He rose with a cry of pain, plunged into the crowds streaming downtown to their work and, scarcely conscious of anything save the ache within, found himself again in his room. He disarranged his bed that his sleepless night might not excite comment. He was just a little ashamed that his loss of poise had been so complete and overwhelming.

When he came downstairs he paused at the door. Harriet was playing and singing again, and the soft tones of her voice were healing. He walked gently to the door of the music-room, leaned against the panel, and watched and listened.

She played, not as a schoolgirl practising a lesson, but with a lingering touch of joy in her work caressing each note. The thrill of hope and faith in her voice was soothing. It soothed the wounded soul and slowly brought a smile to his face.

At last she stopped reluctantly, tipped her golden head sideways in a coquettish little triumphant movement, and in the quaintest imitation of a man's voice said:

"I congratulate you, Miss Harriet—I like that very much!"

"Do you, professor? Oh, I'm so glad to please you!"

She shook her curls with genuine delight, and played out the little dialogue with vivid imaginary touches.

Stuart laughed.

The girl leaped to her feet, blushing scarlet, rushed to his side and seized his hand.

"Did you see me, Jim? Was I very foolish?"

"Certainly not. I quite agree with the professor. You will some day sing before kings and queens, little girl. You sing as the birds, because it's in your soul. And I want to thank you, too. You've helped me again. I had a hard day's work before me, and you've made it easy."

"Then I shall be very happy all day, Jim!"

"Thank you, little pal—au revoir——"

He left her waving and smiling to him from the steps. He walked with new vigour and a deepening sense of gratitude.

Strange what a gracious influence the child had over him. She was always a ray of sunlight. This morning the touch of her hand and the thrill of her voice had brought his dead soul back to life again. His breath deepened and his step grew firm and swift.

He would fight for his own! He would go straight to Nan and laugh at this announcement. He would compel her to hear him. It was an absurd hour to call, but all the better. The more absurd, the deeper impression he would make and the more certain would be his success. He had written a note before—she had easily returned it unopened. She would find it a difficult undertaking to get him out of the house!

Mrs. Primrose's greeting was so cordial, so genuinely friendly, that for a moment he was puzzled. Could it be possible he had misjudged her? Could it be possible that her professions of love and admiration had been genuine? His hunger for sympathy was so keen, his sense of loneliness in his fight so utter, he could not help allowing himself the luxury of a momentary doubt.

She pressed his hand warmly and lingeringly.

"Oh, Jim, I'm so glad you've come! Why have you stayed away so long? It was so foolish of you. You gave up without a struggle. I'm shocked beyond measure at Nan."

Stuart's heart gave a bound of hope and he looked with fierce earnestness into the mother's face. It was only for an instant. Her eyes roamed and shifted and her tongue went faster.

"I told her that his millions would never bring happiness unless her heart went with them—that her love for you was a thing she couldn't lay aside as a cloak she had worn."

When Mrs. Primrose's eyes blinked and turned away under Stuart's gaze, he knew that she was lying again and ceased to listen.

"Well, I haven't given her up yet, Mrs. Primrose," he said bluntly.

"I knew you wouldn't, Jim. And I told Nan the day she promised to marry Mr. Bivens that you were worth a dozen such men, no matter how many millions he had. You have always been my choice—you know that. How she could throw you over for a little scrap of a man like that is beyond me."

Stuart could control himself no longer. He rose and faced Mrs. Primrose with a look which brought her eloquence to an abrupt end.

"Mrs. Primrose, for once in my life I am going to tell you the truth."

"Why, you always do Jim," she feebly answered.

"I never do. Your example has been contagious. I've had to play out the farce with you. To-day I won't play. I'm too hurt, angry, wounded, sore. You have always been my bitterest foe. You brought Nan to New York to get her away from me."

The mother's eyes blazed with honest wrath.

"Yes, I did—and I'm glad I did it—you ungrateful wretch!"

"And you have always been busy poisoning her mind against me and corrupting her imagination with dreams of a life of luxury."

"And thank God I've succeeded at last in bringing her to her senses in time to save her from throwing herself away on you, Jim Stuart!"

"Thank you, mother dear, we understand each other now——"

"Don't you dare call me mother, sir!"

"Why not? I'm going to win in the end, and you're on my side. You know that I'm worth a dozen such fellows as the little scrap of a man on whom she's about to throw herself away."

"How dare you, sir!"

"Because you've just told me. I'm only quoting your words."

As Mrs. Primrose left in speechless anger, Nan quietly entered the room. Her face was set for battle in a proud defiant smile. She was totally unprepared for the way in which Stuart met her.

With a quick step he was at her side, seized both her hands in a grip of fierce tenderness and in low tones of vibrant passion said:

"This thing don't go with me, Nan. I won't accept it. I'm going to fight—fight for my own—for you are mine—mine by every law of God and man, and you are worth fighting for!"

The hard smile of defiance melted from the beautiful face, and a flush of tenderness slowly overspread her cheeks. It was sweet to be loved like that by a strong masterful man. One of the things that had stung her pride deepest during the past weeks was the thought that after all he didn't seem to care. Now that she knew how deeply he cared, her heart went out to him in instinctive tender response.

"I suppose, then," she began slowly, "I've nothing to do but agree to your plan of action?"

"That's it exactly," he replied firmly. "How could I dream that you would regard our quarrel so seriously——"

She started to speak, and he raised his hand:

"I know, dear, you said our engagement was broken. I didn't believe you meant it. I couldn't. I was hurt when you returned my note unopened, but I watched and waited every hour of every day for a word. The news of your engagement to Bivens came as a bolt out of the blue sky. I refuse to accept such an act as final. You did it out of pique. You don't mean it. You can't mean it!"

"And what are your plans?"

"I told you the other day I had a surprise for you—I have. It's worth a day—you promised me one in the country before our foolish quarrel. I want it now. You will come?"

She hesitated a moment and said:

"Yes."

Within an hour they had reached the hills overlooking Gravesend Bay, and the magnificent sweep of water below the Narrows. Nan had scarcely spoken on the way, answering Stuart's questions in friendly nods, smiles, and monosyllables.

"Before we go farther," Stuart said when they had left the car, "I want to show you a model home a friend of mine has built out here. It's my ideal, and I think you'll like it."

Nan nodded and followed his long strides along the narrow path of a single flagstone pavement to the crest of the hill which sloped to the water's edge.

As they entered the gate, half hidden in the hedge, the girl exclaimed:

"What a lovely little place!"

A gardener who was watering some flowers, on a sign from Stuart hastened up the gravel walk and opened the door.

Every window commanded entrancing views of the bay and ocean. Every ship entering or leaving the harbour of New York must pass close and could be seen for miles going to sea.

When Stuart finally led Nan out on the broad veranda of the second floor, she was in a flutter of excitement over the perfection of its details.

"I think it's wonderful, Jim!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm. "I'd like to congratulate your friend on his good taste. And just look at those dear little terraces which lead down to the boathouse—on one of them a strawberry bed, on the other a garden, on the last a grape arbor, and then the boathouse, the wharf—and look—a lovely little boat tied to the float—it's just perfect!"

"And this outlook over bay and sea and towering hills—isn't it wonderful?" he asked soberly—"the hills and sea with their song of the infinite always ringing in one's soul!"

"It's glorious," she murmured. "I've never seen anything more nearly perfect. Whose is it?"

Stuart looked into her dark eyes with desperate yearning.

"It's yours, Nan!"

"Mine?"

"Yes, dear, this is my secret. I've been building this home for you the past year. I've put all the little money my father gave me with every dollar I could save. It's paid for and here's the key. I meant to ask you out here to fix our wedding day. I ask you now. Forget the nightmare of the past two weeks and remember only that we love each other!"

The girl's eyes grew dim for a moment and she turned away that the man who watched might not know. Her lips quivered for just an instant, and her hand gripped the rail of the veranda.

When she answered it was with a light banter in her tones that cut Stuart's heart with cruel pain.

"If I'd seen it four weeks ago, Jim, I really don't see how I could have resisted it—but now"—she shook her head and laughed—"now it's too late!"

"My God, don't say that, Nan!" he pleaded. "It's never too late to do right. You know that I love you. You know that you love me."

"But I've discovered," she went on with bantering, half challenging frankness, "that I love luxury, too. I never knew how deeply and passionately before—" she paused a moment, looking toward Sea-Gate. "Isn't that the anchorage of the Atlantic Yacht Club?"

"Yes," he answered impatiently.

"Then that's Mr. Bivens's yacht—the big, ugly black one lying close inshore with steam up. He told me he would send her into dry dock to-day. He was talking last night of a wedding cruise in her to the Mediterranean. I confess, Jim, that I want to shine, to succeed, and dazzle, and reign. Every ambitious man has this desire. Why shouldn't I? You say I have rare beauty. Well, I wish to express myself. It's a question of common sense. Marriage is my only career. This man's conquest was so easy it startled me and I came down out of the clouds. I don't know a girl in New York to-day who has youth and beauty who does not in her soul of souls aspire to the highest rank and the greatest wealth. This is perhaps the one chance of my life——"

"Do you hold yourself so cheap?"

"You see I'm not so prejudiced an observer as you, Jim. I've looked the facts squarely in the face. You can't realize how much the power of millions means to a woman who chafes at the limitations the world puts on her sex. My imagination has been set on fire by dreams of splendour and power. It's too late——"

"Don't, don't say it, Nan!"

"Why not be frank? This little cottage is a gem, I admit. But I've seen a splendid palace set in flowers and gleaming with subdued light. Soft music steals through its halls mingled with the laughter of throngs who love and admire me. Its banquet tables are laden with the costliest delicacies, while liveried servants hurry to and fro with plates and goblets of gold! And all this wild dream, Jim, seems real, a part of my very life. Perhaps somewhere in another world my spirit lived in such surroundings——"

"Perhaps," Stuart interrupted bitterly, "in the breast of a cruel, merciless half-savage princess who killed her lover to win a throne——"

Nan suddenly grasped his arm.

"What are you saying!"

"Only interpreting your dream."

"You mustn't say horrible things like that to me. It's bad enough, God knows, when I face it. But at least I'm not a murderess."

"I'm not at all sure," he persisted, with desperation. "That a girl who can deliberately kill the soul of the man who loves her, might not kill his body if put to the test——"

"For heaven's sake, Jim, if you do love me don't say such things! I'll never forget them! I can't help it—I've got to do this. The spell is on me, and I must——"

Stuart seized her arm with fierce strength that hurt.

"Then I'll break the spell. You shall not do this hideous thing. You are mine, I tell you, and I am bigger than money. I have the power to think, to create ideas, to create beauty—the power that remakes the world. I expect to have all the money we shall need. In the years to come we shall be rich whether we seek it or not. But the sweetest days of all life will be those in which we fight side by side the first battles of life in youth and poverty when we shall count the pennies and save with care for the little ones God may send us! With your sweet face bending above me and the touch of your hand, the highest success is sure. Marry me now. Here is your home. We don't need to be rich to be happy—a loving heart, generous sympathies, comradeship, high ambitions, strong young bodies and clean souls—and the angels will envy us!"

"But life is short, Jim! I can have things now. He has already promised them—a palace in town, another by the sea, a great castle in the heart of the blue southern mountains we used to watch as children, and armies of servants to do my bidding—I can live now!"

"And you call these trappings and tinsel life?"

"I want them."

"My God, Nan, haven't you a soul? Hasn't the life within no meaning for you? To me such luxury is sheer insanity. The possibilities of personal luxury have been exhausted thousands of years ago. It's commonplace, vulgar, and contemptible. If you wish for power why choose the lowest of all its forms? The way you are entering is worn bare by the feet of millions of forgotten fools whose bodies worms have eaten. Not one of them lives to-day even in a footnote of history. They sailed no unknown seas. They conquered no new worlds. They merely got dollars, spent them and died."

"And yet, Jim, you know as well as I do that money is the sign of success and power; its absence, of failure and weakness."

"To those who see the surface of things only—oh, Nan, why have you let this brood of black-winged bats build their nest in your heart?—this greed, this avarice, this envy of the rich——"

The girl lifted her hand with a gesture of impatience.

"You persist in misunderstanding me. Why should your desire for power be called high ambition, and mine a vulgar avarice? If you make a mistake in your career, you can correct it and begin again. Being a woman I cannot, for marriage is my only career. A mistake now would be to me fatal."

"And you are making the one tragic mistake no repentance can undo. You are choosing to commit the one unpardonable sin—the sin against the Spirit."

"And what, pray, is that?"

"The deliberate choice of evil, knowing it to be evil. Your heart is mine—mine, I tell you! Do you deny it?"

Again he seized her hand, gripped it fiercely, and looked into her eyes with tender, searching gaze.

Nan looked away.

"Oh, Nan, dear, believe me," he pleaded. "You can't deny this voice within the soul and live! Happiness is inside, not outside, dear. You say you want to own a castle on a mountain side. You can't do it by holding a deed and paying taxes on it. I can own it without a deed. I haven't a million, but I own this great city. This mighty harbour is mine. That's why I built our little home nest here on the hill overlooking it. It's all mine—these miles of shining ocean sands, the sea, and these landlocked waters. The great city that stretches northward, its miles of gleaming lights that will come out to-night and dim the stars, the hum and thrill of its life, the laughter and the tears, the joys and the fears—are all mine because I see and hear and feel and understand! Nor can the tax gatherer put his hand on my wealth. It's beyond his touch."

The girl's spirit was caught at last in the grip of his passionate appeal, and her rebellion ceased for the moment as she watched and listened with increasing sympathy.

"Beauty is always a thing of the soul, Nan," he rushed on. "The things we possess are signs of the spirit or we don't possess them—they possess us. The dress you wear expresses something within you when it fits your beautiful body so perfectly. The mere possession of houses and lands and things has no meaning unless they reveal us. If they merely express the labour of an ancestor, the mind of an architect or the genius of a manager, we are only intruders on the scene, not the creator and therefore the possessor of the beauty we aim at. A home, a dress, are symbols, or nothing but goods and chattels. I have seen you wear dresses made by your own hand that revealed a whole conception of life and hats that were poems. The dress you wear to-day is perfect because it expresses you. The clothes of a millionaire's wife have no meaning except conformity to fashion and the expenditure of vast sums of money. The poetic taste, the subtle mystery of personality which you put into your dress have always been a joy to me."

In spite of her fierce determination to give no response to his appeal her fingers instinctively tightened on the hand which had seized hers. His own pressed with new courage and he went on.

"Bivens may think he owns that big black hulk lying out there belching smoke from her huge funnels. But he only pays the bills to keep her going. It takes fifty men to run her. I have a little sloop with a cabin for two. She cost me fifteen hundred dollars and I own her, because I dreamed every rib in her body, every rivet, every line of her graceful form. I created her and gave her a soul. I feel the beat of her proud little heart in the storm and the soft touch of her sleepy wings in the calm. She is part of the rhythm of my life.

"It is not money that gives value or ownership to things. You can only own that which expresses you. For that reason you cannot own the palaces of which you dream. Their service will require a hundred thieving hirelings whose very names you cannot know. This house is mine because I have built it as a work of love and art and expressed myself in it with infinite tenderness and infinite pains. It is not a palace in size, but it is a palace, glorious and wonderful, in a deeper spiritual sense, because it is a poem. Every spar of wood in it is perfect of its kind. Every stone in it is a gem because it is the right thing in the right place. There isn't a shoddy bit of material or a slipshod piece of work from the green tile in its roof to the stone boulders on which it rests. It will last our lives and generations to follow. The very mortar between the bricks and the cement between the stones are perfect because they were mixed with tears of joy that bubbled from my heart as I stood here, watched and sang my love for you——"

The lover paused a moment, overcome with his emotion, and he knew by the quick rising and falling of the girl's breast that a battle was raging.

Quick to see his advantage he drew her gently inside.

"See, Nan, there are no cheap imitations in here, no vulgar ornaments which mean nothing. There has been no copying of models. These rooms I planned with your spirit, dearest, hovering over me, and each one has its little surprise—a nook, a turn, a window opening unexpectedly on its entrancing view. The ornaments on its walls will grow as we grow—pictures we shall find and always love, and tapestries your own dear hands shall paint. This home will be a real one because it will have a soul. There can be no coarse or menial tasks within its walls because its work shall be glorified by the old immortal song of love and life."

Stuart leaned close and spoke in a low tense voice:

"And it will always be beautiful, Nan, because it will be penetrated with the touch of your hand. Every piece of furniture will glow with that radiance. Gold and precious stones can have no such lustre. See, here I have planned to place your piano. There will be no music on earth like the songs those throbbing strings shall make to my soul when they quiver beneath the touch of your hand. Here on this seat I shall lie by the window, looking out over the sea, dream and think great thoughts of life and death and immortality while you play for me. And with each passing year, dearest, the songs that you sing will be deeper and richer and more and more full of divine meaning."

The lover slipped his arm gently around the girl's yielding form, her head drooped on his shoulder, the great dark eyes blinded with tears. For a moment he held her in silence broken only by a deep sob. His hand touched her hair with the tenderest gesture as he whispered:

"We can only know a few real friends in this world, dearest—but one great love comes to any human soul, and life is all too short to lose a single day——"

"Hush—hush! Jim," the girl cried in anguish, "don't say any more, please!"

"Tell me that it's all right, dear," he urged. "You know you cannot leave me now. You know that you love me and that your love is a deathless thing."

"Yes, yes, I know," she gasped. "But I'm going to marry him! I can't help it. The spell of his millions is on me and I can't shake it off!"

So sure was Stuart of victory, Nan's outburst made no impression on his mind. He continued to soothe her as he would a tired child.

"Of course I know you don't mean that—you are only reproaching the imaginary girl who betrayed her love for money. The real Nan is sobbing here in my arms—mine forever——"

With a determined effort she drew herself from his embrace and in hard cold tones said:

"No. Jim, you must face the truth. I am going to marry this man, and the most horrible thing I can say about myself is that, deeply as I love you, I know I shall be content with the splendid career that will be mine. I shall never regret my marriage."

The lover looked at her in a dazed way as if unable to grasp the meaning of her words.

"Nan," he cried at last, "you can't mean that!"

"I do."

"But you can't do this vile thing. Since the world began I know that vain, weak, ignorant women have sold themselves to men they could not love, for money, rank and luxury. But you are not of that breed, Nan. You are not weak, you are not ignorant. You are strong in body and soul, with high aims and the inheritance of rich blood in your veins.

"You are the typical American girl, the daughter of the line of men and women who have made this Republic the glory of the world—women whose hearts have been pure, whose lives have been clean, who have kept burning in the hearts of men the great faiths of the soul. Respect for this woman has been one of the foundations of our moral life. In the worship I have paid you, there has been more than the charm of sex, there has been always this instinctive recognition of the divine. Are you going to kill my faith in God? The woman who sells herself to buy bread, stands higher in the moral world than you——" He hesitated.

"Go on, Jim, say the worst. And still I'm going to do it."

"Knowing full well that no ceremony of Church or State, no words of priest or judge, no pealing of organ, or pomp or pageantry can make this thing a marriage? There is but one vile word in the English tongue that fits the woman——"

Nan straightened her figure with a smile of defiance:

"Say it!"

The lover dropped in silence to the window seat and buried his face in his hands in a paroxysm of emotion beyond control.

At length he rose and looked at the girl he loved long and tenderly.

"God in heaven! It's inconceivable, when I took into your beautiful face! Have you no pity in your heart?"

The full lips smiled a cruel little smile.

"Men are strong, Jim. They can stand hard blows. You come of fighting stock. I know that you will survive——"

"And the solemn pledge of love and loyalty we gave to each other—this means nothing to you?"

"Our engagement was informal. The world knew nothing of it."

"No, but God knew, Nan, and our young souls were their own witness."

"I'm sorry to hurt you, Jim. But I must—it's fate; the big world, I somehow feel I'm akin to, is calling me and I'm going——"

"And Bivens is this big world! If you will throw me over for money, can't you wait until a real man goes with it? It wouldn't be so bad if I felt you had chosen one who was my equal physically and mentally in culture and breeding—but Bivens!"

"You underestimate his ability. You may hate him—but he is a man of genius."

"He is everything you loathe, and yet you are going to marry him. Great God! don't you understand what a close, intimate, personal thing marriage is! You are the most fastidious girl I have ever known. The ceremony with which you keep your beautiful body is a religion. Bivens is physically everything you despise. His teeth are yellow with nicotine, and his lips cracked and stained with tobacco. With every quivering fibre of your delicate and sensitive being you know that you loathe him. And yet you are going to give your body to be his—without reserve—you, the delicate, the exquisite beauty—you who worship your dainty body in a mirror daily. God—have you no real reverence for your own being?"

"No, Jim," she interrupted at last, with deep pity in her heart for his suffering, "I don't think I have, and it's better so after all. I'll never love another, I shall not try."

"Then if you will sell yourself, Nan, dear, let's make a better bargain—wait! You are giving up too easily. Bivens has only a couple of millions, and he may lose them. Don't hold yourself so cheap. If you were on the block for sale I'd give a million for each dimple in your cheek. That pile of glorious black hair is worth a million—I'd give it without haggling at the price! Come, let's have more bids! The smile that plays about your lips should bring millions. The arch of your proud young neck should add another—and your deep dark eyes, I swear are worth a million each."

Stuart's voice had grown husky and sank into a sob as she placed her hand on his arm and gently said:

"Hush, Jim, dear, we must go now. I can't stand any more. I've let you go on like this and say anything you pleased because I'm heartsick to see how cruelly I've hurt you—but there's a limit."

"Yes, I know, forgive me."

Without another word he led her from the place, closed the little gate quietly and returned to her home.

Alone inside the parlour they stood in silence a moment and she took his hand in hers.

"I'm sorry, but it must be good-bye. Your love has been a sweet and wonderful thing in my life——"

"And you throw it aside as a worthless rag."

"No," she answered smiling. "It shall be mine always—good-bye."

She raised her lips to his in a cold kiss.

Dazed with anguish, he turned and left. The door closed on his retreating figure, and Nan sank among the cushions and burst into a flood of passionate tears.



CHAPTER IX

DESPAIR

To the very dawn of Nan's wedding day Stuart had refused to give up hope.

The little financier had sent him an invitation, and worst of all had called to ask that he act as his best man. He refused so curtly that Bivens was deeply wounded. He hastened to soothe his feelings with a plausible explanation.

"The fact is, Bivens, I've always hated church funerals and weddings—of the two I prefer funerals——"

"Nonsense!"

"I assure you I'm not joking. Those long hideous veils and white shroud-like dresses to me always symbolize Death. The pallor of the bride's face perhaps adds to my delusion—but it's painfully real. I never go to a church wedding. The apparition haunts me for days."

Bivens smiled wanly.

"But what will you do when your time comes, old man? You can't run away then."

"That's just what I will do—run away and take my girl with me. We'll elope and be married in street clothes. It's more human."

While he spoke, Stuart's eyes suddenly sparkled with the thought that his words, spoken in jest, might be a prophecy of what could really happen. It had happened again and again. The miracle might happen to him.

"But I say, Jim, that's all rot. I want you to stand by me. I've always taken as much of your friendship as you would give and been grateful for it. I don't make new friends easily. I want you, and you've just got to do it."

Stuart shook his head and firmly set his jaws. A grim temptation flashed through his imagination. If he should accept, it might be the one thing which would prevent Nan's betrayal of her love at the altar. Might he not by the power of his personality, the hypnotic force of his yearning passion and will, stop the ceremony? In the moment of deathlike silence which should follow the minister's words asking if there were any cause known why these two should not be made one, might not a single movement of his body at that moment, a groan of pain, a sob, a cry of agony in a supreme act of his will, cause the white figure to reel and fall at his feet? It was possible.

But it would be too cheap. It would be a worthless victory, a victory of the flesh without the spirit—and he refused to take the body without the soul.

With a frown he turned to Bivens:

"It's no use talking, Cal, I've made up my mind. I won't do it."

"Well, if you won't, you won't," the little man said with a sigh. "At least you'll come to the church. For God's sake let me get a glimpse of one friendly face. I'll be scared to death. You know I'm not used to this."

Stuart smiled:

"All right, I'll be there."

"And a seat, Jim, where I can see you. I want a friend near the door when I start, or I'll never make it—I'll drop on the way. You won't fail?"

"No. You can depend on me."

As Bivens closed the door the young lawyer threw himself back in his chair with a bitter laugh.

"What a farce our lives become sometimes. If we could all see behind the scenes would there be a single illusion left—I wonder?"

His memory rested with bitterness on the fact that he had feared to lift the curtain on Nan's character at one point in their final struggle over this marriage. He had fought with desperation to win and hold her heart, but he had fought fairly. There had always been a way—he might have won by the sacrifice of character. He had not offered to yield his ideal, accept her views, and change his life purpose. The act would have been dishonourable only to his own sense of right. He would have done exactly what Bivens asked. He had never questioned this decision to the day of her wedding. But when the fateful morning came he was stunned by the feeling of incredible despair which crept into his heart. The day was chill and damp. Dull, grayish, half-black clouds rolled over the city from the sea—clouds that hung low and wet over the cold pavements without breaking into rain.

He knew that Nan was as superstitious as the old black mammy of the South who had nursed her. Aunt Sallie had come to New York for the wedding of her "baby," and Stuart could hear her now crooning over the sayings of wedding days:

"Marry in May you'll rue the day; marry in Lent you'll live to repent——"

"Monday for wealth, Tuesday for health, Wednesday best of all; Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday no luck at all." It was Monday, and Nan must have known it when she fixed the day—but there was another important saying he recalled now:

"Happy is the bride the sun shines on——"

Perhaps these lowering clouds and the coming storm might cause her to hesitate and postpone the marriage. All morning he sat brooding by his window, watching the swaying branches of the trees in the Square—and though he knew at best that he was a fool—confidently expecting the miracle of a message. As the hour of noon approached, despair slowly settled over his heart.

How could he reconcile himself to the horrible reality? This woman and the dreams of her had become part of his very being. The memory of his hopes began to strangle him—the wonderful life they were to live together, whose pictured scenes stretched out now before him—of home, of love, of motherhood and fatherhood hallowed by adoration, the pain, the glory, the passion, the tenderness, the sanctity, the mystery of it all—and this the end. A marriage sordid, cold, vulgar to such a man—this little tobacco-stained, bead-eyed weasel.

And she had talked to him about her career. As if she didn't know that the career of any woman was immeasurably grander than that of any man—if she fulfil her destiny that links her to God in the creation of a child—a being whose simple word may mould a million wills and change the fate of centuries—and yet she had deliberately strangled her soul and chosen this little pig, who rooted in the dirt for gold, to be the father of her children.

He rose, breathing hard and brushed a tear from his eye—a tear that had come unbidden in spite of his iron will.

He wished he had not made the foolish promise to Bivens. He knew now that he had never really believed he would have to keep it. And yet the day had come and the hour had struck, and no miracle had been wrought.

He walked with leaden steps through Tenth Street to Broadway, stopped and gazed for a moment on the graceful spire of the church before whose altar Nan would soon stand and perjure herself for money. How could she! He had long felt that in every true man's religion was a supreme belief in himself—in a woman's, faith in some one else. He knew that she believed in him, not in the man to whom she was surrendering herself. And yet she wished to consummate this act of blasphemy—in the House of God before His high altar.

"Why? Why? Why?"

His heart fairly shrieked its cry of despair. He moved mechanically toward the church and waked from his reverie to find himself jammed in a solid mass of humanity. Never before had he realized the utter vulgarity of a public wedding. Why should any one wish a crowd of curious fools to witness even the happiest wedding? Its meaning is surely frank enough without shouting it from the housetops. Should not its joys and mystery be something too shy and sweet and holy for a vulgar crowd of strangers to gaze on? And stripped of the sanctity of love, this ceremony becomes merely a calling of a mob to witness the sale of a woman's body. There could be no illusions about the fact and it was hideous.

He forced his way into the side door and stood waiting the arrival of the bride and groom. When Bivens came, the sight of him roused the slumbering devil in Stuart. The excitement of his triumph had evidently steadied the little man's nerves. His yellow teeth were shining in a broad grin, and from his piercing eyes there flashed the conscious success of the adventurer. His fine clothes and well-groomed body gave him dignity. Never had his shrimp-like figure looked so slippery and plausible.

He extended his slender hand and touched Stuart's in passing. To save his life the lawyer could not repress a shudder. In that moment he could have committed murder with joy. The agony of defeat was on him.

He knew he could beat this man in every fair fight with his bare hands or with equal weapons. And yet there he was carrying off with a grin before his very eyes the woman he loved. He felt in that moment his kinship with all the rebels and disinherited of the earth.

At last the bride came and the surpliced choir moved slowly and solemnly down the aisles through a sea of eager faces as the great organ pealed forth the first bars of the wedding march from "Lohengrin."

Nan was leaning on the arm of a stranger he had never seen before—an uncle from the West. She was pale—deathly pale and walked with a hesitating movement as though weak from illness. Suddenly his heart went out to her in a flood of pity and tenderness. He tried to make her feel this, but she passed without a glance. She had not seen him. The procession moved slowly back to the altar, and a solemn hush fell on the throng.

Stuart listened to the ceremony with a vague impersonal interest, as if it were something going on in another world.

A single question was burning itself into his brain—the price of a woman!

"Have we all our price?" he asked, searching deep into his own soul. Something pathetic in the white face of the bride had touched the deepest sources of his being.

"Have I, too, my price, oh, boastful soul?" he cried. "Would I sell my honour for a million? No. For ten, fifty, a hundred millions? No—not in the market place, no—but would I sell by a compromise of principle in the secret conclave of my party—at a sale the world could never know—would I sell for the Presidency of the Republic? Or would I sell now to win this woman? Would I? Would I? If so, I should hold her blameless. Have all men and all women a price if we but name it? Answer! Answer!" And then from the depths of his being came the burning words:

"No. By God, I swear it. No!"

He looked up with a start, wondering vaguely if the crowd had heard this cry from something inside which he knew in that moment was bigger than the world without.

No, they were intent on the drama at the altar. The minister was saying:

"With this ring I thee wed——" he couldn't see, but he knew the ring was being placed on the third finger of the left hand—chosen by tradition because a vein of blood was supposed to run direct from that finger to the heart—what a solemn farce!

And now he was saying:

"What God hath joined together—let not man put asunder——"

"'God!' Surely he didn't say 'God,'" Stuart brooded. "Does God, the august, mysterious, awful creator of the universe, work like this? Did not the God of heaven and earth give this woman to him beneath the sunny skies of the South while their souls sang for joy?"

They were moving again down the aisle, the organ throbbing the recessional from Mendelssohn. A wave of emotion swept the crowd inside and they became a mob of vulgar, chattering, gossiping fools swarming over the church as if it were the grandstand of a racecourse, without hesitation tearing down and stealing its decorations for souvenirs.

When Stuart reached the door it was pouring rain. He was glad of it. The splash of the rain in his face was refreshing and the breath of the storm was good. He walked for an hour facing the wind, not knowing or caring where it might lead.

By a curious law of reaction, all resentment and anger were gone, and only a great pity for Nan began to fill his heart.



CHAPTER X

GROPING

Stuart reached home from his walk thoroughly tired and dropped into a feverish sleep. A strange dream haunted this attempt to rest. He found himself laughing and chatting with Bivens on terms of intimate friendship. All feeling of resentment against him had gone. The little man had grown to be a great figure and he was happy in remembering their boyhood associations. And strangest of all, they had united in a feeling of hatred for Nan. She was the common enemy of both, and not only so, she was the enemy of all men. As she passed through the street, crowds were hissing and insulting her, and as she was entering her home they tried to kill her. A stone struck her beautiful forehead, and the blood was trickling down the white drawn face. He was hurling himself against the mob in a vain effort to reach her side, and while the crowd laughed and mocked, an officer mounted the steps and, instead of driving the mob back, began to strike her furiously with his club.

Stuart waked with a cry—pressed his head and looked about the room, bewildered. The tip of a swinging limb was pounding against his window pane.

He opened the window quickly and broke the twig.

"What a nightmare!" he exclaimed, with a shiver.

For hours its horror haunted his imagination.

He dressed and started to his club for dinner, changed his mind and turned down Broadway for the old Cafe Boulevard on Second Avenue. He stopped again in front of the dingy Bible House at the head of the Bowery and watched the flood of shopgirls and clerks passing across the street from the department stores. What an endless throng! Hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, men and women, girls and boys, hurrying homeward. He had never noticed them before—this mighty host of three hundred thousand women and five hundred thousand men who rush into these swarming hives every morning and stream out again in the gathering dusk of spring and the deepening nights of winter.

For the first time they seemed human beings who might have hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, even as he.

How strange the world began to look through the new eyes of pity a great sorrow had given him. How worn the faces of these children. They must be horribly overworked. What a pitiful, starved life for a child. He thought of his own childhood, and saw himself with swift bare feet roaming the open fields of the South.

He was struck with the wistful faces of the very young girls—eager and wise beyond their years. What an incongruous thing this mingling of the tense eagerness of young girlhood in the straight open stare of worldly wisdom with which some of them looked at him, and, passing, turned to look again. It made him shiver. They ought to be at school, these children; why were they here, jostling, elbowing, and fighting their way through this crowd? A floor walker passed, holding a pretty girl's arm. His position was unmistakable. No other man strolls through the world with just his step and just his elevation of chin—a chin that will hold its angle in death. Among the hurrying throng that jostled by were men and women with the deep cut lines of sorrow and tragedy in faces that had seen better days, but had somehow lost their way.

Stuart's heart went out to the passing crowd in a throb of sympathy—these slaves of the Modern Invisible Master without a soul—who asked always and without comment for efficiency and economy. They must make money for him or fall by the wayside, and, if they fell, the master never knew and couldn't care.

He ate his dinner in a whirl of confused emotion and again found himself on Broadway walking at a furious pace uptown. He had no idea how furious the pace until he suddenly noticed that he was an object of mild curiosity. He slackened his speed, conscious at last that big forces were fighting within the first pitched battle for the mastery of life.

Could high ideals survive the white heat of this furnace—the focus of the modern world's fiercest desire to live and to will—the money centre of the earth? Was not the whole structure of Society at last thoroughly materialistic? Was not religion merely a tradition, honour and virtue merely the themes of song and story? Had not self and self-interest at last become the sole force behind all great deeds? It looked that way. Then why should any man be a sentimental fool? Why not grasp the main chance?

Why not turn now and beat Bivens at his own game? There was yet time to accept his offer, join his powerful group of the exploiters of modern industry, crush this little shrimp in the hollow of his fist at last, and take the woman he loved from him by the law of might. Deep within he felt throbbing forces of savage cruelty that in the centuries of the past had given his ancestors the leadership of men before the finer virtues of love and mercy which permitted a Bivens to exist had been born. The big nostrils of his long straight nose dilated, the white hard teeth of his strong jaw snapped, and his eyes flashed.

Why not?

Again and again these fierce questions surged within. The "Great White Way" flashed its splendours of electric light. But there was no warmth in it for his spirit. He noted to-night for the first time that the lights were not hung on high for the joy of those who pass. They were flames in the temple of the new god Mammon. They were the signs of hucksters who had goods to sell to the crowds at a profit. The profusion of light, the rush of eager throngs to the theatres, the flash and clatter of passing carriages, the streets piled with debris, the half-finished steel skyscraper whose black ribs stood out against the stars, all brought to his imagination this evening the impression of exhaustless power.

But what power?

Certainly not the power of love, pity, heroism, and unselfish devotion to ideals. There could be but one answer. These flaming signs in the sky were the signals of the advance skirmish line of a huge host—growing in number and power each hour—the army of Mammon!

He paused before a theatre into which a stream of pleasure seekers were pouring. The ticket speculators were yelling their wares on the sidewalk. The play was a famous musical comedy. He knew to-night why musical comedy had such vogue in the money centres of the world. It had become the supreme expression of the utterly absurd—the reduction of life to the terms of an absurdity expressed in rhythmic and sensuous beauty. For men whose god was money, it would doubtless become ultimately the only form of public entertainment.

He began to negotiate with one of the young Hebrew philanthropists of the pavement for a ticket, but stopped in disgust and moved on. There was something inside that hadn't surrendered. He began to be dimly conscious of the fact that the real fight had scarcely begun. The philanthropist's feelings were hurt by his abrupt departure. He followed for half a block holding to Stuart's coat, protesting his affectionate and earnest desire to promote his pleasure without a cent of profit. He offered to cut the price of a seat to $3.50 and solemnly swore that the unfeeling and unprincipled manager had made him pay $3.00 for the ticket.

Stuart paused a moment, his imagination caught by the ravenous eagerness of the man's face. Here surely was a true worshipper in the modern temple.

The young lawyer smiled and said:

"I salute you, my brother—I'm thinking of joining you soon!"

The speculator suddenly let go his sleeve and hurried back to his place, glancing over his shoulder with a vague fear that the lunatic might follow him.

Stuart hurried on to one of the more dignified and serious theatres just off Broadway. He bought a ticket and entered, wondering if he would find the house empty. To his surprise it was full—orchestra, balcony, and gallery. The play was a serious effort by a brilliant young dramatist of the modern school of realism. In two minutes from the rising of the curtain the play had gripped him with relentless power. Slowly, remorseless as fate, he saw the purpose of the author unfold itself in a series of tense and terrible scenes. The comedy over which the crowd laughed with such contagious merriment was even more sinister than the serious parts. No matter what the situation—whether set to laughter, to terror, or to tears—beneath it all throbbed one insistant question:

"Has the woman who sells herself for money a soul?"

With breathless interest he watched the cruel carving of her body into tiny pieces. Without sniffling, whining, or apology, with arms bared and gleaming scalpel firmly gripped in a hand that never quivered once, the author dissected her. Always he could hear this white invisible figure bending over each scene talking to the audience in his quiet terrible way:

"Well, if be she has a soul, we shall find it. Perhaps it's here!" The knife flashed and the crowd laughed. The result was so unexpected, yet so remarkable they had to laugh.

"We'll try again!" the white figure said with a smile, "Perhaps we should go deeper."

And then with firm strong hand the last secret of muscle and nerve and bone was laid bare and the white face looked into the eyes of the audience through a mist of tears.

"I'm sorry, my friends. But we must face the truth. It's better to know the truth, however bitter, than to believe a lie. I do not dogmatize. I do not draw conclusions. I merely show you the thing that is."

With a soft rush the big curtain came down in a silence that could be felt. The dazed crowd waked from the spell and poured into the aisles, while Stuart still sat gripping the arms of his seat with strangling emotion.

At last he said to himself with choking emphasis:

"He was cruel, inhuman, unjust—I refuse to believe it—she has a soul—— She has a soul!"

