He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure.  As he hurled these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in the presence of a man truly mad.  But only for an instant; then my horror, my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept.  It is hard to admit it, but it is true—­I wept uncontrollably.  In an instant the room was quiet except for the sound of my own awful grief.  I heard it, was ashamed of it, but I could not stop.  The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly, but there was no answer.  The stillness became so oppressive that even my own sobs quieted.  I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I slowly raised my eyes.

Bob’s towering figure was in front of me.  His head had fallen forward, and his arms were folded across his breast.  But that he stood erect I should have thought him dead, so still was he.  I jumped to my feet and looked into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently.  I touched him on the shoulder.

“Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me.  For God’s sake, forgive me for intruding on your misery.”

I looked at him.  I will never forget his face.  No heartbroken woman’s could have been sadder.  He slowly raised his head, then staggered and grasped the ticker-stand for support.

“Don’t, Jim, don’t—­don’t ask me to forgive you.  Oh, Jim, Jim, my old friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and truest friend man ever had.  Jim, forget it all.  I was mad, I am mad, I have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer.  I know it can’t, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old days at St. Paul’s and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the ‘System’s’ curse.”

The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.  They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone, a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.

Bob went to the door.  The office was in an uproar.  Twenty or thirty of Bob’s brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.  Many more were pouring in through the outer office.  Bob looked at them coldly.  “Well, what is the trouble?  Is it possible we are down to a point where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man’s office when his wire happens to break down?”

They saw his bluff.  You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a man why Bob had ignored his wires—­guessed that I had been pleading for the life of “the Street.”