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e flat-top desk to touch an electric button.
The doctor's fist suddenly gripped the outstretched hand and his eyes glared into the face of the financier with the dangerous look of a madman.
"You had better not ring that bell, yet," he said, with forced quiet in his tones.
Bivens hesitated and his muscles relaxed in the grip on his wrist.
"You wish to prolong the agony for another moral discussion?" the financier asked with a sneer. "All right, if you enjoy it."
"Just long enough to say one thing to you, Bivens. There's a limit beyond which you and your kind had better not press the men you have wronged. You have made a brave show of your power to-night. Well, you are mistaken if you believe you can longer awe the imagination of the world with its tinsel. You have begun to stir deeper thoughts. Look to your skin. I've always said this is God's world, and it must come out right in the end. I've begun to think to-night there's something wrong. God can't look down and see what's going on here--the God I've tried to serve and worship, whose praise I have sung beneath the stars on fields of battle with the blood streaming from wounds I got fighting for what I believed to be right. If the devil rules the universe, and dog-eat-dog is the law, there'll be a big hand feeling for your throat, feeling blindly in the dark, perhaps, but it will get there! When I look into your brazen face to-night, and hear the strains of that music, there's something inside of me that wants to kill."
"But you won't, Woodman!" Bivens interrupted with a sneer.
"When it comes to the test your liver is white. I know your breed of men, but I like you better in that mood. It gives me pleasure to torture you, and I'm not going to kick you out."
"I shouldn't advise you to try it," was the grim response.
"No. Your tirade gives me an idea. I want you to stay until the festivities end, and enjoy yourself. Observe that I'm pouring out my wealth here to-night in a river of generosity, and that you are starving for a drop which I refuse to give. Take a look over my house. It cost two millions to build it, and requires half a million a year to keep it up. I have a country estate of a hundred thousand acres in the mountains of North Carolina, with a French chateau that cost a million. I only weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, but I require these palaces to properly house me for a year. Think this over while you stroll among my laughing guests. My art gallery will interest you. I've a single painting there which cost three hundred thousand dollars--the entire collection two millions. The butterflies those dancers are crushing beneath their feet in my ball room, I imported from Central America at a cost of five thousand dollars. The favours in jewelry I shall give to my rich guests who have no use for them will be worth twenty-five thousand dollars. You'll see my wife among the dancers. Her dresses cost a hundred thousand a year. For the string of pearls around her neck I paid a half million. The slippers on her feet cost two thousand--all you need for your daughter's education. Take a good look at it, Woodman, and as the day dawns and my guests depart, some of them drunk on wine that cost twenty-five dollars a bottle--remember that I spent three hundred and fifty thousand on this banquet which lasted eight hours and that I will see you and your daughter dead and in the bottomless pit before I will give you one penny. Enjoy yourself, it's a fine evening."
The crushed man stared at Bivens in a stupor of pain. The brazen audacity of his assault was more than he could foresee. When the full import of its cruelty found his soul, he spoke in faltering tones:
"Only he who is willing to die, Bivens, is the master of life. Well, I go now to meet Death and celebrate defeat."
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