King counted out the last crisp note.

“Three thousand dollars.”  He stepped back a pace.

“Three thousand dollars!  That’s a might of money, Mark.  Three thousand dollars all on my table.”  His thin voice was a hushed whisper now.  “I never seen that much money, not all at once and spread out.”

“It’s likely that you’ll never see that much again.  Unless you and I do business.”

Honeycutt did not answer, perhaps had not heard.  His emaciated arms were uplifted; he had let his cane go, supporting himself by leaning hard against the table; his arms curved inward, his fingers were like claws, standing apart.  Slowly the hands descended; the fingers began gathering the few gold pieces, stacking them, lingering with each separate one, smoothing at it.  Gold spoke directly and eloquently to what stood for a soul in Loony Honeycutt; banknotes had a voice which he understood but which could never move him, thrill him, lift him to ecstatic heights, as pure musical, beautiful gold could.

“It’s a sight of money, Mark,” he whispered “It’s a sight of money.”

King held his silence.  His whole argument was on the table.

* * * * *

Only now and then did King catch a glimpse of Honeycutt’s eyes, for the most part hidden by his lowered lids and bent head.  At such times, though he had counted on having to do with cupidity, he was startled by the look he saw Here was the expression of the one emotion which dwelt on in the withered, time-beaten body; here was love in one of its ten thousand forms.  Love that is burning desire, that quenches all other spark of the spirit, that is boundless; love of a hideously grotesque and deformed sort; love defiled, twisted, misshapen as though Eros had become an ugly, malformed, leering monstrosity.  That love which is the expression of the last degree of selfish greed, since it demands all and gives nothing; that love which is like a rank weed, choking tenderer growths; or more like a poisonous snake.  Now it dominated the old man utterly; the world beyond the rectangular top of the table did not exist; now its elixir poured through his arteries so that for the first time in months there came pinkish spots upon the withered cheeks, showing through the scattering soiled grey hairs of his beard.

...  Suddenly King went to the door, standing in the sunshine, filling his lungs with the outside air.  The sight of the gloating miser sickened him.  More than that.  It sickened his fancies so that for a minute he asked himself what he and Brodie were doing!  The lure of gold.  The thing had hypnotized him; he wished that he were out in the mountains riding among the pines and cedars; listening to the voice of the wilderness.  It was clean out there.  Listening to Gloria’s happy voice.  Living in tune with the springtime, thinking a man’s thoughts, dreaming a man’s dreams, doing a man’s work.  And all for something other than just gold at the end of it.