“ As Armstrong looked round the salon into which he was shown, it seemed to him he had never seen anything so magnificent or so stiff. Trafford was housed exactly like a king—and, like a king, he had the air of being a temporary tenant of the magnificence about him. It was the typical great house—a crude, barbaric structure, an exhibition of wealth with no individuality, no originality, ludicrous to the natural eye, yet melancholy; for, from every exhibit of how little wealth buys there protrudes the suggestion of how much it has deprived how many. ”

“ He felt enormously relieved. "Come abroad!" he cried. "Yours is simply a case of a woman's being irritated by indifference into some emotion which, for lack of another name, she calls love. Come abroad and forget it all. Come abroad! Art is there, and dreams! Paris—Italy—flowers—light—and love, perhaps. Come—Neva! Do you want fame? Art will give you that. Do you want love?" Her quickened breath, her widening, wistful eyes made him boldly abandon the pretense that he was lingering with her in friendship's by-path, made him strike into the main road, the great highway. ”

“ A storm that involves one's whole being stirs up from the bottom and lifts to the surface many a strange secret of weakness and of wickedness, none stranger than the secrets of one's real feelings and beliefs, so different from one's professions to others and to himself. Raphael had seen two of these secrets—first, that he was insanely jealous of Armstrong; second, that he was in love with Neva. Not the jealousy and the love that yet leave a man master of himself, but the jealousy and the love that enslave. ”

“ When I got out of college, I was so discouraged by the prospect, I felt so weak without money or influence, that I let myself drift into a great folly—for it is a folly to imagine that money or influence are of any value in making a career. They're the results of a career, not its cause. Once more, when I faced the big battle here in New York, I was fooled for a while in spite of myself by the same old delusion. I saw that the successful men all had great wealth, and I made the same old shallow mistake of supposing their wealth gave them their success. ”

“ Neva's thoughts went back to Armstrong. Presently she vaguely heard Narcisse saying, "I've got to put up a stiffer fight against this loneliness. Do you ever think of suicide?"
"I don't believe any sane person ever does."
"But who is sane? Solitary confinement will upset the steadiest brain." She gazed strangely at Neva. "Look out, my dear. Don't you act so that you'll sentence yourself to a life of solitary confinement. Some people are lucky enough not to be discriminating. They can be just as happy with imitation friendship and paste love as if they had the real thing. ”

“ You're always turning your imagination loose."
"To explore the mysteries my eyes find, my dear Joe," said Boris, unruffled. "You people—the great mass of the human race—go through the world blindfold—blindfolded by ignorance, by prejudice, by letting your stupid brain tell your eyes what they are seeing instead of letting your eyes tell your brain."
"I never heard there was much to Neva Carlin."
"Naturally," replied Boris. "Not all the people who have individuality, personality, mind and heart, beat a drum and march in the middle of the street to inform the world of the fact. ”

“ On impulse, perhaps tinged with selfishness, Narcisse exclaimed, "Neva, why don't you marry Armstrong?"
"Because I don't trust him," replied she. "One may love without trust, but not marry."
"Yet," said Narcisse, "I'd marry Boris, though I never could trust him—never!"
"If you had been married, you wouldn't do it," replied Neva. Then, "But every case is individual, and everyone must judge for himself." ”

“ Those who in addition to class vanity have physical vanity are the clowns of the great show. Hugo was of the clowns—and he dressed the part, that day. He had on a tremendously loud tweed suit, a billycock hat of a peculiar shade of brown to match, a huge plaid overcoat; he was wearing a big, rough-looking chrysanthemum that seemed of a piece with his tie; he diffused perfume like a woman who wishes to be known by the scent she uses. As he drew off his big, thick driving gloves, he gazed grandly around. His eyes met Armstrong's, and his haughty lip curled in a supercilious smile. ”

“ Neva's own heart was suddenly buoyant. "It will—it surely will!" she cried.
"And," proceeded Narcisse, "my troubles are trifles compared with Alois's. I know him; I know he's unhappy. If ever there was a man cheated in a marriage, that man is my poor brother. And he must realize it by this time."
She had guessed close to the truth. Alois and his bride had not been honeymooning many weeks before he confessed to himself that he had overestimated—or, perhaps, misestimated—her intellect. Not that she was stupid or ignorant; no, merely, that she lacked the originality he had attributed to her. ”

