“Quite right, my boy,” said the old man benignly; and, after a few more words, Louis took his leave. For perhaps the first time in his life he stepped into the elevator; he who usually ran up the long, steep stairs as fleetly as a gazelle. Then, reaching his own little room, under the roof, he sat down, slowly and heavily, and looked about him. It was spotlessly clean, but with no attempt at beauty, except one or two of Freddy’s drawings; and, to the boy’s new sense of sight, repulsively bare and comfortless. He let his head sink hopelessly upon his hands. Look where he would, there was no place at “Prices” for Pinkie. With his best efforts he could not think her into his workaday world. It was not her fault, of course; the hardy _arbor vitæ_ stands erect amidst the snows from which the rose must be carefully protected. Is the rose to blame? No, it is only a question of corresponding with one’s environment. Pinkie was, clearly and self-evidently, not created or evolved to correspond with any such environment as “Prices.” He was sitting in the same position when his father entered, half an hour later, with an elate expression, which changed suddenly at sight of Louis’ smile; an old smile on a boyish face. “So!” said Karl Metzerott; “but it is my blame for sending you as a child among those people! Ah! what a fool I was! What has she done to thee, Louis, to send thee home with a face like that?” “It is not her fault, father, nor mine, nor any one’s, for that matter.” “Tell me that! Nothing is _her_ fault at thy age, Louis. Tell me about it, and let me be the judge. Have I not always warned thee? A man’s own senses might tell him that a bit of pink and white wax-work is not the wife for a workingman.” Louis sighed. “It is true,” he said. “Father, I have thought and thought, but I cannot imagine her _here_,—or—myself anywhere else. For see! I have grown up at ‘Prices,’ father; these dear friends are _my_ friends, part of my life; if I could leave it, only half of my heart could go with me; if I could rise into her world”— “Rise? that is, lie, cheat, steal, do anything to get money! For it is money alone that makes equals in that world, my boy; have I not seen it?” Louis bowed his head once more in sad acquiescence. His thoughts were too chaotic for words, but he felt dimly and confusedly that his father was right. Polly’s mercenariness was a nobler thing than Pinkie’s scorn of expense; nay, if he had known it, even the rough raillery of the board-room, quite as delicate as much schoolgirl teasing. “Prices” might be—was—in essentials the higher world; but since it was not Pinkie’s world the result was practically the same. Louis glanced around the plain, bare room, and thought of Alice’s dainty parlor, of the pink and white nest that sheltered his bird, of which he had once had an accidental glimpse,—and he sighed heavily.