"Thank you. I've just seen some very interesting pictures."
"Surely you have not finished with my masterpieces so soon?" he said, with mocking protest.
The doctor had made up his mind to kill him at the moment the dance was at the highest pitch of gaiety and he wanted to get him as near the great arch as possible.
His answer was given so politely and evenly the financier was puzzled.
"No, Bivens," he said in a matter-of-fact voice, "the pictures I saw were purely mental. I haven't been to your art gallery yet."
"See it by all means!" he urged with exaggerated politeness. "It's a rare privilege, you know. It's not often the rabble is inside these walls. It's the chance of your life."
"Thank you, I'll find enough to amuse me before I go."
Bivens turned on his heels with a muttered oath and disappeared in the crowd. He was plainly disconcerted by his enemy's manner. To see a man of his temperament rise suddenly from the depths of despair into smiling serenity was something uncanny. He left him deliberating whether to call his servants and throw him into the street.
As the doctor waited for the music to begin, he watched the women pass, resplendent in their jewels and magnificent in their nakedness. To-night he saw it without the excuses of conventional social usage.
"And this," he exclaimed bitterly, "is the highest development of American life; this splendid, sordid, criminal degrading pageant with its sensual appeal; and yet if the house should fall and crush them all, the world would lose nothing of value except the jewelry that might be mixed with its débris!"
He felt for the moment a messenger of divine vengeance. His pistol shot would at least give them something to think about.
The music began, and the dancers once more whirled into the centre of the room and the crowd filled the space under the grand arch which led into the hall. Bivens was the centre of an admiring group of sycophants and worshipful snobs. The doctor's heart gave a mad throb of joy. His hour had come.
With quick strides he covered the space which separated them and without a moment's hesitation thrust his hand into his breast for his revolver. Not a muscle or nerve quivered. His finger touched the trigger softly and he gave Bivens a look which he meant he should take with him into eternity, when just beyond him he saw Harriet. She stood motionless with a look of mute agony on her fair young face, watching Stuart talk to Bivens's wife.