"Oh, come off!" Delbridge's laugh was even more persistent. "Tell that
to some one else. You see, I _know_. The old man confides in me--not
in just so many words, you know, but he lets me understand. He says
you and he are going to put some whopping big deals through,
presumably after you take up your quarters under his vine and fig
tree."

Mostyn started to protest further, but with another laugh the
financier was off.

"Ten thousand dollars!" he thought, as he moved on. "He speaks of my
business head; what would he think of the investment I have just made?
He would call me a weakling. That is what I am. I have always been
one. The woman doesn't live who could worry him for a minute. But it
is ended now. I have had my lesson, and I sha'n't forget it."

At his desk in his closed office a few minutes later he took a blank
check, and, dipping his pen, he carefully filled it in. Mechanically
he waved it back and forth in the warm air. Suddenly he started; a
sort of shock went through him. How odd that he had not once, in all
his excitement, thought of Dolly Drake! Was it possible that his
imagination had tricked him into believing that he loved the girl and
could make actual sacrifices for her? Why, already she was like a
figment in some evanescent dream. What had wrought the change? Was it
the sight of Delbridge and his mention of Mostyn's financial prowess?
Was it the fellow's confident allusion to Mitchell and his daughter?
Had the buzz and hum of business, the fever of conquest, already
captured and killed the impulses which in the mountains had seemed so
real, so permanent, so redemptive?