Ruth's mind during that drive had been in a confusion of regrets and doubts and hopes. There were times when she refused absolutely to believe the story of Kirk's baseness which her aunt poured into her ear during the first miles of the journey. It was absurd and incredible. Yet, as they raced along the dark roads, doubt came to her and would not be driven out.

A single unfortunate phrase of Kirk's, spoken in haste, but remembered at leisure, formed the basis of this uncertainty. That afternoon when he had left her he had said that Mamie was the real mother of the child. Could it be that Mamie's undeviating devotion to the boy had won the love which she had lost? It was possible. Considered in the light of what Mrs. Porter had told her, it seemed, in her blackest moments, certain.

She knew how wrapped up in the boy Kirk had been. Was it not a logical outcome of his estrangement from herself that he should have turned for consolation to the one person in sympathy with him in his great love for his child?

She tried to read his face as he stood looking at her now, but she could find no hope in it. The eyes that met hers were cold and expressionless.

Mrs. Porter rapped the table a second time.

"Mr. Winfield," she said in the metallic voice with which she was wont to cow publishers insufficiently equipped with dash and enterprise in the matter of advertising treatises on the future of the race, "I have no doubt you are surprised to see us. You appear to be looking your wife in the face. It speaks well for your courage but badly for your sense of shame. If you had the remnants of decent feeling in you, you would be physically incapable of the feat. If you would care to know how your conduct strikes an unprejudiced spectator, I may tell you that I consider you a scoundrel of the worst type and unfit to associate with any but the low company in which I find you."

Steve, who had been listening with interest, and indeed, a certain relish while Kirk was, as he put it to himself, "getting his" in this spirited fashion, started at the concluding words of the address, which, in his opinion, seemed slightly personal. He had long ago made up his mind that Lora Delane Porter, though an entertaining woman and, on the whole, more worth while than a moving-picture show, was quite mad; but, he felt, even lunatics ought to realize that there is a limit to what they may say.

He moaned protestingly, and rashly, for he drew the speaker's attention upon himself.

"This person," went on Mrs. Porter, indicating Steve with a wave of her hand which caused him to sidestep swiftly and throw up an arm, as had been his habit in the ring when Battling Dick or Fighting Jack endeavoured to blot him out with a right swing, "who, I observe, retains the tattered relics of a conscience, seeing that he winces, you employed to do the only dangerous part of your dirty work. I hope he will see that he gets his money. In his place I should be feeling uneasy."

"Ma'am!" protested Steve.

Mrs. Porter silenced him with a gesture.

"Be quiet!" she said.

Steve was quiet.

Mrs. Porter returned to Kirk.

Of all her burning words, Kirk had not heard one. His eyes had never left Ruth's. Like her, he was trying to read a message from a face that seemed only cold. In this crisis of their two lives he had no thought for anybody but her. He had a sense of great issues, of being on the verge of the tremendous; but his brain felt numbed and heavy. He could not think. He could see nothing except her eyes.

His inattention seemed to communicate itself to Mrs. Porter. She rapped imperatively upon the table for the third time. The report galvanized Steve, as, earlier in the day, a similar report had galvanized Mr. Penway; but Kirk did not move.

"Mr. Winfield!"

Still Kirk made no sign that he had heard her. It was discouraging, but Lora Delane Porter was not made of the stuff that yields readily to discouragement. She resumed:

"As for this wretched girl"—she indicated the silent Mamie with a wave of her hand—"this abandoned creature whom you have led astray, this shameless partner of your——"

"Say!"

The exclamation came from Steve, and it stopped Mrs. Porter like a bullet. To her this interruption from one whom she had fallen upon and wiped out resembled a voice from the tomb. She was not accustomed to having her victims rise up and cut sharply, even peremptorily, into the flow of her speech. Macbeth, confronted by the ghost of Banquo, may have been a little more taken aback, but not much.

She endeavoured to quell Steve with a glance, but it was instantly apparent that he was immune for the time being to quelling glances. His brown eyes were fixed upon her in a cold stare which she found arresting and charged with menace. His chin protruded and his upper lip was entirely concealed behind its fellow in a most uncomfortable manner.

