THE AMERICAN
with the most extraordinary change of heart—a mortal disgust for the whole proposition. It came upon me like that!—and he snapped his fingers—as abruptly as an old wound that begins to ache. I could n't tell the meaning of it; I only realised I had turned against myself worse than against the man I wanted to smash. The idea of not coming by that half-million in that particular way, of letting it utterly slide and scuttle and never hearing of it again, became the one thing to save my life from a sudden danger. And all this took place quite independently of my will, and I sat watching it as if it were a play at the theatre. I could feel it going on inside me. You may depend upon it that there are things going on inside us that we understand mighty little about."
"Jupiter, you make my flesh creep!" cried Tristram. "And while you sat in your hack watching the play, as you call it, the other man looked in and collared your half-million?"
"I haven't the least idea. I hope so, poor brute, but I never found out. We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street, but I sat still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down off his seat to see whether his hack had n't turned into a hearse. I could n't have got out any more than if I had been a corpse. What was the matter with me? Momentary brain-collapse, you'll say. What I wanted to get out of was Wall Street. I told the man to drive to the Brooklyn ferry and cross over. When we were over I told him to drive me out into the country. As I had told him originally to drive for dear life down town, I suppose he thought I had lost my wits
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