Then it was over. From the immense height and safety of his little tower Groff sat surveying his conquered world. The man who had everything. The ultimate of personal power. And what would he do with it now? Queer thought! It was so queer, so whimsical a thought that he chuckled, and then was laughing at it—laughing for so long that it left him breathless. There was nobody here to hate. That was another queer thought.
Was it days, or weeks or years, that now he sat alone in his little tower, surveying his empty world? There was nothing to do but gloat with pride at the greatness of himself; and to laugh at the whimsicality of his hungry need to be angry at his enemies who now did not exist. He had tired of that. Then there were times when he thought it would be satisfying if he killed himself, like the man who had written the book and who could not live when he realized that the time had come when no one feared him. But Groff found that he had not the courage to do that.
It tired him to laugh so much, so that often now he sat, just anguished with emptiness. It was queer how that vision of the young couple going down his staircase seemed always here to haunt and to puzzle him. What had been about them that was so gigantic? The thought enraged him, because he knew now that it was something he might have wanted—something he had failed to get.