"Not on your life," interrupted the other with a grimace. "Japs and Chinks eat all kinds of freak things—nightingale tongues and such stuff. No—thanks. Your Oku's a decent little sort, as Jap butlers go, but when it comes to cooking, give me Christian food and a French chef every time."
Stafford laughed heartily.
"Fred—my boy—you're shockingly provincial and bourgeois. I'm afraid I'll never make a cosmopolite out of you. Well, as I said, there is too much art about the place. It seems sacrilege to even think business there, so when I'm putting through any big deal, I just slip away and come to this hotel for a few days. At home I'm an art lover, revelling in the treasures I have succeeded in collecting; here I am a vulgar business person, occupied in the undignified task of making money. Only last week, when I was home, I got thinking out a plan one night in the library for a merger with a road which is cutting pretty badly into our business. I had thought out a plan, the details were working out nicely in my mind, when suddenly my gaze fell on the Corot hung just above my desk. You know the picture. Did you ever see more exquisite coloring, a more wonderful composition? Is it surprising that the plan for the merger quite slipped out of my head?"
"Talking of exquisite coloring," interrupted Hadley irrelevantly, "did you notice how well Maude looked last night? If she's a day, that woman is forty, yet no one would take her for more than five and twenty. She's a marvel. No wonder Stanton is crazy about her."
Stafford shrugged his shoulders.
"Cosmetics and a clever hairdresser can work miracles," he said dryly.
"She's a wonder, just the same—especially when you consider the life she's led. You know her history—a morphine fiend with the face of an angel. She knocked about for years before Stanton fell into her clutches. He's dippy about her—pays for that apartment and gives her a handsome allowance, bought her an automobile, pays her chauffeur, and all the rest of it. Did you notice that string of pearls she was wearing? It cost him a cool $10,000 in Paris last summer."
"Why doesn't he marry her, if he's got it as bad as all that?"
Hadley looked at his friend in amazement.
"You're not in earnest, are you?" he demanded. "Marry a woman of that kind?"