“So it was for this,” Burton exclaimed, “that you offered me that thousand pounds!”

“We were to blame,” Mr. Bomford admitted.

“Very much to blame,” the professor echoed.

“Nevertheless,” Mr. Bomford insisted, “it is an incident which you must forget.  It is man’s first impulse, is it not, to make the best bargain he can for himself?  We tried it and failed.  For the future we abandon all ideas of that sort, Mr. Burton.  We associate you, both nominally and in effect, with our enterprise, in which we will be equal partners.  The professor will find the capital, I will find the commercial experience, you shall hand over the bean.  I promise you that before five years have gone by, you shall be possessed of wealth beyond any dreams you may ever have conceived.”

Burton moved uneasily in his chair.

“But I have never conceived any dreams of wealth at all,” he objected.  “I have no desire whatever to be rich.  Wealth seems to me to be only an additional excitement to vulgarity.  Besides, the possession of wealth in itself tends to an unnatural state of existence.  Man is happy only if he earns the money which buys for him the necessaries of life.”

Mr. Bomford listened as one listens to a lunatic.  Mr. Cowper, however, nodded his head in kindly toleration.

“Thoughts like that,” he admitted, “have come to me, my young friend, in the seclusion of my study.  They have come, perhaps, in the inspired moments, but in the inspired moments one is not living that every-day and necessary life which is forced upon us by the conditions of existence in this planet.  There is nothing in the whole scheme of life so great as money.  With it you can buy the means of gratifying every one of those unnatural desires with which Fate has endowed us.  Take my case, for instance.  If this wealth comes to me, I shall spend no more upon what I eat or drink or wear, yet, on the other hand, I shall gratify one of the dreams of my life.  I shall start for the East with a search party, equipped with every modern invention which the mind of man has conceived.  I shall go from site to site of the ruined cities of Egypt.  No one can imagine what treasures I may not discover.  I shall even go on to a part of Africa—­but I need not weary you with this.  I simply wanted you to understand that the desire for wealth is not necessarily vulgar.”

Burton yawned slightly.  His eyes sought once more the velvety shadows which hung over the lawn.  He wondered down which of those dim avenues she had passed.

“I am so sorry,” he said apologetically.  “You are a man of business, Mr. Bomford, and you, professor, see much further into life than I can, but I do not wish to have anything whatever to do with your scheme.  It does not appeal to me in the least—­in fact it offends me.  It seems crassly vulgar, a vulgar way of attaining to a position which I, personally, should loathe.”

He rose to his feet.