r all, know what Boyne had meant by his unfinished
phrase? She asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at
once that he seemed surprised at her continued ignorance of the subject.
Was it possible that she really knew as little as she said?

"I know nothing--you must tell me," she faltered out; and her visitor
thereupon proceeded to unfold his story. It threw, even to her confused
perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the
whole hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine. Her husband had made his money
in that brilliant speculation at the cost of "getting ahead" of some one
less alert to seize the chance; the victim of his ingenuity was young
Robert Elwell, who had "put him on" to the Blue Star scheme.

Parvis, at Mary's first startled cry, had thrown her a sobering glance
through his impartial glasses.

"Bob Elwell wasn't smart enough, that's all; if he had been, he might
have turned round and served Boyne the same way. It's the kind of thing
that happens every day in business. I guess it's what the scientists
call the survival of the fittest," said Mr. Parvis, evidently pleased
with the aptness of his analogy.

Mary felt a physical shrinking from the next question she tried to
frame; it was as though the words on her lips had a taste that nauseated
her.

"But then--you accuse my husband of doing something dishonorable?"

Mr. Parvis surveyed the question dispassionately. "Oh, no, I don't.
I don't even say it wasn't straight." He glanced up and down the long
lines of books, as if one of them might have supplied him with the
definition he sought. "I don't say it WASN'T straight, and yet I don't
say it WAS straight. It was business." After all, no definition in his
category could be more comprehensive than that.

Mary sat staring at him with a look of terror. He seemed to her like the
indifferent, implacable emissary of some dark, formless power.

"But Mr. Elwell's lawyers apparently did not take your view, since I
suppose the suit was withdrawn by their advice."

"Oh, yes, they knew he hadn't a leg to stand on, technically. It was
when they advised him to withdraw the suit that he got desperate. You
see, he'd borrowed most of the money he lost in the Blue Star, and he
was up a tree. That's why he shot himself when they told him he had no
show."

The horror was sweeping over Mary in great, deafening waves.

"He shot himself? He killed himself because of THAT?"

"Well, he didn't k