ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

"Most of all because I love you" (_Page 242_) _Frontispiece_

"I'm tired of reading about life and hearing about
life. I want to live it" (_Page 66_) 64

"Steve!" The girl was on her feet. "I never dreamed,
never--You poor boy!" (_Page 153_) 156

"You mean to suggest that Elice," he began, "that
Elice--You dare to suggest that to me?" (_Page 107_) 278

The Dominant Dollar

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

A PROPHECY

"You're cold-blooded as a fish, Roberts, colder. You're--There is no
adequate simile."

The man addressed said nothing.

"You degrade every consideration in life, emotional and other, to a
dollar-and-cents basis. Sentiment, ambition, common judgment of right and
wrong, all gravitate to the same level. You have a single standard of
measurement that you apply to all alike, which alike condemns or
justifies. Summer and Winter, morning, noon, and night--it's the same.
Your little yardstick is always in evidence, measuring, measuring--You,
confound you, drive me to distraction with your eternal 'does it pay.'"

Still the other man said nothing.

"I know," apologetically, "I'm rubbing it in pretty hard, Darley, but I
can't help it. You exasperate me beyond my boiling point at times and I
simply can't avoid bubbling over. I believe if by any possibility you
were ever to have a romance in your life, and it came on slowly enough so
you could analyze a bit in advance, you'd still get out your tape line
and tally up to the old mark: would it pay!"

This time the other smiled, a smile of tolerant amusement.

"And why shouldn't I? Being merely the fish you suggest, it seems to me
that that's the one time in a human being's life when, more than another,
deliberation is in order. The wider the creek the longer the wise man
will linger on the margin to estimate the temperature of the current in
event of failure to reach the opposite bank. Inadvertently, Armstrong,
you pass me a compliment. Merely as an observer, marriage looks to me
like the longest leap a sane man will ever attempt."

"I expected you'd say that," shortly,--"predicted it."

"You give me credit for being consistent, then, at least."

"Yes, you're consistent all right."

"Thanks. That's the first kind word I've heard in a long time."

The other