Through the hum of these swarming thoughts Mr. Spence’s voice was going on.  “That’s the only rag of proof they’ve got; and they got it by one of those nasty accidents that nobody can guard against.  I don’t care how conscientiously a man attends to business, he can’t always protect himself against meddlesome people.  I don’t pretend to know how the letter came into their hands; but they’ve got it; and they mean to use it—­and they mean to say that you wrote it for me, and that you knew what it was about when you wrote it. ...  They’ll probably be after you tomorrow—­”

Mr. Spence, restoring his cigar to his lips, puffed at it slowly.  In the pause that followed there was an instant during which the universe seemed to Hugh Millner like a sounding-board bent above his single consciousness.  If he spoke, what thunders would be sent back to him from that intently listening vastness?

“You see?” said Mr. Spence.

The universal ear bent closer, as if to catch the least articulation of Millner’s narrowed lips; but when he opened them it was merely to re-insert his cigar, and for a short space nothing passed between the two men but an exchange of smoke-rings.

“What do you mean to do?  There’s the point,” Mr. Spence at length sent through the rings.

Oh, yes, the point was there, as distinctly before Millner as the tip of his expensive cigar:  he had seen it coming quite as soon as Mr. Spence.  He knew that fate was handing him an ultimatum; but the sense of the formidable echo which his least answer would rouse kept him doggedly, and almost helplessly, silent.  To let Mr. Spence talk on as long as possible was no doubt the best way of gaining time; but Millner knew that his silence was really due to his dread of the echo.  Suddenly, however, in a reaction of impatience at his own indecision, he began to speak.

The sound of his voice cleared his mind and strengthened his resolve.  It was odd how the word seemed to shape the act, though one knew how ancillary it really was.  As he talked, it was as if the globe had swung around, and he himself were upright on its axis, with Mr. Spence underneath, on his head.  Through the ensuing interchange of concise and rapid speech there sounded in Millner’s ears the refrain to which he had walked down Fifth Avenue after his first talk with Mr. Spence:  “It’s too easy—­it’s too easy—­it’s too easy.”  Yes, it was even easier than he had expected.  His sensation was that of the skilful carver who feels his good blade sink into a tender joint.

As he went on talking, this surprised sense of mastery was like wine in his veins.  Mr. Spence was at his mercy, after all—­that was what it came to; but this new view of the case did not lessen Millner’s sense of Mr. Spence’s strength, it merely revealed to him his own superiority.  Mr. Spence was even stronger than he had suspected.  There could be no better proof of that than his faith in Millner’s power to grasp the situation, and his tacit recognition of the young man’s right to make the most of it.  Millner felt that Mr. Spence would have despised him even more for not using his advantage than for not seeing it; and this homage to his capacity nerved him to greater alertness, and made the concluding moments of their talk as physically exhilarating as some hotly contested game.