Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals that before long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved. Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted, partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a welcome he had never given it in Chicago.

"Am I going to die in this sink, doctor?" he asked, when Sommers came back to him in the evening.

"I can't say," the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good deal better off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, and we will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?"

"No," the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring to restrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place—Uncle Brome, you know—and I guess if it hadn't been for my damn foolishness in New York—"

He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommers stopped to telegraph Miss Hitchcock. A few days later he met her at the railroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from her hurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancy and capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to her what Parker had said about not letting his people know.

"It's the first time he ever thought of poor papa," she said bluntly.

"I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But loneliness kills some of these fellows."

"Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "He thought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors of the season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him, and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance for all his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down with typhoid—due to pure carelessness, I am afraid."

"That is a familiar story," the doctor observed, with a grim smile, "especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match—and it is just as well they did."

"You are the ones that really know what it means—the doctors and the nurses," Miss Hitchcock said warmly.

"Here is our San Juan," Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle of tents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp.

After they had visited Parker Hitchcock, Sommers conducted her over the camp. Some of the cots were occupied by gaunt figures of men whom she had known, and at the end of their inspection, she remarked thoughtfully:

"I see that there is something to do here. It makes me feel alive once more."

The next month, while Parker dragged slowly through the stages of the disease, Miss Hitchcock worked energetically with the nurses. Sommers met her here and there about the camp and at their hurried meals. The heat and the excitement told upon her, but her spirited, good-humored mood, which was always at play, carried her on. Finally, the convalescents were sent north to cooler spots, and the camp was closed. Parker Hitchcock was well enough to be moved to Chicago, and Sommers, who had been relieved, took charge of him and a number of other convalescents, who were to return to the West.

The last hours of the journey Sommers and Miss Hitchcock spent together. The train was slowly traversing the dreary stretches of swamp and sand-hills of northern Indiana.

"I remember how forlorn this seemed the other time—four years ago!" Sommers exclaimed. "And how excited I was as the city came into view around the curve of the lake. That was to be my world."

"And you didn't find it to your liking," Miss Hitchcock replied, with a little smile.

"I couldn't understand it; the thing was like raw spirits. It choked you."

"I think I understand now what the matter has always been," she resumed after a little interval. "You thought we were all exceptionally selfish, but we were all just like every one else,—running after the obvious, common pleasures. What could you expect! Every boy and girl in this country is told from the first lesson of the cradle, over and over, that success is the one great and good thing in life. The people here are young and strong, and you can't blame them if they interpret that text a little crudely. But I am beginning to understand what you feel."

"We can't escape the fact, though," Sommers responded. "Life must be based, to a large extent, on gain, on mere living. Nature has ordered it."

"Only in cases like yours," she murmured. "I can never free myself from the order of nature. I shall always be the holder of power accumulated by some one else."

As Sommers refrained from making the platitudinous reply that such a remark seemed to demand, they were silent for several minutes. Then she asked, with an air of constraint:

"What will you do? I mean after your visit to us, for, of course, you must rest."

Sommers smiled ironically.

"That is the question every one asks. 'What will you do? what will you do?' Suppose I should say 'Nothing'? We are always planning. No one is ready to wait and turn his hand to the nearest job. To-morrow, next month, in good time, I shall know what that is."

"It puts out of the question a career, personal ambition."

"Yes," he answered quickly. "And could you do that? Could you care for a man who will have no career, who has no 'future'?"

Sommers's voice had taken a new tone of earnestness, unlike the sober speculation in which they had been indulging. Miss Hitchcock turned her face to the faded landscape of the suburban fields, and failed to reply.

"I have lived out my egotism," he continued earnestly. "What you would call ambition has been dead for long months. I haven't any lofty ambition even for scientific work. Good results, even there, it seems to me, are not born of personal desire, of pride. I am content to be a failure—an honest failure," he ended sharply.

"Don't say that!" she protested, looking at him frankly. "I shall never agree to that."

The people around them began to bestir themselves with the nervous restlessness of pent-up energy. Parker Hitchcock came into the car from the smoking-room.

"We can get off at Twenty-second Street," he called out eagerly. "You're coming, doctor?"

Sommers shook his head negatively, and Miss Hitchcock, who was putting on her veil, did not urge him to join them. The Hitchcock carriage was waiting outside the Twenty-second Street station, and, as the train moved on, Sommers could see Colonel Hitchcock's bent figure through the open window.

When Sommers left the train at the central station, the September twilight had already fallen; and as he crossed the strip of park where the troops had bivouacked during the strike, the encircling buildings were brilliantly outlined in the evening mist by countless points of light. The scene from Twelfth Street north to the river, flanked by railroad yards and grim buildings, was an animated circle of a modern inferno. The cross streets intersecting the lofty buildings were dim, canon-like abysses, in which purple fog floated lethargically. The air was foul with the gas from countless locomotives, and thick with smoke and the mist of the lake. And through this earthy steam, the myriad lights from the facades of the big buildings shone with suffused splendor. It was large and vague and, above all, gay, with the grim vivacity of a city of shades. Streams of people were flowing toward the railroad, up and down the boulevard, in and out of the large hotels. A murmur of living, striving humanity rose into the murky air; and from a distance, through the abysses of the cross streets, sounded the deeper roar of the city.

The half-forgotten note of the place struck sharply upon the doctor's ear. It excited him in some strange way. Two years had dropped from his life, and again he was turning, turning, with the beat of the great machine.



CHAPTER XII

"Yes, he lost that—what was left when you sold for him," Miss M'Gann admitted dejectedly. "And so we had to start over again. Part of it was mine, too."

"Did he put your savings in?" Sommers asked incredulously.

"It was that Dresser man. I wish we'd never laid eyes on him—he kept getting tips from Carson, the man who owned most of his paper. I guess Carson didn't take much interest in giving him the right tip, or perhaps Dresser didn't give us what he knew straight out. Anyway, Jack's been losing!"

"So you aren't married?" Sommers asked.

"Jack's pride is up. You see he wanted to begin with a nice flat, not live on here in this boarding-house. And I was to leave the school. But I guess there isn't much chance now. You've been away a long time—to the war?"

They were sitting on the steps of the Keystone, which at this hour in the morning they had to themselves. Miss M'Gann's glory of dress had faded, together with the volubility of her talk, and the schoolroom air had blanched her high color.

"Jack wanted to go off to Cuba," she continued. "But he got sick again, worrying over stocks, and I guess it was just as well. If he don't keep straight now, and brace up, I'll let him go. I'm not the one to hang around all my life for a silly."

"Perhaps that's what made him try the market again," Sommers suggested.

"No, it was Dresser. He was sporting a lot of money and going with high-toned folks, and it made Jack envious."

"You had better marry him, hadn't you?"

Miss M'Gann moved uneasily on the stone seat.

"He's down there again to-day, I just know. He's given up the Baking Powder place,—they crowded him out in the reorganization,—and Dresser got him a place down town."

"Do you mean he's at the broker's?"

Miss M'Gann nodded and then added:

"Do you remember Dr. Leonard? Well, he made a pile out of a trust, some dentist-tools combine, I think."

"I am glad of it," Sommers said heartily, "and I hope he'll keep it."

"Are you going to stay in Chicago?" Miss M'Gann asked, with renewed curiosity. "We shall be glad to see you at the Keystone."

Sommers got up to leave, and asked for Webber's address in the city. "I may look him up," he explained. "I wish you could keep him away from Dresser. The converted socialist is likely to be a bad lot."

"Socialist!" Miss M'Gann exclaimed disdainfully. "He isn't any socialist. He's after a rich girl."

* * * * *

Sommers left Miss M'Gann with a half-defined purpose of finding Webber and inducing him to give up the vain hope of rivalling the editor of The Investor's Monthly. He had always liked the clerk, and when he had helped to pull him out of the market without loss before, he had thought all would go well. But the optimism of the hour had proved too much for Webber's will. Carson's cheap and plentiful stocks had made it dangerously easy for every office boy to "invest." If Webber had been making money these last months, it would be useless to advise him; but if the erratic market had gone against him, he might be saved.

