Gold as a term never failed to attract the Storri ear. He opened converse with the old man of the pipe. It was to this heavy platform the treasure-wagons backed up when they brought bullion to the Treasury. Storri learned another thing that gave him the sort of thrill that setters feel when in the near vicinity of a covey of grouse. The vault that held the gold reserve was within sixty feet of him as he stood in the street. Just inside those thick, hopeless walls they lay--millions of piled-up yellow treasure. Storri stared hard at the impassive granite and licked his lips. The nearness of those millions pleased him like music. "Sixty feet!" exclaimed Storri unctuously. "That doesn't sound far, but before a robber pierced such a wall as that he would fancy it far enough." "Oh, a robber wouldn't try the wall," said the old man, turning to look at it. "I've often wondered though that no one ever thought of the sewer out there;" and the old man marked a line in the air with his pipe-stem as though tracing the direction of the great street drain that ran beneath the pavement. Storri kept on his journey to the club, but the notion of those millions, almost within hand's touch of the open street, continued to haunt him pleasantly. The sewer, too! Would a tunnel reach this treasure? The question used to come back upon Storri. Also he got into the habit, as he went about the streets, of walking by the Treasury. This was not offspring of any purpose; Storri had none. It was only that he took an instinctive satisfaction in the nearness of that heaped-up gold. He could feel its close neighborhood, and the feeling was as wine to his imagination. Storri was not permitted respite by the San Reve concerning the Harleys. The jealous one of the green-gray eyes insisted upon seeing Storri often; and he, putting on a best face, pretended that he loved the San Reve the better for her jealousy. To keep the peace, he was wont to drop round to Grant Place three or four times a week. These concessions to the San Reve and her rather too fervid love would not get in the way of Storri's dinners at the Harleys'. For a time he should go there but once a week. When despair had chilled Dorothy to tameness he would go oftener. Just then he must give her terrors opportunity to do their freezing work. Storri could not have told whether he loved or hated Dorothy; he was only conscious of a fire-fed passion that consumed him. He must possess her; or, if not that, then he must grind her into the earth. He would torture her as he was tortured; he would blacken her by blackening Mr. Harley; with her pride in the dirt, with disgrace upon her, where then was that man who would wed her? The daughter of a forger--she would stain the name of wife! Richard might have her then; Storri would give her to him for a revenge! These were the mutterings of Storri as he went preyed upon by love and hate at once.