"Then, I'm glad," said Narcisse. "I'm whatever you like. Is your
father waiting for me?"
Narcisse liked old Fosdick--his hearty voice, his sturdy optimism, his
genial tolerance of all human weaknesses, even of crimes, his passion
for the best of everything, his careless generosity. "It's fine," she
often thought, "to see a man act about his own hard-earned wealth as if
he had found it in a lump in the street or had won it in a lottery." He
seemed in high spirits that morning, though Narcisse observed that the
lines in his face looked heavier than usual. "Sorry to drag you clear
up here about such a little matter," said he when they two were seated,
with his big table desk between them. "I just wanted to caution you and
your brother. Quite unnecessary, I know; still, it's my habit to
neglect nothing. I'm thinking of the two buildings you are putting up
for us--for the O.A.D. How are they getting on? I've so much to attend
to, I don't often get round to details I know are in perfectly safe
hands."
"We start the one in Chicago next month, and the one here in May--I
hope."
"Good--splendid! Rush them along. You--you and your
brother--understand that everything about them is absolutely private
business. If any newspaper reporter--or anybody--on any pretext
whatever--comes nosing round, you are to say nothing. Whatever is given
out about them, we'll give out ourselves down at the main office."
"I'll see to that," said Narcisse. "I'm glad you are cautioning us. We
might have given out something. Indeed, now that I think of it, a man
was talking with my brother about the buildings yesterday."
Fosdick leaned forward with sudden and astonishing agitation. "What did
he want?" he cried.
"Merely some specifications as to the cost of similar buildings."
"Did your brother give him what he asked for?" demanded the old man.
"Not yet. I believe he's to get the figures together and give them to
him to-morrow."
Fosdick brought his fist down on the table and laughed with a kind of
savage joy. "The damned scoundrels!" he exclaimed. Then, hastily,
"Just step to the telephone, Miss Siersdorf, and call up your brother
and tell him on no account to give that information."
Narcisse hesitated. "But--that's a very common occurrence in our
business," objected she. "I don't see how we can refuse--unless the man
is a trifler. Anyone who is building likes to have a concrete example to
go by."
"Please do as I ask, Miss Siersdorf," said Fosdick. "We'll discuss it
afterwards."
Narcisse obeyed, and when she returned said, "My brother will give out
nothing more. But I find I was mistaken. He gave the estimates
yesterday afternoon."
Fosdick sank back in his chair, his features contracted in anger and
anxiety. When she tried to speak, he waved her imperiously into
silence. "I must think," he said curtly. "Don't interrupt!" She
watched his face, but could make nothing definite of its vague
reflections of his apparently dark and stormy thoughts. Finally he said,
in a nearer approach to his usual tone and manner, "It's soon remedied.
Your brother can send for the man. You know who he was?"
"His name was Delmar. He represented the Howlands, the Chicago drygoods
people."
"Um," grunted Fosdick, reflecting again; then, as if he had found what
he was searching for, "Yes--that's the trail. Well, Miss Siersdorf, as
I was saying, your brother will send for Delmar and will tell him there
was a mistake. And he'll give him another set of figures--say, doubling
or trebling the first set. He'll say he neglected to make allowance for
finer materials and details of stonework and woodwork--hardwood floors,
marble from Italy, and so forth and so forth. You understand. He'll
say he meant simply the ordinary first-rate office building--and wasn't
calculating on such palaces as he's putting up for the O.A.D."
Narcisse sat straight and silent, staring into her lap. Fosdick's cigar
had gone out. She had never before objected especially to its odor; now
she found it almost insupportable.
"You'd better telephone him," continued Fosdick. "No--I'll just have the
butler telephone him to come up here. We might as well make sure of
getting it straight."
Narcisse did not stir while Fosdick was out of the room, nor when he
resumed his seat and went on, "All this is too intricate to explain in
detail, Miss Siersdorf, but I'll give you an idea of it. It's a
question of the secrecy of our accounts."
"But we know nothing of your company's accounts, Mr. Fosdick," said she.
"You will remember that, under our contracts, we have nothing whatever
to do with the bills--that they go direct to your own people and are
paid by them. We warned you it was a dangerous system, but you insisted
on keeping to it. You said it was your long established way, that a
change would upset your whole bookkeeping, that----"
"Yes--yes. I remember perfectly," interrupted Fosdick, all good humor.
