CHAPTER III


I

On the following day Ruyler, who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion
that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to
remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began
dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and
complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape
from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably forward. When Fate
suddenly begins to take a dramatic interest in a man whose course has run
like a yacht before a strong breeze, she precipitates him toward one half
crisis after another in order to confuse his mental powers and render him
wholly a puppet for the final act. These little Earth histrionics are
arranged no doubt for the weary gods, who hardly brook a mere mortal
rising triumphantly above the malignant moods of the master playwright.

He lunched at the Pacific Union Club and caught the down-town California
Street cable car as it passed, finding his favorite seat on the left side
of the "dummy" unoccupied. He was thinking of Hélène, a little
disappointed, but on the whole vastly relieved, congratulating himself
that, no longer haunted, he could give his mind wholly to the important
question of the merger he contemplated with a rival house that had limped
along since the disaster, but had at last manifested its willingness to
accept the offer of Ruyler and Sons.

It was a moment before he realized that his mother-in-law occupied the