To keep him his employers had been forced to raise his salary, and to do much more than that, for money didn't appeal to him then.

They had given him more important work--"job after job, and Joe made good." The climax of this rising had come one night in the rooms they shared, when Joe told his friend he had made up his mind to set up an office of his own, though he was only twenty-nine.
"And he offered me a partnership." The big man's voice was husky now, as, in a little outburst with a good deal of bitterness in it, he spoke of the glory of the work of which he and Joe had once been a part.

He seemed appealing to Joe's wife to see, for God's sake, what it was in Joe that had been lost.

Then he stopped and frowned and stared at her.
"Oh, what's the use ?" he muttered.

But Ethel's voice was sharp and clear: "Oh, if you only knew," she cried, "how much good this is doing! I won't stop to explain but--please--go on!" Her brown eyes threw him a fierce appeal.