“I had no more than the thirty minutes, you see, for a margin to work on!” She pushed back her hair with a languid hand. “But why cry over spilt milk?” she asked, wearily. Firmer and firmer, she felt, this mad fever of money-getting was taking hold on him. “Especially when we seem about to wade knee-deep in cream!” She made a last effort to fall in with his mood of ruthless aggression. “Yes; what’s this you were going to open my eyes with?” The final vestige of his clouded restraint slipped away from Durkin’s mind. “I had better start right at the beginning, hadn’t I?” he queried, cigar in hand, while she nodded comfortably to the silent question as to whether or not he might smoke. “I suppose you know that Curry was once a New Orleans cotton broker. It was a little over two years ago that he first came to New York, with about a million and a half of his own, and an available three or four million belonging to a pool that was to back him through thick and thin. This they did, when he became a member of the Cotton Exchange. Then step by step he began to plan out his campaign, patiently and laboriously plotting and scheming and manipulating and increasing his power, until the newspaper-men dropped into the habit of speaking of him as the Cotton King, and the old home pool itself got a little afraid of him, and held a few secret meetings to talk things over.” “But how did this campaign end?” “It has not ended. Of just how it will end only two men, outside of Curry and his confidential old head-broker down on the Exchange floor, have any inkling.” “Who is the _other_ man?” asked Frances quietly. Durkin smiled covertly, with a half-mockingly bowed “Thanks!” “The other man, of course, not counting myself, is the operator, or, rather, the private secretary, he keeps at the home end of the wire he has had put into his house, for carrying on his collateral manipulations, as it were.” “I understand,” said Frances. “And then comes myself,” he added confidently. The woman settled back in her leather-lined arm-chair, locking her slender white fingers together above her head. The clustered lights of the chandelier threw heavy shadows about her quiet eyes, and for the first time Durkin noticed the tender little hollow just under her cheek-bones, lending an indescribable touch of tragedy to the old-time softer oval of her face.