On the heels of the Ames reception surged the full flood of the winter's social orgy. Early in November Kathleen Ames was duly presented. The occasion was made one of such stupendous display that Mrs. Hawley-Crowles first gasped, then shivered with apprehension, lest she be unable to outdo it. She went home from it in a somewhat chastened frame of mind, and sat down at her escritoire to make calculations. Could she on her meager annual income of one hundred and fifty thousand hope to meet the Ames millions? She had already allowed that her wardrobe would cost not less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year, to say nothing of the additional expense of properly dressing Carmen. But she now saw that this amount was hopelessly inadequate. She therefore increased the figure to seventy-five thousand. But that took half of her income. Could she maintain her city home, entertain in the style now demanded by her social position, and spend her summers at Newport, as she had planned? Clearly, not on that amount. No, her income would not suffice; she would be obliged to draw on the principal until Carmen could be married off to some millionaire, or until her own father died. Oh? if he would only terminate his useless existence soon!

But, in lieu of that delayed desideratum, some expedient must be devised at once. She thought of the Beaubien. That obscure, retiring woman was annually making her millions. A tip now and then from her, a word of advice regarding the market, and her own limited income would expand accordingly. She had not seen the Beaubien since becoming a member of Holy Saints. But on that day, and again, two months later, when the splendid altar to the late lamented and patriotic citizen, the Honorable James Hawley-Crowles, was dedicated, she had marked the woman, heavily veiled, sitting alone in the rear of the great church. What had brought her there? she wondered. She had shuddered as she thought the tall, black-robed figure typified an ominous shadow falling athwart her own foolish existence.

But there was no doubt of Carmen's hold on the strange, tarnished woman. And so, smothering her doubts and pocketing her pride, she again sought the Beaubien, ostensibly in regard to Carmen's forthcoming debut; and then, very adroitly and off-handedly, she brought up the subject of investments, alleging that the added burden of the young girl now rendered it necessary to increase the rate of interest which her securities were yielding.

The Beaubien proved herself the soul of candor and generosity. Not only did she point out to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles how her modest income might be quadrupled, but she even offered, in such a way as to make it utterly impossible for that lady to take offense, to lend her whatever amount she might need, at any time, to further Carmen's social conquest. And during the conversation she announced that she herself was acting on a suggestion dropped by the great financier, Ames, and was buying certain stocks now being offered by a coming power in world finance, Mr. Philip O. Ketchim.

Why, to be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had heard of this man! Was he not promoting a company in which her sister's husband, and the girl herself, were interested? And if such investments were good enough for a magnate of Ames's standing, they certainly were good enough for her. She would see Mr. Ketchim at once. Indeed, why had she not thought of this before! She would get Carmen to hypothecate her own interest in this new company, if necessary. That interest of itself was worth a fortune.

Quite true. And if Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and Carmen so desired, the Beaubien would advance them whatever they might need on that security alone. Or, she would take the personal notes of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles—"For, you know, my dear," she said sweetly, "when your father passes away you are going to be very well off, indeed, and I can afford to discount that inevitable event somewhat, can I not?" And she not only could, but did.

Then Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soared into the empyrean, and this self-absorbed woman, who never in her life had earned the equivalent of a single day's food, launched the sweet, white-souled girl of the tropics upon the oozy waters of New York society with such eclat that the Sunday newspapers devoted a whole page, profusely illustrated, to the gorgeous event and dilated with much extravagance of expression upon the charms of the little Inca princess, and upon the very important and gratifying fact that the three hundred fashionable guests present displayed jewels to the value of not less than ten million dollars.

The function took the form of a musicale, in which Carmen's rich voice was first made known to the beau monde. The girl instantly swept her auditors from their feet. The splendid pipe-organ, which Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had hurriedly installed for the occasion, became a thing inspired under her deft touch. It seemed in that garish display of worldliness to voice her soul's purity, its wonder, its astonishment, its lament over the vacuities of this highest type of human society, its ominous threats of thundered denunciation on the day when her tongue should be loosed and the present mesmeric spell broken—for she was under a spell, even that of this new world of tinsel and material veneer.

The decrepit old Mrs. Gannette wept on Carmen's shoulder, and went home vowing that she would be a better woman and cut out her night-cap of Scotch-and-soda. Others crowded about the girl and showered their fulsome praise upon her. But not so Mrs. Ames and her daughter Kathleen. They stared at the lovely debutante with wonder and chagrin written legibly upon their bepowdered visages. And before the close of the function Kathleen had become so angrily jealous that she was grossly rude to Carmen when she bade her good night. For her own feeble light had been drowned in the powerful radiance of the girl from Simiti. And from that moment the assassination of the character of the little Inca princess was decreed.

But, what with incessant striving to adapt herself to her environment, that she might search its farthest nook and angle; what with ceaseless efforts to check her almost momentary impulse to cry out against the vulgar display of modernity and the vicious inequity of privilege which she saw on every hand; what with her purity of thought; her rare ideals and selfless motives; her boundless love for humanity; and her passionate desire to so live her "message" that all the world might see and light their lamps at the torch of her burning love for God and her fellow-men, Carmen found her days a paradox, in that they were literally full of emptiness. After her debut, event followed event in the social life of the now thoroughly gay metropolis, and the poor child found herself hustled home from one function, only to change her attire and hurry again, weary of spirit, into the waiting car, to be whisked off to another equally vapid. It seemed to the bewildered girl that she would never learn what was de rigueur; what conventions must be observed at one social event, but amended at another. Her tight gowns and limb-hampering skirts typified the soul-limitation of her tinsel, environment; her high-heeled shoes were exquisite torture; and her corsets, which her French maid drew until the poor girl gasped for air, seemed to her the cruellest device ever fashioned by the vacuous, enslaved human mind. Frequently she changed her clothing completely three and four times a day to meet her social demands. Night became day; and she had to learn to sleep until noon. She found no time for study; none even for reading. And conversation, such as was indulged under the Hawley-Crowles roof, was confined to insipid society happenings, with frequent sprinklings of racy items anent divorce, scandal, murder, or the debauch of manhood. From this she drew more and more aloof and became daily quieter.

It was seldom, too, that she could escape from the jaded circle of society revelers long enough to spend a quiet hour with the Beaubien. But when she could, she would open the reservoirs of her soul and give full vent to her pent-up emotions. "Oh," she would often exclaim, as she sat at the feet of the Beaubien in the quiet of the darkened music room, and gazed into the crackling fire, "how can they—how can they!"

Then the Beaubien would pat her soft, glowing cheek and murmur, "Wait, dearie, wait." And the tired girl would sigh and close her eyes and dream of the quiet of little Simiti and of the dear ones there from whom she now heard no word, and yet whom she might not seek, because of the war which raged about her lowly birthplace.

The gay season was hardly a month advanced when Mrs. Ames angrily admitted to herself that her own crown was in gravest danger. The South American girl—and because of her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her blase sister—had completely captured New York's conspicuous circle. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles apparently did not lack for funds, but entertained with a display of reckless disregard for expense, and a carelessness of critical comment, that stirred the city to its depths and aroused expressions of wonder and admiration on every hand. The newspapers were full of her and her charming ward. Surely, if the girl's social prestige continued to soar, the Ames family soon would be relegated to the social "has-beens." And Mrs. Ames and her haughty daughter held many a serious conference over their dubious prospects.

Ames himself chuckled. Night after night, when the Beaubien's dinner guests had dispersed, he would linger to discuss the social war now in full progress, and to exchange with her witty comments on the successes of the combatants. One night he announced, "Lafelle is in England; and when he returns he is coming by way of the West Indies. I shall cable him to stop for a week at Cartagena, to see Wenceslas on a little matter of business for me."

The Beaubien smiled her comprehension. "Mrs. Hawley-Crowles has become nicely enmeshed in his net," she returned. "The altar to friend Jim is a beauty. Also, I hear that she is going to finance Ketchim's mining company in Colombia."

"Fine!" said Ames. "I learned to-day that Ketchim's engineer, Harris, has returned to the States. Couldn't get up the Magdalena river, on account of the fighting. There will be nothing doing there for a year yet."

"Just as well," commented the Beaubien. Then abruptly—"By the way, I now hold Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's notes to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I want you to buy them from me and be ready to turn the screws when I tell you."

Ames roared with laughter. "Shrewd girl!" he exclaimed, pinching her cheek. "All right. I'll take them off your hands to-morrow. And by the way, I must meet this Carmen."

"You let her alone," said the Beaubien quickly in a low voice.

Ames wondered vaguely what she meant.

* * * * *

The inauguration of the Grand Opera season opened to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles another avenue for her astonishing social activities. With rare shrewdness she had contrived to outwit Mrs. Ames and secure the center box in the "golden horseshoe" at the Metropolitan. There, like a gaudy garden spider in its glittering web, she sat on the opening night, with her rapt protegee at her side, and sent her insolent challenge broadcast. Multimillionaires and their haughty, full-toileted dames were ranged on either side of her, brewers and packers, distillers and patent medicine concoctors, railroad magnates and Board of Trade plungers, some under indictment, others under the shadow of death, all under the mesmeric charm of gold. In the box at her left sat the Ames family, with their newly arrived guests, the Dowager Duchess of Altern and her son. Though inwardly boiling, Mrs. Ames was smiling and affable when she exchanged calls with the gorgeous occupants of the Hawley-Crowles box.

"So chawmed to meet you," murmured the heir of Altern, a callow youth of twenty-three, bowing over the dainty, gloved hand of Carmen. Then, as he adjusted his monocle and fixed his jaded eyes upon the fresh young girl, "Bah Jove!"

The gigantic form of Ames wedged in between the young man and Carmen. "I've heard a lot about you," he said genially, in a heavy voice that harmonized well with his huge frame; "but we haven't had an opportunity to get acquainted until to-night."

For some moments he stood holding her hand and looking steadily at her. The girl gazed up at him with her trustful brown eyes alight, and a smile playing about her mouth. "My, but you are big!" she naively exclaimed.

While she chatted brightly Ames held her hand and laughed at her frank, often witty, remarks. But then a curious, eager look came into his face, and he became quiet and reflective. He seemed unable to take his eyes from her. And when the girl gently drew her hand from his he laughed again, nervously.

