“These are bully rooms, all right.  The view is splendid.  But I don’t see why you need to come to a hotel when you have your apartment on Riverside—­and such an apartment!—­a veritable palace, filled with everything one’s artistic taste cares for and furnished and decorated to suit yourself.”

“That’s just why,” answered his companion dryly.

The railroad man had left the breakfast table, and, seated at a desk on the other side of the room, was busy glancing over a huge batch of letters which had come with the morning’s mail.

“What do you mean by ’that’s just why’?” demanded Hadley, puzzled.

Stafford looked up and smiled.

“Why—­it’s just as you said.  My own place is so attractive that I can’t do any work there.  The paintings, statuary, bric-a-brac and what-not, distract my attention too much.  If I have an important letter to draft, I can’t think of what I want to say because my eyes are fascinated by the Peachblow vases on top of the bookcase.  You haven’t seen the vases, have you, Fred?  They’re ‘peaches,’ all right.  I gave $3,000 for the pair.  That’s going some for a bit of breakable bric-a-brac.  Come up to dinner some night and see them.  I’ll tell Oku you’re coming, and he’ll get up something good—­one of his swell Japanese dishes.”

“Not on your life,” interrupted the other with a grimace.  “Japs and Chinks eat all kinds of freak things—­nightingale tongues and such stuff.  No—­thanks.  Your Oku’s a decent little sort, as Jap butlers go, but when it comes to cooking, give me Christian food and a French chef every time.”

Stafford laughed heartily.

“Fred—­my boy—­you’re shockingly provincial and bourgeois.  I’m afraid I’ll never make a cosmopolite out of you.  Well, as I said, there is too much art about the place.  It seems sacrilege to even think business there, so when I’m putting through any big deal, I just slip away and come to this hotel for a few days.  At home I’m an art lover, revelling in the treasures I have succeeded in collecting; here I am a vulgar business person, occupied in the undignified task of making money.  Only last week, when I was home, I got thinking out a plan one night in the library for a merger with a road which is cutting pretty badly into our business.  I had thought out a plan, the details were working out nicely in my mind, when suddenly my gaze fell on the Corot hung just above my desk.  You know the picture.  Did you ever see more exquisite coloring, a more wonderful composition?  Is it surprising that the plan for the merger quite slipped out of my head?”

“Talking of exquisite coloring,” interrupted Hadley irrelevantly, “did you notice how well Maude looked last night?  If she’s a day, that woman is forty, yet no one would take her for more than five and twenty.  She’s a marvel.  No wonder Stanton is crazy about her.”

Stafford shrugged his shoulders.

“Cosmetics and a clever hairdresser can work miracles,” he said dryly.