He returned to his hotel prepared for any desperate measure, and
convinced now that the Grosvenor Green apartment was not merely the only
thing left for him, but was, on its own merits, the best thing in New
York.

Fulkerson was waiting for him in the reading-room, and it gave March the
curious thrill with which a man closes with temptation when he said:
"Look here! Why don't you take that woman's flat in the Xenophon? She's
been at the agents again, and they've been at me. She likes your look--or
Mrs. March's--and I guess you can have it at a pretty heavy discount from
the original price. I'm authorized to say you can have it for one
seventy-five a month, and I don't believe it would be safe for you to
offer one fifty."

March shook his head, and dropped a mask of virtuous rejection over his
corrupt acquiescence. "It's too small for us--we couldn't squeeze into
it."

"Why, look here!" Fulkerson persisted. "How many rooms do you people
want?"

"I've got to have a place to work--"

"Of course! And you've got to have it at the Fifth Wheel office."

"I hadn't thought of that," March began. "I suppose I could do my work at
the office, as there's not much writing--"

"Why, of course you can't do your work at home. You just come round with
me now, and look at that again."

"No; I can't do it."

"Why?"

"I--I've got to dine."

"All right," said Fulkerson. "Dine with me. I want to take you round to a
little Italian place that I know."

One may trace the successive steps of March's descent in this simple
matter with the same edification that would attend the study of the
self-delusions and obfuscations of a man tempted to crime. The process is
probably not at all different, and to the philosophical mind the kind of
result is unimportant; the process is everything.

Fulkerson led him down one block and half across another to the steps of
a small dwelling-house, transformed, like many others, into a restaurant
of the Latin ideal, with little or no structural change from the pattern
of the lower middle-class New York home. There were the corroded
brownstone steps, the mean little front door, and the cramped entry with
its narrow stairs by which ladies could go up to a dining-room appointed
for them on the second floor; the parlors on the first were set about
with tables, where men smoked cigarettes between the courses, and a
single waiter ran swiftly to and fro with plates and dishes, and,
exchanged unintelligi