bedience to his will. He reasoned with a sophistical show of right that
the great idea was his, that what he gave was given in the fullness of
his heart, and that it was only base ingratitude that prompted the
recipients to oppose and thwart him.

Winston had opposed and thwarted him in a thousand details, and though
Elijah had outwardly yielded, he had not essentially changed, though he
was learning many lessons. He had learned to distinguish between what
Winston would accept and what he would reject, but involuntarily and
unconsciously there was growing up within him a burning hatred of Ralph
Winston. There was a seeming lack of sympathy in the rugged integrity of
Winston that clove through the heart of things. Winston knew only north
and south. If a needle swung to these points, it was right; if it did
not, it was wrong, and he had no use for it.

Elijah was growing jealous of Winston. He said nothing, but he noticed
that, in the field especially, and to a certain extent in the office,
details were more and more referred to Winston, even by Helen. Winston's
name was on every tongue. It seemed to Elijah as if profit, and honor,
and prestige were slipping from him and falling upon Winston. He was
being defrauded. It never occurred to him that Winston's complete
surrender of heart, and soul and mind to the successful fulfilment of
his dreams, all testified far more strongly than honeyed words of praise
to the worthiness of the idea which he had conceived.

He had turned to Helen Lonsdale. With no less rugged ideas of right and
wrong, they had been clouded in Helen with the dangerous sympathy of a
woman's heart. With sympathy, Helen had softened the blows she had dealt
him. To a certain extent she had kept him right, but because the blows
had not pained, they lacked a compelling power. Her intuition,
stimulated by her belief in him, in his essential greatness, had been
quick to detect every changing mood; in her womanly sympathy, her
efforts to soothe and comfort had been unstinted.

In spite of all condemning appearances, these influences were having an
unconscious effect for good upon Elijah, until the advent of Mrs.
MacGregor. She nursed his sense of wrong, stimulated his belief in
himself, fed his morbidly craving soul with honeyed food that fattened
it for the hand of the slayer.

Yet Mrs. MacGregor had missed her mark. She had counted upon a possible
sometime awakening of Elijah, but before the awakening she ha