ars. The memory of his distinctions returned and blotted out his poor clothes.
Gibbons had always been envious of Bettington’s personal grace and charms. Always the girls to whom Gibbons paid his addresses interrupted his fervors with questions concerning Howard Bettington. And here was Bettington sitting at his table with the quiet ease which Gibbons knew for good breeding.
A Million or So
There had been a time when these two meant more to him than any other men. And when success came to him he forgot them. Gibbons grew a little ashamed; but the feeling lasted only a few moments. His arrogance banished it. He had succeeded; they had failed. He was even a little gratified when the pale secretary bowed his way in with two cables which demanded immediate attention.
"Made a million or so?" Bettington asked quizzically, when the secretary had taken down the answers and gone out. "Or lost one?"
"Radway is the loser," Gibbons smiled. "I have just taken a railroad from him and he's too drunk to know about it till to-morrow."
Tubby Unwin made an unexpected remark.
"That will be the Memphis and Toledo road," he said. "It is Radway's pet lamb."
"How the hell do you know that?" Gibbons snapped.
Unwin came to himself with a start. He realized that he had repeated something Mary had told him in confidence. He made a gesture as though to say financial secrets were not hidden from him entirely.
"Well, as you know so much about Radway, you'll be astonished to learn I've got him on the run. There isn't room in New York for Radway and me."
He told them something of his detestation for Radway; of how these five years he had been setting snares for him. When Radway was winning and dining beauties of the front row, he, Gibbons, was working, and now the reward was coming. "I never forgive or forget," Gibbons boasted.
"I see that all marked on chart which is your face," Bettington answered.
"Anything else you see?" Gibbons sneered. He had not made the impression he desired. Men, big men in the "Street," were talking over this duel and here his guests took it calmly.
Bettington gazed at him steadily. Again the painter's good looks and splendid features forced themselves on the capitalist. And there was still that air of detachment about him. He seemed a passionless judge.
"I see what all charts mark. Rocks, quicksands, reefs. You're headed for them, Gibbons."
Feasting Two Failures
Gibbons was amazed to find that he would have preferred the old opprobrious nickname to this attitude. There was something dominating about Bettington. Gibbons felt it even now in his magnificent home in a moment of financial triumph. He sought to dissolve it by a resumption of his harsher manner.
"The unsuccessful," he said acidly, "always feel they have the right to criticize. It's about the only thing they can do; and they do that badly."
"So you call me unsuccessful?" Bettington demanded. Then he smiled a little. "You are wrong. I've accomplished what I set out to do. I have health. I live the life I like. Wall Street flurries do not affect me. And I have what you will never have—contentment. The difference between us is we measure success by different standards."
"I'm the unsuccessful one," Unwin declared. "I have not done what I set out to do."