"I—I know something about Colombia," he said, "and speak the language a bit. We'll have to get together often, so's I can brush up."

Then, apparently noticing Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister for the first time—"Oh, so glad to see you both! Camorso's in fine voice to-night, eh?"

He wheeled about and stood again looking at Carmen, until she blushed under his close gaze and turned her head away. Then he went back to his box. But throughout the evening, whenever the girl looked in the direction of the Ames family, she met the steady, piercing gaze of the man's keen gray eyes. And they seemed to her like sharp steel points, cutting into the portals of her soul.

Night after night during the long season Carmen sat in the box and studied the operas that were produced on the boards before her wondering gaze. Always Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was with her. And generally, too, the young heir of Altern was there, occupying the chair next to the girl—which was quite as the solicitous Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had planned.

"Aw—deucedly fine show to-night, Miss Carmen," the youth ventured one evening, as he took his accustomed place close to her.

"The music is always beautiful," the girl responded. "But the play, like most of Grand Opera, is drawn from the darkest side of human life. It is a sordid picture of licentiousness and cruelty. Only for its setting in wonderful music, Grand Opera is generally such a depiction of sex-passion, of lust and murder, that it would not be permitted on the stage. A few years from now people will be horrified to remember that the preceding generation reveled in such blood scenes—just as we now speak with horror of the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome."

The young man regarded her uncertainly. "But—aw—Miss Carmen," he hazarded, "we must be true to life, you know!" Having delivered himself of this oracular statement, the youth adjusted his monocle and settled back as if he had given finality to a weighty argument.

The girl looked at him pityingly. "You voice the cant of the modern writer, 'true lo life.' True to the horrible, human sense of life, that looks no higher than the lust of blood, and is satisfied with it, I admit. True to the unreal, temporal sense of existence, that is here to-day, and to-morrow has gone out in the agony of self-imposed suffering and death. True to that awful, false sense of life which we must put off if we would ever rise into the consciousness of real life, I grant you. But the production of these horrors on the stage, even in a framework of marvelous music, serves only to hold before us the awful models from which we must turn if we would hew out a better existence. Are you the better for seeing an exhibition of wanton murder on the stage, even though the participants wondrously sing their words of vengeance and passion?"

"But—aw—they serve as warnings; they show us the things we ought not to do, don't you know."

She smiled. "The sculptor who would chisel a beautiful form, does he set before him the misshapen body of a hunchback, in order that he may see what not to carve?" she asked. "And we who would transform the human sense of life into one of freedom from evil, can we build a perfect structure with such grewsome models as this before us? You don't see it now," she sighed; "you are in the world, and of it; and the world is deeply under the mesmeric belief of evil as a stern reality. But the day is coming when our musicians and authors will turn from such base material as this to nobler themes—themes which will excite our wonder and admiration, and stimulate the desire for purity of thought and deed—themes that will be beacon lights, and true guides. You don't understand. But you will, some day."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles frowned heavily as she listened to this conversation, and she drew a sigh of relief when Carmen, sensing the futility of any attempt to impress her thought upon the young man, turned to topics which he could discuss with some degree of intelligence.

Late in the evening Ames dropped in and came directly to the Hawley-Crowles box. He brought a huge box of imported candy and a gorgeous bouquet of orchids, which he presented to Carmen. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles beamed upon him like the effulgent midday sun.

"Kathleen wants you, Reggy," Ames abruptly announced to the young man, whose lips were molding into a pout. "Little gathering up at the house. Take my car." His huge bulk loomed over the younger man like a mountain as he took him by the shoulders and turned him toward the exit.

"But I wish to see the opera!" protested the youth, with a vain show of resistance.

Ames said nothing; but his domineering personality forced the boy out of the box and into the corridor.

"But—Uncle Wilton—!"

Ames laughed curtly. Then he took the seat which his evicted nephew had vacated, and bent over Carmen. With a final hopeless survey of the situation, Reginald turned and descended to the cloak room, muttering dire but futile threats against his irresistible relative.

"Now, little girl!" Ames's manner unconsciously assumed an air of patronage. "This is the first real opportunity I've had to talk with you. Tell me, what do you think of New York?"

Carmen smiled up at him. "Well," she began uncertainly, "since I have thawed out, or perhaps have become more accustomed to the cold, I have begun to make mental notes. Already I have thousands of them. But they are not yet classified, and so I can hardly answer your question, Mr. Ames. But I am sure of one thing, and that is that for the first few months I was here I was too cold to even think!"

Ames laughed. "Yes," he agreed, "the change from the tropics was somewhat abrupt. But, aside from the climate?"

"It is like awaking from a deep sleep," answered Carmen meditatively. "In Simiti we dream our lives away. In New York all is action; loud words; harsh commands; hurry; rush; endeavor, terrible, materialistic endeavor! Every person I see seems to be going somewhere. He may not know where he is going—but he is on the way. He may not know why he is going—but he must not be stopped. He has so few years to live; and he must pile up money before he goes. He must own an automobile; he must do certain things which his more fortunate neighbor does, before his little flame of life goes out and darkness falls upon him. I sometimes think that people here are trying to get away from themselves, but they don't know it. I think they come to the opera because they crave any sort of diversion that will make them forget themselves for a few moments, don't you?"

"H'm! well, I can't say," was Ames's meaningless reply, as he sat regarding the girl curiously.

"And," she continued, as if pleased to have an auditor who at least pretended to understand her, "the thing that now strikes me most forcibly is the great confusion that prevails here in everything, in your government, in your laws, in your business, in your society, and, in particular, in your religion. Why, in that you have hundreds of sects claiming a monopoly of truth; you have hundreds of churches, hundreds of religious or theological beliefs, hundreds of differing concepts of God—but you get nowhere! Why, it has come to such a pass that, if Jesus were to appear physically on earth to-day, I am sure he would be evicted from his own Church!"

"Well, yes, I guess that's so," commented Ames, quite at sea in such conversation. "But we solid business men have found that religious emotion never gets a man anywhere. It's weakening. Makes a man effeminate, and utterly unfits him for business. I wouldn't have a man in my employ who was a religious enthusiast."

"But Jesus was a religious enthusiast," she protested.

"I doubt if there ever was such a person," he answered dryly.

"Why, the Bible—"

"Is the most unfortunate and most misunderstood piece of literature ever written," he interrupted. "And the Church, well, I regard it as the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race."

"You mean that to apply to every church?"

"It fits them all."

She studied his face for a few moments. He returned her glance as steadily. But their thoughts were running in widely divergent channels. The conversational topic of the moment had no interest whatsoever for the man. But this brilliant, sparkling girl—there was something in those dark eyes, that soft voice, that brown hair—by what anomaly did this beautiful creature come out of desolate, mediaeval Simiti?

"Mr. Ames, you do not know what religion is."

"No? Well, and what is it?"

"It is that which binds us to God."

"And that?"

"Love."

No, he knew not the meaning of the word. Or—wait—did he? His thought broke restraint and flew wildly back—but he caught it, and rudely forced it into its wonted channel. But, did he love his fellow-men? Certainly not! What would that profit him in dollars and cents? Did he love his wife? his children? The thought brought a cynical laugh to his lips. Carmen looked up at him wonderingly. "You will have to, you know," she said quixotically.

Then she reached out a hand and laid it on his. He looked down at it, so soft, so white, so small, and he contrasted it with the huge, hairy bulk of his own. This little girl was drawing him. He felt it, felt himself yielding. He was beginning to look beyond the beautiful features, the rare grace and charm of physical personality, which had at first attracted only the baser qualities of his nature, and was seeing glimpses of a spiritual something which lay back of all that—infinitely more beautiful, unspeakably richer, divine, sacred, untouchable.

"Of course you will attend the Charity Ball, Mr. Ames?" The thin voice of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles jarred upon his ear like a shrill discord. Ames turned savagely upon her. Then he quickly found himself again.

"No," he laughed harshly. "But I shall be represented by my family. And you?" He looked at Carmen.

"Most assuredly," returned Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, taking the query to herself. "That is, if my French dressmaker does not fail me. She is dreadfully exasperating! What will Mrs. Ames wear, do you think?" She arched her brows at him as she propounded this innocent question.

Ames chuckled. "I'll tell you what it is this year," he sagely replied. "It's diamonds in the heels!" He gave a sententious nod of his head. "I overheard Kathleen and her mother discussing plans. And—do you want to know next season's innovation? By George! I'm a regular spy." He stopped and laughed heartily at his own treasonable deceit.

"Yes! yes!" whispered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles eagerly, as she drew her chair closer. "What is it?"

"One condition," replied Ames, holding up a thick finger.

"Of course! Anything!" returned the grasping woman.

"Well, I want to get better acquainted with your charming ward," he whispered.

"Of course; and I want you to know her better. That can be arranged very easily. Now what's the innovation?"

"Colored wigs," said Ames, with a knowing look.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles settled back with a smile of supreme satisfaction. She would boldly anticipate next season at the coming Charity Ball. Then, leaning over toward Ames, she laid her fan upon his arm. "Can't you manage to come and see us some time, my sister and Carmen? Any time," she added. "Just call me up a little in advance."

The blare of trumpets and the crash of drums drew their attention again to the stage. Ames rose and bowed his departure. A business associate in a distant box had beckoned him. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles dismissed him reluctantly; then turned her wandering attention to the play.

But Carmen sat shrouded in thoughts that were not stimulated by the puppet-show before her. The tenor shrieked out his tender passion, and the tubby soprano sank into his inadequate arms with languishing sighs. Carmen heeded not their stage amours. She saw in the glare before her the care-lined face of the priest of Simiti; she saw the grim features and set jaw of her beloved, black-faced Rosendo, as he led her through the dripping jungle; she saw Anita's blind, helpless babe; she saw the little newsboy of Cartagena; and her heart welled with a great love for them all; and she buried her face in her hands and wept softly.



CHAPTER 15

"Wait, my little princess, wait," the Beaubien had said, when Carmen, her eyes flowing and her lips quivering, had again thrown herself into that strange woman's arms and poured out her heart's surcease. "It will not be long now. I think I see the clouds forming."