“ He might drag many with him, perhaps Atwater himself; but, in the depths, under the whole mass of wreckage would be himself—dead beyond resurrection. At thirty a man's reputation can be shot all to pieces, and heal, with hardly a scar; but not at forty. Still young, with less than half his strength of manhood run, he would be of the living that are dead. And he had come to see Neva for the last time, after fighting in vain against the folly of the longing—of yielding to the longing, when yielding could mean only pain, more pain. ”

“ Don't you see it on every side, there in New York—the traffic in the souls of men and women viler than any on the sidewalks at night—the brazen faces of the men, flaunting their shame, the brazen faces of the women, the so-called wives, flaunting their shame?"
"But you could never be like them," he protested. "Never!"
"As strong women as I, stronger, have been dragged down. No human being can resist the slow, steady, insidious seduction of his daily surroundings."
"I don't understand this at all, Neva," he said, though his ill-concealed anger showed that he did. ”

“ There were times when he could not quite banish the shadows which the thought of death cast over him—death, so exasperating to men of pride and imagination because, of all their adversaries, it alone cannot be challenged or compromised. But on that day, Boris had only the sense of life, life at its best, with the sun bright and not too warm, with the new garb of nature and of womankind radiantly fresh, and the whole world laughing because the winter had been vanquished once more. ”

“ Coquetry or shyness? He could not tell. "Neva, do you love anyone else?"
"I think—not," replied she, very low.
His eyes were like a tiger peering through a flower-freighted bush. "You love Armstrong," he urged, softly as the purr before the spring.
She was gazing steadily at him now. "We were talking of you and me," rejoined she, her voice clear and positive. "If I loved you, it would not be because I did not love some other man. If I did not love you it would not be because I did love some other." ”

“ Boris, with eyes that penetrated all kinds of human surfaces and revealed to him the realities, had seen at first glance what she was, what she could be, what she was longing and striving to be against the wellnigh hopeless handicaps of shyness and inexperience and solitude. For his own sybarite purposes, material and selfish, from mere wanton appetite, he set his noble genius to helping her; and the creative genius finds nothing comparable in interest to the development of the human plant, to watching it sprout and put forth leaves, blossoms, flowers, perfume, spread into an individuality. ”

“ Neva looked indignant. "He's the best we have—one of the best that ever lived," exclaimed she. "I didn't mean his work by itself wasn't great, but that it seemed inadequate, compared with the man. When one meets most so-called great men—your great men downtown for example—one realizes that they owe almost everything to their slyness, that they steal the labor of the hands and brains of others who are superior to them in every way but craft and unscrupulousness. A truly great man, a man like Boris Raphael, dwarfs his reputation." ”

“ Several times, as he was dressing for dinner, a cynical smile played over his features. What a queer game life was! In other circumstances, that might easily have come about, he and Amy would have plunged into a romantic love affair; they would have been standing by each other against all the world, the stronger in their love and devotion for the opposition. A few words, and off flies her mask of sweetness, so deceptive that it almost deceived herself, and away goes her pretense of friendship; the friends become enemies, liking becomes hate. ”

“ Certainly not," replied Armstrong, with a slight smile at her innocence.
"If they don't do them openly, they know just what they're about."
"No," he said, imperious and impatient. "You don't understand human nature. You don't appreciate how men delude themselves."
His tone, its reminder of his intolerance of any independence of thought in a woman, or in anyone around him for that matter, brought the color to her cheeks. "A man who does wrong, but thinks he is doing right, is not ashamed," she answered. ”

“ Except in finance, high finance, what career was there for him? He would be like a politician without a party, like a general without an army, like a preacher without a parish, like a disbarred lawyer. His reputation would be gone—for morality is a relative word, and by his conduct he was convincing the only class important to him as a man of action that he had not the morality of his class, that he could not be trusted with its interests. Every era, every race, every class has its own morality, its own practical application of the general moral code to its peculiar needs. ”

“ Fosdick went on, with more repression and dignity, but no less energy of feeling, "I cannot but believe that God in His justice will yet hurl you to ruin. You are robbing me, but as sure as there is a God, Horace Armstrong, He will bring you low!"
Well as Armstrong knew him, he was for the moment impressed. The only born monsters are the insane criminals; the monstrous among our powerful and eminent and most respectable are by long and deliberate indulgence in self-deception manufactured into monsters, protected from public exposure by their position, wealth, and respectability. ”

