"I think he is, ma'am."
"Please tell him I'd like to see him—in the library."
She had to wait only three or four minutes before he came—in smoking jacket and slippers. It was long since she had looked at him so carefully as she did then; and she noted how much grosser he was, the puffs under his eyes, the lines of cruelty that were coming out strongly with autocratic power and the custom of receiving meek obedience. And her heart sank. "Useless," she said to herself. "Utterly useless!" And the incident of the necklace and its reminders of all she had suffered from him and through him came trooping into her mind; and it seemed to her that she could not speak, could not even remain in the room with him.
He dropped into a chair before the open fire. "Horribly cold, isn't it?"
She moved uneasily. He slowly lighted a cigar and began to smoke it, his attitude one of waiting.
"I've been thinking," she began at last—she was looking reflectively into the fire—"about your great talent for business and finance. You formed your big combination, and because you understand everything about wool you employ more men, you pay higher wages, and you make the goods better than ever, and at less cost."
"Between a third and a half cheaper," he said. "We employ thirty thousand more men, and since we settled the last strike"—a grim smile that would have meant a great deal to her had she known the history of that strike and how hard he had fought before he gave in—"we've paid thirty per cent. higher wages. Yet the profits are—well, you can imagine."
"And you've made millions for yourself and for those in with you."
"I haven't developed my ideas for nothing."
She paused again. It was several minutes before she went on: