Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/249



HEN next morning Henry viewed his stubbled, haggard face in the glass he reviled himself at his own weakness. Hellfire' Harrington!" he scoffed. "You look like it now, don't you? Crying like a baby, crumpling like a man of straw just because a girl goes back on you—quitting as if there was a streak of yellow in you wider than the inlet out there. Oh, yes, you're a hell of a Hellfire, you are!"

But after a little bit he had decided desperately: "I must see her again! I must see her immediately." He dressed for the occasion with that precise attention to detail of the gallant who expects this day to die with his boots on and is proudly concerned to make an immaculate corpse. Passing up between the statues of Lewis and Clark he came face to face with Mr. Boland—their first encounter in some days—the first since Mr. Boland had refused to see him.

"Good morning, Mr. Boland," said Henry, politely.

"Well, young man!" hailed the magnate sternly, harshly, as addressing a culprit, and Henry felt for the first time the bare impact of the man's displeasure. It was as if a blow, instead of a glance, had struck him. It conveyed an ominous, creeping feeling that he couldn't shake off when Mr. Boland had passed; for Old Two Blades did pass, stiff and uncompromising, without another word. This manner of his struck Henry as somehow sinister; and there was a sinister