Schuyler watched a little ring of blue smoke rising to the ceiling.

"No," he answered, slowly, "you're wrong. I care nothing for the plaudits
of the populace. I'm ambitious, in a way; but when that way requires me
to leave the people--the things--that I love, then ambition chameleonizes
and I become ambitious antithetically. Furthermore, I loathe the climate
of Washington; and all the society I want, I can find right in my home--
with the exception of yourself."

"Which is not so much of an exception, after all," commented Blake;
"because, when it comes to sticking around, I'm the original young Mr.
Glue."

"You know, Tom," went on Schuyler, "I don't like to take any chances with
a happiness such as mine.... I wonder, sometimes, if I really know how
happy I am. One can get used to happiness, you know, just as to other
things--except unhappiness."

"Hum," snorted Blake. "I've got used to that, even. Dad--burn it all,
nothing ever goes right with me--except money; and that's no good without
the rest. Money is merely an agreeable accessory. To have money and
nothing with it is like having an olive and no cocktail to put it in. If
I eat what I like, I get sick. I'm always either forty pounds too heavy
or twenty pounds too light. I'm continually dieting or training and
wondering why in Sam Hill I'm doing either. I have to live alone--to
spend my evening at theatres or clubs--I am a man who would willingly
give up all his clubs for one large pair of pink carpet slippers, and the
theatres for a corpulent, aristocratic Maltese cat, with a baritone
purr."