Could he go to Hand and confess all?
But Hand was a hard, cold, moral man also.

Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! He wondered and thought, and sighed and pondered--all without avail.
Pity the poor earthling caught in the toils of the moral law.

In another country, perhaps, in another day, another age, such a situation would have been capable of a solution, one not utterly destructive to Mr.Sluss, and not entirely favorable to a man like Cowperwood.

But here in the United States, here in Chicago, the ethical verities would all, as he knew, be lined up against him.

What Lake View would think, what his pastor would think, what Hand and all his moral associates would think--ah, these were the terrible, the incontrovertible consequences of his lapse from virtue.
At four o'clock, after Mr.Sluss had wandered for hours in the snow and cold, belaboring himself for a fool and a knave, and while Cowperwood was sitting at his desk signing papers, contemplating a glowing fire, and wondering whether the mayor would deem it advisable to put in an appearance, his office door opened and one of his trim stenographers entered announcing Mr.Chaffee Thayer Sluss.