insisted upon "Roman," and "Roman" meant gigantic.
Then suddenly the young man in the landaulet winced;—he made in his throat one of those sounds of protest that dentists sometimes hear from their patients. For Mme. Momoro's final sharpness again operated upon an exposed nerve of his. Was it true? Had he seen that barbarian of hers grow larger and larger until he became Medjila's "Roman," while he himself grew smaller and smaller until he became only a little petty-souled bankrupt—a bankrupt in vanity as in everything else? Could it possibly be true that Tinker was large, was formidable, was gigantic, was indeed the new Roman?
His thought of the man became concentrated. He thought of that outbreak of semi-riotous, middle-aged men on the "Duumvir" with Tinker as their ringleader; he thought of "Honey, how's Baby?" and of "Mariar," and of the poker table in the smoking-room and the sly cunning that had won all the chips; he thought of the infantile helplessness that sought to appease a wife's anger with barber's unguents and with deceptions and evasions a child might have employed; he thought of the man's surreptitious and