"You can't hold us responsible. We don't even know what payments have
been made."
"Precisely--precisely."
"It's a stupid system, permit me to say. It allows chances for no end
of fraud on you--though I think the people we employed are honest and
won't take advantage of it. And, if your auditors wanted to, they could
charge the company twice or three times or several times what the
building cost, and----"
"Exactly," interrupted Fosdick, an unpleasant sharpness in his voice.
"Let's not waste time discussing that. Let me proceed. We wish no one
to know what our buildings cost."
"But--you have to make reports--to your stockholders--policy holders
rather."
"In a way--yes," admitted Fosdick. "But all the men who have the
direction and control of large enterprises take a certain latitude. The
average citizen is a picayunish fellow, mean about small sums. He
wouldn't understand many of the expenditures necessary to the conduct of
large affairs. He even prefers not to be irritated by knowing just
where every dollar goes. He's satisfied with the results."
"But how does he know the results shown him are the real results? Why,
under that system, figures might be juggled to cheat him out of nearly
all the profits."
"The public is satisfied to get a reasonable return for the money it
invests--and _we_ always guarantee that," replied Fosdick grandly.
Narcisse looked at him with startled eyes, as if a sharp turn of the
road had brought her to the brink of a yawning abyss. It suddenly
dawned on her--the whole system of "finance." In one swift second a
thousand disconnected facts merged into a complete, repulsive whole.
So, _this_ was where these enormous fortunes came from! The big fellows
inveigled the public into enterprises by promises of equal shares; then
they juggled accounts, stole most of the profits, saddled all the losses
on the investors. And she had admired the daring of these great
financiers! Why, who wouldn't be daring, with no conscience, no honor,
and a free hand to gamble with other people's money, without risking a
penny of his own! And she had admired their generosity, their
philanthropy, when it was simply the reckless wastefulness of the thief,
after one rich haul and before another! She saw them, all over the
world, gathering in the mites of toiling millions as trust funds, and
stealing all but enough to encourage the poor fools to continue sending
in their mites! She read it all in Josiah's face now, in the faces of
her rich clients; and she wondered how she could have been so blind as
not to see it before. That hungry look, sometimes frankly there, again
disguised by a slimy over-layer of piety, again by whiskers or fat, but
always there. Face after face of her scores of acquaintances among the
powerful in finance rose beside Josiah's until she shrank and paled.
Under the slather of respectability, what gross appetites, what
repulsive passions! But for the absence of the brutal bruisings of
ignorance and drink, these facts would seem exhibits in a rogues'
gallery.
Josiah had no great opinion of the brains of his fellow men. Women he
regarded as mentally deficient--were they not incapable of comprehending
business? So, while he saw that Narcisse was not accepting his
statement as the honorable, though practical, truth he believed it to
be, he was not disturbed. "I see you don't quite follow me," he said
with kindly condescension. "Business is very complex. My point is,
however, that our accounts are for our own guidance, and not for our
rivals to get hold of and use in exciting a lot of silly, ignorant
people."
Alois Siersdorf now entered and was effusively welcomed. "What's the
matter?" he exclaimed. "Have I made a mess of some sort?"
"Not at all, my boy," said Fosdick, clapping him on the back. "Our
rivals have got up an investigating committee--have set on some of our
policy holders to pretend to be dissatisfied with our management. I
thought until yesterday that the committee was simply a haphazard
affair, got together by some blackmailing lawyer. Then I learned that
it was a really serious attempt of a rival of mine to take the company
away from me. They're smelling round for things to 'expose'--the old
trick. They think this is a rare good time to play it because the
damn-fool public has been liquored up with all sorts of brandy by
reformers and anarchists and socialists, trying to set it on to tear
down the social structure. No man's reputation is safe. You know how
it is in big affairs. It takes a broad-gage man to understand them. A
little fellow thinks he sees thief and robber and swindler written
everywhere, if he gets a peep at the inside. I don't know what we're
coming to, with the masses being educated just enough to imagine they
know, and to try to take the management of affairs out of the hands of
the substantial men."
