CHAPTER XXI

THE BRIDGE

At dawn they roused him out of his drugged sleep and gave him a showerbath and rubdown that brought a healthy glow to his cold skin. He turned pale at the mere mention of food, but after a drink of quassia, Griffith induced him to take a cup of clear coffee and some thickly buttered toast. After that the three hastened in a cab to the station, stopping on the way to buy half a case each of grapefruit and oranges. Aboard the train Blake was at once set to eating grapefruit and chewing the bitter pith to allay the burning of his terrible thirst.

Throughout the trip, which lasted until mid-afternoon, one or the other of the two friends was ever at his side, ready to urge more of the acid fruit upon him and continually seeking to divert and entertain him by cheerful talk. Until after the noon hour they were on the main line and had the benefit of the dining-car. Griffith ordered a hearty meal, more dinner than luncheon, and Blake was able to eat the greater part of a spring chicken.

The most trying and critical time during the trip was the short wait at the junction, where they transferred to the old daycoach that was attached to the train of structural steel for the Michamac Bridge. Blake caught sight of a saloon, and the associations roused by it quickened his craving to an almost irresistible fury. When, none too soon, the train pulled out of the little town, he sank back in his seat morose and almost exhausted by his struggle.

Though Lord James made every effort to rouse him to a more cheerful mood, his face was still sullen and heavy when the train clanked in over the switches of the material yards at the bridge. Before they left the car Griffith made certain that Blake was wrapped about in overcoat and muffler and had on the arctics that he had bought for him.

Having directed one of the trainmen to bring the boxes of fruit to the office, Griffith led the way up the path formed by the bridge-service track. The rails had been kept shovelled clear from the February snowdrifts and ran straight out through the midst of the bleak unlovely buildings grouped near the edge of Michamac Strait, at the southern terminus of the bridge.

Hardly had the three passengers stepped from the train, when Blake lifted his head for a clear view of the big electric derricks, the vast orderly piles of structural steel, floor beams, and planking, the sheds containing paint, machinery, and other stores, the gorged coal- bins, and all the other evidences of a vast work of engineering.

His gaze followed the bridge-service track past the cookhouse and bunkhouse and the storehouses, out across the completed shore span to the gigantic structure of the south cantilever. Far beyond, between its lofty skeleton towers and upsweeping side webs, appeared, in seemingly reduced proportions, the towers and webs of the north cantilever, across on the north edge of the channel of the strait.

Blake drew in a deep breath, and stared at the titanic structure, eager-eyed. There was no need for Lord James to nudge Griffith. The engineer had not missed a single shade of the great change in Blake's expression. He asked casually, "Well, how does the first sight strike you, Tommy?"

"You didn't say she was so far along," replied Blake.

"Didn't I? H. V., you know, has a pull with the Steel Trust. We've had our material delivered in short order, no matter who else waited. North cantilever is completed; ditto the south, except for part of the timbering and flooring. The central span is built out a third of the way from the north 'lever. But several miles of the feed track on that side the strait have been put into such bad shape by the weather that we'll have the central span completed from this side before the road over there is open again."

"That so?" said Blake. "I want to see about that span."

"We'll go out for a look at once, soon as we dump our baggage in on Laffie," said Griffith.

"Is that thing here?" growled Blake.

"Now, just you keep on your shirt, Tommy," warned Griffith. "He may be here, or he mayn't. You are here to look at the Michamac Bridge and hold on to yourself. Understand?"

Blake scowled and stared menacingly toward a snow-embanked, snow- covered building, the verandahs of which distinguished it as the office and quarters of the Resident Engineer.

"I want your promise you'll do nothing or say nothing to him till after you've made good on the Zariba Dam," went on Griffith. "You don't want your blast to go off before you've tamped the hole."

Blake's scowl deepened, and he clenched his fist in its thick fur glove. But after a long moment he answered morosely, "Guess you're right. He holds the cards on me now and has the drop. But if I find he slipped the aces out of my hand, it won't be long before I get the drop on him."

"And then something will drop!" added Lord James.

"I'll smash him—the dirty sneak!" growled Blake.

"Now, now, Tommy; you're not sure yet," cautioned Griffith.

"That so?" replied Blake in a tone that brought a glint of excitement into the worn eyes of the older engineer.

But before he could speak, a silk-robed figure stepped out onto the verandah of the Resident Engineer's office, and called delightedly, "Ah, Lord Avondale!—welcome to Michamac! You escaped my hospitality in town, but you can't here!"

"Thanks. Very good of you, I'm sure," replied Lord James dryly.

"I see you've come with old Grif," Ashton gayly rattled on. "Hello, Griffith! Hurry in, all of you. It's cold as the South Pole. I'll have a punch brewed in two shakes. Who's the other gentleman?"

At the question, Blake, who had been staring fixedly at the bridge, turned his muffled face full to the effusive welcomer. Before his hard, impassive look Ashton shivered as if suddenly struck through to the marrow by the cold.

"Blake!" he gasped. "Here?"

"No objections, have you?" asked Blake in a noncommittal tone. "Just thought I'd run up with Mr. Griffith and take a look at your bridge. He says it's worth seeing. But of course, if you don't allow visitors—"

"Just the opposite, Tommy," put in Griffith, quick to catch his cue. "Mr. Ashton is always glad to have his bridge examined by those who know what's what. Isn't that so, Mr. Ashton?"

"Why, of—of course—I—" stammered Ashton, his teeth chattering.

"Sure," went on Griffith. "Any man who's invented such a modification of the truss as this bridge shows, ought to have all the fame he can get out of it. In England he'd be made a lord, I suppose. Eh, Mr. Scarbridge?"

"Er—we've knighted brewers and soap-boilers. But then, y'know, with us beer and soap are two of the necessities," drawled Lord James.

"W-won't you come in?" urged Ashton. "It's chi-illy out here! I'll have that punch brewed in half a s-second."

"My God!" gasped Blake, his jaws clenched and face black with the agony of his temptation.

All unintentionally Ashton had turned the tables on his tormentors.

Griffith scowled at him and demanded: "Where's McGraw?"

"B-bunkhouse," answered Ashton.

Griffith spoke to Lord James in a low tone. "Go in and keep him there, will you? Might stay with him all night. We'll stop at the bunkhouse."

"I'm on," said Lord James.

Griffith raised his voice. "Well, then, if you prefer it that way, Mr. Scarbridge. It's true Ashton can make you more comfortable, and I'll be busy half the night checking over reports and so forth with McGraw. Ashton, if you'll send over your report, it'll leave you free to entertain Mr. Scarbridge. And say, send over the boxes that'll be coming along in a little while. I'm trying a diet of grapefruit." He turned to Blake. "Come on. We don't want to keep Mr. Ashton out here, to shiver a screw loose."

Blake uttered an inarticulate growl, but turned away with Griffith as Lord James sprang up the verandah steps and blandly led the vacillating Resident Engineer into his quarters. The visiting engineers crossed over to the big ungainly bunkhouse, and entered the section divided off for the bosses and steel workers and the other skilled men.

Within was babel. Kept indoors by the cold that enforced idleness on all the bridge force, the men were crowded thickly about their reading and card tables or outstretched in their bunks, talking, laughing, grumbling, singing, brooding—each according to his mood and disposition, but almost all smoking.

At sight of Griffith a half-hundred voices roared out a rough but hearty welcome that caused Blake's face to lighten with a flush of pleasure. The greeting ended in a cheer, started by one of the Irish foremen.

Griffith sniffed at the foul, smoke-reeking air, and looked doubtfully at Blake. He held up his hand. Across the hush that fell upon the room quavered a doleful wail from the Irish foreman: "Leave av hivin, Misther Griffith, can't ye broibe th' weather bur-r-reau? Me Schlovaks an' th' Eyetalians'll be afther a-knifin' wan another, give 'em wan wake more av this."

"There are indications that the cold snap will break within a week," replied Griffith. "You'll be at it, full blast, in two or three days. Where's McGraw?"

A big, fat, stolid-faced man ploughed forward between the crowded tables. As he came up, he held out a pudgy hand, and grunted: "Huh! Glad t' see you."

Griffith shook hands, and motioned toward Blake. "My friend Mr. Blake. Trying to get him to take charge here—nominally as Assistant Engineer—in case I have to go to Florida."

McGraw's deep-set little eyes lingered for a moment on the stranger's mouth and jaw. "Good thing," he grunted.

"The company is offering him double what Mr. Ashton gets; but he's not anxious to take it as Assistant."

The big general foreman was moved out of his phlegmatic stolidity. "Huh? He's not?"

"Not under that thing," put in Blake grimly.

"Must know him."

"He may change his mind," said Griffith. "The company has authorized me to make it a standing offer. So if he turns up any time—"

McGraw nodded, and offered his hand to Blake. "Hope you'll come. C'n do m' own work. Bridge needs an engineer, though—resident one." "H'm,—Mr. Ashton might call that a slap on the wrist," remarked Griffith. "Get on your coat. We're going out to the bridge."

McGraw headed across for his separate room. While waiting for him, Griffith introduced Blake to the engine-driver of the bridge-service train, two or three foremen, and several of the bridge workers. But the moment McGraw reappeared in arctics and Mackinaw coat, Griffith hurriedly led the way out of the smother of smoke and foul air.

As the three started bridgeward along the clean-shovelled service- track Blake fell in behind his companions. Seeing that he did not wish to talk, Griffith walked on in the lead with McGraw.

They were soon swinging out across the shore, or approach, span of the bridge. This extended from the high ground on the south side of the strait to an inner pier at the edge of the water, where it joined on to the anchor arm of the south cantilever. Almost all the area of the bridge flooring, which had been completed to beyond the centre of the cantilever, was covered with stacked lumber and piles of structural steel and rails, and kegs of nails, rivets, and bolts.

Here every chink and crevice was packed with snow and ice. But all the titanic steel structure above and the unfloored bottom-chords and girders of the outer, or extension, arm of the cantilever had been swept bare of snow by the winter gales and left glistening with the glaze of the last shower of sleet.

