"Doggone the family," snapped Lightener. "Come on."

Bonbright followed him out.

"May I take him along, Lieutenant? I'll fix it with the judge if necessary.... And say, happen to recognize him?"

"Never saw him before."

"If any of the newspaper boys come snoopin' around, you never saw me, either. Much obliged, Lieutenant."

"You're welcome, Mr. Lightener. Glad I kin accommodate you."

Lightener pushed Bonbright into his limousine. "You don't want to go home, I guess. We'll go to my house. Mother'll see you get breakfast. ... Then we'll have a talk.... Here's a paper boy; let's see what's doing."

It was the morning penny paper that Lightener bought, the paper with leanings toward the proletariat, the veiled champion of labor. He bought it daily.

"Huh!" he grunted, as he scanned the first page. "They kind of allude to you."

Bonbright looked. He saw a two-column head:

YOUNG MILLIONAIRE URGES ON POLICE

The next pyramid contained his name; the story related how he had rushed frantically to the police after they had barbarously charged a harmless gathering of workingmen, trampling and maiming half a dozen, and had demanded that they charge again. It was a long story, with infinite detail, crucifying him with cheap ink; making him appear a ruthless, heartless monster, lusting for the spilled blood of the innocent.

Bonbright looked up to meet Lightener's eyes.

"It—it isn't fair," he said, chokingly.

"Fairness," said Lightener, almost with gentleness, "is expected only when we are young."

"But I didn't.... I tried to stop them."

"Don't try to tell anybody so—you won't be believed."

"I'm going to tell somebody," said Bonbright, his mind flashing to Ruth Frazer, "and I'm going to be believed. I've got to be believed."

After a while he said: "I wasn't taking sides. I just went there to see. If I've got to hire men all my life I want to understand them."

"You've got to take sides, son. There's no straddling the fence in this world.... And as soon as you've taken sides your own side is all you'll understand. Nobody ever understood the other side."

"But can't there ever be an understanding? Won't capital ever understand labor, or labor capital?"

"I suppose a philosopher would say there is no difference upon which agreement can't be reached; that there must somewhere be a common meeting ground.... The Bible says the lion shall lie down with the lamb, but I don't expect to live to see him do it without worrying some about the lion's teeth."

"It's one man holding power over other men," said Bonbright.

As the car stopped at Malcolm Lightener's door, sudden panic seized Bonbright.

"I ought not to come here," he said, "after last night. Mrs. Lightener... your daughter."

"I'll bet Hilda's worrying you more than her mother. Nonsense! They both got sense."

Certainly Mrs. Lightener had.

"Just got him out of the police station," her husband said as he led the uncomfortable Bonbright into her presence. "Been shut up all night.... Rioting—that's what he's been doing. Throwing stones at the cops."

Mrs. Lightener looked at Bonbright's pale, weary, worried face. "You let him be, Malcolm.... Never mind HIM," she said to the boy. "You just go right upstairs with him. A warm bath and breakfast are what you need. You don't look as if you'd slept a WINK."

"I haven't," he confessed.

When Bonbright emerged from the bath he found the motherly woman had sent out to the haberdashers for fresh shirt, collar, and tie. He donned them with the first surge of genuine gratefulness he had ever known. Of course he had said thank you prettily, and had thought he felt thanks.... Now he knew he had not.

"Guess you won't be afraid to face Hilda now," said Lightener, entering the room. "I notice a soiled collar is worn with a heap more misgiving than a soiled conscience.... Grapefruit, two soft-boiled eggs, toast, coffee.... Some prescription."

Hilda was in the library, and greeted him as though it were an ordinary occurrence to have a young man just out of the cell block as a breakfast guest. She did not refer to it, nor did her father at the moment. Bonbright was grateful again.

After breakfast the boy and girl were left alone in the library, briefly.

"I'm ashamed," said Bonbright, chokingly.

"You needn't be," she said. "Dad told us all about it. I thought the other night I should like you. Now I'm sure of it." She owned her father's directness.

"You're good," he said.

"No—reasonable," she answered.

He sat silent, thinking. "Do you know," he said, presently, "what a lot girls have to do with making a fellow's life endurable?... Since I went to work I—I've felt really GOOD only twice. Both times it was a girl. The other one just grinned at me when I was feeling down on my luck. It was a dandy grin.... And now you..."

"Tell me about her," she said.

