Berny had been turning over in her mind the advantages of accepting the money—had been letting herself dwell upon the delights of possible possession—when at the Sunday dinner that afternoon Josh McCrae threw her back into the state of incensed¹ rejection² with which she had met the first offer. With his face wreathed in joyous³ grins, he had apprised⁴ her of the fact that only an hour earlier, while walking on Telegraph Hill, he had seen Dominick there talking with Miss Cannon⁵.  
A good deal of query⁶ followed Josh’s statement. There was quite an outburst of animated⁷ interrogations rising from the curiosity the Iversons felt concerning Bill Cannon’s daughter, and under cover of it Berny controlled her face and managed to throw in a question or two on her own account. There had been a minute—that one when Josh’s statement had struck with a shocking unexpectedness on her consciousness—when she had felt and looked her wrath⁸ and amaze. Then she had[355] gripped her glass and drunk some water and, swallowing gulpingly, had heard her sister’s rapid fire of questions, and Josh, proud to have imparted such interesting information, answering importantly. Putting down her glass, she said quite naturally,
 
“Where did you say you saw them—near the quarry⁹?”
 
“Just by the edge, talking together. I was going to walk along and join them, and then I thought they looked so sort of sociable¹⁰, I’d better not butt¹¹ in. Dominick got to know her real well up in the Sierra, didn’t he?”
 
“Yes, of course,” she said hurriedly. “They grew to be quite friends. They must have met by accident on the hill. Dominick’s always walking in those queer, deserted¹² places.”
 
“You haven’t got acquainted with her yet, have you?” said the simple Josh, whose touch was not of the lightest. “It would be a sort of grind on the Ryans if you get really solid with her.”
 
“Oh, I can know her whenever I want,” Berny answered airily, above a discomfort¹³ of growing revelation that was almost as sharp as a pain. “Dominick’s several times asked me if I wanted to meet her, but it always was at times when I’d other things to do. We’re going to ask her to the flat to tea some time.”
 
On ordinary occasions, Berny would never have[356] gone to this length of romantic invention, for she was a judicious¹⁴ liar¹⁵ and believed, with the sage¹⁶, that a lie was too valuable a thing to waste. But just now she was too upset, too preyed¹⁷ upon by shock and suspicion, to exercise an artistic¹⁸ restraint, and she lied recklessly, unmindful of a future when her listeners would expect to see her drafts on the bank of truth cashed.
 
She was quiet for the rest of the afternoon, but it was not till she had reached her own home, silent in its untenanted desertion, that she had an opportunity to turn the full vigor¹⁹ of her mind on what she had heard.
 
She had been jealous of Rose since that fatal Sunday when she had discovered why Dominick was changed. It was not the jealousy²⁰ of disprized love, it was not the jealousy of thwarted²¹ passion. It was a subtle compound of many ingredients, the main one a sense of bursting indignation that two people—one of them a possession of her own—should dare to seek for happiness where she had found only dullness and disappointment. She had an enraging²² premonition that Rose would probably succeed where she had failed. It made her not only jealous of Rose, it made her hate her.
 
Josh’s words increased this, and caused her suspicions, which, if not sleeping, had of late been dormant²³, to wake into excited activity. Dominick’s lonely Sunday walks she now saw shared[357] by the girl who was trying to buy his freedom. Incidents that before she had taken at their face value now were suddenly fraught²⁴ with disturbing significance. Why did Dominick go out so often in the evening? Since the moonlight night, he had been out twice, once not coming back till eleven. The confirmation²⁵ of sight could hardly have made her more confident that he must spend these stolen hours with Rose Cannon in the palatial²⁶ residence on Nob Hill. And it was not the most soothing²⁷ feature in the case that Berny should picture them in one of the artistically-furnished parlors²⁸ of which she had heard so much and seen nothing but the linings²⁹ of the window curtains. Here, amid glories of upholstery, from the sight of which she was for ever debarred, Rose and Dominick talked of the time when he should be free. Berny, like the tiger lashing³⁰ itself to fury with its own tail, thought of what they said, till she became sure her imaginings were facts; and the more she imagined, the more enraged³¹ and convinced she became.
 
She put from her mind all intention of ever taking the money. She wanted it desperately³², terribly; she wanted it so much that when she thought of it it made her feel sick, but the joys of its possession were at the unrealizable distance of dreams, while the fact of her husband’s being enticed³³ away by another woman was a thing[358] of close, immediate³⁴ concern, a matter of the moment, as if some one were trying to pick her pocket. As an appurtenance of hers, Dominick might not have been a source of happiness, but that was no reason why he should be a source of happiness to some one else.
 
Berny did not argue with any such compact clearness. She was less lucid³⁵, less defined and formulated³⁶ in her ideas and desires than she had been when Bill Cannon made the first offer. Anger had thickened and obscured her clarity of vision. Suspicions, harbored and stimulated³⁷ by a mind which wished for confirmation of the most extravagant³⁸, had destroyed the firm and well-outlined conception of what she wanted and was willing to fight for. In fact, she had passed the stage in the controversy³⁹ when she was formidable because she stood with the strength of sincerity⁴⁰ in her position, her demands, and refusals. Now the integrity of her defiance⁴¹ was gone. She wanted the money. She wanted to take it, and her refusal to do so was false to herself and to her standards.
 
She knew that the interview for which Bill Cannon had asked was for a last, deciding conversation. He was to make his final offer. It was a moment of torture to her when she wondered what it would be, and her mind hovered⁴² in distracted temptation over the certain two hundred thousand dollars and the possible quarter[359] of a million. It was then that she whipped up her wrath, obscured for the moment by the mounting dizziness of cupidity⁴³, and thought of Rose and Dominick in the Japanese room, or the Turkish room, or the Persian room, into which she had never been admitted. The thought that they were making love received a last, corrosive⁴⁵ bitterness from the fact that Berny could not see the beautiful and expensive surroundings of these sentimental⁴⁶ passages.
 
