"When the woman who loves me tells me to go. This is her house!" he coolly sneered. Again the voice opposite sank to velvet tones. "Very well, we are face to face without disguise, beast to beast. You haven't the muscle to take her. She is mine. I gave for her the deathless love of a wife, two beautiful children, a name, a career, a character, and the life of the man who gave me being, who died with a broken heart. For her I turned my back upon the poor who looked to me for help, forgot the great city I loved, overturned God's altars, scorned heaven and dared the terrors of hell. Do you think that I will give her up? I own her, body and soul. I've paid the price." [Illustration: "Driving his great fingers into his throat."] He paused a moment, quivering with passion. "I know," he went on, "I was a fool floundering in a bog of sentiment. But you--one-eyed brute--you were never deceived about anything. You set your lecherous eye on her from the first and determined to poison her mind and take her from me." "And I will take her," came the fierce growl from the depths of his throat, "and lift her from the mire into which you have dragged her peerless being." The man opposite gave a quick, nervous laugh. "Well, I, who have dreamed the salvation of the world and lost my own soul, may sink to-night, but, old boy"--he paused and laughed hysterically--"I'll pull down with me into hell as I go one Wall Street banker!" "Talk is cheap," Overman hissed. "Make the experiment. You're keeping a lady waiting." Gordon stepped quickly to the desk and picked up two ivory-handled daggers with keen ten-inch blades, used as paper knives, and handed one to Overman. "These little toys," he said, playfully, "were a wedding present from my wife on our second anniversary." "Which wife?" snarled the big, sneering mouth. Gordon went on meditatively. "They are the finest Italian steel--sharp medicine for friends to take and give, but it will cure our ills. I never quite understood before what you meant by the fighting instinct when I used to watch you fasten those little devilish points on your Game chickens. I know now. I feel it throb in every nerve and muscle. The impulse to kill you is so simple and so sweet, it would be a crime against nature to deny it." Overman threw his head to one side, frowned and peered at the man before him curiously. "Do you ever get tired of preaching? The articulation of wind is a strange mania!" "Pardon me if I've tired you," came the answer in mellow tones. "You'll need a long rest after to-night, and you'll get it." Gordon locked the doors, placed the blower over the flickering embers in the grate, and put his hand on the electric switch.