Valentine was not crushed. He showed no sense of guilt. No one believed him guilty in fact. What he represented, tragically and with great dignity, was the crime of obsolence. A stronger man was putting him aside in a new time. He started to speak, but Potter spoke instead. “I move to strike all this stuff off the record,” he said, “and let matters rest as they are.” He pushed back his chair. Everyone but Valentine arose. There was no vote. Officially nothing had been transacted. The president was left sitting there alone, with his resolutions in front of him. All that Galt said was true. It was probably not the whole truth. His transaction with Gates seemed on the face of it too strange to be so briefly and plausibly explained. One fact at least he left out, which was that Gates hated Valentine with a fixation peculiar to cryptic old age. Nobody knew quite why. He was possibly more interested in revenge upon Valentine than in the future of the Great Midwestern. It may be surmised also that he had some intuition of Galt’s latent power, just as Mordecai had, and placed a bet on him at long, safe odds. It was Galt who took the risk. And as for the Orient & Pacific deal, that did not require to be defended on its merits, for there was already a profit in it for the company. After this Valentine should have resigned. Instead he carried the fight outside, over all persuasion. It became a nasty row. He publicly attacked the company’s purchase of the Orient & Pacific, denounced Galt personally, and solicited the stockholders for proxies to be voted at the annual meeting for directors who would support him. His acquaintance with the financial editors, several of whom were his warm friends, gave him an apparent advantage. All the newspapers were on his side. But nobody then knew how Galt loved a fight. He poured his essence into it and attained to a kind of lustful ecstacy. His methods were both direct and devious. To win by a safe margin did not satisfy him. It must be a smashing defeat for his opponent. He, too, appealed to the stockholders. Valentine in one way had played into his hands. His complaint was that Galt had seized the management. Well, if that were true, nobody but Galt could claim credit for the results, and they were beginning to be marvelous. Great Midwestern’s earnings were improving so fast that Galt’s enemies must resort to malicious innuendo. They said he was a wizard with figures, which was true enough, and that possibly the earnings were fictitious, which was not the case at all.