Besides, in the whirl of the hour before she came, he had found himself strangely wanting to take counsel with Bessie. The Mitchells had made of him for all these years a convenient caretaker of their daughter. Bessie had made of him a playfellow with whom she took the same liberties as with any other of her father’s possessions. This attitude on her part had created the only atmosphere in which Hampstead could have been at ease with her. It had permitted his soul to bask when she was by, but it had done no more. But now, he somehow wanted to confide in Bessie,—not to take her advice for he wasn’t going to take anybody’s advice; all advice was against him,—but to tell her what he was going to do, because he believed she would listen appreciatingly, if not sympathetically. He felt he needed at least the added support of a neutral mind. He had rejected Mr. Mitchell’s proposal, but the glitter of it flashed occasionally. And now he was going to face the resourceful, the ingratiating, the dominating William N. Scofield, and he felt like a man who goes alone to meet his temptation on the mountain top. *CHAPTER VII* *THE HIGH BID* For an hour and a half at dinner, and for another hour sunk in the depths of a great leather chair in the lounging room of the Pacific Union Club, William N. Scofield had searched the soul of Hampstead, who had not only been led to talk rapturously of his stage ambition but to reveal the metes and bounds of his interest in and knowledge upon many subjects. "Gad, but you know a lot," ejaculated Scofield, with unfeigned amazement. "Where’d you get it all?" "I have read a good deal," confessed John, trying to appear much more modest than in his heart he felt; for it was a part of Scofield’s whim or of his campaign to flatter him enormously, and he had succeeded. But for a time now, the Traffic Manager was silent, puffing meditatively at his cigar and staring at the ceiling through loafing rings of smoke in which, as if they were floating letters, he seemed to read the transcript of his thought,—the thought that if, beside employing this enormously able young man, he could also enlist in behalf of the railroad as an institution his capacity for fanatical devotion to an ideal, the prize was one worth bidding high for, high enough to win! "People like you, Hampstead," Scofield broke out presently, and in his most ingratiating vein. "We all felt that down at the office. You did a difficult thing without making an enemy of one of us. Therefore what your personality can do interests me even more than what you know." The railroad man interrupted his speech to shoot an exploratory glance from under veiling lids and went on calculatingly: