The look she gave him was heavy with loathing.  “That means nothing with us.  I never loved you, and you know it.  You know, too, why I married you.  I made no secret of it at the time.  You had what I wanted, and I had what you wanted; but you were content with the bargain because I gave you money, position, and power.  I never promised anything more than that.  I made you into something like a man.  You never could have succeeded without me.  All you have is due to me—­even your reputation in the service.  Your success, your influence, it is all mine, and the only thing you gave me was a name; any other would have done as well.”

He shrank a little under this tirade, despite his exaltation.

“Marriage!” she continued, in bitter scorn.  “A priest mumbled something over us, but it meant nothing then or now.  I have tolerated you because you were useful.  I have carried you with me as I carry a maid or a butler.  I bought a manikin and dressed it up and put breath into it for my own convenience, and I owe you nothing, do you understand—­nothing!  The debt is all on your side, as you and I and all the world know.”

“Who made me a manikin?” he demanded, with womanish fury, a fury that had been striving for utterance these many years.  “I had ambitions and hopes and ability once—­not much, perhaps, but enough—­before you married me.  I was nothing great, but I was getting along.  I had confidence, too, but you took it away from me.  You—­you absorbed me.  You had your father’s brain, and it was too big for me; it overshadowed mine.  In a way you were a vampire; for what I had you drained me of.  At first it was terrible to feel that I was inferior, but I loved you, and although I had some pride—­” He choked an instant and threw back her incredulous stare defiantly.  “I let myself be eliminated.  You thought you were doing me a favor when you put me forward as a figurehead, but to me it was a tragedy.  I couldn’t help letting you do it.  Do you realize what that means to a fellow?  I quit fighting for my own individuality, I became colored by you, I took on your ways, your habits, your mental traits, and—­all the time I knew what was happening.  God!  How I struggled to remain Stephen Cortlandt, but it would have taken a big man to mould you to his ways, and I was only average.  I began to do your work in your particular style; I forgot my ambitions and my dreams and took up yours.  That’s what I fell to, and all the time I knew it, and—­and all the time I knew you neither cared nor understood.  My only consolation was the thought that even though you never had loved me and never could, you at least respected our relation.  I clung to that miserably, for it was all I had left, all that made me seem like a man.  And yet you took away even that.  I tried to rebel, but I had been drugged too long.  You saw Anthony, and he had the things I lack; you found you were not a machine, but a living woman.