She was in this state of feverish⁴⁷ distractedness when she went to Bill Cannon’s office. She had chosen the last of the three days he had specified⁴⁸ in his note, and had left the flat at the time he had mentioned as the latest hour at which he would be there. She had chosen the last day as a manner of indicating her languid interest in the matter to be discussed, and had also decided⁴⁹ to be about fifteen minutes late, as it looked more indifferent, less eager. Bill Cannon would never know that she was dressed and ready half an hour before she started, and had lounged about the flat, watching the clocks, and starting at every unrecognized sound.
 
She was received with a flattering deference⁵⁰. As her footstep sounded on the sill of the outer office, a face was advanced toward one of the circular openings in the long partition, immediately disappeared, and then a door was thrown back to admit to her presence a good-looking, well-dressed[360] young man. His manner was all deferential⁵¹ politeness. A murmur⁵² of her name, just touched with the delicately-questioning quality imparted by the faintest of rising inflections, accompanied his welcoming bow. Mr. Cannon was expecting her in the private office. Special instructions had been left that she should be at once admitted. Would she be kind enough to step this way?
 
Berny followed him down the long strip of outer office where it flanked the partition in which the regularly-recurring holes afforded glimpses of smooth bent⁵³ heads. She walked lightly, and had an alert, wary⁵⁴ air as though it might be a good thing to be prepared for an ambush⁵⁵. She had been rehearsing her part of the interview for days; and like other artists, now that the moment of her appearance was at hand, felt extremely nervous, and had a sense of girding herself up against unforeseen movements on the part of the foe⁵⁶.
 
Nothing, however, could have been more disarmingly friendly than the old man’s greeting. As the door opened and the clerk pronounced her name, he rose from his seat and welcomed her in a manner which was a subtle compound of simple cordiality and a sort of masonic, unexpressed understanding, as between two comrades bound together by a common interest. Sitting opposite him in one of the big leather chairs, she could not but feel some of her resentment⁵⁸ melting away,[361] and her stiffly-antagonistic pose losing something of its rigidity⁵⁹ as he smiled indulgently on her, asking about herself, about Dominick, finally about her sisters, with whose names and positions he appeared flatteringly familiar.
 
Berny answered him cautiously. She made a grip at her receding⁶⁰ anger, conscious that she needed all her sense of wrong to hold her own against this crafty⁶¹ enemy. Even when he told her he had heard with admiration⁶² and wonder of Hannah’s fine record in the primary school department, her smile was guarded, her answer one of brief and watchful⁶³ reserve. She wished he would get to the point of the interview. Her mind could not comfortably contain two subjects at once, and it was crammed⁶⁴ and running over with the all-important one of the money. Her eyes, fixed⁶⁵ on him, did not stray to the furnishings of the room or the long windows that reached to the ceiling and through the dimmed panes⁴⁴ of which men on the other side of the alley⁶⁶ stood looking curiously⁶⁷ down on her.
 
“Well,” he said, when he had disposed of Hannah’s worthiness⁶⁸ and even celebrated⁶⁹ the merits of Josh in a sentence of appreciation⁷⁰, “it’s something to have such a good sterling⁷¹ set of relations. They’re what make the ‘good families’ in our new West out here. And they’re beginning to understand that in Europe. When they see your people in Paris, they’ll recognize[362] them as the right kind of Americans. The French ain’t as effete⁷² as you’d think from what you hear. They know the real from the imitation every time. They’ve had their fill of Coal Oil Johnnys and spectacular spenders. What they’re looking for is the strong man and woman who have carved out their own path.”
 
Berny’s eyes snapped into an even closer concentration of attention.
 
“Maybe that’s so,” she said, “but I don’t see when my sisters are ever going to get to Paris.”
 
“They’ll go over to see you,” he answered. “I guess I could manage now and then to get ’em passes across the continent.”
 
He rested one elbow on the desk against which he was sitting, and with his hand caressing⁷³ his short, stubby beard, he looked at Berny with eyes of twinkling good nature.
 
“Come to think of it,” he added, “I guess I could manage the transportation across the ocean, too. It oughtn’t to cost ’em, all told, more’n fifty dollars. It seems hard luck that Miss Hannah, after a lifetime of work, shouldn’t see Paris, and——”
 
“What makes you think I’m going to be there?” said Berny sharply. She found any deviation⁷⁴ from the subject in hand extremely irritating, and her manner and voice showed it.
 
“Oh, of course you are,” he said, with a little impatient, deprecating jerk of his head. “You[363] can’t be going to persist in a policy that’s simply cutting your own throat.”
 
“I rather fancy I am,” she answered in a cool, hard tone. To lend emphasis to her words, she unbent from her upright attitude and leaned against the chair-back in a sudden assumption of indifference⁷⁵. Her eyes, meeting his, were full of languid insolence⁷⁶.
 
“I don’t feel that I’ll go to Paris at all,” she said. “I think little old San Francisco’s good enough for me.”
 
He looked away from her at the papers on the desk, eyed them for a thoughtful moment, and then said,
 
“I didn’t think you were as short-sighted as that. I’ll tell you fair and square that up to this I’ve thought you were a pretty smart woman.”
 
“Well, I guess from this on, you’ll have to put me down a fool.”
 
She laughed, a short, sardonic⁷⁷ laugh, and her adversary⁷⁸ smiled politely in somewhat absent............