d so clearly, so
faultlessly, so precisely does my mind work that--and this I never
told you--I am often and often able to detect mental inadequacy in
many people around me--the slightest deviation from the normal, the
least degree of mental instability. Phil, so sensitive to
extraneous impression is my mind that you would be astonished to
know how instantly perceptible to me is mental degeneration in
other people. And it would amaze you, too, if I should tell you how
many, many people you know are, in some degree, more or less
insane.

"But there is no use in going into such matters; all I meant to
convey to you was that I am not frightened now at any threat of
that sort from him.

"I don't know what passed between you and him; he won't tell me;
but I do know from the servants that he has been quite ill--I was
in Westchester that night--and that something happened to his
eyes--they were dreadful for a while. I imagine it has something to
do with veins and arteries; and it's understood that he's to avoid
sudden excitement.

"However, he's only serenely disagreeable to me now, and we see
almost nothing of one another except over the card-tables. Gerald
has been winning rather heavily, I am glad to say--glad, as long as
I cannot prevent him from playing. And yet I may be able to
accomplish that yet--in a roundabout way--because the apple-visaged
and hawk-beaked Mr. Neergard has apparently become my slavish
creature; quite infatuated. And as soon as I've fastened on his
collar, and made sure that Rosamund can't unhook it, I'll try to
make him shut down on Gerald's playing. This for your sake,
Phil--because you ask me. And because you must always stand for all
that is upright and good and manly in my eyes. Ah, Phil! what a
fool I was! And all, all my own fault, too.

"Alixe."

This ended the sudden eruption of correspondence; for he did not reply
to this letter, though in it he read enough to make him gravely uneasy;
and he fell, once more, into the habit of brooding, from which both
Boots Lansing and Eileen had almost weaned him.

Also he began to take long solitary walks in the Park when not occupied
in conferences with the representatives of the Lawn Nitro-Powder
Works--a company which had recently approached him in behalf of his
unperfected explosive, Chaosite