In Paris, in his younger days, he had once attended a lesson in acting given at the Conservatoire by one of the great lights of the theatre, and had seen an apparently uncomplicated role of the classic repertory, familiar to him through repeated performances, taken to pieces before his eyes, dissolved into its component elements, and built up again with a minuteness of elucidation and a range of reference that made him feel as though he had been let into the secret of some age-long natural process.  As he listened to Moffatt the remembrance of that lesson came back to him.  At the outset the “deal,” and his own share in it, had seemed simple enough:  he would have put on his hat and gone out on the spot in the full assurance of being able to transact the affair.  But as Moffatt talked he began to feel as blank and blundering as the class of dramatic students before whom the great actor had analyzed his part.  The affair was in fact difficult and complex, and Moffatt saw at once just where the difficulties lay and how the personal idiosyncrasies of “the parties” affected them.  Such insight fascinated Ralph, and he strayed off into wondering why it did not qualify every financier to be a novelist, and what intrinsic barrier divided the two arts.

Both men had strong incentives for hastening the affair; and within a fortnight after Moffatt’s first advance Ralph was able to tell him that his offer was accepted.  Over and above his personal satisfaction he felt the thrill of the agent whom some powerful negotiator has charged with a delicate mission:  he might have been an eager young Jesuit carrying compromising papers to his superior.  It had been stimulating to work with Moffatt, and to study at close range the large powerful instrument of his intelligence.

As he came out of Moffatt’s office at the conclusion of this visit Ralph met Mr. Spragg descending from his eyrie.  He stopped short with a backward glance at Moffatt’s door.

“Hallo—­what were you doing in there with those cut-throats?”

Ralph judged discretion to be essential.  “Oh, just a little business for the firm.”

Mr. Spragg said no more, but resorted to the soothing labial motion of revolving his phantom toothpick.

“How’s Undie getting along?” he merely asked, as he and his son-in-law descended together in the elevator.

“She doesn’t seem to feel much stronger.  The doctor wants her to run over to Europe for a few weeks.  She thinks of joining her friends the Shallums in Paris.”

Mr. Spragg was again silent, but he left the building at Ralph’s side, and the two walked along together toward Wall Street.

Presently the older man asked:  “How did you get acquainted with Moffatt?”

“Why, by chance—­Undine ran across him somewhere and asked him to dine the other night.”

“Undine asked him to dine?”

“Yes:  she told me you used to know him out at Apex.”