“As you please,” said he.
Apparently the matter didn't interest him. He began to talk of the performances of my little two-year-old, Beachcomber; and after twenty minutes or so, he drifted away. “I envy you your enthusiasm,” he said, pausing in my doorway. “Wherever I am, I wish I were somewhere else. Whatever I'm doing, I wish I were doing something else. Where do you get all this joy of the fight? What the devil are you fighting for?”
He didn't wait for a reply.
I thought over my situation steadily for several days. I went down to my country place. I looked everywhere among all my belongings, searching, searching, restless, impatient. At last I knew what ailed me—what the lack was that yawned so gloomily from everything I had once thought beautiful, had once found sufficient. I was in the midst of the splendid, terraced pansy beds my gardeners had just set out; I stopped short and slapped my thigh. “A woman!” I exclaimed. “That's what I need. A woman—the right sort of woman—a wife!”
IV. A CANDIDATE FOR “RESPECTABILITY”
To handle this new business properly I must put myself in position to look the whole field over. I must get in line and in touch with “respectability.” When Sam Ellersly came in for his “rations,” I said: “Sam, I want you to put me up at the Travelers Club.”
“The Travelers!” echoed he, with a blank look.
“The Travelers,” said I. “It's about the best of the big clubs, isn't it? And it has as members most of the men I do business with and most of those I want to get into touch with.”
He laughed. “It can't be done.”