"I want to go back to Simiti, to Padre Jose, to my home," wailed the girl. "I don't understand the ways and the thoughts of these people. They don't know God—they don't know what love is—they don't know anything but money, and clothes, and sin, and death. When I am with them I gasp, I choke—"

"Yes, dearest, I understand," murmured the woman softly, as she stroked the brown head nestling upon her shoulder. "It is social asphyxia. And many even of the 'four hundred' are suffering from the same disease; but they would die rather than admit it. Poor, blind fools!"

To no one could the attraction which had drawn Carmen and the Beaubien together seem stranger, more inexplicable, than to that lone woman herself. Yet it existed, irresistible. And both acknowledged it, nor would have had it otherwise. To Carmen, the Beaubien was a sympathetic confidante and a wise counselor. The girl knew nothing of the woman's past or present life. She tried to see in her only the reality which she sought in every individual—the reality which she felt that Jesus must have seen clearly back of every frail mortal concept of humanity. And in doing this, who knows?—she may have transformed the sordid, soiled woman of the world into something more than a broken semblance of the image of God. To the Beaubien, this rare child, the symbol of love, of purity, had become a divine talisman, touching a dead soul into a sense of life before unknown. If Carmen leaned upon her, she, on the other hand, bent daily closer to the beautiful girl; opened her slowly warming heart daily wider to her; twined her lonely arms daily closer about the radiant creature who had come so unexpectedly into her empty, sinful life.

"But, mother dear"—the Beaubien had long since begged Carmen always to address her thus when they were sharing alone these hours of confidence—"they will not listen to my message! They laugh and jest about real things!"

"True, dearie. And yet you tell me that the Bible says wise men laughed at the great teacher, Jesus."

"Oh, yes! And his message—oh, mother dearest, his message would have helped them so, if they had only accepted it! It would have changed their lives, healed their diseases, and saved them from death. And my message"—her lip quivered—"my message is only his—it is the message of love. But they won't let me tell it."

"Then, sweet, live it. They can not prevent that, can they?"

"I do live it. But—I am so out of place among them. They scoff at real things. They mock all that is noble. Their talk is so coarse, so low and degraded. They have no culture. They worship money. They don't know what miserable failures they all are. And Mrs. Hawley-Crowles—"

The Beaubien's jaw set. "The social cormorant!" she muttered.

"—she will not let me speak of God in her house. She told me to keep my views to myself and never voice them to her friends. And she says I must marry either a millionaire or a foreign noble."

"Humph! And become a snobbish expatriate! Marry a decadent count, and then shake the dust of this democratic country from your feet forever! Go to London or Paris or Vienna, and wear tiaras and coronets, and speak of disgraceful, boorish America in hushed whispers! The empty-headed fool! She forgets that the tarnished name she bears was dragged up out of the ruck of the impecunious by me when I received Jim Crowles into my house! And that I gave him what little gloss he was able to take on!"

"Mother dear—I would leave them—only, they need love, oh, so much!"

The Beaubien strained her to her bosom. "They need you, dearie; they little realize how they need you! I, myself, did not know until you came to me. There, I didn't mean to let those tears get away from me." She laughed softly as Carmen looked up anxiously into her face. "Now come," she went on brightly, "we must plan for the Charity Ball."

A look of pain swept over the girl's face. The Beaubien bent and kissed her. "Wait, dearie," she repeated. "You will not leave society voluntarily. Keep your light burning. They can not extinguish it. They will light their own lamps at yours—or they will thrust you from their doors. And then," she muttered, as her teeth snapped together, "you will come to me."

Close on the heels of the opera season followed the Charity Ball, the Horse Show, and the Fashion Show in rapid succession, with numberless receptions, formal parties, and nondescript social junketings interspersed. During these fleeting hours of splash and glitter Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the air with the sang-froid and exhilaration of an expert aviator. Backed by the Beaubien millions, and with the wonderful South American girl always at her right hand, the worldly ambitious woman swept everything before her, cut a social swath far wider than the glowering Mrs. Ames had ever attempted, and marched straight to the goal of social leadership, almost without interference. She had apparently achieved other successes, too, of the first importance. She had secured the assistance of Ames himself in matters pertaining to her finances; and the Beaubien was actively cooeperating with her in the social advancement of Carmen. It is true, she gasped whenever her thought wandered to her notes which the Beaubien held, notes which demanded every penny of her principal as collateral. And she often meditated very soberly over the large sums which she had put into the purchase of Simiti stock, at the whispered suggestions of Ames, and under the irresistibly pious and persuasive eloquence of Philip O. Ketchim, now president of that flourishing but as yet non-productive company. But then, one day, an idea occurred to her, and she forthwith summoned Carmen into the library.

"You see, my dear," she said, after expounding to the girl certain of her thoughts anent the famous mine, "I do not want Mr. Ketchim to have any claim upon you for the expense which he incurred on account of your six months in the Elwin school. That thought, as well as others relating to your complete protection, makes it seem advisable that you transfer to me your share in the mine, or in the Simiti company. See, I give you a receipt for the same, showing that you have done this as part payment for the great expense to which I have been put in introducing you to society and in providing for your wants here. It is merely formal, of course. And it keeps your share still in our family, of which you are and always will be a member; but yet removes all liability from you. Of course, you know nothing about business matters, and so you must trust me implicitly. Which I am sure you do, in view of what I have done for you, don't you, dear?"

Of course Carmen did; and of course she unhesitatingly transferred her claim on La Libertad to the worthy Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. Whereupon the good woman tenderly kissed the innocent child, and clasped a string of rich pearls about the slender, white neck. And Carmen later told the Beaubien, who said nothing, but frowned darkly as she repeated the tidings over her private wire to J. Wilton Ames. But that priest of finance only chuckled and exclaimed: "Excellent, my dear! Couldn't be better! By the way, I had a cable from Lafelle this morning, from Cartagena. Oh, yes, everything's all right. Good-bye." But the Beaubien hung up the receiver with a presentiment that everything was far from right, despite his bland assurance. And she regretted bitterly now that she had not warned Carmen against this very thing.

The Charity Ball that season was doubtless the most brilliant function of its kind ever held among a people who deny the impossible. The newspapers had long vied with one another in their advertisements and predictions; they afterward strove mightily to outdo themselves in their vivid descriptions of the gorgeous fete. The decorative effects far excelled anything ever attempted in the name of "practical" charity. The display of gowns had never before been even closely approximated. The scintillations from jewels whose value mounted into millions was like the continuous flash of the electric spark. And the huge assemblage embraced the very cream of the nobility, the aristocracy, the rich and exclusive caste of a great people whose Constitution is founded on the equality of men, and who are wont to gather thus annually for a few hours to parade their material vestments and divert their dispirited mentalities under the guise of benefaction to a class for whom they rarely hold a loving thought.

Again the subtle Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had planned and executed a coup. Mrs. Ames had subscribed the munificent sum of twenty-five thousand dollars to charity a week before the ball. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had waited for this. Then she gloated as she telephoned to the various newspaper offices that her subscription would be fifty thousand. Did she give a new note to the Beaubien for this amount? That she did—and she obtained the money on the condition that the little Inca princess should lead the grand march. Of course, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles knew that she must gracefully yield first place to the South American girl; and yet she contrived to score a triumph in apparent defeat. For, stung beyond endurance, Mrs. Ames and her daughter Kathleen at the last moment refused to attend the function, alleging fatigue from a season unusually exacting. The wily Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had previously secured the languid young Duke of Altern as a partner for Carmen—and then was most agreeably thwarted by Ames himself, who, learning that his wife and daughter would not attend, abruptly announced that he himself would lead the march with Carmen.

Why not? Was it not quite proper that the city's leading man of finance should, in the absence of his wife and daughter, and with their full and gratuitous permission—nay, at their urgent request, so it was told—lead with this fair young damsel, this tropical flower, who, as rumor had it, was doubtless a descendant of the royal dwellers in ancient Cuzco?

"Quite proper, O tempora, O mores!" murmured one Amos A. Hitt, erstwhile Presbyterian divine, explorer, and gentleman of leisure, as he settled back in his armchair in the fashionable Weltmore apartments and exhaled a long stream of tobacco smoke through his wide nostrils. "And, if I can procure a ticket, I shall give myself the pleasure of witnessing this sacred spectacle, produced under the deceptive mask of charity," he added.

In vain the Beaubien labored with Ames when she learned of his intention—though she said nothing to Carmen. Ames had yielded to her previously expressed wish that he refrain from calling at the Hawley-Crowles mansion, or attempting to force his attentions upon the young girl. But in this matter he remained characteristically obdurate. And thereby a little rift was started. For the angry Beaubien, striving to shield the innocent girl, had vented her abundant wrath upon the affable Ames, and had concluded her denunciation with a hint of possible exposure of certain dark facts of which she was sole custodian. Ames smiled, bowed, and courteously kissed her hand, as he left her stormy presence; but he did not yield. And Carmen went to the Ball.

Through the perfumed air and the garish light tore the crashing notes of the great band. The loud hum of voices ceased, and all eyes turned to the leaders of the grand march, as they stepped forth at one end of the great auditorium. Then an involuntary murmur arose from the multitude—a murmur of admiration, of astonishment, of envy. The gigantic form of Ames stood like a towering pillar, the embodiment of potential force, the epitome of human power, physical and mental. His massive shoulders were thrown back as if in haughty defiance of comment, critical or commendatory. The smile which flitted about his strong, clean-shaven face bespoke the same caution as the gentle uplifting of a tiger's paw—behind it lay all that was humanly terrible, cunning, heartless, and yet, in a sense, fascinating. His thick, brown hair, scarcely touched with gray, lay about his great head like a lion's mane. He raised a hand and gently pushed it back over the lofty brow. Then he bent and offered an arm to the slender wisp of a girl at his side.

"Good God!" murmured a tall, angular man in the crowd. "Who is she?"

"I don't know, Hitt," replied the friend addressed. "But they say she belongs to the Inca race."

