Norman shrugged his shoulders.  “Very well.  Can I have five hundred at once?”

“I’ll send you a check to-day.  I’ll send two checks a month—­the first and the fifteenth.”

“I am drinking a great deal.”

“You always did.”

“Not until recently.  I never knew what drinking meant until these last few months.”

“Well, do as you like with the money.  Drink it all, if you please.  I’m making no conditions beyond the two I stated.”

“You will send me that address?”

“In the letter with the check.”

“Will she see me, do you think?”

“I haven’t an idea,” replied Tetlow.

“What’s the mystery?” asked Norman.  “Why do you speak of her so indifferently?”

“It’s the way I feel.”  Then, in answer to the unspoken suspicion once more appearing in Norman’s eyes, he added:  “She’s a very nice, sweet girl, Norman—­so far as I know or believe.  Beyond that—­Go to see her.”

It had been many a week since Norman had heard a friendly voice.  The very sound of the human voice had become hateful to him, because he was constantly detecting the note of nervousness, the scarcely concealed fear of being entangled in his misfortunes.  As Tetlow rose to go, Norman tried to detain him.  The sound of an unconstrained voice, the sight of a believing face that did not express one or more of the shadings of contempt between pity and aversion—­the sight and sound of this friend Tetlow was acting upon him like one of those secret, unexpected, powerful tonics which nature at times suddenly injects into a dying man to confound the doctors and cheat death.

“Tetlow,” said he, “I’m down—­probably down for good.  But if I ever get up again, I’ll not make one mistake—­the one that cost me this fall.  Do you know what that mistake was?”

“I suppose you mean Miss Hallowell?”

“No,” said Norman, to his surprise.  “I mean my lack of money, of capital, of a large and secure income.  I used to imagine that brains were the best, the only sure asset.  I was guilty of the stupidity of overvaluing my own possessions.”

“Brains are a mighty good asset, Fred.”

“Yes—­and necessary.  But a man of action must have under his brains another asset—­must have it, Billy.  The one secure asset is a big capital.  Money rules this world.  Some men have been lucky enough to rise and stay risen, without money.  But not a man of all the men who have been knocked out could have been dislodged if he had been armed and armored with money.  My prodigality was my fatal mistake.  I shan’t make it again—­if I get the chance.  You don’t know, Tetlow, how hard it is to get money when you are tumbling and must have it.  I never dreamed what a factor it is in calamities of every sort.  It’s the factor.”

“I don’t like to hear you talk that way, Norman,” said Tetlow earnestly.  “I’ve always most admired in you the fact that you weren’t mercenary.”