And yet a question had been raised in his mind that was destined to change the whole motive and purpose of his life.



CHAPTER XI

ILLUMINATION

Stuart left the theatre with the mysterious conviction stirring within him that only God could have directed his steps to that building. The more overwhelming the author's argument the fiercer became his rebellion and the higher rose this cry of his heart for a nobler faith in the possibilities of humanity. He began dimly to feel that the source of light and love might be very near if he but had eyes to see. As yet he was in the dark, but he felt in a dim way that he was groping toward the light and that suddenly his hand might touch the spring of a hidden door which would open and reveal the shining face of God! How strange that these old ideas of the religion of his childhood should come surging back into his heart from the past in just this moment when he was apparently fighting a losing battle to hold the last shred of his faith in anything human or divine!

He went to bed in a calmer frame of mind than he had known for days. His sleep was deep and refreshing and for the second time since he came to New York he woke with the dawn. He watched the light of the coming sun spread from the eastern horizon until its gray mantle covered the world. And then came the first dim notes of the call of the morning to the great city, and then the long dull roar along the line of battle where millions were rising and girding themselves for the struggle of life.

He drew a breath of gratitude for the dawn of a new day, God's miracle of love—the old weariness gone, the loneliness and heartache easier to bear because new thoughts and new hopes had begun dimly to stir and the world was suddenly flooded with the glory of a new sun.

He went to his office with his mind keyed to a higher pitch of power. He felt that he was on his mettle. The fight was not yet won, but this morning he was winning. He plunged into his work with tireless zeal. Everything he touched seemed illumined with a new light.

At the close of the day's work he was still conscious of an exhaustless pity which had found no adequate expression in his labour on his clients' cases. His mind wandered to the dark silent millions into whose world the doctor had led him that night—millions who have no voice in courts because they have no money to sustain a fight for the enforcement of justice. He had never thought about these people before. They were calling now for his help. Why? Because he had been endowed with powers of head and heart which they did not possess. The possession of these gifts carried a responsibility. He fell this very dimly as yet, but still he felt it. Never before had he been conscious of such an idea.

On reaching his club on Gramercy Park he saw that the Primrose house was closed. Nan's mother had gone with the bridal party on Bivens's big yacht for a cruise which would last through the summer. Somehow, for all his brave talk he didn't feel equal to the task of seeing that window of Nan's old home from his club. He was about to beat a retreat when he stopped abruptly and the lines of his mouth tightened.

"What's the use of being a coward? I've got to get used to it—I'd as well begin at once."

He deliberately took his seat on the little pillared balcony of the clubhouse and watched the darkened window through the gathering twilight. For the moment he gave up the fight—the devil had him by the throat. He let the tears come without protest. He was alone and the shadows were friendly.

He looked at his watch at last by the flickering light of the street lamp and found to his surprise that it was nine o'clock. He had forgotten to eat and felt no hunger. But he must do something. He might get drunk and make a night of it. He couldn't feel any worse. He was in hell anyway, and he had as well join the festivities for once.

He stepped inside, touched a bell and ordered a cocktail. He placed the glass on the little table by his side, and looked at it. What an asinine act, this pouring of poison into the stomach to cure a malady of the soul! He smiled cynically and suddenly recalled something the doctor was fond of repeating.

"My boy, I'm rich so long as there are millions of people in the world poorer than I am."

Perhaps there was an antidote better than this poison. If he could lift the curtain for a single moment in another life more hopeless and wretched than his? It was worth trying.

He rose, left the liquor untouched, and in a few minutes was treading his way through the throngs of the lower East Side. The pathetic figure of a sleeping boy curled up beside a doorstep caught his eye—he stopped and looked at him. Somewhere on this green earth a mother had bent over the cradle of each of these little wild arabs and taught them human speech at least! Now they were as the beasts of the field—and worse—for the fields in which beasts roam at least are free. A great wave of pity swept his heart and the hurt of his own tragedy began to ease before the greater pain of the world. How happy his fate after all—a sound mind in a sound body, youth, strength, power, friends, culture, the inheritance of proud, untainted blood—what a fool he had been an hour ago!

His eye caught the light streaming from a basement saloon on the corner. Crowds of ugly looking wretches were hurrying down the rickety stairs, and the sound of wheezy dance-hall music floated up from below. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and entered.

The ceiling was low, and a crowd of more than fifty half-drunken men and women, smoking and drinking stale beer, sat at the little tables which were placed against the walls. The centre of the room was kept clear for the dancers. He was amazed to find among them a lot of boys and girls not out of their teens. Many of the dark-visaged brutes who sat at the tables watching the dancers were beyond a doubt professional thieves and crooks.

Here and there he saw one of them nod to a girl who was dancing with a boy under age. He knew the meaning of that signal. She was his slave and he lived on her wages. Was there no crime in all the catalogue of human infamy to which man would not stoop for money!

The wheezy little orchestra of three pieces began a waltz, and the dancers swung around the tobacco-fogged room. Stuart rose in disgust to go, when he stopped near the door suddenly frozen to the spot. A fat beastly Negro swept by encircling the frail figure of a while girl. Her dress was ragged and filthy, but the delicate lines of her face, with its pure Grecian profile, and high forehead bore the stamp of breeding and distinction. Two red spots on her cheeks and the unnatural brightness of her big blue eyes told only too plainly that Death had marked her as his own.

To the young Southerner the sight was one of incredible horror. His first impulse on recovery from this surprise was to rush in, knock this Negro down and take the girl to a place of safety.

He looked about among all the men who filled the room, for a single face in which was left a trace of human pride. With one to stand by him, it could be done. He looked in vain. To strike alone in such a den of beasts would be the act of a madman.

Quivering with rage he took a seat and watched the Negro send this girl from side to side of the room to do his bidding. He made up his mind to track the brute to his lair and tear her from his claws, no matter what the cost. The Negro suddenly beckoned to the girl and she left with him.

Stuart followed close on their heels. Two blocks from the place the black figure stopped and demanded her money. She fumbled nervously in the folds of her filthy skirt and drew from her pocket some small coins. He turned it over in his greasy palm with a sneer.

"All right fur ez hit goes, but come over wid de res'."

"It's all I've got—I swear it is," she sobbed.

He glared at her with a savage growl.

"You're a liar!"

"It's true—I swear it's true!" the trembling voice pleaded.

"Didn't I tell ye las' night I'd kill ye if ye didn't do better to-day?"

"Please, don't beat me again—I've done the best I could——"

Strangling and trembling with rage Stuart edged his way close, keeping his form out of range of the Negro's eyes. The brute was looking neither to the right or left now, his whole being absorbed in the cruel joy of the torture he was about to inflict on the helpless, cringing thing that clung to his arm sobbing and begging for mercy.

"Den ef you'se done de bes' you could—I'se gwine ter teach ye ter do better!" His yellow teeth in their blue gums flashed in a devilish smile. He gripped the slender little wrists in one of his claws and doubled his fist to strike, as a blow from Stuart caught him in the neck and laid him on the pavement. The young lawyer sprang on the prostrate figure with fury. It was the joyous work of a minute to beat and choke him into insensibility. He rose and gave the black form a parting kick that rolled him into the gutter, turned to the crouching white figure and said sharply:

"Come with me."

Without a word she followed timidly behind.

He stopped and spoke tenderly:

"Don't walk behind me."

"I'm not fit to walk beside you," she answered meekly.

"I'll be the judge of that. You're a woman. My mother was a woman. And I'm a little bit ashamed of myself to-night for living in such a world as this without having killed somebody."

She hung her head and tried to walk by his side, instinctively shrinking back.

He stopped to ask an officer the way to the Crittenden Mission. Somewhere he had read that a merchant by the name of Crittenden whose heart was broken over the death of a little girl had given all he possessed to found and endow missions for saving other men's daughters.

The girl heard his question and looked up into his face with a new terror in her feverish eyes.

"Won't they lock me up?"

Stuart took the cold thin hand in his.

"Not unless they lock me up too, child. Don't worry. I'm a lawyer. I'll see that no harm comes to you."

"All right. I'll do just as you say," she responded gratefully.

When the matron at the Mission had soothed away the poor creature's last fear, Stuart turned to go.

The girl stepped quickly forward as he extended his hand.

"Good-bye, child, I hope you'll soon be better. If I can help you, let me know. I'm glad to have had the chance to be of service to you to-night. You have done more for me than I have for you. I am very grateful."

The unnaturally bright eyes gazed into his as if they didn't quite understand, and then through the tears she slowly said:

"You have saved me from hell. I'm afraid I haven't long to live. I'll only ask God that it shall be long enough for me to show you how grateful I am."

Stuart walked home with a sense of spiritual elation he had never felt before. For the first time he had given himself utterly without the hope of reward. A new joy filled his heart with a warm glow. Life began to take a deep, new meaning. The boundaries of the world had been extended to include millions whose existence he had ignored. How vast and thrilling their life! As yet, no new purpose had shaped itself within, but his soul was stirring with vague, mighty impulses.

When he reached the house on Washington Square it was yet early in the evening. He longed for the sweet restfulness which Harriet's presence always brought. He had often come home from a visit to Nan, which had been a continuous torture, to find in her a grateful peace. How strange that we so often love those who have the supreme faculty of torturing instead of making us happy. He found Harriet reading in the library.

"Oh, Jim, dear, where on earth have you been for nearly two days?" she cried. "I haven't seen you since the wedding——"

"Won't you sing for me?" he broke in.

A smile of pride made her face radiant.

"You want to hear me this late?"

"Yes—you'll not disturb anybody."

"All right——" she paused and suddenly clapped her hands. "I'll get my mandolin. You've never heard me play that, have you? I've learned 'Way down on the Swannee Ribber' on it. I know you'll like it."

She ran up the stairs and returned in a moment with the mandolin. Softly touching a note, she seated herself and began to sing, accompanying her song with the little half-doubtful touch on the plaintive strings.