On the way to the city he called at St. Isidore's to see if any one in that hive would remember him. The little nurse, whom he recalled as one of the assistants at Preston's operation, had now attained the dignity of the "black band." There was hardly any one else who knew him, except the elevator boy; and he was leaving when he met Dr. Knowles, an old physician, who had a large, old-fashioned family practice in an unfashionable quarter of the city. Dr. Knowles had once been kind to the younger doctor, and now he seemed glad to meet him again. From him Sommers learned that Lindsay had about given up his practice. The "other things," thanks to his intimacy with Porter, and more lately with Carson, had put him outside the petty needs of professional earnings. Dr. Knowles himself was thinking of retiring, he told Sommers, not with his coffers full of trust certificates, but with a few thousand dollars, enough to keep him beyond want. They talked for a long time, and at the end Dr. Knowles asked Sommers to consider taking over his practice. "It isn't very swell," he explained good-humoredly. "And I don't want you to kill off my poor patients. But there are enough pickings for a reasonable man who doesn't practise for money." Sommers promised to see him in a few days, and started for the office where Webber worked.

Lindsay's final success amused him. He had heard a good deal about Porter and Carson; their operations, reported vaguely by the public, interested him. They formed a kind of partnership, evidently. Porter "financed" the schemes that Carson concocted and talked into being. And a following of small people gleaned in their train. Lindsay probably had gleaned more than the others. It was all the better, Sommers reflected, for the state of the medical profession.

As he sauntered down La Salle Street, the air of the pavement breathed the optimism of the hour. Sommers was amazed at the number of brokers' offices, at the streams of men going and coming around these busy booths. The war was over, or practically over, and speculation was brisker than ever. To be sure, the bills for the war were not paid, but success was in the air, and every one was striving to exploit that success in his own behalf. Sommers passed the blazing sign of WHITE AND EINSTEIN; the firm had taken larger offices this year. Sommers stopped and looked at the broad windows, and then, reflecting that he had nothing to do before dining with the Hitchcocks except to see Webber, he went in with a file of other men.

White and Einstein's offices were much more resplendent than the little room in the basement, where they had started two years before. There were many glass partitions and much mahogany-stained furniture. In the large room, where the quotations were posted, little rows of chairs were ranged before the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch the game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,—the names of the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of spectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation under the rapid chalk of the office boy.

The place was feverish with excitement, which Sommers could feel rather than read in the dull faces of the men. From time to time White or Einstein bobbed out of an inner office, or a telephone booth, and joined the watchers before the blackboards. Their detached air and genial smiles gave them the appearance of successful hosts. White recognized Sommers and nodded, with one eye on the board. "Rag's acting queer," he said casually in the doctor's ear. "Are you in the market? Rag is Carson's latest—ain't gone through yet, and there are signs the market's glutted. Look at that thing slide, waltz! Gee, there'll be sore heads to-morrow!"

Sommers leaned forward and touched Webber, who, with open mouth, was following the figures. Webber turned round, but his head went back to the board. The glance he had given was empty—the glance of the drunkard.

"Your young friend's got hit," White remarked apathetically. "He shouldn't try to play marbles with this crowd. Carson is just chucking new stocks at the public. But he has a clique with him that can do anything."

In spite of this opinion "Rag" tottered and wavered. Rumors rapidly spread among the onlookers that Carson had failed to put "Rag" through; that the consolidated companies would fall asunder on the morrow, like badly glued veneer; that Porter "had gone back on Carson" and was selling the stock. The quotations fell: common stock 60, 59, 56, 50, 45, 48, 50, 52, 45, 40—so ran the dazzling line of figures across the blackboard, again and again.

"There'll be fun to-morrow," White remarked, moving away. "Better come in and see Vinegar and Oil and the rest of Carson's list get a black eye."

Sommers touched Webber, then shook him gently, asking,

"What is it this time? Iron and Distillery?"

"Rag," Webber snapped, recognizing the doctor. "And I'm done for this time sure thing—every red copper. I made two thousand last week on Tin, and this morning I chucked the whole pile into Rag."

"You'd better come with me," Sommers urged. "The Exchange is closing for to-day, anyway."

The clerk laughed, and replied: "Let's have a drink. I've just got enough to get drunk on."

"You're drunk already," the doctor answered gruffly.

"I'll be drunker before the morning," the clerk remarked, with a feeble laugh. "I wish I had Dresser here; I'd like to pound him once."

