No one was present to accept or decline his offer. No one caught the words he uttered. But the sound of the blow of his fist upon the table brought a waiter to the end of the box. Leigh ordered more coffee and another cigar. When they had been brought and he was once more alone, his mind ran on:-- "That is one view of it, that is the view I should offer to my customers and to the world of my position. But what kept me so from closing with this Timmons was the consideration that everyone who heard my version of the matter might not accept it. "The clock is out-growing me, and often I feel giddy and in a maze with it. A clock cannot fill all my life and satisfy all a man's heart. At the time I began it years ago I fancied it would suffice. I fancied it would keep my heart from preying on itself. But now the mechanism is often too much for me when it is not before my eyes. It wears, and wears, and wears the mind, as it wears, and wears, and wears itself. "When this man Timmons came to me first, I thought of putting the clock to a use I never contemplated when I started making it. Since I began to think of making the clock of use in my dealings with this Miracle Gold, I have seen her; I have seen this Edith Grace, who staggered me in my pursuit of Miracle Gold and filled my veins with fire I never knew before. What fools we men are! And I who have not the proportions of a man, what a fool ten thousand times multiplied! She shrank from me as though I were a leper, I who am only a monster! I would give all the gold that ever blazed before the eye-balls of men to have a man's fair inches and straight back! I! I! I! What am I that I should have feelings? Why, I am worse than the vilest lepers that rotted without the city gate. _They_, even _they_, had had their days of wholesomeness and strength before the plague fell upon them. I was predestined from birth to stand in odious and grotesque blackness against the sun, to seem in the eyes of all women a goblin spewed out of the maw of hell!" He paused. The clock struck. He sprang to his feet. "Ten!" he said aloud. He said to himself: "Ten o'clock, and I have a good deal to do before Timmons comes at midnight." Suddenly he paused on his way to the door of the restaurant, and stood in deep thought. Then he resumed his way to the door and when he got out into the street, said half aloud: