"No," said Carmen, her eyes dilating with surprise, "but we would resurrect him! Don't you think you have kept him in the tomb long enough? The Christ-principle is intended for use, not for endless burial!"

"I? My dear Miss Carmen, it is I who preach the risen Christ!"

"You preach human theology, Mr. Moore," returned the girl. "And because of centuries of such preaching the world has steadily sunk from the spiritual to the material, and lip service has taken the place of that genuine spiritual worship which knows no evil, and which, because of that practical knowledge, heals the sick and raises the dead."

"You insinuate that—?"

"No, I state facts," said Carmen. "Paul made some mistakes, for he was consumed with zeal. But he stated truth when he said that the second coming of Christ would occur when the 'old man' was put off. We have been discussing the 'old man' to-night, and showing how he may be put off. Now do you from your pulpit teach your people how that may be done?"

"I teach the vicarious atonement of the Christ, and prepare my flock for the world to come," replied the minister with some heat.

"But I am interested in the eternal present," said the girl, "not in a suppositional future. And so was Jesus. The world to come is right here. 'I am that which is, and which was, and which is to come,' says the infinite, ever-present mind, God!"

"I see no Christianity whatsoever in your speculative philosophy," retorted the minister. "If what you say is true, and the world should accept it, all that we have learned in the ages past would be blotted out, and falsehood would be written across philosophy, science, and religion. By wafting evil lightly aside as unreal, you dodge the issue, and extend license to all mankind to indulge it freely. Evil is an awful, a stupendous fact! And it can not be relegated to the realm of shadow, as you are trying to do!"

"Did Jesus regard it as a reality?" she asked. "You know, Duns Scotus said: 'Since there is no real being outside of God, evil has no substantial existence. Perfection and reality are synonyms, hence absolute imperfection is synonymous with absolute unreality.' Did Jesus know less than this man? And do you really think he looked upon evil as a reality?"

"He most certainly did!"

"Then, if that is true," said the girl, "I will have to reject him. But come, we are right up to the point of discussing him and his teachings, and that will be the subject of our next meeting. Will you join us, Mr. Moore? It is love, you know, that has drawn us all together. You'll come?"

"It's an open forum, Moore," said the doctor, patting him on the back. "Wisdom isn't going to die with you. Come and get a new viewpoint."

"I am quite well satisfied with my present one, Doctor," replied the minister tartly.

"Well, then, come and correct us when we err. It's your duty to save us if we're in danger, you know."

"He will come," said Hitt. "And now, Carmen, the piano awaits you. By the way, what did Maitre Rossanni tell you?"

"Oh," replied the girl lightly, "he begged me to let him train me for Grand Opera."

"Yes?"

"He said I would make a huge fortune," she laughed.

"And so you would! Well?"

"I told him I carried my wealth with me, always, and that my fortune was now so immense that I couldn't possibly hope to add to it."

"Then you refused the chance!"

"My dear Mr. Hitt," she said, going to him and looking up into his face, "I am too busy for Grand Opera and money-making. My voice belongs to the world. I couldn't be happy if I made people pay to hear me sing."

With that she turned and seated herself at the piano, where she launched into a song that made the very Reverend Patterson Moore raise his glasses and stare at her long and curiously.



CHAPTER 7

Man reasons and seeks human counsel; but woman obeys her instincts. Carmen did this and more. Her life had been one of utter freedom from dependence upon human judgment. The burden of decision as to the wisdom of a course of action rested always upon her own thought. Never did she seek to make a fellow-being her conscience. When the day of judgment came, the hour of trial or vital demand, it found her standing boldly, because her love was made perfect, not through instinct alone, but through conformity with the certain knowledge that he who lacks wisdom may find it in the right thought of God and man. And so, when on the next day she joined Hitt and Haynerd in the office of the Social Era, and learned that Carlson had met their terms, eagerly, and had transferred to them the moribund Express, she had no qualms as to the wisdom of the step which they were taking.

But not so her companions. Haynerd was a composite picture of doubt and fear, as he sat humped up in his chair. Hitt was serious to the point of gloom, reflecting in a measure his companion's dismal forebodings.

"I was scared to death for fear he wouldn't sell," Haynerd was saying as the girl entered; "and I was paralyzed whenever I thought that he would."

Carmen laughed aloud when she heard these words. "Do you know," she said, "you remind me of Lot's wife. She was told to go ahead, along the right course. But she looked back—alas for her! Now you two being started right are looking back; and you are about to turn to salt tears!

"Now listen," she continued, as Haynerd began to remonstrate; "don't voice a single fear to me! You couldn't make me believe them true even if you argued for weeks—and we have no time for such foolishness now. The first thing that you have got to do, Ned, is to start a little cemetery. In it you must bury your fears, right away, and without any mourning. Put up little headstones, if you wish; but don't ever go near the place afterward, excepting to plant the insults, and gibes, and denouncements, and vilifications which the human mind will hurl at you, once the Express starts out on its new career. Good is bound to stir up evil; and the Express is now in the business of good. Remember, the first thing the Apostles always did was to be afraid. And they kept Jesus busy pointing out the nothingness of their fears."

"Business of good!" retorted Haynerd savagely. "I guess we'll find ourselves a bit lonely in it, too!"

"True, humanly speaking," replied the girl, taking a chair beside him. "But, Ned, let me tell you of the most startling thing I have found in this great, new country. It is this: you Americans have, oh, so much animal courage—and so little true moral courage! You know that the press is one of the most corrupt institutions in America, don't you? The truth is not in it. Going into thousands of homes every day, it is a deadlier menace than yellow fever. You know that it is muzzled by so-called religious bodies, by liquor interests, by vice-politicians, by commercialism, and its own craven cowardice. And yet, Ned, despite your heart-longing, you dare not face the world and stand boldly for righteousness in the conduct of the Express!

"Now," she went on hurriedly, "let me tell you more. While you have been debating with your fears as you awaited Mr. Carlson's decision, I have been busy. If I had allowed my mentality to become filled with fear and worry, as you have done, I would have had no room for real, constructive thought. But I first thanked God for this grand opportunity to witness to Him; and then I put out every mental suggestion of failure, of malicious enmity from the world, and from those who think they do not love us, and with it every subtle argument about the unpreparedness of the human mind for good. After that I set out to visit various newspaper offices in the city. I have talked with four managing and city editors since yesterday noon. I have their viewpoints now, and know what motives animate them. I know what they think. I know, in part, what the Express will have to meet—and how to meet it."

Both men stared at her in blank amazement. Haynerd's jaw dropped as he gazed. He had had a long apprenticeship in the newspaper field, but never would he have dared attempt what this fearless girl had just done.

"I have found out what news is," Carmen resumed. "It is wholly a human invention! It is the published vagaries of the carnal mind. In the yellow journal it is the red-inked, screaming report of the tragedies of sin. I asked Mr. Fallom if he knew anything about mental laws, and the terrible results of mental suggestion in his paper's almost hourly heralding of murder, theft, and lust. But he only laughed and said that the lurid reports of crime tended to keep people alive to what was going on about them. He couldn't see that he was making a terrible reality of every sort of evil, and holding it so constantly before an ignorant, credulous world's eyes that little else could be seen. The moral significance of his so-called news reports had no meaning whatsoever for him!"

"Did you go to see Adams?" asked Haynerd, not believing that she would have dared visit that journalistic demon.

"Yes," answered the girl, to his utter astonishment. "Mr. Adams said he had no time for maudlin sentimentalism or petticoat sophistry. He was in the business of collecting and disseminating news, and he wanted that news to go shrieking out of his office! Here is one of his afternoon extras. You can see how the report of an Italian wife-murder shrieks in red letters an inch high on the very first page. But has Mr. Adams thereby seen and met his opportunity? Or has he further prostituted journalism by this ignorant act?"

"The people want it, Carmen," said Hitt slowly, though his voice seemed not to sound a real conviction.

"They do not!" cried Carmen, her eyes snapping. "If the church and the press were not mortally and morally blind, they would see the deadly destruction which they are accomplishing by shrieking from pulpit and sanctum: 'Evil is real! Pietro Lasanni cuts his wife's throat! Evil is real! Look, and be convinced!'"

"But, Carmen, while what you say is doubtless true, it must be admitted that the average man, especially the day laborer, reads his yellow journal avidly, and—"

"Yes, he does," returned the girl. "And why? The average man, as you call him, is a victim of the most pernicious social system ever devised by the human mind! Swept along in the mad rush of commercialism, or ground down beneath its ruthless wheels, his jaded, jarred nerves and his tired mind cry out for artificial stimulation, for something that will for a moment divert his wearied thought from his hopeless situation. The Church offers him little that is tangible this side of the grave. But whiskey, drugs, and yellow journalism do. Can't you see, Mr. Hitt—can't you, Ned—that the world's cry for sensationalism is but a cry for something that will make it forget its misery for a brief moment? The average man feels the superficiality of the high speed of this century of mad rush; he longs as never before for a foundation of truth upon which to rest; he is tired of theological fairy-tales; he is desperately tired of sin, and sickness, and dying. He cares little about a promised life beyond the grave. He wants help here and now to solve his problems. What does the press offer him? Little beyond a recount of his own daily miseries, and reports of graft and greed, and accounts of vulgar displays of material wealth that he has not and can not have. And these reports divert his jaded mind for a moment and give him a false, fleeting sense of pleasure—and then leave him sunk deeper than before in despair, and in hatred of existing conditions!"

"The girl is right," said Hitt, turning to Haynerd. "And we knew it, of course. But we have let our confidence slip. This steam-calliope age reflects the human-mind struggle for something other than its own unsatisfying ideas. It turns to thrills; it expresses its restlessness and dissatisfaction with itself by futurist and cubist art, so-called; by the rattle and vibration of machinery; by flaring billboards that insult every sense of the artistic; and by the murk and muck of yellow journalism, with its hideous colored supplements and spine-thrilling tales. So much for the reader. But the publisher himself—well, he battens materially, of course, upon the tired victims of our degrading social system. He sees but the sordid revenue in dollars and cents. Beyond that his morals do not extend."

"And they can't," said Haynerd. "Decent journalism wouldn't pay—doesn't—never did! Other papers have tried it, and miserably failed!"

"Then," returned Hitt calmly, after a moment's reflection, "oil will meet the deficit. As long as my paternal wells flow in Ohio the Express will issue forth as a clean paper, a dignified, law-supporting purveyor to a taste for better things—even if it has to create that taste. Its columns will be closed to salacious sensation, and its advertising pages will be barred to vice, liquor, tobacco, and drugs."

"Good!" cried Carmen. "And now we've got to get right down to business."

"Just so," said Hitt, rising. "It is my intention to issue the Express one more week on its present basis, and then turn it into a penny morning daily. I have seen and talked with its staff. They're good men. I'm going to assume the management myself, with you, Carmen, as my first assistant. Haynerd will become city editor. Now, what suggestions have you?"

"Oh, lots!" cried the girl enthusiastically. "But, first, how far may I go?"

"The limit," replied Hitt, rubbing his hands together. "You are my brain, so to speak, henceforth. As to financial resources, I am prepared to dump a hundred thousand dollars right into the Express before a cent of revenue comes back."

"Another question, then: will you issue a Sunday edition?" she asked.

"For a while, yes," he said. "We'll see how it works, for I have some ideas to try out."

"Well, then," resumed the girl eagerly, "I want this paper to be for all the people; to be independent in the truest sense of the term; and to be absolutely beyond the influence of political and religious sectarianism—you'll soon enough learn what that will cost you—to be an active, constructive force in this great city, and a patient, tireless, loving educator."

"Humph!" grunted Haynerd, although he was listening very carefully.

"The Express will succeed," the girl went on, without noticing him, "because our thought regarding it is successful. We have already succeeded; and that success will be externalized in our work. It makes no difference what the people may think of us; but it makes a lot of difference what we think of them and ourselves. Now, our program is unlimited. We assume superiority over adverse conditions, and we claim success, because we know that these things are mental, and that they are divinely ours. Lot's wife didn't have the sort of confidence that wins—she looked back. Our bridges are burnt behind us now. But there is no doubt of the outcome. And so there is no doubt lurking in us to take the edge off our efforts, is there? The thought regarding the Express has not been timidly born within us; it has come forth flashing vigor! Yes it has, Ned, despite your doubts! And we have within us a power mightier than any force outside of us. That is the knowledge of infinite mind's omnipotence, and our ability to use the Christ-principle to meet every problem. Is it not so?"

Haynerd began to rouse up with a returning sense of confidence. Hitt smiled and nodded to Carmen. The girl went on rapidly and eagerly:

"We are going to give the people news from a new standpoint, aren't we? We are not going on the assumption that the report of mankind's errors is the report of real news. The only thing that is really new is good. We'll report that. When I was in Mr. Adams's office two items came in over the 'phone. One was the report of a jewel robbery, and the other was an announcement of the draining by the Government of submerged lands in Louisiana, so as to give an additional opportunity to those seeking farms. Which item did Mr. Adams put in bold type on the front page? The first, yes. I was unable to locate the latter anywhere in the paper, although it was a timely bit of news."

"Very true," replied Hitt.

"Now another thing," continued the girl, "I want the Sunday edition of the Express to contain a resume of the important and vital news of the week, with the very clearest, most impartial and enlightening editorial comment upon it. This calls for nice discrimination in the selection of those items for our comment. It means, however, the best practical education for the people. This was John Ruskin's idea, and certainly is a splendid one. Still another thing, the Express will stand shoulder to shoulder with the women for equal suffrage. Are you agreed?"

"Most emphatically!" declared Hitt. "It is the women who will clean up and regenerate this world, not the men. Reform is now in the hands of the women. They have been held back long enough. And India proves that backward women mean a backward nation."

"Then," continued Carmen, "make a distinct Women's Department in the Express, and put Miss Wall on the staff."

"Very well. Next?" inquired Hitt, smiling.

"A daily educational department for foreigners, our immigrants, giving them every possible aid in suggestions regarding their naturalization, the languages, hotels, boarding houses, employment, and so on."

"Done," said Hitt. "And what else?"

"The Express is going to maintain a social service, and night schools. It is going to establish vacation and permanent homes for girls. It is going to provide for vocational training. It is going to establish a lecture bureau—for lectures on good. It is going to build a model city for workingmen. Then it is going to found a model city for everybody. It is going to establish clubs and meeting places for workingmen, places where they may meet, and play games, and read, and have social intercourse, and practical instruction. It is going to establish the same for young boys. It is going to take the lead for civic betterment in this city, and for child-welfare, and for—"

By this time Haynerd was sitting erect and staring in bewilderment at the girl. "What do you mean?" he sputtered. "Aren't you wandering somewhat beyond strict newspaper limits? We are in the news business!"

"And haven't I told you," returned the girl promptly, "that the only thing new in this world is good? Our news is going to be good news—the collection and dissemination of good to all mankind. People who read our paper will no longer feel that it is dangerous to be alive, but a glorious privilege. I am simply laying out our program. And Mr. Hitt said I could go the limit, you know."

Hitt had caught the girl's infectious enthusiasm, and his face was beaming.

"That's it!" he exclaimed. "It's your unlimited thought, Carmen, that we old dry-bones want! I understand you!"

"Of course you do!" she cried. "And so does dear old protesting Ned. Why, what is money? What is anything in this life, compared with real service to our fellow-men? The Express is not in business to make money! It is in the business of collecting and scattering the news of good. Its dividends will be the happiness and joy it gives to mankind. Will it fail? It simply can't! For good is the greatest success there is!"

It is likely that Hitt did not catch the full meaning of the girl's words; and it is certain that Haynerd did not. But her boundless enthusiasm did penetrate in large degree into their souls, and they ceased to insist on the query, Will it pay? The broader outlook was already beginning to return profits to these men, as the newer definition of 'news' occupied their thought. Fear and doubt fled. Seizing their hats, they bade Carmen go with them to inspect the plant of the Express, and meet its staff.

"There's a question I'd like to ask," said Haynerd, as they pursued their way toward their recent purchase. "I want to know what our editorial policy will be. Do we condone the offenses of our grafters and spoilsmen by remaining silent regarding their crimes? Or do we expose them?"

"We will let their guilt expose and kill itself," quickly returned Carmen. "How? Well, you will see."

A few minutes later they entered the gloomy, dust-laden offices of the Express. Hitt's spirits sank again as he looked about him. But Carmen seemed to suffer no loss of enthusiasm. After a mental appraisal of the dingy, uninviting environment she exclaimed: "Well, one nice thing about this is that we don't have much to start with!"

Hitt reflected upon her cryptical remark, and then laughed.

Carlson joined them at this juncture. It was evident that the sale of his plant had removed a heavy load from his shoulders.

"My best reporter was out yesterday when you called," he said, addressing Hitt. "He—well, he was a little the worse for wear. But he's in now. Come into my office and I'll send for him."

In a few minutes a tall, boyish fellow responded to the editor's summons. He must have been well under twenty, thought Hitt, marveling that so young a man should be regarded as Carlson's best news gatherer. But his wonder grew apace when the editor introduced him as Mr. Sidney Ames.

"Huh!" ejaculated Haynerd. "Know J. Wilton?"

The lad smiled pallidly, as he bent his gaze upon Carmen, and addressed his reply to her. "My governor," he said laconically.

"The deuce he is!" returned Haynerd, beginning to bristle.

Carlson dismissed the reporter, and turned to the curious group.

"The boy has the making of a fine newspaper man in him. Has something of his father's terrible energy. But he's doomed. Whiskey and morphine got him. He used to come down here before his father threw him out. I let him write little articles for the Express when he was barely sixteen years old; and they were mighty good, too. But he got mixed up in some scandal, and J. Wilton cut him off. The boy always did drink, I guess. But since his family troubles he's been on the straight road to the insane asylum. It's too bad. But you'll keep him, I suppose?"

"Certainly not!" replied Haynerd aggressively. "His father is no friend of mine, and—"

"We shall keep him," calmly interrupted Carmen. "His father is a very good friend of mine."

Carlson looked from one to the other quizzically. "H'm!" he mused. "Well," squinting over his glasses at the girl, "this surely is woman's era, isn't it?"

* * * * *

A week later the Express, scarcely recognizable in its clean, fresh type and modest headlines, with its crisp news and well written editorials, very unostentatiously made its entry into the already crowded metropolitan field. Few noticed it. Adams picked it up and laughed, a short, contemptuous laugh. Fallom glanced over it and wondered. J. Wilton Ames, who had been apprised of its advent, threw it into the waste basket—and then drew it out again. He re-read the editorial announcing the policy of the paper. From that he began a careful survey of the whole sheet. His eye caught an article on the feminist movement, signed by Carmen Ariza. His lip curled, but he read the article through, and finished with the mental comment that it was well written. Then he summoned Willett.

"I want this sheet carefully watched," he commanded, tossing the paper to his secretary. "If anything is noticed that in any way refers to me or my interests, call my attention to it immediately."

The secretary bowed and departed. A moment afterward Henry Claus, nominal head of the great Claus brewing interests, was ushered in.

"We licked 'em, Mr. Ames, we licked 'em!" cried the newcomer, rushing forward and clasping the financier's hand. "The city council last night voted against the neighborhood saloon license bill! Lined up solidly for us! Fine, eh?"

"Yes," commented the laconic Ames. "Our aldermen are a very intelligent lot of statesmen, Claus. They're wise enough to see that their jobs depend upon whiskey. It requires very astute statesmanship, Claus, to see that. But some of our congressmen and senators have learned the same thing."

The brewer pondered this delphic utterance and scratched his head.

"Well," continued Ames, "have you your report?"

"Eh? Yes, sure, Mr. Ames. Here."

Ames studied the document. Then he looked severely at Claus. "Sales less than last month," he remarked dryly.

"It's the local option law what done it, Mr. Ames," replied the brewer apologetically. "Them women—"

"Bah! Let a few petticoats whip you, eh? But, anyway, you don't know how to market your stuff. Look here, Claus, you've got to encourage the young people more. We've got to get the girls and boys. If we get the girls, we'll get the boys easily enough. It's the same in the liquor business as in certain others, Claus, you've got to land them young."

"But, Mr. Ames, I can't take 'em and pour it down their throats!" expostulated the brewer.

"You could if you knew how," returned Ames. "Why, man! if I had nothing else to do I'd just like to devote myself to the sales end of the brewing business. I'd use mental suggestion in such a way through advertising that this country would drown in beer! Beer is just plain beer to you dull-wits. But suppose we convinced people that it was a food, eh? Advertise a chemical analysis of it, showing that it has greater nutriment than beef. Catch the clerks and poor stenographers that way. Don't call it beer; call it Maltdiet, or something like that. Why, we couldn't begin to supply the demand!"

"How would you advertise, Mr. Ames?"

"Billboards in every field and along all railroads and highways; boards in every vacant lot in every town and city in the country; electric signs everywhere; handbills; lectures—never thought of that, did you? And samples—why, I'd put samples into every house in the Union! I'd give away a million barrels of beer—and sell a hundred million as a result! But I'd work particularly with the young people. Work on them with literature and suggestion; they're more receptive than adults. The hypnotism that works through suggestive advertising, Claus, is simply omnipotent! How about your newspaper contracts?"

"We have all the papers, excepting the Express, Mr. Ames."

"The Express?" Ames laughed. "Well, that's a new venture. You can afford to pass it up. It's run by a college professor and a doll-faced girl."

"But, Mr. Ames, our advertising manager tells me that the publishers of the Express called a meeting of the managers of all the other city papers, to discuss cutting out liquor advertising, and that since then the rates have gone up, way up! You see, the example set by the Express may—"

"Humph!" grunted Ames. Then he began to reflect. An example, backed by absolute fearlessness—and he knew from experience that the publishers of the Express were without fear—well, it could not be wholly ignored, even if the new paper had no circulation worth the name.

"Mr. Ames," resumed the brewer, "the Express is in every newsstand in the city. All the boys are selling it. It's in every hotel, in every saloon, in every store and business house here. It's in the dives. It isn't sold, it's given away! Where do they get their money?"

Ames himself wondered. And he determined to find out.

"Leave it to me, Claus," he said at length, dismissing the brewer. "I'll send for you in a day or so."

* * * * *

It was well after midnight when the little group assembled in the dining room of the Beaubien cottage to resume their interrupted discussions. Hitt and Haynerd were the last to arrive. They found Doctor Morton eagerly awaiting them. With him had come, not without some reluctance, his prickly disputant, Reverend Patterson Moore, and another friend and colleague, Doctor Siler, whose interest in these unique gatherings had been aroused by Morton.

"I've tried to give him a resume of our previous deductions," the latter explained, as Hitt prepared to open the discussion. "And he says he has conscientious scruples—if you know what that means."

"He's a Philistine, that's all, eh?" offered Haynerd.

Doctor Siler nodded genially. "I am like my friend, Reverend Edward Hull, who says—"

"There!" interrupted Morton. "Your friend has a life job molding the plastic minds of prospective preachers, and he doesn't want to lose the sinecure. I don't blame him. Got a wife and babies depending on him. He still preaches hell-fire and the resurrection of the flesh, doesn't he? Well, in that case we can dispense with his views, for we've sent that sort of doctrine to the ash heap."

Reverend Moore opened his mouth as if to protest; but Hitt prevented him by taking the floor and plunging at once into his subject. "The hour is very late," he said in apology, "and we have much ground to cover. Who knows when we shall meet again?"

Carmen stole a hand beneath the table and grasped the Beaubien's. Then all waited expectantly.

"As I sat in my office this morning," began Hitt meditatively, "I looked often and long through the window and out over this great, roaring city. Everywhere I saw tremendous activity, frantic hurry, and nerve-racking strife. In the distance I marked the smoke curling upward from huge factories, packing houses, and elevators. The incessant seething, the rush and bustle, the noise, the heat, and dust, all spelled business, an enormous volume of human business—and yet, not one iota of it contributed even a mite to the spiritual nature and needs of mankind!

"I pondered this long. And then I looked down, far down, into the streets below. There I saw the same diversified activity. And I saw, too, men and women, rich and comfortable, riding along happily in their automobiles, with not a thought beyond their physical well-being. But, I asked myself, should they not ride thus, if they wish? And yet, the hour will soon come when sickness, disaster, and death will knock at their doors and sternly bid them come out. And then?"

"Just what I have sought to impress upon you whenever you advanced your philosophical theories, Doctor," said Reverend Moore, turning to Morton. The doctor glowered back at him without reply. Hitt smiled and went on.

"Now what should the man in the automobile do? Is there anything he can do, after all? Yes, much, I think. Jesus told such as he to seek first the kingdom of harmony—a demonstrable understanding of truth. The automobile riding would follow after that, and with safety. Why, oh, why, will we go on wasting our precious time acquiring additional physical sensations in motor cars, amusement parks, travel, anywhere and everywhere, instead of laboring first to acquire that real knowledge which alone will set us free from the bitter woes of human existence!"

"Jesus set us free, sir," interposed Reverend Moore sternly. "And his vicarious atonement opens the door of immortality to all who believe on his name."

"But that freedom, Mr. Moore, you believe will be acquired only after death. I dispute that belief strenuously. But let us return to that later. At present we see mankind laboring for that which even they themselves admit is not meat. They waste their substance for what is not bread. And why? Because of their false beliefs of God and man, externalized in a viciously cruel social system; because of their dependence upon the false supports of materia medica, orthodox theology, man-devised creeds, and human opinions. Is it not demonstrably so?

"And yet, who hath believed our report? Who wants to? Alas! men in our day think and read little that is serious; and they reflect hardly at all upon the vital things of life. They want to be let alone in their comfortable materialistic beliefs, even though those beliefs rend them, rive them, rack and twist them with vile, loathsome disease, and then sink them into hideous, worm-infested graves! The human mind does not want its undemonstrable beliefs challenged. It does not want the light of unbiased investigation thrown upon the views which it has accepted ready-made from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, the human mind is inert, despite its seemingly tremendous material activity. And its inertia is the result of its own self-mesmerism, its own servile submission to beliefs which, as Balfour has shown, have grown up under every kind of influence except that of genuine evidence. Chief of these are the prevalent religious beliefs, which we are asked to receive as divinely inspired."

Doctor Morton glanced at Reverend Moore and grinned. But that gentleman sat stolid, with arms folded and a scowl upon his sharp features.

"Religion," continued Hitt, "is that which binds us to the real. Alas! what a farce mankind have made of it. And why? Because, in its mad desire to make matter real and to extract all pleasures from it, the human mind has tried to eliminate the soul."

"We have been having a bad spell of materialism, that's true," interposed Doctor Morton. "But we are progressing, I hope."

"Well," Hitt replied, "perhaps so. Yet almost in our own day France put God out of her institutions; set up and crowned a prostitute as the goddess of reason; and trailed the Bible through the streets of Paris, tied to the tail of an ass! What followed? Spiritual destitution. And in this country we have enthroned so-called physical science, and, as Comte predicted, are about to conduct God to the frontier and bow Him out with thanks for His provisional services. With what result? As our droll philosopher, Hubbard, has said, 'Once man was a spirit, now he is matter. Once he was a flame, now he is a candlestick. Once he was a son of God, now he is a chemical formula. Once he was an angel, now he is plain mud.'"

"But," exclaimed Reverend Moore, visibly nettled, "that is because of his falling away from the Church—"

"My friend," said Hitt calmly, "he fell away from the Church because he could not stagnate longer with her and be happy. Orthodox theology has largely become mere sentimentalism. The average man has a horror of being considered a namby-pamby, religiously weak, wishy-washy, so-called Christian. It makes him ashamed of himself to stand up in a congregation and sing 'My Jesus, I love Thee,' and 'In mansions of glory and endless delight.' What does he know about Jesus? And he is far more concerned about his little brick bungalow and next month's rent than he is about celestial mansions. And I don't blame him. No; he leaves religion to women, whom he regards as the weaker sex. He turns to the ephemeral wisdom of human science—and, poor fool! remains no wiser than before. And the women? Well, how often nowadays do you hear the name of God on their lips? Is He discussed in society? Is He ever the topic of conversation at receptions and balls? No; that person was right who said that religion 'does not rise to the height of successful gossip.' It stands no show with the latest cabaret dance, the slashed skirt, and the daringly salacious drama as a theme of discourse. Oh, yes, we still maintain our innumerable churches. And, though religion is the most vital thing in the world to us, we hire a preacher to talk to us once a week about it! Would we hire men to talk once a week to us about business? Hardly! But religion is far, far less important to human thought than business—for the latter means automobiles and increased opportunities for physical sensation."

"Well, Mr. Hitt," objected Doctor Siler, "I am sure this is not such a godless era as you would make out."

"No," returned Hitt. "We have many gods, chief of whom is matter. The world's acknowledged god is not spirit, despite the inescapable fact that the motive-power of the universe is spiritual, and the only action is the expression of thought.

"But now," he continued, "we have in our previous discussions made some startling deductions, and we came to the conclusion that there is a First Cause, and that it is infinite mind. But, having agreed upon that, are we now ready to admit the logical corollary, namely, that there can be but one real mind? For that follows from the premise that there is but one God who is infinite."

"Then we do not have individual minds?" queried Miss Wall.

"We have but the one mind, God," he replied. "There are not minds many. The real man reflects God. Human men reflect the communal mortal mind, which is the suppositional opposite of the divine mind that is God. I repeat, the so-called human mind knows not God. It never sees even His manifestations. It sees only its own interpretations of Him and His manifestations. And these it sees as mental concepts. For all things are mental. Could anything be plainer?"

"Well, they might be," suggested Doctor Siler.

