"Seems to you what, young woman?" "--that your daughter would prefer to do these at her leisure--they are so personal." Constantine moved uneasily in his chair. "I guess women don't like to do things these days"--rather disgruntled in general--"but she might as well have asked an African medicine man as to ask me. What do I know about red lacquered cabinets and relining fur capes? I just pay for them." Mary smiled. Something about his gruff, merciless personality had always attracted her. She had sometimes suspected that the day would come when she would be sorry for him--just why she did not know. She had watched him from afar during the period of being his assistant bookkeeper, and now, having risen with the fortunes of Steve O'Valley, she faced him on an almost equal footing--another queer quirk of American commerce. She realized that his tense race after wealth had been in a sense his strange manner of grieving for his wife. But his absolute concentration along one line resulted in a lack of wisdom concerning all other lines. Though he could figure to the fraction of a dollar how to beat the game, play big-fish-swallow-little-fish and get away with it, he had no more judgment as to his daughter's absurd self than Monster, who had gone on the honeymoon wrapped in a new silken blanket. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, as Mary had decided during her early days of running errands for nervous modistes who boxed her ears one moment and gave her a silk remnant the next. Neither can a man put all his powers of action into one channel, blinding himself to all else in the world, and expect to emerge well balanced and normal in his judgments. As Mary agreed to help Constantine out of his debris of French clocks and pewter for the breakfast room she began to feel sorry for him even if he was a business pirate--for he had paid an extremely high price for the privilege of being made a fool of by his own child. He escorted her to the limousine and they whirled up to the apartment house, where in all the gray stone, iron grille work, hall-boy elegance there now resided three couples of the Gorgeous Girl type, and where Bea's apartment awaited her coming, the former tenants having been forced to vacate in time to have the place completely redone. "I wouldn't ask Gaylord if I had to do it myself," Constantine said, brushing by the maid who opened the door. "There is a young man we could easily spare. If he ever gets as good a job as painting spots on rocking-horses I'll eat my hat." Mary was surveying the room. "Where--where do we go to from here?" she faltered. Constantine sank into a large chair, shaking his head. "Damned if I know," he panted. "Look at that truck!"--pointing to piles of wedding gifts.