"She's my secretary now. Little bit of a thing, but she grins at all the world... Socialist, too, or anarchist or something. I made them give her to me for my secretary so I could see her grin once in a while."

"I'd like to see her."

"I don't know her," said Bonbright. "She's just my secretary. I'll bet she'd be bully to know."

Hilda Lightener would not have been a woman had she not wondered about this girl who had made such an impression on Bonbright. It was not that she sensed a possible rival. She had not interested herself in Bonbright to the point where a rival could matter. But—she would like to see that girl.

Malcolm Lightener re-entered the room.

"Clear out, honey," he said to his daughter. "Foote and I have got to make medicine."

She arose. "If he rumbles like a volcano," she said to Bonbright, "don't be afraid. He just rumbles. Pompeii is in no danger."

"You GIT," her father said.

"Now," he said when they were alone, "what's to pay?"

"I don't know."

"Will your father raise the devil? Maybe you'd like to have me go along when you interview him."

"I think I'd rather not."

Lightener nodded with satisfaction.

"Well, then—I've kind of taken a shine to you. You're a young idiot, all right, but there's something about you.... Let's start off with this: You've got something that's apt to get you into hot water. Either it's fool curiosity or genuine interest in folks. I don't know which. Neither fits into the Bonbright Foote formula. Six generations of 'em seem to have been whittled off the same chip—and then the knife slipped and you came off some other chip altogether. But the Foote chip don't know it, and won't recognize it if it does.... I'm not going to criticize your father or your ancestors, whatever kind of darn fools I may personally think they are. What I want to say is, if you ever kick over the traces, drop in and tell me about it. I'll see you on your road."

"Thanks," said Bonbright, not half comprehending.

"You can't keep on pressing men out of the same mold forever. Maybe you can get two or three or a dozen to be as like as peas—and then nature plays a joke on you. You're the joke on the Foote mold, I reckon. Maybe they can squeeze you into the form and maybe they can't.... But whatever happens is going to be darn unpleasant for you."

Bonbright nodded. THAT he knew well.

"You've got a choice. You can start in by kicking over the traces— with the mischief to pay; or you can let the vanished Footes take a crack at you to see what that can make of you. I advise no boy to run against his father's wishes. But everybody starts out with something in him that's his own—individual—peculiar to him. Maybe it's what the preachers call his soul. Anyhow, it's HIS. Whatever they do to you, try to hang on to it. Don't let anybody pump it out of you and fill its room with a standardized solution. Get me?"

"I think so."

"I guess that's about, all from me. Now run along to your dad. Got any idea what will happen?"

Bonbright studied the rug more than a minute before he answered.

"I think I was right last night. Maybe I didn't go about it the way I should, but I INTENDED right. At least I didn't intend WRONG. Father will be—displeased. I don't think I can explain it to him... "

"Uh!" grunted Lightener.

"So I—I guess I sha'n't try," Bonbright ended. "I think I'll go along and have it over with."

When he was gone Malcolm Lightener made the following remark to his wife, who seemed to understand it perfectly:

"Some sons get born into the wrong families."



CHAPTER VIII

Bonbright entered his office with the sensations of a detected juvenile culprit approaching an unavoidable reckoning. If there was a ray of brightness in the whole episode it was that the newspapers had miraculously been denied the meatiest bit of his night's adventure— his detention in a cell. If that had been flaunted before the eyes of the public Bonbright felt he would never have been able to face his father.

He was vividly aware of the stir his entrance caused among the office employees. It was as though the heart of the office skipped a beat. He flushed, and, with eyes straight before him, hurried into his own room and sat in his chair. He experienced a quivering, electric emptiness—his nerves crying out against an approaching climax. It was blood-relative to panic.

Presently he was aware that his father stood in the door scrutinizing him. Bonbright's eyes encountered his father's. They seemed to lock ... In that tense moment the boy was curiously aware how perfectly his father's physical presence stood for and expressed his theory of being. Tall, unbending, slender, aristocratic, intellectual—the pose of the body, the poise of the head, even that peculiar, slanting set of the lips expressed perfectly the Bonbright Foote idea. Five generations had bred him to be the perfect thing it desired.

"Well, sir," he said, coldly. Bonbright arose. There was a formality about the situation which seemed to require it. "Good morning," he said, in a low tone.

"I have seen the papers."

"Yes, sir."

"What they printed was in substance true?"

"I prefer not—to discuss it, sir."

"And I prefer TO discuss it... Do you fancy you can drag the name of Foote through the daily press as though it were that of some dancing girl or political mountebank, and have no reference made of it? Tell me exactly what happened last night—and why it was permitted to happen."

"Father—" Bonbright's voice was scarcely audible, yet it was alive and quivering with pain. "I cannot talk to you about last night."

The older man's lips compressed. "You are a man grown—are supposed to be a man grown. Must I cross-examine you as if you were a sulking schoolboy?"

Bonbright was not defiant, not sulkily stubborn. His night's experiences had affected, were affecting him, working far-reaching changes in him, maturing him. But he was too close to them for their effect to have been accomplished. The work was going on each moment, each hour. He did not reply to his father immediately, but when he did so it was with a certain decision, a firmness, a lack of the old boyishness which was marked and distinct.

"You must not cross-question me. There are things about which one's own father has not the right to ask.... If I could have come to you voluntarily—but I could not. In college I have seen fellows get into trouble, and the first thing they thought of was to go to their fathers with it... It was queer. What happened last night happened to ME. Possibly it will have some effect on my family and on the name of Foote, as you say... But it happened to ME. Nobody else can understand it. No one has the right to ask about it."

"It happened to YOU! Young man, you are the seventh Bonbright Foote— member of a FAMILY. What happens to you happens to it. You cannot separate yourself from it. You, as an individual, are not important, but as Bonbright Foote VII you become important. Do you imagine you can act and think as an entity distinct from Bonbright Foote, Incorporated?... Nonsense. You are but one part of a whole; what you do affects the whole, and you are responsible for it to the shops."

"A man must be responsible to himself," said Bonbright, fumbling to express what was troubling his soul. "There are bigger things than family..."

His father had advanced to the desk. Now he interrupted by bringing his hand down upon it masterfully. "For you there is no bigger thing than family. You have a strange idea. Where did you get it? Is this sort of thing being taught in college to-day? I suppose you have some notion of asserting your individuality. Bosh! Men in your position, born as you have been born, have no right to individuality. Your individuality must express the individuality of your family as mine has done, and as my father's and HIS father's did before me... I insist that you explain fully to me what occurred last night."

"I am sorry, sir, but I cannot."

There was no outburst of passion from the father; it would have been wholly out of keeping with his character. Bonbright Foote VI was a strong man in his way; he possessed force of character—even if that force were merely a standardized, family-molded force of character. He recognized a crisis in the affairs of the Foote family which must be met wisely. He perceived that results could not be obtained through the violent impact of will; that here was a dangerous condition which must be cured—but not by seizing it and wrenching it into place... Perhaps he could make Bonbright obey him, but if matters were as serious as they seemed, it would be far from wise. The thing must be dealt with patiently, firmly. Here was only a symptom; the disease went deeper. For six generations one Bonbright Foote after another had been born true to tradition's form—the seventh generation had gone askew! It must be set right, remolded.

"Let me point out to you," said he, "that you are here only because you are my son and the descendant of our forefathers. Aside from that you have no right to consideration or to position. You possess wealth. You are a personage... Suppose it were necessary to deprive you of these things. Suppose, as I have the authority to do, I should send you out of this office to earn your own living. Suppose, in short, I should find it necessary to do as other fathers have done— to disown you... What then? What could you do? What would your individuality be worth?... Think it over, my son. In the meantime we will postpone this matter until you revise your mood."

He turned abruptly and went into his own room. He wanted to consider. He did not know how to conduct himself, nor how to handle this distressing affair... He fancied he was acting wisely and diplomatically, but at the same time he carried away with him the unpleasant consciousness that victory lay for the moment with his son. Individuality was briefly triumphant. One thing was clear to him—it should not remain so. The Bonbright Foote tradition should be continued correctly by his son. This was not so much a determination as a state of mind. It was a thing of inevitability.

Bonbright's feeling as his father left him was one of utter helplessness, of futility. He had received his father's unveiled threat and later it would have its effect. For the moment it passed without consideration. First in his mind was the fact that he did not know what to do—did not even know what he WANTED to do. All he could see was the groove he was in, the family groove. He did not like it, but he was not sure he wanted to be out of it. His father had talked of individuality; Bonbright did not know if he wanted to assert his individuality. He was at sea. Unrest grappled with him blindly, urging him nowhere, seeming merely to wrestle with him aimlessly and maliciously... What was it all about, anyhow? Why was he mixed up in the struggle? Why could not he be left alone in quiet? If he had owned a definite purpose, a definite ambition, a describable desire, it would have been different, but he had none. He was merely bitterly uncomfortable without the slightest notion what event or course of action could bring him comfort.