With lip curling Narcisse looked at her brother, expecting to see in his
face some sign of appreciation of the disgusting comedy of Fosdick's
cant; but he seemed to be taking Josiah and his oration quite seriously;
to her amazement he said, "I often think of that, Mr. Fosdick. We must
have a stronger government, and abolish universal suffrage. This thing
of ignorant men, with no respect for the class with brains and property,
having an equal voice with us has got to stop or we'll have ruin."
A self-confessed thief trying to justify himself by slandering those he
had robbed, and angry with them because they were not grateful to him
for not having taken all their property--and her brother applauding!
"You're right," said Fosdick, clapping him on the knee. "I've been
trying to explain to your sister--though I'm afraid I don't make myself
clear. The ladies--even the smartest of them--are not very attentive
when we men talk of the business side of things. However, I suggested to
her that you recall those specifications you gave my enemies----"
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Siersdorf, shocked. "Yes--yes--I see--I
understand. But I can straighten it all out. I was rather vague with
Delmar. I'll send for him and tell him I was calculating on very
different kinds of buildings for him--something much cheaper----"
"Precisely!" cried Josiah. "Your brother's got a quick mind, Miss
Siersdorf."
Narcisse turned away. Her brother had not even waited for Fosdick to
unfold his miserable chicane; his own brain had instantly worked out the
same idea; and, instead of in shame suppressing it, he had uttered it as
if it were honest and honorable!
"There's another matter," continued Fosdick. He no longer felt that he
must advance cautiously. Sometimes, persons not familiar with large
affairs, not accustomed to dealing under the conditions that compel
liberal interpretation of the moral code, had been known to balk, unless
approached gradually, unless led by gentle stages above narrow ideas of
the just and the right. But clearly, the Siersdorfs, living in the
atmosphere of high finance, did not need to be acclimated. "It may be
this committee can get permission from the State Government to pry into
our affairs. I don't think it can; indeed, I almost know it can't;
we've got the Government friendly to us and not at all sympathetic with
these plausible blackmailers and disguised anarchists. Still, it's
always well to provide for any contingency. If you should get a tip
that you were likely to be wanted as witnesses you could arrange for a
few weeks abroad, and not leave anything--any books or papers--for these
scoundrels to nose into, couldn't you?"
"Certainly," assented Siersdorf, with great alacrity. "You may be sure
they'll get nothing out of us."
"Then, that's settled," said Fosdick. "And now, let's have lunch, and
forget business. I want to hear more about those plans for Amy's house
down in Jersey. She has told me a good deal, but not all."
"We can't stop to lunch," interposed Narcisse, with a meaning look at
her brother. "We must go back to the office at once." And when she saw
that Fosdick was getting ready for a handshake, she moved toward the
door, keeping out of his range without pointedly showing what she was
about. In the street with her brother she walked silently, moodily
beside him, selecting the softest words that would honestly express the
thoughts she felt she must not conceal from him.
"A great man, Fosdick," said Alois. "One of the biggest men in the
country--a splendid character, strong, able and honorable."
"Why do you say that just at this time?" asked his sister.
Alois reddened a little, avoided meeting her glance.
"To convince yourself?" she went on. "To make us seem less--less
dishonest and cowardly?"
He flashed at her; his anger was suspiciously ready. "I felt you were
taking that view of it!" he cried. "You are utterly unpractical. You
want to run the world by copybook morality."
"Because I haven't thrown 'Thou shalt not steal' overboard? Because I
am ashamed, Alois, that we are helping this man Fosdick to cover his
cowardly thief tracks?"
"You don't understand, Cissy," he remonstrated, posing energetically as
the superior male forbearing with the inferior female. "You oughtn't to
judge what you haven't the knowledge to judge correctly."
"He is a thief," retorted she bluntly. "And we are making ourselves his
accomplices."
Alois's smile was uncomfortable. With the manner of a man near the
limit of patience with folly, he explained, "What you are giving those
lurid names to is nothing but the ordinary routine of business,
throughout the world. Do you suppose the man of great financial
intellect would do the work he does for small wages? Do you imagine the
little people he works for and has to work through, the beneficiaries of
all those giant enterprises, would give him his just due voluntarily?
He's a man of affairs, and he works practically, deals with human nature
on human principles--just as do all the great men of action."
Narcisse stopped short, gazed at him in amazement. "Alois!" she
exclaimed.