That desire was repeated in the looks of many men, who were still glowering at the afternoon's quotations. Carson, the idol of the new "promotions," seemed to be the man most in demand for pounding. Einstein was explaining to a savage customer why he had advised him to buy "Rag."

"I got it over the telephone this morning from a man very close to Carson that Rag was the thing, the peach of the whole lot. He said it was slated to cross Biscuit to-day."

The man growled and ground a cigar stub into the floor.

"Come, we'll have a drink," a white-faced young fellow called out to an old man, an acquaintance of the hour. "Somebody's got my money!" The two passed out arm in arm.

Webber had his drink, and then another. Then he leaned back in the embrasure of the bar-room window and looked at Sommers.

"I guess it's the lake this time. I can't go back to her and tell her it's all up."

Sommers watched the man closely, trying to determine how far the disease had gone. Webber's vain, rather weak face was disguised with a beard, which made him look older than he was, and the arm that rested on the table trembled nervously from the flaccid fingers to the shoulder-blades.

"They've put up some trick between them," Webber continued, in a grumbling tone. "Carson or Porter is making something by selling Rag. They'd ought to be in the penitentiary."

"What rot!" Sommers remarked deliberately. "They've beaten you at your game, and they will every time, because they have more nerve than you, and because they know more. There's no use in damning them. You'd do the same thing if you knew when to do it."

"They're nothing but sharps!" the clerk protested feebly, insistent like a child on his idea that some one had done him a personal injury.

Sommers shrugged his shoulders in despair. "I must be going," he said at last. "I don't suppose you'll take my advice, and perhaps the lake would be the best thing for you. But you'd better try it again—it's just as well that everything has gone this time. There won't be any chance of going back to the game. Tell her, and if she'll take you, marry her at once, and start with the little people. Or stay here and have a few more drinks," he added, as he read the irresolute look upon Webber's face.

The clerk rose wearily and followed the doctor into the street, as if afraid of being alone.

"You needn't be so rough," he muttered. "There are lots of the big fellows who started the same way—in the market, wheat or stocks. And I had a little ambition to be something better than a clerk. I wanted her to have something different. She's as good as those girls Dresser is always talking to her about."

Sommers made no reply to his defence, but walked slowly, accommodating his pace to Webber's weary steps. When they reached Michigan Avenue, he stopped and said,

"I should put the lake off, this time, and make up my mind to be a little fellow."

Webber shook hands listlessly and started toward the railroad station with his drooping, irresolute gait. Sommers watched him until his figure merged with the hurrying crowd. Habit was taking the clerk to the suburban train, and habit would take him to the Keystone and Miss M'Gann instead of to the lake. Habit and Miss M'Gann would probably take him back to his desk. But the disease had gone pretty far, and if he recovered, Sommers judged, he would never regain his elasticity, his hope. He would be haunted by a memory of hot desires, of feeble defeat.

The wavering clerk had succumbed to the mood of the hour. And the mood of the hour in this corner of the universe was hopeful for weak and strong alike. Cheap optimism, Sommers would have called it once, but now it seemed to him the natural temper of the world. With this hope suffused over their lives, men struggled on—for what? No one knew. Not merely for plunder, nor for power, nor for enjoyment. Each one might believe these to be the gifts of the gods, while he kept his eyes solely on himself. But when he turned his gaze outward, he knew that these were not the spur of human energy. In striving restlessly to get plunder and power and joy, men wove the mysterious web of life for ends no human mind could know. Carson built his rickety companies and played his knavish tricks upon the gullible public, of whom Webber was one. Brome Porter rooted here and there in the industrial world, and fattened himself upon all spoils. These had to be; they were the tools of the hour. But indifferent alike to them and to Webber, the affairs of men ebbed and flowed in the resistless tide of fate.



CHAPTER XIII

The dinner at the Hitchcocks' was very simple. Parker had gone out "to enjoy his success in not getting to Cuba," as Colonel Hitchcock expressed it grimly. The old merchant's manner toward the doctor was cordial, but constrained. At times during the dinner Sommers found Colonel Hitchcock's eyes resting upon him, as if he were trying to understand him. Sommers was conscious of the fact that Lindsay had probably done his best to paint his character in an unflattering light; and though he knew that the old colonel's shrewdness and kindliness would not permit him to accept bitter gossip at its face value, yet there must have been enough in his career to lead to speculation. While they were smoking, Colonel Hitchcock remarked:

"So you're back in Chicago. Do you think you'll stay?"