Stuart listened, entranced. He had heard that old song of the South a hundred times. But she was singing it to-night with a strange new power. Or was it his imagination? He listened with keen and more critical ears. No. It was not his imagination. The change was in her voice. He heard with increasing wonder. The quivering notes of tenderness sought his inmost being and stirred the deepest emotion—not with memories of his boyhood days in the South whose glory the song was telling—but in visions of the future, thoughts of great deeds to be done and heroic sacrifice to be endured.

How selfish his life had been after all. Every dream and struggle had been for himself. A feeling of shame overspread his soul as he watched the girl's soft little hand touch the strings, and he contrasted his own life with the sweetness of her spirit. In all the years he had known her he could not recall a single mean or selfish act. Her face was not beautiful by the standard of artists, but the sunlight lingered in her eyes, her hands were cunning, and her feet swift to serve those she loved. For the last two years as she had blossomed into maidenhood, a subtle fragrance had enveloped her being, making significant and charming all she said or did, revealing new beauty and grace at every turn.

From some shadowy memory of a Sunday's service in his boyhood came floating into his heart the words "He that seeketh to save his life shall lose it."

The groping hand that had been fumbling in the dark suddenly touched the hidden spring, and the darkened soul was flooded with light. A strange peace entered to abide forever. A man had been born again—of the spirit, not the flesh.

The rapt look still held his face when the music had ceased, and Harriet watched his expression for a moment in silence.

The girl leaned forward at last with eager interest and laid her friendly hand on his. She had a trick of leaning forward like that when talking to him that had always amused Stuart.

He watched the flashes of light in her eyes beneath their long lashes and the quiver of the mobile mouth.

"Tell me what you are thinking about, Jim?" she said, a smile flitting around her tender, expressive eyes.

Stuart noticed two dainty dimples come with the smile in the faintest suggestion of coquetry.

"I was seeing a vision, little pal," he began slowly—"the vision of a gala night of Grand opera. Broadway blazed with light and I was fighting my way through the throng at the entrance to hear a great singer whose voice had begun to thrill the world. At last amid a hush of intense silence, she came before the footlights, saw and conquered. The crowd went mad with enthusiasm. For once an American audience forgot its cold self-possession. Men leaped on their seats, cheered and shouted as Frenchmen or Italians. Women in resplendent gowns and jewels rose in their boxes and split their gloves clapping their hands. And through it all the singer stood bowing in simple dignity, looking over the sea of faces as if in search of one she knew. I lifted my hat and waved it on high until she saw. A beautiful smile lighted her face and straight over the heads of the people she blew me a kiss——"



The tiniest frown clouded the girl's brow.

"Who was she, Jim?"

"One who shall yet sing before Kings and Princes—I call her 'Sunshine'—her name is Harriet Woodman."

With a sigh of relief she threw herself back in the big armchair in a pose of natural grace, her lips twitched, the golden head tipped to one side thoughtfully, and he waited for her to speak.

"But, Jim, suppose I'm not ambitious? Suppose I'm just a silly little home body who only wishes to be loved?"

"And so you will be loved. They will come in troops—these lovers—serious and gay, and fall at your feet——"

"But if I only want one—and he is not there—they will tire me, won't they?"

"When I see those two dimples come into your cheeks now and then I think you will enjoy it."

"Perhaps I would."

The head nodded in quick friendly understanding. She raised her arms and touched the bow of ribbon on her luxuriant hair with another suggestion of coquetry, quickly lowered them, drew the short skirt down further over her knees, gazed thoughtfully at Stuart, and with a quizzical look in her eyes asked:

"How old do you think a girl must be to really and deeply and truly love, Jim?"

Stuart's brow contracted and he took her hand in his, stroked it tenderly and studied the beautiful lines as they melted from the firmly shaped wrist into the rounded arm and gracefully moulded body.

"I'm afraid you've asked a bigger question than I can answer, dear," he said, with serious accent. "I've been wondering lately whether the world hasn't lost the secret of happy mating and marrying. A more beautiful even life I have never seen than the one in the home of my childhood. Yet my mother was only fourteen and my father twenty-one when they were married. You see, dear, that was in the old days when boys and girls were not afraid—when love dared to laugh at cares about houses and lands and goods and chattels, when Nature claimed her own, when the voices of the deepest impulses of our bodies and souls were heard first and the chatterings about careers and social triumphs were left to settle themselves. Now folks only allow themselves to marry in cold blood, calculating with accuracy their bank accounts. My mother had been married six months at your age, and yet here I sit on a pedestal and have the impudence to talk to you as a child——"

"But you're not impudent, Jim," she broke in eagerly, "and I understand."

Her eyes were looking steadily into his.

"I'm beginning to wonder," Stuart continued, "whether Nature made a mistake when she made woman as she is. I once knew a girl of fifteen to whom I believe life was the deepest tragedy or the highest joy of which her heart will ever be capable. Else why did the blood come and go so quickly in her cheeks?"

A sudden flush mantled Harriet's face and she turned away that he might not see.

"Why did she fuel the loud beating of her heart at the approach of the man she imagined to be her hero? Why did she drop her eyes in confusion——"

The deep brown eyes were looking into his now with a steady light. She had mastered herself and he could not guess her secret. Her heart beat so loudly she wondered if he could hear.

Stuart's voice had grown dreamy, as if a thousand tender memories were trooping into his heart from the past and he was talking to himself.

"Why were her hands so moist and warm to the touch of the boy who held them, and why did they tremble so violently? Why did she turn so pale?—so pale and so suddenly, he thought she was about to faint? When again in life can one see this moment of the blossoming of both soul and body—this quivering readiness for the touch of the lover for whose coming she waits with such frank and honest eagerness?"

Again the little figure bent forward with breathless interest as she slowly asked:

"Oh, Jim, when did you see this?"

Stuart's head bent low and rested between his hands.

"I loved such a little girl once, dear——"

Harriet's face suddenly flushed with joy. It was too wonderful to be true, but it was true! And he had chosen this curious way to tell her. Her voice sank to the softest whisper as she bent closer:

"And you love her still, Jim?"

His head drooped lower as he sighed:

"I loved and lost her, little pal! She was married two days ago. God called me in the morning of life to claim my own. But I wasn't bold enough. I waited, and worldly wisdom, prudence, and common sense became her tutors to make her wise. She came to the great city, learned its ways and sold herself for gold. A priest of God standing before his altar confirmed the sale while a crowd of fools looked on in awe——"

The colour had slowly returned to the little freckled face with its crown of golden hair, and the deep brown eyes overflowed with tears for just a moment. She brushed them away before he raised his head, so that he never knew.

She put her hand on his head and stroked the dark hair tenderly.

"I'm so sorry, Jim," she said simply, "I understand now."

He raised his head and took her hand in his again.

"It's very sweet to have you share this ugly secret of my life, little pal. It will help me."

"And you are sorry you ever knew her, Jim?"

"No, I'm not sorry. You see, dearie, there's just one thing even God can't do—create a human character. He can only give us a will—the spark from his own soul. We must do the rest. I've grown to see that there's just one thing in the world that's really big—big as God is big—the man who has attained a character. I haven't lived at all yet. I'm just beginning to see what it means to live. Until now I've thought only of myself. A new light has illumined the way. Now—I'm going to live for others. From to-day I shall ask nothing for myself, and I can never be disappointed again."

Harriet looked up quickly.

"Would it please you, Jim, if I should make a great singer?"

"More than I can tell you, dear. Your voice is a divine gift. I envy you its power."

Her eyes were shining with a great purpose.

"I know that it means years and years of patient work—but I'll do it," she cried.

Stuart rose and pressed her hand to his lips. She wondered if he could feel it tremble beneath the pounding of her heart.

When the last echo of his footstep in the hall above died away and his door had closed, the little golden head bowed low in a passionate tender prayer:

"God help me to keep my secret and yet to love and help him always!"



Book 2—The Root



CHAPTER I

AN OLD PERFUME

Stuart sat in his office holding a letter from Nan which was hard to answer.

For nine years he had refused to see or speak to her. He met Bivens as a matter of course, but always down town during business hours or at one of his clubs. For the first year Nan had resented his attitude in angry pride and remained silent. And then she began to do a curious thing which had grown to be a part of his inmost life. For the past eight years she had written a brief daily diary recording her doings, thoughts and memories which she mailed to him every Sunday night. She asked no reply and he gave none. No names appeared in its story and no name was signed to the dainty sheets of paper which always bore the perfume of wild strawberries.

But the man who read them in silence knew and understood.

The letter he held to-day was not an unsigned sheet of her diary—it was a direct, personal appeal—tender and beautiful in its sincerity. She begged him to forget the past, because she needed his friendship and advice, and asked that he come to see her at once.

This letter was his first temptation to break the resolution by which he had lived for years. He rose and paced the room with fury, as he began to realize how desperate was his desire to go.

"Have I fought all these years for nothing?" he cried.

The thing that drew him with all but resistless power was the deeper meaning between the lines. He knew that each day the incompleteness of her life had been borne in upon her with crushing force. He knew that the mad impulses which had expressed themselves in luxury, dress, extravagance, balls and bizarre entertainments were but the strangled cries of a sorrowing heart. And he knew that the fatuity of it all had begun at last to terrify her. The more desperately he fought the impulse to go the keener became his desire to see her again. And yet he must not. He felt, by an instinct deeper than reason, that the day he returned from his exile and touched her hand would mark the beginning of a tragedy for both.

And yet the desire to go clamoured with increasing madness. The changes that had come into his life counted for nothing—to-day only a great passion remained—torturing, challenging, tempting. Could he never live it down? He looked about his office, reminded himself of his dignity and responsibility, and sought refuge in his sense of duty to the people.

"I've done some things worth while!" he cried, with brooding pride.

And the record confirmed his boast.