He disregarded her rebuke, her reminder of the time when he had thought
and talked very differently. "Suppose," he persisted, "these great
fortunes didn't exist; suppose Fosdick were ass enough to take a salary
and divide up the profits; suppose all these people of wealth we work
for were to be honest according to your definition of the word--what
then? Why, millions of people would get ten or twelve dollars a year,
or something like that, more than they now have, and there'd be no great
fortunes to encourage art, to employ people like us, to endow colleges
and make the higher and more beautiful side of life."
"That's too shallow to answer," said Narcisse sternly. "You know
better, Alois. You know it's from the poor that intellect and art and
all that's genuine and great and progressive come--never from the rich,
from wealth. But even if it were not so, how can _you_ defend anything
that means a sacrifice of character?" She stopped in the street and
looked at him. "Alois, _what_ has changed you?"
"Come," he urged rather shamefacedly. "People are watching us."
They went on in silence, separated at the offices with a few constrained
words. They did not meet again until the next morning--when he sought
her. He looked much as usual--fresh, handsome, supple in body and mind.
Her eyes were red round the edges of the lids and her usually healthy
skin had the paleness that comes from a sleepless night. "Well," he
said, with his sweet, conciliatory smile--he had a perfect disposition,
while hers was often "difficult." "Do you still think I'm wrong--and
desperately wicked?"
"I haven't changed my mind," she answered, avoiding his gaze.
He frowned; his face showed the obstinacy that passes current for will
in a world of vacillators.
"You've always left business to me," he went on. "Just continue to leave
it. Rest assured I'll do nothing to injure my honor in the opinion of
any rational, practical person--or the honor of the firm."
She was not deceived by the note of conciliation in his voice; she knew
he had his mind fixed. She was at her desk, stiffly erect, gazing
straight ahead. Her expression brought out all the character in her
features, brought out that beauty of feminine strength which the best of
the Greeks have succeeded in giving their sculptured heroines. Without
warning she flung herself forward, hid her face and burst into tears.
"Oh, I _hate_ myself!" she cried. "I'm nothing but a woman, after
all--miserable, contemptible, weak creatures that we are!"
He settled himself on the arm of her chair and drew her into his arm.
"You're a finer person in every way than I am," he said; "a better brain
and a better character. But, Cissy dear, don't judge in matters that
aren't within your scope."
"Do as you please," she replied brokenly. "I'm a woman--and where's the
woman that wouldn't sacrifice anything and everything for love?"
She had, indeed, spent a night of horror. She felt that what he had
done was frightful dishonor--was proof that he was losing his moral
sense and, what seemed to her worse, becoming a pander to the class for
which they did most of the work they especially prided themselves upon.
She felt that, for his sake no less than for her own, she ought to join
the issue squarely and force him to choose the right road, or herself go
on in it alone. But she knew that he would let her go. And she had only
him. She loved him; she would not break with him; she could not.
"You know nothing about those buildings, anyhow," he continued. "Just
forget the whole business. I'll take care of it. Isn't that fair?"
"Anything! Anything!" she sobbed. "Only, let there be peace and love
between us."
*VIII*
*IN NEVA'S STUDIO*
Shown into the big workroom of Neva's apartment with its light softened
and diffused by skillfully adjusted curtains and screens, Narcisse
devoted the few minutes before Neva came to that thorough inspection
which an intelligent workman always gives the habitat of a fellow
worker.
"What a sensitive creature she is!" was the reminiscent conclusion of
the builder after the first glance round. A less keen observer might
have detected a nature as delicately balanced as an aspen leaf in the
subtle appreciation of harmony and contrast, of light and shade. And
there were none of the showy, shallow tricks of the poseur; for, the
room was plain, as a serious worker always insists on having his
surroundings. It appeared in the hanging of the few pictures, in the
colors of the few rugs and draperies, of walls, ceiling, furniture, in
the absence of anything that was not pleasing; the things that are not
in a room speak as eloquently of its tenant as do the things that are
there.
"Not a scrap of her own work," thought Narcisse, with a smile for the
shyness that omission hinted.
"Pardon my keeping you waiting," apologized Neva, entering in her long,
brown blouse with stains of paint. "I was at work when you were
announced."
"And you had to hustle everything out of sight, so I'd have no chance to
see."
Neva nodded smiling assent. "But I'm better than I used to be. Really,
I am. My point of view is changing--rapidly--so rapidly that I wake up
each morning a different person from the one who went to bed the night
before."
