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.

He turned his attention to tempting her to extravagance in dress. Rut
his success there was not all he could have wished. She wore better
clothes--much better. She no longer looked the poor working girl,
struggling desperately to be neat and clean. She had almost immediately
taken on the air of the comfortable classes. Rut everything she got for
herself was inexpensive and she made dresses for herself, and trimmed
all her hats. With the hats Norman found no fault. There her good taste
produced about as satisfactory results as could have been got at the
fashionable milliners--more satisfactory than are got by the women who
go there, with no taste of their own beyond a hazy idea that they want