The man groaned, for he was heavy, and no doubt dreaded the stairs.  He scratched a match on his thigh, and led the way up.  March was sorry for him, and he put his fingers on a quarter in his waistcoat-pocket to give him at parting.  At the same time, he had to trump up an objection to the flat.  This was easy, for it was advertised as containing ten rooms, and he found the number eked out with the bath-room and two large closets.  “It’s light enough,” said March, “but I don’t see how you make out ten rooms”

“There’s ten rooms,” said the man, deigning no proof.

March took his fingers off the quarter, and went down-stairs and out of the door without another word.  It would be wrong, it would be impossible, to give the man anything after such insolence.  He reflected, with shame, that it was also cheaper to punish than forgive him.

He returned to his hotel prepared for any desperate measure, and convinced now that the Grosvenor Green apartment was not merely the only thing left for him, but was, on its own merits, the best thing in New York.

Fulkerson was waiting for him in the reading-room, and it gave March the curious thrill with which a man closes with temptation when he said:  “Look here!  Why don’t you take that woman’s flat in the Xenophon?  She’s been at the agents again, and they’ve been at me.  She likes your look—­or Mrs. March’s—­and I guess you can have it at a pretty heavy discount from the original price.  I’m authorized to say you can have it for one seventy-five a month, and I don’t believe it would be safe for you to offer one fifty.”

March shook his head, and dropped a mask of virtuous rejection over his corrupt acquiescence.  “It’s too small for us—­we couldn’t squeeze into it.”

“Why, look here!” Fulkerson persisted.  “How many rooms do you people want?”

“I’ve got to have a place to work—­”

“Of course!  And you’ve got to have it at the Fifth Wheel office.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” March began.  “I suppose I could do my work at the office, as there’s not much writing—­”

“Why, of course you can’t do your work at home.  You just come round with me now, and look at that again.”

“No; I can’t do it.”

“Why?”

“I—­I’ve got to dine.”

“All right,” said Fulkerson.  “Dine with me.  I want to take you round to a little Italian place that I know.”

One may trace the successive steps of March’s descent in this simple matter with the same edification that would attend the study of the self-delusions and obfuscations of a man tempted to crime.  The process is probably not at all different, and to the philosophical mind the kind of result is unimportant; the process is everything.