The graceful girl moving by the side of her giant escort seemed like a slender ray of light, a radiant, elfish form, transparent, intangible, gliding softly along with a huge, black shadow. She was simply clad, all in white. About her neck hung a string of pearls, and at her waist she wore the rare orchids which Ames had sent her that afternoon. But no one saw her dress. No one marked the pure simplicity of her attire. The absence of sparkling jewels and resplendent raiment evoked no comment. The multitude saw but her wonderful face; her big eyes, uplifted in trustful innocence to the massive form at her side; her rich brown hair, which glittered like string-gold in the strong light that fell in torrents upon it.

"Hitt, she isn't human! There's a nimbus about her head!"

"I could almost believe it," whispered that gentleman, straining his long neck as she passed before him. "God! has she fallen into Ames's net?"

Immediately behind Carmen and Ames strode the enraptured Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who saw not, neither heard, and who longed for no further taste of heaven than this stupendous triumph which she had won for herself and the girl. Her heavy, unshapely form was squeezed into a marvelous costume of gold brocade. A double ballet ruffle of stiff white tulle encircled it about the hips as a drapery. The bodice was of heavy gold net. A pleated band of pale moire, in a delicate shade of pink, crossed the left shoulder and was caught at the waist in a large rose bow, ambassadorial style. A double necklace of diamonds, one bearing a great pendant of emeralds, and the other an alternation of emeralds and diamonds, encircled her short, thick neck. A diamond coronet fitted well around her wonderful amber-colored wig—for, true to her determination, she had anticipated the now passee Mrs. Ames and had boldly launched the innovation of colored wigs among the smart set. An ivory, hand-painted fan, of great value, dangled from her thick wrist. And, as she lifted her skirts to an unnecessary height, the gaping people caught the glitter of a row of diamonds in each high, gilded heel.

At her side the young Duke of Altern shuffled, his long, thin body curved like a kangaroo, and his monocle bent superciliously upon the mass of common clay about him. "Aw, beastly crush, ye know," he murmured from time to time to the unhearing dame at his right. And then, as she replied not, he fell to wondering if she fully realized who he was.

Around and across the great hall the gorgeous pageant swept. The big-mouthed horns bellowed forth their noisy harmony. In the distant corridors great illuminated fountains softly plashed. At the tables beyond, sedulous, touting waiters were hurriedly extracting corks from frosted bottle necks. The rare porcelain and cut glass shone and glittered in rainbow tints. The revelers waxed increasingly merry and care-free as they lightly discussed poverty over rich viands and sparkling Burgundy. Still further beyond, the massive oak doors, with their leaded-glass panes, shut out the dark night and the bitter blasts of winter. And they shut out, too, another, but none the less unreal, externalization of the mortal thought which has found expression in a social system "too wicked for a smile."

"God, no—I'd get arrested! I can't!"

The frail, hungry woman who stood before the great doors clutched her wretched shawl closer about her thin shoulders. Her teeth chattered as she stood shivering in the chill wind. Then she hurried away.

At the corner of the building the cold blast almost swept her off her feet. A man, dirty and unkempt, who had been waiting in an alley, ran out and seized her.

"I say, Jude, ain't ye goin' in? Git arrested—ye'd spend the night in a warm cell, an' that's better'n our bunk, ain't it?"

"I'm goin' to French Lucy's," the woman whispered hoarsely. "I'm dead beat!"

"Huh! Ye've lost yer looks, Jude, an' ol' Lucy ain't a-goin' to take ye in. We gotta snipe somepin quick—or starve! Look, we'll go down to Mike's place, an' then come back here when it's out, and ye kin pinch a string, or somepin, eh? Gawd, it's cold!"

The woman glanced back at the lights. For a moment she stood listening to the music from within. A sob shook her, and she began to cough violently. The man took her arm, not unkindly; and together they moved away into the night.

* * * * *

"Well, little girl, at last we are alone. Now we can exchange confidences." It was Ames talking. He had, late in the evening, secured seats well hidden behind a mass of palms, and thither had led Carmen. "What do you think of it all? Quite a show, eh? Ever see anything like this in Simiti?"

Carmen looked up at him. She thought him wonderfully handsome. She was glad to get away for a moment from the crowd, from the confusion, and from the unwelcome attentions of the now thoroughly smitten young Duke of Altern.

"No," she finally made answer, "I didn't know there were such things in the world."

Ames laughed pleasantly. How refreshing was this ingenuous girl! And what a discovery for him! A new toy—one that would last a long time. But he must be careful of her.

"Yes," he went on genially, "I'll wager there's millions of dollars' worth of jewelry here to-night."

"Oh!" gasped Carmen. "And are the people going to sell it and give the money to the poor?"

"Sell it! Ha! ha! Well, I should say not!"

"But—this is a—a charity—"

"Oh, I see. Quite so. No, it's the money derived from the sale of tickets that goes to the poor."

"And how much is that?"

"I haven't the slightest idea."

"But—aren't you interested in the poor?"

"Of course, of course," he hastened to assure her, in his easy casual tone.

For a long time the girl sat reflecting, while he studied her, speculating eagerly on her next remark. Then it came abruptly:

"Mr. Ames, I have thought a great deal about it, and I think you people by your charity, such as this, only make more charity necessary. Why don't you do away with poverty altogether?"

"Do away with it? Well, that's quite impossible, you know. 'The poor ye have always with you', eh? You see, I know my Bible."

She threw him a glance of astonishment. He was mocking her! She was deeply serious, for charity to her meant love, and love was all in all.

"No," she finally replied, shaking her head, "you do not know your Bible. It is the poor thought that you have always with you, the thought of separation from good. And that thought becomes manifested outwardly in what is called poverty."

He regarded her quizzically, while a smile played about his mouth.

"Why don't you get at the very root of the trouble, and destroy the poverty-thought, the thought that there can be any separation from God, who is infinite good?" she continued earnestly.

"Well, my dear girl, as for me, I don't know anything about God. As for you, well, you are very innocent in worldly matters. Poverty, like death, is inevitable, you know."

"You are mistaken," she said simply. "Neither is inevitable."

"Well, well," he returned brightly, "that's good news! Then there is no such thing as 'the survival of the fittest,' and the weak needn't necessarily sink, eh?"

She looked him squarely in the eyes. "Do you consider, Mr. Ames, that you have survived as one of the fittest?"

"H'm! Well, now—what would you say about that?"

"I should say decidedly no," was the blunt reply.

A dark shade crossed his face, and he bit his lip. People did not generally talk thus to him. And yet—this wisp of a girl! Pshaw! She was very amusing. And, heavens above! how beautiful, as she sat there beside him, her head erect, and her face delicately flushed. He reached over and took her hand. Instantly she drew it away.

"You are the kind," she went on, "who give money to the poor, and then take it away from them again. All the money which these rich people here to-night are giving to charity has been wrested from the poor. And you give only a part of it back to them, at that. This Ball is just a show, a show of dress and jewels. Why, it only sets an example which makes others unhappy, envious, and discontented. Don't you see that? You ought to."

"My dear little girl," he said in a patronizing tone, "don't you think you are assuming a great deal? I'm sure I'm not half so bad as you paint me."

Carmen smiled. "Well, the money you give away has got to come from some source, hasn't it? And you manipulate the stock market and put through wheat corners and all that, and catch the poor people and take their money from them! Charity is love. But your idea of charity makes me pity you. Up here I find a man can pile up hundreds of millions by stifling competition, by debauching legislatures, by piracy and legalized theft, and then give a tenth of it to found a university, and so atone for his crimes. That is called charity. Oh, I know a lot about such things! I've been studying and thinking a great deal since I came to the United States."

"Have you come with a mission?" he bantered. And there was a touch of aspersion in his voice.

"I've come with a message," she replied eagerly.

"Well," he said sharply, "let me warn and advise you: don't join the ranks of the muck-rakers, as most ambitious reformers with messages do. We've plenty of 'em now. I can tear down as easily as you or anybody else. But to build something better is entirely another matter."

"But, Mr. Ames, I've got something better!"

"Yes?" His tone spoke incredulous irony. "Well, what is it, if I may ask?"

"Love."

"Love, eh? Well, perhaps that's so," he said, bending toward her and again attempting to take her hand.

"I guess," she said, drawing back quickly, "you don't know what love is, do you?"

"No," he whispered softly. "I don't really believe I do. Will you teach me?"

"Of course I will," she said brightly. "But you'll have to live it. And you'll have to do just as I tell you," holding up an admonitory finger.

"I'm yours to command, little woman," he returned in mock seriousness.

"Well," she began very softly, "you must first learn that love is just as much a principle as the Binomial Theorem in algebra. Do you know what that is? And you must apply it just as you would apply any principle, to everything. And, oh, it is important!"

"You sweet little thing," he murmured absently, gazing down into her glowing face. "Who taught you such stuff? Where did you learn it? I wonder—I wonder if you really are a daughter of the Incas."

She leaned back and laughed heartily. "Yes," she said, "I am a princess. Of course! Don't I look like one?"

"You look like—I wonder—pshaw!" he passed his hand across his eyes. "Yes, you certainly are a princess. And—do you know?—I wish I might be your prince."

"Oh, you couldn't! Padre Jose has that honor." But then her bright smile faded, and she looked off wistfully down the long corridor.

"Who is he?" demanded Ames savagely. "I'll send him a challenge to-night!"

"No," she murmured gently, "you can't. He's way down in Simiti. And, oh, he was so good to me! He made me leave that country on account of the war."

The man started slightly. This innocent girl little knew that one of the instigators of that bloody revolution sat there beside her. Then a new thought flashed into his brain. "What is the full name of this priest?" he suddenly asked.

"Jose—Jose de Rincon," she whispered reverently.

Jose de Rincon—of Simiti—whom Wenceslas had made the scapegoat of the revolution! Why, yes, that was the man! And who, according to a recent report from Wenceslas, had been arrested and—

"A—a—where did you say this—this Jose was, little girl?" he asked gently.

"In Simiti," she replied. "He is working out his problem."

His eyes shifted quickly from hers. But he could not hold them away.

"His problem?"

"Yes. You know, he never was a priest at heart. But, though he saw the truth, in part, he was not able to prove it enough to set himself free; and so when I came away he stayed behind to work out his problem. And he will work it all out," she mused abstractedly, looking off into the distance; "he will work it all out and come—to me. I am—I am working with him, now—and for him. And—" her voice dropped to a whisper, "I love him, oh, so much!"

