He had compelled them to stay in line to save himself, and they had been saved as well.
His mind moved on to the incident at the corner of the bar of the Parthenon, when the young athlete had turned his hand down.
He was no longer stunned by the event, but he was shocked and grieved, as only a strong man can be, at this passing of his strength.
And the issue was too clear for him to dodge, even with himself.
He knew why his hand had gone down.
Not because he was an old man.
He was just in the first flush of his prime, and, by rights, it was the hand of the hammer-thrower which should have gone down.
Daylight knew that he had taken liberties with himself.
He had always looked upon this strength of his as permanent, and here, for years, it had been steadily oozing from him.
As he had diagnosed it, he had come in from under the stars to roost in the coops of cities.
He had almost forgotten how to walk.
He had lifted up his feet and been ridden around in automobiles, cabs and carriages, and electric cars.
He had not exercised, and he had dry-rotted his muscles with alcohol.
And was it worth it?
What did all his money mean after all?
Dede was right.
It could buy him no more than one bed at a time, and at the same time it made him the abjectest of slaves.
It tied him fast.
He was tied by it right now.
Even if he so desired, he could not lie abed this very day. His money called him.
The office whistle would soon blow, and he must answer it.
The early sunshine was streaming through his window—a fine day for a ride in the hills on Bob, with Dede beside him on her Mab.
Yet all his millions could not buy him this one day.
One of those flurries might come along, and he had to be on the spot to meet it.
Thirty millions!
And they were powerless to persuade Dede to ride on Mab—Mab, whom he had bought, and who was unused and growing fat on pasture.
What were thirty millions when they could not buy a man a ride with the girl he loved?
Thirty millions!—that made him come here and go there, that rode upon him like so many millstones, that destroyed him while they grew, that put their foot down and prevented him from winning this girl who worked for ninety dollars a month.
Which was better? he asked himself.
All this was Dede's own thought.
It was what she had meant when she prayed he would go broke.
He held up his offending right arm.
It wasn't the same old arm.
Of course she could not love that arm and that body as she had loved the strong, clean arm and body of years before.
He didn't like that arm and body himself.
A young whippersnapper had been able to take liberties with it.
It had gone back on him.
He sat up suddenly.
No, by God, he had gone back on it! He had gone back on himself.
He had gone back on Dede.
She was right, a thousand times right, and she had sense enough to know it, sense enough to refuse to marry a money slave with a whiskey-rotted carcass.
He got out of bed and looked at himself in the long mirror on the wardrobe door.
He wasn't pretty.
The old-time lean cheeks were gone. These were heavy, seeming to hang down by their own weight.
He looked for the lines of cruelty Dede had spoken of, and he found them, and he found the harshness in the eyes as well, the eyes that were muddy now after all the cocktails of the night before, and of the months and years before.
He looked at the clearly defined pouches that showed under his eyes, and they've shocked him.
He rolled up the sleeve of his pajamas.
No wonder the hammer-thrower had put his hand down.
Those weren't muscles.
A rising tide of fat had submerged them.