One thought persisted through the chaos of his surging thoughts. He must call in Ruth Frazer and explain to her that he had not done what the papers said he did. Somehow he felt he owed her explanation, her of all the world.

She entered in response to the button he pushed, but there was not the broad smile—the grin—he looked up eagerly to see. She was grave, rather more than grave—she was troubled, so troubled that she did not raise her eyes to look at him, but took her seat opposite him and laid her dictation book on the desk.

"Miss Frazer—" he said, and at his tone she looked at him. He seemed very young to her, yet older than he had appeared before. Older he was, with a tired, haggard look left by his sleepless night. She could not restrain her heart from softening toward him, for he was such a boy—just a boy.

"Miss Frazer," he said again, "I want to—talk to you about last night—about what the papers said."

If he expected help from her he was disappointed. Her lips set visibly.

"It was not true—what they said... I sha'n't explain it to anybody else. What good could it do? But I want you to understand. It seems as if I HAVE to explain to you.... I can't have you believing—"

"I didn't read it in the papers," she said. "I heard from an eyewitness.

"Mr. Dulac," he said. "Yes, he would have seen. Even to him it might have looked that way—it might. But I didn't—I didn't! You must believe me. I did not run to the police to have them charge the strikers again... Why should I?"

"Why should you?" she repeated, coldly.

"Let me tell you... I went there—out of curiosity, I guess. This whole strike came so suddenly. I don't understand why strikes and troubles like this must be, and I thought I might find out something if I went and watched... I wasn't taking sides. I don't know who is right and who is wrong. All I wanted was to learn. One thing... I don't blame the strikers for throwing bricks. I could have thrown a brick at one of our guards; a policeman shoved me and I could have thrown a brick at him.... I suppose, if there are to be strikes and mobs who want to destroy our property, that we must have guards and police... But they shouldn't aggravate things. I went around where I could see—and I saw the police charge. I saw them send their horses smashing into that crowd—and I saw them draw back, leaving men on the pavement,... There was one who writhed about and made horrible sounds!... The mob was against us and the police were for us—but I couldn't stand it. I guess I lost my head. I hadn't the least intention of doing what I did, or of doing anything but watch... but I lost my head. I did rush up to the police, Miss Frazer, and the strikers tried to mob me. I was struck more than once... It wasn't to tell the police to charge. You must believe me—you MUST.... I was afraid they WOULD charge again, so I rushed at them. All I remember distinctly is shouting to them that they mustn't do it again—mustn't charge into that defenseless mob.... It was horrible." He paused, and shut his eyes as though to blot out a picture painted on his mind. Then he spoke more calmly. "The police didn't understand, either. They thought I belonged to the mob, and they arrested me.... I slept—I spent the night in a cell in Police Headquarters."

Ruth was leaning over the desk toward him, eyes wide, lips parted. "Is—is that the TRUTH?" she asked; but as she asked she knew it was so. Then: "I'm sorry—so sorry. You must let me tell Mr. Dulac and he will tell the men. It would be terrible if they kept on believing what they believe now. They think you are—"

"I know," he said, wearily. "It can't be helped. I don't know that it matters. What they think about me is what—it is thought best for them to think. I am supposed to be fighting the strike."

"But aren't you?"

"I suppose so. It's the job that's been assigned to me—but I'm doing nothing. I'm of no consequence—just a stuffed figure."

"You caused the strike."

"I?" There was genuine surprise in his voice. "How?"

"With that placard."

"I suppose so," he said, slowly. "My name WAS signed to it, wasn't it?... You see I had been indiscreet the night before. I had mingled with the men and spoken to Mr. Dulac.... I had created a false impression—which had to be torn up—by the roots."

"I don't understand, Mr. Foote."

"No," he said, "of course not.... Why should you? I don't understand myself. I don't see why I shouldn't talk to Mr. Dulac or the men. I don't see why I shouldn't try to find out about things. But it wasn't considered right—was considered very wrong, and I was—disciplined. Members of my family don't do those things. Mind, I'm not complaining. I'm not criticizing father, for he may be right. Probably he IS right. But he didn't understand. I wasn't siding with the men; I was just trying to find out..."

