ok at all the other
places in town first. He really spent the greater 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.