bled
life some sort of sheltering influence, to which he had succumbed with an
effortless, an almost fatalistic impulse, finding there, at any rate, a
refuge from the horrors of his empty days. It was all abstract and
impersonal at first, this jealousy which had come so suddenly to disturb
the serenity of an almost too perfect day, but as the hours passed it
seemed to him that his thoughts dwelt more often upon the direct cause of
his brief separation from Elizabeth. He turned in at one of the clubs of
which he had been made a member, and threw himself gloomily into an
easy-chair. His thoughts had turned towards the grim, masterful
personality of the man who seemed to have obtruded himself upon their
lives. What did it mean when Elizabeth told him she was engaged for
to-night? She was supping with him somewhere--probably at that moment
seated opposite to him at a small, rose-shaded table in one of the many
restaurants of the city which they had visited together. He, Sylvanus
Power, his supplanter, was occupying the place that belonged to him,
ordering her supper, humouring her little preferences, perhaps sharing
with her that little glow of relief which comes with the hour of rest,
after the strain of the day's work. The suggestion was intolerable.
To-morrow he would have an explanation! Elizabeth belonged to him.
The sooner the world knew it, the better, and this man first of all. He
read her few lines again, hastily pencilled, and evidently written
standing up. There was a certain ignominy in being sent about his
business, just because this colossus from the West had appeared and
claimed--what? Not his right!--he could have no right! What then?...

Philip ordered a drink, tore open an evening paper, and tried to read.
The letters danced before his eyes, the whisky and soda stood neglected
at his elbow. Afterwards he found himself looking into space. There was
something cynical, challenging almost, in the manner in which that man
had taken Elizabeth away from him, had acknowledged his introduction,
even had treated the author of a play, a writer, as some sort of a
mountebank, making his living by catering for the amusements of the
world. How did that man regard such gifts as his, he wondered?--Sylvanus
Power, of whom he had seen it written that he was one of the conquerors
of nature, a hard but splendid utilitarian, the builder of railways in
China and bridges for the transit of his metals amid the clouds of the
mounta