u know--just pot luck with us, with your old
superintendent, you rascal," he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an
attempt at jocular fellowship.

Martin went down the street in a daze. He stopped at the corner and
looked about him vacantly.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he murmured at last. "The old fellow was afraid
of me."

CHAPTER XLV

Kreis came to Martin one day--Kreis, of the "real dirt"; and Martin
turned to him with relief, to receive the glowing details of a scheme
sufficiently wild-catty to interest him as a fictionist rather than an
investor. Kreis paused long enough in the midst of his exposition to
tell him that in most of his "Shame of the Sun" he had been a chump.

"But I didn't come here to spout philosophy," Kreis went on. "What I
want to know is whether or not you will put a thousand dollars in on this
deal?"

"No, I'm not chump enough for that, at any rate," Martin answered. "But
I'll tell you what I will do. You gave me the greatest night of my life.
You gave me what money cannot buy. Now I've got money, and it means
nothing to me. I'd like to turn over to you a thousand dollars of what I
don't value for what you gave me that night and which was beyond price.
You need the money. I've got more than I need. You want it. You came
for it. There's no use scheming it out of me. Take it."

Kreis betrayed no surprise. He folded the check away in his pocket.

"At that rate I'd like the contract of providing you with many such
nights," he said.

"Too late." Martin shook his head. "That night was the one night for
me. I was in paradise. It's commonplace with you, I know. But it
wasn't to me. I shall never live at such a pitch again. I'm done with
philosophy. I want never to hear another word of it."

"The first dollar I ever made in my life out of my philosophy," Kreis
remarked, as he paused in the doorway. "And then the market broke."

Mrs. Morse drove by Martin on the street one day, and smiled and nodded.
He smiled back and lifted his hat. The episode did not affect him. A
month before it might have disgusted him, or made him curious and set him
to speculating about her state of consciousness at that moment. But now
it was not provocative of a second thought. He forgot about it the next
moment. He forgot about it as he would have forgotten the Central Bank
Building or the City Hall after having walked past them. Yet his mind
was preternaturally active. His thou