In the past nine years he had thrown his life away only to find it in greater power. He recalled it now with a renewed sense of gratitude.

The first year which he had given of unselfish devotion to the service of the people had been a failure. He saw at the end of it that in reaching an individual here and there he was merely trying to bale out the ocean with a soup ladle. He saw that if he would serve the people he must work through them. He must appeal to the masses, teach, lead, uplift and inspire them to action. And he entered politics. Only organic social action could get anywhere or accomplish anything worth while. He joined the organization of the local Democracy in his district and went to work.

It happened that he joined just before an exciting municipal election. He threw himself into the campaign with the zeal of a crusader. The people who crowded to hear him were not merely thrilled by the eloquence of his impassioned speeches—they felt instinctively that the heart of a real man was beating back of every word.

His advancement was remarkable. At the end of four years he was nominated for District Attorney, and was swept into office by a large majority.

Under his vigorous administration of this important and powerful office the enforcement of justice ceased to be a joke and became a living faith.

His work had stirred the State to a nobler and cleaner civic life. During the past year he had become one of the foremost figures in American Democracy—the best loved and the most hated and feared man in public life in New York.

He remained alike indifferent to the cheers of his friends or the threats of his enemies. He was the most powerful man who had ever held such an office because he had no ambition beyond the highest service he could render the people. He asked no favours—he sought no preferment.

To the men who secured his nomination and election he was an insolvable mystery. He said he wanted nothing. They had taken that as a wise saying of a very shrewd man. When he accepted the nomination, they smiled knowingly. But when they demanded that he use his high office to punish enemies and reward friends—and he politely refused—they served notice on him of political death unless he yielded within a given number of hours.

His answer was a laugh as he opened the door and pointed the way by which the astonished delegation might find a safe and swift way of exit. They passed out in speechless astonishment, and sent their big chief to browbeat and bully the young upstart into submission. The incredible swiftness with which he returned left the question open as to how he got out of the District Attorney's office. He claimed to have bowed himself politely out the door—but, from the condition of his clothes and the rumpled state of his hair, his comrades cherished the secret but sure conviction that he was kicked down the stairs. Be that as it may, from that day Stuart was left to his own devices by the professional politicians, who were loud in their accusations of treachery and ingratitude. His political education was given up as hopeless.

Yet in spite of their gloomy predictions of his speedy ruin, he had steadily grown in power and influence.

The work on which he had just entered was an investigation before an unusually intelligent Grand Jury of the criminal acts of a group of the most daring and powerful financiers of the world. These men controlled through their position as trustees of the treasuries of great corporations more millions than the combined treasuries of the governments of the Republic—State and National. The act was not only daring, it was extremely dangerous. Under certain conditions it might produce a panic—so daring and dangerous was the move that its first announcement was received as a joke by the press. The idea of a young upstart questioning the honesty and position of the men who controlled the treasuries of the great insurance and trust companies was ridiculous. When he realized the magnitude of the task he had undertaken, he at once put his house in order for the supreme effort. It was necessary that he give up every outside interest that might distract his attention from the greater task.

The one matter of grave importance to which he was giving his time outside his office was his position as advisory counsel to Dr. Woodman in his suit for damages against the Chemical Trust, which had been dragging its course through the courts for years. To his amazement he had just received an offer from Bivens's attorneys to compromise this suit for a hundred thousand dollars. He would of course advise the doctor to accept it immediately. He had never believed he could win a penny.

What could be Bivens's motive in making such an offer? It was impossible that the shrewd little president of the American Chemical Company had anything to fear personally from this attack. His fortune was vast and beyond question. His wealth had grown in the past nine years like magic. Everything his smooth little hand touched had turned to gold. Wherever an industry could pay a dividend, his ferret eyes found it. The process was always the same. He brought together its rival houses, capitalized the new combine for ten times its actual value and bound the burden of this enormous fictitious value as an interest-bearing debt on the backs of the consumers of the goods. The people and their children and their children's children would have to pay it.

His fortune now could not be less than forty millions and the issue of such a suit as the one Woodman had brought and on which he had spent so much of his time and money was to Bivens a mere bagatelle.

The more Stuart pondered over this extraordinary offer, the more completely he was puzzled. He sought for outside influences that might move him to such an act. It might be Nan—it must be! Her letter surely made the explanation reasonable. She knew this suit was an obstacle in the way of their meeting. If she had made up her mind to remove that obstacle, she would do it. Her will had grown in imperious power with each indulgence.

During the past winter she had become the sensation of the metropolis. Her wealth, her beauty, her palaces, and her entertainments had made her the subject of endless comment. She had set a pace for extravagance which made the old leaders stand aghast. And the one thing which made her letter well nigh resistless was that he alone of all the world knew the inner life of this beautiful woman whose name was on a thousand lips. Her worldly wise mother might have guessed it but she had been dead for the past five years, and the secret was his alone.

He read her letter over again and looked thoughtfully at the pile of legal documents in the case of Woodman against the American Chemical Company lying on his desk.

"It's her work beyond a doubt!" he said at last, "and the doctor will never believe it."

He was waiting the arrival of his old friend for a conference over Bivens's offer of compromise and he dreaded the ordeal. If he should refuse this final chance of settlement he would make a mistake that could not be undone. The result was even worse than he could possibly foresee.

"So the little weasel has offered to compromise my suit for half the sum we named, eh?" the doctor asked in triumph.

"I assure you that if the case comes to its final test you are certain to lose."

"So you have said again and again, my boy"—was the good-natured reply, "but his sudden terror and this offer shows that we have won already and he knows it. Greater thieves, who have ruined their competitors in the same way, are urging him to settle this suit and prevent others from being brought."

"I don't think so."

"It's as plain as daylight."

"There's another motive."

"Nonsense," persisted the doctor, his whole being aglow with enthusiasm, "Bivens has seen the hand-writing on the wall. When the American people are once aroused their wrath will sweep the Trusts into the bottomless pit."

"Bivens isn't worrying about the people or their wrath."

"Then it's time he began!" the doctor cried. "Mark my word, the day of the common people has dawned. This mudsill of the world has learned to read and write and begun to think. He has tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and begins dimly to see his own nakedness. He will never be content again until he turns the world upside down. My country will lead the way as in the past."

"But if in the meantime you and yours go down in ruin?"

"I refuse to consider it. The cause of the people and their day has come. I will stand or fall with them. Remember, my boy, that at last the idea has been born that we are all—men! It's new—it's revolutionary. A few centuries ago the people slept in ignorance. Of the twenty-six barons who signed the Magna Charta only three could write their names—the rest could only make their mark. The average workingman of to-day is more cultured than the titled nobleman of yesterday—the people once thoroughly aroused—let fools find shelter!"

"But you and I have both agreed, Doctor," Stuart interrupted with a frown, "that Mr. Jno. C. Calhoun Bivens is not a fool. You must consider this offer. You have too much at stake. Your factory has been closed for five years. Your store has been sold—your business ruined and you are fighting to pay the interest on your debts. I've seen you growing poorer daily until you have turned your home into a lodging house and filled it with strangers."

"I've enjoyed knowing them. My sympathies have been made larger."

"Yes, you won't even collect your rents."

"Still I've always managed to get along," was the cheerful answer. "I've yet a roof over my head."

"But is this battle yours alone, Doctor? You are but one among millions. You are trying to bear the burden of all—have you counted the cost? Harriet's course in music will continue two years longer—the last year she must spend abroad. Her expenses will be great. This settlement is a generous one, no matter what Bivens's motive."

"I can't compromise with a man who has crushed my business by a conspiracy of organized blackmail."

"Oh, come, come, Doctor, talk common sense. The American Chemical Company has simply dispensed with the services of the jobber, and the retailer. They manufacture the goods and sell them direct to the consumer through their own stores. The day of the jobber and retailer is done. They had to go. You were not ruined by blackmail, you were crushed by a law of progress as resistless as the law of gravity."

The doctor's gray eyes flashed with sudden inspiration.

"If the law of gravity is unjust it will be abolished. If civilization is unjust it must be put down. There can be no contradiction in life when once we know the truth. I can't compromise with Bivens—I refuse his generosity. I'll take only what the last tribunal of the people shall give me—justice."

"The last tribunal of the people will give you nothing," the lawyer said, emphatically.

"I'll stand or fall with it. I make common cause with the people. I know that Bivens is a power now. He chooses judges, defies the law, bribes legislatures and city councils and imagines that he rules the nation. But the Napoleons of finance to-day will be wearing stripes in Sing Sing to-morrow. We are merely passing through a period of transition which brings suffering and confusion. The end is sure, because evil carries within itself the seed of death. A despotism of money cannot be fastened on the people of America."

"But, Doctor," Stuart interrupted persuasively, "he is not trying to fasten a despotism on America, on you, or anybody else in this offer."

The older man ignored the interruption and continued with a dreamy look:

"Only a few years ago a great millionaire who lived in a palace on Fifth Avenue boldly said to a newspaper reporter: 'The public be d——d!' Times have changed. The millionaires have begun to buy the newspapers and beg for public favour. We are walking on the crust of a volcano of public wrath."

"But how long must we wait for this volcanic outburst of public wrath?"

"It's of no importance. The big thing is that in America a new force has appeared in the world, the common consciousness of a passion for justice in the hearts of millions of enlightened freemen clothed with power! Never before has manhood had this supreme opportunity. Under its influence this insane passion for gold must slowly but surely be transformed into a desire for real wealth of mind and soul. The evils of our time are not so great as those of our fathers. We merely feel them more keenly. The trouble is our faith grows dim in these moments of stress. As for me I lift up my head and believe in my fellow-man. We are just entering a new and wonderful era—the era of electricity and mystery, of struggle, aspiration, the passion for the eternal. I am content to live and fight for the right, win or lose, and play my little part in this mighty drama!"

"I had hoped you were tired of fighting a losing battle."

