"I'll shake down Quarrier, though! I'll make him pay for his treachery--scaring me out of Amalgamated! That will be restitution, not extortion!" He was the angrier because he had been for days screwing up his courage to the point of seeking Quarrier face to face.

He had not wished to do it; the scene, and his own attitude in it, could only be repugnant to him, although he continually explained to himself that it was restitution, not extortion.
But whatever it was, he didn't like to figure in it, and he had hung back as long as circumstances permitted.

But his new lodgings and his new friends were expensive; and Plank, he supposed, was off somewhere fishing; so he hung on as long as it was possible; then, exasperated by necessity, started for Quarrier's office, only to miss him by a few seconds because he was fool enough to waste his temper and his opportunity in making an enemy out of a friend! "Oh," he groaned, "what an ass I am!" And he got out of his cab in front of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.
The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean fashion.

There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy, Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.
All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.
Yet there was something about it all--about the bluish silvery half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid in her flamboyant cap and apron--that arrested attention and fixed it.
The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs.

There was nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains were drawn over the lace window hangings; no shadows anywhere, no half-lights.