And he turned on his heel and retraced his steps toward the door. Mrs. Richmond paused to look pityingly after him; he was slightly bent; his step had lost its spring. Only once before had she seen him so harassed--the time when he was trying to negotiate apparently impossible loans to save his fortune from ruin and himself from prison. She hated him with what she believed to be an implacable hate. In fact, she hated him only because he would not let her love him; he fascinated her, a woman of the sort that crave a master and really love the servitude they profess to loathe. She rejoiced in his defeats; she delighted to waste his money where she could not sequester it. But her soul did homage to him as its lord. She looked after him longingly; she would have given a good part of her possessions to be an unseen and unsuspected spectator at the scene between him and Roger. For she would have staked all she had on Roger’s administering to him the defeat of his life. XIX ROGER SORE BESET Roger still seated on his front veranda behind the curtain of creepers, was not a little astonished to see that the solitary occupant of the runabout stopping at his gate was Beatrice’s father. His astonishment did not decrease when the little big financier, advancing briskly up the gravel walk edged by flowering plants, hailed the first clear view of his face with a smile of the utmost geniality--the greeting of an old and dear friend. “I’ve come about that picture,” Richmond hastened to explain. “I wish--for my own sake--I’d seen it sooner. If you’ll pardon an old man--at least, a much older man than yourself--for being quite frank--it has given me an entirely different opinion of you. It has made me very proud of my acquaintance with you. I know that’s blunt--but it’s sincere.” Roger was as fond of praise as the next human being. He had cultivated the philosophy of indifference only to uncritical censure. He blushed and stammered out some awkward words of thanks--certainly not the less awkward for the uneasiness Richmond’s manner had raised within him. “My wife and my daughter were quite right and I was wrong--stupidly wrong,” continued Richmond. They were seated now. “I’m not an art expert--and not imagining I was or pretending to be has saved me thousands of dollars and a lot of fake art stuff. But, at the same time, a man who amounts to anything in any line always appreciates good work in every other line--whether he likes it or not. So--I want that picture. Isn’t there anything I could say or do that would induce you to change your mind and let me have it?” Roger’s brow clouded again; a strange, absent look was in his eyes--the eyes of an artist, sensitive, sympathetic, penetrating, yet devoid of the least suggestion of craft. “I’ve been thinking that matter over,” said he with an effort. “I have decided not to take the picture with me. So--you can have it--if you’ll accept it.”