The damp rail was cool and refreshing, and after a spell the pain diminished. He shook himself free and stood straight, his jaws hard and his eyes, absorbing what light there was from the stars, chatoyant. Sorry! So be it. To have humbled himself before this American girl and to be snubbed for his pains! But, patience! Two million francs and his friends awaiting the word from him. She was sorry! He laughed, and the laughter was not unlike that which a few nights gone had startled the ears of the other woman to whom he had once appealed in passionate tones and not without success. "Karl!" The sight of Hildegarde at this moment neither angered nor pleased him. He permitted her hand to lay upon his arm. "My head aches," he said, as if replying to the unspoken question in her eyes. "Karl, why not give it up?" she pleaded. "Give it up? What! when I have come this far, when I have gone through what I have? Oh, no! Do not think so little of me as that." "But it is a dream!" He shook off her hand angrily. "If there is to be any reckoning I shall pay, never fear. But it will not, _shall_ not fail!" She would have liked to weep for him. "I would gladly give you my eyes, Karl, if you might see it all as I see it. Ruin, ruin! Can you touch this money without violence? Ah, my God, what has blinded you to the real issues?" "I have not asked you to share the difficulties." "No. You have not been that kind to me." To-night there were no places in his armor for any sentiment but his own. "I want nothing but revenge." "I think I can read," her own bitterness getting the better of her tongue. "Miss Killigrew has declined." "You have been listening?" with a snarl. "It has not been necessary to listen; I needed only to watch." "Well, what is it to you?" "Take care, Karl! You can not talk to me like that." "Don't drive me, then. Oh," with a sudden turn of mind, "I am sorry that you can not understand." "If I hadn't I should never have given you my promise not to speak. There was a time when you had right on your side, but that time ceased to be when you lied to me. How little you understood me! Had you spoken frankly and generously at the start, God knows I shouldn't have refused you. But you set out to walk over my heart to get that miserable slip of paper. Ah! had I but known! I say to you, you will fail utterly and miserably. You are either blind or mad!" Without a word in reply to this prophecy he turned and left her; and as soon as he had vanished she kissed the spot on the rail where his hand had rested and laid her own there. When at last she raised it, the rail was no longer merely damp, it was wet. "Now there," began Fitzgerald, taking M. Ferraud firmly by the sleeve, "I have come to the end of my patience. What has Breitmann to do with all this business?" "Will you permit me to polish my spectacles?" mildly asked M. Ferraud.