Gordon remained in the house during the entire afternoon.

Kate called a boy and sent two messages. One of them summoned her lawyer, the same polite gentleman who had brought the wonderful message from that house a few years before.

At 6:30 Gordon went to his study. The wind had risen steadily and was blowing now a gale from the northwest, and he could feel the cut of hail mixed with the raindrops. It was fearful under foot, and he knew his crowd would be small.

His mind was in a whirl of nervous rage.

“Bah! It’s this infernal storm in the air,” he cried, in disgust.

A feeling of suffocation at last mastered him. He turned the service over to an assistant, left the Temple, and returned to Gramercy Park with feverish step.

Overman was in the library in earnest consultation with Kate.

They both sprang to their feet as he hurriedly entered, and he could see that Kate was trembling with excitement and dread.

The banker was cool and insolent.

Gordon walked quickly to Kate’s side and spoke in icy tones of command.

“Go to your room. I have something to say to this gentleman it will not be necessary for you to hear.”

She hesitated and glanced inquiringly at Overman.

“Certainly; it’s best,” came his low, quick answer.

The hesitation and appeal to the new master were not lost on Gordon. He squared his gigantic shoulders, and wet his lips as if to cool them.

“Very well,” she said, facing Gordon. “Before I go I wish to announce to you that it will not be convenient for you to spend another night in this house. If you do not go, I will.”

He bowed politely and waved her away with a graceful gesture.

“That will do. I do not care to hear any more.”

Kate turned and quickly left the room.

“Won’t you sit down?” Gordon said, offering Overman a chair with excessive courtesy.

“Thanks; I prefer to stand,” he answered, gruffly.

The single eye was fixed on the man opposite in a steady blaze, following every step and every movement in silence.

Gordon took his place by Overman’s side, thrust his big thumbs into his vest at the armpits, and looked off into space.

“It’s no use, Mark, for us to mince words,” he began, in even, clear tones. “I understand the situation perfectly.”

“Then the solution should be easy under your code,” the banker dryly remarked.

“All I ask of you now,” Gordon continued, quietly, “as my best friend, is to let my wife alone. Is that a reasonable request?”

“No,” was the emphatic answer. “Did I seek your wife? Yet nothing could have wrung from me the secret of my love had you not flung the challenge in my face again and again; and even then my love for you sealed my lips until she broke the spell to-day with words that cannot be unsaid.”

Gordon’s face and voice softened.

“Granted, Mark, I’ve been a fool. I know better now. I appeal to your sense of honour and our long friendship. Let this scene end it. Let us return to the old life and its standards.”

The big neck straightened.

“Then go back,” he flashed, in tones that cut like steel, “to the wife of your youth and the mother of your children!”

Gordon’s fist clenched; he was still a moment, and when he spoke his voice was like velvet.

“It’s useless to bandy epithets, or to argue, Mark. I don’t reason about this thing. I only feel. My passion is very simple, very elemental. It flouts logic and reason. This woman is mine. I have paid the price, and I will kill the man who dares to take her. Do you understand?”

The banker gave a sneering laugh, and twisted the muscles of his mouth.

“Yes, I understand, and I’m not fainting with alarm. You will be a preacher and a poser to the end.”

“I have appealed to your principles and your sense of honour first,” Gordon repeated, in a subdued voice.

The one eye was closed with a smile.

“Principles! Sense of honour! What principles? What sense of honour? I agree that, under the old view of marriage as a divine sacrament and a great social ordinance, sacrifice of one’s desires for the sake of humanity might be noble. But in this paradise into which you have thrust me, with an invitation on your own door for all the world to enter and contest your position, and with you yourself shouting from the housetop freedom and fellowship—-Sense of honour? Rubbish!”

“I can see,” snapped Gordon, “that one such beast as you is enough to transform heaven into hell.”

Overman slowly pulled his moustache, and a grin pushed his nose upward.

“Exactly. I am the one odd individual your scheme overlooked—a normal human being with the simplest rational instincts, a clear brain and the muscle big enough to enforce a desire.”

“The muscle test is yet to come,” Gordon coldly interrupted.

The banker shrugged his shoulders.

“I suppose so. And you know, Frank, the fear of man is an emotion I have never experienced.”

Gordon bent quickly toward him, his face quiet and pale, and said in muffled accents:

“Well, you who have never feared man, listen. Get out of this house to-night, give up my wife, never speak to her again or cross my path, or else—” a pause—“I am going to disarm you, bend your bulldog’s body across my knee by an art of which I am master, close your jaw with this fist on your throat, and break your back inch by inch. Will you go?”

Overman surveyed the questioner with scorn.

“When the woman who loves me tells me to go. This is her house!” he coolly sneered.

Again the voice opposite sank to velvet tones.

“Very well, we are face to face without disguise, beast to beast. You haven’t the muscle to take her. She is mine. I gave for her the deathless love of a wife, two beautiful children, a name, a career, a character, and the life of the man who gave me being, who died with a broken heart. For her I turned my back upon the poor who looked to me for help, forgot the great city I loved, overturned God’s altars, scorned heaven and dared the terrors of hell. Do you think that I will give her up? I own her, body and soul. I’ve paid the price.”

He paused a moment, quivering with passion. “I know,” he went on, “I was a fool floundering in a bog of sentiment. But you—one-eyed brute—you were never deceived about anything. You set your lecherous eye on her from the first and determined to poison her mind and take her from me.”

“And I will take her,” came the fierce growl from the depths of his throat, “and lift her from the mire into which you have dragged her peerless being.”

The man opposite gave a quick, nervous laugh.

“Well, I, who have dreamed the salvation of the world and lost my own soul, may sink to-night, but, old boy”—he paused and laughed hysterically—“I’ll pull down with me into hell as I go one Wall Street banker!”

“Talk is............