"I'm not like that," Gordon informed him; "it's
pretty well known that I stand square in front of the
man I'm after. Don't you think, this time, you
have made a little mistake? Hadn't I better give
you that fifty, and something more later?"

Valentine Simmons rose from his chair and
turned, facing Gordon. His muslin bow had
slipped awry on the polished, immaculate bosom
of his shirt, and it gave him a slightly ridiculous,
birdlike expression. He gazed coldly, with his thin
lips firm and hands still, into the other's threatening,
virulent countenance. "Two hundred and fifty
dollars," he insisted.

The thought of Clare, betrayed, persisted in Gordon's
mind, battling with his surging temper, his unreasoning
resentment. Valentine Simmons stood
upright, still, against the lamplight. It was plain
that he was not to be intimidated. An overwhelming
wave of misery, a dim realization of the disastrous
possibilities of his folly, inundated Gordon,
drowning all other considerations. He turned, and
walked abruptly from the office into the store.
There the clerk placed on the counter the bottle,
filled and wrapped. In a petty gust of rage, like a
jet of steam escaping from a defective boiler, he
swept the bottle to the floor, where he ground the
splintering fragments of glass, the torn and stained
paper, into an untidy blot.

[[47]]

p046 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p047w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p048

v?