and financial consequence, their conspicuous respect for him was a
concentrated essence of general adulation. He lingered on, eating a
great supper with real appetite. He went home in high good humor with
himself. He felt that he was a conqueror born, that such things of his
desire as did not come could be forced to come. He no longer regarded
his passion for the nebulous girl of many personalities as a descent
from dignity. Was he not king? Did not his favor give her whatever rank
he pleased? Might not a king pick and choose, according to his fancy?
Let the smaller fry grow nervous about these matters of caste. They did
well to take care lest they should fall. But not he! He had won thus far
by haughtiness, never by cringing. His mortal day would be that in which
he should abandon his natural tactics for the modes of lesser men. True,
only a strong head could remain steady in these giddy altitudes of
self-confidence. But was not his head strong?

And without hesitation he called up the vision that made him
delirious-and detained it and reveled in it until sleep came.




VIII


The longer he thought of it the stronger grew his doubt that the little
Hallowell girl could be so indifferent to him as she seemed. Not that
she was a fraud--that is, a conscious fraud--even so much of a fraud as
the sincerest of the other women he had known. Simply that she was
carrying out a scheme of coquetry. Could it be in human nature, even in
the nature of the most indiscriminating of the specimens of young