"You say it rather neatly; but that isn't all. The thing is that I'm
not game enough to go on and take the punishment. Are you surprised?"

"No. But are you prepared to give up the thing which won her?"

"My money? I've thought of it." He folded his arms and began walking
up and down the littered, water-soaked office. "Would you like me any
better?" he asked, tenderly.

Mary's eyes grew stormy. "If the men go to work at once we can have
the rugs sent to the cleaner's and put down old matting for a
temporary covering--and I can go ahead taking inventory," was her
answer.

"I see," Steve made himself respond. "Well--I didn't trespass very
much," he whispered as he passed her to leave the building.

* * * * *

Beatrice regarded the fire as an amusing happening and before Steve
realized what was being done she had proposed that Gaylord refurnish
the office in an arts-and-crafts fashion. It had long seemed to her a
most inartistic and clumsy place and when Steve refused her offer and
told her that a splint-bottomed chair and a kitchen chair were his
office equipment some years ago she sent for Gaylord on her own
initiative and told him to beard the lion in the den to see if he
could win Steve to the cause of painted wall panels typifying
commerce, industry, and such, and crippled beer steins and so on as
artistic wastebaskets.

There had never been an active feud between Gaylord and Steve; it was
always that hidden enmity of a weak culprit toward a strong man.
Neither had Trudy been able to win Steve by her Titian curls,
baby-blue eyes, and obese compliments. In fact, Gaylord had avoided
Steve the last year. He was the one Beatrice called upon to play with
her, he accompanied her shopping, even unto the milliner's, and had
been in New York one time when Beatrice had gone down to see about
buying a moleskin wrap. Not even Trudy knew that he had actually
adopted a monocle and squired Beatrice round in state.

So he approached Steve with the attitude of "I hate you and am only
waiting to prove it but meanwhile I'll play off the friend lizard no
matter how painful."

But after a few "my dear fellows" and "old dears" and gibes about the
disordered office with its prosaic chairs and Mary Faithful, quite
flushed and plain looking as she dashed round giving orders, Gaylord
found himself being neatly set outside on the curbstone and told to
remain in that exact position.

"I hat