For a breathing-space Hamilton Burton felt faint and uncertain, as one may feel in a dream which is half-wakefulness.

Then he was conscious of his own voice speaking half-aloud: 

“Slivers Martin paid me ten for ’em an’ I got ’em for seven—­an’ he had to go after ’em.”

The words had come involuntarily—­as from another personality speaking with his tongue, and they startled him.  With a fiercely impatient gesture he brushed his hand across his forehead and picked up from a table a new appreciation of the life and campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Yamuro slipped in with his cushioned tread and stood awaiting orders, and after a while the master whose attention refused to remain fixed even on Napoleon glanced up.

“You may go, Yamuro,” he said in a wearied voice, but the Japanese valet did not go.  Instead he approached and his face grew anxious as he noted the confused and fatigued droop of his master’s eyes and lips.

“’Scuse, please,” he hazarded as his white teeth flashed in an apologetic grin.  “You tired.  You go down gymnasium—­take ex’cise—­one half-hour.  Yes, one half-hour and me rub you Japanese way; make you sleep—­yes, please.”

Hamilton Burton raised his head slowly.  “Perhaps,” he acceded in a dull voice, “that mightn’t be a bad idea.  I do feel a bit fagged—­for some reason—­and I need to be fit tomorrow.  Tomorrow will be a decisive day.”

So with the narrow-eyed little servitor in whose breast beat a heart of unquestioning loyalty, the untriumphant victor went down into the basement of his house, where between marble slabs and porphyry columns he had equipped a small gymnasium finished with the magnificence of a Roman bath.

Beyond an arched portal was another room where the basin of a swimming-pool spread cool and inviting between mosaic floors.

Here each morning Hamilton plunged into the icy water and came out with a splendid vitality glowing on his firm flesh.  But at night he used only the warm shower and when they came into the gymnasium they did not touch the switch which lighted the pool.

Then Hamilton Burton stripped and attacked the punching bag until his muscles glistened and shone as if they had been freshly oiled.  Yamuro stood looking on with sparkling eyes.  Hamilton Burton stripped and in action would have brought a glow of delight to the face of those Hellenic masters of training who saw in the human body the most sacred temple of the human soul, and paid tribute to physical perfection.  The flow and ripple of these strong, justly modeled sinews were like the play of steel under satin and their smoothness was as rhythmic and full of power as some young gladiator’s, who might have stirred the appreciation of Phidias or Praxiteles.  When at last he had burned his mental restlessness into physical weariness, Burton halted and stood with his shoulders thrown back and his head erect, the breathing of chest and abdomen as regular and deep as the sequence of waves at flood tide.  Yamuro went out into still another room for the accessories of his Japanese art of muscle-kneading, and Hamilton turned idly toward the darkened swimming pool.  He strolled over to the edge of the marble basin and walked out on the spring-board.  It was all very dark in here, but his feet were familiar with every foot of space.