"Oh, nothing. I'm partially insane now, perhaps. Come, let's go to the piano. I feel like playing. You don't mind, do you?"

That evening Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k made a suggestion to her husband.

"Fletcher," she said, "I am inclined to think it is time you and Albert had a talk concerning the future. A business talk, I mean. I am a little uneasy about him. From some things he has said to me recently I gather that he is planning to earn his living with his pen."

"Well, how else did you expect him to earn it; as bookkeeper for the South Harniss lumber concern?"

"Don't be absurd. What I mean is that he is thinking of devoting himself to literature exclusively. Don't interrupt me, please. That is very beautiful and very idealistic, and I honor him for it, but I cannot see Madeline as an attic poet's wife, can you?"

"I can't, and I told you so in the beginning."

"No. Therefore I should take him to one side and tell him of the opening in your firm. With that as a means of keeping his feet on the ground his brain may soar as it likes, the higher the better."

Mr. Fosd.i.c.k, as usual, obeyed orders and that afternoon Albert and he had the "business talk." Conversation at dinner was somewhat strained.

Mr. Fosd.i.c.k was quietly observant and seemed rather amused about something. His wife was dignified and her manner toward her guest was inclined to be abrupt. Albert's appet.i.te was poor. As for Madeline, she did not come down to dinner, having a headache.

She came down later, however. Albert, alone in the library, was sitting, a book upon his knees and his eyes fixed upon nothing in particular, when she came in.

"You are thinking again, I see," she said.

He had not heard her enter. Now he rose, the book falling to the floor.

"Why--why, yes," he stammered. "How are you feeling? How is your head?"

"It is no worse. And no better. I have been thinking, too, which perhaps explains it. Sit down, Albert, please. I want to talk with you. That is what I have been thinking about, that you and I must talk."

She seated herself upon the davenport and he pulled forward a chair and sat facing her. For a moment she was silent. When she did speak, however, her question was very much to the point.

"Why did you say 'No' to Father's offer?" she asked. He had been expecting this very question, or one leading up to it. Nevertheless, he found answering difficult. He hesitated, and she watched him, her impatience growing.

"Well?" she asked.

He sighed. "Madeline," he said, "I am afraid you think me very unreasonable, certainly very ungrateful."

"I don't know what to think about you. That is why I feel we must have this talk. Tell me, please, just what Father said to you this afternoon."

"He said--well, the substance of what he said was to offer me a position in his office, in his firm."

"What sort of a position?"

"Well, I--I scarcely know. I was to have a desk there and--and be generally--ornamental, I suppose. It was not very definite, the details of the position, but--"

"The salary was good, wasn't it?"

"Yes; more than good. Much too good for the return I could make for it, so it seemed to me."

"And your prospects for the future? Wasn't the offer what people call a good opportunity?"

"Why, yes, I suppose it was. For the right sort of man it would have been a wonderful opportunity. Your father was most kind, most generous, Madeline. Please don't think I am not appreciative. I am, but--"

"Don't. I want to understand it all. He offered you this opportunity, this partnership in his firm, and you would not accept it? Why? Don't you like my father?"

"Yes, I like him very much."

"Didn't you," with the slightest possible curl of the lip, "think the offer worthy of you? ... Oh, I don't mean that! Please forgive me. I am trying not to be disagreeable. I--I just want to understand, Albert, that's all."

He nodded. "I know, Madeline," he said. "You have the right to ask. It wasn't so much a question of the offer being worthy of me as of my being worthy the offer. Oh, Madeline, why should you and I pretend? You know why Mr. Fosd.i.c.k made me that offer. It wasn't because I was likely to be worth ten dollars a year to his firm. In Heaven's name, what use would I be in a stockbroker's office, with my make-up, with my lack of business ability? He would be making a place for me there and paying me a high salary for one reason only, and you know what that is. Now don't you?"

She hesitated now, but only for an instant. She colored a little, but she answered bravely.

"I suppose I do," she said, "but what of it? It is not unheard of, is it, the taking one's prospective son-in-law into partnership?"

"No, but--We're dodging the issue again, Madeline. If I were likely to be of any help to your father's business, instead of a hindrance, I might perhaps see it differently. As it is, I couldn't accept unless I were willing to be an object of charity."

"Did you tell Father that?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said a good deal. He was frank enough to say that he did not expect me to be of great a.s.sistance to the firm. But I might be of SOME use--he didn't put it as baldly as that, of course--and at all times I could keep on with my writing, with my poetry, you know. The brokerage business should not interfere with my poetry, he said; your mother would scalp him if it did that."

She smiled faintly. "That sounds like dad," she commented.

"Yes. Well, we talked and argued for some time on the subject. He asked me what, supposing I did not accept this offer of his, my plans for the future might be. I told him they were pretty unsettled as yet. I meant to write, of course. Not poetry altogether. I realized, I told him, that I was not a great poet, a poet of genius."

Madeline interrupted. Her eyes flashed.

"Why do you say that?" she demanded. "I have heard you say it before.

That is, recently. In the old days you were as sure as I that you were a real poet, or should be some day. You never doubted it. You used to tell me so and I loved to hear you."

Albert shook his head. "I was sure of so many things then," he said. "I must have been an insufferable kid."

She stamped her foot. "It was less than three years ago that you said it," she declared. "You are not so frightfully ancient now... . Well, go on, go on. How did it end, the talk with Father, I mean?"

"I told him," he continued, "that I meant to write and to earn my living by writing. I meant to try magazine work--stories, you know--and, soon, a novel. He asked if earning enough to support a wife on would not be a long job at that time. I said I was afraid it might, but that that seemed to me my particular game, nevertheless."

She interrupted again. "Did it occur to you to question whether or not that determination of yours was quite fair to me?" she asked.

"Why--why, yes, it did. And I don't know that it IS exactly fair to you.

I--"

"Never mind. Go on. Tell me the rest. How did it end?"

"Well, it ended in a sort of flare-up. Mr. Fosd.i.c.k was just a little bit sarcastic, and I expressed my feelings rather freely--too freely, I'm afraid."

"Never mind. I want to know what you said."

"To be absolutely truthful, then, this is what I said: I said that I appreciated his kindness and was grateful for the offer. But my mind was made up. I would not live upon his charity and draw a large salary for doing nothing except be a little, d.a.m.ned tame house-poet led around in leash and exhibited at his wife's club meetings... . That was about all, I think. We shook hands at the end. He didn't seem to like me any the less for ... Why, Madeline, have I offended you? My language was pretty strong, I know, but--"