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Your husband is my friend, and from to-day our lives must lie apart. It's the only way." She extended her hand and he pressed it tenderly. Her voice was the merest sobbing whisper when she spoke: "Yes, Jim, I suppose it's the only way." In spite of Bivens's protest Stuart returned to New York on the first train the morning after the coaching party reached the house.
He looked about the room and saw that he was in the inner office of the president of the bank, alone with Bivens's wife. He was lying on the big leather couch. "I heard that you were going to speak this morning. I wanted to hear you and came. I arrived just as you began and managed to get into the bank. I saw that man try to kill you, Jim, and that crowd of wild beasts trampling you to death.
His friendship for Stuart and his deference to him personally and socially dated from their boyhood in North Carolina and particularly from an incident which occurred in their college days. Bivens's father had been a notorious coward in the Confederate army and had at last deserted the service. A number of very funny stories about his actions in battle had become current everywhere.
"Why, Jim, how could you be so absurd," she protested indignantly. "I've been saving money for a month to give Nan this chance to return some courtesies she has received from rich friends. I need Mr. Bivens's money to pay the rent of this big house. But any attention on his part to Nan would be disgusting to me beyond measure."
He had made some brave talk to Bivens's face as he stared at the daring display of his money. He couldn't realize it then. He was on guard. But now that he was alone and his imagination began to paint pictures and his fancy to weave visions, he saw the beckoning hand of Temptation from a high mountain wave invitingly toward the world below, and the vision was beautiful.
Strange he hadn't noticed it until Bivens's dark sneering face this morning, insolent in its conscious strength, had opened his eyes. What chance had his old friend Woodman against such forces? Yet why should he resent them personally? He was young. The future was his not the past. He didn't resent them. Of course not.
"Did you hear what I just said to you?" He turned his head stupidly. "Hear what? No, I can't hear anything. Jim, except a devil that follows me everywhere, day and night, and whispers in my ear 'thief! thief! It's no use. I'm done." "Well I'm not done. I've just begun. You are not going to give up and you're not going to prison. We'll go to Bivens's house to-night. We'll tell him the truth.
"I have put all bitterness out of my heart and come to-night to ask that bygones be bygones. You know the history of our relations and of my business. I need not repeat it. And you know that in God's great book of accounts you are my debtor." Bivens's eyes danced with anger, and his words had the ring of cold steel. "I owe you nothing."
Bivens's mouth quivered with the slightest sneer. "Perhaps it was lost in transit!" The sneer was lost on the doctor. He was too intent on his purpose. "I know. It was a mistake. I see it now, and I'm perfectly willing to pay for that mistake by accepting even half of your last proposition." Bivens laughed cynically. "This might be serious, Woodman, if it wasn't funny.
"If Europe now cringes at the feet of our present millionaire-king of Wall Street, emperors beg his favour and princes wait at his door, what could the real ruler of the world do with these puppets when he comes into his kingdom?" Bivens's voice again sank into low passionate whispers, while his black eyes again became two points of fierce gleaming light.
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