“Hey, presto!” he whispered.  “We who think so much of ourselves have become pigmies upon the face of the earth.  There towers the representative of modern omnipotence.  Those are the hands—­grim, strong-looking hands, aren’t they?—­that grip the levers of modern American life.  Rodin ought to do a statue of him as he stands there—­art and letters growing smaller as he grows larger.  We exist for him.  He builds theatres for our plays, museums for our pictures, libraries for our books.”

“Seems to me he is looking for one of us,” Noel Bridges remarked.

“Some pose, isn’t it!” a younger member of the party exclaimed reverently, as he lifted his tankard.

All these things were a matter of seconds, during which Sylvanus Power did indeed stand without moving, looking closely about the room.  Then his eye at last lit upon the end of the table where Philip and his friends were seated.  He approached them without a word.  Noel Bridges ventured upon a greeting.

“Coming to join us, Mr. Power?” he asked.

Sylvanus Power, if he heard the question, ignored it.  His eyes had rested upon Philip.  He stood over the table now, looming before them, massive, in his way awe-inspiring.

“Ware,” he said, “I’ve been looking for you.”

Instinctively Philip rose to his feet.  Tall though he was, he had to look up at the other man, and his slender body seemed in comparison like a willow wand.  Nevertheless, the light in his eyes was illuminative.  There was no shrinking away.  He stood there with the air of one prepared to welcome, to incite and provoke storm whatever might be brewing.

“I have been to your rooms,” Sylvanus Power went on.  “They knew nothing about you there.”

“They wouldn’t,” Philip replied.  “I go where I choose and when I choose.  What do you want with me?”

Conversation in the room was almost suspended.  Those in the immediate locality, well acquainted with the gossip of the city, held the key to the situation.  Every one for a moment, however, was spellbound.  They felt the coming storm, but they were powerless.

“I sought you out, Ware,” Sylvanus Power continued, his harsh voice ringing through the room, “to tell you what probably every other man here knows except you.  If you know it you’re a fool, and I’m here to tell you so.”

“Have you been drinking?” Philip asked calmly.

“Maybe I have,” Sylvanus Power answered, “but whisky can’t cloud my brain or stop my tongue.  You’re looking at my little toy here,” he went on, twirling in his right hand a heavy malacca cane with a leaden top.  “I killed a man with that once.”

“The weapon seems sufficient for the purpose,” Philip answered indifferently.

“Any other man,” Sylvanus Power went on, “would have sat in the chair for that.  Not I!  You don’t know as much of me as you need to, Merton Ware.  I’m no whippersnapper of a pen-slinger, earning a few paltry dollars by writing doggerel for women and mountebanks to act.  I’ve hewn my way with my right arm and my brain, from the streets to the palace.  They say that money talks.  By God! if it does I ought to shout, for I’ve more million dollars than there are men in this room.”