He and his sister went home together. Her first remark in the auto was: "What were you and Josie quarreling about?"
"Quarreling?" inquired he in honest surprise.
"I looked at her through my glasses and saw that the was all upset—and you, too."
"This is too ridiculous," cried he.
"She looked—jealous."
"Nonsense! What an imagination you have!"
"I saw what I saw," Ursula maintained. "Well, I suppose she has heard something—something recent. I thought you had sworn off, Fred. But I might have known."
Norman was angry. He wondered at his own exasperation, out of all proportion to any apparent provoking cause. And it was most unusual for him to feel temper, all but unprecedented for him to show it, no matter how strong the temptation.
"It's a good idea, to make her jealous," pursued his sister. "Nothing like jealousy to stimulate interest."
"Josephine is not that sort of woman."
"You know better. All women are that sort. All men, too. Of course, some men and women grow angry and go away when they get jealous while others stick closer. So one has to be judicious."
"Josephine and I understand each other far too well for such pettiness."
"Try her. No, you needn't. You have."
"Didn't I tell you——"
"Then what was she questioning you about?"
"Just to show you how wrong you were, I'll tell you. She was asking me about a poor little girl down at the office—one she wants to help."
Ursula laughed. "To help out of your office, I guess. I thought you'd lived long enough, Fred, to learn that no woman trusts any man about any woman. Who is this 'poor little girl'?"
"I don't even know her name. One of the typewriters."
"What made Josephine jealous of her?"
"Haven't I told you Josephine was not——"
"But I saw. Who is this girl?—pretty?"
Norman pretended to stifle a yawn. "Josephine bored me half to death talking about her. Now it's you. I never heard so much about so little."
"Is there something up between you and the girl?" teased Ursula.
"Now, that's an outrage!" cried Norman. "She's got nothing but her reputation, poor child. Do leave her that."
"Is she very young?"
"How should I know?"
"Youth is a charm in itself."
"What sort of rot is this!" exclaimed he. "Do you think I'd drop down to anything of that kind—in any circumstances? A little working girl—and in my own office?"
"Why do you heat so, Fred?" teased the sister. "Really, I don't wonder Josephine was torn up."
An auto almost ran into them—one of those innumerable hairbreadth escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle—and as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very name he was uncertain whether he remembered aright.
Said Ursula, as they entered the house, "A girl working in the office with a man has a magnificent chance at him. It's lucky for the men that women don't know their business, but are amateurs and too stuck on themselves to set and bait their traps properly. Is that girl trying to get round you?"
"What possesses everybody to-night!" cried Norman. "I tell you the girl's as uninteresting a specimen as you could find."
"Then why are you so interested in her?" teased the sister.
Norman shrugged his shoulders, laughed with his normal easy good humor and went to his own floor.
On top of the pile of letters beside his plate, next morning, lay a note from Josephine:
"Don't forget your promise about that girl, dear. I've an hour before
lunch, and could see her then. I was out of humor last night. I'm very
penitent this morning. Please forgive me. Maybe I can do something for
her. JOSEPHINE."
Norman read with amused eyes. "Well!" soliloquized he, "I'm not likely to forget that poor little creature again. What a fuss about nothing!"
IV
Many men, possibly a majority, have sufficient equipment for at least a fair measure of success. Yet all but a few are downright failures, passing their lives in helpless dependence, glad to sell themselves for a small part of the value they create. For this there are two main reasons. The first is, as Norman said, that only a few men have the self-restraint to resist the temptings of a small pleasure to-day in order to gain a larger to-morrow or next day. The second is that few men possess the power of continuous concentration. Most of us cannot concentrate at all; any slight distraction suffices to disrupt and destroy the whole train of thought. A good many can concentrate for a few hours, for a week or so, for two or three months. But there comes a small achievement and it satisfies, or a small discouragement and it disheartens. Only to the rare few is given the power to concentrate steadily, year in and year out, through good and evil event or report.
As Norman stepped into his auto to go to the office—he had ridden a horse in the park before breakfast until its hide was streaked with lather—the instant he entered his auto, he discharged his mind of everything but the business before him down town—or, rather, business filled his mind so completely that everything else poured out and away. A really fine mind—a perfect or approximately perfect instrument to the purposes of its possessor—is a marvelous spectacle of order. It is like a vast public library constantly used by large numbers. There are alcoves, rows on rows, shelves on shelves, with the exactest system everywhere prevailing, with the attendants moving about in list-bottomed shoes, fulfilling without the least hesitation or mistake the multitude of directions from the central desk. It is like an admirably drilled army, where there is the nice balance of freedom and discipline that gives mobility without confusion; the divisions, down to files and even units, can be disposed along the line of battle wherever needed, or can be marshaled in reserve for use at the proper moment. Such a mind may be used for good purpose or bad—or for mixed purposes, after the usual fashion in human action. But whatever the service to which it is put, it acts with equal energy and precision. Character—that is a thing apart. The character determines the morality of action; but only the intellect determines the skill of action.
In the offices of that great law firm one of the keenest pleasures of the more intelligent of the staff was watching the workings of Frederick Norman's mind—its ease of movement, its quickness and accuracy, its obedience to the code of mental habits he had fixed for himself. In large part all this was born with the man; but it had been brought to a state of perfection by the most painful labor, by the severest discipline, by years of practice of the sacrifice of small temptations—temptations to waste time and strength on the little pleasant things which result in such heavy bills—bills that bankrupt a man in middle life and send him in old age into the deserts of poverty and contempt.
Such an unique and trivial request as that of Josephine Burroughs being wholly out of his mental habit for down town, he forgot it along with everything else having to do with uptown only—along with Josephine herself, to tell a truth which may pique the woman reader and may be wholly misunderstood by the sentimentalists. By merest accident he was reminded.
As the door of his private office