“He and I have had dealings,” said Norman.  “He understood at once.  I always know my way when I’m dealing with a big man.  It’s only the little people that are muddled and complex.  I hope you’ll not forget this lesson, Billy.”

“I shan’t,” promised Tetlow.

“We are to be partners,” pursued Norman.  “We shall be intimately associated for years.  You’ll save me a vast amount of time and energy and yourself a vast amount of fuming and fretting, if you’ll simply accept what I say, without discussion.  When I want discussion I’ll ask your advice.”

“I’m afraid you don’t think it’s worth much,” said Tetlow humbly, “and I guess it isn’t.”

“On the contrary, invaluable,” declared Norman with flattering emphasis.  “Where you lack and I excel is in decision and action.  I’ll often get you to tell me what ought to be done, and then I’ll make you do it—­which you’d never dare, by yourself.”

At eleven sharp Galloway came, looking as nearly like a dangerous old eagle as a human being well could.  Rapacious, merciless, tyrannical; a famous philanthropist.  Stingy to pettiness; a giver away of millions.  Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter of his given word, yet so treacherous where his sly mind could nose out a way to evade the spirit of his agreements that his name was a synonym for unfaithfulness.  An assiduous and groveling snob, yet so militantly democratic that, unless his interest compelled, he would not employ any member of the “best families” in any important capacity.  He seemed a bundle of contradictions.  In fact he was profoundly consistent.  That is to say, he steadily pursued in every thought and act the gratification of his two passions—­wealth and power.  He lost no seen opportunity, however shameful, to add to his fortune or to amuse himself with the human race, which he regarded with the unpitying contempt characteristic of every cold nature born or risen to success.

His theory of life—­and it is the theory that explains most great financial successes, however they may pretend or believe—­his theory of life was that he did not need friends because the friends of a strong man weaken and rob him, but that he did need enemies because he could grow rich and powerful destroying and despoiling them.  To him friends suggested the birds living in a tree.  They might make the tree more romantic to the unthinking observer; but they in fact ate its budding leaves and its fruit and rotted its bough joints with their filthy nests.

We Americans are probably nearest to children of any race in civilization.  The peculiar conditions of life—­their almost Arcadian simplicity—­up to a generation or so ago, gave us a false training in the study of human nature.  We believe what the good preacher, the novelist and the poet, all as ignorant of life as nursery books, tell us about the human heart.  We fancy that in a social system modeled upon the cruel and immoral system of Nature,