She was eager to hold on to the secure forty thousand a year—­for his sake no less than for her own.  She argued with him with all the adroitness of a mind as good in its way as his own.  But she could not shake his resolution.  And she in prudence, desisted when he said bitterly:  “I see you’ve lost confidence in me.  Well, I don’t blame you. . . .  So have I.”  Then after a moment, violently rather than strongly:  “But I’ve got to get it back.  If I don’t I’m only putting off the smash—­a complete smash.”

“I don’t see quite how it’s to be arranged,” said she, red and hesitating.  For, she feared he would think her altogether selfish in her anxiety.  He certainly would have been justified in so thinking; he knew how rarely generosity survived in the woman who leads the soft and idle life.

“How long can we keep on as we’re living now—­if there’s nothing, or little, coming in?”

“I don’t know,” confessed she.  She was as poor at finance as he, and had certainly not been improved by his habit of giving her whatever she happened to think was necessary.  “I can’t say.  Perhaps a few months—­I don’t know—­Not long, I’m afraid.”

“Six months?”

“Oh, no.  You see—­the fact is—­I’ve been rather careless about the bills.  You’re so generous, Fred—­and one is so busy in New York.  I guess we owe a good deal—­here and there and yonder.  And—­the last few days some of the tradespeople have been pressing for payment.”

“You see!” exclaimed he.  “The report is going round that I’m ruined and done for.  I’ve simply got to make good.  If you can’t keep up a front, shut up the house and go abroad.  You can stay till I’ve got my foot back on its neck.”

She believed in him, at bottom.  She could not conceive how appearances and her forebodings could be true.  Such strength as his could not be overwhelmed thus suddenly.  And by so slight a thing!—­by an unsatisfied passion for a woman, and an insignificant woman, at that.  For, like all women, like all the world for that matter, she measured a passion by the woman who was the object of it, instead of by the man who fabricated it.  “Yes—­I’ll go abroad,” said she, hopefully.

“Quietly arrange for a long stay,” he advised.  “I hope it won’t be long.  But I never plan on hope.”

Thus, with his sister and Fitzhugh out of the way and the heaviest of his burdens of expense greatly lightened, he set about rehabitating himself.  He took an office, waited for clients.  And clients came—­excellent clients.  Came and precipitately left him.

There were two reasons for it.  The first—­the one most often heard—­was the story going round that he had been, and probably still was, out of his mind.  No deadlier or crueler weapon can be used against a man than that same charge as to his sanity.  It has been known to destroy, or seriously maim, brilliant and able men with no trace of any of the untrustworthy kinds of insanity.  Where the man’s own conduct gives color to the report, the attack is usually mortal.  And Norman had acted the crazy man.  The second reason was the hostility of Burroughs, reinforced by all the hatreds and jealousies Norman’s not too respectful way of dealing with his fellow men had been creating through fifteen years.