"

"Look here," Philip broke in, "I know all this. I know everything you
have told me, and everything you can tell me. What about it? What have
you got to say to me?"

"This," Sylvanus Power declared, striking the desk with his clenched
fist. "I have only had one consolation all the time I have been
waiting--there has been no other man. Elizabeth isn't that sort. Each
time I was separated and came back, I just looked at her and I knew.
That's why I have been patient. That is why I haven't insisted upon my
debt being paid. You understand that?"

"I hear what you say."

Power crossed the room, helped himself to whisky, and returned to his
place with the tumbler in his hand. There was a brief silence. A little
clock upon the mantelpiece struck two. The street sounds outside had
ceased save for the hoot of an occasional taxicab. Philip was conscious
of a burning desire to get away. This man, this great lump of power and
success, standing like a colossus in his wonderful home, infuriated him.
That a man should live who thought he had a right such as he claimed,
was maddening.

"Well," Power proceeded, setting down the tumbler empty, "you won't be
bought. How am I going to get you out of the way?"

"You can't do it," Philip asserted. "I am going to-morrow morning to
Elizabeth, and I am going to pray her to marry me at once."

Power swayed for a single moment upon his feet. The teeth gleamed between
his slightly parted lips. His great arm was outstretched, its bursting
muscles showing against the sleeve of his dinner coat. His chest was
heaving.

"If you do it," he shouted, "I'll close the theatre to-morrow and sack
every one in it. I'll buy any theatre in New York where you try to
present your namby-pamby play. I'll buy every manager she goes to for an
engagement, every newspaper that says a word of praise of any work of
yours. I tell you I'll stand behind the scenes and pull the strings which
shall bring you and her to the knowledge of what failure and want mean.
I'll give up the great things in life. I'll devote every dollar I have,
every thought of my brain, every atom of my power, to bringing you two
face to face with misery. That's if I keep my hands off you. I mayn't do
that."

Philip shrugged his shoulders.

"If I put you in a play," he said, "which is where you really belong,
people would find you humorous. Your threats don't affect me at all, Mr.
Power. Elizabeth can choose."

Power leaned over to the