Neale told her that he understood this and felt with her that he was stepping forward into a new phase of their relation; and he did feel this at intervals. But while this was the only change that had occurred in Martha's life, it was overshadowed in Neale's by his intuition that he had now come to a crucial moment in his business career. He recognized perfectly the feel of the moment in the game when one side or the other wins, although half the time may yet remain to be played through. In football it lasted but an instant, that well-remembered poise on the very crest of the will-to-win. In business it would last--he had no idea how long--but he felt that he had been well coached by life, that his training had left him with the endurance to stick it out--years if necessary. His pride as a fighter hardened and set. He felt again the single-hearted passion to win out at any cost to himself or others which had been the meat and marrow of his football days. In short he began to be considered by all the experienced eyes about him as a remarkably promising young American business-man. But now for the first time he did not pass on to Martha the excited exuberant sense of triumphant force, the salty tang of pushing a weaker man where he had not wished to go. Nowadays when he stepped into Professor Wentworth's apartment he found Martha with excitements and interests of her own--of her own and his too. After the first slightly startled recognition that he had opened the door upon a quite unexpected scene, he always focussed his eyes to the other distances, and discussed as animatedly as Martha the relative advantages of suburban and upper-west-side locations, and looked over with her the list of apartments to let. But when he left her, he had scarcely reached the bottom of the stairs before he was again in his own world, crouching warily with tense muscles, alert to catch his opponents off their balance. He occasionally cast a mental glance back at the scene he had left, but it was already out of focus. As a matter of plain fact he did not care a picayune whether they lived in a suburb or on 145th Street, or in what kind of book-case they kept their books, nor whether they had twin beds of mahogany or white enamel. He told himself that what he did care about was that Martha should be suited in those details about which she seemed to care so much.