The blinded man suspected not that his wife's heart was estranged from him, that treachery spun its webs around him under his own roof. His love, his confidence, firm as if founded on a rock, helped to blind him, and when his eyes were at last opened, it was too late, he saw his happiness and honour lying in ruin before him. Almost driven mad by despair, he lost self-control and struck the destroyer of his happiness to the ground.
Fate had at least preserved him from that last misery, blood-guiltiness. Although severely injured, the traitor recovered slowly, but Sandow had to pay the penalty of his deed by an imprisonment of many a weary year. Though Right was unquestionably on his side, the letter of the law sentenced him, and that sentence destroyed his whole existence.
His situation was naturally lost, his official career closed. She, who had once been his wife, had after the necessary separation had taken place, given her hand to the man for whose sake she had betrayed her husband, and whose name she now bore. And the one thing left to him, the one thing the law allowed to the desolate man, that he himself put from him. He had learnt to doubt all, all that he had once considered pure and true, he now looked on as lying deception; thus he believed no more in his paternal rights, and refused to recognise the little being which had once been the joy of his heart.
He left it to the mother without even seeing it again. Under these circumstances it was impossible to contemplate returning to his native town.
Only America was open to him, that refuge of so many shattered existences. Despairing of himself and of the world, poor and with the prison stain upon his brow, he went there, but it was the turning point in his life. There he rose from deepest misery to riches and splendour.
From that time success had remained true to Frank Sandow. Whatever he ventured brought the richest returns, and soon he found only too much pleasure in these ventures. He dragged the quiet and timorous Clifford with him into the boldest and fool-hardiest speculations, and, as since his death, the reins had been entirely in his own hands, he could now brook no control.
There was something almost terrible in this restless, unceasing, hunt for gain in a man, who heaped up riches, but had no one for whom to gather them. But man must have something to cling to, something to give an aim and object to his life, and when the nobler good is lost, it is often the demon of gold which makes itself lord of the empty shrine.
Thus Sandow had fallen a victim. This demon spurred him ever forwards to new gains, drove him from one wild speculation to another, and led him to place his all on a single card. But it made him also insensible of every joy of life, to peace or happiness.
The chief of the great American banking house had indeed won for himself an imposing position, but his countenance showed only furrows of care, only the traces of feverish excitement; of peace and happiness there was no sign there.
The mist over the sea had grown thicker and spread farther and farther. Like dusky visions it floated to the land, and out of it rolled and burst the gloomy billows. The wind which now arose in its full might, drove them more strongly and violently on the strand. They came no more with a light splash, but roared and foamed on the beach. Threateningly they rushed to the feet of the lonely man, who darkly, and as if lost in thought, looked down on them. It was as if every wave repeated the words he had just heard, and that out of the fog arose the pictures they had called up before him.