Narcisse was thinking that the Neva before her was as unlike the Neva of
their school days as a spring landscape is unlike the same stretch in
the bleak monotones of winter. "Getting more confidence in yourself?"
suggested she aloud. "Or are you beginning to see that the world is an
old fraud whose judgments aren't important enough to make anyone
nervous?"
"Both," replied Neva. "But I can't honestly claim to be self-made-over.
Boris teaches me a great deal beside painting."
Narcisse changed expression. As they talked on and on--of their work,
of the West, of the college and their friendship there, Neva felt that
Narcisse had some undercurrent of thought which she was striving with,
whether to suppress or express, she could not tell. The conversation
drifted back to New York, to Boris. There was something of warning in
Narcisse's face, and something of another emotion less clearly defined
as she said with a brave effort at the rigidly judicial, "Boris is a
great man; but first of all a man. You know what that means when a man
is dealing with a woman."
Neva's lip curled slightly. "That side of human nature doesn't interest
me."
Narcisse, watching her closely, could not but be convinced that the
indifference in her tone was not simulated. "Not yet," she thought.
Then, aloud, "That side doesn't often interest a woman until she finds
she must choose between becoming interested in it and losing the man
altogether."
Neva looked at her with a strange, startled expression, as if she were
absorbing a new and vital truth, self-evident, astonishing.
"Boris has lived a long time," continued Narcisse. "And women have
conquered him so often that they've taught him how to conquer them."
"I don't know much about him, beyond the painting," said Neva. "And I
don't care to know."
The silence that fell was constrained. It was with tone and look of
shyness more like Neva than like herself that Narcisse presently went
on, "I owe a great deal to Boris. He made me what I am.... He broke my
heart."
Neva gave her a glance of wonder and fear--wonder that she should be
confiding such a secret, fear lest the confidence would be repented.
Narcisse's expression, pensive but by no means tragic, not even
melancholy, reassured her. "You know," she proceeded, "no one ever does
anything real until his or her heart has been broken."
Neva, startled, listened with curious, breathless intentness.
"We learn only by experience. And the great lesson comes only from the
great experience."
"Yes," said Neva softly. She nodded absently. "Yes," she repeated.
"When one's heart is broken ... then, one discovers one's real self--the
part that can be relied on through everything and anything."
Neva, with studied carelessness, opened a drawer in the stand beside her
and began to examine the tips of a handful of brushes. Her face was
thus no longer completely at the mercy of a possible searching glance
from her friend.
"Show me anyone who has done anything worth while," continued Narcisse,
"and I'll show you a man or a woman whose heart has been broken--and
mended--made strong.... It isn't always love that does the breaking.
In fact, it's usually something else--especially with men. In my case
it happened to be love."
Neva's fingers had ceased to play with the brushes. Her hands rested
upon the edge of the drawer lightly, yet their expression was somehow
tense. Her eyes were gazing into--Narcisse wondered what vision was
hypnotizing them.
"It was ten years ago--when I was studying in Paris. I can see how he
might not be attractive to some women, but he was to me." Narcisse
laughed slightly. "I don't know what might have happened, if he hadn't
been drawn away by a little Roumanian singer, like an orchid waving in a
perfumed breeze. All Paris was quite mad about her, and Boris got her.
She thought she got him; but he survived, while she-- When she made her
way back to Paris, she found it perfectly calm."
"And you still care for him?" said Neva gently.
Narcisse laughed healthily. "I mended my heart, accepted my lesson....
Isn't it queer, how differently one looks at a person one has cared for,
after one is cured?"
"I don't know," said Neva, in a slow, constrained way. "I've never had
the experience."
After a silence Narcisse went on, "I've no objection to your repeating
to him what I've said. It was a mere reminiscence, not at all a
confession."
Neva shook her head. "That would bring up a subject a woman should
avoid with men. If it is never opened, it remains closed; if it's ever
opened, it can't be shut again."
Narcisse was struck by the penetration of this, and proceeded to
reexamine Neva more thoroughly. Nothing is more neglected than the
revision from time to time of our opinions of those about us. Though
character is as mobile as every other quantity in this whirling
kaleidoscope of a universe, we make up our minds about our acquaintances
and friends once for all, and refuse to change unless forced by some
cataclysm. As their talk unfolded the Neva beneath the surface, it soon
appeared to Narcisse that either she or Neva had become radically
different since their intimacy of twelve years before. "Probably both
of us," she decided. "I've learned to read character better, and she has
more character to read. I remember, I used to think she was one of
those who would develop late--even for a woman."
