“Of course, I came to ask for the loan, and not specially to justify it,” he said, in mild irony which was quite lost on the philosopher in the president’s chair.  “I wasn’t sure just how you would regard it if you should know the object for which we are borrowing, and this high sense of personal honor you speak of impelled me to be altogether frank with you.”

“Quite right; you were quite right, Mr. Gordon,” said the banker urbanely.  “You are young in business, but you have learned the first lesson in the book of success—­to be perfectly open and outspoken with your banker.  As I have said, the venality of these men with whom you are dealing is most deplorable, but....”

There was some further glozing over of the putrid fact, a good bit of it, and Tom sat back in his chair and listened, outwardly respectful, inwardly hot-hearted and contemptuous.  Was this smooth-spoken, oracular prince of the market-place a predetermined hypocrite, shaping his words to fit the money-gathering end without regard to their demoralizing effect?  Or was he only a subconscious Pharisee, self-deceived and complacent?  Tom’s thought ran lightning-like over the long list of the Vancourt Hennikers:  men of the business world successful to the Croesus mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and hospitals, gift-givers to their fellow men, irreproachable in private life, and yet apparently stone blind on the side of the larger equities.  Could it be possible that such men deliberately admitted and accepted the double standard in morals?  It seemed fairly incredible, and yet their lives appeared to proclaim it.

When the president had finished his apology for those who bow the head in the house of Rimmon, Tom rose to take his bit of approved paper around to the cashier’s window.  The bridge was built, and he meant to cross it; but he was honest enough, or blunt enough, to give his own point of view in a crisp sentence or two.

“I wish I could look at it in some such way as you do, Mr. Henniker, but I can’t,” he objected.  “To me it is just plain bribery; the corrupting of officials who have sworn, among other things, to administer their offices honestly.  I’m immoral, or unmoral, enough to yield to the apparent necessity, but it is quite without prejudice to a firm conviction that I am no better than the men I am going to purchase.”

Having obtained the sinews of war, he kept the appointment with Norman, and their joint discussion of the business situation made him too late for the early dinner at Woodlawn.  To complete the delay, the evening train lost half an hour with a hot box at a point a mile short of Gordonia.  Two things came of these combined time-killings:  a man in a slouched hat and the brown jeans of the mountaineers, who had been watching the Woodlawn gates since dusk from his hiding-place behind the field wall across the pike, got up stiffly and went away; and Tom reached home just in time to intercept Ardea on the steps of the picturesque veranda.