She had never had the privilege of seeing Steve in the active exercise of his late profession, or she would have recognized the look. It was the one which proclaims the state of mind commonly known as "being fighting mad," and in other days had usually heralded a knock-out for some too persistent opponent.

"Say, ma'am, you want to cut that out. That line of talk don't go."

Great is the magic of love that can restore a man in an instant of time from being an obsequious wreck to a thing of fire and resolution. A moment before Steve's only immediate object in life had been to stay quiet and keep out of the way as much as possible. He had never been a man of ready speech in the presence of an angry woman; words intimidated him as blows never did, especially the whirl of words which were at Lora Delane Porter's command in moments of emotion.

But this sudden onslaught upon Mamie, innocent Mamie who had done nothing to anybody, scattered his embarrassment and filled him with much the same spirit which sent bantam-weight knights up against heavy-weight dragons in the Middle Ages. He felt inspired.

"Nix on the 'abandoned creature,'" he said with dignity. "You're on the wrong wire! This here lady is my affianced wife!"

He went to Mamie and, putting his arm round her waist, pressed her to him. He was conscious, as he did so, of a sensation of wonderment at himself. This was the attitude he had dreamed of a thousand times and had been afraid to assume. For the last three years he had been picturing himself in precisely this position, and daily had cursed the lack of nerve which had held him back. Yet here he was, and it had all happened in a moment. A funny thing, life.

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Porter.

"Sure thing," said Steve. His coolness, the ease with which he found words astonished him as much as his rapidity of action.

"I stole the kid," he said, "and it was my idea at that. Kirk didn't know anything about it. I wired to him to-day what I had done and that he was to come right along. And," added Steve in a burst of inspiration, "I said bring along Mamie, too, as the kid's used to her and there ought to be a woman around. And she could be here, all right, and no harm, she being my affianced wife." He liked that phrase. He had read it in a book somewhere, and it was the goods.

He eyed Mrs. Porter jauntily. Mrs. Porter's gaze wavered. She was not feeling comfortable. Hers was a nature that did not lend itself easily to apologies, yet apologies were obviously what the situation demanded. The thought of all the eloquence which she had expended to no end added to her discomfort. For the first time she was pleased that Kirk had so manifestly not been listening to a word of it.

"Oh!" she said.

She paused.

"That puts a different complexion on this affair."

"Betcha life!"

She paused once more. It was some moments before she could bring herself to speak. She managed it at last.

"I beg your pardon," she said.

"Mine, ma'am?" said Steve grandly. Five minutes before, the idea that he could ever speak grandly to Lora Delane Porter would have seemed ridiculous to him; but he was surprised at nothing now.

"And the young wom—— And the future Mrs. Dingle's," said Mrs. Porter with an effort.

"Thank you, ma'am," said Steve, and released Mamie, who forthwith bolted from the room like a scared rabbit.

Steve had started to follow her when Mrs. Porter, magnificent woman, snatching what was left from defeat, stopped him.

"Wait!" she said. "What you have said alters the matter in one respect; but there is another point. On your own confession you have been guilty of the extremely serious offence, the penal offence of kidnapping a child who—"

"Drop me a line about it, ma'am," said Steve. "Me time's rather full just now."

He disappeared into the outer darkness after Mamie.

* * * * *

In the room they had left, Kirk and Ruth faced each other in silence. Lora Delane Porter eyed them grimly. It was the hour of her defeat, and she knew it. Forces too strong for her were at work. Her grand attack, the bringing of these two together that Ruth might confront Kirk in his guilt, had recoiled upon her. The Old Guard had made their charge up the hill, and it had failed. Victory had become a rout. With one speech Steve had destroyed her whole plan of campaign.

She knew it was all over, that in another moment if she remained, she would be compelled to witness the humiliating spectacle of Ruth in Kirk's arms, stammering the words which intuition told her were even now trembling on her lips. She knew Ruth. She could read her like a primer. And her knowledge told her that she was about to capitulate, that all her pride and resentment had been swept away, that she had gone over to the enemy.

Elemental passions were warring against Lora Delane Porter, and she bowed before them.

"Mr. Winfield," she said sharply, her voice cutting the silence like a knife, "I beg your pardon. I seem to have made a mistake. Good night."

Kirk did not answer.

"Good night, Ruth."

Ruth made no sign that she had heard.

