“You may recall, sir, that I once told you I was an artist of revenge. It is this very ambiguity I’m after. I would hook the fellow--hook him and play him as I would a fish! The man’s a coward. I saw it written on his face that day when, following ‘Long Island,’ he threw away his gun and stores. By coming at him with this ambiguity, he will hope in the beginning to secure himself by evasions. He will write; I shall respond; there will be quite a correspondence. Days will drag along in agony and torment to him. And all the time he cannot escape. From the moment I send him that letter he is mine. It is as if I had him in a narrow lane; he cannot get by me. On the other hand, if I come upon him, as you suggest, with some undeniable charge, it will all be over in a moment. He will be obliged at once to toe the peg. You now understand that I design only in this letter to hook him hard and fast. When I have so played him as to satisfy even my hatred, rest secure I’ll reel him in. He can no more avoid meeting me than he can avoid trembling when he contemplates the dark promise of that meeting. His wife would despise him, his very children cut him dead were he to creep aside.” Van Ness goes with Aaron’s letter to Hamilton. The latter, as he reads it, cannot repress a start. The blood rushes from his face to his heart and back again; for, as though the blind were made to see, he realizes the snare into which he has walked--a snare that he himself has spread to his own undoing. With an effort he commands his agitation. “You shall have my answer by the hand of Mr. Pendleton,” he says. Hamilton’s reply, long and wordy, is two days on its way. As Aaron foretold, it is wholly evasive, and comes in its analysis to be nothing better than a desperate peering about for a hole through which its author may crawl, and drag with him what he calls his honor. Aaron’s reply closes each last loophole of escape. “Your letter,” he says, “has furnished me new reasons for requiring a definite reply.” Hamilton reads his doom in this; and yet he cannot consent to the sacrifice, but struggles on. He makes a second response, this time at greater length than before. Aaron, implacable as Death, reads what Hamilton has written. “I think we should close the business,” he says to Van Ness, as he gives him Hamilton’s letter. “It has been ten days since I sent my initial note, and I have had enough of vengeance in anticipation. And so for the last act.” Aaron dispatches Van Ness with a peremptory challenge. There being no gateway of relief, Hamilton is driven to accept. Even then comes a cry for time; Hamilton asks that the hour of final meeting be fixed ten further days away. Aaron smiles that pale smile of hatred made content, and grants the prayed-for delay.