And not the least of the bitterness of that moment was the acrid realization that I could not charge him with having flattered and hounded Fred into the vanity of the enterprise, because at that moment Fred and I were one—with this distinction: What Fred was suffering would roll from his back like water from a rhinoceros, whereas I would remain obscenely branded by his words forevermore. It was useless to argue, futile to protest. There was no time or place for extenuating circumstances. I was too full of shame and humiliation to offer any conciliatory suggestions, and I still had enough of mulish pride not to truckle to that fish-eyed bully. We walked out of that man’s office bankrupts. I still marvel how I found my way back to our own office through the lurid darkness that encompassed me. The world about me—the palpitating, pressing eager world, of which in a measure I had been a part—was suddenly strange and phantasmal and alien, the ghostly city of a dream. The people were shadows and their hurrying steps and errands as mysterious and as unrelated to my life as those of a colony of ants. The only actuality I did not envisage in that dark moment which was coextensive with eternity, was that _I_ was the anemic ghost stalking at noonday and the others were the reality. "If only you had not taken the balance of my capital—" was the thought throbbing under my overwhelming misery—"if only you had left me that!" But I could not bring myself to whine to Fred. I kept stonily silent. A burning resentment swelled my heart so that I could not speak. The newspaper publicity Fred had craved would come to him now with a vengeance. Now they are busy dismembering the corpse and colporting the remains, whilst I sit darkly at home in Crestlands like one disembodied, dead. *CHAPTER XI* I have had time to grow dulled to the shabby peripety of my career as a business man. The sickening details and legal forms of our failure are over, and I am wretchedly surviving on the loan made upon an insurance policy, but still I have evolved no plans for the future. I sit in the shadow of the châlet watching Jimmie rolling down the slope and endeavoring to roll up again. The early August sun is hot in the heavens and the air even of Crestlands is muggy. And my pulses keep insistently repeating, repeating, "What is to become of us?" My pulses—but not my mind. That useless functionary has quite simply suspended operations.