ins."

He rose from his chair and wandered upstairs to Undine.

That was the Wall Street code: it all "boiled down" to the personal
obligation, to the salt eaten in the enemy's tent. Ralph's fancy
wandered off on a long trail of speculation from which he was pulled
back with a jerk by the need of immediate action. Moffatt's "deal"
could not wait: quick decisions were essential to effective action, and
brooding over ethical shades of difference might work more ill than
good in a world committed to swift adjustments. The arrival of several
unforeseen bills confirmed this view, and once Ralph had adopted it he
began to take a detached interest in the affair.

In Paris, in his younger days, he had once attended a lesson in acting
given at the Conservatoire by one of the great lights of the theatre,
and had seen an apparently uncomplicated role of the classic repertory,
familiar to him through repeated performances, taken to pieces before
his eyes, dissolved into its component elements, and built up again with
a minuteness of elucidation and a range of reference that made him feel
as though he had been let into the secret of some age-long natural
process. As he listened to Moffatt the remembrance of that lesson came
back to him. At the outset the "deal," and his own share in it, had
seemed simple enough: he would have put on his hat and gone out on the
spot in the full assurance of being able to transact the affair. But as
Moffatt talked he began to feel as blank and blundering as the class of
dramatic students before whom the great actor had analyzed his part. The
affair was in fact difficult and complex, and Moffatt saw at once just
where the difficulties lay and how the personal idiosyncrasies of "the
parties" affected them. Such insight fascinated Ralph, and he strayed
off into wondering why it did not qualify every financier to be a
novelist, and what intrinsic barrier divided the two arts.

Both men had strong incentives for hastening the affair; and within a
fortnight after Moffatt's first advance Ralph was able to tell him that
his offer was accepted. Over and above his personal satisfaction he felt
the thrill of the agent whom some powerful negotiator has charged with
a delicate mission: he might have been an eager young Jesuit carrying
compromising papers to his superior. It had been stimulating to work
with Moffatt, and to study at close range the large powerful instrument
of his intelligence.

As he came out