It was extraordinary how wide awake Fred Starratt felt next morning. He was full of tingling reactions to the sharp chill of disillusionment. At the breakfast table he met his wife’s advances with an air of tolerant aloofness. In the past, the first moves toward adjusting a misunderstanding had come usually from him. He had an aptitude for kindling the fires of domestic harmony, but he had discovered overnight the futility of fanning a hearthstone blaze when the flue was choked so completely. Before him lay the task of first correcting the draught. Temporary genialities had no place in his sudden, bleak speculations. Helen shirred his eggs to a turn, pressed the second cup of coffee on him, browned him a fresh slice of toast ... he suffered her favors, but he was unmoved by them. They did not even annoy him. When he kissed her good-by he felt the relaxation of her body against his, as she stood for a moment languishing in provocative surrender. He put her aside sharply. Her caress had a new quality which irritated him.

Outside, the morning spread its blue-gold tail in wanton splendor. February in San Francisco! Fred Starratt drew in a deep breath and wondered where else in the whole world one could have bettered that morning at any season of the year. Like most San Franciscans, he had never flown very far afield, but he was passionate in his belief that his native city “had it on any of them,” to use his precise term. And he was resentful to a degree at any who dared in his presence to establish other claims or to even suggest another preference. He looked forward to New York as an experience, but never as a goal. No, San Francisco was good enough for him!

He felt the same conviction this morning, but a vague gypsying stirred his blood also, and a wayfaring urge swept him. The sky was indescribably blue, washed clean by a moist January that had drenched the hills to lush-green life. The bay lay in a sapphire drowse, flecked by idle-winged argosies, unfolding their storm-soaked sails to the caressing sunlight. Soaring high above the placid gulls, an airplane circled and dipped like a huge dragon fly in nuptial flight. Through the Golden Gate, shrouded in the delicate mists evoked by the cool night, an ocean liner glided with arrogant assurance.

From the last vantage point, before he slipped townward to his monotonous duties, Starratt stood, shading his eyes, watching the stately exit of this maritime giant. This was a morning for starting adventure...for setting out upon a quest!... He had been stirred before to such Homeric longings ... spring sunshine could always prick his blood with sharp-pointed desire. But to-day there was a poignant melancholy in his flair for a wider horizon. He was touched by weariness as well as longing. He was like a pocket hunter whose previous borrowings had beguiled him with flashing grains that proved valueless. He would not abandon his search, but he must pack up and move on to new, uncertain, unproved ground. And he felt all the weight of hidden and heartbreaking perils with which his spiritual faring forth must of necessity be hedged.

At the corner of California and Montgomery streets he met the tide of nine-o’clock commuters surging toward the insurance offices and banks. His widened vision suddenly contracted. Middle class! The phrase leaped forward from the flock mind which this standardized concourse diffused. In many of the faces he read the potentialities of infinite variety, smothered by a dull mask of conformity. What a relief if but one in that vast flood would go suddenly mad! He tried fantastically to picture the effect upon the others the momentary cowardice and braveries that such an event would call into life. For a few brief moments certain personalities and acts would stand out sharply glorified, like grains of dust dancing in the slanting rays of the sun. Then, the angle of yellow light restored to white normality, the whirling particles would drift back into their colorless oblivion.

For a moment he had a taste of desire for unspringing power. If he could but be the wind to shake these dry reeds of custom into a semblance of life!... One by one they passed him with an air of growing preoccupation ... each step was carrying them nearer to the day’s pallid slavery, and an unconscious sense of their genteel serfdom seemed gradually to settle on them. There were no bent nor broken nor careworn toilers among this drab mass...the stamp of long service here was a withered, soul-quenched gentility that came of accepting life instead of struggling against it.

Gradually the temper of the crowd communicated itself to him. It was time to descend from his speculative heights and face the problems of his workday world. He turned sharply toward his office. Young Brauer was just mounting the steps.

“Well, what’s new?” Brauer threw out, genially.

“Not a thing in the world!” escaped Starratt.

They went into the office together.

Old Wetherbee was carrying his cash book out of the safe. The old man smiled. He was usually in good humor early in the morning.

“Well, what’s new?” he inquired, gayly.

“Not a thing in the world!” they chimed, almost in chorus.

At the rear of the office they slipped on their office coats. Brauer took a comb from his pocket and began carefully to define the part in his already slick hair. Starratt went forward.

In the center of the room the chief stenographer stood, putting her formidable array of pencils through the sharpener. She glanced up at Starratt with a complacent smile.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Starratt!” she purred, archly. “What’s new with you?”

“Not a thing in the world,” he answered, ironically, and he began to arrange some memoranda in one of the wire baskets on his desk... At nine thirty the boy brought him his share of the mail from the back office, and in ten minutes he was deeply absorbed in sorting the “daily reports” from the various agencies. He worked steadily, interrupted by an occasional phone call, an order from the chief clerk, the arrival and departure of business associates and clients. Above the hum of subdued office conversation the click of typewriting machines and the incessant buzzing of the desk telephones, he was conscious of hearing the same question repeated with monotonous fidelity:

“Hello! What’s new with you?”

And as surely, either through his own lips or the lips of another, the identical reply always came:

“Not a thing in the world!”

At half past eleven he stopped deliberately and stood for a moment, nervously fingering his tie. He was thinking about the course of action that he had decided upon in that long, unusual vigil of the night before. His uncertainty lasted until the remembrance of his wife’s scornful question swept over him:

“Why aren’t you doing something?... Everybody else is!”

But it was the answer he had made that committed him irrevocably to 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 oysters, so they decided to go up to one of the stalls in the California Market for lunch. He was in an expansive mood.

