“I mean,” said Natalie, ... “oh, you know, papa, dear. Don’t be an old stupid. Why go on with it?... Of course you can always do things with people of a sort. They ask you fast enough. But mother says if we do that we’ll never get anywhere. So we have to wait.” “Wait for what?” “I don’t know,” said Natalie, on the verge of tears. “Ask mother.” “So ho-o-o-o!” said Galt, beginning to see. “I’ll ask her.” Mrs. Galt and Vera were in a state of crystal passivity. They heard without listening. Galt pursued the matter no further at dinner. Later he held a long interview with Mrs. Galt and she told him the truth. Social ostracism was the price his family paid for the enemies he had made and continued to make in Wall Street. She had tried. She had knocked, but no door opened. She had prostrated herself before her friends. They were sorry and helpless. Nothing could be done,--not at once. She had better wait quietly, they said, until the storm blew over. Mrs. Valentine was at her worst, terrible and unapproachable. The subject couldn’t even be mentioned. Anyone who received the Galts was damned. iii Galt was unable to get his mind down to work the next day. He would leave it and walk about in a random manner, emitting strange, intermittent sounds,--grunts, hissings and shrewd whistlings. Then he would sit down to it again, but with no relief, and repeat the absent performance. “Come on, Coxey,” he said, taking up his hat. “We’ll show them something.” We went up-town by the L train, got off at 42nd Street, took a cab and drove slowly up Fifth Avenue. “That’s Valentine’s house,” he said, indicating a beautiful old brick residence. He called to the cabby to put us down and wait. We walked up and down the block. Almost directly opposite the Valentine house was a brown stone residence in ill repair, doors and windows boarded up, marked for sale. Having looked at it several times, measuring the width of the plot with his eye, he crossed over to the Valentine house, squared his heels with the line of its wall and stepped off the frontage, counting, “Three, six, nine,” etc. It stretched him to do an imaginary yard per step. He was as unconscious as a mechanical tin image and resembled one, his arms limp at his sides, his legs shooting out in front of him with stiff angular movements. He wore a brown straw hat, his hair flared out behind, his tie was askew and fallen away from the collar button. Returning he stepped off in the same way the frontage of the property for sale. “About what I thought,” he said. “Twenty feet more.” He wrote down the number of the house and the name and address of the real estate firm from the sign and we were through. An agent was sent immediately to buy the property. He telephoned before the end of the day. “We’ve got it, Coxey,” said Galt. “The transfer will be made in your name. This is all a dead secret. Not a word. Find the best architect in New York and have him down here tomorrow.”