"Do you mean," she asked, a bit breathlessly, "that you have done none of these things of your own will—because you wanted to? I mean the placard, and bringing in O'Hagan and his strike breakers, and taking all these ruthless methods to break the strike?... Were you made to APPEAR as though it was you—when it wasn't?"

"Don't YOU misunderstand me, Miss Frazer. You're on the other side— with the men. I'm against them. I'm Bonbright Foote VII." There was a trace of bitterness in his voice as he said it, and it did not escape her attention. "I wasn't taking sides.... I wouldn't take sides now— but apparently I must.... If strikes are necessary then I suppose fellows in places like mine must fight them.... I don't know. I don't see any other way.... But it doesn't seem right—that there should be strikes. There must be a reason for them. Either our side does something it shouldn't—and provokes them, or your side is unfair and brings them on.... Or maybe both of us are to blame.... I wanted to find out."

"I shall tell Mr. Dulac," she said. "I shall tell him EVERYTHING. The men mustn't go on hating and despising you. Why, they ought to be sorry for you!... Why do you endure it? Why don't you walk out of this place and never enter it again?..."

"You don't understand," he said, with perplexity." I knew you would think I am siding with the men."

"I don't think that—no!... You might come to side with us—because we're right. But you're not siding with yourself. You're letting somebody else operate your very soul—and that's a worse sin than suicide.... You're letting your father and this business, this Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, wipe you out as if you were a mark on a slate—and make another mark in your place to suit its own plans. ... You are being treated abominably."

"Miss Frazer, I guess neither of us understands this thing. You see this business, for generations, has had a certain kind of man at the head of it. Always. It has been a successful business. Maybe when father, and his father, were young, they had to be disciplined as I am being. Maybe it is RIGHT—what I have heard called TRAINING."

"Do you like it?"

He did not answer at once. "I—it disturbs me. It makes me uneasy. ... But I can do nothing. They've got me in the groove, and I suppose I'll move along it."

"If you would own up to it, you're unhappy. You're being made miserable.... Why, you're being treated worse than the strikers—and by your own father!... Everybody has a right to be himself."

"You say that, but father and the generations of Footes before him say the exact opposite.... However, I'm not the question. All I wanted to do was to explain to you about last night. You believe me?"

"Of course. And I shall tell—"

He shook his head. "I'd rather you didn't. Indeed, you mustn't. As long as I am here I must stick by my family. Don't you see? I wanted YOU to know. My explanation was for you alone."

Rangar appeared in the door—quietly as it was his wont to move. "Pardon," he said. "Your father wishes to speak to you, Mr. Foote."

"One moment, Miss Frazer. I have some letters," Bonbright said, and stepped into his father's office.

"Bonbright," said his father, "Rangar has just discovered that your secretary—this Miss Frazer—lives in the same house with Dulac the strike leader.... She comes of a family of disturbers herself. Probably she is very useful to Dulac where she is. Therefore you will dismiss her at once."

"But, father—"

"You will dismiss her at once—personally."

A second time that day the eyes of father and son locked.

Bonbright's face was colorless; he felt his lips tremble.

"At once," said his father, tapping his desk with his finger.

Bonbright's sensation was akin to that of falling through space— there seemed nothing to cling to, nothing by which to sustain himself. How utterly futile he was was borne in upon him! He could not resist. Protestation would only humiliate him. He turned slowly and walked into his own room, where he stood erect before his desk.

"Miss Frazer," he said in a level, timbreless voice, "the labor leader Dulac lives in your house. You come of a family of labor agitators. Therefore you are discharged."

"WHAT?" she exclaimed, the unexpectedness of it upsetting her poise.

"You are discharged," he repeated; and then, turning his back on her, he walked to the window, where he stood tense, tortured by humiliation, gazing down upon a street which he could not see.

Ruth gathered her book and pencils and stood up. She moved slowly to the door without speaking, but there she stopped, turned, and looked at Bonbright. There was neither dismay nor anger in her eyes—only sympathy. But she did not speak it aloud. "Poor boy!" she whispered to herself, and stepped out into the corridor.



CHAPTER IX

Ruth Frazer had passed her twentieth birthday, and now, for the first time, she was asking herself that question which brings tearful uncertainty, vague fears, disquieting speculations to the great majority of women—should she give herself, body and soul, into the hands of a definite man? It was the definiteness, the identification of the man, that caused all her difficulty. All women expect to be chosen by, and to choose, some man; but when he arrives in actual flesh and blood—that is quite another matter. Some, perhaps many, have no doubts. Love has come to them unmistakably. But not so with most. It is a thing to be wept over, and prayed over, and considered with many changes of mind, until final decision is made one way or the other.

Dulac had been interrupted in what Ruth knew would have been a proposal of marriage; the scene would be resumed, and when it was what answer should she give?

It is no easy task for a girl of twenty to lay her heart under the microscope and to see if the emotion which agitates it is love, or admiration, or the excitation of glamour. She has heard of love, has read of love, has dreamed of love, possibly, but has never experienced love. How, then, is she to recognize it? With Ruth there had been no long acquaintanceship with this man who came asking her future of her. There had been no months or years of service and companionship. Instead, he had burst on her vision, had dazzled her with his presence and his mission. Hers was a steady little head, and one capable of facing the logic of a situation. Was her feeling toward Dulac merely hero worship?

The cause he represented was dear to her heart, and he was an eminent servant in that cause. It thrilled her to know that such a man as he could want HER for his wife. It quite took her breath away. Present also was the feeling that if Dulac wanted her, if she could bring happiness, ease, help to him, it would be her duty to give herself. By so doing she would contribute her all to the cause.... Behind that thought were generations of men and women who had sacrificed and suffered for labor. If her father had given his life, would he not expect his daughter to give HER life? If she could make Dulac stronger to carry on his work for social revolution, had she a right to withhold herself?...

But, being a girl, with youth singing in her heart, it was impossible that anything should take precedence of love. That was the great question. Did she love?... At noon she was sure she did; at one o'clock she was sure she did not; at two o'clock she was wavering between the two decisions; at six o'clock she had passed through all these stages half a dozen times, and was no nearer certainty.

Being who she was and what she was, her contacts with the world had not been those of the ordinary girl of her age and her station in life. In her earlier years she had been accustomed to radical words, radical thought, radical individuals. The world she was taught to see was not the world girl children are usually taught to see. And yet she retained her humor, her brightness of spirit, the joy of life that gave her her smile.... She had known boys and men. However, none of these had made marked impression upon her. They had been mere incidents, pleasant, uninteresting, wearying, amusing. None had thrilled her.... So she had less experience to call to her aid than the average girl.

Dulac occupied her mind as no man had ever occupied it before; the thought of him thrilled her.... He wanted her, this magnetic, theatrically handsome man wanted her....

When we make a choice we do so by a process of comparison. We buy this house because we like it better than that house; we buy this hat because we prefer it to that other;... it is so we get our notions of value, of desirability. It is more than possible that some effort at comparison is made by a woman in selecting a husband. She compares her suitor with other men. Her decision may hinge upon the result. ... Dulac was clearly superior to most of the men Ruth had known.... Then, unaccountably, she found herself thinking of Bonbright Foote, who had that morning discharged her from her employment. She found herself setting young Foote and Dulac side by side and, becoming objectively conscious of this, she felt herself guilty of some sort of disloyalty. What right had a man in Foote's position to stand in her thoughts beside Dulac? He was everything Dulac was not; Dulac was nothing that Foote was.

She realized she was getting nowhere, was only confusing herself. Perhaps, she told herself, when Dulac was present, when he asked her to be his wife, she would know what to answer. So, resolutely, she put the matter from her mind. It would not stay out.

She dreaded meeting Dulac at supper—for the evening meal was supper in the Frazer cottage—and yet she was burningly curious to meet him, to be near him, to verify her image of him.... Extra pains with the detail of her simple toilet held her in her room until her mother called to know if she were not going to help with the meal. As she went to the kitchen she heard Dulac moving about in his room.

When they were seated at the table it was Mrs. Frazer who jerked the conversation away from casual matters.

"Ruth was discharged this morning, Mr. Dulac," she said, bitterly, "and her as good a typewriter and as neat and faithful as any. No fault found, either, nor could be, not if anybody was looking for it with a fine-tooth comb. Meanness, that's what I say. Nothing but meanness.... And us needing that fifteen dollars a week to keep the breath of life in us."

"Don't worry about that, mother," Ruth said, quickly. "There are plenty of places—"

"Who fired you?" interrupted Dulac, his black eyes glowing angrily. "That young cub?"

"Young Mr. Foote," said Ruth.

"It was because I live here," said Dulac, intensely. "That was why, wasn't it? That's the way they fight, striking at us through our womenfolks.... And when we answer with bricks..."