“ Everyone whose opinion we care anything about is in the game, and this attack on us is simply a move of our enemies."
"Deceive yourself, if you want to," replied Amy. "But I know I can't get married any too soon."
"And marrying a nobody, a mere architect, whose sister works for a living. You haven't even the excuse of caring for him."
"Don't be too sure about that! In the last twenty-four hours I've learned a great deal about life, about people. Everybody talks of love, and of wanting love. But nobody knows what it really means, until he has suffered. Oh, Hugo, don't be so hard! I need Alois!" ”

“ But before many months Overlook had crowded out all the routine distractions; instead of its being a mere stop-gap between them, they became an irritating interruption to its absorbing interest. It even took the sharp edge off her discomfiture with Armstrong; for interest is the mental cure-all. She dreaded a return of her former state, when an empty hour would make her walk the floor, racking her brains for something to do; she spun this occupation out and out. Narcisse Siersdorf lost all patience; the patience of feminine with feminine, or of masculine with masculine, is less than infinite. ”

“ Armstrong drew Westervelt aside. "You are taking those three books, and the one I see bulging in your pocket, down to Mr. Fosdick, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Westervelt.
"Take my advice," said Armstrong. "Don't."
"It's merely a little matter I wish to go over with him—a few minutes," stammered Westervelt.
"I understand perfectly," said Armstrong. "But is it wise for you to put yourself in anybody's power? Don't hand all your weapons to a man who could use them against you—and, as you well know, would do it if he felt compelled. ”

“ The darkness in which her figure, long and slim and slight, was framed, the flooding light upon it as if from it, the exceeding beauty of her slender face, of her dreaming, dazzled eyes, all combining to suggest a soul, newly awakened from a long, long sleep, and entering life, full equipped for all that life has for a mind that can think and a heart that can love and laugh and weep— It was Neva at her best, Boris at his best. ”

“ But you get so many that you have to accept what somebody else has thought out, and just as they've thought it out."
"And the result is, I look a frump," said Amy, half believing it for the moment.
"You look the woman who has too many clothes to have any that really belong to her," replied Narcisse, greatly to Amy's secret irritation. "There's the curse of wealth—too many clothes, to be well dressed; too many servants, to be well served; too many and too big houses, to be well housed; too much food, to be well fed." ”

“ Do you know that Trafford steals outright one-third of every dollar the poor people, the day laborers, intrust to him as insurance for their old age and for their orphans? Do you know that Langdon there robs a million farmers of their earnings and drives them to the mortgage and the tax sale and pauperism and squalor—all so that the Langdons may have palaces and carriages and the means to degrade thousands into dependence and to steal more and more money from more and more people? ”

“ He knew that the basis of Raphael's genius was in his marvelous sight—"simply seeing where others will not" was Boris's own description of his gift. Yet when Boris reported to him what he saw, he was incredulous. "An artist's wild imagination," he said to himself. In the world of the blind, the dim-eyed man is king, not the seeing man; the seeing man—the "seer"—passes for mad, and the blind follow those with not enough sight to rouse the distrust of their flock.
When the painter returned to the drawing-room Neva was gone. ”

“ Amy never entered those offices without a new sensation of pleasure. The voluntary environment of a human being is a projection, a reflection, of his inner self, is the plain, undeceiving index to his real life—for, is not the life within, the drama of thought, the real life, and the drama of action but the imperfect, distorted shadowgraph? The barest room can be most significant of the personality of its tenant; his failure to make any impression on his surroundings is conclusive. ”

“ As they talked on and on—of their work, of the West, of the college and their friendship there, Neva felt that Narcisse had some undercurrent of thought which she was striving with, whether to suppress or express, she could not tell. The conversation drifted back to New York, to Boris. There was something of warning in Narcisse's face, and something of another emotion less clearly defined as she said with a brave effort at the rigidly judicial, "Boris is a great man; but first of all a man. You know what that means when a man is dealing with a woman." ”

“ That ghastly, sunken face, those frightened, dim old eyes, the trembling step— If a long life of soul-prostitution had left Josiah Fosdick enough of natural human generosity to appreciate the meaning of Armstrong's expression, he might have been able to change his crushing defeat into what in the circumstances would have been the triumph of a drawn battle. But, except possibly the creative geniuses, men must measure their fellows throughout by themselves. ”

“ What dreadful faces they have! What tyranny and meanness and trickery! And, how wretched! It is hard to know whether most to pity or to despise them."
Narcisse knew instinctively that she meant Armstrong, and perhaps, to a certain extent, Boris also. "We've no right to condemn them," said she. "They are the victims of circumstances too strong for them."
"You have the right," insisted Neva. "You have been tempted; yet, you are not like them. You have not let New York enslave you, but have made it your servant." ”

