part of the next
day in hunting up the owner of an apartment that had neither steam heat
nor an elevator, but was otherwise perfect, and trying to get him to
take less than the agent asked. By a curious psychical operation he was
able, in the transaction, to work himself into quite a passionate desire
for the apartment, while he held the Grosvenor Green apartment in
the background of his mind as something that he could return to as
altogether more suitable. He conducted some simultaneous negotiation
for a furnished house, which enhanced still more the desirability of the
Grosvenor Green apartment. Toward evening he went off at a tangent far
up-town, so as to be able to tell his wife how utterly preposterous
the best there would be as compared even with this ridiculous
Grosvenor Green gimcrackery. It is hard to report the processes of his
sophistication; perhaps this, again, may best be left to the marital
imagination.

He rang at the last of these up-town apartments as it was falling dusk,
and it was long before the janitor appeared. Then the man was very
surly, and said if he looked at the flat now he would say it was too
dark, like all the rest. His reluctance irritated March in proportion
to his insincerity in proposing to look at it at all. He knew he did not
mean to take it under any circumstances; that he was going to use his
inspection of it in dishonest justification of his disobedience to his
wife; but he put on an air of offended dignity. "If you don't wish to
show the apartment," he said, "I don't care to see it."

The man groaned, for he was heavy, and no doubt dreaded the stairs. He
scratched a match on his thigh, and led the way up. March was sorry for
him, and he put his fingers on a quarter in his waistcoat-pocket to give
him at parting. At the same time, he had to trump up an objection to the
flat. This was easy, for it was advertised as containing ten rooms, and
he found the number eked out with the bath-room and two large closets.
"It's light enough," said March, "but I don't see how you make out ten
rooms."

"There's ten rooms," said the man, deigning no proof.

March took his fingers off the quarter, and went down-stairs and out
of the door without another word. It would be wrong, it would be
impossible, to give the man anything after such insolence. He reflected,
with shame, that it was also cheaper to punish than forgive him.

He returned to his hotel prepared for any desperate measure, and