He noted with satisfaction her look of love and anxiety. It was
some slight salve to his cruelly wounded vanity. He walked
feebly away, but it was pure acting, as he no longer felt so
downcast. He had soon put Hilda into the background and was busy
with his plans for revenge upon Ganser--``a vulgar animal who
insulted me when I honored him by marrying his ugly gosling.''
Before he fell asleep that night he had himself wrought up to a
state of righteous indignation. Ganser had cheated, had outraged
him--him, the great, the noble, the eminent.


Early the next morning he went down to a dingy frame building
that cowered meanly in the shadow of the Criminal Court House.
He mounted a creaking flight of stairs and went in at a low door
on which ``Loeb, Lynn, Levy and McCafferty'' was painted in black
letters. In the narrow entrance he brushed against a man on the
way out, a man with a hangdog look and short bristling hair and
the pastily-pallid skin that comes from living long away from the
sunlight. Feuerstein shivered slightly--was it at the touch of
such a creature or at the suggestions his appearance started? In
front of him was a ground-glass partition with five doors in it.
At a dirty greasy pine table sat a boy--one of those child
veterans the big city develops. He had a long and extremely
narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty.
His expression was sophisticated and cynical. ``Well, sir!'' he
said with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance.

``I want to see Mr. Loeb.'' Feuerstein produced a card--it was
one of his last remaining half-dozen and was pocket-worn.