Blake swung steadily along after the others, his face impassive. But his eyes scrutinized with fierce eagerness the immense webs of steel posts and diagonals that ran up on either side, under the grand vertical curves of the top-chords, almost to the peaks of the cantilever towers. He had to tilt back his head to see the tops of those huge steel columns, which reared their peaks two hundred and fifty feet above the bridge-floor level and a round four hundred feet above the water of the strait.

Presently the three were passing the centre of the cantilever, between the gigantic towers, whose iron heels were socketed far below in the top-plates of the massive concrete piers, built on the very edge of deep water. From this point the outer arm of the cantilever extended far out over the broad chasm of the strait, where, a hundred and fifty feet beneath its unfloored level, the broken ice from the upper lake crashed and thundered on its wild passage of the strait.

Blake looked down carelessly into the abyss of grinding, hurtling ice cakes. The drop from that dizzy height would of itself have meant certain death. Yet without a second glance at the ice-covered waters, he followed his companions along the narrow walk of sleeted planks that ran out alongside the service-track. Though his gaze frequently shifted downward as well as upward, it went no farther than the ponderous chords and girders and posts of the bridge's framework.

Striding along the narrow runway of ice-glazed planks with the assurance of goats, the three at last passed under the main traveller, a huge structure of eleven hundred tons' weight that straddled the bridge's sides and rose higher than the towers. Its electromagnetic cranes were folded together and cemented in place by the ice.

A few yards beyond they came to the end of the extension arm of the cantilever and out upon the uncompleted first section of the central, or suspension, span. It was poised high in space, far out over the dizzy abyss. Many yards away, across a yawning gap, the completed north third of the suspension span reached out, above the gulf, from the tip of the north cantilever, like the arm of a Titan straining to clasp hands with his brother of the south shore.

Yet the mid-air companionship of this outreaching skeleton-arm served only to heighten the giddiness and seeming instability of the south- side overhang. From across the broad gap, the eye followed the curve of the bottom-chords of the north cantilever away down into the abyss toward the far shore of the strait, where the lofty towers upreared upon their massive piers.

From this viewpoint there was no relieving glimpse of the shoreward curving anchor-arm that balanced the outer half of the north cantilever alike in line and weight. There was only the vast upcurve of the top-chords and the stupendous down-curve of the bottom-chords and the line between that stood for the foreshortened sixteen hundred feet of bridge-floor level extending from the north shore to the swaying tip of that unanchored north third of the central span.

Few even among men accustomed to great heights could have stood anywhere upon the outer reach of the overhang without a feeling of nausea and vertigo. Not only did the gigantic structure on the far side of the gap seem continually on the verge of toppling forward into the abyss, but the end of the south cantilever likewise quivered and swayed, and the mad flow of the roaring, ice-covered waters beneath added to the giddiness of height the terrifying illusion that the immense steel skeleton had torn loose from its anchorage to earth and was hurtling up the strait through mid-air, ready to crash down to destruction the instant its winged driving-force failed.

Yet Griffith and Blake followed McGraw out to the extreme end of the icy walk and poised themselves, shoulder to wind, on narrow sleet- glazed steel beams, as unconcerned as sailors on a yardarm. Griffith and McGraw were absorbed in a minute inspection of the bridge's condition and in estimating the time it would take to throw forward the remaining sections of the central, or suspension, span, upon the termination of the irksome spell of extreme frosty weather.

Blake looked, as they looked, at post and diagonal, eyebolt and bottom-chord, and across the gap at the swaying tip of the north cantilever. But his face showed clearly that his thoughts were not the same as their thoughts. His eyes shone like polished steel, and there was a glow in his haggard face that told of an exultance beyond his power of repression.

At last Griffith roused from his absorption. He immediately noticed Blake's expression, and dryly demanded: "Well?"

"Well your own self!" rejoined Blake, striving to speak in an indifferent tone.

"Something of a bridge, eh?"

"It's not so bad," admitted Blake. He glanced at McGraw, who had paused in his ox-like ruminating.

Griffith addressed the general foreman. "Mr. Blake is a bit off his feed. A friend that came with us will occupy my room in Mr. Ashton's quarters. I'd like a room in the bunkhouse for Mr. Blake and myself, with a good stove and a window that'll let in lots of fresh air."

"C'n have mine," grunted McGraw. "Extra bunk in yardmaster's room,"

"It'll be a favor," said Griffith. "You might get it ready, if you will. Mr. Blake must have clean air when he goes inside. He and I will take our time going back. There are two or three things I want another look at."

McGraw at once started shoreward, without making any verbal response, yet betraying under his dull manner his eagerness to oblige the Consulting Engineer. When he had gone well beyond earshot, Griffith turned upon Blake with a quizzical look.

"So!" he croaked. "It's a certainty."

"Knew that soon's I got the first look," said Blake.

Griffith's forehead creased with an anxious frown. "You promise not to mix it with him."

"Don't fash yourself," reassured Blake. "I've waited too long for this, to go off at half-cock now."

"That's talking! You'll wait till you're sure you can settle him—the skunk! Come on, now. We'll start inshore before you get chilled."

"How about yourself?" chuckled Blake, as he led back along the runway. "Won't take the frost two shakes to reach the centre of your circumference, once it gets through that old wolfskin coat."

"Huh! I can still go you one better, young man. I'll soon be thawing out in Florida, while you'll be trotting back here to boss the completion of T. Blake's cantilever—largest suspension span cantilever in the world."

"God!" whispered Blake, staring incredulously at the titanic structure born of his brain. "But it's mine—it is mine!... I sweat blood over those plans!"

"Doggone you, Tommy, you're no engineer—you're an inventor, Class A-1!" exulted Griffith. "First this; then the Zariba Dam. After that, the Lord only knows what! Trouble with you, you're a genius."

"And a whiskey soak!" added Blake, with a sudden upwelling of bitterness.

"Hey! what!—after this?" demanded Griffith, his voice sharp with apprehension. He could not see the face of his companion, but the manner in which Blake's head bent forward between his hunching shoulders was more than enough to confirm his alarm.

"Come, now, Tommy!" he reproached. "Don't be a fool—just when things are coming your way."

"Think so?" muttered Blake. "What d'you suppose I care for what I'd get out of this or the dam? Good God! You can't see it—yet you had Mollie!"

For a moment the older man was forced to a worried silence. It ended in an outflashing of hope. "I told you what she said about you—almost her last words. You'll win out—she said it!"

Blake halted and turned about to his friend, his face convulsed with doubt and a despondency that verged on despair. They were still half way out on the overhang of the extension arm. He pointed down to the crashing, tumbling ice far beneath his feet.

"Do you know what I'd do if I had any nerve?" he cried. "I'd step over ... end it! ... You could tell her I slipped. There wouldn't be any need to tell her about—yesterday. She would remember me as she knew me there in Mozambique. After a time she'd make Jimmy happy—and be happy herself. Trouble is, I'm what she suspected. I haven't the nerve, when it comes to the real showdown."

"Damnation!" swore Griffith. "Have you gone clean dotty? You're not the kind to quit, Tom!—to slide out from under because you haven't the grit to hang on!"

"That's it. I'm booked for the D. T. route," muttered Blake. "Wasn't born for a watery end. Whiskey for mine!"

"Rats! You're over the worst of this bump already. You're going back to-morrow and dig in to make good on the dam."

"The dam! What's it to me now?"

"Fifty thousand dollars, the credit for your bridge, and a place among the top-notchers."

"Much that amounts to—when I've lost her!" retorted Blake.

He turned about again and plodded heavily shoreward, his chin on his breast and his big shoulders bowed forward.



CHAPTER XXII

CONDEMNED

Though he sank into a taciturn and morose mood from which no efforts of his friends could rouse him, Blake sullenly accepted the continued treatment that Griffith thrust upon him. In the morning he muttered a confirmation of the statement of Lord James that he was looking better and that the attack must be well over.

Ashton, forced probably by an irresistible impulse to learn the worst, followed Lord James to the room occupied by the engineers. Blake cut short his vacillating in the doorway with a curt invitation to come in and sit down. Having satisfied what he considered the requirements of hospitality, Blake paid no further attention to the Resident Engineer. As nothing was said about the bridge, Ashton soon regained all his usual assurance, and even went so far as to comment upon Blake's attack of biliousness.

When, beside the car step, an hour later, Ashton held out his hand, Blake seemingly failed to perceive it. Ashton's look of relief indicated that he mistook the other's profound contempt for stupid carelessness. To one of his nature, the fact that Blake had not at once denounced him as a thief seemed proof positive that the sick man had failed to recognize in the bridge structure the embodiment of his stolen plans.

He turned from Blake to Lord James. "Ah, my dear earl, this has been such a pleasure—such a delight! You cannot imagine how intolerable it is to be cut off from the world in this dreary hole—deprived of all society and compelled to associate, if at all, with, these common brutes!"

"Really," murmured Lord James. "For my part, y' know, I rather enjoy the company of intelligent men who have their part in the world's work. Though one of the drones myself, I value the 'Sons of Martha' at their full worth."

"Oh, they have their place. The trouble is to make them keep it."

"'Pon my word, I scarcely thought you'd say that—so clever an engineer as yourself!"

Ashton glanced up to be certain that both Griffith and Blake had passed on into the car.

"Your lordship hasn't quite caught the point," he said. "One may have the brains—the intellect—necessary to create such a bridge as this, without having to lower himself into the herd of common workers."

"Ah, really," drawled the Englishman, swinging up the car steps.

Ashton raised his hat and bowed. "Au revoir, Earl. Your visit has been both a delight and an honor. I shall hope soon to have the pleasure of seeing you in town."

"Yes?" murmured Lord James with a rising inflection. "Good-day."

He nodded in response to Ashton's final bow, and hastened in to where Blake and Griffith were making themselves comfortable in the middle of the car. The three were the only passengers for the down trip.

"So he didn't get you to stay over for the winter?" remarked Griffith as the Englishman began to shed his topcoat.

"Gad, no! He couldn't afford it. Tried to show me how to play poker last night. I've his check for two thousand. He insisted upon teaching me the fine points of the game."

"Crickey!—when you've travelled with T. Blake!" cackled Griffith. "Hey, Tommy? Any one who's watched you play even once ought to be able to clean out a dub like Lallapaloozer Laf. Say, though, I didn't think even you could keep on your poker face as you have this morning. It's dollars to doughnuts, he sized it up that you had failed to get next."

"Told you I wasn't going to show him my cards," muttered Blake.

Lord James looked at him inquiringly, but he lapsed into his morose silence, while Griffith commenced to write his report on the bridge, without volunteering an explanation. Lord James repressed his curiosity, and instead of asking questions, quietly prepared for his friend one of the last of the grapefruit.

An hour or so later Blake growled out a monosyllabic assurance that he was now safely over his attack. Yet all the efforts of Lord James to jolly him into a cheerful mood utterly failed. Throughout the trip he continued to brood, and did not rouse out of his sullen taciturnity until the train was backing into the depot.

"Here we are," remarked Lord James. "Get ready to make your break for cover, old man. What d' you say, Mr. Griffith? Will it be all right for him to keep close to his work for a while—to lie low?"

"What's that?" growled Blake.

"Young Ashton's a bally ass," explained Lord James. "He bolted down whole what I said about your attack of bile. Others, however, may not be so credulous or blind. You'd better keep close till you look a bit less knocked-up. There's no need that what's happened should come to Miss Leslie."

"Think so, do you?" said Blake. "Well, I don't."

"What's that?" put in Griffith.

"There's not going to be any frame-up over this, that's what," rejoined Blake, reaching for his hat and suitcase. "Soon 's I get a shave I'm going out to tell her."

"Gad, old man!" protested Lord James. "But you can't do that—it's impossible! You surely do not realize—"

"I don't, eh?" broke in Blake bitterly. "I'm up against it. I know it, and you know it. You don't think I'm going to do the baby act, do you? I've failed to make good. Think I'm going to lie to her about it? No! —nor you neither!"

His friends exchanged a look of helplessness. They knew that tone only too well. Yet Lord James sought to avert the worst.

"Might have known you'd be an ass over it," he commented. "Best I can do, I presume, is to go along and explain to her my view of what started you off."

"Best nothing. You'll keep out of this. It's none of your funeral."

"There's more than one opinion as to that."

"I tell you, this is between her and me. You'll keep out of it," said Blake, with a forcefulness that the other could not withstand. "Don't worry. You'll have your turn later on."

"Deuce take it!" cried the Englishman." You can't fancy I'm dwelling on that! You can't think me such a cad as to be waiting for an opportunity derived from an injustice to you!"

"Injustice, bah!" gibed Blake. "I'll get what's coming to me. It's of her I'm thinking, not you. She was right. I'm going to tell her so. That's all."

"But, in view of what she herself did—"

"I'll tell her the facts. That's enough," said Blake, and he led the way from the car.

He hastened out of the depot and would have started off afoot, had not Lord James hailed a taxicab and taken him and Griffith home. He went in with them, and when Blake had shaved and dressed, proposed that they should go on together as far as the hotel. To this Blake gave a sullen acquiescence, and they whirred away to the North Side. But instead of stopping at the hotel, their cab sped on out to the Lake Shore Drive.

Lord James coolly explained that he intended to take his friend to the door of the Leslies. Blake would have objected, but acquiesced as soon as he understood that Lord James intended to remain in the cab.

During the day the cold had moderated, and when Blake swung out of the cab he was wrapped about in the chilly embrace of a dripping wet fog from off the lake. He shivered as he hurried across and up the steps and into the stately portico of the Leslie house.

At the touch of his finger on the electric button, the heavy door swung open. He was bowed in and divested of hat and raincoat by an overzealous footman before he could protest. Silent and frowning, he was ushered to a door that he had not before entered. The footman announced him and drew the curtains together behind him.

Still frowning, Blake stepped forward and stopped short to stare about him at the resplendent room of gold and ivory enamel that he had entered. Only at the second glance did he perceive the graceful figure that had risen from the window-seat at the far end of the room and stood in a startled attitude, gazing fixedly at him.

Before he could speak, Genevieve came toward him with impetuous swiftness, her hands outstretched in more than cordial welcome.

"Tom! Is it really you?" she exclaimed. "I had not looked for you back so soon."

"It's somewhat sooner than I expected myself," he replied, with a bitter humor that should have forewarned her.

But she was too relieved and delighted to heed either his tone or his failure to clasp her hands, "Yes. You know, I've been so worried. You really looked ill Sunday, and I thought Lord James' manner that evening was rather odd—I mean when I spoke to him about you."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Blake in a harsh voice. "Jimmy had been there before. He knew."

"Knew? You mean—?" The girl stepped back a little way and gazed up into his face, startled and anxious. "Tom, you have been sick— very sick! How could I have been so blind as not to have seen it at once? You've been suffering terribly!"

Again she held out her hands to him, and again he failed to take them.

"Don't touch me," he replied. "I'm not fit. It's true I've suffered. Do you wonder? I've been in hell again—where I belong."

"Tom! oh, Tom!—no, no!" she whispered, and she averted her face, unable to endure the black despair that she saw in his unflinching eyes.

"Jimmy and old Grif, between them, managed to catch me when I was under full headway," he explained. "They stopped me and took me up to the Michamac Bridge. I'm on my feet again now. Just the same, I went under, and if it hadn't been for them, I'd be beastly, roaring drunk this minute."

"No, Tom! It's impossible—impossible! I can't believe it!"

"Think I'd lie about a little thing like that?" he asked with the terrible levity of utter despair.

"But it's—it's so awful!"

"I've known funnier jokes. God! D'you think I've done much laughing over being smashed for good? It's rid you of a drunken degenerate. It's you who ought to laugh. How about me? I've lost you! God!"

He bent over, with his chin on his breast and his big fists clenched down at his sides.

She stared at him, dazed, almost stunned by the shock. Only after what seemed an age of waiting could she find words for the stress of bitter disappointment and mortified love that drove the blood to her heart and left her white and dizzy.

"Then—you have—failed. You are—weak!" she at last managed to say.

Simple as were the words, the tone in which they were spoken was enough for Blake.

"Yes," he answered, and he swung about toward the door.

"Have you no excuses—no defence?" she demanded.

"I might lay it to that wine at the church—and prove myself still weaker," said Blake.

"The holy communion!" she reproached.

"I never made fun even of a Chinaman's religion," he said. "Just the same, if I don't believe a thing, I don't lie and let on I do. I told you that wine meant nothing to me in a religious way. But even if it had, I don't think it would have made any difference. Drop nitric acid on the altar rail, and it will eat the brass just the same as if it was in a brass foundry. Put alcohol inside me, and the craving starts up full blast."

"Then you believe I should excuse—"

"No," he interrupted with grim firmness. "I might have thought it then—but not now. I've had two days to think it over. It all comes down to this: If, knowing how you felt about it, I could not kneel there beside you and take that taste of wine without going under, I'm just what you suspected—weak, unfit."

She clasped her hands on her bosom. "You—admit it?"

"What's the use of lying about it?" he said. "If it hadn't come about that way, you can see now it was bound to happen some other way."

"I—suppose—yes. Oh! but it's horrible!—horrible! I thought you so strong!"

"I won't bother you any more," he muttered. "Good-bye."

He went out without venturing a glance at her white face. She waited, motionless, looking toward the spot where he had stood. Several moments passed before she seemed to realize that he had gone.



CHAPTER XXIII

A REPRIEVE

Lord James did not call upon Genevieve until late afternoon of the next day, and then he did not come alone. He had called first upon Mrs. Gantry and Dolores, who brought him on in their coupe.

Genevieve came down to them noticeably pale and with dark shadows under her fine eyes, but her manner was, if anything, rather more composed than usual. She even had a smile to exchange for the gay greeting of Dolores. Mrs. Gantry met her with a kiss a full degree more fervent than was consistent with strict decorum.

"My dear child!" she exclaimed. "I have hastened over to see you. Lord Avondale has told me all about that fellow."

"Yes?" asked Genevieve, looking at Lord James calmly but with a slight lift of her eyebrows that betrayed her astonishment.

"Hasn't your father told you?" replied Mrs. Gantry, reposing herself in the most comfortable seat. "It seems that he has arranged—"

"Beg pardon," said Lord James. "It was the Coville Construction Company that made the offer."

"Very true. An arrangement has been made, my dear, that will take that person to the bridge and keep him there."

"Provided he accepts the offer," added Lord James.

"How can it be otherwise? The salary is simply stupendous for a man of his class and standing."

"Laffie gets only twelve thousand a year, yet he designed the bridge," remarked Dolores. "He told me it wasn't even enough for pin-money."

"I fancy he must contrive to make it go farther since his last trip to town," said Mrs. Gantry. "The little visit proved rather expensive. His father made another reduction in his allowance."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Dolores. "Poor dear Laffie boy! If I conclude to marry him, I shall insist that Papa Ashton is to give me a separate allowance."

"My word, Miss Dolores!" expostulated Lord James. "You're not encouraging that fellow?"

"Oh, it's as well to have more than one hook on the line. Ask mamma if it isn't. Besides, Laffie would be a gilt-edged investment—provided his papa made the right kind of a will. Anyway, I could get Uncle Herbert's lawyers to fix up an agreement as to that—a kind of pre- nuptial alimony contract between me and Laffie's papa's millions."

Mrs. Gantry held up her hands. "Could you have believed it, Genevieve! She was frivolous enough before I went over for you. But now!"

Dolores coolly disregarded her mother, to turn a meaning look on Lord James. "If I have frivolled enough, it's about time you said something."

The young Englishman put an uneasy hand to his mustache. "Er—I should have preferred a—a rather more favorable time, Miss Dolores."

"Yes, and have mamma slam him before you put in the buffer," rejoined the girl. "See here, Vievie. It's too bad, but you must have tattled something to Uncle Herbert, and he—"

"Tattled!" repeated Genevieve. "I have always been candid with papa, if that is what you mean, Dolores."