Sommers described the offer Dr. Knowles had made.

"I used to see Knowles,—a West Side man,—not very able as a money-getter, I guess, but a good fellow," Colonel Hitchcock emitted meditatively.

"He has a very commonplace practice," Sommers replied. "An old-fashioned kind of practice."

"Do you think you'll like Chicago any better?" Colonel Hitchcock asked bluntly.

"I haven't thought much about that," the doctor admitted, uncomfortably. He felt that the kind old merchant had lost whatever interest he might have had in him. Any man who played ducks and drakes with his chances in life was not to be depended upon, according to Colonel Hitchcock's philosophy. And a man who could not be depended upon to do the rational thing was more or less dangerous. It was easier for him to understand Parker's defects than Sommers's wilfulness. They were both lamentable eccentricities.

"Chicago isn't what it was," the old man resumed reminiscently. "It's too big, and there is too much speculation. A man is rich to-day and poor to-morrow. That sort of thing used to be confined to the Board of Trade, but now it's everywhere, in legitimate business. People don't seem to be willing to work hard for success." He relapsed into silence, and shortly after went upstairs, saying as he excused himself,—"Hope we shall see you again, Dr. Sommers."

When Colonel Hitchcock had left the room, Miss Hitchcock said, as if to remove the sting of her father's indifference:

"Uncle Brome's transactions worry papa,—for a time papa was deeply involved in one of his schemes,—and he worries over Parker, too. He doesn't like to think of—what will happen when he is dead. Parker will have a good deal of money, more than he will know what to do with. It's sad, don't you think so? To be ending one's life with a feeling that you have failed to make permanent your ideals, to leave things stable in your family at least?"

Instead of replying Sommers left his chair and walked aimlessly about the room. At last he came back to the large table near which Miss Hitchcock was seated.

"You know why I came to-night," he began nervously.

Miss Hitchcock put down the book she held in her hands and turned her face to him.

"Will you help me—to live?" he said bluntly.

She rose from her seat, and, with a slight smile of irony, replied,

"Can I?"

"The past,—" Sommers stammered. "You know it all better than any one else."

"I would not have it different, not one thing changed," she protested with warmth. "What I cannot understand in it, I will believe was best for you and for me."

"And the lack of success, the failure?" Sommers questioned eagerly; a touch of fear in his voice. "I am asking much and giving very little."

"You understand so badly!" The smile this time was sad. "I shall never know that it is failure."



CHAPTER XIV

Miss Hitchcock's wedding was extremely quiet. It was regarded by all but the two persons immediately concerned as an eccentric mistake. Even Colonel Hitchcock, to whom Louise was almost infallible, could not trust himself to discuss with her, her decision to marry Dr. Sommers. It was all a sign of the irrational drift of things that seemed to thwart his energetic, honorable life. Even Sommers's attitude in the frank talk the two men had about the marriage offended the old merchant. Sommers had met his distant references to money matters by saying bluntly that he and Louise had decided it would be best for them not to be the beneficiaries of Colonel Hitchcock's wealth to any large extent. He wished it distinctly understood that little was to be done for them now, or in the future by bequest. Louise had agreed with him that for many reasons their lives would be happier without the expectation of unearned wealth. He did not explain that one potent reason for their decision in this matter was the hope they had that Colonel Hitchcock would realize the futility of leaving any considerable sum of money to Parker, and would finally place his money where it could be useful to the community in which he had earned it. Colonel Hitchcock rather resented the doctor's independence, and, at the same time, disliked the direct reference to his fortune. Those matters arranged themselves discreetly in families, and if Louise had children, why....

