The employees standing between him and the doors moved aside to let him pass, and they did it without a word.

And I watched him register, as he walked that gauntlet of silence, that it was not the old silence — not the careful, frightened quiet of people who feared him.

This silence was something else.

This silence was judgment.

For three years these people had stepped aside for Lucan Winthrop out of fear.

They stepped aside now out of contempt, and he was a sharp enough man, even in ruin, to feel the difference in his skin.