Mrs. Porter, grand in defeat, moved slowly to the door.

But even in the greatest women there is that germ of feminine curiosity which cannot be wholly eliminated, that little grain of dust that asserts itself and clogs the machinery. It had been Mrs. Porter's intention to leave the room without a glance, her back defiantly toward the foe. But, as she reached the door, there came from behind her a sound of movement, a stifled cry, a little sound whose meaning she knew too well.

She hesitated. She stood still, fighting herself. But the grain of dust had done its work. For an instant she ceased to be a smoothly working machine and became a woman subject to the dictates of impulse.

She turned.

Intuition had not deceived her. Ruth had gone over to the enemy. She was in Kirk's arms, holding him to her, her face hidden against his shoulder, for all the world as if Lora Delane Porter, her guiding force, had ceased to exist.

Mrs. Porter closed the door and walked stiffly through the scented night to where the headlights of her automobile cleft the darkness. Birds, asleep in the trees, fluttered uneasily at the sudden throbbing of the engine.



Chapter XVI

The White-Hope Link

The White Hope slept. The noise of the departing car, which had roused the birds, had made no impression on him. As Steve had said, dynamite could not do it. He slumbered on, calmly detached, unaware of the remarkable changes which, in the past twenty-four hours, had taken place in his life. An epoch had ended and a new one begun, but he knew it not.

And probably, if Kirk and Ruth, who were standing at his bedside, watching him, had roused him and informed him of these facts, he would have displayed little excitement. He had the philosophical temperament. He took things as they came. Great natural phenomena, like Lora Delane Porter, he accepted as part of life. When they were in his life, he endured them stoically. When they went out of it, he got on without them. Marcus Aurelius would have liked William Bannister Winfield. They belonged to the same school of thought.

The years have a tendency to destroy this placidity towards life and to develop in man a sense of gratitude to fate for its occasional kindnesses; and Kirk, having been in the world longer than William Bannister, did not take the gifts of the gods so much for granted. He was profoundly grateful for what had happened. That Lora Delane Porter should have retired from active interference with his concerns was much; but that he should have had the incredible good fortune to be freed from the burden of John Bannister's money was more.

If ever money was the root of all evil, this had been. It had come into his life like a poisonous blight, withering and destroying wherever it touched. It had changed Ruth; it had changed William Bannister; it had changed himself; it was as if the spirit of the old man had lived on, hating him and working him mischief. He always had superstitious fear of it; and events had proved him right.

And now the cloud had rolled away. A few crowded hours of Bailey's dashing imbecility had removed the curse forever.

He was alone with Ruth and his son in a world that contained only them, just as in the old days of their happiness. There was something symbolic, something suggestive of the beginning of a new order of things, in their isolation at this very moment. Steve had gone. Only he and Ruth and the child were left.

The child—the White Hope—he was the real hero of the story, the real principal of the drama of their three lives. He was the link that bound them together, the force that worked for coherence and against chaos. He stood between them, his hands in theirs; and while he did so there could be no parting of the ways. His grip was light, but as strong as steel. Time would bring troubles, moods, misunderstandings, for they were both human; but, while that grip held, there could be no gulf dividing Ruth and himself, as it had divided them in the past.

He faced the future calmly, with open eyes. It would be rough going at first, very rough going. It meant hard work, incessant work. No more vague masterpieces which might or might not turn into "Carmen" or "The Spanish Maiden." No more delightful idle days to be loafed through in the studio or the shops. No more dreams, seen hazily through the smoke of a cigar, as he lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling, of what he would do to-morrow. To-morrow must look after itself. His business was with the present and the work of the present.

He braced himself to the fight, confident of his power to win. He had found himself.

Bill stirred in his sleep and muttered. Ruth bent over him and kissed the honourable scratch on his cheek.

"Poor little chap! You'll wake up and find that you aren't a millionaire baby after all! I wonder if you'll mind. Kirk, do you mind?"

"Mind!"

"I don't," said Ruth. "I think it will be rather fun being poor again."

"Who's poor?" said Kirk stoutly. "I'm not. I've got you and I've got Bill. Do you remember—ages ago—what that Vince girl, the model, you know, said that her friend had called me? A plute. That's me. I'm the richest man in the world."

THE END