"Indefinitely!"
"And you want me to break up my home 'indefinitely'? Well, I must confess I don't in the least see it that way, Mr. Rawn."
"You're selfish, and that's why you can't see it, Charles. Above all things you ought to avoid the vice of selfishness. You are not parting from your wife, but only helping her to a better grade of living. Meantime, of course, your duty to her and to the company is to make a success of your work. Think of your business, my son. There is no good comes of selfishness. Try to be just. And for God's sake, also, try to get one of those machines done!"
Halsey only sat and looked at him darkly for a time, making no reply.
"It seems to me that I can never get you to understand, Charles," resumed Rawn, "that things are not the way they used to be before we came here to Chicago. I'm a bigger man now than I was then. I've grown these last two or three years, my boy. I should not be surprised if eventually I were obliged to make my residence in New York, if indeed not abroad. We are rising in the world, rising very fast, Charles. Do you want to go up with the Rawns, or stay down with the Halseys of this world? Besides, in this case you ought to respect the wishes of your own wife. You want to remember, my dear boy, that my daughter, Grace, is half Rawn as well as half Johnson. The only trouble with her is, the Rawn half has not yet had its innings."
VI
Halsey turned and stared at his wife. He found her sitting with her dark eyes fixed, now on her father, now wandering hither and yon over the rich surroundings in her father's home. To his intense surprise, she had as yet issued no veto to this calm proposal to which they all had listened. In his surprise he forgot comment of his own. What caused him greatest surprise of all was his secret feeling that he was not so reluctant to this arrangement as he ought to be! He pondered Grace, her sour visage, her morose air. He recalled countless angry, irritated, irritating words. He looked, and saw no longer any feminine charm. It took all his resolution not to question why he had ever made this choice. Almost he began a certain comparison.
"Now let this end it," resumed John Rawn. "Let comforts, and let luxuries, come where they have been earned. It's the Rawn half of Grace that has earned the luxuries, Charles, if I am willing to give them to her. Take what you can get, my son, of comfort and luxury in this life—after you've earned them. But earn them first. Your place is over there at the works. This is your opportunity. Fall in with my plans and I'll carry you along. Don't try to hold Grace over there when she belongs here. Don't be selfish, Charles."
He relented just a trifle. "I don't say this is going to last for ever. Pull off success over there for us. I'll tell you what I'll do—the day you can charge a storage battery car from one of our second current receivers—finished and in place there in the factory—and run it from the factory up here, I'll make you a present of fifty thousand dollars."
VII