“You are hard—­as hard as life,” she said.

“Life is as we make it,” he retorted.  He lifted her muff from the desk and she took it from him, turning towards the door.  As he followed her into the hall he spoke slowly:  “I shall read the papers that relate to the case,” he said.  “I shall do my duty.  You were mistaken if you supposed that your coming to me would influence my decision.  Personal appeal rarely avails and is often painful.”

He unlatched the outer door and she passed out and descended the steps.

When he returned to the fire he was shivering from the draught let in by the opening doors, and, lifting the fallen poker, he attacked almost fiercely the slumbering coals.  The physical shock had not tempered the rage within; he felt it gnawing upon his entrails like a beast of prey.  Once only in his life had he found himself so powerless before a devouring passion, and then, as now, he had glutted it with wounded love.  Then, as now, he had hated with a terrible desire.

The application lay upon his desk, and he pushed it out of sight.  He could not read it now—­he wondered if the time would ever come when he could read it.  The thought smote him with the lash of fear—­the fear of himself.  He who an hour ago had held his assurance to be beyond assault was now watching for the death of his hate as he might have watched for the death of a wolf whose fangs he had felt.

Lifting his head, he could see through the curtained window the chill slopes of the square and the circular drive beneath the great bronze Washington.  Beyond the distant gates rose the church spires of the city, suffused with the pink flush of sunset.  The atmosphere glowed like a blush upon the perspective, which was shading through variations of violet remoteness.  All was frozen save the winter sunset and the advancing twilight.

He turned from the window and faced the painting of the Confederate soldier.  For a moment he regarded it blankly, then, pushing aside Eugenia’s chair he threw himself into one across from it.  He was thinking of Bernard Battle, and he remembered suddenly that he must have hated him always—­that he had hated him long ago in his childhood when the weak-faced boy had headed a school faction against him.  True, Dudley Webb had incited the attempt at social ostracism, but he bore no resentment against Dudley—­on the contrary, he was convinced that he liked him in spite of all—­in spite, even, of Eugenia.  With the inflexible fairness that he never lost, he knew that, with Eugenia, Dudley had not wronged him.  It had been a fight in open field, and Dudley had won.  He had even liked the vigour of his wooing, and some years later, when they had met, he had given the victor a hearty handshake.  He distrusted him as a politician, but he liked him as a man.