I'd turn criminal before I'd put up with this."

In the underworld from which Gideon had sprung--the underworld
where welters the overwhelming mass of the human race--there
are three main types. There are the hopeless and
spiritless--the mass--who welter passively on, breeding and
dying. There are the spirited who also possess both shrewdness
and calculation; they push upward by hook and by crook, always
mindful of the futility of the struggle of the petty criminal
of the slums against the police and the law; they arrive and
found the aristocracies of the future. The third is the
criminal class. It is also made up of the spirited--but the
spirited who, having little shrewdness and no calculation--that
is, no ability to foresee and measure consequences--wage clumsy
war upon society and pay the penalty of their fatuity in lives
of wretchedness even more wretched than the common lot. Gideon
belonged to the second class--the class that pushes upward
without getting into jail; he was a fair representative of this
type, neither its best nor its worst, but about midway of its
range between arrogant, all-dominating plutocrat and shystering
merchant or lawyer or politician who barely escapes the
criminal class.

"You don't ask me to sit down, dearie," he went on facetiously.
"But I'm not so mad that I won't do it."

He took the seat Miss Hinkle had cleared on the bed. His
glance wandered disgustedly from object to object in the
crowded yet bare attic. He caught a whiff of the odor from
across the hall--from the fresh-air shaft--and hastily gave
several puffs at his cigar to saturate his surroundings with
its perfume. Susan acted as if she were alone in the room.
She had not even drawn together her nightgown.

"I phoned your store about you," resumed Gideon. "They said
you hadn't showed up--wouldn't till tomorrow. So I came round
here and your landlady sent me up. I want to take you for a
drive this afternoon. We can dine up to Claremont or farther,
if you like."

"No, thanks," said Susan. "I can't go."

"Upty-tupty!" cried Gideon. "What's the lady so sour about?"

"I'm not sour."

"Then why won't you go?"

"I can't."

"But we'll have a chance to talk over what I'm going to do for you."

"You've kept your word," said Susan.

"That was only part. Besides, I'd have given your house the
order, anyhow."

Susan's eyes suddenly lighted up. "You would?" she cried.

"Well--a part of it. Not so muc