"I don't think he wanted to do it," Ruth said. "I think he was made to."

"Nonsense! Too bad the boys didn't get their hands on him last night— the infernal college-bred whipper-snapper!... Well, don't you worry about that job. Nor you, either, Mrs. Frazer."

"Seems like I never did anything but worry; if it wasn't about one thing it was another, and no peace since I was in the cradle," said Mrs. Frazer, dolefully. "If it ain't the rent it's strikes and riots and losin' positions and not knowin' if your husband's comin' home to sleep in bed, or his name in the paper in the morning and him in jail. And since he was killed—"

"Now, mother," said Ruth, "I'll have a job before tomorrow night. We won't starve or be put out into the street."

Mrs. Frazer dabbed at her eyes with her apron and signified her firm belief that capital was banded together for the sole purpose of causing her mental agony; indeed, that capital had been invented with that end in view, and if she had her way—which seldom enough, and her never doing a wrong to a living body—capital should have visited on it certain plagues and punishments hinted at as adequate, but not named. Whereupon she got up from the table and went out into the kitchen after the pie.

"Mrs. Frazer," said Dulac, when she returned, "I've got to hurry downtown to headquarters, but I want to have a little talk with Ruth before I go. Can't the dishes wait?"

"I did up dishes alone before Ruth was born, and a few thousand times since. Guess I can get through with it without her help at least once more."

Dulac smiled, so that his white, even teeth showed in a foreign sort of way. In that moment Ruth thought there was something Oriental or Latin about his appearance—surely something exotic. He had a power of fascination, and its spell was upon her.

He stood up and walked to the door of the little parlor, where he stood waiting. Ruth, not blushing, but pale, afraid, yet eager to hear what she knew he was going to say, passed him into the room. He closed the door.

"You know what I want to say," he began, approaching close to her, but not touching her. "You know what life will be like with a man whose work is what mine is.... But I'd try to make up for the hardships and the worries and the disagreeable things. I'd try, Ruth, and I think I could do it.... Your heart is with the Cause. I wouldn't marry you if it wasn't because you couldn't stand the life. But you want to see what I want to see.... If I'm willing to run the risks and live the life I have to live because I see how I can help along the work and make the world a better place for those to live in who need to have it a better place... if I can do what I do, I've thought you might be willing to share it all.... You're brave. You come of a blood that has suffered and been willing to suffer. Your father was a martyr—just as I would be willing to be a martyr...."

Somehow the thing did not seem so much like a proposal of marriage as like a bit of flamboyant oratory. The theatrical air of the man, his self-consciousness—with the saving leaven of unquestionable sincerity—made it more an exhortation from the platform. Even in his intimate moments Dulac did not step out of character.... But this was not apparent to Ruth. Glamour was upon her, blinding her. The personality of the man dominated her personality. She saw him as he saw himself.... And his Cause was her Cause. If he would have suffered martyrdom for it, so would she. She raised her eyes to his and, looking into them, saw a soul greater than his soul, loftier than his soul. She was an apostle, and her heart throbbed with pride and joy that this man of high, self-sacrificing purpose should desire her.... She was ready to surrender; her decision was made. Standing under his blazing eyes, in the circle of his magnetism, she was sure she loved him.

But the surrender was not to be made then. Her mother rapped on the door.

"Young gentleman to see you, Ruth," she called.

She heard Dulac's teeth click savagely. "Quick," he said. "What is it to be?"

The spell was broken, the old uncertainty, the wavering, was present again. "I—oh, let me think. To-morrow—I'll tell you to-morrow."

She stepped—it was almost a flight—to the door, and opened it. In the dining room, hat in hand, stood Bonbright Foote. Dulac saw, too.

"What does he want here?" he demanded, savagely.

"I don't know."

"I'll find out. It's no good to you he intends."

"Mr. Dulac!" she said, and faced him a moment. He stopped, furious though he was. She stopped him. She held him.... There was a strength in her that he had not realized. Her utterance of his name was a command and a rebuke.

"I know his kind," Dulac said, sullenly. "Let me throw him out."

"Please sit down," she said. "I want to bring him in here. I know him better than you—and I think your side misunderstands him. It may do some good."

She stepped into the dining room. "Mr. Foote," she said.

He was embarrassed, ill at ease. "Miss Frazer," he said, with boyish hesitation, "you don't want to see me—you have no reason to do anything but—despise me, I guess. But I had to come. I found your address and came as quickly as I could."

