Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 34

heat nor an elevator, but was otherwise perfect, and trying to get him to take less than the agent asked. By a curious psychical operation he was able, in the transaction, to work himself into quite a passionate desire for the apartment, while he held the Grosvenor Green apartment in the background of his mind as something that he could return to as altogether more suitable. He conducted some simultaneous negotiation for a furnished house, which enhanced still more the desirability of the Grosvenor Green apartment. Toward evening he went off at a tangent far up-town, so as to be able to tell his wife how utterly preposterous the best there would be as compared even with this ridiculous Grosvenor Green gimcrackery. It is hard to report the processes of his sophistication; perhaps this, again, may best be left to the marital imagination. He rang at the last of these up-town apartments as it was falling dusk, and it was long before the janitor appeared. Then the man was very surly, and said if he looked at the flat now he would say it was too dark, like all the rest. His reluctance irritated March in proportion to his insincerity in proposing to look at it at all. He knew he did not mean to take it under any circumstances; that he was going to use his inspection of it in dishonest justification of his disobedience to his wife; but he put on an air of offended dignity. "If you dont wish to show the apartment," he said, "I dont care to see it." The man groaned, for he was heavy, and no doubt dreaded the stairs. He scratched a match on his thigh, and led the way up. March was sorry for him, and he put his fingers on a quarter in his waistcoat-pocket to give him at parting. At the same time, he had to trump up an objection to the flat. This was easy, for it was advertised as containing ten rooms, and he found the number eked out with the bath-room and two large closets. "Its light enough," said March, "but I dont see how you make out ten rooms." "Theres ten rooms," said the man, deigning no proof. March took his fingers off the quarter, and went down-stairs and out of the door without another word. It would be wrong, it would be impossible, to give the man anything after such insolence. He reflected, with shame, that it was also cheaper to punish than forgive him. 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 dont you take that womans flat in the Xenophon? Shes been at the agents again, and theyve been at me. She likes your look--or Mrs. Marchs--and I guess you can have it at a pretty heavy discount from the original price. Im authorized to say you can have it for one seventy-five a month, and I dont 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. "Its too small for us--we couldnt squeeze into it." "Why, look here!" Fulkerson persisted. "How many rooms do you people want?" "Ive got to have a place to work--" "Of course! And youve got to have it at the Fifth Wheel office." "I hadnt thought of that," March began. "I suppose I could do my work at the office, as theres not much writing--" "Why, of course you cant do your work at home. You just come round with me now, and look at that again." "No; I cant do it." "Why?" "I--Ive 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 Marchs 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

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