"Sure he expects a rake-off," Starratt's silent partner had said. "Everybody gets it … if they've got business enough to make it worth while."
"Well, he won't get it from me," Fred returned, decisively. "I've signed my name to an agreement and that agreement will stick if I starve doing it!"
Brauer, disconcerted by his friend's vehemence, merely had shrugged, but at another time he said, craftily:
"If Hilmer wants to break even on the fire business he gives us, why can't we make it up some other way?… There's nothing against giving him all the commissions on that automobile liability policy we placed the other day. We can do what we please with that profit."
Starratt flushed. "Can't you see, Brauer, that the principle is the same?"
"Principle! Oh, shoot!… We're out to make money, not to reform business methods."
Starratt made no further reply, but Brauer's attitude rankled. He began to wish that he hadn't allowed Brauer to go in on his venture. 'But it had taken money … more than he had imagined. They had to put a good deposit down on the office furniture, and the rent was, of course, payable in advance. Then came the fee for joining the Broker's Exchange, and he had to borrow money for his personal expenses in the face of his diminished salary check from Ford, Wetherbee & Co. He realized, too, that the difficulties would scarcely decrease, even in the face of brisk business. The office furnishings would one day have to be met in full, the typewriting machine paid for, the stationery and printing bills settled. During all this time he and Helen would have to live and keep up a decent, not to say prosperous, appearance. Yes, even with Helen saving the price of a stenographer, the problem would not be easy. A day would come finally when he would feel compelled to provide Helen with a fair salary. A man couldn't expect even his own wife to go on pounding a typewriting machine for nothing. What he really hoped was that when things began to run smoothly Helen would retire… He had heard her in the old days voice her scorn of the married woman who went out to earn a salary.
"I wouldn't marry a man who couldn't support me!" she used to blaze.
As a matter of fact, he had felt the same way about it—he felt that way still. It hurt him to think that Helen should be wearing the badge of his inefficiency. And then, deep down, he had a masculine distaste for sharing his workday world with a woman. He liked to preserve the mystery of those hours spent in the fight for existence, because he knew instinctively that battle grounds lost their glamour at close range. His Californian inheritance had fostered the mining-camp attitude toward females—they were one of two things: men's moral equals or men's moral superiors. It was well enough to meet an equal on common ground, but one felt in duty bound to enshrine a superior being in reasonable seclusion.
At first he had been doubtful of Helen's ability to adapt herself to such a radical change. Her performance soon set his mind at rest on that score, but he still could not recover quite from the surprise of her unexpected decision. Indifference, amazement, opposition—nothing seemed able to sway her from her purpose. In the end he had been too touched by her attitude to put his foot down firmly against the move… She got on well with Hilmer, too, he noticed. Usually at the end of one of these late afternoon conferences with their chief patron Fred and Hilmer ended up by shaking for an early evening cocktail at Collins & Wheeland's, just around the corner. Hilmer always saw to it that Fred returned to the office with something for Helen—a handful of ginger-snaps from the free-lunch counter, a ham sandwich, or a paper of ripe olives. Once he stopped in a candy shop on Leidesdorff Street and bought two ice-cream cornucopias. Fred used to shake a puzzled head as he deposited these gastronomic trifles upon Helen's desk as he said: