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hung any more for a sheep than you can for a lamb. No one can prevent you from giving me
that check. You're the city treasurer. Once I have that I can see my way out of this, and I'll pay it
all back to you next week or the week after--this panic is sure to end in that time. With that put
back in the treasury we can see them about the five hundred thousand a little later. In three
months, or less, I can fix it so that you can put that back. As a matter of fact, I can do it in fifteen
days once I am on my feet again. Time is all I want. You won't have lost your holdings and
nobody will cause you any trouble if you put the money back. They don't care to risk a scandal
any more than you do. Now what'll you do, George? Mollenhauer can't stop you from doing this
any more than I can make you. Your life is in your own hands. What will you do?"
Stener stood there ridiculously meditating when, as a matter of fact, his very financial blood was
oozing away. Yet he was afraid to act. He was afraid of Mollenhauer, afraid of Cowperwood,
afraid of life and of himself. The thought of panic, loss, was not so much a definite thing
connected with his own property, his money, as it was with his social and political standing in
the community. Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly developed. They
do not know what it means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which releases the sources
of social action-- its medium of exchange. They want money, but not for money's sake. They
want it for what it will buy in the way of simple comforts, whereas the financier wants it for what
it will control--for what it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power. Cowperwood wanted
money in that way; Stener not. That was why he had been so ready to let Cowperwood act for
him; and now, when he should have seen more clearly than ever the significance of what
Cowperwood was proposing, he was frightened and his reason obscured by such things as
Mollenhauer's probable opposition and rage, Cowperwood's possible failure, his own inability to
face a real crisis. Cowperwood's innate financial ability did not reassure Stener in this hour. The
banker was too young, too new. Mollenhauer was older, richer. So was Simpson; so was Butler.
These men, with their wealth, represented the big forces, the big standards in his world. And
besides, did not Cowperwood himself confess that he was in great danger--that he was in a
corner. That was the worst possible confession to make to Stener--although under the
circumstances it was the only one that could be made--for he had no courage to face danger.
So it was that now, Stener stood by Cowperwood meditating--pale, flaccid; unable to see the
main line of his interests quickly, unable to follow it definitely, surely, vigorously--while they
drove to his office. Cowperwood entered it with him for the sake of continuing his plea.
"Well, George," he said earnestly, "I wish you'd tell me. Time's short. We haven't a moment to
lose. Give me the money, won't you, and I'll get out of this quick. We haven't a moment, I tell
you. Don't let those people frighten you off. They're playing their own little game; you play
yours."
"I can't, Frank," said Stener, finally, very weakly, his sense of his own financial future, overcome
for the time being by the thought of Mollenhauer's hard, controlling face. "I'll have to think. I can't
do it right now. Strobik just left me before I saw you, and--"
"Good God, George," exclaimed Cowperwood, scornfully, "don't talk about Strobik! What's he
got to do with it? Think of yourself. Think of where you will be. It's your future--not Strobik's--that
you have to think of."
"I know, Frank," persisted Stener, weakly; "but, really, I don't see how I can. Honestly I don't.
You say yourself you're not sure whether you can come out of things all right, and three
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