I bowed, and when there was the closed door between us, I laughed, not at all pleasantly. “This New York!” I said aloud. “This New York that dabbles its slime of sordidness and snobbishness on every flower in the garden of human nature.” I took from my inside pocket the picture of Anita I always carried. “Are _you_ like that?” I demanded of it. And it seemed to answer: “Yes, I am.” Did I tear the picture up? No. I kissed it as if it were the magnetic reality. “I don’t care what you are,” I cried. “I want you! I want you!” “Fool!” you are saying. Precisely what I called myself. And you? Is it the one you _ought_ to love that you give your heart to? Is it the one that understands you and sympathizes with you? Or is it the one whose presence gives you visions of paradise and whose absence blots out the light? I loved her. Yet I would have torn out my life before I would have taken her on any terms that did not make her wholly mine. XXIV. Now that Updegraff is dead, I am free to tell of our relations. My acquaintance with him was more casual than with any other of “The Seven.” From the outset of my career I made it a rule never to deal with understrappers, always to get in touch with the man who had the final say. Thus, as the years went by, I grew into intimacy with the great men of finance where many with better natural facilities for knowing them remained in an outer circle. But with Updegraff, interested only in enterprises west of the Mississippi and keeping Denver as his legal residence and exploiting himself as a Western man who hated Wall Street, I had a mere bowing acquaintance. This was not important, however, as each knew the other well by reputation. Our common intimacies made us intimates for all practical purposes.