"It was stupid of me," she said to Neva, "but I've been assuming you are
just as you were. Now it dawns on me that you are as new to me as if
you were an entire stranger. You are different--outside and inside."
"Inside, I've certainly changed," admitted Neva. "Don't you think we're,
all of us, like the animals that shed their skins? We live in a mental
skin, and it seems to be ours for good and all; but all the time a new
skin is forming underneath; and then, some fine day, the old skin slips
away, and we're quite new from top to tip--apparently."
Narcisse's expression was encouraging.
"That happened to me," continued Neva. "But I didn't realize it--not
completely--until the divorce was over and I was settled here, in this
huge wilderness where the people can't find each other or even see each
other, for the crowd. It was the first time in my life. I could look
about me with the certainty I wasn't being watched, peeped at, pressed
in on all sides by curious eyes--hostile eyes, for all curious eyes are
hostile. But you were born and brought up in a small town. You know."
"Yes," said Narcisse. "Everybody lives a public life in a little town."
"Here I could, so to speak, stand in the sun naked and let its light
beat on my body, without fear of peepers and pryers." She drew a long
breath and stretched out her arms in a gesture of enormous relief. "I
dare to be myself. Free! All my life I'd been shut in, waiting and
hoping some one would come and lead me out where there was warmth and
affection. Wasn't that vanity! Now, I'm seeking what I want--the only
way to get it."
Narcisse's face took on an expression of cynicism, melancholy rather
than bitter. "Don't seek among your fellow beings. They're always off
the right temperature--they either burn you or freeze you."
"Oh, but I'm not trying to get warmth, but to give it," replied Neva.
"I'm not merchandising. I'm in a business where the losses are the
profits, the givings the gains."
"The only businesses that really pay," said Narcisse. "The returns from
the others are like the magician's money that seemed to be gold but was
only withered mulberry leaves. Won't you let me see some of your
work--anything?"
Neva drew aside a curtain, wheeled out an easel, on it her unfinished
portrait of Raphael. At first glance--and with most people the first
glance is the final verdict--there seemed only an elusive resemblance to
Raphael. It was one of those portraits that are forthwith condemned as
"poor likenesses." But Narcisse, perhaps partly because she was
sympathetically interested in Neva's work and knew that Neva must put
intelligence into whatever she did, soon penetrated to the deeper
purpose. The human face is both a medium and a mask; it both reveals
and covers the personality behind. It is more the mask and less the
medium when the personality is consciously facing the world. A portrait
that is a good likeness is, thus, often a meaningless or misleading
picture of the personality, because it presents that personality when
carefully posed for conscious inspection. On the other hand, a portrait
that is hardly recognizable by those who know best, and least, the
person it purports to portray, may be in fact a true, a profound, a
perfect likeness--a faithful reproduction of the face as a medium, with
the mask discarded. The problem the painter attempts, the problem
genius occasionally solves but mere talent rarely, and then imperfectly,
is to combine the medium and the mask--to paint the mask so
transparently that the medium, the real face, shows through; yet not so
transparently that eyes which demand a "speaking likeness" are
disappointed.
Neva, taught by Raphael to face and wrestle with that problem, was in
this secret unfinished portrait striving for his "living likeness" only.
She had learned that painting the "speaking likeness" is an unimportant
matter to the artist as artist--however important it may be to him as
seeker of profitable orders or of fame's brassy acclaim so vulgar yet so
sweet. She was not seeking fame, she was not dependent upon
commissions; she was free to grapple the ultimate mystery of art. And
this attempt to fix Raphael, the beautiful-ugly, lofty-low, fine-coarse,
kind-cruel personality that walked the earth behind that
gorgeous-grotesque external of his, was her first essay.
"All things to all men--and all women, like the genius that he is," said
Narcisse, half to herself. Then to Neva, "What does _he_ think of it?"
"He hasn't seen it.... I doubt if I'll ever show it to him--or to
anybody, when it's finished."
"It does threaten to be an intrusion on his right of privacy," said
Narcisse. "No, he's not attracting you in the least as a man."