Hitt laughed. "Well then," he said, "if you will not admit that all things are mental—including the entire universe—you certainly are forced to admit that your comprehension of things is mental."

"Agreed," returned the doctor.

"Then you will likewise have to admit that you are not concerned with things, but with your comprehension of things."

"H'm, well—yes."

"And so, after all, you deal only with mental things—and everything is mental to you."

"But—whence the human mind? Did God create it?" continued Doctor Siler. "Did He, Mr. Moore?"

"The Bible states clearly that He created all things," returned that gentleman a little stiffly.

"My friends," resumed Hitt very earnestly, "we are on the eve of a tremendous enlightenment, I believe. And for that we owe much to the so-called 'theory of suppositional opposites.' We have settled to our satisfaction that, although mankind believe themselves to be dependent upon air, food, and water for existence, nevertheless they are really dependent upon something vastly finer, which is back of those things. That 'something' we call God, for it is good. Matthew Arnold said that the only thing that can be verified about God is that He is 'the eternal power that makes for righteousness.' Very well, we are almost willing to accept that alone—for that carries infinite implications. It makes God an eternal, spiritual power, omnipotent as an influence for good. It makes Him the infinite patron, so to speak, of right-thinking. And we know that thought is creative. So it makes Him the sole creative force.

"But," he continued, "force, or power, is not material. God by very necessity is mind, including all intelligence. And His operations are conducted according to the spiritual law of evolution. Oh, yes, evolution is not a theory, it is a fact. God, infinite mind, evolves, uncovers, reveals, unfolds, His numberless eternal ideas. These reflect and manifest Him. The greatest of these is the one that includes all others and expresses and reflects Him perfectly. That we call man. That is the man who was 'made'—revealed, manifested—in His image and likeness. There is no other image and likeness of God. Moreover, God has always existed, and always will. So His ideas, including real man, have had no beginning. They were not created, as we regard creation, but have been unfolded.

"All well and good, so far. But now we come to the peculiar part, namely, the fact that reality seems always to have its shadow in unreality. Every positive seems to have a negative. The magnet has its opposite poles, one positive, the other negative. Jesus had his Nero. Truth has its opposing falsities. At the lowest ebb of the world's morals appeared the Christ. The Christian religion springs from the soil of a Roman Emperor's blood-soaked gardens. And so it goes. Harmony opposed by discord. Errors hampering the solving of mathematical problems. Spirit opposed by matter. Which is real? That which stands the test of demonstration as to permanence, I say with Spencer.

"And now we learn that it is the communal mortal mind that stands as the opposite and negative of the infinite mind that is God, and that it is but a supposition, without basis of real principle or fact. It has its law of evolution, too, and evolves its types in human beings and animals, in mountain, tree, and stream. All material nature, in fact, is but the manifestation, or reflection, of this communal mortal mind.

"But, though God had no beginning, and will have no ending, this communal mortal mind, on the contrary, did have a seeming beginning, and will end its pseudo-existence. It seemingly began as a mental mist. It seemingly evolved form and became active. It seemingly evolved its universe, and its earth as its lower stratum. It made its firmament, and it gradually filled its seas with moving things that manifested its idea of life. Slowly, throughout inconceivable eons of time, it unrolled and evolved, until at last, through untold generations of stupid, sluggish, often revolting animal forms, it began to evolve a type of mind, a crude representation of the mind that is God, and manifesting its own concept of intelligence. That type was primitive man.

"Now what was this communal mortal mind doing? Counterfeiting divine mind, if I may so express it. Evolving crude imitative types. But types that were without basis of principle, and so they passed away—the higher forms died, the lower disintegrated. Aye, death came into the world because of sin, for the definition of sin is the Aramaic word which Jesus used, translated 'hamartio,' which means 'missing the mark.' The mortal mind missed the mark. And so its types died. And so they still die to-day. Yes, sin came through Adam, for Adam is the name of the communal mortal mind.

"Well, ages and ages passed, reckoned in the human mind concept of time. The evolution was continually toward a higher and ever higher type. Why? The influence of divine mind was penetrating it. Paleolithic man still died, because he did not have enough real knowledge in his mortal mind to keep him from missing the mark. He probably had no belief in a future life, for he did not bury his dead after the manner of those who later manifested this belief. But, after the lapse of centuries, Neolithic man was found manifesting such a belief. What has happened? This: the mortal mind was translating the divine idea of immortality into its own terms and thus expressing it.

"Ages rolled on. The curtain began to rise upon what we call human history. The idea of a power not itself began to filter through the mist of mortal mind, and human beings felt its influence, the influence that makes for righteousness. And then, at last, through the mortal mind there began to filter the idea of the one God. The people who best reflected this idea were the ancient Israelites. They called themselves the 'chosen' people. Their so-called minds were, as Carmen has expressed it, like window-panes that were a little cleaner than the others. They let a bit more of the light through. God is light, you know, according to the Scriptures. And little by little they began to record their thoughts regarding their concept of the one God. These writings became sacred to them. And soon they were seeing their God manifested everywhere, and hearing His voice in every sound of Nature. And as they saw, they wrote. And thus began that strange and mighty book, the Bible, the record of the evolution of the concept of God in the human mind."

"Do you mean to say that the Bible was not given by inspiration?" demanded Reverend Moore.

"No," replied Hitt. "This filtering process that I have been speaking about is inspiration. Every bit of truth that comes to you or me to-day comes by inspiration—the breathing in—of the infinite mind that is truth.

"And so," he went on, "we have those reflections of the communal mortal mind which we call the Israelites recording their thoughts and ideas. Sometimes they recorded plain fact; sometimes they wrapped their moral teachings in allegories and fables. Josephus says of Moses that he wrote some things enigmatically, some allegorically, and the rest in plain words, since in his account of the first chapter of Genesis and the first three verses of the second he gives no hint of any mystery at all. But when he comes to the fourth verse of the second chapter he says Moses, after the seventh day was over, began to talk philosophically, and so he understood the rest of the second and third chapters in some enigmatical and allegorical sense. Quite so, it appears to me, for the writer, whoever he was, was then attempting the impossible task of explaining the enigma of evil, the origin of which is associated always with the dust-man."

"You deny the truth of the account of the creation as given in the second chapter of Genesis, do you?" asked Reverend Moore. "You deny that man was tempted and fell?"

"Well," said Hitt, smiling, "of course there is no special reason for denying that serpents may have talked, millions and millions of years ago. In fact, they still have rudimentary organs of speech—as do most animals. Perhaps they all talked at one time. Snakes developed in the Silurian Era, some twenty million years ago. In the vast intervening stretch of time they may have lost their power to talk. But, as for the second chapter of Genesis, Moses may or may not have written it. Indeed, he may not have written the first. We do not know. The book of Genesis shows plainly that it is a composite of several books by various authors. I incline to the belief that some more materialistic hand and mind than Moses's composed that second chapter. However that may be, it is a splendid example of the human mind's crude attempt to interpret the spiritual creation in its own material terms. It in a way represents the dawning upon the human mind of the idea of the spiritual creation. For when finite sense approaches the infinite it must inevitably run into difficulties with which it can not cope; it must meet problems which it can not solve, owing to its lack of a knowledge of the infinite principle involved. That's why the world rejected the first account of the creation and accepted the second, snake-story, dust-man, apple tree, and all."

"Hitt!" exclaimed Haynerd, his eyes wide agape. "You're like a story-book! Go on!"

"Wait!" interrupted Miss Wall. "We know that man appeared on this earth in comparatively recent times. For millions and millions of years before he was evolved animals and vegetables had been dying. Now was their death due to sin? If so, whose?"

"Assuredly," returned Hitt. "Your difficulty arises from the fact that we are accustomed to associate sin with human personality. But remember, the physical universe has been evolved from the communal mortal mind. It represents 'negative truth.' It has been dying from the very beginning of its seeming existence, for its seeming existence alone is sin. The vegetables, the animals, and now the men, that have been evolved from it, and that express it and reflect and manifest it, must die, necessarily, because the so-called mind from which they evolve is not based upon the eternal, immortal principle, God. And so it and they miss the mark, and always have done so. You must cease to say, Whose sin? Remember that the sin is inherent in the so-called mind that is expressed by things material. The absence of the principle which is God is sin, according to the Aramaic word, translated 'hamartio,' which Jesus used. The most lowly cell that swam in the primeval seas manifested the communal mortal mind's sin, and died as a consequence."

"In other words, it manifested a supposition, as opposed to truth?"

"Its existence was quite suppositional," replied Hitt. "It did not manifest life, but a material sense of existence. The subjective always determines the objective. And so the communal mortal mind, so-called, determined these first lowly material and objective forms of existence. They were its phenomena, and they manifested it. Different types now manifest it, after long ages. But all are equally without basis of principle, all are subject to the mortal law that everything material contains within itself the elements for its own destruction, and all must pass away. In our day we are dealing with the highest type of mortal mind so far evolved, the human man. He, too, knows but one life, human life, the mortal-mind sense of existence. His human life is demonstrably only a series of states of material consciousness, states of thought-activity. The classification and placing of these states of consciousness give him his sense of time. The positing of his mental concepts give him his sense of space. His consciousness is a thought-activity, externalizing human opinions, ideas, and beliefs, not based on truth. This consciousness—or supposititious human mind—is very finite in nature, and so is essentially self-centered. It attributes its fleshly existence to material things. It believes that its life depends upon its fleshly body; and so it thinks itself in constant peril of losing it. It goes further, and believes that there are multitudes of other human minds, each having its own human, fleshly existence, or life, and each capable of doing it and one another mortal injury. It believes that it can be deprived by its neighboring mortal minds of all that it needs for its sustenance, and that it can improve its own status at their expense, and vice versa. It is filled with fears—not knowing that God is infinite good—and its fears become externalized as disaster, loss, calamity, disease, and death at last. Perhaps its chief characteristic is mutability. It has no basis of principle to rest upon, and so it constantly shifts and changes to accord with its own shifting thought. There is nothing certain about it. It is here to-day, and gone to-morrow."

"Pretty dismal state of affairs!" Haynerd was heard to mutter.

"Well, Ned," said Hitt, "there is this hope: human consciousness always refers its states to something. And that 'something' is real. It is infinite mind, God, and its infinite manifestation. The human mind still translates or interprets God's greatest idea, Man, as 'a suffering, sinning, troubled creature,' forgetting that this creature is only a mental concept, and that the human mind is looking only at its own thoughts, and that these thoughts are counterfeits of God's real thoughts.

"Moreover, though the human mind is finite, and can not even begin to grasp the infinite, the divine mind has penetrated the mist of error. There is a spark of real reflection in every mortal. That spark can be made to grow into a flame that will consume all error and leave the real man revealed, a consciousness that knows no evil. There is now enough of a spark of intelligence in the human, so-called mind to enable it to lay hold on truth and grow out of itself. And there is no excuse for not doing so, as Jesus said. If he had not come we wouldn't have known that we were missing the mark so terribly."

"Well," observed Haynerd, "after that classification I don't see that we mortals have much to be puffed up about!"

"All human beings, or mortals, Ned," said Hitt, "are interpretations by the mortal mind of infinite mind's idea of itself, Man. These interpretations are made in the human mind, and they remain posited there. They differ from one another only in degree. All are false, and doomed to decay. How, then, can one mortal look down with superciliousness upon another, when all are in the same identical class?"

Carmen's thoughts rested for a moment upon the meaningless existence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who had anchored her life in the shifting sands of the flesh and its ephemeral joys.

"Now," resumed Hitt, "we will come back to the question of progress. What is progress but the growing of the human mind out of itself under the influence of the divine stimulus of demonstrable truth? And that is made possible when we grasp the stupendous fact that the human, mortal mind, including its man, is absolutely unreal and non-existent! The human man changes rapidly in mind, and, consequently, in its lower stratum, or expression, the body. For that reason he need not carry over into to-day the old, false beliefs which were manifested by him yesterday. If he leaves them in the past, they cease to be manifested in his present or future. Thus he outgrows himself. Then, opening himself to truth, he lays off the 'old man' and puts on the 'new.' He denies himself—denies that there is any truth in the seeming reality of the mortal, material self—as Jesus bade us do."

"He must make new thoughts, then?" said Miss Wall.

"No," replied Hitt. "Thought is not manufactured. God is eternal mind. His ideas and the thoughts regarding them must always have existed. His thoughts are infinite in number. He, as mind, is an inexhaustible reservoir of thought. Now the human, mortal mind interprets His thoughts, and so seems to manufacture new thought. It makes new interpretations, but not new thoughts. When you hear people chatting, do you think they are manufacturing new thought? Not a bit of it! They are but reflecting, or voicing, the communal so-called mortal mind's interpretations of God's innumerable and real thoughts."

"And so," suggested Father Waite, "the more nearly correct our interpretations of His thoughts are, the nearer we approach to righteousness."

"Just so," returned Hitt. "There exist all sorts of real thoughts about God's ideas. And these are good and eternal. But the human mind makes likewise all sorts of erroneous translations of them. We shall solve our problem of existence when we correctly interpret His thoughts, and use them only. When the human mentality becomes attuned or accustomed to certain thoughts, that kind flow into it readily from the communal mortal mind. Some people think for years along certain erroneous or criminal lines. Their minds are set in that direction, and invite such a flow of thought. But were they to reverse the 'set,' there would be a very different and better resulting externalization in health, prosperity, and morals."

"I think I see," said Miss Wall. "And I begin to glimpse the true mission of Jesus, and why he was ready to give up everything for it."

"Yes. And now a word further about the so-called mortal mind. For, when we have collected and arranged all our data regarding it, we will find ourselves in a position to begin to work out of it, and thereby truly work out our salvation, even if with fear and trembling. I have said in a previous talk that, judging by the deductions of the physical scientists, everything seems about to leave the material basis and turn into vibrations, and 'man changes with velocity' of these. They tell us that all life depends upon water; that life began, eons ago, in the primeval sea. True, the human sense of existence, as I have said, began in the dark, primeval sea of mist, the deep and fluid mortal mind, so-called. And that sense of existence most certainly is dependent upon the fluid of mortal mind. Bichat has said that 'life is the sum of the forces that resist death.' Spencer has defined life as the 'continuous adjustment of internal to external relations.' Very good, as applied to the human sense of life. The human mind makes multitudes of mental concepts, and then struggles incessantly to adjust itself to them, and at length gives up the struggle, hopelessly beaten. Scientists tell us that life is due to a continuous series of bodily ferments. The body is in a constant state of ferment, and that gives rise to life. Good! We know that the human mind is in a state of incessant ferment. The human mind is a self-centered mass of writhing, seething, fermenting material thought. And that fermentation is outwardly manifested in its concept of body, and its material environment. The scientists themselves are rapidly pushing matter back into the realm of the human mind. Bodily states are becoming recognized as manifestations of mental states—not vice versa, as has been ignorantly believed for ages. A prominent physician told me the other day that many a condition of nervous prostration now could be directly traced to selfishness. We know that hatred and anger produce fatal poisons. The rattlesnake is a splendid example of that. I am told that its poison and the white of an egg are formed of exactly the same amounts of the same elements. The difference in effect is the thought lying back of each."

"Well!" exclaimed Doctor Siler. "You don't pretend that the snake thinks and hates—"

"Doctor," said Hitt, "for thousands upon thousands of years the human race has been directing hatred and fear-thoughts toward the snake. Is it any wonder that the snake is now poisonous? That it now reflects back that poisonous thought to mankind?"

"But some are not poisonous, you know."

"Can we say how long they have not been so, or how soon our hatred will make them all poisonous? Do you know, moreover, that sorrow, remorse, all emotions, in fact, affect the perspiration that exudes from the human body? Do you know that hatred will render human perspiration the deadliest poison known to science? I am told that in a few minutes of murderous hatred enough of this poisonous perspiration is exuded from the human body to kill a man. And do you know that the thought which manifests upon the body in such deadly poison is just as deadly when sent into the mentality of a human being? Think what the Church's deadly hatred of so-called heretics has done in the last nineteen hundred years! Why, millions have been killed by it alone! And in the name of Christ!

"But now," he said, consulting his watch, "I must go. Even a newspaper man requires a little sleep. And I must make my apology for occupying the floor to-night to the exclusion of you all. I have gradually been filling up with these thoughts for some weeks, and I had to let them out. Besides—"

"Mr. Hitt," interrupted Father Waite, "I shall soon be ready to report on those questions of Bible research which you assigned to me."

"Ah, yes," replied Hitt. "Well, have you found that Jesus really was an historical character, or not?"

"I think," said Carmen, "that he has found that it really matters little whether there ever was such a person as the human man Jesus. The Christ has always lived; and the Christ-principle which the man Jesus is reported to have revealed to the world is with us, here, now, and always. It is the principle, rather than the man Jesus, that concerns us, is it not?"

"Miss Carmen," interposed Reverend Moore, "Jesus was the incarnate Son of God, and your remarks concerning him are—"

"Slow up, Pat!" interrupted Doctor Morton. "I'll fight that out with you on the way home. Come, the meeting's adjourned."

"We will take up that question in our next discussion," said Hitt. "But, wait; Carmen must give us just a short song before we part."

The girl went immediately to the piano. As she passed Hitt, she squeezed his hand. A few minutes later the little group dispersed, with the melody of the girl's voice trembling in their souls.



CHAPTER 8

For several days Ames reflected, and waited. Judging by the data which he was able to secure, the Express was eating up money at a fearful pace. To continue at that rate meant certain financial disaster in the near future. And yet the publishers of the rejuvenated sheet seemed never to count the cost of their experiment. Already they had begun the introduction of innovations that were startling and even mirth-provoking to staid, conservative publishers in the journalistic field. To survive the long period necessary for the education of the public taste to such things as the Express stood for demanded a source of income no less permanent than La Libertad itself. But at this thought Ames chuckled aloud.

Then an idea occurred to him. The Beaubien, of course, in her crippled financial condition was affording the Express no monetary assistance. Carmen had nothing. Haynerd's few thousands were long since dissipated. Hitt's income was measured. But—ah, Miss Wall! And her estate was handled by Ames and Company! And handled, we may add, in such a manner that Miss Wall knew naught regarding it, except that she might draw upon it as one dips water from a hillside spring.

Thus Ames reflected. And as he meditated upon the new paper and its promoters, there gradually formed within him a consuming desire to see again the fair young girl who had drawn him so strongly, despite his mountainous wrath and his flaming desire to crush her when she boldly faced him in his own house on the night of his grand reception. Why had he let her escape him then? He had been a fool! True, women had meant little to him, at least in the last few years. But this girl had seemed to stir within him new emotions, or those long slumbering. He knew not, coarsely materialistic as was his current thought, that in him, as in all who came within the radius of her pure affection, she had swept chords whose music he had never heard before.

Days passed, while Ames still mused. And then one morning he took down the receiver and called up the office of the Express.

No, Mr. Hitt was not there—but this was his assistant. And:

"You didn't want to see Mr. Hitt, did you? You wanted to see me. Well, you may come over."

Ames nearly dropped the receiver in his astonishment. In the first place, the girl had read his thought; and in the second, he was not accustomed to being told that he might go to see people—they came cringing to him.

"You may come at twelve-fifteen," continued the clear, firm voice. "And remain a half hour; I'm very busy."

Ames put down the instrument and looked about, thankful that no one was there to comment on his embarrassment. Then he leaned back in his chair and went slowly over in thought the experiences of that eventful night in his house. Why, this slip of a girl—a half-breed Indian at best—this mere baby—! But he glanced up at the great electric wall clock, and wished it were then twelve-fifteen.

* * * * *

At noon Ames, jauntily swinging his light walking stick, strolled casually into the office of the Express. His air was one of supreme confidence in his own powers. He was superhuman, and he knew it. And the knowledge rendered him unafraid of God, man, or beast. He had met and conquered everything mundane, excepting this young girl. But that thought was now delightful to him. In her he had unearthed a real novelty, a ceaseless interest. She reminded him of a beautiful kitten. She scratched and nettled him; but she was as nothing in his grasp.

