Mr. Dagonet
hesitated, as if aware of the inadequacy of the alternative, and then
added: "And he can count on three thousand a year from me."

Mr. Spragg tilted himself farther back without disturbing his
subtly-calculated relation to the scrap basket.

"Does it cost anything like that to print his poetry?"

Mr. Dagonet smiled again: he was clearly enjoying his visit. "Dear,
no--he doesn't go in for 'luxe' editions. And now and then he gets ten
dollars from a magazine."

Mr. Spragg mused. "Wasn't he ever TAUGHT to work?"

"No; I really couldn't have afforded that."

"I see. Then they've got to live on two hundred and fifty dollars a
month."

Mr. Dagonet remained pleasantly unmoved. "Does it cost anything like
that to buy your daughter's dresses?"

A subterranean chuckle agitated the lower folds of Mr. Spragg's
waistcoat.

"I might put him in the way of something--I guess he's smart enough."

Mr. Dagonet made a gesture of friendly warning. "It will pay us both in
the end to keep him out of business," he said, rising as if to show that
his mission was accomplished.

The results of this friendly conference had been more serious than
Mr. Spragg could have foreseen--and the victory remained with his
antagonist. It had not entered into Mr. Spragg's calculations that he
would have to give his daughter any fixed income on her marriage. He
meant that she should have the "handsomest" wedding the New York press
had ever celebrated, and her mother's fancy was already afloat on a sea
of luxuries--a motor, a Fifth Avenue house, and a tiara that should
out-blaze Mrs. Van Degen's; but these were movable benefits, to be
conferred whenever Mr. Spragg happened to be "on the right side" of the
market. It was a different matter to be called on, at such short notice,
to bridge the gap between young Marvell's allowance and Undine's
requirements; and her father's immediate conclusion was that the
engagement had better be broken off. Such scissions were almost painless
in Apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl's
pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to do better.

"You'd better wait awhile and look round again," was the way he had put
it to her at the opening of the talk of which, even now, he could not
recall the close without a tremor.

Undine, when she took his meaning, had been terrible. Everything had
gone down before her, as towns and villages went down before one of the
tornadoe