The card Sheila had played in her desperation succeeded so completely that she became alarmed. She had played on impulse, recking not the danger of crossing the lawyer. The effect on Fargus was so extreme that she suddenly found herself in all the dangers which now arose from her double relation. The very thought that any man might make love to his wife had sufficed to awaken all the demons of jealousy in Fargus and had caused the face of Bofinger to appear the most odious in the world. From that night the name of the lawyer never passed his lips. He avoided him studiously in the streets. He left orders at his restaurants to deny him access. It was no longer only Bofinger he held in fear but all younger men, and he resolved bitterly never again to commit the error of introducing into his home that particular danger.

For six days Bofinger was unable to catch even a glimpse of his coat-tails or to penetrate to his office. Vaguely alarmed, he studied his time and succeeded in surprising Fargus one afternoon at the moment he was leaving for the rounds of his various establishments. Fargus, unaware of his proximity, was startled by a clasp on his arm and the glib voice of Bofinger crying in his ear:

"Here's luck! Where in thunder have you been hiding all the while?"

In dismay Fargus let fall the package under his arm.

"Evil conscience," said the lawyer, laughing as he restored the bundle. "Well, are things going any better?"

"What things?" Fargus stammered. He looked at him darkly, seeing nothing but the eyes that Sheila had found handsome.

"Hello, didn't your lady tell you how I lectured her on expenses?" Bofinger said, examining him with uneasiness. "Guess I must have turned her against me with too much advice."

"Oh yes," Fargus said finally, forced to say something. "I remember."

"It goes better then?"

"Better."

"Well, well, glad to hear it," Bofinger said, withdrawing his arm and shooting a queer look. "Glad to have been of use. Call on me any time. By, by!"

With a nod and a luxuriant wave of his arm he ground on his heel and strode away. Fargus, a little uneasy, plodded along saying to himself that he had shown his ill-humor too abruptly. Next, remembering the little deceit in which they had been fellows, he became genuinely alarmed lest Bofinger, offended, should revenge himself by blabbing to Sheila. At this horrible idea he at once set out for Jefferson Market determined to conciliate the lawyer. The poor man, after a few weeks of marriage, was ready to do anything to escape facing a scene.

Entering hastily he found the office in the sole possession of Hyman Groll. He halted, startled by the unusual figure of the hunchback, and asked:

"Isn't Mr. Bofinger back?"

"Not yet."

"When do you expect him?"

"When I see him," Groll answered, shrugging his shoulders.

"You're his partner?" Fargus said, surveying the hunchback with an interest which Groll returned, each recognizing in the other a common intensity of purpose.

"I'm his partner. Can we do anything for you?"

"No, no," Fargus said hastily; "just tell him I want to see him very much."

"What name?"

"Fargus. He will know."

"You're a client of his, then?" Groll said with aroused curiosity.

"Yes, of course."

"I beg pardon—since when?"

"Why, a couple of months—"

"Indeed—what name?"

"Fargus, Max Fargus."

"Oh, Max Fargus. Thank you, I'll speak to him," Groll answered with just the slightest twitch to his eyebrows.

Excusing himself Fargus hurried directly home, convinced that the lawyer would be beforehand. He arrived at the corner of Second Avenue just in time to perceive the figure of Bofinger passing into his home.

"Oh, the villain," he cried, "he is going to betray me!"

And clutching his cane in the middle, he began to run, provoking the gibes of a group of street urchins, who cheered him on. He reached the door, blown and trembling, and inserting the key entered. Immediately such an explosion of anger greeted him from above that, mystified, he checked the call on his lips and stole cautiously to the foot of the stairs. The voice of his wife was answering in terror:

"I swear I haven't! I've played square!"

"Look here, Sheila, my girl," cried the furious voice of Bofinger. "It won't go. It won't do. What I want to know is what you've been telling the old boy to set him against me!"

The first words had revealed the truth to the misanthrope, as in the storm a flash suddenly reveals the monstrous iniquities of the night. The exclamation was stifled in his throat; crumbling he fell across the banister, clinging to them with desperate fingers, while above the sounds of the altercation continued their overwhelming revelation.

"Are you going to tell me the truth?" cried the lawyer. "Sheila, either you've made a blunder or you're playing double with me."

"I am not."

"You've made him suspicious of me."

"I haven't—I swear it—on my honor."

"Honor!" he cried with a roar of laughter. "Cut that out between us! Now once for all you can't fool me. I know when you're lying, and you're lying now! Ah, my girl, I've placed you long ago. You think you'll play me close and get all for yourself."

"Bofinger, you are mad!"

"See here, cut this short. I'll give you just one chance."

"What's that?" she said, but so faintly that Fargus did not hear it.

"You get me to supper here within four days—or I'll put the screws on!"

"But how can I?"

"That's a good one," he cried, repeating contemptuously her words. "You do it. That's all. We're partners and don't you forget it. Share alike! That was the terms when I could have ruined you with a word—and those, my girl, are the terms now!"

