“I sat in a small boat,” Bellair was saying, “for ten days, with very little food and water. I saw one man die like a beast of thirst--or fear of thirst; and I saw another man master it--so that he died smiling--as only a man can die----” Bellair did not finish. He had tried to catch the old man’s attention with this--to hold it an instant, thinking that some word would get home, something of the immortal facts in his heart, something greater than cash ... but the old man believed him insane, a liar, a fool or all three. “Yes, yes,” he said, looking to the side, and to the door. So he could listen, neither before nor afterward. Bellair eased his agony by letting him go--the money gripped in his hands, his limbs hastening, eyes darting to the right and left, as he sped through the swinging door.... For several moments, Bellair sat in the sorrow of it--lost in the grimmest of all tragedies--that here we are, a human family, all designed for lofty and majestic ends, yet having lost the power to articulate to each other. Suddenly Bellair remembered that the old face had looked into his for a swift second, when he was released--shaken, ashen, a murmur of something like “God thank you,” on the trembling lips. There was a bit of a ray in that.... Then he settled back into the tragedy again. It was this--that the old man had thought him insane for trying to help him; that he had seen something foreign and altogether amiss in the landlady’s eyes, in Ben Broadwell’s, and what was more touching to him, in Davy Acton’s. Bellair straightened his shoulders. The misery of the thing oppressed him until he brought it to the laugh. Formerly he would have tried to escape. It was not his business if the old man would not be helped; he had tried. If a man can succeed in radiating good feelings and a spirit of helpfulness, he has done his part; the consequences are out of his hand. He saw that he had wanted to help; that what he had taken from the open boat and from the woman had brought this impulse to the fore in all his thinking. After that he must be an artist in the work; must become consummate; but having done his best--he must not spend energy in moods and personal depressions.... As for Lot & Company, he must meet them on their own footings--forgetting everything but their points of view. It was his business now to make a black spot clean, and it was an ugly material matter to be coped with as such, calling forth will-power and acumen of a world kind. He would see if he was to fail. Bellair’s laugh was hard at first, from the tensity of the temptation to give up and let New York have its way in his case. Having whipped that (and it was a fair afternoon’s work) the smile softened a little, and he entered upon the task of the evening.