ght out, I've slaved for
it, prayed for it, believed in it, and tried to make my wife and my
boys feel as I do about it, and none of them cares as I care. Look at
Fabian--over with the enemy, fighting his own father; look at Carnac,
out in the open, taking his own way." He paused.

"And your wife?" asked Tarboe almost furtively, because it seemed to him
that the old man was most unhappy in that particular field.

"She's been a good wife, but she don't care as I do for success and
money."

"Perhaps you never taught her," remarked Tarboe with silky irony.

"Taught her! What was there to teach? She saw me working; she knew
the life I had to live; she was lifted up with me. I was giving her
everything in me to give."

"You mean money and a big house and servants and comfort," said Tarboe
sardonically.

"Well, ain't that right?" snapped the other.

"Yes, it's all right, but it don't always bring you what you want. It's
right, but it's wrong too. Women want more than that, boss. Women want
to be loved--sky high."

All at once Grier felt himself as far removed from Tarboe as he had ever
been from Carnac, or his wife. Why was it? Suddenly Tarboe understood
that between him and John Grier there must always be a flood. He
realized that there was in Grier some touch of the insane thing;
something apart, remote and terrible. He was convinced of it, when he
saw Grier suddenly spring up, and pace the room again like a tortured
animal.

"You've got great influence with me," he said. "I was just going to tell
you something that'd give you pleasure, but what you've said about my
boy coming back has made me change what I was going to do. I don't need
to say I like you. We were born in the same nest almost. We've got the
same ideas."

"Almost," intervened Tarboe. "Not quite, but almost."

"Well, this is what I've got to say. You've got youth, courage, and good
sense, and business ability, and what more does a man want in life, I
ask you that?" Tarboe nodded, but made no reply.

"Well, I don't feel as strong as I used to do. I've been breaking
up this last year, just when we've been knitting the cracks in the
building. What was in my mind is this--to leave you when I die the whole
of my business to keep it a success, and get in the way of Belloc, and
pay my wife so much a year to live on."

"That wouldn't be fair to your wife or your sons."

"As for Carnac, if I left him the business it'd be dead in two years.
Nothing co