Fargus, crimped to the banisters, listening with parted mouth and terrible eyes, could hear no more. He was suffocated. He reeled to the door and with a last effort opened it without noise. Once in the street he slunk rapidly away, glancing backward fearfully over his shoulder, scarce restraining a mad impulse to break into a run. He scurried under the Elevated and on without stopping, until at last the river barred his way. There he collapsed on a pile of lumber and remained holding his numbed head in his hands, swaying, until a policeman startled him by touching him on the shoulder and questioning him. Then, stumbling to his feet, he fled again towards the south, but haphazard as the rush of a brute wounded to the death.

For mile after mile he scurried thus, striking east and striking west, his mind vacant and stunned, incapable of other thought than to flee as far as he could from the abomination he had left in his home. A dozen times he came near being run over, without knowing his danger or hearing the screams of warning that followed his crazy progress. In the blank shifting of faces he saw nothing but the leer and the scorn of the mocking world. The blow had been too instant and too astounding. His numbed mind could only feel the acuteness of the anguish, without as yet being able to analyze or recognize the causes. He did not think of Sheila or Bofinger. It was the world which had crushed him, the perfidious, mocking world which in the end had thus taken its contemptuous revenge.

FOR MILE AFTER MILE HE SCURRIED THUS.

He saw everywhere smiles of derision, heard triumphant laughter. Every one was gazing at him, enjoying the discomfiture of the ancient enemy. He saw nothing clearly, he began to stumble in his walk and to waver, clearing his way through the crowds with his cane, thrusting women and children violently out of his path.

In one narrow street in the Jewish quarter a crowd of boys at play set up a cry of "Madman!"

He turned furiously and shook his fist, cursing them. Then fleeing anew his course became embroiled, crossing and recrossing, until to his dismay, a second time, he encountered the group of urchins, who accompanied him a block, with derisive shouts. Fargus, clasping his temples in his hands, broke away in terror and, by some instinct avoiding his former direction, turned north, winding and twisting helplessly in the labyrinth of the ill-smelling slums. Still everything was confused, his hatred and his agony. It was always the world which pursued him with its jeers. This obsession possessed him so completely that even the noises of the city, the rumble of truck and carriage, the roar of the Elevated, the screams of the street hawkers, the hum and swish of the crowd, struck his ears as so many delirious taunts.

Through this fog and rumble, all at once, he heard a wild shriek of acclaim:

"Madman! Madman!"

Looking up wildly he found himself, to his horror, a third time in the street of his persecutors. This time the hilarity descended on him like a storm, for humanity is pitiless once its sense of ridicule is touched. From the windows women saluted him with gibes and laughter, people crowded to the front of the shops showing him to one another, while the loungers cheered on the ragamuffins who, forming in a company behind him, chanted in unison:

"Mad dog! Mad dog!"

Some one from a window pelted him with an apple. At this moment he was in danger of losing his reason. He began frantically to run, his tormentors with shrieks of delight pursuing him. After two blocks of fruitless flight he turned suddenly on the pack about his heels and clubbed the foremost with such fury that the rest fled. Then forgetting everything but the new fear of the something within his mind which was beginning to snap, he rushed over to the west side, crossing Broadway by a miracle. All at once he heard his name pronounced. A familiar voice was saying conciliatingly:

"Oh, Mr. Fargus, do come in! What has happened to you?"

He came to a halt, stock still, and glared about him. Some strange instinct had led him back to the scenes of his boyhood. He was before the sunken rooms of Nell's Coffee House, and Mrs. Biggs herself was watching him with fear and wonder.

"What, you too!" he cried, and whipped into fury by the sight of his first love he brandished his cane and rushed on her. The woman, with a cry, flung into the restaurant and barricaded the door.

Then a chill began to shake him, his arm fell inertly, his rage, from utter exhaustion, passed like a fever from him. He turned away and instinctively took up the familiar journey to his old home in the tenements.

"Ah, let me think," he said wearily, striking his damp forehead. The perfidy of Bofinger he had guessed from the first words of his wife. He gradually comprehended what had happened, that the lawyer had gone straight to Sheila and with her had formed a compact which had made her his wife. If the details were obscure the truth was blinding. When he had thought this carefully out he said again:

"What am I going to do?"

He returned to the street of his birth and hurried up the well-known stairs. The key of the room was still in his pocket—he had never surrendered the old quarters. It was a superstition and a sentiment unique in his life. He entered the room and looked about solicitously. Nothing had been disturbed. Mechanically, still confused, he went to the trunk and was taking out the bedding when in dismay he recollected himself and shoved it hurriedly back. Then seating himself on the bed, his head imprisoned in his hands, he repeated:

"What am I going to do?"

This time the question had the vigor of an explosion. He no longer could abandon himself to the torrents of his rage. That emotion had left him in weakness and fear. But gradually, in the cold succeeding calm, a germ of a new passion formed and gathered violence,—the germ of vengeance.

At the end of an hour of anguish he leaped to his feet with a shout of victory and, refreshed and alert, again rushed down the stairs and set out resolutely for the upper city.