But Mr. Baxter's pride refused to be sacrificed. His business sense had suggested the plan shortly after the union had voted to strike. He would have adopted the plan immediately, as the obvious procedure in the situation, had it not been for the break with Foley. But the break had come, and his pride could not forget that last visit of Foley to his private office; it had demanded that the walking delegate be humiliated--utterly crushed. His business sense, from the other side, had argued the folly of allowing mere emotion to stand in the way of victory and the profitable resumption of work. Outraged pride had been the stronger during April and May, but as the possibility of its satisfaction had grown less and less as May had dragged by, the pressure of his business sense had become greater and greater. And the Avon explosion had given business sense a further chance to greaten. "Try the plan at once," it had exhorted; "if you don't, Foley may do it again." However, for all the pressure of owners and contractors and of his business sense--owners and contractors urging any sort of settlement, so that it be a settlement, business sense urging its own private plan--in the early days of June Mr. Baxter continued to present the same appearance of wall-like firmness. But his firmness was that of a dam that can sustain a pressure of one hundred, and is bearing a pressure of ninety-nine with its habitual show of eternal fixedness. Mr. Baxter had to withstand pressure from yet another source--from his wife. When he had told her in early May that the strike was not going to be settled as quickly as he had first thought, and had asked her to practice such temporary economy as she could, she had acquiesced graciously but with an aching heart; and instead of going to Europe as she had intended, she and her daughter had run up to Tuxedo, where with two maids, carriage, and coachman, they were managing to make both ends meet on three hundred dollars a week. But when the first days of June had come, and no prospect of settlement, she began to think with swelling anxiety of the Newport season. "Why can't this thing be settled right off?" she said to her husband who had run up Friday evening--the Friday after the Wednesday Foley had assured the union of certain victory--to stay with her over Saturday and Sunday. And she acquainted him with her besetting fears. Only another unit of pressure was needed to overturn the wall of Mr. Baxter's resistance, and the stress of his wife's words was many times the force required. During his two days at Tuxedo Mr. Baxter sat much of the time apart in quiet thought. Mrs. Baxter was too considerate a wife to repeat to him her anxieties, or to harass him with pleas and questions, but just before he left early Monday morning for the city she could not refrain from saying: "You will try, won't you, dear, to end the strike soon?" "Yes, dear." She beamed upon him. "How soon?" "It will last about three more weeks."