“And I never shall be,” said Norman, with the patient smile of a swift, keen mind at one that is slow and hard to make understand.  “It isn’t my nature.  But, if I’m resurrected, I’ll seem to be mercenary until I get a full suit of the only armor that’s invulnerable in this world.  Why, I built my fort like a fool.  It was impregnable except for one thing—­one obvious thing.  It hadn’t a supply of water.  If I build again it’ll be round a spring—­an income big enough for my needs and beyond anybody’s power to cut off.”

Tetlow showed that he was much cheered by Norman’s revived interest in life.  But he went away uneasy; for the last thing Norman said to him was: 

“Don’t forget that address!”

XV

But it chanced that Norman met her in the street about an hour after Tetlow’s call.

He was on the way to lunch at the Lawyer’s Club—­one of those apparent luxuries that are the dire and pitiful necessities of men in New York fighting to maintain the semblance and the reputation of prosperity.  It must not be imagined by those who are here let into Norman’s inmost secrets that his appearance betrayed the depth to which he had fallen.  At least to the casual eye he seemed the same rich and powerful personage.  An expert might have got at a good part of the truth from his somber eyes and haggard face, from the subtle transformation of the former look of serene pride into the bravado of pretense.  And as, in a general way, the facts of his fall were known far and wide, all his acquaintances understood that his seeming of undiminished success was simply the familiar “bluff.”  Its advantage to him with them lay in its raising a doubt as to just what degree of disaster it hid—­no small advantage.  Nor was this “bluff” altogether for the benefit of the outside world.  It made his fall less hideously intolerable to himself.  In the bottom of his heart he knew that when drink and no money should finally force him to release his relaxing hold upon his fashionable clubs, upon luxurious attire and habits, he would suddenly and with accelerated speed drop into the abyss—­We have all caught glimpses of that abyss—­frayed fine linen cheaply laundered, a tie of one time smartness showing signs of too long wear, a suit from the best kind of tailor with shiny spot glistening here, patch peeping there, a queer unkemptness about the hair and skin—­these the beginnings of a road that leads straight and short to the barrel-house, the park bench, and the police station.  Because, when a man strikes into that stretch of the road to perdition, he ceases to be one of our friends, passes from view entirely, we have the habit of saying that such things rarely if ever happen.  But we know better.  Many’s the man now high who has had the sort of drop Norman was taking.  We remember when he was making a bluff such as Norman was making in those days; but we think now that we were mistaken in having suspected it of being bluff.