Her alarm took him by surprise.  The sum seemed small to him—­and it was only about one fifth what the alterations and improvements had cost.  Cried she, “Why, that’s more than our whole income for a year has been!”

“You are forgetting these improvements add to the value of the property.  I’ve bought it.”

That quieted her.  “You are sure you didn’t pay those decorators and furnishers too much?” said she.

“You don’t like their work?” inquired he, chagrined.

“Oh, yes—­yes, indeed,” she assured him.  “I like plain, solid-looking things.  But—­two thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

Norman regretted that, as his whole object had been to please her, he had not ordered the more showy cheaper stuff but had insisted upon the simplest, plainest-looking appointments throughout.  Even her bedroom furniture, even her dressing table set, was of the kind that suggests cost only to the experienced, carefully and well educated in values and in taste.

“But I’m sure it isn’t fair to charge all these things to the company,” she protested.  “I can’t allow it.  Not the things for my personal use.”

“You are a fierce watchdog of a treasurer,” said Norman, laughing at her but noting and respecting the fine instinct of good breeding shown in her absence of greediness, of desire to get all she could.  “But I’m letting the firm of decorators take over what you leave behind in the old house.  I’ll see what they’ll allow for it.  Maybe that will cover the expense you object to.”

This contented her.  Nor was she in the least suspicious when he announced that the decorators had made such a liberal allowance that the deficit was but three hundred dollars.  “Those chaps,” he explained, “have a wide margin of profit.  Besides, they’re eager to get more and bigger work from me.”

A few weeks, and he was enjoying the sight of her ensconced with her father in luxurious comfort—­with two servants, with a well-run house, with pleasant gardens, with all that is at the command of an income of six thousand a year in a comparatively inexpensive city.  Only occasionally—­and then not deeply—­was he troubled by the reflection that he was still far from his goal—­and had made apparently absurdly little progress toward it through all this maneuvering.  The truth was, he preferred to linger when lingering gave him so many new kinds of pleasure.  Of those in the large and motley company that sit down to the banquet of the senses, the most are crude, if not coarse, gluttons.  They eat fast and furiously, having a raw appetite.  Now and then there is one who has some idea of the art of enjoyment—­the art of prolonging and varying both the joys of anticipation and the joys of realization.