"You foolish, funny boy," she said, taking pity on his involved analysis, "don't you see what you have done? It's quite the common fate of get-rich-quick dreamers; you merely symbolized your goal by Beatrice Constantine, she stood for the combined relationships of wife, comrade, lady luxury--and you captured your goal, and the greater effort ceased. You have had time to examine your prize in microscopic fashion. It isn't at all what you intended--but it is quite what you deserve. No one can make a lie serve for the truth--at all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a cropper somewhere--usually where you least expect it. And you lied to yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a story-book princess and let that be my incentive. Story-book princesses are expensive lovelies and you have to have money bags to jingle before their fair selves!' So you became more and more infatuated with the fairy-book princess who happened to be in your pathway--and it was Beatrice. She made you feel that anything your slightly mad and quite unrealizing young self might do was proper. Just as the boy with a new air rifle deliberately sets up a target to shoot away at because the savage in him must justify hitting something besides the ozone, so you have merely wooed and won your own falsehood and disillusionment." "You say it rather neatly; but that isn't all. The thing is that I'm not game enough to go on and take the punishment. Are you surprised?" "No. But are you prepared to give up the thing which won her?" "My money? I've thought of it." He folded his arms and began walking up and down the littered, water-soaked office. "Would you like me any better?" he asked, tenderly. Mary's eyes grew stormy. "If the men go to work at once we can have the rugs sent to the cleaner's and put down old matting for a temporary covering--and I can go ahead taking inventory," was her answer. "I see," Steve made himself respond. "Well--I didn't trespass very much," he whispered as he passed her to leave the building. * * * * * Beatrice regarded the fire as an amusing happening and before Steve realized what was being done she had proposed that Gaylord refurnish the office in an arts-and-crafts fashion. It had long seemed to her a most inartistic and clumsy place and when Steve refused her offer and told her that a splint-bottomed chair and a kitchen chair were his office equipment some years ago she sent for Gaylord on her own initiative and told him to beard the lion in the den to see if he could win Steve to the cause of painted wall panels typifying commerce, industry, and such, and crippled beer steins and so on as artistic wastebaskets.