his future course:

"Perhaps I am. You don't know everything."

He had felt a sense of fatality bound up in these words of defiant pretense, once they had escaped him…a fatality which the blazing contempt of his wife's retort had emphasized. Even now his cheeks burned with the memory of that unleashed insult:

"What can you do?"

No, there was no turning back now. His own self-esteem could not deny so clear-cut a challenge.

He called his assistant. "I wish you'd go into the private office and see if Mr. Ford is at leisure," he ordered. "I want to have a talk with him."

The youth came back promptly. "He says for you to come," was his brief announcement.

Fred Starratt stared a moment and, recovering himself, walked swiftly in upon his employer. Mr. Ford was signing insurance policies.

"Well, Starratt," he said, looking up smilingly, "what's the good word?… What's new with you?"

Starratt squared himself desperately. "Nothing…except I find it impossible to live upon my salary."

Mr. Ford laid aside his pen. "Oh, that's unfortunate!… Suppose you sit down and we'll talk it over."

Starratt dropped into the nearest seat.

Mr. Ford let his eyeglasses dangle from their cord. He was not in the least disturbed. Indeed, he seemed to be approaching the issue with unqualified pleasure.

"Now, Starratt, let's get at the root of the trouble… Of course you're a reasonable man otherwise…"

Starratt smiled ironically. A vivid remembrance of Hilmer's words flashed over him. His lip-curling disdain must have communicated itself to Mr. Ford, because that gentleman hesitated, cleared his throat, and began all over again.

"You're a reasonable man, Starratt, and I know that you have the interest of the firm at heart."

Starratt leaned back in his seat and listened, but he might have spared himself the pains. Somehow he anticipated every word, every argument, before Mr. Ford had a chance to voice them. Business conditions were uncertain, overhead charges extraordinarily increased, the loss ratio large and bidding fair to cut their bonus down to nothing. Therefore … well, of course, next year things might be different. The firm was hoping that by next year they would be in a position to deal handsomely with those of their force who had been patient… Mr. Ford did not stop there, he did not expect Starratt to take his word for anything. He reached for a pencil and pad and he went into a mathematic demonstration to show just how near the edge of financial disaster the firm of Ford, Wetherbee & Co. had been pushed. Starratt could not doubt the figures, and yet his eyes traveled instinctively to the bag of golf sticks in a convenient corner. Somehow, nothing in either Ford's argument or his sleek presence irritated Starratt so much as these golf sticks. For, in this particular instance, they became the symbol of a self-sufficient prosperity whose first moves toward economy were directed at those who serve… If all this were so, why didn't Ford begin by cutting down his own allowance, by trimming his own expenses to the bone? Golf, as Mr. Ford played it, was an expensive luxury. No doubt the exercise was beneficial, but puttering about a garden would have done equally. Starratt might have let all this pass. He was by heart and nature and training a conservative and he had sympathy for the genial vanities of life. It was Ford's final summary, the unconscious patronage, the quiet, assured insolence of his words, which gave Starratt his irrevocable cue.

"We rather look to men like you, Starratt," Mr. Ford was saying, his voice suave to the point of insincerity, "to tide us over a crisis. Just now, when the laboring element is running amuck, it's good to feel that the country has a large percentage of people who can be reasonable and understand another viewpoint except their own… After everything is said and done, in business a man's first loyalty is to the firm he works for."

"Why?" Starratt threw out sharply.

Ford's pallid eyes widened briefly. "I think the answer is obvious,
Starratt. Don't you? The hand that feeds a man is…"

"Feeds? That may work both ways."

"I don't quite understand."

Starratt's glance traveled toward the golf sticks. "Well, it seems to me it's a case of one man cutting down on necessities to provide another with luxuries." He hated himself once he had said it. It outraged his own sense of breeding.

Mr. Ford shoved the pencil and pad to one side. "A parlor radical, eh?… Well, this from you is surprising!… If there was one man in my employ whom I counted on, it was you. You've been with me over fifteen years … began as office boy, as I remember. And in all that time you've never even asked for a privilege… I'm sorry to see such a fine record broken!"

Yesterday Starratt would have agreed with him, but now he felt moved to indignation and shame at Ford's summary of his negative virtues. He had been born with a voice and he had never lifted it to ask for his rights, much less a favor. No wonder Hilmer could sneer and Helen Starratt cut him with the fine knife of her scorn! The words began to tumble to his lips. They came in swirling flood. He lost count of what he was saying, but the angry white face of his employer foreshadowed the inevitable end of this interview. He gave his rancor its full scope … protests, defiance, insults, even, heaping up in a formidable pile.

"You ask me to be patient," he flared, "because you think I'm a reasonable, rational, considerate beast that can be broken to any harness!" He recognized Hilmer's words, but he swept on. "If you were in a real flesh-and-blood business you'd have felt the force of things … you'd have had men with guts to deal with … you'd have had a brick or two heaved into your plate-glass window. A friend of mine said last night that potting clerks was as sickening as a rabbit drive. He was right, it is sickening!"

Mr. Ford raised his hand. Starratt obeyed with silence.

"I'm sorry, Starratt, to see you bitten with this radical disease… Of course, you can't stay on here, after this. Your confidence in us seems to have been destroyed and it goes without saying that my confidence in you has been seriously undermined. We'll give you a good recommendation and a month's salary… But you had better leave at once. A man in your frame of mind isn't a good investment for Ford, Wetherbee & Co."

Starratt was still quivering with unleashed heroics. "The recommendation is coming to me," he returned, coldly. "The month's salary isn't. I'll take what I've earned and not a penny more."

"Very well; suit yourself there."

Mr. Ford reached for his pen and began where he had left off at Starratt's entrance … signing insurance policies… Starratt rose and left without a word. The interview was over.

Already, in that mysterious way with which secrets flash through an office with lightninglike rapidity, a hint of Starratt's brush with Ford was illuminating the dull routine.

"I think he's going into business for himself, or something," Starratt heard the chief stenographer say in a stage whisper to her assistant, as he passed.

And at his desk he found Brauer waiting to waylay him with a bid for lunch, his little ferret eyes attempting to confirm the general gossip flying about.

Starratt had an impulse to refuse, but instead he said, as evenly as he could:

"All right … sure! Let's go now!"

Brauer felt like eating