The first thing that impressed him on entering the office was the air of prosperity which hung over the place. The environment, he mentally commented, was somewhat unusual for a newspaper plant. Order, quiet, and cleanliness were dominant notes in the prevailing harmony. He first walked back into the pressroom to see if the same conditions prevailed there. Then he retraced his steps, and at length came to a halt before a door bearing the inscription, "Miss Ariza," on the glass. Turning the knob, he peered curiously in.

The room was small, but light and airy. Its furnishings were new, and its walls had been freshly tinted. A few pictures of good quality hung about them. A handsome rug lay upon the floor. At the desk, bending over a new typewriter, sat Carmen.

"I beg pardon," said Ames, hesitating in the doorway.

The girl glanced up quickly. "Oh, come in," she said. "I was expecting you."

He entered and took the chair indicated. "You don't mind if I finish this article, do you?" she said, bending again to her work. "It's got to go to the compositors right away."

"Certainly—don't stop," replied Ames easily. "When we talk I want your undivided attention."

"Oh, you're sure to get it," she returned, laughing. And Ames wondered just what she meant.

He sat back in his chair and watched her closely. How wondrous fair she was! Yet, there was just a slight tint in her skin, he thought. Perhaps the report that she was a mulatto was not wholly unfounded, although the strain must have been greatly mixed. How simply she was dressed. He remembered her in her beautiful ball gown. He thought he preferred this. How rapidly her fingers sped over the keys. And what fingers! What a hand! He wanted to bend over and take it in his own. Then he suddenly remembered what the Beaubien had once told him—that she always seemed to be a better woman in this girl's presence. But—what changes had come since then! Could he go on persecuting the harassed woman? But he wouldn't, if—

"There!" said the girl, with what seemed to be a little sigh of relief. She pressed a button, and handed the typewritten sheets to the boy who responded. Then, turning to Ames:

"You've come to apologize, haven't you? But you needn't. I'm not a bit offended. I couldn't be, you know."

Apologize! Well, he certainly had not had any such intention when he came in. In fact, he knew not just why he was there.

"You see, Congressman Wales didn't vote for the unaltered schedule. And so everything's all right, isn't it?" she went on lightly.

Ames's face darkened. "No vote has been taken," he said, a dull anger rising within him.

"Oh, you are mistaken," replied the girl. "The bill was voted out of committee an hour ago. That's what I was writing up. Here's the wire, showing the alterations made. Mr. Wales voted for them."

Ames read the message, and handed it back. Beyond the clouding of his features he gave no indication of his feelings.

"So, you see," continued the girl, "that incident is closed—for all time, isn't it?"

He did not reply for some moments. Then:

"Rather odd, isn't it?" he commented, turning quite away from that subject, and glancing about, "that one with the high ideals you profess should be doing newspaper work."

"Just the contrary," she quickly returned. "There is nothing so practical as the ideal, for the ideal is the only reality."

"Well, just what, may I ask, are you trying to do here?" he continued.

"Run a newspaper on a basis of practical Christianity," she answered, her eyes dancing. "Just as all business will have to be conducted some day."

He leaned back and laughed.

"It is funny, isn't it?" she said, "to the carnal mind."

The laughter abruptly ceased, and he looked keenly at her. But there was no trace of malice in her fair face as she steadily returned the look.

"Has it paid yet?" he asked in a bantering tone.

"Splendidly!" she exclaimed.

"H'm! Well, I'll wager you won't get a dollar back on your investment for years."

"A dollar! No, nor perhaps a penny! We are not measuring our profits in money!"

"And your investment—let's see," he mused, trying to draw her out. "You've put into this thing a couple of hundred thousand, eh?"

She smiled. "I'll tell you," she said, "because money is the only measure you have for estimating the worth of our project. Mr. Hitt has put more than that amount already into the Express."

"Well! well! Quite a little for you people to lose, eh?"

"You will have to change your tone if you remain here, Mr. Ames," she answered quietly. "We talk only prosperity in this office."

"Prosperity! In the face of overwhelming debts! That's good!" he laughed.

She looked at him closely for a moment. "Debts?" she said in a low voice. "You speak of debts? You who owe your fellow-men what you can never, never repay? Why, Mr. Ames, there is no man in this whole wide world, I think, who is so terribly, hopelessly in debt as you!"

"I? My dear girl! Why, I don't owe a dollar to any man!"

"No?" she queried, bending a little closer to him. "You do not owe Madam Beaubien the money you are daily filching from her? You do not owe poor Mr. Gannette the money and freedom of which you robbed him? You do not owe anything to the thousands of miners and mill hands who have given, and still give, their lives for you? You do not owe for the life which you took from Mrs. Hawley-Crowles? You do not owe for the souls which you have debauched in your black career? For the human wreckage which lies strewn in your wake? You do not owe Mr. Haynerd for the Social Era which you stole from him?"

Ames remained rigid and quiet while the girl spoke. And when she had finished, and they sat looking squarely into each other's eyes, the silence was like that which comes between the sharp click of lightning and the crash of thunder which follows. If it had been a man who thus addressed him, Ames would have hurled him to the floor and trampled him. As it was, he rose slowly, like a black storm-cloud mounting above the horizon, and stood over the girl.

She looked up into his face dauntlessly and smiled. "Sit down," she quietly said. "I've only begun. Don't threaten, please," she continued. "It wouldn't do any good, for I am not a bit afraid of you. Sit down."

A faint smile began to play about Ames's mouth. Then he twitched his shoulders slightly. "I—I got up," he said, with an assumption of nonchalance, "to—to read that—ah, that motto over there on the wall." He went slowly to it and, stooping, read aloud:

"Lift up the weak, and cheer the strong, Defend the truth, combat the wrong! You'll find no scepter like the pen To hold and sway the hearts of men."

"That was written by your Eugene Field," offered the girl. "Now read the one on the opposite side. It is your Tekel Upharsin."

He went to the one she indicated, and read the spiritual admonition from Bryant:

"Leave the vain, low strife That makes men mad—the tug for wealth and power— The passions and the cares that wither life, And waste its little hour."

"Now," continued the girl, "that is only a suggestion to you of the real handwriting on the wall. I put it there purposely, knowing that some day you would come in here and read it."

Ames turned and looked at her in dumb wonder, as if she were some uncanny creature, possessed of occult powers. Then the significance of her words trickled through the portals of his thought.

"You mean, I suppose," he said, "that if I am not persuaded by the second motto I shall feel the force of the first, as it sways you, eh?"

"I mean, Mr. Ames," she replied steadily, "that the world is entering upon a new era of thought, and that your carnal views and methods belong to a day that is past. This century has no place for them; it wearies of the things you represent; you are the epitome of that evil which must have its little hour of night before the reality dawns."

He regarded her intently for some moments. "Am I to understand," he asked, "that the Express, under its new management, is about to turn muck-raker, and shovel mud at us men of wealth?"

"We are not considering the Express now, Mr. Ames," she replied. "It is I alone who am warning you."

"Do Hitt and Haynerd bring against me the charges which you voiced a moment ago? And do you intend to make the columns of your paper spicy with your comments on my character and methods? I verily believe you are declaring war!"

"We are in the business of declaring truth, Mr. Ames," she said gently. "The Express serves all people. It will not shield you when you are the willing tool of evil, nor will it condone your methods at any price."

"War, eh? Very well," he replied with a bantering smile. "I came over here this noon to get the policy of your paper. I accept your challenge."

"Our challenge, Mr. Ames," she returned, "is the challenge which evil always finds in good. It is perpetual."

"Fine!" he exclaimed. "I like a good enemy, and an honest one. All right, marshal your forces. Who's your general, Hitt or Haynerd?"

"God," she answered simply.

For an instant the man was taken back. Then he recovered himself, and laughed.

"Do you know," he said, bending close to her, "I admire you very much. You are a splendid little fighter. Now let's see if we can't get together on terms of peace. The world hasn't used you right, and I don't blame you for being at odds with it. I've wanted to talk with you about this for some time. The pin-headed society hens got jealous and tried to kill you. But, if you'll just say the word, I'll set you right up on the very pinnacle of social prestige here. I'll take you by the hand and lead you down through the whole crowd of 'em, and knock 'em over right and left! I'll make you the leading woman of the city; I'll back the Express; we'll make it the biggest newspaper in the country; I'll make you and your friends rich and powerful; I'll put you in the place that is rightfully yours, eh? Will you let me?"

He was bending ever nearer, and his hand closed over hers when he concluded. His eyes were looking eagerly into her face, and a smile, winning, enticing, full of meaning, played about his lips. His voice had dropped to a whisper.

Carmen returned his smile, but withdrew her hand. "I'll join you," she said, "on one condition."

"Name it!" he eagerly cried.

"That you obey me."

"Well—and what does that mean?"

"Go; sell that thou hast; and give to the poor. Then come, take up the cross, and follow—my leader."

He straightened up, and a sneer curled his lips. "I suppose," he coarsely insinuated, "that you think you now have material for an illuminating essay on my conversation."

"No," she said gently. "It is too dark to be illuminating."

The man's facial muscles twitched slightly under the sting, but he retained his outward composure. "My dear girl," he said, "it probably has not occurred to you that the world regards the Express as utterly without excuse for existence. It says, and truly, that a wishy-washy sheet such as it, with its devitalized, strained, and bolted reports of the world's vivid happenings, deserves to go under from sheer lack of interest. The experiment has been tried before, and has signally failed. Money alone can keep your paper alive. But, say the word, and—"

"And your money, as well as your business ideals, will be ours?" she concluded for him.

He smiled and nodded.

"Mr. Ames," she said, "you have no ideals. No man who amasses millions by taking advantage of the world's inhuman and pernicious social system can have ideals worthy of the name. To apply your methods, your thought, to the Express would result in sinking its moral tone into the dust. As for your money—"

"Commit suicide, then!" cried the man, yielding to his rising anger. "Let the Express go down, carrying you and your spineless associates with it! But, remember, you will be the sole cause of its ruin, and theirs!"