"All right, then, Miss Candid. Though we called it tattling ten years ago. Anyway, Uncle Herbert wrote about it to mamma. He sent the letter out this noon. Next thing, it'll be all over Chicago—and England."

"Dolores! I must insist!" admonished Mrs. Gantry.

"So must I, mamma! If it's wrong to destroy the property of others, it's no less wrong to destroy their reputations."

Her mother expanded with self-righteous indignation. "Well, I never!— indeed! When the fellow has neither character nor reputation!"

"Dear auntie," soothed Genevieve, "I know you too well to believe you could intentionally harm any one."

"I would do anything to save you from ruining your life!" exclaimed Mrs. Gantry, moved almost to tears.

"I shall not ruin my life," replied Genevieve, with a quiet firmness that brought a profound sigh of relief from her aunt.

"A-a-h!—My dear child! Then you at last realize what sort of a man he is."

"Vievie knows he is a man—which is more than can be said of some of them," thrust Dolores, with a mocking glance at Lord James.

"My dear," urged Mrs. Gantry, "give no heed to that silly chit. I wish to commend your stand against the fatal attraction of mere brute efficiency."

"Oh, I say!" put in Lord James. "It's this I must protest against, Miss Leslie—this talk of his brute qualities—when it's only the lack of polish. You should know that. He's a thistle, prickly without, but within soft as silk."

"Do I not know?" exclaimed Genevieve, for the moment unable to maintain her perfect composure.

"The metaphor was very touching and most loyal, my dear earl," said Mrs. Gantry. "Yet you must pardon me if I suggest that your opinion of him may be somewhat biased by friendship."

"But of course mamma's opinion isn't biased," remarked Dolores. She shot an angry glance at her mother, and added—"by friendship."

"It would relieve me very much if no more were said about Mr. Blake," said Genevieve.

"We can't—now," snapped Dolores, frowning at the footman who had appeared in the doorway. "Some one must have sighted the right honorable earl in our coupe."

Her irony was justified by the actions of the three young matrons who fluttered in on the breeze of the footman's announcement. They immediately fell into raptures over his lordship, who was forced in self-defence to tug and twist at his mustache and toy with his monocle. At this last Dolores flung herself out of the room in ill- concealed disdain.

She was not to be found when, all too soon, her mother tore the "charming Earl Avondale" away from his chattering adorers. After the worshipful one had been borne off, the dejected trio did not linger long. Their departure was followed by the prompt reappearance of Dolores.

She came at her cousin with eyes flashing. "Now you're all alone, Vievie! I've been waiting for this. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give you a piece of my mind."

"Please, dear!" begged Genevieve.

"No. I'll not please! You deserve a good beating, and I'm going to give it to you. That poor Mr. Blake! Aren't you 'shamed of yourself? Breaking his big noble heart!"

"Dolores! I must ask you—"

"No, you mustn't! You've got to listen to me, you know you have. To think that you, who've always pretended to be so kind and considerate, should be a regular cat!"

"You foolish dear!" murmured Genevieve. "Do you imagine that anything that you can say can hurt me, after—after—" She turned away to hide her starting tears.

"That's it!" jeered her cousin. "Be a snivelly little hypocrite. Pretend to be so sorry—when you're not sorry at all. Pah!"

Genevieve recovered her dignity with her composure. "That is quite enough, my dear. I can overlook what you have already said. You know absolutely nothing about love and the bitter grief it brings."

"You don't say!" retorted Dolores, her nostrils quivering. "Much you know about me. But you!—the idea of pretending you love him—that you ever so much as dreamed of loving him!"

Genevieve shrank back as if she had been struck. "Oh! for any one to say that to me!"

"It's true—it must be true!" insisted Dolores, half frightened yet still too surcharged with anger to contain herself. "If it isn't true, how could you break his heart?—the man who saved you from that terrible savage wilderness!"

"I—I cannot explain to you. It's something that—"

"I know! You needn't tell me. It's mamma." "She's been knocking him. I'll bet she started knocking him when she first cabled to you—at least she would have, had she known anything about him. Think I don't know mamma and her methods? If only he'd been his lordship—Owh, deah! what a difference, don't y' know! She'd never have let you get out of England unmarried!"

"Dolores! this is quite enough!"

"The Countess of Avondale, future Duchess of Ruthby! Think I don't see through mamma's little game? And you'd shillyshally around, and throw over the true, noble hero to whom you owe everything—whom you've pretended you loved—to run after a title, an Englishman, when you could have that big-hearted American!"

Genevieve's lips straightened. "What a patriot!" she rejoined with quiet irony. "You, of course, would never dream of marrying an Englishman."

"That's none of your business," snapped Dolores, not a little taken aback by the counter attack.

"You spoke about pretence and hypocrisy," went on Genevieve. "How about the way you tease and make sport of Lord Avondale?"

For a moment the younger girl stood quivering, transfixed by the dart. Suddenly she put her hands before her eyes and rushed from the room in a storm of tears.

Genevieve started up as if to hasten after her, but checked herself and sank back into her chair. For a long time she sat motionless, in the blank dreary silence of profound grief, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, dry and lustreless.

When, a few minutes before their dinner hour, her father hurried into the room, expectant of his usual affectionate welcome, she did not spring up to greet him. The sound of his brisk step failed to penetrate to her consciousness. He came over to her and put a fond hand on her shoulder.

"H'm—how's this, my dear?" he asked. "Not asleep? Brown study, eh?"

She looked up at him dully; but at sight of the loving concern in his eyes, the unendurable hardness of her grief suddenly melted to tears. She flung herself into his arms, to weep and sob with a violence of which he had never imagined his quiet high-bred daughter capable. Bewildered and alarmed by the storm of emotion, he knew not what to do, and so instinctively did what was right. He patted her on the back and murmured inarticulate sounds of love and pity.

His sympathy and the blessed relief of tears soon restored her quiet self-control. She ceased sobbing and drew away from him, mortified at her outburst.

"There now," he ventured. "You feel better, don't you?"

"I've been very silly!" she exclaimed, drying her tear-wet cheeks.

"You're never silly—that is, since you came home this time," he qualified.

"Because—because—" She stopped with an odd catch in her voice, and seemed again about to burst into tears.

"Because he taught you to be sensible,—you'd say."

"Ye—yes," she sobbed. "Oh, papa, I can't bear it—I can't! To think that after he'd shown himself so brave and strong—! But for that, I should never have—have come to this!"

"H'm,—from the way you talked last night, I took it that the matter was settled. You said then that you could no longer—h'm—love him."

"I can't!—I mustn't! Don't you see? He's proved himself weak. How, then, can I keep on loving him? But they—they infer that it is my fault. I believe they think I tempted him."

"How's that?"

"Because I urged him to take the communion with me. I told you what he himself said about alcohol. But he did not blame me. He pointed out that if he was too weak to resist then, he would have yielded to the next temptation."

"H'm,—no doubt. Yet I've been considering that point—the fact that you did force him against his will."

"Surely, papa, you cannot say it was my fault, when he himself admits that his own weakness—"

"Wait," broke in her father. "What do you know about the curse of drink? It's possible that he might be able to resist the craving if not roused by the taste."

"Yet if he is so weak that a few drops of the holy communion wine could cause him to give way so shamelessly—"

"Holy?—h'm!" commented Mr. Leslie. "Alcohol is a poison. Suppose the Church used a decoction containing arsenic. Would that make arsenic holy?"

"Oh, papa! But it's so very different!"

"Yes. Alcohol and arsenic are different poisons. But they're similar in at least one respect. The effects of each are cumulative. To one who has been over-drugged with arsenic a slight amount more may prove a fatal dose. So of a person whose will has been undermined and almost paralyzed with alcohol—"

"That's it, papa. Don't you see? If he lacks the will, the strength, the self-control to resist!"

"No, that isn't the point. It's your part in this most unfortunate occurrence that I'm now considering."

"My part?"

"You told him that he must not look to you for help or even sympathy. I can understand your position as to that. At the same time, should you not have been as neutral on the other side? Was it quite fair for you to add to his temptations?"

"Yet the fact of his weakness—"

"I'm not talking about him, my dear. It's what you've done—the question whether you do not owe him reparation for your part in his— misfortune."

"My part?"

"Had you not forced him into what I cannot but consider an unfair test of his strength, he would not have fallen. Griffith tells me that he was well along toward a solution of the Zariba Dam. Had you not caused this unfortunate interruption in his work, he might soon have proved himself a master engineer. That would have strengthened him in his fight against this hereditary curse."

"He was to fight it on his own strength."

"What else would this engineering triumph have been but a proof to himself of his strength? You have deprived him of that. Griffith tells me that, hard as he is striving to work out the idea which he was certain would meet the difficulties of the dam, he now seems unable to make any progress."

"So Mr. Griffith and you blame all upon me?"

"You mistake me, my dear. What I wish to make clear to you is that, however hopeless Blake's condition may be, you are responsible for his failure upon this occasion."

"And if so?"

"Premising that in one respect my attitude toward him is unalterable, I wish to say that he has risen very much in my esteem. I have had confidential talks with Griffith and Lord Avondale regarding him. I have been forced to the conclusion that you were justified in considering him, aside from this one great fault, a man essentially sound and reliable. He has brains, integrity, courage, and endurance. Given sufficient inducement, those qualities would soon enable him to acquire all that he lacks,—manners and culture."

"Oh, papa, do not speak of it! It was because I saw all that in him that I felt so certain. If only it were not for the one thing!"

"H'm," considered Mr. Leslie, scrutinizing her tense face. "Then I gather it's not true what yesterday you said and no doubt believed. You still regard him with the same feelings as before this occurrence."

"No! no! He has destroyed all my faith in him. I—I can pity him. But anything more than that is—it must be—dead."

"Can't say I regret it. But—this is another question. You've lost him one chance. I believe you should give him another."

"Another chance?—you say that?" she asked incredulously.

"You should cancel this record—this occurrence. Blot it out. Start anew."

"How can I? It is impossible to forget that he has failed so utterly."

"Thanks to the poison you put into his mouth."

"Father! I did not think that you—"

"I was unjust to him. You also have done him a wrong. I am seeking to make reparation. In part payment, I wish to make clear to you what you should do to offset your fault. In view of the development of your character (which, by the way, you claim was brought about by your African experience), I feel that I should have no need to urge this matter. You are not a thoughtless child. Think it over. Here's Hodges."

She went in with him to dinner, perfectly composed in the presence of the grave-faced old butler. But after the meal, when her father left for his customary cigar in the conservatory, she sought the seclusion of the library, and attempted to fight down the growing doubt of her justice toward Blake that had been roused by her father's suggestions.

It was easy for her to maintain the resolute stand she had taken so long as she kept her thoughts fixed on his fall from manhood. But presently she began to recall incidents that had occurred during those terrible weeks on the savage coast of Mozambique.

She remembered, most vividly of all, a day on the southern headland— the eventful day before the arrival of the steamer—when he had spoken freely of the faults of his past life.... He had never lied to her or sought to gloze over his weakness.

And he could have concealed this present failure. She divined that both Griffith and Lord James would never have betrayed him. Yet he had come direct to her and confessed, knowing that she would condemn him.

The thought was more than she could withstand. She crossed over to her desk, and wrote swiftly:—

Dear Friend:

You are to consider that all which has taken place since Sunday is as if it had never happened.

Come to me to-morrow, at ten.

Jenny.

Enclosing the note in an envelope addressed to Blake, she gave it to a servant for immediate delivery. As soon as the man left the room, she went to the telephone and arranged for a private consultation with one of the most eminent physicians in the city.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE WAY OF A WOMAN

Blake was humped over his desk, his fingers deep in his hair, and his forehead furrowed with the knotted wrinkles of utter weariness and perplexity, as his eyes pored over the complex diagrams and figures jotted down on the plan before him.

Griffith came shuffling into the room in his old carpet slippers. He looked anxiously at the bent form across the desk from him, and said: "See here, Tommy, what's the use of wasting electricity?"

Blake stared up at him, blear-eyed with overstudy and loss of sleep.

"Told you 'm going to keep going long as the wheels go 'round," he mumbled.

"They'd keep going a heap longer if you laid off Sundays," advised Griffith. "I'm no fanatic; but no man can keep at it day and night, this way, without breaking."

"Sooner the better!" growled Blake. "You go tuck yourself into your cradle."

Griffith shook his head dubiously and was shuffling out when he heard a knock at the hall door of the living-room. He hastened to respond, and soon returned with a dainty envelope. Blake was again poring over his plans and figures. The older man tossed the missive upon the desk.

"Hey, wake up," he cackled. "Letter from one of your High Society lady friends. Flunkey in livery for messenger."

"Livery?" echoed Blake. "Brown and yellow, eh?—as if his clothes had malaria."

"No. Dark green and black."

Blake started to his feet, his face contorted with the conflict of his emotions. "Don't joke!—for God's sake! That's hers!"

Griffith ripped the note from its envelope and held it out. Blake clutched it from him, and opened up the sheet with trembling fingers, to find the signature. For a moment he stood staring at it as if unable to believe his own eyes. Then he turned to the heading of the note and began to read.

"Well?" queried Griffith, as the other reached the end and again stood staring at the signature.

Instead of replying, Blake dropped into his chair and buried his face in his arms. Griffith hovered over him, gazing worriedly at the big heaving shoulders.

"Must say you're mighty talkative," he at last remarked, and he started toward the door. "Good-night."

"Wait!" panted Blake. "Read it!"

Griffith took the note, which was thrust out to him, and read it through twice.

"Huh," he commented. "She wasn't so awfully sudden over it. 'Bout time, I'd say."

"Shut up!" cried Blake, flinging himself erect in the chair, to beam upon his friend. "You've no license to kick, you old grouch. I'm coming to bed. But wait till to-morrow afternoon. Maybe the fur won't fly on old Zariba!"

"Come on, then. I'll get your sulphonal."

"You will—not! No more dope in mine, Grif. I've got something a thousand per cent better."

"She ought to've come through with it at the start-off," grumbled Griffith. But he gladly accompanied his friend to the bedroom.

In the morning Blake awoke from a profound natural sleep, clear-eyed and clear-brained. His first act was to telephone to a florist's to send their largest crimson amaryllis to Miss Genevieve Leslie.

Though he forced himself to walk, he reached the Leslie mansion a full half-hour before ten. To kill time, he swung on out the Drive into Lincoln Park. He went a good mile, yet was back again five minutes before the hour. Unable to wait a moment longer, he hastened up into the stately portico and rang.

As on the previous day, he was at once bowed in and ushered to the beautiful room of gold and ivory enamel. He entered eagerly, and was not a little dashed to find himself alone. His spirits rebounded at the remembrance that he was early. He stopped in the centre of the room and stood waiting, tense with expectancy.

Very soon Genevieve came in at one of the side doorways. He started toward her the instant he heard her light step. But her look and bearing checked his eager advance. She was very pale, and her eyelids were swollen from hours of weeping.

"Jenny!" he stammered. "What is it? Your note—I thought that—that—"

"You poor boy! you poor boy!" she murmured, her eyes brimming over with tears of compassion.

"What is it?" he muttered, and he drew nearer to her.

She put out her hands and grasped his coat, and looked up at him, her forehead creased with deep lines of grief, and the corners of her sweet mouth drooping piteously.

"Oh, Tom! Tom!" she sobbed, "I know the worst now! I know how greatly I wronged you by forcing you into temptation. I have been to one who knows—one of the great physicians."

"About me?" asked Blake, greatly surprised.

"I used no names. He does not know who I am. But I told him the facts, as you have told them to me, dear. He said—Oh, I cannot—I cannot repeat it!"

She bent forward and pressed her face against his breast, sobbing with an uncontrollable outburst of grief. He raised his arms to draw her to him, but dropped them heavily.

"Well?" he asked in a harsh voice. "What of it?"

She drew herself away from him, still quivering, but striving hard to control her emotion.

"I—I must tell you!" she forced herself to answer. "I have no right to keep it from you. He said that it is a—a disease; that it is a matter of pathology, not of moral courage."

"Disease?" repeated Blake. "Well, what if it is? I don't see what difference that makes. If I fight it down—all well and good. If I lose out, I lose out—that's all."

"But don't you see the difference it makes to me?" she insisted. "I blamed you—when it wasn't your fault at all. But I did not realize, dear. I've been under a frightful strain ever since we reached home. Just because I do not weep and cry out, every one imagines I'm cold and unfeeling. I've been reproached for treating you cruelly. But you see now—"

"Of course!" he declared. "Don't you suppose I know? It's your grit. Needn't tell me how you've felt. You're the truest, kindest little woman that ever was!"

"Oh, Tom! that's so like you!—and after I have treated you so cruelly!"

"You? What on earth put that into your head? Maybe you mean, because you didn't give me the second chance at once when I owned up to failing. But it was no more than right for you to send me off. Didn't I deserve it? I had given you cause enough to despise me—to send me off for good."

"No, no, not despise you, Tom! You know that never could be, when there in that terrible wilderness you proved yourself so true and kind—such a man! And not that alone! I know all now—how you, to save me—" She paused and looked away, her face scarlet. Yet she went on bravely: "how, in order that I might be compelled to make certain, you endured the frightful heat and smother of that foul forecastle, all those days to Aden!"

"That wasn't anything," disclaimed Blake. "I slept on deck every night. Just a picnic. I knew you were safe—no more danger of that damnable fever—and with Jimmy to entertain you."

"While you had to hide from me all day! James said that it was frightful in the forecastle."

"Much he knows about such places! It wasn't anything to a glass- factory or steelworks. If it had been the stokehole, instead—I did try stoking, one day, just to pass the time. Stood it two hours. Those Lascars are born under the equator. I don't see how any white man can stoke in the tropics."

"You did that?—to pass the time! While we were aft, under double awnings, up where we could catch every breath of air! Had I known that you did not land at Port Mozambique, I should have—should have—"

"Course you would have!" he replied. "But now you see how well it was you didn't know."

"Perhaps—Yet I'm not so sure—I—I—"

She clasped her hands over her eyes, as all her grief and anguish came back upon her in full flood.

"Oh, Tom! what shall we do? My dear, my poor dear! That doctor, with his cold, hard science! I have learned the meaning of that fearful verse of the Bible: 'Unto the third and fourth generation.' You may succeed; you may win your great fight for self-mastery. But your children—the curse would hang over them. One and all, they too might suffer. Though you should hold to your self-mastery, there would still be a chance,—epilepsy, insanity, your own form of the curse! And should you again fall back into the pit—"

She stopped, overcome.

He drew back a little way, and stood regarding her with a look of utter despair.

"So that is why you sent for me," he said. "I came here thinking you might be going to give me another chance. Now you tell me it's a lot worse than even I thought."

"No, no!" she protested. "I learned what I've told you afterward— after I had sent you the note. You must not think—"

He broke in upon her explanation with a laugh as mirthless as were his hard-set face and despairing eyes. She shrank back from him.

"Stop it!—stop it!" she cried. "I can't bear it!"

He fell silent, and began aimlessly fumbling through his pockets. His gaze was fixed on the wall above and beyond her in a vacant stare.

"Tom!" she whispered, alarmed at his abstraction.

He looked down at her as if mildly surprised that she was still in the room.

"Excuse me," he muttered. "I was just wondering what it all amounts to, anyway. A fellow squirms and flounders, or else drifts with the current. Maybe he helps others to keep afloat, and maybe he doesn't. Maybe some one else helps him hold up. But, sooner or later, he goes down for good. It will all be the same a hundred years from now."

"No!" she denied. "You know that's not true. You don't believe it."

He straightened, and raised his half-clenched fist.

"You're right, Jenny. It's the facts, but not the truth. It's up to a man to pound away for all he's worth; not whine around about what's going to happen to him to-morrow or next year or when he dies. Only time I ever was a floater was when I was a kid and didn't know the real meaning of work. Since then I've lived. I can at least say I haven't been a parasite. And I've had the fun of the fight."

He flung out his hand, and his dulled eyes flashed with the fire of battle.

"Lord!—what if I have lost you! That's no reason for me to quit. You did love me there—and I'll love you always, little woman! You've given me a thousand times more than I deserve. I've got that to remember, to keep me up to the fighting pitch. I'm going to keep on fighting this curse, anyway. Idea of a man lying down, long as he can stagger! Even if the curse downs me in the end, there're lots of things I can do before I go under. There're lots of things to be done in the world—big things! Pound away! What if a man is to be laid on the shelf to-morrow? Pound away! Keep doing—that's life! Do your best—that's living!"

"I know of one who has lived!" whispered Genevieve. "Jenny! Then it's not true? You'll give me another chance? You still love me?"

"Wait! No, you must not!" she replied, shrinking back again. "I cannot—I will not give way! I must think of the future—not mine, but theirs! I must do what is right. I tell you, there is one supreme duty in a woman's lot—she should choose rightly the man who is to be the father of her children! It is a crime to bring into the world children who are cursed!"

A flame of color leaped into her face, but she stood with upraised head, regarding him with clear and candid eyes that glowed with the ecstasy of self-sacrifice.

Before her look, his gaze softened to deepest tenderness and reverence. When he spoke, his voice was hushed, almost awed.

"Now I understand, Jenny. It's—it's a holy thing you've done—telling me! I'll never forget it, night or day, so long as I live. Good-bye!"

He turned to go; but in an instant she was before him with hands outflung to stop him.

"Wait! You do not understand. Listen! I did not mean what you think— only—only if you fail! Can you imagine I could be so unjust? If you do not fail—if you win—Oh, can't you see?"

He stared at her, dazed by the sudden glimmering of hope through the blackness of his despair.

"But you said that, even if I should win—" he muttered.

"Yes, yes; he told me there would still be a risk. But I cannot believe it. At least it would not be so grave a risk. Oh, if you can but win, Tom!"

"I'll try," he answered soberly.

"You will win—you shall win! I will help you."

"You?"

"Yes. Don't you understand? That is why I sent for you—to tell you that."

"But you said—"

"I don't care what I said. It's all different now. I see what I should do. I have failed far worse than you. There on that savage coast you required me to do my share; but always you stood ready to advise and help me. Yet after all that—How ungrateful you must think me!"

"No, never!" he cried. "You sha'n't say that. I can't stand it. You're the truest, kindest—"

"It's like you to say it!" she broke in. "But look at the facts. Did you ever set me a task that called for the very utmost of my strength —perhaps more; and then turn coldly away, with the cruel word that I must win alone or perish?"

"It's not the same case at all," he remonstrated. "You're not fair to yourself. I'm a man."

"And I've called myself a woman," she replied. "After those weeks with you I thought myself no longer a shallow, unthinking girl. A woman! Now I see, Tom—I know! I have failed in the woman's part. But now I shall stand by you in your fight. I shall do my part, and you will win!"

Blake's eyes shone soft and blue, and he again held out his arms to her. But in the same moment the glow faded and his arms fell to his side.

"I almost forgot," he murmured. "You said that I must win by my own strength—that you must be sure of my strength."

"That was before I learned the truth," she replied. "I no longer ask so much. I shall—I must help you, as you helped me. I owe you life and more than life. You know that. You cannot think me so ungrateful as not to do all I can."

"No," he replied, with sudden resolve. "You are to do as you first said—as we agreed."

"You mean, not help you? But I must, Tom, now that I realize."

"All I want is another chance," he said. "It's more than I deserve. I can't accept still more."

"You'll not let me help you? Yet what the doctor said makes it all so different."

"Not to me," replied Blake, setting his jaw. "I've started in on this fight, and I'm going through with it the way I began. It'll be a big help to know how you feel now; but, just the same, I'm going to fight it out alone. The doctors may say what they please,—if I haven't will power enough to win, without being propped up, I'm not fit to marry any woman, much less you!"

"Tom!" she cried. "You are the man I thought you. You will win!"

She held out her hands to him. He took them in his big palms, and bent over to kiss her on the forehead.

"There!" he said, stepping away. "That's a lot more than I'm entitled to now, Jenny. It's time I left, to go and try to earn it."

"You won't allow me to help?" she begged.

"No," he answered, with a quiet firmness that she knew could not be shaken.

"At least you cannot keep me from praying for you," she said.

"That's true; and it will be a help to know how you feel about it now," he admitted.

"You will come again—soon?"

"No, not until I begin to see my way out on the Zariba Dam."

"Oh, that will be soon, I'm sure."

"I hope so. Good-bye!"

He turned and hurried from the room with an abruptness that in other circumstances she might have thought rude. But she understood. He was so determined in his purpose that he would not take the slightest risk that might be incurred by lingering.

She went to a front window, and watched him down the Drive. His step was quick but firm, and his head and shoulders were bent slightly forward, as if to meet and push through all obstacles.



CHAPTER XXV

HEAVY ODDS

For a few days Lord James was able to bring Genevieve encouraging reports of a vast improvement in Blake's spirits. But still the engineer-inventor failed to make the headway he had expected toward the solution of the complex and intricate problem of the dam. In consequence, he re-doubled his efforts and worked overtime, permitting himself less than four hours of sleep a night. His meals he either went without or took at his desk.

All the urgings of Griffith and Lord James could not induce him to cease driving himself to the very limit of endurance. Day by day he fell off, growing steadily thinner and more haggard and more feverish; yet still he toiled on, figuring and planning, planning and figuring.

But on the morning of the day set for Genevieve's ball, the weary, haggard worker tossed his pencil into the air, and uttered a shout that brought his two friends on a run from Griffith's office.

"I've got it! I've got it!" he flung at them, as they rushed in. He thrust a tablet across the table. "There's the proof. Check those totals, Grif."

Lord James leaned over the table to grasp Blake's hand.

"Gad, old man!" he said. "Just in time for you to go to the ball."

Griffith paused in his swift checking of Blake's final computations. "Ball? Not on your sweet life! He's going to bed."

"You promised to go, Tom," said Lord James.

"Did I?" replied Blake. "Well, then, of course I'm going."

"Of course!" jeered Griffith. "It's no use arguing against a mule. Can't help but wish you hadn't reminded him, Mr. Scarbridge."

"The change will do him good," argued Lord James.

"I'm in for it, anyway," said Blake. "Only thing, I wish I could get some sleep, in between. Well, here's for a good hot bath and a square meal. That'll set me up."

Griffith shook his head. "I'm not so sure. What you need is twelve hours on your back."

That he was right the Englishman had to admit himself with no little contrition before the ball was half over.

Blake presented a good figure, and though he talked little and danced less, yet on the whole he produced a very good impression. As Lord James had once observed, with regard to his visit at Ruthby Castle, Blake's bigness of mind seemed to be instinctively sensed by nearly all those with whom he came in contact on favorable terms.

But, from the first, he avoided Genevieve with a persistence so marked as almost to disarm Mrs. Gantry.

Most of his few dances were with Dolores, who discovered that, notwithstanding his evident weariness, he was astonishingly light on his feet and by no means a poor waltzer. But after midnight she found it increasingly difficult to lure him out on the floor whenever she was seized with the whim to favor him by scratching the name—and feelings—of some other partner.

More than once Lord James urged him to go home and turn in. Blake's reply was that he knew he ought not to have come to the ball, but since he had come, he proposed to stick it out,—he would not be a quitter. So he stayed on, hour after hour, weary-eyed and taciturn, but by no means ill-humored. Many of the wall-flowers and elderly guests poured their chatter into his unhearing ear, and thought him a most sympathetic listener.

Genevieve, however, with each glimpse that she caught of him, perceived how his fatigue was constantly verging toward exhaustion. At last, between three and four in the morning, she cut short a dance with young Ashton and asked Lord James to take her into the library for a few minutes' rest. He was with Dolores, but immediately relinquished her to Ashton, and went off with Genevieve.

They soon passed out of the chatter and whirl of the crowd into the seclusion of the library. Genevieve led the way to her father's favorite table, but avoided the big high-backed armchair. Lord James placed a smaller chair for her at the other side of the table, facing the door of the cardroom, and as she sank into it he took the chair at the corner.

"Ah!" sighed Genevieve. "It's so restful to get away from them all for a few moments."

"I wonder you're not still more fatigued. Awful crush," replied Lord James. "I daresay you haven't had any chance all evening for a nibble of anything. Directed that something be brought to us here."

"That was very thoughtful of you. I do need something. I'm depressed— It's about Tom. I brought you in here to ask your opinion. He has looked so haggard and worn to-night."

"Overwork," explained Lord James. "He's been hard at it, day and night, in that stuffy office. He could stand any amount of work out in the open. But this being cooped up indoors and grinding all the time at those bally figures!"

"If only it's nothing worse! I'm so afraid!"

"No. It hasn't come on again; though that may happen any time when he's so nearly pegged. Must confess, I blame myself for urging him to come to-night. But he said he had solved the big problem, and I thought the change would do him good—relax his mind, you know. Egregious mistake, I fear. I've urged him to go; but he insists upon sticking it out."

"But you're certain that he—has—done nothing as yet?"

"No, indeed, I assure you! This over-fatigue—I'm not even certain whether the craving is on him or not.... You'll pardon me, Miss Genevieve—but do you realize how hard you have made it for him, cutting him off from all help in his desperate struggle?"

"Then he is fighting all alone?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. He won't allow even me to jolly him up now. He's given me the cold shoulder. Said the inference to be drawn from your conditions was that he should have no help whatever."

"Isn't that brave!—isn't that just like him!" cried the girl, her eyes sparkling and cheeks aglow. "He will win! I feel sure he'll win!"

Lord James looked down at the table, and asked in rather an odd and hesitating tone: "We must hope it. But—if he does win—what then?"

Blake came slowly into the room through the doorway behind them, his head downbent as if he were pondering a problem.

Unaware of the newcomer, Genevieve looked regretfully into the troubled face of her companion, and answered him with absolute candor. "Dear friend, need I repeat? I am very fond of you, and I esteem you very highly. Yet if he succeeds, I must say 'no' to you."

