had Joe Embry said to her: "Look out for that man; he is a crook." And now was that same man crying in a voice which went ringing through her ears, saying not behind Joe Embry's back but to his very face: "He's a damned low down contemptible cur!" And for that brief, immeasurably brief, fragment of time, so charged was the decrying voice with vibrant denunciation, Beatrice Corliss believed!
Even the calm self-mastery of a Joe Embry must feel to its very roots the shock of such accusation, even the face of a Joe Embry must flush hotly, his eyes cease once more to mask his thought. The man does not live into whose face there does not spring a line of crimson to the whip lash laid across it.
In a certain sense never had Beatrice Corliss lived to the full as she lived through these few vital seconds. Trained since early girlhood to cope with big situations, she had directed sortie and assault from the castellated citadel of a secure position, sending forth her emissaries to do battle for her, to come to close grips with what obstacles were in the paths of her success, herself unruffled by the life which pulsed and beat and clamoured and even raged at her bidding but always beyond the physical reach of her hand. From her vantage point, aloof and secure, she had but watched the marching forth of her serried ranks which were countless dollars and stubborn mercenaries, had but smiled as they went on and were lost in the obscurity of conflict, confidently awaiting their orderly return with word of victory for her. Nothing had been more characteristic of her method, of the Corliss method than this: she directed
