The days moved on toward the end of June, and each morning Ralph opened his newspaper with a keener thrill of expectation.  Any day now he might read of the granting of the Apex charter:  Moffatt had assured him it would “go through” before the close of the month.  But the announcement did not appear, and after what seemed to Ralph a decent lapse of time he telephoned to ask for news.  Moffatt was away, and when he came back a few days later he answered Ralph’s enquiries evasively, with an edge of irritation in his voice.  The same day Ralph received a letter from his lawyer, who had been reminded by Mrs. Marvell’s representatives that the latest date agreed on for the execution of the financial agreement was the end of the following week.

Ralph, alarmed, betook himself at once to the Ararat, and his first glimpse of Moffatt’s round common face and fastidiously dressed person gave him an immediate sense of reassurance.  He felt that under the circle of baldness on top of that carefully brushed head lay the solution of every monetary problem that could beset the soul of man.  Moffatt’s voice had recovered its usual cordial note, and the warmth of his welcome dispelled Ralph’s last apprehension.

“Why, yes, everything’s going along first-rate.  They thought they’d hung us up last week—­but they haven’t.  There may be another week’s delay; but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the Fourth.”

An office-boy came in with a name on a slip of paper, and Moffatt looked at his watch and held out a hearty hand.  “Glad you came.  Of course I’ll keep you posted...No, this way...Look in again...” and he steered Ralph out by another door.

July came, and passed into its second week.  Ralph’s lawyer had obtained a postponement from the other side, but Undine’s representatives had given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the first of August.  Ralph telephoned once or twice to Moffatt, receiving genially-worded assurances that everything was “going their way”; but he felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office, and let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension.  Finally one afternoon Henley Fairford, coming back from town (which Ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over Sunday), brought word that the Apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter.  It was useless to attempt to reach Moffatt on Sunday, and Ralph wore on as he could through the succeeding twenty-four hours.  Clare Van Degen had come down to stay with her youngest boy, and in the afternoon she and Ralph took the two children for a sail.  A light breeze brightened the waters of the Sound, and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out toward the sunset, coming back at last, under a failing breeze, as the summer sky passed from blue to a translucid green and then into the accumulating greys of twilight.

As they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the darkening lawn, a sense of security descended again on Ralph.  He could not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of any impending evil, and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him.