As the young Englishman bent over, without replying, Blake roused from his abstraction and perceived that he was not alone in the room.

"Hello—'scuse me!" he mumbled. Half startled, they turned to look at him. He met them with a rare smile. "So it's you, Jeems—and Miss Jenny. Didn't mean to cut in on your 'tates-an'-tay, as the Irishman put it."

He started to turn back. Genevieve sought to stop him. "Won't you join us, Tom?"

"Thanks, no. It's Jimmy's sit-out. I just stepped in here to see if I could find a book on the differential calculus. Been figuring a problem in my head all evening, and there's a formula I need to get my final solution. I know that formula well as I know you, but somehow my memory seems to've stopped working."

"Those bally figures! Can't you ever chop off?" remonstrated Lord James. "You're pegged. Come and join us. Miss Genevieve will be interested to hear about the dam."

"I'm interested, indeed I am, Tom. Papa says you are working out a piece of wonderful engineering."

Blake stared. "What does he know about it?"

"I suppose his consulting engineer told him—your friend Mr. Griffith."

"Grif's not working for him now."

"Indeed? Then I misunderstood. Anyway, you must come and explain all about the dam."

"Well, if you insist," said Blake. He went around to the big armchair, across from Genevieve, and sat down wearily while explaining: "But the dam is a long way from being built. It's all on paper yet, and I've had to rely on the reports sent in by the field engineers."

A footman came in and set food and wine before Genevieve and Lord James. Blake went on, with quick-mounting enthusiasm, heedless of the coming and going of the soft-footed, unobtrusive servant.

"That's the only thing I'm afraid of. Would have liked to've gone over the ground myself first. But they had two surveys, and the field notes check fairly well. Barring mistakes in them, I've got the proposition worked out to a T. It's all done except some figuring of details that any good engineer could do. Just as well, for I'm about all in. Stiffest proposition I ever went up against."

He sank back into the depths of the big chair, with a sudden giving way of enthusiasm to fatigue. Lord James reached out his plate to him.

"You are pegged, old man," he said. "Have a sandwich."

"No," replied Blake. "I'm too played out to eat. Just want to rest."

Genevieve had been scrutinizing his face, and her deepening concern lent a note of sharpness to her reproach: "You're exhausted! You should not have come to-night!"

"Couldn't pass up a dance at your house, could I?" he smilingly rejoined. "Don't you worry about me. It's all right, long's I've got that whole damn irrigation system worked out."

"Ha! ha! old man!" chuckled Lord James. "That expresses it to a T, as you put it. But wouldn't it be better form to say, 'the whole irrigation dam system'?"

Blake smiled shamefacedly. "Did I make a break like—such as that? 'Scuse me, Miss Jenny. I'm sort of—I'm rather muddled to-night."

"No wonder, after all you've done," said Genevieve. She added, with a radiant smile, "But isn't it glorious that you've finished such a great work! Papa says that you've actually invented a new kind of dam."

The silent footman had reappeared with another plate and glass of wine. He glided around behind Blake, who had leaned forward again with the right arm upon the edge of the table. Unconscious of the servant, who placed the plate and wine glass near him on his left and quietly glided from the room, the engineer responded to Genevieve's remark with an animation that might have been likened to the last flare of a dying candle.

"No," he said, "it's not exactly a new kind of dam—not an invention. I did work out once a modification of bridge trusses which some might call an invention,—new principle in the application of trusses to bridge structure. Allows for a longer suspension span on cantilever bridges."

"But this Zariba Dam," remarked Lord James; "I've yet to learn, myself, just how you worked it out."

"Well, it wasn't any invention; just a sort of discovery how to combine a lot of well-known principles of construction to fit the particular case. You see, it's this way. There was only one available site for the dam, and the mid-section of that was bottomless bog; yet provision had to be made for a sixty-five foot head of water."

"You take him, Miss Genevieve," said Lord James. "They have no solid ground to build on, and the water above the dam is to be sixty-five feet deep."

"I should think the dam would sink into the bog," remarked Genevieve.

"That was one factor in the problem," said Blake. "Solved it by putting the steel reinforcement of the concrete in the form of my bridge-truss span. The whole central section could hang in midair and not buckle or drop. That was simple enough, long's I had my truss already invented. The main difficulty was that deep bog. If you studied hydrostatics, you'd soon learn that a sixty-five foot head of water puts an enormous pressure on the bed of a reservoir."

Absorbed in his explanation, Blake unconsciously grasped the wine glass in his left hand, as he went on:

"That pressure would be enough to make the water boil down through the bog and clear out under the deepest foundation any of the other engineers had been able to figure out. Well, I figured and figured, but somehow I couldn't make anything in the books go. At last, when I had almost given up—"

"No! you couldn't do that," put in Lord James.

Blake smiled at him, and paused to grasp again his broken thread of thought. In the fatal moment when his wakeful consciousness was diverted, and before Lord James could interpose to avert the act, his subconsciousness automatically caused his left hand to raise the glass which it held to his lips.

Before he was aware of what he was doing, he had taken a sip of the wine. An instant afterward the glass shattered on the floor beside his chair, and he clutched at the edge of the table, his face convulsed and his eyes glaring with the horror of what he had done.

"Hell!" he gasped.

Genevieve rose and started back from the table, shocked and frightened by what she mistook for an outburst of rage or madness. Lord James rose almost as quickly, no less shocked and quite as uncertain as to what his friend would do.



"Tom!" he called warningly, and he laid his hand on Blake's shoulder.

Almost beside himself in the paroxysm of fear and craving that had stricken his face white and half choked him with seeming rage, Blake shook off the restraining hand, and gasped hoarsely at Genevieve: "Wine!—here—in your house! God! Shoved into my hand! Smell wasn't enough—must taste it! God! Tough deal!"

"Lord Avondale!" cried Genevieve, and she turned to leave the room, furiously indignant.

"Gad! old man!" murmured Lord James, staring uncertainly from Blake to the angry girl, for once in his life utterly disconcerted and bewildered. He was unable to think, and the impulse of his breeding urged him to accompany Genevieve. After a moment's vacillation, he sprang about and hastened with her from the room.

Blake sat writhing in dumb anguish, his distended eyes fixed upon the doorway for many moments after they had gone. Then slowly yet as though drawn by an irresistible force, his gaze sank until it rested upon the half-filled wine glass left by Lord James. He glared at it in fearful fascination. Suddenly his hand shot out to clutch at it,—and as suddenly was drawn back.

There followed a grim and silent struggle, which ended in a second clutch at the glass. This time the shaking fingers closed on the slender stem. The wine was almost wetting his lips when, with a convulsive jerk, he flung it out upon the rug beside his chair.

Shuddering and quivering, Blake sank back in the chair, with his left arm upraised across his face as if he were expectant of a crushing blow or sought to shut out some horrible sight. His right arm slipped limply down outside the chair-arm, and the empty glass dropped to the floor out of his relaxing fingers.

Yet the lull in the contest was only momentary. As his protecting arm sank down again, his bloodshot eyes caught sight of the wine in Genevieve's glass. Instantly he started up rigid in his chair and clutched the edge of the table, as if to spring up and escape. But he could not tear his gaze away from the crimson wine.

Again there came the grim and silent struggle, and again the fierce craving for drink compelled his hand to go out to grasp the glass. But his will was not yet totally benumbed. As his fingers crooked to clutch the glass-stem, he made a last desperate effort to withstand the all but irresistible impulse that was forcing him over the brink of the pit. Beads of cold sweat started out on his forehead. His face creased with furrows of unbearable agony. His mouth gaped. The serpent had him by the throat.

The struggling man realized that he was on the verge of defeat. He was almost overcome. In a flash he perceived the one way to escape. For a single instant his slack jaw closed fast,—and in the same instant his outstretched hand clenched together and upraised and smashed down upon the wine glass.

Utterly exhausted, the victor collapsed forward, with head and arms upon the table, in a half swoon that quickly passed into the sleep- stupor of outspent strength.



CHAPTER XXVI

TURNING THE ODD TRICK

Thus it was Lord James found his friend when he came hurrying back into the library. He did not rouse Blake to ask questions. One glance at the shattered glass and Blake's bleeding hand was enough to tell him what had happened. There could be no doubt that Blake had won. It was no less certain, however, that the struggle had cost him the last ounce of his strength. What he now needed was absolute rest.

With utmost gentleness, Lord James examined the cut hand for fragments of glass and bound it up with his own handkerchief. As quietly, he gathered up the broken glass and the dishes, and wiped the blood and wine from the table. Another hour would see the end of the ball. Many of the guests already had gone, and it was not probable that any of those who remained would leave the ballroom or the cardroom to wander into the secluded library. Yet he thought it as well to remove the traces of Blake's struggle. He placed the bandaged hand of his unconscious friend down on the chair-arm, in the shadow of the edge of the table, and went out with the plates and glass, closing the door behind him.

He had been gone only a few minutes when the door of the cardroom swung open before a sharp thrust, and Mr. Leslie stepped into the library, followed by Mrs. Gantry. Mr. Leslie closed the door, and each took advantage of the seclusion to blink and yawn and stretch luxuriously. They had just risen from the card table, and were both cramped and sleepy. Also neither perceived Blake, who was hidden from them by the back of the big chair.

"Ho-ho-hum!" yawned Mr. Leslie, in a last relaxing stretch. "That ends it for this time." He wagged his head at his sister-in-law, and rubbed his hands together exultantly. "For once you'll have to admit I can play bridge."

"For once," she conceded, as she moved toward the table. "You're still nothing more than a whist-player, yet had it not been for the honor score, you'd have beaten us disgracefully. One is fortunate when one has the honor score in one's favor."

"H'm! h'm!" he rallied. "I'll admit you women can score honor, but the question is, do you know what honor is?"

"Most certainly—when the score is in our favor. One would fancy you'd been reading Ibsen. Of all the bad taste—" Mrs. Gantry stopped short, to raise her lorgnette and stare at the flaccid form of Blake. "Hoity-toity! What have we here?"

