such
things, had scratched on a piece of paper a tentative layout for the
various departments. He had put the editorial and art departments on the
topmost floor, giving the publisher, whoever he might eventually prove
to be, a commanding position in a central room on the western side of
the building which overlooked all the city between the Square and Hudson
River, and showed that magnificent body of water as a panorama for the
eye to feast upon. He had put the advertising and some overflow
editorial rooms on the seventeenth floor, and the circulation with its
attendant mailing and cabinet record rooms on the sixteenth. The
publisher's and editor's rooms he laid out after an old Flemish scheme
he had long had in mind, in which green, dark blue, blood-red and black
walnut shades contrasted richly with the flood of light which would be
available.

"You might as well do this thing right if you do it at all," he had said
to Colfax. "Nearly all the editorial offices I have ever seen have been
the flimsiest makeshifts. A rich-looking editorial, art and advertising
department would help your company a great deal. It has advertising
value."

He recalled as he spoke Summerfield's theory that a look of prosperity
was about the most valuable asset a house could have.

Colfax agreed with him, and said when the time came that he wished
Eugene would do him the favor to come and look the thing over. "I have
two good architects on the job," he explained, "but I would rather trust
your ideas as to how those rooms should be laid out."

When he was considering this final call for a decision he was thinking
how this floor would look--how rich it would be. Eventually, if he
succeeded, his office would be the most sumptuous thing in it. He would
be the most conspicuous figure in the great, new building, apart from
Colfax himself.

Thoughts of this kind, which ought to have had but very little share in
any commercial speculation, were nevertheless uppermost in Eugene's
mind; for he was not a business man--he was primarily an artist, and for
all his floundering round in the commercial world he remained an artist
still. His sense of his coming dignity and standing before the world was
almost greater than his sense of the terrifying responsibility which it
involved. Colfax was a hard man, he knew, harder even than Summerfield,
for he talked less and acted more; but this did not sink into Eugene's
consciousness sufficiently to worry him. H