"Then we're engaged," said Ten Eyck.
"It's outrageous!" said Willie. "That fellow with an income equal to five per cent. on a couple of million dollars."
"What you kicking about, Willie?" said Winifred. "You get several times as much, and you never lifted hand or foot in your life."
"But Willie's father did," said Mrs. Neff. "He killed himself working."
"Willie has it much better arranged," said Bob. "Instead of Willie working for money he has the money working for him."
"It works while he sleeps," said Winifred.
Forbes was thinking gloomily in the gloom of the car. This dancer, this mountebank, François, was earning as much in a week as the government paid him in a year, after all his training, his campaigning, his readiness to take up his residence or lay down his life wherever he was told to.
Then he compared his income with Willie Enslee's. Enslee did not even dance for his supper, yet into his banks gold rained where pennies dribbled into Forbes' meager purse. And it was not a precarious salary such as dancers and soldiers earned by their toil; it was the mere sweat from great slumbering masses of treasure.
Forbes felt no longer an exultance at falling in with these people. He felt ashamed of himself. He was no more a part of the company he kept than a gnat on an ox or a flea caught up in the ermine of a king. The air grew oppressive. He felt like a tenement waif patronized for a moment on a whim, and likely to be tossed back to his poverty at any moment. He wanted to get out before he was put out. The very luxuries that enthralled him at first were intolerable now. The perfume of the women and their flowers lost its savor. Their graces had gone. They were all elbows and knees. He suffocated as in a black hole of Calcutta.
When a footman at the Café des Beaux Arts wrenched the door open and let the cool air in, it was welcome. Forbes moved to escape. But he was kept prisoner while Bob was sent as an avant courier. He returned with the bad news that he was unable even to reach a head waiter.