“Vae victis.”

His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more often they met at dinner. But that was all. Jadwin’s life by now had come to be so irregular, and his few hours of sleep so precious and so easily disturbed, that he had long since occupied a separate apartment.

What Laura’s life was at this time he no longer knew. She never spoke of it to him; never nowadays complained of loneliness. When he saw her she appeared to be cheerful. But this very cheerfulness made him uneasy, and at times, through the murk of the chaff of wheat, through the bellow of the Pit, and the crash of collapsing fortunes there reached him a suspicion that all was not well with Laura.

Once he had made an abortive attempt to break from the turmoil of La Salle Street and the Board of Trade, and, for a time at least, to get back to the old life they both had loved⁠—to get back, in a word, to her. But the consequences had been all but disastrous. Now he could not keep away.