"I'm sorry, Starratt, to see _you_ bitten with this radical disease...

Of course, you can't stay on here, after this. Your confidence in us seems to have been destroyed and it goes without saying that my confidence in you has been seriously undermined. We'll give you a good recommendation and a month's salary... But you had better leave at once. A man in your frame of mind isn't a good investment for Ford, Wetherbee & Co."

Starratt was still quivering with unleashed heroics. "The recommendation is coming to me," he returned, coldly. "The month's salary isn't. I'll take what I've earned and not a penny more."

"Very well; suit yourself there."

Mr. Ford reached for his pen and began where he had left off at Starratt's entrance ... signing insurance policies... Starratt rose and left without a word. The interview was over.

Already, in that mysterious way with which secrets flash through an office with lightninglike rapidity, a hint of Starratt's brush with Ford was illuminating the dull routine.

"I think he's going into business for himself, or something," Starratt heard the chief stenographer say in a stage whisper to her a.s.sistant, as he pa.s.sed.

And at his desk he found Brauer waiting to waylay him with a bid for lunch, his little ferret eyes attempting to confirm the general gossip flying about.

Starratt had an impulse to refuse, but instead he said, as evenly as he could:

"All right ... sure! Let's go now!"

Brauer felt like eating oysters, so they decided to go up to one of the stalls in the California Market for lunch. He was in an expansive mood.

"Let's have beer, too," he insisted, as they seated themselves. "After the first of July they'll slap on war-time prohibition and it won't be so easy."

Starratt acquiesced. He usually didn't drink anything stronger than tea with the noonday meal, because anything even mildly alcoholic made him loggy and unfit for work, but the thought that to-day he was free intrigued him.

The waiter brought the usual plate of shrimps that it was customary to serve with an oyster order, and Starratt and Brauer fell to. A gla.s.s of beer foamed with enticing amber coolness before each plate. Brauer reached over and lifted his gla.s.s.

"Well, here's success to crime!" he said, with pointed facetiousness.

Starratt ignored the lead. He had never liked Brauer and he did not find this sharp-nosed inquisitiveness to his taste. He began to wonder why he had come with him. Lunching with Brauer had never been a habit.

Occasionally, quite by accident, they managed to achieve the same restaurant and the same table, but it was not a matter of prearrangement. Indeed, Starratt had always prided himself at his ability to keep Brauer at arm's length. A subtle change had occurred.

Was it possible that a borrowed five-dollar bill could so reshape a relationship? Well, he would pay him back once he received his monthly salary, and get over with the obligation. His monthly salary?...

Suddenly it broke over him that he had received the last full month's salary that he would ever get from Ford, Wetherbee & Co. It was the 20th of February, which meant, roughly, that about two thirds of his one hundred and fifty dollars would be coming to him if he still held to his haughty resolve to take no more than he had earned. Two thirds of one hundred and fifty, less sixty-odd dollars overdrawn... He was recalled from his occupation by Brauer's voice rising above the clatter of carelessly flung crockery and tableware.

"Is it true you're leaving the first of the month?"

He liked Brauer better for this direct question, although the man's presumption still rankled.

"I'm leaving to-day," he announced, dryly, not without a feeling of pride.

"What are you going to do?"

"I haven't decided... Perhaps...I don't know ... I _may_ become an insurance broker."

Brauer picked through the mess in his plate for an unsh.e.l.led shrimp.

"That takes money," he ventured, dubiously.

"Oh, not a great deal," Starratt returned, ruffling a trifle. "Office rent for two or three months before the premiums begin to come in ...

a little capital to furnish up a room. I might even get some one to give me a desk in his office until I got started. It's done, you know."

Brauer neatly extracted a succulent morsel from its scaly sheath.

"Don't you think it's better to put up a front?" he inquired. "If you've got a decent office and your own phone and a good stenographer it makes an impression when you're going after business... Why don't you go in with somebody?... There ought to be plenty of fellows ready to put up their money against your time."

"Who, for instance?" escaped Starratt, involuntarily.

Brauer shoved his plate of husked shrimps to one side. "Take me. I've saved up quite a bit, and..."

The waiter broke in upon them with the oysters.

Starratt knitted his brows. "Well, why not?" was his mental calculation.

Brauer ordered two more pints of beer.

Starratt had leaned at first toward keeping his business venture a secret from Helen. But in the end a boyish eagerness to sun himself in the warmth of her surprise unlocked his reserve.

"I've quit Ford-Wetherbee," he said, quietly, that night, as she was seating herself after bringing on the dessert.

He had never seen such a startled look flash across her face.

"What! Did you have trouble?"

He decided swiftly not to give her the details. He didn't want her to think that any outside influence had pushed him into action.

"Oh no!..." he drawled, lightly. "I've been thinking of leaving for some time. Working for another person doesn't get you anywhere."

He could see that she was puzzled, perhaps a little annoyed. Last night in a malicious moment she had been quite ready to sneer at her husband's inactivity, but now, with the situation a matter of practice rather than theory, Starratt felt that she was having her misgivings.

A suggestion of a frown hovered above her black eyebrows.

"You can't mean that you're going into business!" she returned, as she pa.s.sed him a dish of steaming pudding.

There was a suggestion of last night's scorn in her incredulity.

"No?... And why not?"

She cast a sidelong glance at him. "That takes money," she objected.

He knew now, from her tone, what was behind the veil of her intimations and he found a curious new pleasure in watching her squirm.

"Oh, well," he half mused, "I guess we'll struggle through somehow.

We've always managed to."

She leaned one elbow heavily on the table. "_More_ economies, I suppose!"

He had trapped her too easily! It was his turn to be cutting. "Don't worry!... I sha'n't ask you to do without any more than you've done without so far. If you can stand it as it is awhile longer, why ..."

He broke off with a shrug.

Her eyes swam in a sudden mist. "You're not fair!" she sniffed. "I'm thinking as much of you as I am of myself. Going into business isn't only a question of money. There are anxieties and worry ... and ...

and ..." She recovered herself swiftly and looked at him with clear, though reproachful, eyes. "I'm always willing to help ... you know that!"