Cole did not answer. The three moved slowly toward the door, and there in the doorway stood the author of their perplexity and distress. O'Connor saw them coming, and held out his hand to the veteran underwriter. "How do you do, Mr. Osgood," he said. "I hope you don't bear any ill will to me for what has just happened. I said I thought the rule would go through, and you can see for yourself that it was passed almost unanimously. Perhaps we may be able to do business together after all. Let us consider this as two sensible business men. Of course I'm glad the rule went through; but please don't think that I did it. I don't own the Boston Board." The other man regarded him steadily. "Probably you are right, Mr. O'Connor," he replied. "I do not seem to have correctly estimated the sentiment of to-day. No doubt you used your influence on the side of your company's interests. But I do not care to do business with you, sir--on that point my mind is unchanged." "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way about it," said the other, with the good nature which as victor he could afford to maintain. "Good-day, Mr. Osgood." Mr. Osgood passed through the doorway, but Gunterson, following him, smitten with vague valor and sudden fury, turned. "You--you!" was all he said, at a loss for words in his anger, and the President of the Salamander met him with a smile of humorous contempt. "Why, hello!" he said, "here's Gunterson! Come to Boston to find a new agent, I suppose. So did I, to tell the truth. Good luck, old man." Mr. Gunterson turned his back on his tormentor, and passed on. He could think of no appropriate retort. But the situation could not be saved by any degree of repartee. Boston had voted for separation; Silas Osgood and Company must resign the Guardian; and Samuel Gunterson had made a humiliating failure of his quest. Into his throbbing brain, however, a new idea had come, suggested by O'Connor's taunt. A new agent! Why not? If the Osgood office, consisting largely of Conference companies, was obliged to resign the Guardian, there must be some other agency where non-Conference companies predominated and where he could place the Guardian upon the withdrawal of a Conference company. After all, the Osgood office was not the only good agency in Boston. A new vigor fortified him--he would find an agent for the Guardian who should excel the Osgood connection as the sun outshines the moon. In one office of perhaps more notoriety than prominence, though Mr. Gunterson knew it not, at that very moment the matter was being discussed. "Well, Jake," said Sternberg, of Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, "they've passed it." "What did I tell you?" demanded Jake Bloom. "Didn't I tell you them Conference companies would get what they wanted? They got it, all right. Now the question is, what do we get out of it?"