That thought dragged another in its train, an ugly, grinning imp that leered at me and sneered: “_But she won't have you now_!” “She will! She must!” I cried aloud, starting up. And then the storm burst--I raged up and down the floor, shaking my clinched fists, gnashing my teeth, muttering all kinds of furious commands and threats--a truly ridiculous exhibition of impotent rage. For through it all I saw clearly enough that she wouldn't have me, that all these people I'd been trying to climb up among would kick loose my clinging hands and laugh as they watched me disappear. They who were none too gentle and slow in disengaging themselves from those of their own lifelong associates who had reverses of fortune--what consideration could “Black Matt” expect from them? And she--The necessity and the ability to deceive myself had gone, now that I could not pay the purchase price for her. The full hideousness of my bargain for her dropped its veil and stood naked before me. At last, disgusted and exhausted, I flung myself down again, and dumbly and helplessly inspected the ruins of my projects--or, rather, the ruin of the one project upon which I had my heart set. I had known I cared for her, but it had seemed to me she was simply one more, the latest, of the objects on which I was in the habit of fixing my will from time to time to make the game more deeply interesting. I now saw that never before had I really been in earnest about anything, that on winning her I had staked myself, and that myself was a wholly different person from what I had been imagining. In a word, I sat face to face with that unfathomable mystery of sex-affinity that every man laughs at and mocks another man for believing in, until he has himself felt it drawing him against will, against reason, and sense, and interest, over the brink of destruction yawning before his eyes--drawing him as the magnet-mountain drew Sindbad and his ship. And I say to you that those who can defy and resist that compulsion are not more, but less, than man or woman; and their fancied strength is in reality a deficiency. Looking calmly back upon my follies under her spell, I think the better of myself for them. It is the splendid follies of life that redeem it from vulgarity. But--it is not in me to despair. There never yet was an impenetrable siege line; to escape, it is only necessary by craft or by chance to hit upon the moment and the spot for the sortie. “Ruined!” I said aloud. “Trapped and trimmed like the stupidest sucker that ever wandered into Wall Street! A dead one, no doubt; but I'll see to it that they don't enjoy my funeral.” XVII. A GENTEEL “HOLD-UP”