He had just returned from lunch on Friday when he started, to perceive the ruddy face and powerful frame of Mr. Prentidd darken the front door--which he had not done since his voice was last raised. Bellair was conscious of Seth Wetherbee hitching up his chair and a peculiar gasping cough from the old man, but his own eyes did not turn from the caller’s face--which moved slowly about, the pale little exchange-miss behind the first barrier, attentive to catch the stranger’s eye and answer his question. The inventor glanced slowly among desks and doors. His eye sought Sproxley, and the furtive black eyes of the latter shot down to his ledger as if crippled on the wing. His eyes held Bellair and the young man felt the scorn of ages burn through his veins--something new to his later life, yet deep in his heart, something he had known somewhere before, as if he had betrayed a good king, and his punishment had been to look that king in the eye before he died. Bellair had never hated himself as at that moment, and certainly never before felt himself identified body and soul with modern corruption, as now with scorn like a fiery astringent in his veins. The eyes of Mr. Prentidd finally settled upon the figure of Mr. Seth Wetherbee, their rays striking him abeam as it were. The old man hunched closer if anything, but did not raise his head. The inventor was a physical person; his morals of a physical nature; his Nubian file of the same dimension and method of mind--a strong man who had to do with pain and pleasure of the flesh; his ideas of possessions were of the world. He moved softly, a soft, dangerous smile upon his lips, to the desk of the vice-president and jerked up a chair. The old man had to raise his head. It was as if the scene of three years ago was now to be continued, for Bellair saw the sorrowful, lengthened face of Mr. Eben turn from his desk in the other room and bend toward his father, whose face was intensely pathetic now in its forced smile of greeting. “You’re not looking well--in fact, you’re looking old, Mr. Wetherbee, as if you would die pretty soon.” “I’m not so strong as I was, Mr. Prentidd.” Bellair couldn’t have done it, as the inventor did. Had the man stolen and ruined him--he could not have pushed on after the pathos of that. “You’re a dirty old man--and you’ll die hard and soon--for you lied to me when I trusted you. I suppose you have lied to everybody, all your life----”