Ames's steely eyes narrowed. His mouth opened; then shut again with a sharp snap. That beautiful creature now belonged to him, and to none other! Were there other claimants, he would crush them without mercy! As for this apostate priest, Jose—humph! if he still lived he should rot the rest of his days in the reeking dungeons of San Fernando!

Carmen looked up. "When he comes to me," she said softly, "we are going to give ourselves to the whole world."

Ames appeared not to hear.

"And—perhaps—perhaps, by that time, you will be—be—"

"Well?" snapped the man, irritated by the return of her thought to himself.

"Different," finished the girl gently.

"Humph! Different, eh?"

"Yes. Perhaps by that time you will—you will love everybody," she murmured. "Perhaps you won't go on piling up big mountains of money that you can't use, and that you won't let anybody else use."

Ames frowned upon her. "Yes?" he said ironically.

"You will know then that Jesus founded his great empire on love. Your empire, you know, is human business. But you will find that such empires crumble and fall. And yours will, like all the rest."

"Say," he exclaimed, turning full upon her and seeming to bear her down by his tremendous personality, "you young and inexperienced reformers might learn a few things, too, if your prejudices could be surmounted. Has it ever occurred to you that we men of business think not so much about accumulating money as about achieving success? Do you suppose you could understand that money-making is but a side issue with us?"

"Achieving success!" she echoed, looking wonderingly at him. "Well—are you—a success?"

He started to reply. Then he checked himself. A flush stole across his face. Then his eyes narrowed.

"Yes," the girl went on, as if in quiet soliloquy, "I suppose you are—a tremendous worldly success. And this Ball—it is a splendid success, too. Thousands of dollars will be raised for the poor. And then, next year, the same thing will have to be done again. Your charities cost you hundreds of millions every year up here. And, meantime, you rich men will go right on making more money at the expense of your fellow-men—and you will give a little of it to the poor when the next Charity Ball comes around. It's like a circle, isn't it?" she said, smiling queerly up at him. "It has no end, you know."

Ames had now decided to swallow his annoyance and meet the girl with the lance of frivolity. "Yes, I guess that's so," he began. "But of course you will admit that the world is slowly getting better, and that world-progress must of necessity be gradual. We can't reform all in a minute, can we?"

She shook her head. "I don't know how fast you might reform if you really, sincerely tried. But I think it would be very fast. And if you, a great, big, powerful man, with the most wonderful opportunities in the world, should really try to be a success, why—well, I'm sure you'd make very rapid progress, and help others like you by setting such a great example. For you are a wonderful man—you really are."

Ames looked at her long and quizzically. What did the girl mean? Then he took her hand, this time without resistance.

"Tell me, little girl—although I know there can be no doubt of it—are you a success?"

She raised her luminous eyes to his. "Yes," she replied simply.

He let fall her hand in astonishment. "Well!" he ejaculated, "would you mind telling me just why?"

She smiled up at him, and her sweet trustfulness drew his sagging heartstrings suddenly taut.

"Because," she said simply, "I strive every moment to 'acquire that mind which was in Christ Jesus.'"

Silence fell upon them. From amusement to wonder, to irritation, to anger, then to astonishment, and a final approximation to something akin to reverent awe had been the swift course of the man's emotions as he sat in this secluded nook beside this strange girl. The poisoned arrows of his worldly thought had broken one by one against the shield of her protecting faith. His badinage had returned to confound himself. The desire to possess had utterly fled before the conviction that such thought was as wildly impossible as iniquitous.

Then he suddenly became conscious that the little body beside him had drawn closer—that it was pressing against him—that a little hand had stolen gently into his—and that a soft voice, soft as the summer winds that sigh among the roses, was floating to his ears.

"To be really great is to be like that wonderful man, Jesus. It is to know that through him the great Christ-principle worked and did those things which the world will not accept, because it thinks them miracles. It is to know that God is love, and to act that knowledge. It is to know that love is the Christ-principle, and that it will destroy every error, every discord, everything that is unlike itself. It is to yield your present false sense of happiness and good to the true sense of God as infinite good. It is to bring every thought into captivity to this Christ-principle, love. It is to stop looking at evil as a reality. It is to let go your hold on it, and let it fade away before the wonderful truth that God is everywhere, and that there isn't anything apart from Him. Won't you try it? You will have to, some day. I have tried it. I know it's true. I've proved it."

* * * * *

How long they sat in the quiet that followed, neither knew. Then the man suffered himself to be led silently back to the ball room again. And when he had recovered and restored his worldly self, the bright little image was no longer at his side.

"Stand here, Jude, an' when they begins to come out to their gasoline carts grab anything ye can, an' git. I'll work over by the door."

The shivering woman crept closer to the curb, and the man slouched back against the wall close to the exit from which the revelers would soon emerge. A distant clock over a jeweler's window chimed the hour of four. A moment later the door opened, and a lackey came out and loudly called the number of the Hawley-Crowles car. That ecstatically happy woman, with Carmen and the obsequious young Duke of Altern, appeared behind him in the flood of light.

As the big car drew softly up, the wretched creature whom the man had called Jude darted from behind it and plunged full at Carmen. But the girl had seen her coming, and she met her with outstretched arm. The glare from the open door fell full upon them.

"Jude!"

"God!" cried the woman. "It's the little kid!"

She turned to flee. Carmen held her. With a quick movement the girl tore the string of pearls from her neck and thrust it into Jude's hand. The latter turned swiftly and darted into the blackness of the street. Then Carmen hurriedly entered the car, followed by her stupefied companions. It had all been done in a moment of time.

"Good heavens!" cried Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, when she had recovered her composure sufficiently to speak. "What does this mean? What did you do?"

But Carmen replied not. And the Duke of Altern rubbed his weak eyes and tried hard to think.



CHAPTER 16

Before Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sought her bed that morning the east was red with the winter sun. "The loss of the pearls is bad enough," she exclaimed in conclusion, glowering over the young girl who sat before her, "for I paid a good three thousand for the string! But, in addition, to scandalize me before the world—oh, how could you? And this unspeakable Jude—and that awful house—heavens, girl! Who would believe your story if it should get out?" The worried woman's face was bathed in cold perspiration.

"But—she saved me from—from that place," protested the harassed Carmen. "She was poor and cold—I could see that. Why should I have things that I don't need when others are starving?"

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles shook her weary head in despair. Her sister, Mrs. Reed, who had sat fixing the girl with her cold eyes throughout the stormy interview following their return from the ball, now offered a suggestion. "The thing to do is to telephone immediately to all the newspapers, and say that her beads were stolen last night."

"But they weren't stolen," asserted the girl. "I gave them to her—"

"Go to your room!" commanded Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, at the limit of her endurance. "And never, under any circumstances, speak of this affair to any one—never!"

The social crown, which had rested none too securely upon the gilded wig of the dynamic Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, had been given a jolt that set it tottering.

* * * * *

It was very clear to Mrs. J. Wilton Ames after the Charity Ball that she was engaged in a warfare to the death, and with the most relentless of enemies. Nothing short of the miraculous could now dethrone the detested Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her beautiful, mysterious ward. She dolefully acknowledged to herself and to the sulking Kathleen that she had been asleep, that she had let her foot slip, and that her own husband's conduct in leading the grand march with Carmen bade fair to give the coup de grace to a social prestige which for many weeks had been decidedly on the wane.

"Mamma, we'll have to think up some new stunts," said the dejected Kathleen over the teacups the noon following the ball. "Why, they've even broken into the front page of the newspapers with a fake jewelry theft! Look, they pretend that the little minx was robbed of her string of pearls last night on leaving the hall. I call that pretty cheap notoriety!"

Mrs. Ames's lip curled in disdain as she read the news item. "An Inca princess, indeed! Nobody knows who she is, nor what! Why doesn't somebody take the trouble to investigate her? They'd probably find her an outcast."

"Couldn't papa look her up?" suggested Kathleen.

Mrs. Ames did not reply. She had no wish to discuss her husband, after the affair of the previous evening. And, even in disregard of that, she would not have gone to him with the matter. For she and her consort, though living under the same roof, nevertheless saw each other but seldom. At times they met in the household elevator; and for the sake of appearances they managed to dine together with Kathleen in a strained, unnatural way two or three times a week, at which times no mention was ever made of the son who had been driven from the parental roof. There were no exchanges of confidences or affection, and Mrs. Ames knew but little of the working of his mentality. She was wholly under the dominance of her masterful husband, merely an accessory to his mode of existence. He used her, as he did countless others, to buttress a certain side of his very complex life. As for assistance in determining Carmen's status, there was none to be obtained from him, strongly attracted by the young girl as he had already shown himself to be. Indeed, she might be grateful if the attachment did not lead to far unhappier consequences!

"Larry Beers said yesterday that he had something new," she replied irrelevantly to Kathleen's question. "He has in tow a Persian dervish, who sticks knives through his mouth, and drinks melted lead, and bites red-hot pokers, and a lot of such things. Larry says he's the most wonderful he's ever seen, and I'm going to have him and a real Hindu swami for next Wednesday evening."

New York's conspicuous set indeed would have languished often but for the social buffoonery of the clever Larry Beers, who devised new diversions and stimulating mental condiments for the jaded brains of that gilded cult. His table ballets, his bizarre parlor circuses, his cunningly devised fads in which he set forth his own inimitable antics, won him the motley and the cap and bells of this tinseled court, and forced him well out into the glare of publicity, which was what he so much desired.

And by that much it made him as dangerous as any stupid anarchist who toils by candle-light over his crude bombs. For by it he taught the great mass of citizenship who still retained their simple ideals of reason and respect that there existed a social caste, worshipers of the golden calf, to whom the simple, humdrum virtues were quite unendurable, and who, utterly devoid of conscience, would quaff champagne and dance on the raw, quivering hearts of their fellow-men with glee, if thereby their jaded appetites for novelty and entertainment might be for the moment appeased.

And so Larry Beers brought his swami and dervish to the Ames mansion, and caused his hostess to be well advertised in the newspapers the following day. And he caused the eyes of Carmen to bulge, and her thought to swell with wonder, as she gazed. And he caused the bepowdered nose of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to stand a bit closer to the perpendicular, while she sat devising schemes to cast a shade over this clumsy entertainment.

The chief result was that, a week later, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, still running true to form, retorted with a superb imitation of the French Bal de l'Opera, once so notable under the Empire. The Beaubien had furnished the inspiring idea—and the hard cash.

"I wonder why I do it?" that woman had meditated. "Why do I continue to lend her money and take her notes? I wanted to ruin her, at first. I don't—I don't seem to feel that way now. Is it because of Carmen? Or is it because I hate that Ames woman so? I wonder if I do still hate her? At any rate I'm glad to see Carmen oust the proud hussy from her place. It's worth all I've spent, even if I burn the notes I hold against Jim Crowles's widow."

And often after that, when at night the Beaubien had sought her bed, she would lie for hours in the dim light meditating, wondering. "It's Carmen!" she would always conclude. "It's Carmen. She's making me over again. I'm not the same woman I was when she came into my life. Oh, God bless her—if there is a God!"

The mock Bal de l'Opera was a magnificent fete. All the members of the smart set were present, and many appeared in costumes representing flowers, birds, and vegetables. Carmen went as a white rose; and her great natural beauty, set off by an exquisite costume, made her the fairest flower of the whole garden. The Duke of Altern, costumed as a long carrot, fawned in her wake throughout the evening. The tubbily girthy Gannette, dressed to represent a cabbage, opposed her every step as he bobbed before her, showering his viscous compliments upon the graceful creature. Kathleen Ames appeared as a bluebird; and she would have picked the fair white rose to pieces if she could, so wildly jealous did she become at the sight of Carmen's further triumph.

About midnight, when the revelry was at its height, a door at the end of the hall swung open, and a strong searchlight was turned full upon it. The orchestra burst into the wailing dead march from Saul, and out through the glare of light stalked the giant form of J. Wilton Ames, gowned in dead black to represent a King Vulture, and with a blood-red fez surmounting his cruel mask. As he stepped out upon the platform which had been constructed to represent the famous bridge in "Sumurun," and strode toward the main floor, a murmur involuntarily rose from the assemblage. It was a murmur of awe, of horror, of fear. The "monstrum horrendum" of Poe was descending upon them in the garb which alone could fully typify the character of the man! When he reached the end of the bridge the huge creature stopped and distended his enormous sable wings.

"Good God!" cried Gannette, as he thought of his tremendous financial obligations to Ames.

Carmen shuddered and turned away from the awful spectacle. "I want to go," she said to the petrified Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who had known nothing of this feature of the program.

Straight to the trembling, white-clad girl the great, black vulture stalked. The revelers fell away from him on either side as he approached. Carmen turned again and watched him come. Her face was ashen. "God is everywhere," she murmured.

Then her anxious look faded. A light came into her eyes, and a smile wreathed her mouth. And when Ames reached her and extended his huge, black wings again, she walked straight into them with a look of joy upon her beautiful face. Then the wings closed and completely hid the fair, white form from the gaping crowd.

For a few moments dead silence reigned throughout the hall. Then the orchestra crashed, the vulture's wings slowly opened, and the girl, who would have gone to the stake with the same incomprehensible smile, stepped out. The black monster turned and strode silently, ominously, back to the end of the hall, crossed the bridge, and disappeared through the door which opened at his approach.

"I'm going home!" said the shaken Gannette to his perspiring wife. "That looks bad to me! That girl's done for; and Ames has taken this way to publicly announce the fact! My God!"

There was another astonished watcher in the audience that evening. It was the eminent Monsignor Lafelle, recently back from Europe by way of the West Indies. And after the episode just related, he approached Carmen and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles.

"A very clever, if startling, performance," he commented; "and with two superb actors, Mr. Ames and our little friend here," bowing over Carmen's hand.

"I am so glad you could accept our invitation, Monsignor. But, dear me! I haven't got my breath yet," panted the steaming Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "Do take us, Monsignor, to the refectory. I feel faint."

A few moments later, over their iced drinks, Lafelle was relating vivid incidents of his recent travels, and odd bits of news from Cartagena. "No, Miss Carmen," he said, in reply to her anxious inquiries, "I did not meet the persons you have mentioned. And as for getting up the Magdalena river, it would have been quite impossible. Dismiss from your mind all thought of going down there now. Cartagena is tense with apprehension. The inland country is seething. And the little town of Simiti which you mention, I doubt not it is quite shut off from the world by the war."

Carmen turned aside that he might not see the tears which welled into her eyes.

"Your entertainment, Madam," continued Lafelle, addressing the now recovered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, "is superb, as have been all of your social projects this winter, I learn. The thought which you expressed to me some months ago regarding Catholic activity in social matters certainly was well founded. I perceive that our Protestant rivals have all but retired from the field."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles swelled with pride. Carmen regarded the churchman with wonder.

"And have you not found a sense of peace, of satisfaction and comfort, since you united with the true Church?" Lafelle went on. "Are you not at last at rest?"

"Quite so," sighed the lady, though the sigh was scarcely one of unalloyed relief.

Lafelle turned to Carmen. "And our little friend here—can she still remain an alien, now that she has some knowledge of her indebtedness to the Church?"

Carmen looked blank. "My indebtedness to the Church!" she repeated. "Why—"

It was now Lafelle's turn to sigh, as he directed himself again to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "She does not see, Madam, that it was by the ladder of Holy Church that she mounted to her present enviable social height."

"But—what—what do you mean?" stammered the bewildered girl.

"May I not come and explain it to her?" said Lafelle. Then he suddenly thought of his last conversation with the Beaubien. But he shrugged his shoulders, and a defiant look sat upon his features.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles dared not refuse the request. She knew she was now too deeply enmeshed for resistance, and that Lafelle's control over her was complete—unless she dared to face social and financial ruin. And under that thought she paled and grew faint, for it raised the curtain upon chaos and black night.

"Would it be convenient for me to call to-morrow afternoon?" continued the churchman.

"Certainly," murmured Mrs. Hawley-Crowles in a scarcely audible voice.

"By the way," Lafelle said, suddenly turning the conversation, "how, may I ask, is our friend, Madam Beaubien?"

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles again trembled slightly. "I—I have not seen her much of late, Monsignor," she said feebly.

"A strong and very liberal-minded woman," returned Lafelle with emphasis. "I trust, as your spiritual adviser, Madam, I may express the hope that you are in no way influenced by her."

"Sir!" cried Carmen, who had bounded to her feet, her eyes ablaze, "Madam Beaubien is a noble woman!"

"My dear child!" Lafelle grasped her hand and drew her back into her chair. "You misunderstand me, quite. Madam Beaubien is a very dear friend of ours, and we greatly admire her strength of character. She certainly does not require your defense! Dear! dear! you quite startled me."

A few moments later he rose and offered his arms to his companions to lead them back to the hall. Delivering Carmen into the charge of the eagerly waiting Duke of Altern, Lafelle remarked, as he took leave of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, "I trust you will permit me to talk with your beautiful ward to-morrow afternoon—alone." And when the lady interpreted the significance of his look, her heart beat rapidly, as she bowed her acknowledgment of abject submission.

"Bah Jove!" ejaculated the young Duke, clutching Carmen. "Ye know, I was deucedly afraid you had gone home, or that Uncle Wilton had you. Ye know, I think I'm jealous of him!"

Carmen laughed merrily at the fellow. His grotesque costume made him appear still more ridiculous.

"It's nothing to laugh at, Miss Carmen! It's a bally bore to have a regular mountain like him always getting in the way; and to-night I just made up my mind I wouldn't stand it any longer, bah Jove! I say, come on!"

He fixed his monocle savagely in his eye and strode rapidly toward the refreshment hall. Carmen went in silence. She heard his murmur of gratification when his gaze lighted upon the chairs and table which he had evidently arranged previously in anticipation of this tete-a-tete.

"Ye know," he finally began, after they were seated and he had sat some minutes staring at the girl, "ye know, you're deucedly clevah, Miss Carmen! I told mother so to-day, and this time she had to agree. And that about your being an Inca princess—ye know, I could see that from the very first day I met you. Mighty romantic, and all that, don't ye know!"

"Indeed, yes!" replied the girl, her thought drifting back to distant Simiti.

"And all about that mine you own in South America—and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles making you her heiress—and all that—bah Jove! It's—it's romantic, I tell you!" His head continued to nod emphasis to his thought long after he finished speaking.

"Ye know," he finally resumed, drawing a gold-crested case from a pocket and lighting a monogrammed cigarette, "a fellow can always tell another who is—well, who belongs to the aristocracy. Mrs. Ames, ye know, said she had some suspicions about you. But I could see right off that it was because she was jealous. Mother and I knew what you were the minute we clapped eyes on you. That's because we belong to the nobility, ye know."

He smoked in silence for some moments. Carmen was far, far away.

"Bah Jove, Miss Carmen, I'm going to say it!" he suddenly blurted. "Mother wanted me to marry Lord Cragmont's filly; but, bah Jove, I say, I'm going to marry you!"

Carmen now heard, and she quickly sat up, her eyes wide and staring. "Marry me!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he went on. "Oh, it's all right. You're a princess, ye know, and so you're in our class. I'm not one of the kind that hands out a title to the red-nosed daughter of any American pork packer just to get her money. Not me! The girl I marry has got to be my equal."

"Oh!" murmured the astonished Carmen.

"It's all right for you to have money, of course. I won't marry a pauper, even if she's a duchess. But you and I, Miss Carmen, are just suited to each other—wealth and nobility on each side. I've got thirty thousand good British acres in my own right, bah Jove!"

By now Carmen had fully recovered from her surprise. She reflected a moment, then determined to meet the absurd youth with the spirit of levity which his audacity merited. "But, Reginald," she said in mock seriousness, "though your father was a duke, how about your mother? Was she not just an ordinary American girl, a sister of plain Mrs. J. Wilton Ames? Where's the aristocracy there? Now on my side—"

"Now, Miss Carmen," cried the boy petulantly, "can't you see that, by marrying my father, my mother became ennobled? Bah Jove, you don't understand! Were your parents both noble?"

"Indeed they were!" said Carmen. "They were both children of a king."

"You don't say!" he whispered, leaning far over the table toward her. "Then we've simply got to marry!"

"But," protested the girl, "in my country people love those whom they marry. I haven't heard a word of that from you."

"Now, I say!" he exclaimed. "I was just getting round to that. It was love that made me offer you my name and title!"

"Yes? Love of what?"

"Why—you—of course!"

She laughed musically. "My dear Reginald, you don't love me. It is yourself that you love. You are madly in love, it is true; but it is with the young Duke of Altern."

"See here, you can't talk to me that way, ye know!" he flared out. "Bah Jove, I'm offering to make you a duchess—and I love you, too, though you may not think it!"

"Of course you love me, Reginald," said Carmen in gentle reply, now relinquishing her spirit of badinage; "and I love you. But I do not wish to marry you."

The young man started under the shock and stared at her in utter lack of comprehension. Was it possible that this unknown girl was refusing him, a duke? She must be mad!

"A—a—I don't get you, Miss Carmen," he stammered.

"Come," she said, rising and holding out a hand. "Let's not talk about this any more. We must go back to the hall. I do love you, Reginald, but not in the way that perhaps you would like. I love the real you; not the vain, foolish, self-adoring human concept, called the Duke of Altern. And the love I feel for you will help you, oh, far more than if I married you! Come."

"But—Miss Carmen!" He stood before her with mouth open.

"Yes, Reginald."

"I—I expected we'd be engaged—I told mother—"

"Very well, Reginald, we are engaged. Engaged in handling this little problem that has presented itself to you. Do you see? And I will help you to solve it in the right way. For you need help. Reginald dear, I didn't mean to treat your proposal so lightly. I am sorry. There, give me your hand. We're just awfully good friends, aren't we? And I do love you, more than you think."

Leaving the bewildered youth in the hall, Carmen fell afoul of the very conservative Mrs. Gannette, whose husband, suffering from a sense of nausea since the appearance of Ames as a King Vulture, had some moments before summoned his car and driven to his favorite club to flood his apprehensions with Scotch high-balls.

"Ah, little sly-boots!" piped Mrs. Gannette, shaking a finger at Carmen. "I saw you with Reginald just now. I'm awfully wise about such things. Tell me, dear, when shall we be able to call you the Duchess of Altern? You lucky girl!"

Carmen's spirits sank, as, without reply, she submitted to the banal boredom of this blustering dame's society gabble. Mrs. Gannette hooked her arm into the girl's and led her to a divan. "It's a great affair, isn't it?" she panted, settling her round, unshapely form out over the seat. "Dear me! I did intend to come in costume. Was coming as a tomato. Ha! ha! Thought that was better adapted to my shape. But when I got the cloth form around me, do you know, I couldn't get through the door! And my unlovely pig of a husband said if I came looking like that he'd get a divorce." The corpulent dame shook and wheezed with the expression of her abundant merriment.

"Well," she continued, "it wasn't his threat that hindered me, goodness knows! A divorce would be a relief, after living forty years with him! Say, there goes young Doctor Worley. Speaking of divorce, he's just got one. It all came round through a joke. Billy Patterson dared him to exchange wives with him one evening when they were having a little too much gaiety at the Worley home, and the doctor took the dare. Ha! ha! The men swapped wives for two days. What do you think of that! And this divorce was the result. But Billy took his wife back. He thought it was just a good joke. Kate Worley gets an alimony of fifty thousand per. But the doctor can stand it. Why, he has a practice of not less than two hundred and fifty thousand a year!"

"I supposed," murmured Carmen, "that amount of money is a measure of his ability, a proof of his great usefulness."

"Nothing of the kind," replied Mrs. Gannette. "He's simply in with the wealthy, that's all. Dear! dear! Do look at that fright over there! It's Lizzie Wall. Now isn't she simply hideous! Those diamonds are nothing but paste! The hussy!"

Carmen glanced at the pale, slender woman across the hall, seated alone, and wearing a look of utter weariness.

"I'd like to meet her," she said, suddenly drawn by the woman's mute appeal for sympathy.

"Don't do it!" hastily interposed Mrs. Gannette. "She's going to be dropped. Name's already on the black list. I don't know what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was thinking of to invite her to-night! Her estate is being handled by Ames and Company, and J. Wilton says there won't be much left when it's settled—

"My goodness!" she exclaimed, abruptly flitting to another topic. "There goes Miss Tottle. Look at her skirt—flounced at the knees, and full in the back so's to give a bustle effect. My! I wish I could wear togs cut that way—

"They say, my dear," the garrulous old worldling prattled on, "that next season's styles will be very ultra. Butterfly idea, I hear. Hats small and round, like the heads of butterflies. Waists and jackets very full and quite loose in the back and shoulders, so's to give the appearance of wings. Belts, but no drawing in at the waist. Skirts plaited, plaits opening wide at the knees and coming close together again at the ankle, so's to look like the body of a butterfly. Then butterfly bows sprinkled all over."

She paused for breath. Then she drew a long sigh. "Oh dear," she lamented, "I'd give anything if I had a decent shape! I'd like to wear those shimmering, flowing, transparent summer things over silk tights. But, mercy me! I'd look like a potato busted wide open. Now you can wear those X-ray dresses all right—

"Say, Kathleen Ames has a new French gown to wear to the Dog Show. Skirt slit clear to the knee, with diamond garter around the leg just below. How I'd look! I have a leg like a ham!"

Carmen heard little of this vapid talk, as she sat studying the pale woman across the hall. She had resolved to meet her just as soon as the loquacious Mrs. Gannette should seek another victim. But that genial old gossip gave no present evidence of a desire to change.

"I'm so glad you're going to marry young Altern," she said, again swerving the course of her conversation. "He's got a fine old ruined castle somewhere in England, and seems to have wads of money, though I hear that everything is mortgaged to Ames. I wouldn't be surprised. Still, his bare title is worth something to an American girl. Besides, you've got money. And you'll do a lot for his family. You know—but don't breathe a word of this!—his mother never was recognized socially in England, and she finally had to give up the fight. For a while Ames backed her, but it wouldn't do. His millions couldn't buy her the court entree, and she just had to quit. That's why she's over here now. The old Duke—he was lots older than she—died a couple of years ago. Ran through everything and drank himself to death. Before and since that happy event the Duchess did everything under the heavens to get a bid to court. She gave millions to charity and to entertainments. She sacrificed everything. But, no sir! It wouldn't do. She had no royal blood. But with you it will be different. You're a princess, royal Inca, and such like. You qualify right from the jump. So you see what you're expected to do for the Altern crowd—

"Dear! dear!" catching her breath and switching quickly to another theme, "have you heard about the Hairton scandal? It's simply rich! You see, young Sidney Ames—"

Carmen's patience had touched its limit. "Don't, please don't!" she begged, holding out a hand. "I do not wish to hear it!"

Mrs. Gannette raised her lorgnette and looked at the girl. "Why, my dear! what's the matter? The scandal's about Ames's son, you know. The reason he doesn't go in society. Just come to light. You see—"

"My dear Mrs. Gannette," Carmen looked up at her with a beseeching smile. "You wouldn't deliberately give me poison to drink, would you?"

"Why, certainly not!" blustered that garrulous lady in astonishment.

"Then why do you poison my mind with such conversation?"

"What!"

"You sit there pouring into my mentality thought after thought that is deadly poisonous, don't you know it?"

"Why—!"

"You don't mean to harm me, I know," pleaded the girl. "But if you only understood mental laws you would know that every thought entering one's mind tends to become manifested in some way. Thoughts of disease, disaster, death, scandal—all tend to become externalized in discordant ways, either on the body, or in the environment. You don't want any such things manifested to me, do you? But you might just as well hand me poison to drink as to sit there and pour such deadly conversation into me."

Mrs. Gannette slowly drew herself up with the hauteur of a grandee. Carmen seized her hand. "I do not want to listen to these unreal things which concern only the human mind," she said earnestly. "Nor should you, if you are truly aristocratic, for aristocracy is of the thought. I am not going to marry Reginald. A human title means nothing to me. But one's thought—that alone is one's claim to real aristocracy. I know I have offended you, but only because I refuse to let you poison me. Now I will go."

She left the divan and the petrified dame, and hurriedly mingled with the crowd on the floor.

"The little cat!" exploded Mrs. Gannette, when she again found herself. "She has mortally insulted me!"

Carmen went directly to the pale woman, still sitting alone, who had been one of the objects of Mrs. Gannette's slighting remarks. The woman glanced up as she saw the girl approaching, and a look of wonder came into her eyes. Carmen held out a hand.

"I am Carmen Ariza," she said simply. "You are Miss Wall. I want you to be my friend."

The woman roused up and tried to appear composed.

"Will you ride with me to-morrow?" continued Carmen. "Then we can talk all we want to, with nobody to overhear. Aren't you happy?" she abruptly added, unable longer to withstand the appeal which issued mutely from the lusterless eyes before her.

The woman smiled wanly. "Not so very," she replied slowly.

"Well!" exclaimed Carmen; "what's wrong?"

"I am poverty-stricken," returned the woman sadly.

"But I will give you money," Carmen quickly replied.

"My dear child," said the woman, "I haven't anything but money. That is why I am poverty-stricken."

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, sinking into a chair at her side. "Well," she added, brightening, "now you have me! And will you call me up, first thing in the morning, and arrange to ride with me? I want you to, so much!"

The woman's eyes grew moist. "Yes," she murmured, "I will—gladly."

In the small hours of the morning there were several heads tossing in stubborn wakefulness on their pillows in various New York mansions. But Carmen's was not one of them.



CHAPTER 17

On the morning following Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's very successful imitation of the Bal de l'Opera, Monsignor Lafelle paid an early call to the Ames sanctum. And the latter gentleman deemed the visit of sufficient importance to devote a full hour to his caller. When the churchman rose to take his leave he reiterated:

"Our friend Wenceslas will undertake the matter for you, Mr. Ames, but on the conditions which I have named. But Rome must be communicated with, and the substance of her replies must be sent from Cartagena to you, and your letters forwarded to her. That might take us into early summer. But there is no likelihood that Mr. Ketchim's engineers will make any further attempt before that time to enter Colombia. Mr. Reed in still in California. Mr. Harris is in Denver, at his old home, you tell me. So we need look for no immediate move from them."