“ But his self-confidence had developed beyond that stage, had reached the point where a man feels that, if any force from without can injure him, the sooner he finds it out, the more quickly he will be able to make a career founded upon the only unshakable ground, his own single strength.
"I've taken a great deal off you," she went on in a menacing tone, a tone intended to remind him that he was an employee. "You ought to be more careful. I'm not all sweetness. I can be hard and unforgiving when I cease to like."
He laughed unpleasantly as vanity thus easily divested itself of its mask of love. ”

“ As I remember my acquaintances in New York, our friends, do you know what I always feel? I remember their palaces, their swarms of servants, their jewels, their luxuries, the food they eat, the wine they drink, all of it; and I wonder just whose dollar was stolen to help pay for this or that luxury, just who is in want, how many are in want, that that carriage might roll or the other automobile go darting about. You know the men steal it; they don't know from whom, and so they can brazen it out to themselves."
"That is harsh—too harsh, Neva!" ”

“ The good man doubts himself; not the self-deceiving hypocrite. There was triumph in the long look he gave Morris—a look which Morris returned with the tranquil shine of a satisfied revenge, a revenge of payment with interest for slights, humiliations, insults which the old tyrant had put upon him. Long trafficking upon the cupidity and timidity of men gives the ruling class a false notion of the discernment of mankind and of their own mental superiority, as well as moral. It was natural that Fosdick should believe himself above censure, above criticism even. ”

“ For one fairly well-rounded human being, satisfying to eye and mind and heart, we find ten thousand stunted, blighted, blasted. Each of us knows that, in other, in more favorable, in less unfavorable circumstances, he would have been far more than he is or ever can be. But for Boris, Neva might have gone through life, not indeed as stunted a development as she had been under the blight of her unfortunate marriage, but far from the rounded personality, presenting all sides to the influences that make for growth and responding to them eagerly. ”

“ Since his talk with Armstrong, he had been remeasuring with more care that young man's character, and had come to the conclusion that he was entering upon a much stiffer campaign than he had anticipated. Atwater's dealings were, and for years had been, with men of large fortune—industrial "kings," great bankers, huge investors. Such men are as timid as a hen with a brood. They will fight fiercely—if they must—for their brood of millions. But they would rather run than fight, and much rather go clucking and strutting along peacefully with their brood securely about them. ”

“ She saw that Amy was taking to herself the whole credit for Overlook, was looking on Alois as simply a stimulant to her own great magnetism and artistic sense, was patronizing him as a capable and satisfactory agent for transmitting them into action. And this made her angry, not with Amy but with Alois. "Amy isn't to blame," she said to herself. "It's his fault. To please her he has been exaggerating her importance to herself, and he has succeeded in convincing her. She has ended up just where people always end up, when you encourage them to give their vanity its head." ”

“ If industry was talked of, what more natural than to point to old Westervelt, for fifty years at his desk early and late, without ever taking a vacation? If honesty was being discussed, where a better instance of it than honest old Bill Westervelt, who had handled billions yet was worth only a modest three or four millions? If fidelity was the theme, there again was old Bill with his long white whiskers, refusing offer after offer of high stations because he was loyal to the O.A.D. Why, he had even refused the financial place in the Cabinet! ”

“ He noted Alois's nervousness, then his thin and harassed look. "How do Amy and Alois live?" he asked his father.
"Live? What do you mean?" said Josiah. "Why, they're perfectly happy. What put such nonsense in your head?"
"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Hugo. "Certainly they're happy. Amy'd be a fool not to be happy with as decent a chap as he is. I mean, how do they get along about money?"
"He's got a good business," said Fosdick. "You know it as well as I do."
"He used to have," replied Hugo. "But he's too busy with Amy to be doing much else. He's always standing on her dress. And he has no partner." ”

“ It suddenly dawned on her—the whole system of "finance." In one swift second a thousand disconnected facts merged into a complete, repulsive whole. So, this was where these enormous fortunes came from! The big fellows inveigled the public into enterprises by promises of equal shares; then they juggled accounts, stole most of the profits, saddled all the losses on the investors. And she had admired the daring of these great financiers! Why, who wouldn't be daring, with no conscience, no honor, and a free hand to gamble with other people's money, without risking a penny of his own! ”