“You’re all off,” he answered dryly. “When his grandfather dies--and the old fellow’s over eighty now--he’ll have one of the finest estates in the part of England where he’s located. What’s he want with your money? Why, he could buy up and put in his pocket a whole bunch of plungers like you, with your wildcat shares. Can’t you believe that the boy’s honestly in love with a girl like Rosamund?” “Oh, Jim, you’re an old maid!” the other returned with his irritating, lazy laughter. “He’s in love with Rosamund all right, but he’s also in love with the money he thinks he’s going to get with her. But don’t you fret. It’ll be all right. He’s a decent enough fellow, but it’s a good thing for us he’s not got more sense.” Thus the older men had their anxieties, as the young people had theirs. And all this agglomeration of divers emotions and interests concentrated, even as the pressure in the city without, the year sweeping toward its close with ever-increasing momentum, like a river rushing toward the sea. October was a month of movement, pressure and stir. While San Francisco waited expectant for its first cleansing rains, Harrower left for England, to return in the spring and claim his bride. In the long gray afternoons June sat much at home, brooding over the sitting-room fire, waiting for a visitor who never came. Mercedes moved up from Tres Pinos and took possession of the city house her father had rented for her. She was blooming and gay after her summer in the country. Her heart was swelled with triumph, for she knew the game was won, and, caught in the eddies of the whirling current, she too was swept forward toward a future that was full of tantalizing secrets. CHAPTER XI LUPÉ’S CHAINS ARE BROKEN One of the most harassed and uneasy men in these stormy days was Jerry Barclay. He had arrived at a point in his career where he stood arrested and uncertain between diverging paths. His infatuation for Mercedes drew him to her like a magnet and sent him from her in troubled distress, not knowing what to do, longing for his freedom and sometimes wondering whether he would marry her if he had his freedom. He thought she loved him as other women had done, and he often wondered if he really loved her. In the sudden glimpses of clairvoyance which come to souls swayed by passion, he saw life with Mercedes as a coldly splendid waste in which he wandered, lonely and bereft of comfort. Shaken from his bondage by one of these moments of clear sight, he felt a conviction that he did not love her, declared himself free of her enchantments, and at the first glance of invitation in her eyes, the first beckoning gesture of her hand, was back at her side, as much her slave as ever.