It did not take Louise and Sommers long, however, to convince Colonel Hitchcock that they were absolutely sincere in their decision, and to interest him in methods of returning his wealth, at his death, to the world. As the months wore on, and Sommers settled into the peaceful routine of Dr. Knowles's mediocre practice, Colonel Hitchcock revised, to a certain extent, his judgment of the marriage. It must always remain a mystery to him, however, that the able young surgeon neglected the brilliant opportunities he had on coming to Chicago, and had, apparently, thrown away four years of his life. Probably he attributed this mistake to the young doctor's ignorance of the world, due to the regrettable fact that Dr. Isaac Sommers had remained in Marion, Ohio, instead of courting cosmopolitan experiences in Chicago. When his grandchild came, he saw that Louise was entirely happy, and he was content. Neither Louise nor Sommers looked back into the past, or troubled themselves about the future. The practice which Dr. Knowles had left, if not lucrative, was sufficiently large and varied to satisfy Sommers.

Brome Porter had transferred all his interests to New York. He had recouped himself by selling "Rag" short before it was really launched and by some other clever strokes of stock manipulation, and had undertaken at length the much-needed trip to Carlsbad. The suspicion that Porter had won back the money he owed to Colonel Hitchcock by a trick upon the small fry of speculators, such as Webber, had its influence in the feeling which Sommers and his wife had about the Hitchcock money. The last move of the "operator" had made something of a scandal in Chicago, for many of Porter's friends and acquaintances lost heavily in "Rag," and felt sore because "they had been left on the outside." If Porter was not in good odor in Chicago, Carson's name was anathema, not only to a host of little speculators, who had followed this ingenious promoter's star, but to substantial men of wealth as well. After the first flush of optimism, people began to examine Carson's specialties, and found them very rotten. Carson, and those who were near him in these companies, it turned out, had got their holdings at low figures and made money when those not equally favored lost. When "Rag" went to pieces, it was rumored that Carson had been caught in his own leaky tub; but, later, it turned out that Carson and Porter had had an understanding in this affair. "Rag" was never meant to "go." So Carson betook himself to Europe, and the great Sargent was removed from public exhibition to a storage warehouse. In some future generation, on the disintegration of the Carson family, the portrait may come back to the world again, labelled "A Soldier of Fortune."

Sommers met Dr. Lindsay at rare intervals; the great specialist treated him with a nice discrimination of values, adjusting the contempt he felt for the successor of Dr. Knowles to the respect he felt for the son-in-law of Colonel Alexander Hitchcock. Report had it that Lindsay had been forced to return to office practice after virtually retiring from the profession. And, in the fickle world of Chicago, the offices on the top floor of the Athenian Building did not "take in" what they once had gathered. For this as well as other reasons Sommers was not surprised when his wife opened Miss Laura Lindsay's wedding cards one morning, and read out the name of the intended bridegroom, Mr. Samuel Thompson Dresser.

"Shall we go?" Louise asked, scrutinizing the cards with feminine keenness.

"I have reasons for not going," Sommers answered hesitatingly. "But you used to know Laura Lindsay, and—"

"I think she will not miss me," Louise answered quickly. "It was queer, though," she continued, idly waving the invitation to and fro, "that a girl like Laura should marry a man like Dresser."

"Did I ever hear you say that it was to be expected that Miss Blank should marry Mr. Blank?" her husband asked. "In this case I think it is beautifully appropriate."

"But he was not exactly in our set, and you once said he was given to theories, was turned out of a place on account of the ideas he held, didn't you?"

"He has seen the folly of those ideas," Sommers responded dryly. "He has become a bond broker, and has a neat little office in the building where White and Einstein had their trade."

"Well," Mrs. Sommers insisted, "Laura never was what you might call serious."

"She has taught him a good deal, though, I have no doubt."

Mrs. Sommers looked puzzled.

"As other excellent women have taught other men," the doctor added, with a laugh.

"What shall we send them?" his wife asked, disregarding the flippancy of the remark.

"A handsomely bound copy of the 'Report of the Commission to Examine into the Chicago Strike, June-July, 1894.'"

As Louise failed to see the point, he remarked:

"I think I hear your son talking about something more important. Shall we go upstairs to see him? I must be off in a few minutes."

They watched the little child without speaking, while he cautiously manipulated his arms and interested himself in the puzzle of his own anatomy.

"What tremendous faith!" Sommers exclaimed at last.

"In what?"

"In the good of it all—in life."

THE END