had begun: With the name of the failing firm. After what seemed a decade
she drew herself up and sat erect and white, trembling from her throat
to her feet. She forced her agonized features into a semblance of
artificial calm. Suppose he should return to her now, defeated, ruined,
crushed, and open his door on that picture of despair and surrender!

The clock said two-fifty-five. So she had been sitting here ten minutes!
Grasping the arms of her chair and bracing herself, she rose with a
labored effort and went resolutely back to the ticker where, as one
draws aside a veil which may reveal tragedy, she picked up the tape
again. She saw no name this time, and suddenly it occurred to her that
the monstrous thing had passed callously on to other news--as though
there were other news!

She dragged it out of its twisted coils in the basket and read in cold,
unpunctuated capitals, EDWARDES AND EDWARDES FAIL TO MEET OBLIGATIONS.

The girl reeled and leaned limply against the wall, and, as she stood
there overpowered and dizzy, a low incoherent moan came up from her
throat. Then as she mechanically held the tenuous death-warrant in her
pulseless fingers, her eyes fell on an item just finished.

MARKET TAKES TURN BURTON BROKERS BIDDING UP.

A comprehension came to her and her brain reeled in fury and torture.
Now that his end was accomplished, the Great Bear had turned bull. He
would sell back on the rise what he had slaughtered on the fall, and
when tomorrow's reaction came with its roster of deluded misery he would
harvest vast profits on his massacre.