"Your daughter?"

"She sang to-night on your programme."

"Oh, I see, with the other hired singers; well, what do you want?"

"Only a few minutes of your time on a matter of grave importance."

"I don't care to discuss business here to-night, Woodman," Bivens broke in abruptly. "Come to my office."

"I have been there three or four times," the doctor went on hurriedly, "and wrote to you twice. I felt sure that my letters had not reached you. I hoped for the chance of a moment to-night to lay my case before you."

Bivens smiled and sat down.

"All right, I'll give you five minutes."

"I felt sure you had not seen my letters."

"I'll ease your mind on that question. I did see them both. You got my answer?"

"That's just it. I didn't. And I couldn't understand it."

"Oh, I see!" Bivens's mouth quivered with the slightest sneer. "Perhaps it was lost in transit!"

The sneer was lost on the doctor. He was too intent on his purpose.

"I know. It was a mistake. I see it now, and I'm perfectly willing to pay for that mistake by accepting even half of your last proposition."

Bivens laughed cynically.

"This might be serious, Woodman, if it wasn't funny. But you had as well know, once and for all, that I owe you nothing. Your suit has been lost. Your appeal has been forfeited. My answer is brief but to the point--_not one cent_--my generosity is for my friends and followers, not my enemies."

"But we are not enemies, personally," the doctor explained, good-naturedly. "I have put all bitterness out of my heart and come to-night to ask that bygones be bygones. You know the history of our relations and of my business. I need not repeat it. And you know that in God's great book of accounts you are my debtor."

Bivens's eyes danced with anger, and his words had the ring of cold steel.

"I owe you nothing."

In every accent of the financier's voice the man before him felt the deadly merciless hatred whose fires had been smouldering for years.

For a moment he was helpless under the spell of his fierce gaze. He began to feel dimly something of the little man's powerful personality, the power that had crushed his enemies.

The doctor's voice was full of tenderness when he replied at last:

"My boy," he began quietly--"for you are still a boy when you stand beside my gray hairs--men may fight one another for a great principle without being personal enemies. We are men still, with common hopes, fears, ills, griefs and joys. When I was a soldier I fought the Southern army, shot and shot to kill. I was fighting for a principle.

When the firing ceased I helped the wounded men on the field as I came to them. Many a wounded man in blue I've seen drag himself over the rough ground to pass his canteen to the lips of a boy in gray who was lying on his back, crying for water. If I am your enemy, it is over a question of principle. The fight has ended, and I have fallen across your path to-night, dying of thirst while rivers of water flow about me."

Bivens turned away and the doctor pressed closer.

"Suppose we have fought each other in the heat of the day in the ranks of two hostile armies? The battle has ceased. For me the night has fallen, I----"

His voice quivered and broke for an instant.

"You have won. You can afford to be generous. That you can deny me in this the hour of my desolation is unthinkable. I'm not pleading for myself. I can live on a rat's allowance. I'm begging for my little girl. I need two thousand dollars immediately to complete her musical studies. You know what her love means to me. I have put myself in your power. Suppose I've wronged you? Now is your chance to do a divine thing. Deep down in your heart of hearts you know that the act would be one of justice between man and man."

Bivens looked up sharply.

"As a charity, Woodman, I might give you the paltry fifty thousand dollars you ask."--

"I'll take it as a charity!" he cried eagerly, "take it with joy and gratitude, and thank God for his salvation sent in the hour of my need."

Bivens smiled coldly.

"But in reality you demand justice of me?"

"I have put myself in your power. I have refused and still refuse to believe that you can treat me with such bitter cruelty as to refuse to recognize my claim. I have waked at last to find myself helpless. The shock of it has crushed me. I've always felt rich in the love of my country, in the consciousness that I did my part to save the Union. Its growing wealth I have rejoiced in as my own. There has never been a moment in my life up to this hour that I have envied any man the possession of his millions. In the fight I have made on you, I have been trying to strike for the freedom of the individual man against what seemed to me to be the crushing slavery of soulless machinery."

The little financier lifted his shapely hand with a commanding gesture and the speaker paused.

"Come to the point, Woodman, what is in your mind when you say that I am your debtor?"

"Simply that I have always known that your formula for that drink was a prescription which I compounded years ago and which you often filled for me when I was busy. As a physician I could not patent such a thing.

You had as much right to patent it as any one else."

"In other words," Bivens interrupted coldly, "you inform me that you have always known that I stole from your prescription counter the formula which gave me my first fortune, and for that reason every dollar I possess to-day is branded with the finger print of a thief; and you, the upright physician, held by the old code of honour which makes your profession a fraternity of ancient chivalry, come now with your hat in hand and ask me for a share of this tainted money."

"Bivens," the doctor protested with dignity, "you know that I have made no such wild accusation against you. In our contest I have never stooped to personalities. I have always felt that the inherent justice of my cause was based on principle. But I'm an old man to-night. The sands of life are running low. I'm down and out. The one being I love supremely is in peril. I can't fight."

Bivens turned with sudden fury and faced his visitor, every mask of restraint thrown to the winds. His little bead-eyes flashed with the venom of a snake coiled to strike. He stood close to the doctor and looked up at his tall massive figure, stretching his own diminutive form in a desperate effort to stand on a level with his enemy.

The doctor's face grew suddenly pale and his form rigid as the two men stood holding each other's gaze for a moment without words.

The financier began to speak with slow venomous energy:

"I've let you ramble on in your maudlin talk, Woodman, because it amused me. For years I've waited for your coming. Your unexpected advent is the sweetest triumph of this festival night. The offer I made you was at the suggestion of my wife. I did it solely to please her. I think you will take my word for it to-night." He paused and a sinister smile played about his mouth. "The last time I saw you I promised myself that I'd make you come to me the next time, and when you did, that you'd come on your hands and knees."

The doctor's big fists suddenly closed and Bivens took a step back toward his desk when his slender hand gripped and fumbled a heavy cut glass ink stand. The older observed his trembling hand with a smile of contempt.

"And I swore," Bivens went on in a voice quivering with unrestrained passion, "that when you looked up into my face grovelling and whining for mercy as you have to-night, I'd call my servants and order them to kick you down my door step."

He loosed his hold on the ink stand and leaned across the massive 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."