Now, hunched up there in his chair, he began to understand.  If Ruthven had been a blackguard—­it was not for him to punish him—­no, not even threaten to expose him.  His own caste would take care of that; his own sort would manage such affairs.  Meanwhile Neergard had presumed to annoy them, and the society into which he had forced himself and which he had digestively affected, was now, squid-like, slowly turning itself inside out to expel him as a foreign substance from which such unimportant nutrition as he had afforded had been completely extracted.

He looked at Ruthven, scarcely seeing him.  Finally he gathered his thick legs under to support him as he rose, stupidly, looking about for his hat.

Ruthven rang for a servant; when he came Neergard followed him without a word, small eyes vacant, the moisture powdering the ridge of his nose, his red blunt hands dangling as he walked.  Behind him a lackey laughed.

* * * * *

In due time Neergard, who still spent his penny on a morning paper, read about the Orchil ball.  There were three columns and several pictures.  He read all there was to read about—­the sickeningly minute details of jewels and costumes, the sorts of stuffs served at supper, the cotillon, the favours—­then, turning back, he read about the dozen-odd separate hostesses who had entertained the various coteries and sets at separate dinners before the ball—­read every item, every name, to the last imbecile period.

Then he rose wearily, and started downtown to see what his lawyers could do toward reinstating him in a club that had expelled him—­to find out if there remained the slightest trace of a chance in the matter.  But even as he went he knew there could be none.  The squid had had its will with him, not he with the squid; and within him rose again all the old hatred and fear of these people from whom he had desired to extract full payment for the black days of need he had endured, for the want, the squalor, the starvation he had passed through.

But the reckoning left him where he had started—­save for the money they had used when he forced it on them—­not thanking him.

So he went to his lawyers—­every day for a while, then every week, then, toward the end of winter, less often, for he had less time now, and there was a new pressure which he was beginning to feel vaguely hostile to him in his business enterprises—­hitches in the negotiations of loans, delays, perhaps accidental, but annoying; changes of policy in certain firms who no longer cared to consider acreage as investment; and a curiously veiled antagonism to him in a certain railroad, the reorganisation of which he had dared once to aspire to.

And one day, sitting alone in his office, a clerk brought him a morning paper with one column marked in a big blue-pencilled oval.