"Hey?" queried Mr. Leslie, peering around her shoulder. "Asleep? Who is he?"

Mrs. Gantry turned to him and answered in a lowered voice: "It's that fellow, Blake. I do believe he's intoxicated."

"Intoxicated?" exclaimed Mr. Leslie. He went quickly around and bent over Blake. He came back to her on tiptoe and led her away from the table.

"You're mistaken," he whispered. "I'm certain he hasn't touched a drop."

"Certain?"

"Yes. Some one has spilled wine on the table; but his breath proves that he hasn't had any. It's merely that he's worn out—fallen asleep. Poor boy!"

"'Poor boy'?" repeated Mrs. Gantry, quizzing her brother-in-law through her lorgnette.

"H'm. Why not?" he demanded. "I was most unjust to him. I've been compelled to reverse my judgment of him on every point that was against him. As you know, he refused everything I offered in the way of money or position. He has proved that his intentions are absolutely honorable,—and now he has proved himself a great engineer. By his solution of the Zariba Dam problem, he has virtually put half a million, dollars into my pocket."

"I understood that you turned that project over to some company."

"The Coville Company—of which I own over ninety-five per cent of the stock. He would quit if he knew it, and I can't afford to lose him. The solution of the dam is a wonderful feat of engineering. That's what's the matter with him now. He worked at it to the point of exhaustion—and then for him to come here, already worn out!"

"I'm sure he was quite welcome to stay away," put in the lady.

Mr. Leslie frowned, and went on: "Griffith tells me that he can stand any amount of outdoor work, but that office work runs him down fast. But I'll soon fix that. We arranged to put him in charge of the Michamac Bridge."

"In charge? How will you get rid of Lafayette? You've grumbled so often about his having a contract to remain there as chief builder, because he drew the bridge plans."

"Copied them, you should say."

"Ah, is that the term?"

"For what he did, yes—unless one uses the stronger term."

"I quite fail to take you."

"You'll understand—later on. Griffith and I are figuring that Tom will take the bridge and keep it."

"He has my heartfelt wish that he will take it soon, and remain in personal possession for all time!"

"H'm. I presume Genevieve could come down to visit us occasionally."

"Herbert! You surely cannot mean—?"

"Griffith has told me something in connection with this bridge that proves Thomas Blake to be one of the greatest engineers, if not the greatest, in America. I'd be proud to have him for a son-in-law."

"Impossible! impossible! It can't be you'll withdraw your opposition!"

"Not only that; I'll back him to win. I like your earl. He's a fine young fellow. But, after all, Blake is an American."

"He's a brute! Herbert, it is impossible!"

"They said that dam was impossible. He has mastered it. He's big; he's got brains. He'll be a gentleman within six months. He's a genius!"

"Poof! He's a degenerate!"

"You'll see," rejoined Mr. Leslie. He went back to the table and tapped the sleeper sharply on the shoulder.

Blake stirred, and mumbled drowsily: "Huh! what—whatcha want?"

"Wake up," answered Mr. Leslie. "I wish to congratulate you."

Blake slowly heaved himself up and blinked at his disturber with haggard, bloodshot eyes. He was still very weary and only half roused from his stupor.

"Huh!" he muttered. "Must 'uv dropped 'sleep—Dog tired." His bleared gaze swung around and took in Mrs. Gantry. He started and tried to sit more erect. "Excuse me! Didn't know there was a lady here."

"Don't apologize. That's for me to do," interposed Mr. Leslie, offering his hand. "My—that is, the Coville Company officers tell me you've worked out a wonderful piece of engineering for them."

Blake stared hard at the bookcase behind Mrs. Gantry and answered curtly, oblivious of the older man's hand. "That remains to be seen. It's only on paper, so far."

"But I—h'm—it seems they are sufficiently satisfied to wish to put you in charge of the Michamac Bridge."

"In charge?"

"Yes."

"How about Ashton—their contract with him?"

"That's to be settled later. I wish—h'm—I understand that you are to be sent nominally as Assistant Engineer."

"I am, eh? Excuse me!"

"At double the salary of Ashton, and—"

"Not at ten times the salary as his assistant!"

"But you must know that Griffith's doctor has ordered him to Florida, and with the work rushing on the bridge—He tells me it has reached the most critical stage of construction—that suspension span—"

"You seem mighty interested in a project you got rid of," remarked Blake, vaguely conscious of the other's repressed eagerness.

"Yes. I was the first to consider the possibility of bridging the strait."

"Your idea, was it?" said Blake, with reluctant admiration. "It was a big one, all right."

"Nothing as compared to the invention of that bridge," returned Mr. Leslie.

"Your young friend Ashton sure is a great one," countered Blake.

"The man who planned that bridge is a genius," stated Mr. Leslie with enthusiasm. "That's one fact. Another is that Laffie Ashton is unfit to supervise the construction of the suspension span. I'll see to it myself that the matter is so arranged that you—"

"Thanks, no. You'll do nothing of the kind," broke in Blake. He spoke without brusqueness yet with stubborn determination. "I don't want any favors from you, and you know why. I can appreciate your congratulations, long as you seem to want to be friendly. But you needn't say anything to the company."

"Very well, very well, sir!" snapped Mr. Leslie, irritated at the rebuff. He jerked himself about to Mrs. Gantry. "There's time yet. What do you say to another rubber?"

"You should have spoken before we rose," replied the lady. "There'll be others who wish to go. You'll be able to take over some one's hand. I prefer to remain in here for a tete-a tete with Mr. Blake."

Blake and Mr. Leslie stared at her, alike surprised. The younger man muttered in far other than a cordial tone: "Thanks. But I'm not fit company. Ought to've been abed and asleep hours ago."

"Yet if you'll pardon me for insisting, I wish to have a little chat with you," replied Mrs. Gantry.

At her expectant glance, Mr. Leslie started for the door of the cardroom. As he went out and closed the door, Mrs. Gantry took the chair on the other side of the table from Blake, and explained in a confidential tone: "It is about this unfortunate situation."

Blake stared at her, with a puzzled frown. "Unfortunate what?"

"Unfortunate situation," she replied, making an effort to moderate her superciliousness to mere condescension. "I assure you, I too have learned that first impressions may err. I cannot now believe that you are torturing my niece purposely."

Blake roused up on the instant, for the first time wide awake.

"What!" he demanded. "I—torturing—her?"

"Most unfortunately, that is, at least, the effect of the situation."

"But I—I don't understand! What is it, anyhow? I'd do anything to save her the slightest suffering!"

"Ah!" said Mrs. Gantry, and she averted her gaze.

"Don't you believe me?" he demanded.

"To be sure—to be sure!" she hastened to respond. "Had I not thought you capable of that, I should not have troubled to speak to you."

"But what is it? What do you mean?" he asked, with swift-growing uneasiness.

"I do not say that I blame you for failing to see and understand," she evaded. "No doubt you, too, have suffered."

"Yes, I've—But that's nothing. It's Jenny!" he exclaimed, fast on the barbed hook. "Good God! if it's true I've made her suffer—But how? Why? I don't understand."

Mrs. Gantry studied him with a gravity that seemed to include a trace of sympathy. There was an almost imperceptible tremor in her voice.

"Need I tell you, Mr. Blake, how a girl of her high ideals, her high conception of noblesse oblige, of duty (you saved her life as heroically as—er—as a fireman)—need I point out how grateful she must always feel toward you, and how easily she might mistake her gratitude for something else?"

"You mean that she—that she—" He could not complete the sentence.

Mrs. Gantry went on almost blandly. "A girl of her fine and generous nature is apt to mistake so strong a feeling of gratitude for what you no doubt thought it was."

"Yet that morning—on the cliffs—when the steamer came—"

"Even then. Can you believe that if she really loved you then, she could doubt it now?"

"You say she—does—doubt it? I thought that—maybe—" The heavy words dragged until they failed to pass Blake's tense lips.

"Doubt it!" repeated Mrs. Gantry. "Has she accepted you?"

"No. I—"

"Has she promised you anything?"

"No. She said that, unless she was sure—"

"What more do you need to realize that she is not sure? Can you fancy for a moment that she would hesitate if she really loved you—if she did not intuitively realize that her feeling is no more than gratitude? That is why she is suffering so. She realizes the truth, yet will not admit it even to herself."

"Blake forced himself to face the worst. "Then what—what do you—?"

"Ah! so you really are generous!" exclaimed Mrs. Gantry, beaming upon him, with unfeigned suavity. "Need I tell you that she is extremely fond of Lord Avondale? With him there could be no doubts, no uncertainties."

"Jimmy is all right," loyally assented Blake. "Yes, he's all right. Just the same, unless she—" He stopped, unable to speak the word.

"In accepting him she would attain to—" The tactful dame paused, considered, and altered her remark. "With him she would be happy."

"I'm not saying 'no' to that," admitted Blake. "That is, provided—"

"Ah! And you say you love her!" broke in Mrs. Gantry. "What love is it that would stand between her and happiness—that would compel her to sacrifice her life, out of gratitude to you?"

Blake bent over and asked in a dull murmur: "You are sure it's that?"

"Indeed, yes! How can it be otherwise?—a girl of her breeding; and you—what you are!"

Blake bent over still lower, and all his fortitude could not repress the groan that rose to his lips. Mrs. Gantry watched him closely, her face set in its suave smile, but her eyes hard and cold. She went on, without a sign of compunction: "But I now believe you are possessed of sterling qualities, else I should not have troubled to speak the truth to you."

She paused to emphasize what was to follow. "There is only one way for you to save her. She is too generous to save herself. I believe that you really love her. You can prove it by—" again she paused—"going away."

Blake bent over on the table and buried his face in his arms. His smothered groan would have won him the compassion of a savage. It was the cry of a strong man crushed under an unbearable burden. Mrs. Gantry was not a savage. Her eyes sparkled coldly.

"You will go away. You will prove your love for her," she said.

Certain that she had accomplished what she had set out to do, she returned to the cardroom, and left her victim to his misery and despair.