tself, and its petty functions were once more resumed--its envious
scheming, its covetous capability, its vicious achievement. For with him
achievement could embody only the meaner imitations of the sheer
colossal _coups_ by which the great financiers gutted a nation with
kid-gloved fingers, and changed their gloves after the operation so that
no blood might stick to Peter's pence or smear the corner-stones of
those vast and shadowy institutions upreared in restitution--black
silhouettes against the infernal sunset of lives that end in the shadowy
death of souls.

* * * * *

Even before Neergard's illness Ruthven's domestic and financial affairs
were in a villainous mess. Rid of Neergard, he had meant to deal him a
crashing blow at the breakaway which would settle him for ever and
incidentally bring to a crisis his own status in regard to his wife.

Whether or not his wife was mentally competent he did not know; he did
not know anything about her. But he meant to. Selwyn's threat, still
fairly fresh in his memory, had given him no definite idea of Alixe, her
whereabouts, her future plans, and whether or not her mental condition
was supposed to be permanently impaired or otherwise.

That she had been, and probably now was, under Selwyn's protection he
believed; what she and Selwyn intended to do he did not know. But he
wanted to know; he dared not ask Selwyn--dared not, because he was
horribly afraid of Selwyn; dared not yet make a legal issue of their
relations, of her sequestration, or of her probable continued infirmity,
because of his physical fear of the man.

But there was--or he thought that there had been--one way to begin the
matter, because the matter must sooner or later be begun: and that was
to pretend to assume Neergard responsible; and, on the strength of his
wife's summer sojourn aboard the _Niobrara_, turn on Neergard and demand
a reckoning which he believed Selwyn would never hear of, because he did
not suppose Neergard dared defend the suit, and would sooner or later
compromise. Which would give him what he wanted to begin with, money,
and the entering wedge against the wife he meant to be rid of in one way
or another, even if he had to swear out a warrant against Selwyn before
he demanded a commission to investigate her mental condition.

Ruthven was too deadly afraid of Selwyn to begin suit at that stage of
the proceedings. All he could do was to start, through his