“Let’s have beer, too,” he insisted, as they seated themselves. “After the first of July they’ll slap on war-time prohibition and it won’t be so easy.”

Starratt acquiesced. He usually didn’t drink anything stronger than tea with the noonday meal, because anything even mildly alcoholic made him loggy and unfit for work, but the thought that to-day he was free intrigued him.

The waiter brought the usual plate of shrimps that it was customary to serve with an oyster order, and Starratt and Brauer fell to. A glass of beer foamed with enticing amber coolness before each plate. Brauer reached over and lifted his glass.

“Well, here’s success to crime!” he said, with pointed facetiousness.

Starratt ignored the lead. He had never liked Brauer and he did not find this sharp-nosed inquisitiveness to his taste. He began to wonder why he had come with him. Lunching with Brauer had never been a habit. Occasionally, quite by accident, they managed to achieve the same restaurant and the same table, but it was not a matter of prearrangement. Indeed, Starratt had always prided himself at his ability to keep Brauer at arm’s length. A subtle change had occurred. Was it possible that a borrowed five-dollar bill could so reshape a relationship? Well, he would pay him back once he received his monthly salary, and get over with the obligation. His monthly salary?... Suddenly it broke over him that he had received the last full month’s salary that he would ever get from Ford, Wetherbee & Co. It was the 20th of February, which meant, roughly, that about two thirds of his one hundred and fifty dollars would be coming to him if he still held to his haughty resolve to take no more than he had earned. Two thirds of one hundred and fifty, less sixty-odd dollars overdrawn... He was recalled from his occupation by Brauer’s voice rising above the clatter of carelessly flung crockery and tableware.

“Is it true you’re leaving the first of the month?”

He liked Brauer better for this direct question, although the man’s presumption still rankled.

“I’m leaving to-day,” he announced, dryly, not without a feeling of pride.

“What are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided... Perhaps...I don’t know ... I may become an insurance broker.”

Brauer picked through the mess in his plate for an unshelled shrimp. “That takes money,” he ventured, dubiously.

“Oh, not a great deal,” Starratt returned, ruffling a trifle. “Office rent for two or three months before the premiums begin to come in ... a little capital to furnish up a room. I might even get some one to give me a desk in his office until I got started. It’s done, you know.”

Brauer neatly extracted a succulent morsel from its scaly sheath. “Don’t you think it’s better to put up a front?” he inquired. “If you’ve got a decent office and your own phone and a good stenographer it makes an impression when you’re going after business... Why don’t you go in with somebody?... There ought to be plenty of fellows ready to put up their money against your time.”

“Who, for instance?” escaped Starratt, involuntarily.

Brauer shoved his plate of husked shrimps to one side. “Take me. I’ve saved up quite a bit, and...”

The waiter broke in upon them with the oysters.

Starratt knitted his brows. “Well, why not?” was his mental calculation.

Brauer ordered two more pints of beer.

Starratt had leaned at first toward keeping his business venture a secret from Helen. But in the end a boyish eagerness to sun himself in the warmth of her surprise unlocked his reserve.

“I’ve quit Ford-Wetherbee,” he said, quietly, that night, as she was seating herself after bringing on the dessert.

He had never seen such a startled look flash across her face.

“What! Did you have trouble?”

He decided swiftly not to give her the details. He didn’t want her to think that any outside influence had pushed him into action.

“Oh no!...” he drawled, lightly. “I’ve been thinking of leaving for some time. Working for another person doesn’t get you anywhere.”

He could see that she was puzzled, perhaps a little annoyed. Last night in a malicious moment she had been quite ready to sneer at her husband’s inactivity, but now, with the situation a matter of practice rather than theory, Starratt felt that she was having her misgivings. A suggestion of a frown hovered above her black eyebrows.

“You can’t mean that you’re going into business!” she returned, as she passed him a dish of steaming pudding.

There was a suggestion of last night’s scorn in her incredulity.

“No?... And why not?”

She cast a sidelong glance at him. “That takes money,” she objected.

He knew now, from her tone, what was behind the veil of her intimations and he found a curious new pleasure in watching her squirm.

“Oh, well,” he half mused, “I guess we’ll struggle through somehow. We’ve always managed to.”

She leaned one elbow heavily on the table. “More economies, I suppose!”

He had trapped her too easily! It was his turn to be cutting. “Don’t worry!... I sha’n’t ask you to do without any more than you’ve done without so far. If you can stand it as it is awhile longer, why ...” He broke off with a shrug.

Her eyes swam in a sudden mist. “You’re not fair!” she sniffed. “I’m thinking as much of you as I am of myself. Going into business isn’t only a question of money. There are anxieties and worry ... and ... and ...” She recovered herself swiftly and looked at him with clear, though reproachful, eyes. “I’m always willing to help ... you know that!”

He melted at once. There was a moment of silence, and then he told her everything ... about Brauer, and what they purposed.

“He’s to keep on at Ford-Wetherbee’s until things are running smoothly. Of course, I’d rather not have it that way, but he holds the purse strings, so I’ve got to make concessions. We can get an office for twenty-five a month. It will be the salary of the stenographer that will count up.”

“When do you start?”

“To-morrow. And do you know who I’m going after first thing?... Hilmer. He told me last night to come around and talk over insuring that car of his... I don’t know that I’ll land that. But I might line him up for something else. He must have a lot of insurance to place one way or another.”

She smiled dubiously. “Well, I wouldn’t count too much upon Hilmer,” she said, with a superior air.

“I’m not counting on anything or anybody,” he returned, easily. “Hilmer isn’t the only fish in the sea.”