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Updated: June 9, 2025
Fred Starratt had a hasty meal and then he took a direct car line for the Hilmers'. He had never been to their house, but he found just about what he had expected a two-story hand-me-down dwelling in the Richmond district, a bit more pretentious and boasting greater garden space than most of the homes in the block. Helen answered his ring. She had her wrist in a tight bandage.
"Can't you see, Brauer, that the principle is the same?" "Principle! Oh, shoot!... We're out to make money, not to reform business methods." Starratt made no further reply, but Brauer's attitude rankled. He began to wish that he hadn't allowed Brauer to go in on his venture. 'But it had taken money ... more than he had imagined.
The unpleasant things in Helen Starratt's life didn't go very far beyond half-tipsy maids and impertinent butcher boys. Hilmer's experiences were not quite in the line of drawing-room anecdotes, and Starratt had seen the time when his wife would have recoiled from them with the disdainful grace of a feline shaking unwelcome moisture from its paws.
All afternoon Fred Starratt wandered about sometimes dawdling defiantly, sometimes dropping into a brisk pace, but at every turn his new-found shadow followed at an inconspicuous distance. The afternoon sun was gracious, tinged with a pleasant coolness, and far to the west a blue-gray fog bank waited for evening to let down the day's warm barriers.
He wished that Helen Starratt had stayed at home where she belonged. It had been a long time since the insurance world on California Street had been given such a chance for gossip as the shifting of the Hilmer insurance provided. Naturally, business changes took place every day, but it was unusual to have such a rank beginner at the brokerage game put over so neat a trick. Speculation was rife.
Fred Starratt sat down again... Shortly after this the gathering broke up. Storch went to sleep immediately. Fred blew out the light. But he did not throw himself upon his couch this time. Instead he opened the door softly and crept out. A bright moon was riding high in the sky. He went swiftly down the lane and stood for a moment upon the edge of the cliff which plunged down toward the docks.
It could not be that he was insensible to ugliness, but he rose above it on the wings of some inner beauty... Once Fred Starratt would have felt some of the father's scorn for Felix Monet the patronizing scorn most men bring to an estimate of the incomprehensible. What could one expect of a fiddler? Yes, he would have felt something worse than scorn he would have been moved to tolerance.
A man who could brain an assailant and fight for a mouthful of bread would put things over by hook or crook. There wasn't much chance for failure there. But Fred Starratt ... well, he was apt to have some ridiculous scruple or too keen a sense of business courtesy or a sensitiveness to rebuffs.
Surely a man who risked bail money was justified in seeing that the object of his charity kept faith... Fred Starratt sat down and laughed unpleasantly. What a contempt everybody must have for him! What a contempt he had for himself! He threw himself sprawling his full length upon the rumpled bed. But this time it was not to sleep.
But to-night she drew her dark eyebrows together tensely and let her thin, vivid lips part with frank eagerness. Her interest flamed her with a new quality. Fred Starratt had always known that his wife was attractive; he would not have married her otherwise; but, as she leaned forward upon the arm of her chair, resting her elbows upon an orange satin pillow, he saw that she was handsome.
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