They had time for a great deal of joking at the office during the season of leisure which penetrates in August to the very heart of business, and they all got on terms of greater intimacy if not greater friendliness than before.  Fulkerson had not had so long to do with the advertising side of human nature without developing a vein of cynicism, of no great depth, perhaps, but broad, and underlying his whole point of view; he made light of Beaton’s solemnity, as he made light of Conrad’s humanity.  The art editor, with abundant sarcasm, had no more humor than the publisher, and was an easy prey in the manager’s hands; but when he had been led on by Fulkerson’s flatteries to make some betrayal of egotism, he brooded over it till he had thought how to revenge himself in elaborate insult.  For Beaton’s talent Fulkerson never lost his admiration; but his joke was to encourage him to give himself airs of being the sole source of the magazine’s prosperity.  No bait of this sort was too obvious for Beaton to swallow; he could be caught with it as often as Fulkerson chose; though he was ordinarily suspicious as to the motives of people in saying things.  With March he got on no better than at first.  He seemed to be lying in wait for some encroachment of the literary department on the art department, and he met it now and then with anticipative reprisal.  After these rebuffs, the editor delivered him over to the manager, who could turn Beaton’s contrary-mindedness to account by asking the reverse of what he really wanted done.  This was what Fulkerson said; the fact was that he did get on with Beaton and March contented himself with musing upon the contradictions of a character at once so vain and so offensive, so fickle and so sullen, so conscious and so simple.

After the first jarring contact with Dryfoos, the editor ceased to feel the disagreeable fact of the old man’s mastery of the financial situation.  None of the chances which might have made it painful occurred; the control of the whole affair remained in Fulkerson’s hands; before he went West again, Dryfoos had ceased to come about the office, as if, having once worn off the novelty of the sense of owning a literary periodical, he was no longer interested in it.

Yet it was a relief, somehow, when he left town, which he did not do without coming to take a formal leave of the editor at his office.  He seemed willing to leave March with a better impression than he had hitherto troubled himself to make; he even said some civil things about the magazine, as if its success pleased him; and he spoke openly to March of his hope that his son would finally become interested in it to the exclusion of the hopes and purposes which divided them.  It seemed to March that in the old man’s warped and toughened heart he perceived a disappointed love for his son greater than for his other children; but this might have been fancy.  Lindau came in with some copy while Dryfoos was there, and March