He sat a second in his cab, motionless, the obsequious smile still stencilled on his flushed face; then the flush darkened; he got out of his cab and, bidding the man wait, rang at the house of Ruthven.
Admitted, it was a long while before he was asked to mount the carved stairway of stone.

And when he did, on every step, hand on the bronze rail, he had the same curious sense of occult resistance to his physical progress; the same instinct of a new element arising into the scheme of things the properties of which he felt a sudden fierce desire to test and comprehend.
Ruthven in a lounging suit of lilac silk, sashed in with flexible silver, stood with his back to the door as Neergard was announced; and even after he was announced Ruthven took his time to turn and stare and nod with a deliberate negligence that accented the affront.
Neergard sat down; Ruthven gazed out of the window, then, soft thumbs hooked in his sash, turned leisurely in impudent interrogation.
"What the hell is the matter with you ?" asked Neergard, for the subtle something he had been encountering all day had suddenly seemed to wall him out of all he had conquered, forcing him back into the simpler sordid territory where ways and modes of speech were more familiar to him--where the spontaneous crudity of expression belonged among the husks of all he had supposed discarded for ever.
"Really," observed Ruthven, staring at the seated man, "I scarcely understand your remark." "Well, you'll understand it perhaps when I choose to explain it," said Neergard.

"I see there's some trouble somewhere.

What is it?
What's the matter with Orchil, and that hatchet-faced beagle-pup, Mottly?
_Is_ there anything the matter, Jack ?" "Nothing important," said Ruthven with an intonation which troubled Neergard.

"Did you come here to--ah--ask anything of me?
Very glad to do anything, I'm sure." "Are you?
Well, then, I want a card to the Orchils'." Ruthven raised his brows slightly; and Neergard waited, then repeated his demand.
Ruthven began to explain, rather languidly, that it was impossible; but--"I want it," insisted the other doggedly.
"I can't be of any service to you in this instance." "Oh, yes, I think you can.