, so short a
time that he was even a little uneasy at the wonderful strength of this
new passion, a thing which had leaped up like a forest tree in a world
of magic, a live, fully-grown thing, mighty and immovable in a single
night. He found himself thinking of all the other things in life from a
changed standpoint. His sense of proportions was altered, his financial
triumphs were no longer omnipotent. He was inclined even to brush them
aside, to consider them more as an incident in his career. He associated
her now with all those plans concerning the future which he had been
dimly formulating since the climax of his successes had come. She was of
the world which he sought to enter--at once the stimulus and the object
of his desires. He forgot all about Da Souza and his threats, about the
broken-down, half-witted old man who was gazing with wistful eyes across
the ocean which kept him there, an exile--he remembered nothing save the
wonderful, new thing which had come into his life. A month ago he would
have scoffed at the idea of there being anything worth considering
outside the courts and alleys of the money-changers' market. To-night he
knew of other things. To-night he knew that all he had done so far was
as nothing--that as yet his foot was planted only on the threshold of
life, and in the path along which he must hew his way lay many fresh
worlds to conquer. To-night he told himself that he was equal to them
all. There was something out here in the dim moonlight, something
suggested by the shadows, the rose-perfumed air, the delicate and
languid stillness, which crept into his veins and coursed through his
blood like magic.

* * * * *

Yet every now and then the same thought came; it lay like a small but
threatening black shadow across all those brilliant hopes and dreams
which were filling his brain. So far he had played the game of life as a
hard man, perhaps, and a selfish one, but always honestly. Now, for the
first time, he had stepped aside from the beaten track. He told himself
that he was not bound to believe Da Souza's story, that he had left
Monty with the honest conviction that he was past all human help. Yet
he knew that such consolation was the merest sophistry. Through the
twilight, as he passed to and fro, he fancied more than once that the
wan face of an old man, with wistful, sorrowing eyes, was floating
somewhere before him--and he stopped to listen w