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Updated: April 30, 2025
"Do you really like to participate in a game you know to be unfair, Hilmer? dishonest, in fact?" "Participating? I haven't signed any Broker's Exchange agreement. I'm not breaking any pledge when I accept a share of insurance commission. That's up to the other fellow."
Brauer fell to grumbling quite audibly over these advances, and he saw to it that Fred's notes for the amounts always were forthcoming. Hilmer did not come in quite so often to the office; a rush of shipbuilding construction took him over to his yards in Oakland nearly every day. But Mrs. Hilmer was in evidence a good deal.
Even a fool would scarcely have left so forbidding a character to dawdle about the living room while she went to fetch her mistress. He had expected to find this room changed, and yet he was not prepared for quite the quality of familiarity which it possessed. Most of the old Hilmer knickknacks had been swept aside, their places taken by bits that had once enlivened the Starratt household.
A fortnight ago the doctors had given Mrs. Hilmer a scant six months of life. But now Fred Starratt knew that she would live as long as her spirits had vengeance to feed upon. Thus had the door closed upon Hilmer and his crippled gaoler. Already Helen Starratt had gained the street corner. Fred was seized with an impulse to overtake her, but it had died as quickly.
Fred read this sentence over and over again. To what purpose did Ginger discuss him with Mrs. Hilmer? ... Surely not altogether in the name of entertainment. Meanwhile, summer died, hot and palpitant and arid to the end. And autumn came gently with cool, foggy mornings and days of sunshine mellowed like old gold.
"No harder than most men," she answered, slipping easily from the traces of his cross-examination. His rancor outran his reserve. "I guess I'm vain," he threw out bitterly, "but I'd like to feel that I could land one piece of business without anybody's help." She laughed indulgently. "Why, Freddie, that isn't nice! You landed Hilmer at the start... Don't you remember that very first line?
Of course, I'd rather not have it that way, but he holds the purse strings, so I've got to make concessions. We can get an office for twenty-five a month. It will be the salary of the stenographer that will count up." "When do you start?" "To-morrow. And do you know who I'm going after first thing?... Hilmer.
But that is in your hands." He felt suddenly cold all over, as if she had delivered an enemy into his keeping. She still loved Axel Hilmer...loved him to the point of hatred. What she wished for was his head upon a charger. With other backgrounds and other circumstances crowding her to fury she would have danced for her boon like the daughter of Herodias.
You must know I don't want to lose five cents' worth of business. But there are some things a gentleman doesn't do." He was sorry once the last remark had escaped him, but Hilmer didn't seem disconcerted by the covert inference. "Scruples are like laws," Hilmer returned, affably. "I never saw one yet that couldn't be gotten round legitimately."
She was curious, she told herself, to see whether a man like Hilmer would be impressed by feminine artifice... Did a black silk gown, with spotless lace at wrist and throat, spell the acme of Hilmer's ideal of womanhood? Was woman to him something durable and utilitarian or did his fancy sometimes carry him to more decorative ideals?
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