I bowed. Though he had not saved me as a favor to me, but because it fitted in with his plans, whatever they were, my eyes dimmed. “I shan't forget this,” said I, my voice not quite steady. “I know it,” said he curtly. “I know you.” I saw that his mind had already turned me out. I said no more, and withdrew. When I left the room it was precisely as it had been when I entered it--except the bit of paper torn from the pad. But what a difference to me, to the thousands, the hundreds of thousands directly and indirectly interested in the Coal combine and its strike and its products, was represented by those few, almost illegible scrawlings on that scrap of paper. Not until I had gone over the situation with Farquhar, and we had signed and exchanged the necessary papers, did I begin to relax from the strain--how great that strain was I realized a few weeks later, when the gray appeared thick at my temples and there was in my crown what was, for such a shock as mine, a thin spot. “I am saved!” said I to myself, venturing a long breath, as I stood on the steps of Galloway's establishment, where hourly was transacted business vitally affecting the welfare of scores of millions of human beings, with James Galloway's personal interest as the sole guiding principle. “Saved!” I repeated, and not until then did it flash before me, “I must have paid a frightful price. He would never have consented to interfere with Roebuck as soon as I asked him to do it, unless there had been some powerful motive. If I had had my wits about me, I could have made far better terms.” Why hadn't I my wits about me? “Anita” was my instant answer to my own question. “Anita again. I had a bad attack of family man's panic.” And thus it came about that I went back to my own office, feeling as if I had suffered a severe defeat, instead of jubilant over my narrow escape. Joe followed me into my den. “What luck?” asked he, in the tone of a mother waylaying the doctor as he issues from the sick-room. “Luck?” said I, gazing blankly at him. “You've seen the latest quotation, haven't you?” In his nervousness his temper was on a fine edge. “No,” replied I indifferently. I sat down at my desk and began to busy myself. Then I added: “We're out of the Coal combine. I've transferred our holdings. Look after these things, please.” And I gave him the checks, notes and memoranda of agreement. “Galloway!” he exclaimed. And then his eye fell on the totals of the stock I had been carrying. “Good God, Matt!” he gasped. “Ruined!” And he sat down, and buried his face and cried like a child--it was then that I measured the full depth of the chasm I had escaped. I made no such exhibition of myself, but when I tried to relight my cigar my hand trembled so that the flame scorched my lips.