you know. Are you--are you feeling quite well? Do let me give
you something--a--a glass of champagne, perhaps. I'll call a servant."

Gard's smile was so cruel that Mahr's worst fears were confirmed. But
the torrent of accusation that burst from Gard's lips bore him down with
the consciousness of the other's knowledge.

"You scoundrel!" roared the enraged man. "You squirming, poisonous
snake! You would strike at a woman through her daughter, would you! You
would send anonymous letters to a child about her mother! You would hire
sneaks for your sneaking vileness!--coward, brute that you are! Well, I
know it all--_all_, I say. And as true as I live, if ever you make one
move in that direction again, I shall find it out, and I will kill you!
But first I'll go to your boy, Victor Mahr, and I shall tell him: 'Your
father is a criminal--a bigamist. Your mother never was his wife. Sneak
and beast from first to last, he found it easier to desert and deceive.
You are the nameless child of an outcast father, the whelp of a cur.'
I'll say in your own words, Victor Mahr: 'Obscurity is best, perhaps,
even exile.' Do you remember those words? Well, never forget them again
as long as you live, or, by God, you'll have no time on earth to make
your peace!"

Mahr's face was gray; his hands trembled. He looked at that moment as if
the death the other threatened was already come upon him. There was a
moment of silence, intense, charged with the electricity of emotions--a
silence more sinister than the noise of battles. Twice Mahr attempted to
speak, but no sound came from his contracted throat. Slowly he pulled
himself together. A look awful, inhuman, flashed over his convulsed
features. Words came at last, high, cackling and cracked, like the voice
of senility.

"It's you--it's _you_!" he quavered. "So she told you everything, did
she? So you and she--"

The sentence ended in a hoarse gasp, as Mahr launched himself at Gard
with the spring of an animal goaded beyond endurance.

Gard was the larger man, and his wrath had been long demanding
expression. They closed with a jar that rocked the electric lamp on the
desk. There was a second of straining and uncertainty. Then with a jerk
Gard lifted his adversary clear off his feet, and shook him, shook him
with the fury of a bulldog, and as relentlessly. Then, as if the
temptation to murder was more than he could longer resist, he flung him
from him.

Mahr fell full length upon the heav