Carmen rose quietly and opened the office door. "Your half hour is up, Mr. Ames," she said, glancing at the little clock on her desk; "and I must return to my work."

For a moment the huge man stood looking down darkling upon the girl. He would have given his soul if he could have clasped that slender form in his arms! A sudden impulse assailed him, and bade him fall upon his knees before her, and ask her forgiveness and guidance. She stood waiting—perhaps just for that, and always with that same smile into which no one had ever yet read aught but limitless love.

The telephone bell rang sharply. Carmen hastened to answer the call.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Hitt. Yes—yes—the cotton schedule was reported out quite changed—yes, an hour ago!"

When she looked up, she was alone.

* * * * *

"Dearie," said the Beaubien at evening, as Carmen seated herself in that woman's lap and wound her arms about her neck, "I am afraid for you."

"Well, mother dearest," replied the girl, giving her a tighter squeeze, "that is a sheer waste of time. If you haven't anything more to occupy you than fear, you'd better come down to the office, and I'll set you to work."

"But—you have defied him—as he says, declared war—"

"No, dearest, not that. It is the carnal mind, using him as a channel, that has declared war against good. But evil is not power; nor has it been given power by God. My one thought is this: Am I doing that which will result in the greatest good to the greatest number? Am I loving my neighbor as myself? Serving as I would be served? Not as evil would want to be served, but as good. If my mental attitude is right, then God's law becomes operative in all that I do, and I am protected. Don't you see?"

"I know, dearie, but—there's the telephone! Oh, I do hope they don't want you!"

Carmen answered the call, and returned with the announcement that Haynerd was in distress. "Sidney Ames is—not there," she said. "He was to report a meeting. Mr. Haynerd wanted Lewis. Now don't worry, dearest; I—I won't go alone."

The girl had taken her coat and hat. A moment later she gave the Beaubien a kiss, and hurried out into the night. In half an hour she stood at Haynerd's desk.

"What are we going to do?" moaned that perturbed individual. "Here I am, tied down, depending on Sid, and he's drunk!"

"Well, I'm here. What's the assignment?"

Haynerd looked up at her, and hesitated. "Mass meeting, over on the East Side. Here's the address," taking up a slip of paper. "Open meeting, I'm told; but I suspect it's an I. W. W. affair. Hello!" he said, replying to a telephone call. "What's that? The Ames mills at Avon closed down this afternoon? What's reason? Oh, all right. Call me in an hour."

He hung up the receiver and turned to Carmen. "That's what this meeting is about," he said significantly. "Four thousand hands suddenly thrown out at the Avon mills. Dead of winter, too!"

Sidney Ames slouched into the editor's office and sank heavily into a chair. Haynerd gave a despairing gesture. "Look here," he said, in sudden desperation, "that fellow's got to be sobered up, now! Or else—"

Another call came, this time from the Beaubien. Father Waite had just come in. Could he take the assignment? Haynerd eagerly gave the address over the 'phone, and bade him start at once.

"Now," he said, nodding at Carmen, and jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the intoxicated reporter, "it's up to you."

Carmen rose at once and went to the lad. "Come, Sidney," she said, taking his hand.

The boy roused dully, and shuffled stupidly after the girl into her own little office.

Carmen switched on the lights and closed the door. Then she went to the limp, emaciated form crumpled up in a chair, and sat down beside it.

"Sidney," she said, taking his hand, "there is but one habit—the habit of righteousness. That is the habit that you are going to wear now."

Outside, the typewriters clicked, the telephones tinkled, and the linotypes snapped. There were quick orders; men came and went hurriedly; but there was no noise, no confusion. Haynerd toiled like a beaver; but his whole heart was in his work. He had found his niche. Carmen's little room voiced the sole discordant note that night. And as the girl sat there, holding the damp hand of the poor victim, she thanked her God that the lad's true individuality was His pure thought of him.

* * * * *

At dawn Sidney Ames awoke. A rosy-tinted glow lay over the little room, and the quiet form at his side seemed an ethereal presence. A gentle pressure from the hand that still clasped his brought a return of his earthly sense, and he roused up.

"Miss Carmen! You—?"

"Yes, Sidney." The gentle voice sounded to him like distant music.

"I—you—you brought me in here last night—but—" His hands closed about the little one that lay in his grasp. "You—haven't sat here—with me—all night?"

"Yes, Sidney, all night."

With a low moan the boy buried his face in her arms, and burst into a flood of bitter tears.

"It isn't real, Sidney," she whispered, twining an arm about his neck. "It isn't real."

For some moments the lad sobbed out his shame and misery. Carmen stroked his fair hair, and drew him closer to her, while tears of love and pity coursed down her own cheeks.

Then, suddenly, the boy started up. "Don't touch me!" he cried, struggling to his feet, while his eyes shone with a wild light.

He started for the door, but Carmen darted past him and stood with her back against it, facing him. "Stop, Sidney!" she cried, holding her hands against him. "It can't drive you! It is powerless! God reigns here!"

She turned the lock as he hesitated; then took his arm and led him, trembling and shivering, back to his chair.

"We are going to meet this, Sidney, you and I," she whispered, bending over the shaking form.

The suffering lad shook his head and buried his face in his hands. "You can't," he moaned; "you can't—I'm gone!" His voice died into a tremble of hopeless despair, of utter surrender.

Carmen bit her lip. She had faced many trying situations in her brief life-experience; but, though she met it with dauntless courage and knew its source, the insidious suggestion now persisted that the eyes of her people were upon her, and that by this would stand or fall their faith. Aye, the world was watching her now, keen-eyed and critical. Would she give it cause to say she could not prove her faith by her works?

And then came the divine message that bade her "Know that I am God!"—that bade her know that responsibility lay not upon her shoulders, but upon the Christ for whom she was now called to witness. To see, or permit the world to see, this mountainous error, this heaped-up evil, as real and having power, meant a denial of the Christ and utter defeat. It meant a weary retracing of her own steps, and a long night of spiritual darkness to those whose eyes had been upon her.

"Sidney," she said, turning to the sunken boy at her side, "you are right, the old man is gone. And now we are going to create 'new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind'—as thought. Underneath are the everlasting arms, and you have sunk down, down, down, until at last you rest upon them, and you find that you haven't sunk at all, and that you couldn't possibly get away from that infinite Love that is always drawing you to itself!"

She put her arm again about the lad, and drew him toward her. "Listen, Sidney dear, I am standing with you—and with me is omnipotent God! His arm is not shortened, that it can not save you from the pit of spiritual oblivion into which human thought would seem to make you think you had fallen, engulfed by the senses."

The boy raised his head and looked at her through his bloodshot eyes. "You don't know!" he whispered hoarsely; "you don't understand—"

"It is just because I do understand, Sidney, that I am able to help you," she interrupted quickly. "I understand it all."

"It—it isn't only whiskey—it's—" his head sank again—"it's—morphine! And—God! it's got me!"

"It's got the false thought that seems to call itself 'you,'" she said. "Well, let it have it! They belong together. Let them go. We'll cling to them no longer, but shake them off for good. For good, I said, Sidney—and that means, for God!"

"God?" he echoed. "I know no God! If there were a God, I shouldn't be where I am now."

"Then I will know it for you," she softly answered. "And you are now right where you belong, in Him. And His love is about you."

"Love!" He laughed bitterly. "Love! I never knew what it meant. My parents didn't teach it to their children. And when I tried to learn, my father kicked me into the street!"

"Then, Sidney, I'll teach you. For I am in the world just to show what love will do."

"My father—it's his fault—all his fault!" cried the boy, flaring up and struggling to rise. "God! I hate him—hate him! It's his fault that I'm a sot and a drug fiend!"

"It is hate, Sidney, that manifests in slavery, in sodden brains, and shaking nerves. You don't hate your father; the hate is against your thought of him; and that thought is all wrong. We're going to correct it."

"I used to drink—some, when I lived at home," the boy went on, still dwelling on the thoughts that held him chained. "But he could have saved me. And then I fell in love—I thought it was love, but it wasn't. The woman was—she was years older than I. When she left the city, I followed her. And when I found out what she was, and came back home, my father threw me out—cut me off—God!"

"Never mind, Sidney," the girl whispered. "It isn't true anyway." But she realized that the boy must voice the thoughts that were tearing his very soul, and she suffered him, for it uncovered to her the hidden sources of his awful malady.

"And then I drank, drank, drank!" he moaned. "And I lay in the gutters, and in brothels, and—then, one day, Carlson told me to come and work for him. He thought I could straighten up. And so I went to a doctor, and he—God curse him!—he injected morphine into my arm to sober me. And that taught me that I could drink all I wanted to, and sober up on morphine. But then I learned—I found—"

He stopped, and began to fumble in his pockets. His eyes became wilder as he searched.

"Where is it?" he cried, turning fiercely upon the girl. "Did you take it from me? Give it to me—quick!" He caught her wrist and twisted it painfully. His voice became a scream.

"God is everywhere!" flashed through the girl's thought. "I am not afraid to see evil seem to have power!" Then aloud: "I know what you are searching for, Sidney. Yes, I have it. Listen, and I will give it to you. You are searching for help. No, it isn't in morphine tablets. It is in love—right here—the Christ-principle, that is bigger far than the demons that seem to tear you! I have all power from God, and you, evil, can not touch me!"

The boy started at the ringing voice, and loosened his grasp. Then he sank back into his chair, shaking as with palsy.

"Sidney!" she cried, seizing his hand. "Rise, and stand with me! We don't have to struggle—we don't have to fight—we only have to know. All that you are wrestling with is the world-wide belief that there is a power apart from God! There is none! Any claim that there is such a power is a lie! I have proved it! You and I will prove it again! There is no power or intelligence in whiskey or morphine! I have been sent to help you! The Christ-principle will save you! There is nothing beyond its reach, not even your problem!

