John was not thinking at all. There was coming before his mind’s eye a succession of pictures, without consequence, and quite irrelevant to the situation he ought to be facing. They were just haphazard memories,--some recent, some very old, nearly all of them trivial. He saw Sponley lighting his cigar when they had just lunched together for the first time--how long ago? He saw himself slamming the carriage door on Harriet’s skirt when they were coming from a play one night. He saw--and this took him far back into his boyhood--his father taking books out of that very shelf where Sponley stood, and handing them to Martha, who dusted them rebelliously. As he looked at this half-forgotten sister of his, the childish figure grew older, and he saw that she was Dick Haselridge, smiling whimsically, just as a little earlier that evening she had smiled over the notion that honesty was a matter of more than good intentions. “This is your proposition, as I understand it,” said John. “I sell out Pickering, on a pretext, to-morrow morning. When he’s weakened by that attack, you’ll throw your lard in, and that’ll break him. And afterward you will turn Cartwright and Meredith over to me, and support me as before on the Board of Directors.” “That’s about it,” said Sponley, without turning. “You want my answer to-night?” “If you please.” “You won’t get it,” said the Banker, “to-night, or any other time.” Sponley whirled around. “What do you mean?” John had risen and thrust his hands into his pockets. His voice, when he spoke, was a little louder and it had a nasal resonance peculiar to his moments of excitement. “I mean that I do not see that anything you have proposed requires an answer.” The two men looked full into each other’s eyes. There was no regret there over the breaking up of the ties of a score of years; that would come later, probably to both of them. Now, there was nothing but the old primal lust of fighting: a challenge flatly given and swiftly accepted. “Steady, there! Steady!” said Sponley, softly. “I’m going to smash Pickering; and if you don’t stand from under, I swear to God I’ll smash you, too.” Once more John Bagsbury’s answer was silence. As he turned away, there was no gesture even of dissent, and his face told nothing. He stood looking at the picture cover of a magazine which chanced to lie on the centre table; his hands were still in his trousers pockets, every line of his long, supple, loose-jointed figure showed him to be at ease. Sponley looked at him, then he replaced the books he was holding on the shelf, and with a swift decision he made his first move.