CHAPTER V THE SCALES OF HONOUR
That Mario and Hera were taken in by the counterfeit despair and make-believe submission of Tarsis proved how little they knew the man with whom they had to deal. Tarsis had as much thought of giving up Hera as he had of parting with his life. In the last words spoken to him by Mario—“She is not to be your wife”—he knew that he had heard the declaration of a resolute strike against his fondest design; and to set about breaking it by means of craft instead of open resistance was only the instinctive recourse of a character schooled in devices. The art of throwing the antagonist off his guard had become a second nature with him. Always this was the first move he made in a fight with his fellow-man. He had achieved his earlier successes in the business world
