The words were not spoken before the young gentleman darted across the narrow street and into a yard hidden by masses of clematis, morning glory and sweet peas. And Jane realized that she had wholly mistaken the meaning of that hypnotic stare.

Victor laughed—the small figure, the vast clothes, the bare feet with voluminous trousers about them made a ludicrous sight. "He doesn't want it," said Victor. "Thank you just the same."

"But I want him to have it," said Jane.

With a significant unconscious glance at her costume Dorn said: "Those costumes haven't reached our town yet."

"He did some work for me. I owe it to him."

"He's my sister's little boy," said Dorn, with his amiable, friendly smile. "We mustn't start him in the bad way of expecting pay for politeness."

Jane colored as if she had been rebuked, when in fact his tone forbade the suggestion of rebuke. There was an unpleasant sparkle in her eyes as she regarded the young man in the baggy suit, with the basket on his arm. "I beg your pardon," said she coldly. "I naturally didn't know your peculiar point of view."

"That's all right," said Dorn carelessly. "Thank you, and good day." And with a polite raising of the hat and a manner of good humored friendliness that showed how utterly unconscious he was of her being offended at him, he hastened across the street and went in at the gate where the boy had vanished. And Jane had the sense that he had forgotten her. She glanced nervously up at the window to see whether Selma Gordon was witnessing her humiliation—for so she regarded it. But Selma was evidently lost in a world of her own. "She doesn't love him," Jane decided. "For, even though she is a strange kind of person, she's a woman—and if she had loved him she couldn't have helped watching while he talked with another woman—especially with one of my appearance and class."

Jane rode slowly away. At the corner—it was a long block—she glanced toward the scene she had just quitted. Involuntarily she drew rein. Victor and the boy had come out into the street and were playing catches. The game did not last long. Dorn let the boy corner him and seize him, then gave him a great toss into the air, catching him as he came down and giving him a hug and a kiss. The boy ran shouting merrily into the yard; Victor disappeared in the entrance to the offices of the New Day.

That evening, as she pretended to listen to Hull on national politics, and while dressing the following morning Jane reflected upon her adventure. She decided that Dorn and the "wild girl" were a low, ill-mannered pair with whom she had nothing in common, that her fantastic, impulsive interest in them had been killed, that for the future she would avoid "all that sort of cattle." She would receive Selma Gordon politely, of course—would plead headache as an excuse for not walking, would get rid of her as soon as possible. "No doubt," thought Jane, with the familiar, though indignantly denied, complacence of her class, "as soon as she gets in here she'll want to hang on. She played it very well, but she must have been crazy with delight at my noticing her and offering to take her up."

The postman came as Jane was finishing breakfast. He brought a note from Selma—a hasty pencil scrawl on a sheet of printer's copy paper:

"Dear Miss Hastings: For the present I'm too busy to take my walks. So, I'll not be there to-morrow. With best regards, S.G."

Such a fury rose up in Jane that the undigested breakfast went wrong and put her in condition to give such exhibition as chance might tempt of that ugliness of disposition which appears from time to time in all of us not of the meek and worm-like class, and which we usually attribute to any cause under the sun but the vulgar right one. "The impertinence!" muttered Jane, with a second glance at the note which conveyed; among other humiliating things, an impression of her own absolute lack of importance to Selma Gordon. "Serves me right for lowering myself to such people. If I wanted to try to do anything for the working class I'd have to keep away from them. They're so unattractive to look at and to associate with—not like those shrewd, respectful, interesting peasants one finds on the other side. They're better in the East. They know their place in a way. But out here they're insufferable."

And she spent the morning quarrelling with her maid and the other servants, issuing orders right and left, working herself into a horrible mood dominated by a headache that was anything but a pretense. As she wandered about the house and gardens, she trailed a beautiful negligee with that carelessness which in a woman of clean and orderly habits invariably indicates the possession of many clothes and of a maid who can be counted on to freshen things up before they shall be used again. Her father came home to lunch in high good humor.

"I'll not go down town again for a few days," said he. "I reckon I'd best keep out of the way. That scoundrelly Victor Dorn has done so much lying and inciting these last four or five years that it ain't safe for a man like me to go about when there's trouble with the hands."

"Isn't it outrageous!" exclaimed Jane. "He ought to be stopped."

Hastings chuckled and nodded. "And he will be," said he. "Wait till this strike's over."

"When will that be?" asked Jane.

"Mighty soon," replied her father. "I was ready for 'em this time—good and ready. I've sent word to the governor that I want the militia down here tomorrow——"

"Has there been a riot?" cried Jane anxiously.

"Not yet," said Hastings. He was laughing to himself. "But there will be to-night. Then the governor'll send the troops in to-morrow afternoon."

"But maybe the men'll be quiet, and then——" began Jane, sick inside and trembling.

"When I say a thing'll happen, it'll happen," interrupted her father. "We've made up our minds it's time to give these fellows a lesson. It's got to be done. A milder lesson'll serve now, where later on it'd have to be hard. I tell you these things because I want you to remember 'em. They'll come in handy—when you'll have to look after your own property."

She knew how her father hated the thought of his own death; this was the nearest he had ever come to speaking of it. "Of course, there's your brother William," he went on. "William's a good boy—and a mighty good business man—though he does take risks I'd never 'a took—not even when I was young and had nothing to lose. Yes—and Billy's honest. BUT"—the big head shook impressively—"William's human, Jenny—don't ever forget that. The love of money's an awful thing." A lustful glitter like the shine of an inextinguishable fire made his eyes fascinating and terrible. "It takes hold of a man and never lets go. To see the money pile up—and up—and up."

The girl turned away her gaze. She did not wish to see so far into her father's soul. It seemed a hideous indecency.

"So, Jenny—don't trust William, but look after your own property."

"Oh, I don't care anything about it, popsy," she cried, fighting to think of him and to speak to him as simply the living father she had always insisted on seeing.

"Yes—you do care," said Hastings sharply. "You've got to have your money, because that's your foundation—what you're built on. And I'm going to train you. This here strike's a good time to begin."

After a long silence she said: "Yes, money's what I'm built on. I might as well recognize the truth and act accordingly. I want you to teach me, father."

"I've got to educate you so as, when you get control, you won't go and do fool sentimental things like some women—and some men that warn't trained practically—men like that Davy Hull you think so well of. Things that'd do no good and 'd make you smaller and weaker."

"I understand," said the girl. "About this strike—WHY won't you give the men shorter hours and better pay?"

"Because the company can't afford it. As things are now, there's only enough left for a three per cent dividend after the interest on the bonds is paid."

She had read in the New Day that by a series of tricks the "traction ring" had quadrupled the bonded indebtedness of the roads and multiplied the stock by six, and had pocketed the proceeds of the steal; that three per cent on the enormously inflated capital was in fact eighteen per cent on the actual stock value; that seven per cent on the bonds was in fact twenty-eight per cent on the actual bonded indebtedness; that this traction steal was a fair illustration of how in a score of ways in Remsen City, in a thousand and one ways in all parts of the country, the upper class was draining away the substance of the masses, was swindling them out of their just wages, was forcing them to pay many times the just prices for every article of civilized use. She had read these things—she had thought about them—she had realized that they were true.

She did not put to her father the question that was on her lips—the next logical question after his answer that the company could not afford to cut the hours lower than fourteen or to raise wages to what was necessary for a man to have if he and his family were to live, not in decency and comfort, but in something less than squalor. She did not put the question because she wished to spare her father—to spare herself the shame of hearing his tricky answer—to spare herself the discomfort of squarely facing a nasty truth.

Instead she said: "I understand. And you have got to look out for the rights of the people who have invested their money."

"If I didn't I'd be cheating them," said Hastings. "And if the men don't like their jobs, why, they can quit and get jobs they do like." He added, in absolute unconsciousness of his inconsistency, in absolute belief in his own honesty and goodness, "The truth is our company pays as high wages as can be got anywhere. As for them hours—when I was working my way up, I used to put in sixteen and eighteen hours a day, and was mighty glad to do it. This lazy talk of cutting down hours makes me sick. And these fellows that're always kicking on their jobs, I'd like to know what'd become of them and their families if I and men like me didn't provide work for 'em."

"Yes, indeed!" cried Jane, eagerly seizing upon this attractive view of the situation—and resolutely accepting it without question.

In came one of the maids, saying: "There's a man wants to see you, Mr. Hastings."

"What's his name? What does he want?" inquired Hastings, while Jane made a mental note that she must try to inject at least a little order and form into the manners of announcing visitors.

"He didn't give a name. He just said, 'Tell the old man I want to see him.' I ain't sure, but I think it's Dick Kelly."

As Lizzie was an ardent Democrat, she spoke the name contemptuously—for Dick Kelly was the Republican boss. If it had been House, the Democratic boss and Kelly's secret dependent and henchman, she would have said "Mr. Joseph House" in a tone of deep respect.

"Kelly," said Hastings. "Must be something important or he'd 'a telephoned or asked me to see him at my office or at the Lincoln Club. He never came out here before. Bring him in, Lizzie."

A moment and there appeared in the doorway a man of perhaps forty years who looked like a prosperous contractor who had risen from the ranks. His figure was notable for its solidity and for the power of the shoulders; but already there were indications that the solidity, come of hard manual labor in early life, was soon to soften into fat under the melting influence of prosperity and the dissipation it put within too easy reach. The striking features of his face were a pair of keen, hard, greenish eyes and a jaw that protruded uglily—the jaw of aggressiveness, not the too prominent jaw of weakness. At sight of Jane he halted awkwardly.

"How're you, Mr. Hastings?" said he.

"Hello, Dick," said the old man. "This is my daughter Jane."

Jane smiled a pleasant recognition of the introduction. Kelly said stiffly, "How're you, ma'am?"

"Want to see me alone, I suppose?" Hastings went on. "You go out on the porch, Jenny."

As soon as Jane disappeared Kelly's stiffness and clumsiness vanished. To head off Hastings' coming offer of a cigar, he drew one from his pocket and lighted it. "There's hell to pay, Mr. Hastings," he began, seating himself near the old man, tilting back in his chair and crossing his legs.

"Well, I reckon you can take care of it," said Hastings calmly.

"Oh, yes, we kin take care of it, all right. Only, I don't want to do nothing without consulting you."

In these two statements Mr. Kelly summed up the whole of politics in Remsen City, in any city anywhere, in the country at large.

Kelly had started life as a blacksmith. But he soon tired of the dullness and toil and started forth to find some path up to where men live by making others work for them instead of plodding along at the hand-to-mouth existence that is the lot of those who live by their own labors alone. He was a safe blower for a while, but wisely soon abandoned that fascinating but precarious and unremunerative career. From card sharp following the circus and sheet-writer to a bookmaker he graduated into bartender, into proprietor of a doggery. As every saloon is a political club, every saloon-keeper is of necessity a politician. Kelly's woodbox happened to be a convenient place for directing the floaters and the repeaters. Kelly's political importance grew apace. His respectability grew more slowly. But it had grown and was growing.

If you had asked Lizzie, the maid, why she was a Democrat, she would have given no such foolish reason as the average man gives.

She would not have twaddled about principles—when everyone with eyeteeth cut ought to know that principles have departed from politics, now that both parties have been harmonized and organized into agencies of the plutocracy. She would not have said she was a Democrat because her father was, or because all her friends and associates were. She would have replied—in pleasantly Americanized Irish:

"I'm a Democrat because when my father got too old to work, Mr. House, the Democrat leader, gave him a job on the elevator at the Court House—though that dirty thief and scoundrel, Kelly, the Republican boss, owned all the judges and county officers. And when my brother lost his place as porter because he took a drink too many, Mr. House gave him a card to the foreman of the gas company, and he went to work at eight a week and is there yet."

Mr. Kelly and Mr. House belong to a maligned and much misunderstood class. Whenever you find anywhere in nature an activity of any kind, however pestiferous its activity may seem to you—or however good—you may be sure that if you look deep enough you will find that that activity has a use, arises from a need. The "robber trusts" and the political bosses are interesting examples of this basic truth. They have arisen because science, revolutionizing human society, has compelled it to organize. The organization is crude and clumsy and stupid, as yet, because men are ignorant, are experimenting, are working in the dark. So, the organizing forces are necessarily crude and clumsy and stupid.

Mr. Hastings was—all unconsciously—organizing society industrially. Mr. Kelly—equally unconscious of the true nature of his activities—was organizing society politically. And as industry and politics are—and ever have been—at bottom two names for identically the same thing, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Kelly were bound sooner or later to get together.

Remsen City was organized like every other large or largish community. There were two clubs—the Lincoln and the Jefferson—which well enough represented the "respectable elements"—that is, those citizens who were of the upper class. There were two other clubs—the Blaine and the Tilden—which were similarly representative of the "rank and file" and, rather, of the petty officers who managed the rank and file and voted it and told it what to think and what not to think, in exchange taking care of the needy sick, of the aged, of those out of work and so on. Martin Hastings—the leading Republican citizen of Remsen City, though for obvious reasons his political activities were wholly secret and stealthy—was the leading spirit in the Lincoln Club. Jared Olds—Remsen City's richest and most influential Democrat, the head of the gas company and the water company—was foremost in the Jefferson Club. At the Lincoln and the Jefferson you rarely saw any but "gentlemen"—men of established position and fortune, deacons and vestrymen, judges, corporation lawyers and the like. The Blaine and the Tilden housed a livelier and a far less select class—the "boys"—the active politicians, the big saloon keepers, the criminal lawyers, the gamblers, the chaps who knew how to round up floaters and to handle gangs of repeaters, the active young sports working for political position, by pitching and carrying for the political leaders, by doing their errands of charity or crookedness or what not. Joe House was the "big shout" at the Tilden; Dick Kelly could be found every evening on the third—or "wine," or plotting—floor of the Blaine—found holding court. And very respectful indeed were even the most eminent of Lincoln, or Jefferson, respectabilities who sought him out there to ask favors of him.

The bosses tend more and more to become mere flunkeys of the plutocrats. Kelly belonged to the old school of boss, dating from the days when social organization was in the early stages, when the political organizer was feared and even served by the industrial organizer, the embryo plutocrats. He realized how necessary he was to his plutocratic master, and he made that master treat him almost as an equal. He was exacting ever larger pay for taking care of the voters and keeping them fooled; he was getting rich, and had as yet vague aspirations to respectability and fashion. He had stopped drinking, had "cut out the women," had made a beginning toward a less inelegant way of speaking the language. His view of life was what is called cynical. That is, he regarded himself as morally the equal of the respectable rulers of society—or of the preachers who attended to the religious part of the grand industry of "keeping the cow quiet while it was being milked."

But Mr. Kelly was explaining to Martin Hastings what he meant when he said that there was "hell to pay":

"That infernal little cuss, Victor Dorn," said he "made a speech in the Court House Square to-day. Of course, none of the decent papers—and they're all decent except his'n—will publish any of it. Still, there was about a thousand people there before he got through—and the thing'll spread."

"Speech?—what about?" said Hastings. "He's always shooting off his mouth. He'd better stop talking and go to work at some honest business."

"He's got on to the fact that this strike is a put-up job—that the company hired labor detectives in Chicago last winter to come down here and get hold of the union. He gave names—amounts paid—the whole damn thing."

"Um," said Hastings, rubbing his skinny hands along the shiny pantaloons over his meagre legs. "Um."

"But that ain't all," pursued Kelly. "He read out a list of the men told off to pretend to set fire to the car barns and start the riot—those Chicago chaps, you know."

"I don't know anything about it," said Hastings sharply.

Kelly smiled slightly—amused scorn. It seemed absurd to him for the old man to keep up the pretense of ignorance. In fact, Hastings was ignorant—of the details. He was not quite the aloof plutocrat of the modern school, who permits himself to know nothing of details beyond the dividend rate and similar innocent looking results of causes at which sometimes hell itself would shudder. But, while he was more active than the conscience-easing devices now working smoothly made necessary, he never permitted himself to know any unnecessary criminal or wicked fact about his enterprises.

"I don't know," he repeated. "And I don't want to know."

"Anyhow, Dorn gave away the whole thing. He even read a copy of your letter of introduction to the governor—the one you—according to Dorn—gave Fillmore when you sent him up to the Capitol to arrange for the invitation to come after the riot."

Hastings knew that the boss was deliberately "rubbing it in" because Hastings—that is, Hastings' agents had not invited Kelly to assist in the project for "teaching the labor element a much needed lesson." But knowledge of Kelly's motive did not make the truth he was telling any less true—the absurd mismanagement of the whole affair, with the result that Dorn seemed in the way to change it from a lesson to labor on the folly of revolt against their kind and generous but firm employers into a provoker of fresh and fiercer revolt—effective revolt—political revolt. So, as Kelly "rubbed," Hastings visibly winced and writhed.

Kelly ended his recital with: "The speech created a hell of a sensation, Mr. Hastings. That young chap can talk."

"Yes," snapped Hastings. "But he can't do anything else."

"I'm not so sure of that," replied Kelly, who was wise enough to realize the value of a bogey like Dorn—its usefulness for purposes of "throwing a scare into the silk-stocking crowd." "Dorn's getting mighty strong with the people."

"Stuff and nonsense!" retorted Hastings. "They'll listen to any slick tongued rascal that roasts those that are more prosperous than they are. But when it comes to doing anything, they know better. They envy and hate those that give them jobs, but they need the jobs."

"There's a good deal of truth in that, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly, who was nothing if not judicial. "But Dorn's mighty plausible. I hear sensible men saying there's something more'n hot air in his facts and figgures." Kelly paused, and made the pause significant.

"About that last block of traction stock, Mr. Hastings. I thought you were going to let me in on the ground floor. But I ain't heard nothing."

"You ARE in," said Hastings, who knew when to yield. "Hasn't Barker been to see you? I'll attend to it, myself."

"Thank you, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly—dry and brief as always when receipting with a polite phrase for pay for services rendered. "I've been a good friend to your people."

"Yes, you have, Dick," said the old man heartily. "And I want you to jump in and take charge."

Hastings more than suspected that Kelly, to bring him to terms and to force him to employ directly the high-priced Kelly or Republico-Democratic machine as well as the State Republico-Democratic machine, which was cheaper, had got together the inside information and had ordered one of his henchmen to convey it to Dorn. But of what use to quarrel with Kelly? Of course, he could depose him; but that would simply mean putting another boss in his place—perhaps one more expensive and less efficient. The time had been when he—and the plutocracy generally—were compelled to come to the political bosses almost hat in hand. That time was past, never to return. But still a competent political agent was even harder to find than a competent business manager—and was far more necessary; for, while a big business might stagger along under poor financial or organizing management within, it could not live at all without political favors, immunities, and licenses. A band of pickpockets might as well try to work a town without having first "squared" the police. Not that Mr. Hastings and his friends THEMSELVES compared themselves to a band of pickpockets. No, indeed. It was simply legitimate business to blackjack your competitors, corner a supply, create a monopoly and fix prices and wages to suit your own notions of what was your due for taking the "hazardous risks of business enterprise."

"Leave everything to me," said Kelly briskly. "I can put the thing through. Just tell your lawyer to apply late this afternoon to Judge Lansing for an injunction forbidding the strikers to assemble anywhere within the county. We don't want no more of this speechifying. This is a peaceable community, and it won't stand for no agitators."

"Hadn't the lawyers better go to Judge Freilig?" said Hastings.

"He's shown himself to be a man of sound ideas."

"No—Lansing," said Kelly. "He don't come up for re-election for five years. Freilig comes up next fall, and we'll have hard work to pull him through, though House is going to put him on the ticket, too. Dorn's going to make a hot campaign—concentrate on judges."

"There's nothing in that Dorn talk," said Hastings. "You can't scare me again, Dick, as you did with that Populist mare's nest ten years ago."

That had been Kelly's first "big killing" by working on the fears of the plutocracy. Its success had put him in a position to buy a carriage and a diamond necklace for Mrs. Kelly and to make first payments on a large block of real estate. "It was no mare's nest, Mr. Hastings," gravely declared the boss. "If I hadn't 'a knowed just how to use the money we collected, there'd 'a been a crowd in office for four years that wouldn't 'a been easy to manage, I can tell you. But they was nothing to this here Dorn crowd. Dorn is——"

"We must get rid of him, Dick," interrupted Hastings.

The two men looked at each other—a curious glance—telegraphy. No method was suggested, no price was offered or accepted. But in the circumstances those matters became details that would settle themselves; the bargain was struck.

"He certainly ought to be stopped," said Kelly carelessly. "He's the worst enemy the labor element has had in my time." He rose. "Well, Mr. Hastings, I must be going." He extended his heavy, strong hand, which Hastings rose to grasp. "I'm glad we're working together again without any hitches. You won't forget about that there stock?"

"I'll telephone about it right away, Dick—and about Judge Lansing. You're sure Lansing's all right? I didn't like those decisions of his last year—the railway cases, I mean."

"That was all right, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly with a wave of the hand. "I had to have 'em in the interests of the party. I knowed the upper court'd reverse. No, Lansing's a good party man—a good, sound man in every way."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Hastings.

Before going into his private room to think and plan and telephone, he looked out on the west veranda. There sat his daughter; and a few feet away was David Hull, his long form stretched in a hammock while he discoursed of his projects for a career as a political reformer. The sight immensely pleased the old man. When he was a boy David Hull's grandfather, Brainerd Hull, had been the great man of that region; and Martin Hastings, a farm hand and the son of a farm hand, had looked up at him as the embodiment of all that was grand and aristocratic. As Hastings had never travelled, his notions of rank and position all centred about Remsen City. Had he realized the extent of the world, he would have regarded his ambition for a match between the daughter and granddaughter of a farm hand and the son and grandson of a Remsen City aristocrat as small and ridiculous. But he did not realize.

Davy saw him and sprang to his feet.

"No—no—don't disturb yourselves," cried the old man. "I've got some things to 'tend to. You and Jenny go right ahead."

And he was off to his own little room where he conducted his own business in his own primitive but highly efficacious way. A corps of expert accountants could not have disentangled those crabbed, criss-crossed figures; no solver of puzzles could have unravelled the mystery of those strange hieroglyphics. But to the old man there wasn't a difficult—or a dull—mark in that entire set of dirty, dog-eared little account books. He spent hours in poring over them. Just to turn the pages gave him keen pleasure; to read, and to reconstruct from those hints the whole story of some agitating and profitable operation, made in comparison the delight of an imaginative boy in Monte Cristo or Crusoe seem a cold and tame emotion.

David talked on and on, fancying that Jane was listening and admiring, when in fact she was busy with her own entirely different train of thought. She kept the young man going because she did not wish to be bored with her own solitude, because a man about always made life at least a little more interesting than if she were alone or with a woman, and because Davy was good to look at and had an agreeable voice.

"Why, who's that?" she suddenly exclaimed, gazing off to the right.

Davy turned and looked. "I don't know her," he said. "Isn't she queer looking—yet I don't know just why."

"It's Selma Gordon," said Jane, who had recognized Selma the instant her eyes caught a figure moving across the lawn.

"The girl that helps Victor Dorn?" said Davy, astonished. "What's SHE coming HERE for? You don't know her—do you?"

"Don't you?" evaded Jane. "I thought you and Mr. Dorn were such pals."

"Pals?" laughed Hull. "Hardly that. We meet now and then at a workingman's club I'm interested in—and at a cafe' where I go to get in touch with the people occasionally—and in the street. But I never go to his office. I couldn't afford to do that. And I've never seen Miss Gordon."

"Well, she's worth seeing," said Jane. "You'll never see another like her."

They rose and watched her advancing. To the usual person, acutely conscious of self, walking is not easy in such circumstances. But Selma, who never bothered about herself, came on with that matchless steady grace which peasant girls often get through carrying burdens on the head. Jane called out:

"So, you've come, after all."

Selma smiled gravely. Not until she was within a few feet of the steps did she answer: "Yes—but on business." She was wearing the same linen dress. On her head was a sailor hat, beneath the brim of which her amazingly thick hair stood out in a kind of defiance. This hat, this further article of Western civilization's dress, added to the suggestion of the absurdity of such a person in such clothing. But in her strange Cossack way she certainly was beautiful—and as healthy and hardy as if she had never before been away from the high, wind-swept plateaus where disease is unknown and where nothing is thought of living to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five. Both before and after the introduction Davy Hull gazed at her with fascinated curiosity too plainly written upon his long, sallow, serious face. She, intent upon her mission, ignored him as the arrow ignores the other birds of the flock in its flight to the one at which it is aimed.

"You'll give me a minute or two alone?" she said to Jane. "We can walk on the lawn here."

Hull caught up his hat. "I was just going," said he. Then he hesitated, looked at Selma, stammered: "I'll go to the edge of the lawn and inspect the view."

Neither girl noted this abrupt and absurd change of plan. He departed. As soon as he had gone half a dozen steps, Selma said in her quick, direct fashion:

"I've come to see you about the strike."

Jane tried to look cool and reserved. But that sort of expression seemed foolish in face of the simplicity and candor of Selma Gordon. Also, Jane was not now so well pleased with her father's ideas and those of her own interest as she had been while she was talking with him. The most exasperating thing about the truth is that, once one has begun to see it—has begun to see what is for him the truth—the honest truth—he can not hide from it ever again. So, instead of looking cold and repellant, Jane looked uneasy and guilty. "Oh, yes—the strike," she murmured.

"It is over," said Selma. "The union met a half hour ago and revoked its action—on Victor Dorn's advice. He showed the men that they had been trapped into striking by the company—that a riot was to be started and blamed upon them—that the militia was to be called in and they were to be shot down."

"Oh, no—not that!" cried Jane eagerly. "It wouldn't have gone as far as that."

"Yes—as far as that," said Selma calmly. "That sort of thing is an old story. It's been done so often—and worse. You see, the respectable gentlemen who run things hire disreputable creatures. They don't tell them what to do. They don't need to. The poor wretches understand what's expected of them—and they do it. So, the respectable gentlemen can hold up white hands and say quite truthfully, 'No blood-no filth on these—see!"' Selma was laughing drearily. Her superb, primitive eyes, set ever so little aslant, were flashing with an intensity of emotion that gave Jane Hastings a sensation of terror-much as if a man who has always lived where there were no storms, but such gentle little rains with restrained and refined thunder as usually visit the British Isles, were to find himself in the midst of one of those awful convulsions that come crashing down the gorges of the Rockies. She marveled that one so small of body could contain such big emotions.

"You mustn't be unjust," she pleaded. "WE aren't THAT wicked, my dear."

Selma looked at her. "No matter," she said. "I am not trying to convert you—or to denounce your friends to you. I'll explain what I've come for. In his speech to-day and in inducing the union to change, Victor has shown how much power he has. The men whose plans he has upset will be hating him as men hate only those whom they fear."

"Yes—I believe that," said Jane. "So, you see, I'm not blindly prejudiced."

"For a long time there have been rumors that they might kill him——"

"Absurd!" cried Jane angrily. "Miss Gordon, no matter how prejudiced you may be—and I'll admit there are many things to justify you in feeling strongly—but no matter how you may feel, your good sense must tell you that men like my father don't commit murder."

"I understand perfectly," replied Selma. "They don't commit murder, and they don't order murder. I'll even say that I don't think they would tolerate murder, even for their benefit. But you don't know how things are done in business nowadays. The men like your father have to use men of the Kelly and the House sort—you know who they are?"

"Yes," said Jane.

"The Kellys and the Houses give general orders to their lieutenants. The lieutenants pass the orders along—and down. And so on, until all sorts of men are engaged in doing all sorts of work. Dirty, clean, criminal—all sorts. Some of these men, baffled in what they are trying to do to earn their pay—baffled by Victor Dorn—plot against him." Again that sad, bitter laugh. "My dear Miss Hastings, to kill a cat there are a thousand ways besides skinning it alive."

"You are prejudiced," said Jane, in the manner of one who could not be convinced.

Selma made an impatient gesture. "Again I say, no matter. Victor laughs at our fears——"

"I knew it," said Jane triumphantly. "He is less foolish than his followers."

"He simply does not think about himself," replied Selma. "And he is right. But it is our business to think about him, because we need him. Where could we find another like him?"

"Yes, I suppose your movement WOULD die out, if he were not behind it."

Selma smiled peculiarly. "I think you don't quite understand what we are about," said she. "You've accepted the ignorant notion of your class that we are a lot of silly roosters trying to crow one sun out of the heavens and another into it. The facts are somewhat different. Your class is saying, 'To-day will last forever,' while we are saying, 'No, to-day will run its course—will be succeeded by to-morrow. Let us not live like the fool who thinks only of the day. Let us be sensible, intelligent, let us realize that there will be to-morrow and that it, too, must be lived. Let us get ready to live it sensibly. Let us build our social system so that it will stand the wear and tear of another day and will not fall in ruins about our heads.'"

"I am terribly ignorant about all these things," said Jane. "What a ridiculous thing my education has been!"

"But it hasn't spoiled your heart," cried Selma. And all at once her eyes were wonderfully soft and tender, and into her voice came a tone so sweet that Jane's eyes filled with tears. "It was to your heart that I came to appeal," she went on. "Oh, Miss Hastings—we will do all we can to protect Victor Dorn—and we guard him day and night without his knowing it. But I am afraid—afraid! And I want you to help. Will you?"

"I'll do anything I can," said Jane—a Jane very different from the various Janes Miss Hastings knew—a Jane who seemed to be conjuring of Selma Gordon's enchantments.

"I want you to ask your father to give him a fair show. We don't ask any favors—for ourselves—for him. But we don't want to see him—" Selma shuddered and covered her eyes with her hands "—lying dead in some alley, shot or stabbed by some unknown thug!"

Selma made it so vivid that Jane saw the whole tragedy before her very eyes.

"The real reason why they hate him," Selma went on, "is because he preaches up education and preaches down violence—and is building his party on intelligence instead of on force. The masters want the workingman who burns and kills and riots. They can shoot him down. They can make people accept any tyranny in preference to the danger of fire and murder let loose. But Victor is teaching the workingmen to stop playing the masters' game for them. No wonder they hate him! He makes them afraid of the day when the united workingmen will have their way by organizing and voting. And they know that if Victor Dorn lives, that day will come in this city very, very soon." Selma saw Davy Hull, impatient at his long wait, advancing toward them. She said: "You will talk to your father?"

"Yes," said Jane. "And I assure you he will do what he can. You don't know him, Miss Gordon."

"I know he loves you—I know he MUST love you," said Selma. "Now, I must go. Good-by. I knew you would be glad of the chance to do something worth while."

Jane had been rather expecting to be thanked for her generosity and goodness. Selma's remark seemed at first blush an irritating attempt to shift a favor asked into a favor given. But it was impossible for her to fail to see Selma's sensible statement of the actual truth. So, she said honestly:

"Thank you for coming, Miss Gordon. I am glad of the chance."

They shook hands. Selma, holding her hand, looked up at her, suddenly kissed her. Jane returned the kiss. David Hull, advancing with his gaze upon them, stopped short. Selma, without a glance—because without a thought—in his direction, hastened away.

When David rejoined Jane, she was gazing tenderly after the small, graceful figure moving toward the distant entrance gates. Said David:

"I think that girl has got you hypnotized."

Jane laughed and sent him home. "I'm busy," she said. "I've got something to do, at last."



III

Jane knocked at the door of her father's little office. "Are you there, father?" said she.

"Yes—come in, Jinny." As she entered, he went on, "But you must go right away again. I've got to 'tend to this strike." He took on an injured, melancholy tone. "Those fool workingmen! They're certain to lose. And what'll come of it all? Why, they'll be out their wages and their jobs, and the company lose so much money that it can't put on the new cars the public's clamorin' for. The old cars'll have to do for another year, anyhow—maybe two."

Jane had heard that lugubrious tone from time to time, and she knew what it meant—an air of sorrow concealing secret joy. So, here was another benefit the company—she preferred to think of it as the company rather than as her father—expected to gain from the strike. It could put off replacing the miserable old cars in which it was compelling people to ride. Instead of losing money by the strike, it would make money by it. This was Jane's first glimpse of one of the most interesting and important truths of modern life—how it is often to the advantage of business men to have their own business crippled, hampered, stopped altogether.

"You needn't worry, father," said she cheerfully. "The strike's been declared off."

"What's that?" cried her father.

"A girl from down town just called. She says the union has called the strike off and the men have accepted the company's terms."

"But them terms is withdrawn!" cried Hastings, as if his daughter were the union. He seized the telephone. "I'll call up the office and order 'em withdrawn."

"It's too late," said she.

Just then the telephone bell rang, and Hastings was soon hearing confirmation of the news his daughter had brought him. She could not bear watching his face as he listened. She turned her back, stood gazing out at the window. Her father, beside himself, was shrieking into the telephone curses, denunciations, impossible orders. The one emergency against which he had not provided was the union's ending the strike. When you have struck the line of battle of a general, however able and self-controlled, in the one spot where he has not arranged a defense, you have thrown him—and his army—into a panic. Some of the greatest tactitians in history have given way in those circumstances; so, Martin Hastings' utter loss of self-control and of control of the situation only proves that he had his share of human nature. He had provided against the unexpected; he had not provided against the impossible.

Jane let her father rave on into the telephone until his voice grew hoarse and squeaky. Then she turned and said: "Now, father—what's the use of making yourself sick? You can't do any good—can you?" She laid one hand on his arm, with the other hand caressed his head. "Hang up the receiver and think of your health."

"I don't care to live, with such goings-on," declared he. But he hung up the receiver and sank back in his chair, exhausted.

"Come out on the porch," she went on, tugging gently at him. "The air's stuffy in here."

He rose obediently. She led him to the veranda and seated him comfortably, with a cushion in his back at the exact spot at which it was most comfortable. She patted his shrunken cheeks, stood off and looked at him.

"Where's your sense of humor?" she cried. "You used to be able to laugh when things went against you. You're getting to be as solemn and to take yourself as seriously as Davy Hull."

The old man made a not unsuccessful attempt to smile. "That there Victor Dorn!" said he. "He'll be the death of me, yet."

"What has he done now?" said Jane, innocently.

Hastings rubbed his big bald forehead with his scrawny hand. "He's tryin' to run this town—to run it to the devil," replied he, by way of evasion.

"Something's got to be done about him—eh?" observed she, in a fine imitation of a business-like voice.

"Something WILL be done," retorted he.

Jane winced—hid her distress—returned to the course she had mapped out for herself. "I hope it won't be something stupid," said she. Then she seated herself and went on. "Father—did you ever stop to wonder whether it is Victor Dorn or the changed times?"

The old man looked up abruptly and sharply—the expression of a shrewd man when he catches a hint of a new idea that sounds as if it might have something in it.

"You blame Victor Dorn," she went on to explain. "But if there were no Victor Dorn, wouldn't you be having just the same trouble? Aren't men of affairs having them everywhere—in Europe as well as on this side—nowadays?"

The old man rubbed his brow—his nose—his chin—pulled at the tufts of hair in his ears—fumbled with his cuffs. All of these gestures indicated interest and attention.

"Isn't the real truth not Victor Dorn or Victor Dorns but a changed and changing world?" pursued the girl. "And if that's so, haven't you either got to adopt new methods or fall back? That's the way it looks to me—and we women have got intuitions if we haven't got sense."

"I never said women hadn't got sense," replied the old man. "I've sometimes said MEN ain't got no sense, but not women. Not to go no further, the women make the men work for 'em—don't they? THAT'S a pretty good quality of sense, I guess."

But she knew he was busily thinking all the time about what she had said. So she did not hesitate to go on: "Instead of helping Victor Dorn by giving him things to talk about, it seems to me I'd USE him, father."

"Can't do anything with him. He's crazy," declared Hastings.

"I don't believe it," replied Jane. "I don't believe he's crazy. And I don't believe you can't manage him. A man like that—a man as clever as he is—doesn't belong with a lot of ignorant tenement-house people. He's out of place. And when anything or anybody is out of place, they can be put in their right place. Isn't that sense?"

The old man shook his head—not in negation, but in uncertainty.

"These men are always edging you on against Victor Dorn—what's the matter with them?" pursued Jane. "I saw, when Davy Hull talked about him. They're envious and jealous of him, father. They're afraid he'll distance them. And they don't want you to realize what a useful man he could be—how he could help you if you helped him—made friends with him—roused the right kind of ambition in him."

"When a man's ambitious," observed Hastings, out of the fullness of his own personal experience, "it means he's got something inside him, teasing and nagging at him—something that won't let him rest, but keeps pushing and pulling—and he's got to keep fighting, trying to satisfy it—and he can't wait to pick his ground or his weapons."

"And Victor Dorn," said Jane, to make it clearer to her father by putting his implied thought into words, "Victor Dorn is doing the best he can—fighting on the only ground that offers and with the only weapons he can lay hands on."

The old man nodded. "I never have blamed him—not really," declared he. "A practical man—a man that's been through things—he understands how these things are," in the tone of a philosopher. "Yes, I reckon Victor's doing the best he can—getting up by the only ladder he's got a chance at."

"The way to get him off that ladder is to give him another," said Jane.

A long silence, the girl letting her father thresh the matter out in his slow, thorough way. Finally her young impatience conquered her restraint. "Well—what do you think, popsy?" inquired she.

"That I've got about as smart a gel as there is in Remsen City," replied he.

"Don't lay it on too thick," laughed she.

He understood why she was laughing, though he did not show it. He knew what his much-traveled daughter thought of Remsen City, but he held to his own provincial opinion, nevertheless. Nor, perhaps, was he so far wrong as she believed. A cross section of human society, taken almost anywhere, will reveal about the same quantity of brain, and the quality of the mill is the thing, not of the material it may happen to be grinding.

She understood that his remark was his way of letting her know that he had taken her suggestion under advisement. This meant that she had said enough. And Jane Hastings had made herself an adept in the art of handling her father—an accomplishment she could by no means have achieved had she not loved him; it is only when a woman deeply and strongly loves a man that she can learn to influence him, for only love can put the necessary sensitiveness into the nerves with which moods and prejudices and whims and such subtle uncertainties can be felt out.

The next day but one, coming out on the front veranda a few minutes before lunch time she was startled rather than surprised to see Victor Dorn seated on a wicker sofa, hat off and gaze wandering delightedly over the extensive view of the beautiful farming country round Remsen City. She paused in the doorway to take advantage of the chance to look at him when he was off his guard. Certainly that profile view of the young man was impressive. It is only in the profile that we get a chance to measure the will or propelling force behind a character. In each of the two main curves of Dorn's head—that from the top of the brow downward over the nose, the lips, the chin and under, and that from the back of the head round under the ear and forward along the lower jaw—in each of these curves Dorn excelled.

She was about to draw back and make a formal entry, when he said, without looking toward her:

"Well—don't you think it would be safe to draw near?"

The tone was so easy and natural and so sympathetic—the tone of Selma Gordon—the tone of all natural persons not disturbed about themselves or about others—that Jane felt no embarrassment whatever. "I've heard you were very clever," said she, advancing. "So, I wanted to have the advantage of knowing you a little better at the outset than you would know me."

"But Selma Gordon has told me all about you," said he—he had risen as she advanced and was shaking hands with her as if they were old friends. "Besides, I saw you the other day—in spite of your effort to prevent yourself from being seen."

"What do you mean?" she asked, completely mystified.

"I mean your clothes," explained he. "They were unusual for this part of the world. And when anyone wears unusual clothes, they act as a disguise. Everyone neglects the person to center on the clothes."

"I wore them to be comfortable," protested Jane, wondering why she was not angry at this young man whose manner ought to be regarded as presuming and whose speech ought to be rebuked as impertinent.

"Altogether?" said Dorn, his intensely blue eyes dancing.

In spite of herself she smiled. "No—not altogether," she admitted.

"Well, it may please you to learn that you scored tremendously as far as one person is concerned. My small nephew talks of you all the time—the 'lady in the lovely pants.'"

Jane colored deeply and angrily. She bent upon Victor a glance that ought to have put him in his place—well down in his place.

But he continued to look at her with unchanged, laughing, friendly blue eyes, and went on: "By the way, his mother asked me to apologize for HIS extraordinary appearance. I suppose neither of you would recognize the other in any dress but the one each had on that day. He doesn't always dress that way. His mother has been ill. He wore out his play-clothes. If you've had experience of children you'll know how suddenly they demolish clothes. She wasn't well enough to do any tailoring, so there was nothing to do but send Leonard forth in his big brother's unchanged cast-offs."

Jane's anger had quite passed away before Dorn finished this simple, ingenuous recital of poverty unashamed, this somehow fine laying open of the inmost family secrets. "What a splendid person your sister must be!" exclaimed she.

She more than liked the look that now came into his face. He said: "Indeed she is!—more so than anyone except us of the family can realize. Mother's getting old and almost helpless. My brother-in-law was paralyzed by an accident at the rolling mill where he worked. My sister takes care of both of them—and her two boys—and of me—keeps the house in band-box order, manages a big garden that gives us most of what we eat—and has time to listen to the woes of all the neighbors and to give them the best advice I ever heard."

"How CAN she?" cried Jane. "Why, the day isn't long enough."

Dorn laughed. "You'll never realize how much time there is in a day, Miss Jane Hastings, until you try to make use of it all. It's very interesting—how much there is in a minute and in a dollar if you're intelligent about them."

Jane looked at him in undisguised wonder and admiration. "You don't know what a pleasure it is," she said, "to meet anyone whose sentences you couldn't finish for him before he's a quarter the way through them."

Victor threw back his head and laughed—a boyish outburst that would have seemed boorish in another, but came as naturally from him as song from a bird. "You mean Davy Hull," said he.

Jane felt herself coloring even more. "I didn't mean him especially," replied she. "But he's a good example."

"The best I know," declared Victor. "You see, the trouble with Davy is that he is one kind of a person, wants to be another kind, thinks he ought to be a third kind, and believes he fools people into thinking he is still a fourth kind."

Jane reflected on this, smiled understandingly. "That sounds like a description of ME," said she.

"Probably," said Victor. "It's a very usual type in the second generation in your class."

"My class?" said Jane, somewhat affectedly. "What do you mean?"

"The upper class," explained Victor.

Jane felt that this was an opportunity for a fine exhibition of her democracy. "I don't like that," said she. "I'm a good American, and I don't believe in classes. I don't feel—at least I try not to feel—any sense of inequality between myself and those—those less—less—fortunately off. I'm not expressing myself well, but you know what I mean."

"Yes, I know what you mean," rejoined Victor. "But that wasn't what I meant, at all. You are talking about social classes in the narrow sense. That sort of thing isn't important. One associates with the kind of people that pleases one—and one has a perfect right to do so. If I choose to have my leisure time with people who dress a certain way, or with those who have more than a certain amount of money, or more than a certain number of servants or what not—why, that's my own lookout."

"I'm SO glad to hear you say that," cried Jane. "That's SO sensible."

"Snobbishness may be amusing," continued Dorn, "or it may be repulsive—or pitiful. But it isn't either interesting or important. The classes I had in mind were the economic classes—upper, middle, lower. The upper class includes all those who live without work—aristocrats, gamblers, thieves, preachers, women living off men in or out of marriage, grown children living off their parents or off inheritances. All the idlers."

Jane looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt. She had long taken a secret delight in being regarded and spoken of as an "upper class" person. Henceforth this delight would be at least alloyed.

"The middle class," pursued Victor, "is those who are in part parasites and in part workers. The lower class is those who live by what they earn only. For example, you are upper class, your father is middle class and I am lower class."

"Thank you," said Jane demurely, "for an interesting lesson in political economy."

"You invited it," laughed Victor. "And I guess it wasn't much more tiresome to you than talk about the weather would have been. The weather's probably about the only other subject you and I have in common."

"That's rude," said Jane.

"Not as I meant it," said he. "I wasn't exalting my subjects or sneering at yours. It's obvious that you and I lead wholly different lives."

"I'd much rather lead your life than my own," said Jane. "But—you are impatient to see father. You came to see him?"

"He telephoned asking me to come to dinner—that is, lunch. I believe it's called lunch when it's second in this sort of house."

"Father calls it dinner, and I call it lunch, and the servants call it IT. They simply say, 'It's ready.'"

Jane went in search of her father, found him asleep in his chair in the little office, one of his dirty little account books clasped in his long, thin fingers with their rheumatic side curve. The maid had seen him there and had held back dinner until he should awaken. Perhaps Jane's entrance roused him; or, perhaps it was the odor of the sachet powder wherewith her garments were liberally scented, for he had a singularly delicate sense of smell. He lifted his head and, after the manner of aged and confirmed cat-nappers, was instantly wide awake.

"Why didn't you tell me Victor Dorn was coming for dinner?" said she.

"Oh—he's here, is he?" said Hastings, chuckling. "You see I took your advice. Tell Lizzie to lay an extra plate."

Hastings regarded this invitation as evidence of his breadth of mind, his freedom from prejudice, his disposition to do the generous and the helpful thing. In fact, it was evidence of little more than his dominant and most valuable trait—his shrewdness. After one careful glance over the ruins of his plan, he appreciated that Victor Dorn was at last a force to be reckoned with. He had been growing, growing—somewhat above the surface, a great deal more beneath the surface. His astonishing victory demonstrated his power over Remsen City labor—in a single afternoon he had persuaded the street car union to give up without hesitation a strike it had been planning—at least, it thought it had been doing the planning—for months. The Remsen City plutocracy was by no means dependent upon the city government of Remsen City. It had the county courts—the district courts—the State courts even, except where favoring the plutocracy would be too obviously outrageous for judges who still considered themselves men of honest and just mind to decide that way. The plutocracy, further, controlled all the legislative and executive machinery. To dislodge it from these fortresses would mean a campaign of years upon years, conducted by men of the highest ability, and enlisting a majority of the voters of the State. Still, possession of the Remsen City government was a most valuable asset. A hostile government could "upset business," could "hamper the profitable investment of capital," in other words could establish justice to a highly uncomfortable degree. This victory of Dorn's made it clear to Hastings that at last Dorn was about to unite the labor vote under his banner—which meant that he was about to conquer the city government. It was high time to stop him and, if possible, to give his talents better employment.

However, Hastings, after the familiar human fashion, honestly thought he was showing generosity, was going out of his way to "give a likely young fellow a chance." When he came out on the veranda he stretched forth a graciously friendly hand and, looking shrewdly into Victor's boyishly candid eyes, said:

"Glad to see you, young man. I want to thank you for ending that strike. I was born a working man, and I've been one all my life and, when I can't work any more, I want to quit the earth. So, being a working man, I hate to see working men make fools of themselves."

Jane was watching the young man anxiously. She instinctively knew that this speech must be rousing his passion for plain and direct speaking. Before he had time to answer she said: "Dinner's waiting. Let's go in."

And on the way she made an opportunity to say to him in an undertone: "I do hope you'll be careful not to say anything that'll upset father. I have to warn every one who comes here. His digestion's bad, and the least thing makes him ill, and—" she smiled charmingly at him—"I HATE nursing. It's too much like work to suit an upper-class person."

There was no resisting such an appeal as that. Victor sat silent and ate, and let the old man talk on and on. Jane saw that it was a severe trial to him to seem to be assenting to her father's views. Whenever he showed signs of casting off his restraint, she gave him a pleading glance. And the old man, so weazened, so bent and shaky, with his bowl of crackers and milk, was—or seemed to be—proof that the girl was asking of him only what was humane. Jane relieved the situation by talking volubly about herself—her college experiences, what she had seen and done in Europe.

After dinner Hastings said:

"I'll drive you back to town, young man. I'm going in to work, as usual. I never took a vacation in my life. Can you beat that record?"

"Oh, I knock off every once in a while for a month or so," said Dorn.

"The young fellows growing up nowadays ain't equal to us of the old stock," said Martin. "They can't stand the strain. Well, if you're ready, we'll pull out."

"Mr. Dorn's going to stop a while with me, father," interposed Jane with a significant glance at Victor. "I want to show him the grounds and the views."

"All right—all right," said her father. He never liked company in his drives; company interfered with his thinking out what he was going to do at the office. "I'm mighty glad to know you, young man. I hope we'll know each other better. I think you'll find out that for a devil I'm not half bad—eh?"

Victor bowed, murmured something inarticulate, shook his host's hand, and when the ceremony of parting was over drew a stealthy breath of relief—which Jane observed. She excused herself to accompany her father to his trap. As he was climbing in she said:

"Didn't you rather like him, father?"

Old Hastings gathered the reins in his lean, distorted hands. "So so," said he.

"He's got brains, hasn't he?"

"Yes; he's smart; mighty smart." The old man's face relaxed in a shrewd grin. "Too damn smart. Giddap, Bet."

And he was gone. Jane stood looking after the ancient phaeton with an expression half of amusement, half of discomfiture. "I might have known," reflected she, "that popsy would see through it all."

When she reappeared in the front doorway Victor Dorn was at the edge of the veranda, ready to depart. As soon as he saw her he said gravely: "I must be off, Miss Hastings. Thank you for the very interesting dinner." He extended his hand. "Good day."

She put her hands behind her back, and stood smiling gently at him. "You mustn't go—not just yet. I'm about to show you the trees and the grass, the bees, the chickens and the cows. Also, I've something important to say to you."

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I must go."

She stiffened slightly; her smile changed from friendly to cold. "Oh—pardon me," she said. "Good-by."

He bowed, and was on the walk, and running rapidly toward the entrance gates.

"Mr. Dorn!" she called.

He turned.

She was afraid to risk asking him to come back for a moment. He might refuse. Standing there, looking so resolute, so completely master of himself, so devoid of all suggestion of need for any one or anything, he seemed just the man to turn on his heel and depart. She descended to the walk and went to him. She said:

"Why are you acting so peculiarly? Why did you come?"

"Because I understood that your father wished to propose some changes in the way of better hours and better wages for the men," replied he. "I find that the purpose was—not that."

"What was it?"

"I do not care to go into that."

He was about to go on—on out of her life forever, she felt. "Wait," she cried. "The men will get better hours and wages. You don't understand father's ways. He was really discussing that very thing—in his own mind. You'll see. He has a great admiration for you. You can do a lot with him. You owe it to the men to make use of his liking."

He looked at her in silence for a moment. Then he said: "I'll have to be at least partly frank with you. In all his life no one has ever gotten anything out of your father. He uses men. They do not use him."

"Believe me, that is unjust," cried Jane. "I'll tell you another thing that was on his mind. He wants to—to make reparation for—that accident to your father. He wants to pay your mother and you the money the road didn't pay you when it ought."

Dorn's candid face showed how much he was impressed. This beautiful, earnest girl, sweet and frank, seemed herself to be another view of Martin Hastings' character—one more in accord with her strong belief in the essential goodness of human nature.

Said he: "Your father owes us nothing. As for the road—its debt never existed legally—only morally. And it has been outlawed long ago—for there's a moral statute of limitations, too. The best thing that ever happened to us was our not getting that money. It put us on our mettle. It might have crushed us. It happened to be just the thing that was needed to make us."

Jane marveled at this view of his family, at the verge of poverty, as successful. But she could not doubt his sincerity. Said she sadly, "But it's not to the credit of the road—or of father. He must pay—and he knows he must."

"We can't accept," said Dorn—a finality.

"But you could use it to build up the paper," urged Jane, to detain him.

"The paper was started without money. It lives without money—and it will go on living without money, or it ought to die."

"I don't understand," said Jane. "But I want to understand. I want to help. Won't you let me?"

He shook his head laughingly. "Help what?" inquired he. "Help raise the sun? It doesn't need help."

Jane began to see. "I mean, I want to be helped," she cried.

"Oh, that's another matter," said he. "And very simple."

"Will YOU help me?"

"I can't. No one can. You've got to help yourself. Each one of us is working for himself—working not to be rich or to be famous or to be envied, but to be free."

"Working for himself—that sounds selfish, doesn't it?"

"If you are wise, Jane Hastings," said Dorn, "you will distrust—disbelieve in—anything that is not selfish."

Jane reflected. "Yes—I see," she cried. "I never thought of that!"

"A friend of mine, Wentworth," Victor went on, "has put it wonderfully clearly. He said, 'Some day we shall realize that no man can be free until all men are free.'"

"You HAVE helped me—in spite of your fierce refusal," laughed Jane. "You are very impatient to go, aren't you? Well, since you won't stay I'll walk with you—as far as the end of the shade."

She was slightly uneasy lest her overtures should be misunderstood. By the time they reached the first long, sunny stretch of the road down to town she was so afraid that those overtures would not be "misunderstood" that she marched on beside him in the hot sun. She did not leave him until they reached the corner of Pike avenue—and then it was he that left her, for she could cudgel out no excuse for going further in his direction. The only hold she had got upon him for a future attempt was slight indeed—he had vaguely agreed to lend her some books.

People who have nothing to do get rid of a great deal of time in trying to make impressions and in speculating as to what impressions they have made. Jane—hastening toward Martha's to get out of the sun which could not but injure a complexion so delicately fine as hers—gave herself up to this form of occupation. What did he think of her? Did he really have as little sense of her physical charm as he seemed? No woman could hope to be attractive to every man. Still—this man surely must be at least not altogether insensible. "If he sends me those books to-day—or tomorrow—or even next day," thought Jane, "it will be a pretty sure sign that he was impressed—whether he knows it or not."

She had now definitely passed beyond the stage where she wondered at herself—and reproached herself—for wishing to win a man of such common origin and surroundings. She could not doubt Victor Dorn's superiority. Such a man as that didn't need birth or wealth or even fame. He simply WAS the man worth while—worth any woman's while. How could Selma be associated so intimately with him without trying to get him in love with her? Perhaps she had tried and had given up? No—Selma was as strange in her way as he was in his way. What a strange—original—INDIVIDUAL pair they were!

"But," concluded Jane, "he belongs with US. I must take him away from all that. It will be interesting to do it—so interesting that I'll be sorry when it's done, and I'll be looking about for something else to do."

She was not without hope that the books would come that same evening. But they did not. The next day passed, and the next, and still no books. Apparently he had meant nothing by his remark, "I've some books you'd be interested to read." Was his silence indifference, or was it shyness? Probably she could only faintly appreciate the effect her position, her surroundings produced in this man whose physical surroundings had always been as poor as her mental surroundings—those created by that marvelous mind of his—had been splendid.

She tried to draw out her father on the subject of the young man, with a view to getting a hint as to whether he purposed doing anything further. But old Hastings would not talk about it; he was still debating, was looking at the matter from a standpoint where his daughter's purely theoretical acumen could not help him to a decision. Jane rather feared that where her father was evidently so doubtful he would follow his invariable rule in doubtful cases.

On the fourth day, being still unable to think of anything but her project for showing her prowess by conquering this man with no time for women, she donned a severely plain walking costume and went to his office.

At the threshold of the "Sanctum" she stopped short. Selma, pencil poised over her block of copy paper and every indication of impatience, albeit polite impatience, in her fascinating Cossack face, was talking to—or, rather, listening to—David Hull. Like not a few young men—and young women—brought up in circumstances that surround them with people deferential for the sake of what there is, or may possibly be, in it—Davy Hull had the habit of assuming that all the world was as fond of listening to him as he was of listening to himself. So it did not often occur to him to observe his audience for signs of a willingness to end the conversation.

Selma, turning a little further in her nervousness, saw Jane and sprang up with a radiant smile of welcome.

"I'm SO glad!" she cried, rushing toward her and kissing her. "I've thought about you often, and wished I could find time to come to see you."

Jane was suddenly as delighted as Selma. For Selma's burst of friendliness, so genuine, so unaffected, in this life of blackness and cold always had the effect of sun suddenly making summer out of a chill autumnal day. Nor, curiously enough, was her delight lessened by Davy Hull's blundering betrayal of himself. His color, his eccentric twitchings of the lips and the hands would have let a far less astute young woman than Jane Hastings into the secret of the reason for his presence in that office when he had said he couldn't "afford" to go. So guilty did he feel that he stammered out:

"I dropped in to see Dorn."

"You wished to see Victor?" exclaimed the guileless Selma. "Why didn't you say so? I'd have told you at once that he was in Indianapolis and wouldn't be back for two or three days."

Jane straightway felt still better. The disgusting mystery of the books that did not come was now cleared up. Secure in the certainty of Selma's indifference to Davy she proceeded to punish him. "What a stupid you are, Davy!" she cried mockingly. "The instant I saw your face I knew you were here to flirt with Miss Gordon."

"Oh, no, Miss Hastings," protested Selma with quaint intensity of seriousness, "I assure you he was not flirting. He was telling me about the reform movement he and his friends are organizing."

"That is his way of flirting," said Jane. "Every animal has its own way—and an elephant's way is different from a mosquito's."

Selma was eyeing Hull dubiously. It was bad enough for him to have taken her time in a well-meaning attempt to enlighten her as to a new phase of local politics; to take her time, to waste it, in flirting—that was too exasperating!

"Miss Hastings has a sense of humor that runs riot at times," said Hull.

"You can't save yourself, Davy," mocked Jane. "Come along. Miss Gordon has no time for either of us."

"I do want YOU to stay," she said to Jane. "But, unfortunately, with Victor away——" She looked disconsolately at the half-finished page of copy.

"I came only to snatch Davy away," said Jane.

"Next thing we know, he'll be one of Mr. Dorn's lieutenants."

Thus Jane escaped without having to betray why she had come. In the street she kept up her raillery. "And a WORKING girl, Davy! What would our friends say! And you who are always boasting of your fastidiousness! Flirting with a girl who—I've seen her three times, and each time she has had on exactly the same plain, cheap little dress."

There was a nastiness, a vulgarity in this that was as unworthy of Jane as are all the unlovely emotions of us who are always sweet and refined when we are our true selves—but have a bad habit of only too often not being what we flatter ourselves is our true selves. Jane was growing angry as she, away from Selma, resumed her normal place in the world and her normal point of view. Davy Hull belonged to her; he had no right to be hanging about another, anyway—especially an attractive woman. Her anger was not lessened by Davy's retort. Said he:

"Her dress may have been the same. But her face wasn't—and her mind wasn't. Those things are more difficult to change than a dress."

She was so angry that she did not take warning from this reminder that Davy was by no means merely a tedious retailer of stale commonplaces. She said with fine irony—and with no show of anger: "It is always a shock to a lady to realize how coarse men are—how they don't discriminate."

Davy laughed. "Women get their rank from men," said he coolly.

"In themselves they have none. That's the philosophy of the peculiarity you've noted."

This truth, so galling to a lady, silenced Jane, made her bite her lips with rage. "I beg your pardon," she finally said. "I didn't realize that you were in love with Selma."

"Yes, I am in love with her," was Davy's astounding reply. "She's the noblest and simplest creature I've ever met."

"You don't mean you want to marry her!" exclaimed Jane, so amazed that she for the moment lost sight of her own personal interest in this affair.

Davy looked at her sadly, and a little contemptuously.

"What a poor opinion at bottom you women—your sort of women—have of woman," said he.

"What a poor opinion of men you mean," retorted she. "After a little experience of them a girl—even a girl—learns that they are incapable of any emotion that isn't gross."

"Don't be so ladylike, Jane," said Hull.

Miss Hastings was recovering control of herself. She took a new tack. "You haven't asked her yet?"

"Hardly. This is the second time I've seen her. I suspected that she was the woman for me the moment I saw her. To-day I confirmed my idea. She is all that I thought—and more. And, Jane, I know that you appreciate her, too."

Jane now saw that Davy was being thus abruptly and speedily confiding because he had decided it was the best way out of his entanglement with her. Behind his coolness she could see an uneasy watchfulness—the fear that she might try to hold him. Up boiled her rage—the higher because she knew that if there were any possible way of holding Davy, she would take it—not because she wished to, or would, marry him, but because she had put her mark upon him. But this new rage was of the kind a clever woman has small difficulty in dissembling.

"Indeed I do appreciate her, Davy," said she sweetly. "And I hope you will be happy with her."

"You think I can get her?" said he, fatuously eager. "You think she likes me? I've been rather hoping that because it seized me so suddenly and so powerfully it must have seized her, too. I think often things occur that way."

"In novels," said Jane, pleasantly judicial. "But in real life about the hardest thing to do is for a man to make a woman care for him—really care for him."

"Well, no matter how hard I have to try——"

"Of course," pursued Miss Hastings, ignoring his interruption, "when a man who has wealth and position asks a woman who hasn't to marry him, she usually accepts—unless he happens to be downright repulsive, or she happens to be deeply and hopefully in love with another man."

Davy winced satisfactorily. "Do you suspect," he presently asked, "that she's in love with Victor Dorn?"

"Perhaps," said Jane reflectively. "Probably. But I'd not feel discouraged by that if I were you."

"Dorn's a rather attractive chap in some ways."

Davy's manner was so superior that Jane almost laughed in his face. What fools men were. If Victor Dorn had position, weren't surrounded by his unquestionably, hopelessly common family, weren't deliberately keeping himself common—was there a woman in the world who wouldn't choose him without a second thought being necessary, in preference to a Davy Hull? How few men there were who could reasonably hope to hold their women against all comers.

Victor Dorn might possibly be of those few. But Davy Hull—the idea was ridiculous. All his advantages—height, looks, money, position—were excellent qualities in a show piece; but they weren't the qualities that make a woman want to live her life with a man, that make her hope he will be able to give her the emotions woman-nature craves beyond anything.

"He is very attractive," said Jane, "and I've small doubt that Selma Gordon is infatuated with him. But—I shouldn't let that worry me if I were you." She paused to enjoy his anxiety, then proceeded: "She is a level-headed girl. The girls of the working class—the intelligent ones—have had the silly sentimentalities knocked out of them by experience. So, when you ask her to marry you, she will accept."

"What a low opinion you have of her!" exclaimed Davy. "What a low view you take of life!"—most inconsistent of him, since he was himself more than half convinced that Jane's observations were not far from the truth.

"Women are sensible," said Jane tranquilly. "They appreciate that they've got to get a man to support them. Don't forget, my dear Davy, that marriage is a woman's career."

"You lived abroad too long," said Hull bitterly.

"I've lived at home and abroad long enough and intelligently enough not to think stupid hypocrisies, even if I do sometimes imitate other people and SAY them."

"I am sure that Selma Gordon would no more think of marrying me for any other reason but love—would no more think of it than—than YOU would!"

"No more," was Jane's unruffled reply. "But just as much. I didn't absolutely refuse you, when you asked me the other day, partly because I saw no other way of stopping your tiresome talk—and your unattractive way of trying to lay hands on me. I DETEST being handled."

Davy was looking so uncomfortable that he attracted the attention of the people they were passing in wide, shady Lincoln Avenue.

"But my principal reason," continued Jane, mercilessly amiable and candid, "was that I didn't know but that you might prove to be about the best I could get, as a means to realizing my ambition." She looked laughingly at the unhappy young man. "You didn't think I was in love with you, did you, Davy dear?" Then, while the confusion following this blow was at its height, she added: "You'll remember one of your chief arguments for my accepting you was ambition. You didn't think it low then—did you?"

Hull was one of the dry-skinned people. But if he had been sweating profusely he would have looked and would have been less wretched than burning up in the smothered heat of his misery.

They were nearing Martha's gates. Jane said: "Yes, Davy, you've got a good chance. And as soon as she gets used to our way of living, she'll make you a good wife." She laughed gayly.

"She'll not be quite so pretty when she settles down and takes on flesh. I wonder how she'll look in fine clothes and jewels."

She measured Hull's stature with a critical eye. "She's only about half as tall as you. How funny you'll look together!" With sudden soberness and sweetness, "But, seriously, David, I'm proud of your courage in taking a girl for herself regardless of her surroundings. So few men would be willing to face the ridicule and the criticism, and all the social difficulties." She nodded encouragingly. "Go in and win! You can count on my friendship—for I'm in love with her myself."

She left him standing dazedly, looking up and down the street as if it were some strange and pine-beset highway in a foreign land.

After taking a few steps she returned to the gates and called him: "I forgot to ask do you want me to regard what you've told me as confidential? I was thinking of telling Martha and Hugo, and it occurred to me that you might not like it."

"Please don't say anything about it," said he with panicky eagerness. "You see—nothing's settled yet."

"Oh, she'll accept you."

"But I haven't even asked her," pleaded Hull.

"Oh—all right—as you please."

When she was safely within doors she dropped to a chair and burst out laughing. It was part of Jane's passion for the sense of triumph over the male sex to felt that she had made a "perfect jumping jack of a fool" of David Hull. "And I rather think," said she to herself, "that he'll soon be back where he belongs." This with a glance at the tall heels of the slippers on the good-looking feet she was thrusting out for her own inspection. "How absurd for him to imagine he could do anything unconventional. Is there any coward anywhere so cowardly as an American conventional man? No wonder I hate to think of marrying one of them. But—I suppose I'll have to do it some day. What's a woman to do? She's GOT to marry."

So pleased with herself was she that she behaved with unusual forbearance toward Martha whose conduct of late had been most trying. Not Martha's sometimes peevish, sometimes plaintive criticisms of her; these she did not mind. But Martha's way of ordering her own life. Jane, moving about in the world with a good mind eager to improve, had got a horror of a woman's going to pieces—and that was what Martha was doing.

"I'm losing my looks rapidly," was her constant complaint. As she had just passed thirty there was, in Jane's opinion, not the smallest excuse for this. The remedy, the preventive, was obvious—diet and exercise. But Martha, being lazy and self-indulgent and not imaginative enough to foresee to what a pass a few years more of lounging and stuffing would bring her, regarded exercise as unladylike and dieting as unhealthful. She would not weaken her system by taking less than was demanded by "nature's infallible guide, the healthy appetite." She would not give up the venerable and aristocratic tradition that a lady should ever be reposeful.

"Another year or so," warned Jane, "and you'll be as steatopygous as the bride of a Hottentot chief."

"What does steat—that word mean?" said Martha suspiciously.

"Look in the dictionary," said Jane. "Its synonyms aren't used by refined people."

"I knew it was something insulting," said Martha with an injured sniff.

The only concessions Martha would make to the latter-day craze of women for youthfulness were buying a foolish chin-strap of a beauty quack and consulting him as to whether, if her hair continued to gray, she would better take to peroxide or to henna.

Jane had come down that day with a severe lecture on fat and wrinkles laid out in her mind for energetic delivery to the fast-seeding Martha. She put off the lecture and allowed the time to be used by Martha in telling Jane what were her (Jane's) strongest and less strong—not weaker but less strong, points of physical charm.

It was cool and beautiful in the shade of the big gardens behind the old Galland house. Jane, listening to Martha's honest and just compliments and to the faint murmurs of the city's dusty, sweaty toil, had a delicious sense of the superiority of her lot—a feeling that somehow there must be something in the theory of rightfully superior and inferior classes—that in taking what she had not earned she was not robbing those who had earned it, as her reason so often asserted, but was being supported by the toil of others for high purposes of aesthetic beauty. Anyhow, why heat one's self wrestling with these problems?

When she was sure that Victor Dorn must have returned she called him on the telephone. "Can't you come out to see me to-night?" said she. "I've something important—something YOU'LL think important—to consult you about." She felt a refusal forming at the other end of the wire and hastened to add: "You must know I'd not ask this if I weren't certain you would be glad you came."

"Why not drop in here when you're down town?" suggested Victor.

She wondered why she did not hang up the receiver and forget him.

But she did not. She murmured, "In due time I'll punish you for this, sir," and said to him: "There are reasons why it's impossible for me to go there just now. And you know I can't meet you in a saloon or on a street corner."

"I'm not so sure of that," laughed he. "Let me see. I'm very busy. But I could come for half an hour this afternoon."

She had planned an evening session, being well aware of the favorable qualities of air and light after the matter-of-fact sun has withdrawn his last rays. But she promptly decided to accept what offered. "At three?"

"At four," replied he.

"You haven't forgotten those books?"

"Books? Oh, yes—yes, I remember. I'll bring them."

"Thank you so much," said she sweetly. "Good-by."

And at four she was waiting for him on the front veranda in a house dress that was—well, it was not quite the proper costume for such an occasion, but no one else was to see, and he didn't know about that sort of thing—and the gown gave her charms their best possible exposure except evening dress, which was out of the question. She had not long to wait. One of the clocks within hearing had struck and another was just beginning to strike when she saw him coming toward the house. She furtively watched him, admiring his walk without quite knowing why. You may perhaps know the walk that was Victor's—a steady forward advance of the whole body held firmly, almost rigidly—the walk of a man leading another to the scaffold, or of a man being led there in conscious innocence, or of a man ready to go wherever his purposes may order—ready to go without any heroics or fuss of any kind, but simply in the course of the day's business. When a man walks like that, he is worth observing—and it is well to think twice before obstructing his way.

That steady, inevitable advance gave Jane Hastings an absurd feeling of nervousness. She had an impulse to fly, as from some oncoming danger. Yet what was coming, in fact? A clever young man of the working class, dressed in garments of the kind his class dressed in on Sunday, and plebeianly carrying a bundle under his arm.

"Our clock says you are three seconds late," cried she, laughing and extending her hand in a friendly, equal way that would have immensely flattered almost any man of her own class. "But another protests that you are one second early."

"I'm one of those fools who waste their time and their nerves by being punctual," said he.

He laid the books on the wicker sofa. But instead of sitting Jane said: "We might be interrupted here. Come to the west veranda."

There she had him in a leafy solitude—he facing her as she posed in fascinating grace in a big chair. He looked at her—not the look of a man at a woman, but the look of a busy person at one who is about to show cause for having asked for a portion of his valuable time. She laughed—and laughter was her best gesture. "I can never talk to you if you pose like that," said she. "Honestly now, is your time so pricelessly precious?"

He echoed her laugh and settled himself more at his ease. "What did you want of me?" he asked.

"I intend to try to get better hours and better wages for the street car men," said she. "To do it, I must know just what is right—what I can hope to get. General talk is foolish. If I go at father I must have definite proposals to make, with reasons for them. I don't want him to evade. I would have gotten my information elsewhere, but I could think of no one but you who might not mislead me."

She had confidently expected that this carefully thought out scheme would do the trick. He would admire her, would be interested, would be drawn into a position where she could enlist him as a constant adviser. He moved toward the edge of his chair as if about to rise. He said, pleasantly enough but without a spark of enthusiasm:

"That's very nice of you, Miss Hastings. But I can't advise you—beyond saying that if I were you, I shouldn't meddle."

She—that is, her vanity—was cut to the quick. "Oh!" said she with irony, "I fancied you wished the laboring men to have a better sort of life."

"Yes," said he. "But I'm not in favor of running hysterically about with a foolish little atomizer in the great stable. You are talking charity. I am working for justice. It will not really benefit the working man for the company, at the urging of a sweet and lovely young Lady Bountiful, to deign graciously to grant a little less slavery to them. In fact, a well fed, well cared for slave is worse off than one who's badly treated—worse off because farther from his freedom. The only things that do our class any good, Miss Hastings, are the things they COMPEL—compel by their increased intelligence and increased unity and power. They get what they deserve. They won't deserve more until they compel more. Gifts won't help—not even gifts from—" His intensely blue eyes danced—"from such charming white hands so beautifully manicured."

She rose with an angry toss of the head. "I didn't ask you here to annoy me with impertinences about my finger nails."

He rose, at his ease, good-humored, ready to go. "Then you should have worn gloves," said he carelessly, "for I've been able to think only of your finger nails—and to wonder WHAT can be done with hands like that. Thank you for a pleasant talk." He bowed and smiled. "Good-by. Oh—Miss Gordon sent you her love."

"What IS the matter, Mr. Dorn?" cried the girl desperately. "I want your friendship—your respect. CAN'T I get it? Am I utterly hopeless in your eyes?"

A curious kind of color rose in his cheeks. His eyes regarded her with a mysterious steadiness. "You want neither my respect nor my friendship," said he. "You want to amuse yourself." He pointed at her hands. "Those nails betray you." He shrugged his shoulders, laughed, said as if to a child: "You are a nice girl, Jane Hastings. It's a pity you weren't brought up to be of some use. But you weren't—and it's too late."

Her eyes flashed, her bosom heaved. "WHY do I take these things from you? WHY do I invite them?"

"Because you inherit your father's magnificent persistence—and you've set your heart on the whim of making a fool of me—and you hate to give up."

"You wrong me—indeed you do," cried she. "I want to learn—I want to be of use in the world. I want to have some kind of a real life."

"Really?" mocked he good-humoredly.

"Really," said she with all her power of sweet earnestness.

"Then—cut your nails and go to work. And when you have become a genuine laborer, you'll begin to try to improve not the condition of others, but your own. The way to help workers is to abolish the idlers who hang like a millstone about their necks. You can help only by abolishing the one idler under your control."

She stood nearer him, very near him. She threw out her lovely arms in a gesture of humility. "I will do whatever you say," she said.

They looked each into the other's eyes. The color fled from her face, the blood poured into his—wave upon wave, until he was like a man who has been set on fire by the furious heat of long years of equatorial sun. He muttered, wheeled about and strode away—in resolute and relentless flight. She dropped down where he had been sitting and hid her face in her perfumed hands.

"I care for him," she moaned, "and he saw and he despises me! How COULD I—how COULD I!"

Nevertheless, within a quarter of an hour she was in her dressing room, standing at the table, eyes carefully avoiding her mirrored eyes—as she cut her finger nails.



IV

Jane was mistaken in her guess at the cause of Victor Dorn's agitation and abrupt flight. If he had any sense whatever of the secret she had betrayed to him and to herself at the same instant it was wholly unconscious. He had become panic-stricken and had fled because he, faced with her exuberance and tempting wealth of physical charm, had become suddenly conscious of her and of himself in a way as new to him as if he had been fresh from a monkery where no woman had ever been seen. Thus far the world had been peopled for him with human beings without any reference to sex. The phenomena of sex had not interested him because his mind had been entirely taken up with the other aspects of life; and he had not yet reached the stage of development where a thinker grasps the truth that all questions are at bottom questions of the sex relation, and that, therefore, no question can be settled right until the sex relations are settled right.

Jane Hastings was the first girl he had met in his whole life who was in a position to awaken that side of his nature. And when his brain suddenly filled with a torrent of mad longings and of sensuous appreciations of her laces and silk, of her perfume and smoothness and roundness, of the ecstasy that would come from contact with those warm, rosy lips—when Victor Dorn found himself all in a flash eager impetuosity to seize this woman whom he did not approve of, whom he did not even like, he felt bowed with shame. He would not have believed himself capable of such a thing. He fled.

He fled, but she pursued. And when he sat down in the garden behind his mother's cottage, to work at a table where bees and butterflies had been his only disturbers, there was this SHE before him—her soft, shining gaze fascinating his gaze, her useless but lovely white hands extended tantalizingly toward him.

As he continued to look at her, his disapproval and dislike melted. "I was brutally harsh to her," he thought repentantly.

"She was honestly trying to do the decent thing. How was she to know? And wasn't I as much wrong as right in advising her not to help the men?"

Beyond question, it was theoretically best for the two opposing forces, capital and labor, to fight their battle to its inevitable end without interference, without truce, with quarter neither given nor taken on either side. But practically—wasn't there something to be said for such humane proposals of that of Jane Hastings? They would put off the day of right conditions rightly and therefore permanently founded—conditions in which master and slave or serf or wage-taker would be no more; but, on the other hand, slaves with shorter hours of toil and better surroundings could be enlightened more easily. Perhaps. He was by no means sure; he could not but fear that anything that tended to make the slave comfortable in his degradation must of necessity weaken his aversion to degradation. Just as the worst kings were the best kings because they hastened the fall of monarchy, so the worst capitalists, the most rapacious, the most rigid enforcers of the economic laws of a capitalistic society were the best capitalists, were helping to hasten the day when men would work for what they earned and would earn what they worked for—when every man's pay envelope would contain his wages, his full wages, and nothing but his wages.

Still, where judgment was uncertain, he certainly had been unjust to that well meaning girl. And was she really so worthless as he had on first sight adjudged her? There might be exceptions to the rule that a parasite born and bred can have no other instructor or idea but those of parasitism. She was honest and earnest, was eager to learn the truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been almost insultingly curt and mocking.

"What was the matter with me?" he asked himself. "I never acted in that way before." And then he saw that his brusqueness had been the cover for fear of of her—fear of the allure of her luxury and her beauty. In love with her? He knew that he was not. No, his feeling toward her was merely the crudest form of the tribute of man to woman—though apparently woman as a rule preferred this form to any other.

"I owe her an apology," he said to himself. And so it came to pass that at three the following afternoon he was once more facing her in that creeper-walled seclusion whose soft lights were almost equal to light of gloaming or moon or stars in romantic charm.

Said he—always direct and simple, whether dealing with man or woman, with devious person or straight: