He was in the door of the dressing-room--the small wiry figure in rose-silk pajamas. The mustache and imperial were carefully waxed as always, day and night. On the little feet were high-heeled slippers. On the head was a rose-silk Neapolitan nightcap with gay tassel. The nightcap hid the bald spot from which the lofty toupee had been removed. A grotesque little figure, but not grotesque to her. Through the mask of the vain, boastful little face she saw the general watching her, as she had seen him that afternoon when she came in--the mysterious and terrible personality that had made the vast fortune, that had ridden ruthlessly over friend and foe, over man and woman and child--to the goal of its desires. "It's late, my dear?" said the little man. "Come to bed." She rose to obey--she in the general's purchases of filmy nightgown under a pale-pink silk dressing-gown. He smiled with that curious noiseless mumbling and smacking of the thin lips. She sat down again. "Don't keep me waiting. It's chilly," he said, advancing toward her. "I shall sleep in here to-night--on the couch," said she. She was trembling with fright at her own audacity. She could see a fifty-centime piece and a copper dancing before her eyes. She felt horribly alone and weak, but she had no desire to retract the words with which she had thrown down the gauntlet. The little general halted. The mask dropped; the man, the monster, looked at her. "What's the matter?" said he in an ominously quiet voice. "Mr. Harding delivered your message to-day," said she, and her steady voice astonished her. "So I am going back home." He waited, looking steadily at her. "After he told me and I thought about it, I decided to submit, but just now I saw that I couldn't. I don't know what possesses me. I don't know what I'm going to do, or how I'm going to do it. But it's all over between us." She said this rapidly, fluently, in a decisive way, quite foreign to her character as she had thought it. "You are coming to bed, where you belong," said he quietly. "No," replied she, pressing herself against her chair as if force were being used to drag her from it. She cast about for something that would make yielding impossible. "You are--repulsive to me." He looked at her without change of countenance. Said he: "Come to bed. I ask you for the last time."