Hood started, and shot a look of mingled surprise and curiosity at his master. Was it possible that Ames––
“You heard my question, Mr. Hood?”
“I––I beg pardon! Yes, sir––Sidney is still with them. He––a––they say he has quite conquered his––his––”
“You mean, he’s no longer a sot?” Ames asked brutally. “Out with it, man! Don’t sit there like a smirking Chinese god!”
“Well, Mr. Ames, I learn that Sidney has been cured of his habits, and that the––that girl––did it,” stammered the nervous lawyer.
Ames’s mouth jerked open––and then snapped shut. Silence held him. His head slowly sank until his chin touched his breast. And as he sat thus enwrapped, Hood rose and noiselessly left the room.
Alone sat the man of gold––ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims. Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.
Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of countless multitudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gross hewers of wood and drawers of water. Looking, and knowing not that in their piteous cry for help and light was sounded his own dire peril.
The door opened, and the office boy announced the chief stenographer of the great bank below. Ames looked up and silently nodded permission for the man to enter.