So, all might yet have been amended; but this was not to be.  Never yet had “Tiger” Waldron bowed the neck to living man or woman.  Dominance was his whole scheme of life.  Though he might purr, politely enough, so long as his fur was smoothed the right way, a single backward stroke set his fangs gleaming and unsheathed every sabre-like claw.  And now this woman, his fiancee though she was, her beauty dear to him and her charm most fascinating, her fortune much desired and most of all, an alliance with her father—­now this woman, despite all these considerations, had with a few incisive words ruffled his temper beyond endurance.

So great was his agitation that, despite his strongest instinct of saving, he flung away the scarcely-tasted cigar.

“Kate,” he exclaimed, his very tongue thick with the rage he could not quell, “Kate, I can’t stand this!  You’re going too far.  What do you know of men’s work and men’s affairs?  Who are you, to judge of their times of coming and going, their obligations, their habits and man of life?  What do you understand—?”

“It’s obvious,” she replied with glacial coldness, “that I don’t understand you, and never have.  I have been living in a dream, Wally; seeing you through the glass of illusion; not reality.  After all, you’re like all men—­just the same, no different.  Idealism, self-sacrifice, con true nobility of character, where are these, in you?  What is there but the same old selfishness, the same innate masculine conceit and—­”

“No more of this, Kate!” cried the financier, paling a little.  “No more!  I can’t have it!  I won’t—­it’s impossible!  You—­you don’t understand, I tell you.  In your narrow, untrained, woman’s way, you try to set up standards for me; try to judge me, and dictate to me.  Some old puritanical streak in you is cropping out, some blue-law atavism, some I know not what, that rebels against my taking a drink—­like every other man.  That cries out against my letting slip a harmless oath—­again, like every other man that lives and breathes.  Every man, that is, who is a man, a real man, not a dummy!  If you’ve been mistaken in me, how much more have I, in you!  And so—­”

“And so,” she took the very words from his pale lips, “we’ve both been mistaken, that’s all.  No, no,” she forbade him with raised hand, as he would have interrupted with protests.  “No, you needn’t try to convince me otherwise, now.  A thousand volumes of speeches, after this, couldn’t do it.  An hour’s insight into the true depths of a man’s character—­yes, even a moment’s—­perfectly suffices to show the truth.  You’ve just drawn the veil aside, Wally, for me, and let me look at the true picture.  All that I’ve known and thought of you, so far, has been sham and illusion.  Now, I know you!”

“You—­you don’t, Catherine!” he exclaimed, half in anger, half contrition, terrified at last by the imminent break between them, by the thought of losing this rich flower from the garden of womanhood, this splendid financial and social prize.  “I—­I’ve done wrong, Kate.  I admit it.  But, truly—­”