“These are a few—a very few. People find out the softness of my heart, and then they come to me. Women with stingy husbands and extravagant tastes, men with limited brains and boundless ambition. Each and all, with many other pleas and reasons, call upon me and win me over to their way of thinking. I am always won. No simple-hearted fool within the country gives in more easily than I when I can gain security of person.” “But don’t you tell them that you expect return?” “No; I like them to think there’s one generous person in the world.” “But that is scarcely fair. You ought to tell them what you want.” “The argument would be beyond them. Besides, it would come then too much like making bargains. I am no shopman. Those who seek me find me. Others stay away.” “But this is nothing short of madness. How can you make people pay without a signature or anything?” “I never jest but when it suits my purpose. And for madness, I grant upon the surface it may appear as such. But each bill works backward—item by item, year by year. Mathematicians and philosophers looking through them would find a subject more than fascinating.” “But if when you show your bill the people refuse to pay, and say they never got the goods?” “Why, then, one little snip and the fabric ravels out again, loop by loop, as it was knitted up. Back it goes to the fundamental working, as rigid as machinery, as true as time, and ends in nothingness.” Rosalie was silent for a time, and then she said: “Is that how it is you are such a rich man?” But he shook his head. “I am poorer than many people think,” he answered. “And richer too—wealth is comparative. But now,” he continued, with more energy, “I have come to the conclusion that your term of prison life shall not be quite so dull as you expected. You may come to me at any time, provided I have leisure. Moreover, you may borrow any book; amongst all these there will be surely some to suit you, even though it be but a uniquely pictured book of Ally Krimjo.” “But what are you expecting in return? You say you like people to esteem you generous, and are not in reality so at all. This generosity to me may end in nothing but a high percentage. It may bring me down to nothingness.” “You have the advantage of being young, you see. I might end your debtor if I tied you up in an unsympathetic prison, and let you out at last, to find I was too late, and your spirit killed by solitude.” He was looking at her with a puzzled and thoughtful expression, as if trying to weigh or settle something in his mind to his own satisfaction. “I think you were easier to understand dumb than you are speaking,” he said at last. “Well, yes, because I would be less complex,” said Rosalie wisely. “I was minus something before, now I’m not.” “Maybe. When will you come to visit me again?” “To-morrow morning, if I may. From twelve to one?”