He was one of those rare individuals who never
give a promise overnight and regret it in the morning. He was
slow to move, but when he did the movement brushed all
obstacles aside. In the first days of his usurpation he had
gone cautiously, half fascinated, half distrustful; then the
reality, the extraordinary tangibility of the position had
gripped him when, matching himself for the first time with men
of his own caliber, he had learned his real weight on the day
of his protest against the Easter adjournment. With that
knowledge had been born the dominant factor in his whole
scheme--the overwhelming, insistent desire to manifest his
power. That desire that is the salvation or the ruin of every
strong man who has once realized his strength. Supremacy was
the note to which his ambition reached. To trample out
Chilcote's footmarks with his own had been his tacit instinct
from the first; now it rose paramount. It was the whole
theory of creation--the survival of the fittest--the deep,
egotistical certainty that he was the better man.
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