The truth is, she was too near the dreaded shadow of Bofinger to have regained the clearness of analysis which would have saved her from such a blunder.
CHAPTER XIII SHEILA RETREATS
The explanation of this extraordinary meeting, which had so mystified Sheila, lay in a last revolt of the miser. Once out of her presence, Max Fargus was constantly terrified at the gradual perversion of his own character. He could refuse his wife nothing, or resisted only long enough to learn anew the completeness of his surrender. From an agony of foreboding he vacillated to an ecstasy of defeat. His own impotence mystified him, for he believed that he resisted with all his being, not realizing that in an infatuation half of the man combats for the woman. Then he could never comprehend the use of money. Money spent was money lost. He would have denied angrily being a miser and would have argued that in allowing his wealth to accumulate he individualized it and turned it into a human agency which returned him the most satisfying of sensations,—power.
For the first time in his life he felt the need of a friend to advise and to steady him. But what he had cried out to Sheila was literally true, he had not a friend in the world, not even an acquaintance to whom he could turn. In all his business dealings he had sought to make himself feared. He disdained conciliation, to prevail by sheer autocracy alone intoxicated him.
In this perplexed mood he found himself one morning, in what seemed to him the most accidental manner, face to face with his former attorney, Alonzo Bofinger. The familiar face evoked the memory of an unexampled moderation. A quick thought was followed by a bow. He stopped, giving him a smiling,
"Good morning, Sir."
The lawyer shifted his glance a moment, then with a blank countenance passed on.
"But I'm not mistaken, it must be him," Fargus said doubtfully, and he called again, "Mr. Bofinger, hello there!"