“What matter personalities to us?” he blandly inquired. “We are interested in facts.”
The chief lifted his hand and gave curt direction. “Show her in.”
Then through the door came a woman whose beauty would have arrested attention in any gathering. Just now what these men, rising grudgingly from their chairs, noted first, was the self-possession, the poise, and the convincing evidence of good breeding and competency which characterized her.
She was elegantly but plainly dressed, and her manner conveyed a self-assurance in nowise flustered by the prospect of impending storm.
No one there, save Spurrier, recognized her, for to Martin Harrison carrying the one disapproving impression of a mountain girl in patched gingham, the transformation was complete.
And as for Spurrier himself, after coming to his 302 feet, he stood as a man might be expected to stand if a specter of death had suddenly materialized before him.
For the one time in his life all the assumption of boldness, worn for other eyes, broke and fell away from him, leaving him nakedly and starkly dumbfounded. He presented the pale and distressed aspect of a whipped prize fighter, reeling groggily against the ropes, and defenseless against attack.
It was a swift transformation from audacious boldness to something which seemed abject, or that at least was the aspect which presented itself to Martin Harrison and his aides, but back of it all lay reasons into which they could not see.
It was no crumbling and softening of battle metal that had wrought this astonishing metamorphosis but a thing much nearer to the man’s heart. At that moment there departed from his mind the whole urgent call of the duel between business enemies—and he saw only the woman for whom he had sought and whom he had not found.
In the cumulative force and impact of their heart-breaking sequence there rushed back on him all the memories that had been haunting him, intensified to unspeakable degree at the sight of her face—and if he thought of the business awaiting them at all, it was only with a stabbing pain of realization that he had met Glory again only in the guise of an enemy.