s standard he had set up for others. Judged by conventional
laws he had nothing to fear. He was a faithful member of his church. He
gave liberally to its work and gave generously to a hundred worthy
charities. He loved his wife with old-fashioned loyalty and tenderness
and grieved that she was childless. He stood by his friends and fought
his enemies, asking no quarter and giving none.

Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that, judged in the great white
light of the Eternal when all things hidden shall be revealed, he could
not stand blameless. He knew that while he had kept within the letter
of the law, his genius consisted in the skill with which he had learned
to divert other men's earnings into his own coffers.

And deep down in the depths of his memory there lay one particular deed
which lent colour to all that followed. He knew that however loftily he
might discourse at present about "character," "honour," "integrity,"
and "fair dealing," he had stolen the formula from his big-hearted
employer with which he had laid the foundation of his fortune. It was
the first half-million that came hard. It was this first half-million
that bore the stain of shame. He had justified it with fine sophistry
until he counted himself a benefactor to Woodman, but the grim fact
stood out in his memory with growing clearness as his millions piled up
with each succeeding year.

His other questionable acts on which the fate of millions had often
hung he had no difficulty in justifying. Business was war. In war it
was fair to deceive, to march in the night, to attack when least
suspected, to strike to kill, to destroy and lay waste the fairest
countries and starve your enemy into submission.

All this had flashed through Bivens's imagination when Stuart smiled,
and in spite of his conscious dignity and power, he had fallen silent.
The smile had made him nervous. He wondered vaguely what was in the
mind of the tall quiet man that provoked a smile at such a serious
moment.

He wondered particularly whether the lawyer could have suspected his
hobby, for he had one of the most curious--a collection of historic
material on the origin of American fortunes. The origin of his own had
early made Bivens suspect that all great fortunes which had mounted
into millions, like his own, may have been built in their first
foundations on fraud. He wondered if Stuart had by any accident
stumbled on this information. Even if he had he could not understan