"It is a problem, that's all, Sidney," she went on, as he became calmer. "And I have the solution. Will you put yourself in my charge, in my care, and let me meet it for you?" She bent over him and looked eagerly into his drawn face.

"We are not going to fight," she continued. "We are not going to resist evil as the world does, and so make it real. I know, dear, just how pressing your need is. I know, and I understand. I know how awfully real it seems to you. But trust me, as I trust the Christ. For victory is inevitable!"

For a few moments they sat together, hand in hand. The boy seemed to have been stunned. Then Carmen rose. "Come," she said. "I am going to take you home with me. I am going to keep you right with me, right under my thought. I'm going to be the mirror, constantly with you, that reflects infinite love to you every moment. Come; your problem is mine now. The burden of proof rests upon me. Don't think of anything else now, excepting that God has your hand and is leading you."

She took his arm and drew him, unresisting, yet uncomprehending, to the door. As she opened it, she looked up into his face and smiled. The boy choked, and turned back.

"No!" she cried, shifting her grasp to his hand. "No; you are mine now! And I shall not turn you over to yourself again until the problem is solved!"

Hitt met them as they came out of the room. "Well," he said, "I've kept Madam Beaubien informed as well as I could. But she's been worried. Where are you going?"

"Home," she said simply. "We'll be back at three—perhaps."

* * * * *

But at three that afternoon the Beaubien telephoned to Hitt that Carmen would not be down.

"She will not leave the boy," the woman said. "She holds him—I don't know how. And I know he is trying desperately to help her. But—I never saw any one stand as she does! Lewis is here, but he doesn't interfere. We're going to put a bed in his room, and Sidney will sleep there. Yes, I'll keep you informed. Tell Ned, won't you?"

Haynerd stormed; but the tempest was all on the surface. "I know, I know," he said, in reply to Hitt's explanation. "That boy's life is more to her than a million newspapers, or anything else in the universe just at present. She'll win! The devil can't look her in the face! I—I wish I were—What are you standing there for? Go 'long and get to work!"

In the little Beaubien cottage that afternoon the angry waves of human fear, of human craving, of hatred, wrath, and utter misery mounted heaven-high, and fell again. Upon them walked the Christ. As the night-shadows gathered, Sidney Ames, racked and exhausted, fell into a deep sleep. Then Carmen left his bedside and went into the little parlor, where sat the Beaubien and Father Waite.

"Here," she said, handing a hypodermic needle and a vial of tablets to the latter. "He didn't use them. And now," she continued, "you must work with me, and stand—firm! Sidney's enemies are those of his own mental household. It is our task to drive them out. We have got to uproot from his consciousness the thought that alcohol and drugs are a power. Hatred and self-condemnation, as well as self-love, voiced in a sense of injury, are other mental enemies that have got to be driven out, too. There is absolutely no human help! It is all mental, every bit of it! You have got to know that, and stand with me. We are going to prove the Christ-principle omnipotent with respect to these seeming things.

"But," she added, after a moment's pause, "you must not watch this error so closely that it can't get away. Don't watch it at all! For if you do, you make a reality of it—and then, well—"

"The case is in your hands, Carmen," said Father Waite gently. "We know that Jesus would cure this boy instantly, if he were here—"

"Well—the Christ is here!" cried the girl, turning upon him. "Put away your 'ifs' and 'buts.' Stand, and know!"

The man bowed before the rebuke. "And these," he said, holding out the needle and vial, "shall we have further use for them?"

"It will be given us what we are to do and say," she returned. "The case rests now with God."



CHAPTER 9

Four weeks from that crisp morning when Carmen led the bewildered, stupified lad to her home, she and Sidney sat out upon the little porch of the cottage, drinking in the glories of the winter sun. January was but half spent, and the lad and girl were making the most of the sudden thaw before the colder weather which had been predicted might be upon them.

What these intervening weeks had been to Carmen, none might have guessed as she sat there with the sunlight filtering in streamlets of gold through her brown hair. But their meaning to the boy might have been read with ease in the thin, white face, turned so constantly toward his fair companion. They were deeply, legibly written there, those black nights, when he would dash out into the hall, determined to break through the windows of the nearest dram shop and drink, drink, drink, until the red liquor burst from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils! Those ghastly nights, when Carmen would stand before him, her arms outspread across the door, and beat back the roaring devils within him! Those long days of agonized desire for the vicious drug which had sapped his manhood! Those fell hours, when low curses poured from his burning lips upon her and upon all mankind! Those cold, freezing sweats, and the dry, cracking fever! Those hours when, with Carmen always by his side, he tramped mile after mile through drifts and ice, until he dropped at length from sheer exhaustion, only to awake, hours later, to find that the girl had brought him home, safe, unharmed!—

And then, oh, the "Peace, be still!" which he began to hear, faint at first, but growing in volume, until, at last, it became a mighty, thunderous command, before which the demons paled and slunk away, never to return! Oh, the tears of agony that had given way to tears of joy, of thanksgiving! Oh, the weakness that had been his strength! And, oh, the devotion of this fair girl—aye, and of her associates, too—but all through her! Had she proved her God before the eyes of the world? That she had! Day after day, clad in the impenetrable armor of her love, she had stood at this struggling lad's side, meeting the arrows of death with her shield of truth! Night after night she had sat by his couch, her hand crushed in his desperate grasp, flouting the terror that stalked before his delirious gaze! What work she had done in those long weeks, none would ever know; but the boy himself knew that he had emerged from the valley of the shadow of death with a new mind, and that she had walked with him all the dark, cloud-hung way.

As they sat there in the bright sunlight that morning, their thought was busy with the boy's future. Old plans, old ambitions, had seemed to lift with the lifting of the mortal curse which had rested upon him, and upward through the ashes of the past a tender flower of hope was pushing its way. He was now in a new world. The last tie which bound him to his family had been severed by his own father two weeks before, when the shadow of death fell athwart his mother's brilliant path. Mrs. J. Wilton Ames, delicate in health when recalled from abroad, and still suffering from the fatigue of the deadly social warfare which had preceded her sudden flight from her husband's consuming wrath, had failed to rally from the indisposition which seized her on the night of the grand Ames reception. For days she slowly faded, and then went quickly down under a sharp, withering attack of pneumonia. A few brief weeks after the formal opening of the Ames palace its mistress had sighed away her blasted hopes, her vain desires, her petty schemes of human conquest and revenge, and had gone to face anew her problems on another plane of mortal thought. It was rumored by the servants that, in her last hours, when she heard the rustle of the death angel's wings beside her, a great terror had stricken her, and she had called wildly for that son whom she had never cared to know. It was whispered that she had begged of her husband to seek the lad and lead him home; that she had pleaded with him to strive, with the boy, to find the better things of life; that she had begged him to warn and be warned of her present sufferings, as she lay there, stripped of every earthly aid, impoverished in heart, in soul, in mind, with her hands dusty and begrimed with the ashes of this life's mocking spoils. How true these rumors, none might say. What truth lay hidden in her mad ravings about the parentage of Carmen, and her confused, muttered references to Monsignor Lafelle, no one knew. But of those who stood about her bedside there was none who could gainsay the awed whisperings of the servants that this haughty leader of the great city's aristocracy had passed from this life into the darkness beyond in pitiable misery and terror.

The news of his mother's death had come at a time when the boy was wild with delirium, at an hour when Waite, and Hitt, and Carmen stood with him in his room and strove to close their ears against the shrieking of the demon that was tearing him. Hitt at once called up Willett, and asked for instructions. A few minutes later came the message that the Ames house was forever barred against the wayward son. And it was not until this bright winter morning, when the lad again sat clothed and in his right mind, that Carmen had gently broken the news to him.

"I never knew her," the boy had said at length, rousing from his meditations. "Few of the rich people's children know their parents. I was brought up by nurses and tutors. I never knew what it was to put my arms around my mother, and kiss her. I used to long to, at times. And often I would plan to surprise her by suddenly running into her arms and embracing her. But then, when I would see her, she was always so far away, so cold, so beautifully dressed. And she seldom spoke to me, or to Kathleen, until we were grown up. And by that time I was running wild. And then—then—"

"There!" admonished Carmen, reaching over and taking his hand. "That's in our little private cemetery, you know. The old error is dead, and we are not going to dig it up and rehearse it, are we?"

He smiled wanly. "I'm like a little baby," he said sadly. "I'm just beginning to live. And you are my mother, the only one I've ever known."

Carmen laughed merrily. "Let me be your sister," she said. "We are so near of an age, you know."

He raised her hand to his lips. "You are my angel," he murmured. "My bright, beautiful angel. What would I have been without you!"

"Now, Sidney!" she warned, holding up a finger. "What have I told you so often that Jesus said? 'Of mine own self I can do nothing.' Nor can I, Sidney dear. It was—" her voice sank to a whisper—"it was the Christ-principle. It worked through him as a channel; and it worked through me."

"You're going to teach me all about that," he said, again pressing her hand to his lips. "You won't cast me adrift yet, will you, little sister?"

"Cast you adrift! Never, Sidney dear! Why, you're still mine, you know! I haven't given you back to yourself yet, have I? But now let's talk about your work. If you want to write, you are going to, and you are going to write right."

"And you, Carmen?" he asked, wondering.

"Back to the Express," she said lightly. "I haven't written a word for it now for a month. And how dear, funny old Ned has scolded!"

"You—you dropped everything—your work—all—for a poor, worthless hulk like me," he sighed. "I—I can't understand it. You didn't know me, hardly."

"Sidney dear," the girl replied. "It wasn't for you. It was for God. Everything I do is 'as unto Him.' I would have done the same for anybody, whether I knew the person or not. I saw, not you, but the human need—oh, such a need! And the Christ-principle made me a human channel for meeting it, that is all. Drop my work, and my own interests! Why, Sidney, what is anything compared with meeting human needs? Didn't Jesus drop everything and hurry out to meet the sick and the suffering? Was money-making, or society, or personal desire, or worldly pleasure anything to him when he saw a need? You don't seem to understand that this is what I am here for—to show what love will do."