"Quite satisfactory, Lafelle," returned Ames genially. "In future, if I can be of service to you, I am yours to command. Mr. Willett will hand you a check covering your traveling expenses on my behalf."

When the door closed after Lafelle, Ames leaned back in his chair and gave himself up to a moment's reflection. "I wonder," he mused, "I wonder if the fellow has something up his sleeve that he didn't show me? He acted suspiciously. Perhaps he's getting a bit dangerous. He may know too much already. I'm going to drop him after this trap is sprung. He's got Jim Crowles's widow all tied up, too. I wonder if he—by heaven! if he begins work on that girl I'll—"

He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell. It was Gannette. "What?" shouted Ames, "you say the girl insulted your wife last evening? I don't believe she could—Yes, yes, I mean, I don't think she meant to—certainly not, no aspersion whatever intended—What? the girl will have to apologize?—Well! well—No, not in a thousand years!—Yes, I'll back her! And if your society isn't good enough for her—and I don't think it is—why, I'll form a little coterie all by myself!"

He hung up the receiver with a slam. Then he angrily summoned Hodson. "I want a dozen brokers watching Gannette now until I call them off," he commanded. "I want you to take personal charge of them. Dog his every move. I'll give you some suggestions later."

Hodson bowed and went out. Ames continued his meditations. "Lucile already has Gannette pretty well wound up in his Venezuelan speculations—and they are going to smash—Lafelle has fixed that. And I've bought her notes against Mrs. Hawley-Crowles for about a million—which I have reinvested for her in Colombia. Humph! She'll feed out of my hand now! La Libertad is mine when the trap falls. So is C. and R. And that little upstart, Ketchim, goes to Sing Sing!"

He turned to the morning paper that lay upon his desk. "I don't like the way the Colombian revolution drags," he mused. "But certainly it can't last much longer. And then—then—"

His thoughts wandered off into devious channels. "So Jose de Rincon is—well! well! Things have taken an odd turn. But—where on earth did that girl come from? Lord! she was beautiful last night. All religion, eh? Ha! ha! Well, she's young. There's a lot of experience coming to her. And then she'll drop a few of her pious notions. Lucile says—but Lucile is getting on my nerves!"

* * * * *

Monsignor Lafelle found Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her ward awaiting him when his car drove up at two that afternoon. Carmen had not left the house during the morning, for Elizabeth Wall had telephoned early that a slight indisposition would necessitate postponement of the contemplated ride.

"Well," reflected Carmen, as she turned from the 'phone, "one who knows that God is everywhere can never be disappointed, for all good is ever present." And then she set about preparing for the expected call of Monsignor Lafelle.

When that dignitary entered the parlor Mrs. Hawley-Crowles graciously welcomed him, and then excused herself. "I will leave her with you, Monsignor," she said, indicating Carmen, and secretly glad to escape a presence which she greatly feared. Lafelle bowed, and then waved Carmen to a seat.

"I have come to-day, Miss Carmen," he began easily, "on a mission of vastest importance as concerning your welfare. I have been in Cartagena. I have talked with the acting-Bishop there, who, it seems, is not wholly unacquainted with you."

"Then," cried Carmen eagerly, "you know where Padre Jose is? And the others—"

"No," replied Lafelle. "I regret to say I know nothing of their present whereabouts. Leave them with God."

"I have long since done that," said Carmen softly.

"It is of yourself that I wish to speak," continued Lafelle. "I have come to offer you the consolation, the joy, and the protection of the Church. Your great benefactress, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, has found peace with us. Will you longer delay taking a step toward which you are by race, by national custom, and by your Saviour admonished? I have come to invite you to publicly confess your allegiance to the Church of Rome. You belong to us. A Catholic country gave you birth. Your parents were Catholic. Your best friend, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, is one of us. Come," he said, extending his hands. "We need you. And you, my daughter, now need the Church," he added with suggestive emphasis.

Carmen was not surprised. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had hinted the probable mission of the churchman, and the girl was prepared.

"I thank you, Monsignor," she replied simply. "But it is impossible."

"Impossible?" He arched his fine brows. "My child, it is quite necessary!"

"Why, Monsignor?"

"For your eternal salvation," he replied.

"But I have my salvation, ever present. It is the Christ-principle."

"My dear child, do not lean upon your pretty theories in the hope that they will open the door of heaven for you. There is no salvation outside of the Church."

"Monsignor," said Carmen gently, "such talk is very foolish. Can you prove to me that your Church ever sent any one to heaven? Have you any but a very mediaeval and material concept of heaven? To me, heaven is right here. It is the consciousness of good only, without a trace of materiality or evil. And I enter into that consciousness by means of the Christ-principle, which Jesus gave to the world. It is very simple, is it not? And it makes all your pomp and ceremony, and your penance and rites quite unnecessary."

Lafelle eyed her narrowly. He had certain suspicions, but he was not ready to voice them. Carmen went on:

"Monsignor, I love my fellow-men, oh, so much! I want to see every one work out his salvation, as Jesus bade us all do, and without any hindrance from others. And I ask but that same privilege from every one, yourself included. Let me work out my salvation as my Father has directed."

Lafelle smiled paternally. "I have no wish to hinder you, child. On the contrary, I offer you the assistance and infallible guidance of the Church. You are very young. We are very old. Beginning nineteen centuries ago, when we were divinely appointed custodian of the world's morals, our history has been a glorious one. We have in that time changed a pagan world into one that fears God and follows His Christ."

"But for nineteen hundred years, Monsignor, the various so-called Christian sects of the world have been persecuting and slaying one another over their foolish beliefs, basing their religious theories upon their interpretations of the Bible. Surely that is not a glorious history!"

"Ah! You unwittingly argue directly for our cause, my child. The result which you have just cited proves conclusively that the Scriptures can not be correctly interpreted by every one. That is perfectly patent to you, I see. Thus you acknowledge the necessity of an infallible guide. That is to be found only in the spiritual Fathers, and in the Pope, the holy Head of the Church of Rome, the present Vicegerent of Christ on earth."

"Then your interpretation of the Bible is the only correct one?"

"Absolutely!"

"And you Catholics are the only true followers of Christ? The only real Christians?"

"We are."

She rose. "Come, Monsignor, I will get my coat and hat. We will take your car."

"Why—where are you going?" he asked in amazement, as he slowly got to his feet.

She stopped and faced him squarely. "Jesus said: 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.' I am going to take you over to the home of old Maggie, our cook's mother. She is sick. You will heal her, for you are a true follower of Christ."

"Well—but, hasn't she a doctor?"

"Yes, but he can't help her. Doctors are not infallible. But you represent the Christ on earth. You should be able to do the works which he did. You can change the wafer and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus. How much easier, then, and vastly more practical, to cure a sick woman! Wait, I will be back in a minute."

"But, you impetuous child, I shall go on no such foolish errand as that!"

She stopped again. "If the woman were dying or dead, and you were summoned, you would go, would you not? For she is a Catholic."

"Why—yes, of course."

"And if she were dying you would put holy oil on her, and pray—but it wouldn't make her well. And if she were dead, you would say Masses for the repose of her soul. Monsignor, did it never occur to you that the great works which you claim to do are all done behind the veil of death? You can do but little for mankind here; but you pretend to do much after they have passed beyond the grave. Is it quite fair to the poor and ignorant, I ask, to work that way? Did it never strike you as remarkable and very consistent that Jesus, whenever he launched a great truth, immediately ratified it by some great sign, some sign which the world now calls a miracle? The Gospels are full of such instances, where he first taught, then came down and immediately healed some one, thus at once putting his teaching to the proof. Do you prove anything? Your Church has taught and thundered and denounced for ages, but what has it proved? Jesus taught practical Christianity. You teach the so-called practical Christianity which makes a reality of evil and an eternal necessity of hospitals and orphan asylums. If you did his works the people would be so uplifted that these things would be wiped out. Your Church has had nineteen hundred years in which to learn to do the works which he did. Now come over to Maggie's with me and prove that you are a true follower and believer, and that the Church has given you the right sort of practical instruction!"

Gradually the girl's voice waxed stronger while she delivered this polemic. Slowly the churchman's face darkened, as he moved backward and sank into his chair.

"Now, Monsignor, having scolded you well," the girl continued, smiling as she sat down again, "I will apologize. But you needed the scolding—you know you did! And nearly all who profess the name of Christ need the same. Monsignor, I love you all, and every one, whether Catholic or Protestant, or whatever his creed. But that does not blind my eyes to your great need, and to your obstinate refusal to make any effort to meet that need."

A cynical look came into the man's face. "May I ask, Miss Carmen, if you consider yourself a true follower and believer?" he said coolly.

"Monsignor," she quickly replied, rising and facing him, "you hope by that adroit question to confound me. You mean, do I heal the sick? Listen: when I was a child my purity of thought was such that I knew no evil. I could not see it anywhere. I could not see sickness or death as anything more than unreal shadows. And that wonderful clearness of vision and purity of thought made me a channel for the operation of the Christ-principle, God himself. And thereby the sick were healed in my little home town. Then, little by little, after my beloved teacher, Jose, came to me, I lost ground in my struggle to keep the vision clear. They did not mean to, but he and my dearest padre Rosendo and others held their beliefs of evil as a reality so constantly before me that the vision became obscured, and the spirituality alloyed. The unreal forces of evil seemed to concentrate upon me. I know why now, for the greatest good always stirs up the greatest amount of evil—the highest truth always has the lowest lie as its opposite and opponent. I see now, as never before, the unreality of evil. I see now, as never before, the marvelous truth which Jesus tried, oh, so hard, to impress upon the dull minds of his people, the truth which you refuse to see. And ceaselessly I am now striving to acquire 'that mind,' that spiritual consciousness, which was in him. My vision is becoming daily clearer. I have been wonderfully shielded, led, and cared for. And I shall heal, some day, as he did. I shall regain my former spirituality, for it has never really been lost. But, Monsignor, do not ask me to come into your Church and allow my brightening vision to become blurred by your very inadequate concept of God—a God who is moved by the petitions of Saints and Virgin and mortal men. No! no! Unless," she added, brightening, "you will let me teach your Church what I know. Will you agree to that?"