ustre, one might almost have fancied a tint of
red in them. His pale, slightly sunken face had some of the
characteristics of your polished Mephisto, though not too many. He was
not at all devilish looking in the true sense of the word, but keen,
subtle, artistic. His method was to ingratiate himself with men who had
money in order to get from them the vast sums which he found it
necessary to borrow to carry out the schemes or rather dreams he was
constantly generating. His fancies were always too big for his purse,
but he had such lovely fancies that it was a joy to work with them and
him.

Primarily Winfield was a real estate speculator, secondarily he was a
dreamer of dreams and seer of visions. His visions consisted of lovely
country areas near some city stocked with charming country houses, cut
up with well paved, tree shaded roads, provided with sewers, gas,
electricity, suitable railway service, street cars and all the comforts
of a well organized living district which should be at once retired,
exclusive, pleasing, conservative and yet bound up tightly with the
great Metropolitan heart of New York which he so greatly admired.
Winfield had been born and raised in Brooklyn. He had been a politician,
orator, insurance dealer, contractor, and so on. He had succeeded in
organizing various suburban estates--Winfield, Sunnyside, Ruritania, The
Beeches--little forty, fifty, one hundred and two hundred acre flats
which with the help of "O. P. M." as he always called other people's
money he had divided off into blocks, laying out charmingly with trees
and sometimes a strip of green grass running down the centre, concrete
sidewalks, a set of noble restrictions, and so forth. Anyone who ever
came to look at a lot in one of Winfield's perfect suburbs always found
the choicest piece of property in the centre of this latest burst of
improvement set aside for the magnificent house which Mr. Kenyon
C. Winfield, the president of the company, was to build and live in.
Needless to say they were never built. He had been round the world and
seen a great many things and places, but Winfield or Sunnyside or
Ruritania or The Beeches, so the lot buyers in these places were told,
had been finally selected by him deliberately as the one spot in all the
world in which he hoped to spend the remainder of his days.

At the time Eugene met him, he was planning Minetta Water on the shores
of Gravesend Bay, which was the most ambitious of all hi