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 burned the old passion for power, the ineradicable appetite for authority. He resented the fact that she should feel sorry for him. He inwardly resolved to make her suffer for that pity, to enlighten her as to what life was still left in the battered old carcass which she could so openly sorrow over.

"Well, I 'm back," he announced in his guttural bass, as though to bridge a silence that was becoming abysmal.

"Yes, you 're back!" echoed Elsie Verriner. She spoke absently, as though her mind were preoccupied with a problem that seemed inexplicable.

"And a little the worse for wear," he pursued, with his mirthless croak of a laugh. Then he flashed up at her a quick look of resentment, a look which he found himself unable to repress. "While you 're all dolled up," he said with a snort, as though bent on wounding her, "dolled up like a lobster palace floater!"

It hurt him more than ever to see that he could not even dethrone that fixed look of pity