"The thick-headedness of you is what amuses me," he said. "The crass incapability of understanding your own case. Order, respectability, good feeling, as you call it--these have been propping you all your life. You don't understand--how should you?--what it is to be in the hands of a man who gives not a jot for any one of them." He snapped his fingers. "Not that!" he added. "For honor, standing, the esteem of my fellows I give nothing--nothing!" "And yet chaffer to obtain them," said Aylmer, drily. "I don't chaffer; I take," said Landon. "I am requiring them as mere stage properties necessary to the carrying out of my other purposes. Intrinsically they have no value for me." "Unfortunately for you, you have neither the weapons to win them nor the means to buy them," said Aylmer. "Haven't I?" said Landon, slowly. "Haven't I?" He rose from his seat and came a pace or two nearer. "Listen to me, you--you blazing fool!" he snarled. "I have you here to break, as I will. See that you don't goad me into doing it, for the mere pleasure of seeing you squirm. You give me your promise to accept me, push me forward, vouch for me, in the rotten mob you call society, or, by God, you'll be sorry before I've done with you!" Aylmer still stared relentlessly into the other's eyes. "You haven't a thing that'll touch me--not a single thing!" he said. "My life? Do you think that has a value for me above the hope of clearing you from a decent family's path--into the gutter!" Landon went white with passion. His fingers worked. "By the Lord!" he said, and his eyes shot menacing lightnings towards Miller, not towards his cousin; "by the Lord, am I to keep my hands off him--after that?" There was a sort of appeal in the question. There was malignance, there was red anger, but there was entreaty, the cry of a slave to a master. Claire recognized it; so did Aylmer, with amazement. They both looked at the gray man. Miller's gesture was all humility, all dejection. "Don't exasperate him, Captain Aylmer," he pleaded. "He has weapons; he has, indeed!" Landon laughed malevolently. "By God, I have!" he cried. "Your thick body and your ox's nerves? You can pit them against me, if you like! What about your finer feelings, as I suppose you'd call them? What about your honor? And--what about--_hers_?" He shot the question out fiercely, insistently, pointing at Claire. A sudden dryness coated Aylmer's lips. "What do you mean?" he demanded. He rose, too, towering over Landon from the full height of his stature and that, indeed, seemed to have added inches to itself since the other spoke. But Landon, drunk with venom, did not flinch. "Look at her!" he cried, still pointing. "Look at her! And if you defy me, you shall have something more to look at before long! I'll deal with her; I'll let these men have their will of her; I'll drag her through filth enough--I'll--"