"Thank you!"
"I am a little frazled, I admit, and a breath of mountain-air will do me good. I will visit my brother Walt in Darien. It's hard to go. My heart begins to ache already with prospective hunger. You have been my world, my one ambition for three months—my incessant care and thought."
"All the more reason why you should forget me and things dramatic for a while. There is nothing so destructive to peace and tranquillity as the stage."
"Don't I know that? When I was a youth in a Western village I became in some way the possessor of two small photographs of Elsie Melville. She was my ideal till I saw her, fifteen years later."
Helen laughed. "Poor Elsie, she took on flesh dreadfully in her later years."
"Nevertheless, those photographs started me on the road to the stage. I used to fancy myself as Macbeth, but I soon got switched into the belief that I could write plays. Now that I have demonstrated that"—his tone was a little bitter again—"I think I would better return to architecture."
She silenced him. "All that we will discuss when you come back reinvigorated from the mountains." She turned to her desk. "I have something here for you. Here is a small check from Westervelt on account. Don't hesitate to take it. He was glad to give it."
"It is the price of my intellectual honesty."
"By no means!" She laughed, but her heart sickened with a sense of the truth of his phrase. "It's only a very small part payment. You can at least know that the bribe they offer is large."
"Yes"—he looked at her meaningly—"the prize was too great for my poor resolution. All they can give will remain part payment. I wonder if you will be compassionate enough to complete the purchase—"