"Tired of fighting a losing battle? You've forgotten, perhaps, that I'm a veteran of the civil war. You know we were defeated year after year, battle after battle, until it looked as if Lee was invincible. And then a silent dark man with a big black cigar in his thoughtful mouth came slowly out of the West and we commenced to move forward under his leadership inch by inch. It was slow, and the dead lay ever in piles around us—but still we moved—always forward, never backward. And when at last the men saw it, they began to laugh at Death. Their eyes had seen the first flash of the coming glory of the Lord!"

The doctor paused a moment and looked at Stuart with a curious expression of pity shining through his gray eyes.

"What a wonderful old world this is, if we only lift up our heads and see it. Across its fields and valleys armies have marched and counter-marched for four thousand years, a world of tears and blood, of tyranny and oppression, of envy and hate, of passion and sin—and yet it has always been growing better, brighter and more beautiful. Wooden shoes have always been ringing on stairs of gold as men from the depths have climbed higher and higher. I'll fight this battle to a finish and I'll win. If God lives I'll win—I'm so sure of it, my boy."

The doctor paused and his eyes flashed.

"I'm so sure of it, that I'm not only going to refuse this bribe from Bivens, but my answer will be a harder blow. I'm going to begin another bigger and more important suit for the dissolution of the American Chemical Trust."

"You can't mean this!"

"I do!" was the firm response.

Stuart slipped his arm around the older man with a movement of instinctive tenderness.

"Look here, Doctor, I've lived in your home for fourteen years and I've grown to love you as my own father."

"I know, my boy."

"You must listen to me now!" the younger man insisted with deep emotion. "I can give no time to your suit. I am just entering on a great struggle for the people. Tremendous issues are at stake."

"And your own career hangs on the outcome, too?" the doctor interrupted.

"Yes."

"You'll go down a wreck if you fail."

"Perhaps."

"And you're going to risk all without a moment's hesitation?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It's my duty."

"Good boy!" the older man cried, seizing Stuart's hand. "You can't fail. That's why I'm going to risk all in my fight."

"But the cases are not the same."

"No, I'm old and played out—my life's sands are nearly run, I haven't much to risk—but such as I have I offer it freely to God and my country. I envy you the opportunity to make a greater sacrifice—and you advise me to compromise for a paltry sum of money a righteous cause merely to save my own skin while you tell me in the same breath that you are just entering the lists against the one unconquerable group of financial buccaneers in America and that you've set your life on the issue."

The doctor seized Stuart's hand, wrung it and laughed.

"Congratulations, my boy—I'm proud of you—proud that you live in my house, proud that I've known and loved you, and tried to teach you the joy and the foolishness of throwing your life away!"

With a wave of his hand the stalwart figure of the old man passed out and left him brooding in sorrowful silence.

"If the doctor and Harriet were only out of this!" he exclaimed. "It makes me sick to think of the future!"

He picked up Nan's unanswered letter and read it again and the faint perfume of the delicate paper stole into his heart with a thousand aching memories.

He seized his pen at last, set his face like flint and resolutely wrote his answer:

Dear Nan:

Your letter is very kind. I'll be honest and tell you that it has stirred memories I've tried to kill and can't. I hate to say no, but I must.

Sincerely,

JIM.

As he drew down the door of the letter box on the corner to post this reply he paused a moment. A wave of desperate longing swept his heart.

"My God! I must see her!" he cried in anguish.

And then the strong square jaw came together and the struggle was over. He dropped the letter in the box, turned and walked slowly home.



CHAPTER II

AN INTRUDER

On the night following Stuart worked late in his office, developing his great case. He was disappointed in the final showing of the evidence to be presented to the Grand Jury. His facts were not as strong as he expected to make them.

At ten o'clock he quit work and hurried home to refresh his tired spirit with Harriet's music. He could think more clearly while she played for him.

As he hurried up the steps he suddenly collided with a handsome young fellow just emerging from the door.

His first hope was that he had crippled a lodger. He hated the sight and sound of them. He had always felt their presence in the house an unpardonable intrusion. A second look showed him that the youngster who had hurried down the steps with profound apologies and much embarrassment was not a lodger. He was dressed too handsomely and he had evidently been calling on some one.

Perhaps on Harriet!

A sudden fear gripped his heart. He felt like following him to the corner and demanding his reasons for such impudence.

Where had he seen that boy's face?

Somewhere, beyond a doubt. But he couldn't place him.

He let himself in softly and started at the sight of Harriet's smiling face framed in the parlor doorway. His worst fears were confirmed. She was dressed in a dainty evening gown and had evidently enjoyed her visitor.

Stuart pretended not to notice the fact and asked her to play.

He fell lazily into an arm chair while the deft fingers swept the keys. As he sat dreaming and watching the rhythmic movement of her delicate hands, he began to realize at last that his little pal, stub-nosed, red haired and freckled, had silently and mysteriously grown into a charming woman. He wondered what had become of the stub-nose? It seemed to have stretched out into perfect proportions. The freckles had faded into a delicate white skin of creamy velvet. And what once threatened to be a violent red head had softened into beaten gold.

But the most charming feature of all was the deep spiritual tenderness of her eyes, blue sometimes, gray and blue sometimes, but always with little brown spots in them which Nature seemed to have dropped by accident the day she painted them. Stuart always imagined she had picked up a brown brush by mistake. He thought with a sudden pang of the possibility of losing her. She was twenty-three now, in the pride and glory of perfect young womanhood, and yet she had no lovers. He wondered why? Her music of course. It had been the one absorbing passion of life. Her progress had been slow for the first years, while at college. But during the past two years of training every lesson seemed to tell. He had watched her development with pride and brooding tenderness. And her eyes had always sparkled with deep joy at his slightest word of praise. For the first time it had occurred to him as an immediate possibility that she might marry and their lives drift apart.

He resented the thought with unreasonable anger. Of course she must marry. And he would have to give her up.

He began to realize dimly how much he owed to her of peace and happiness during the past nine lonely years. A sweet comradeship had grown between them deeper and more tender than the tie which binds a brother and sister, and he had taken it as a matter of course. He resented the idea of a break in their relations. Yet why should he? What rights had he over her life? Absolutely none, of course. He wondered vaguely if she were sly enough to have a sweetheart and let nobody know? Who was that fellow? Where had he met him before?

He rose with a sudden frown. Sure as fate—the very boy—the tall, dreamy-looking youngster who danced with her so many times that night ten years ago at her birthday party! She said he was too frail—that her prince must be strong. Well, confound him, he had gotten strong. That's why he had failed to place him at first. He made up his mind to put a stop to it. He was her guardian anyway. Her father was so absorbed in saving the world, any thief could slip in and steal his daughter under his very nose. The fellow who took Harriet would have to measure up to the full stature of a man. He made up his mind to that.

He walked over to the piano and stood behind her a moment.

When the last note died softly away and she began turning the pages of a pile of music sheets without looking up, Stuart said, with a studied indifference:

"Tell me, little pal, who was that tall young fellow I ran into on the steps?"

"Why, don't you remember my frail young admirer of long ago?"

"Do you love him, girlie?"

Stuart bent low and looked searchingly into her eyes.

Her fingers slipped lazily over the keys in little touches of half-forgotten songs.

"When I was very, very young, I thought I did. It makes me laugh now. It's wonderful how much we can outgrow, isn't it?"

"I'm glad you've outgrown this."

"Why? He's an awfully nice fellow."

"Perhaps—but I don't like him."

"What's the matter with him?"

"I just don't like him and I don't want you to like him."

"Oh!"

"You see, little pal, I'm your guardian."

"Are you?"

"Yes, and I'm giving you due legal notice that you have no right to marry without my consent—you promise to make me your confidant?"

A soft laugh full of tenderness and joy came from the girl as she turned her eyes upward for the first time:

"All right, guardie, I'll confer with you on that occasion."



CHAPTER III

A STRAIGHT TIP

Nan received the announcement of Bivens's failure to settle Woodman's suit with a grim resolution to win now, at all hazards. The sensational reports of Stuart's action against the big financiers had given her quick mind the cue to a new line of stratagem. She began cautiously.

"You are not going to give up a thing I've set my heart on merely because old Woodman's a fool, are you?" she asked her husband, with a touch of scorn. "Jim Stuart is the best friend you ever had. He has become one of the most famous men in America. He would lend distinction to our house. I want him at our next entertainment."

"The thing that puzzles me," Bivens broke in, "is why the devil he will not come to the house. When I meet him down town he's always friendly."

Nan's lips quivered with a queer little smile.

"Will he succeed in this action against these men?"

"No."

"Why?"

"He can't get the facts."

"If he could get them and did succeed, what would happen?"

"He'd shake the foundations of the financial world."

"You could get the facts, couldn't you, dear?"

Nan spoke in the softest tones.

"I have them already."

"Why not give them to him?"

"I had thought of that—but it's dangerous."

"Why dangerous?"

"It might bring on a panic."

"What have you to lose by it?"

"Nothing, if I'm wise."

"I've never known anybody to call you a fool."

"A panic's a dangerous thing to monkey with."

"Nonsense!" Nan cried with enthusiasm. "I'll back you to win when the test comes."

Bivens smiled with pride.

"Yes. I could win, I think, having a little inside information about what may happen."

"Why don't you do it, then?"

"It's dangerous," Bivens repeated, thoughtfully.

"It couldn't injure Stuart?" his wife asked cautiously.

"No. It couldn't hurt him. On the other hand, I might make him the unconscious instrument of a great personal vengeance, double my fortune and possibly land Jim in the White House."

"You must do it, dear!" his wife cried, trembling with suppressed excitement. Bivens hesitated and shook his head.

"It's playing with dynamite."

"It's worth the risk to double your fortune—do it for my sake!"

Nan leaned close and pressed her husband's hand while her dark eyes found their way into his heart. The hard mouth smiled as he took her flushed face in his hands and kissed her.