“Good enough, but why doesn’t he decide now?”

“Because it would hardly be in keeping with his peculiar methods.  I haven’t questioned him, but occasionally he drops a hint that leads me to believe that he’s satisfied.”

DeGolyer was once tempted to tell Richmond and McGlenn that he was feeling his way through a part that had been put upon him, but with this impulse came a restraining thought—­the play was not yet done.  They were at luncheon, and McGlenn had declared that DeGolyer was sometimes strangely inconsistent.

“I admit that I am, John, and with an explanation I could make you stare at me.”

“Then let us have the explanation.  Man was made to stare as well as to mourn.”

“No, not now; but it will come one of these days, though perhaps not directly from me.”

“Ah, you have killed a mysterious lion and made a riddle; but where is the honey you found in the carcass?  Give us the explanation.”

“Not now.  But one of these bleak Chicago days you and Richmond will sit in the club, watch the whirling snow and discuss me, and you both will say that you always thought there was something strange about me.”

“And we do,” McGlenn replied.  “Here’s a millionaire’s son, and he has chosen toil instead of ease.  Isn’t that an anomaly, and isn’t such an anomaly a strange thing?  But will the outcome of that vague something cause us to hold you at a cooler length from us—­will that ’I told you so’ result in your banishment?  Shall we send a Roger Williams over the hills?”

“John, what are you trying to get at?” Richmond asked.

McGlenn looked serenely at him.  “Have you devoured your usual quota of pickles?  If so, writhe in your misery until I have dined.”

“I writhe, not with what I have eaten, but at what I see.  Is there a more distressing sight than an epicure—­or a gourmand, rather—­with a ragged purse?”

“Oh, yes; a stuffer, a glutton without a purse.”

Richmond laughed.  “Hunger may force a man to apparent gluttony,” he said, “and a sandbagger may have taken his purse; and all on his part is honesty.  But there is pretense—­which I hold is not honest—­in an effort to be an epicure.”

“Ah, which you hold is not honest.  A most rare but truthful avowal, since nothing you hold is honest.”

“In my willingness to help the weak,” Richmond replied, “I have held your overcoat while you put it on.”

“And it was not an honest covering until you took your hands off.”

“Neither did it cover honesty until some other man put it on by mistake,” Richmond rejoined.

DeGolyer went to his office, and Richmond and McGlenn, wrangling as they walked along, betook themselves to the Press Club.  “I tell you,” said McGlenn, as they were going up the stairs, “that he needs our sympathy.  He has suffered, but having suffered, he is great.”

Thus the weeks were sprinkled with light incidents, and thus the days dripped into the past—­and a designated future was drawing near.