"Step in here," she said. Then, "You and Mr. Dulac have met."

Dulac stood scowling. "Yes," he said, sullenly. Bonbright flushed and nodded.... Dulac seemed suddenly possessed by a gust of passion. He strode threateningly to Bonbright, lips snarling, eyes blazing.

"What do you mean by coming here? What do you want?" he demanded, hoarsely. "You come here with your hands red with blood. Two men are dead.... Four others smashed under the hoofs of your police!... You're trying to starve into submission thousands of men. You're striking at them through their wives and babies.... What do you care for them or their suffering? You and your father are piling up millions—and every penny a loaf stolen from the table of a workingman!... There'll be starving out there soon.... Babies will be dying for want of food—and you'll have killed them.... You and your kind are bloodsuckers, parasites!... and you're a sneaking, spying hound.... Every man that dies, every baby that starves, every ounce of woman's suffering and misery that this strike causes are on your head.... You forced the strike, backed up by the millions of the automobile crowd, so you could crush and smash your men so they wouldn't dare to mutter or complain. You did it deliberately—you prowling, pampered puppy...." Dulac was working himself into blind rage.

Bonbright looked at the man with something of amazement, but with nothing of fear. He was not afraid. He did not give back a step, but, as he stood there, white to the lips, his eyes steadily on Dulac's eyes, he seemed older, weary. He seemed to have been stripped of youth and of the lightheartedness and buoyancy of youth. He was thinking, wondering. Why should this man hate him? Why should others hate him? Why should the class he belonged to be hated with this blighting virulence by the class they employed?...

He did not speak nor try to stem Dulac's invective. He was not angered by it, nor was he hurt by it.... He waited for it to subside, and with a certain dignity that sat well on his young shoulders. Generations of ancestors trained in the restraints were with him this night, and stood him in good stead.

Ruth stood by, the situation snatched beyond her control. She was terrified, yet even in her terror she could not avoid a sort of subconscious comparison of the men.

"Mr. Dulac!... Please!... Please!..." she said, tearfully.

"I'm going to tell this—this murderer what he is. and then I'm going to throw him out," Dulac raged.

"Mr. Foote came to see ME," Ruth said, with awakened spirit. "He is in my house.... You have no right to act so. You have no right to talk so.... You sha'n't go on."

Dulac turned on her. "What is this cub to you? What do you care?... Were you expecting him?"

"She wasn't expecting me," said Bonbright, breaking silence for the first time. "I came because she didn't get a square deal.... I had to come."

"What do you want with her?... You've kicked her out of your office —now leave her alone.... There's just one thing men of your class want of girls of her class...."

At first Bonbright did not comprehend Dulac's meaning; then his face reddened; even his ears were enveloped in a surge of color. "Dulac," he said, evenly, "I came to say something to Miss Frazer. When I have done I'm going to thrash you for that."

Ruth seized Dulac's arm. "Go away," she cried. "You have no right. ... If you ever want an answer—to that question—you'll go NOW... If this goes on—if you don't go and leave Mr. Foote alone, I'll never see you again.... I'll never speak to you again.... I mean it!"

Dulac, looking down into her face, saw that she did mean it. He shot one venomous glance at Bonbright, snatched his hat from the table, and rushed from the room.

Presently Ruth spoke.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

Bonbright smiled. "It was too bad.... He believes what he says about me...."

"Yes, he believes it, and thousands of other men believe it.... They hate you."

"Because I have lots of money and they have little. Because I own a factory and they work in it.... There must be a great deal to it besides that.... But that isn't what I came to say. I—it was about discharging you."

"Yes," she said. "I knew it wasn't you.... Your father made you."

He flushed. "You see... I'm not a real person. I'm just something with push buttons. When somebody wants a thing done he pushes one, and I do it.... I didn't want you to go. I—Well, things aren't exactly joyous for me in the plant. I don't fit—and I'm being made to fit." His voice took on a tinge of bitterness. "I've got to be something that the label 'Bonbright Foote VII' will fit.... It was on account of that smile of yours that I made them give you to me for my secretary. The first time I saw you you smiled—and it was mighty cheering. It sort of lightened things up—so I got you to do my work —because I thought likely you would smile sometimes...."

Her eyes were downcast to hide the moisture that was in them.

"Father made me discharge you.... I couldn't help it—and you don't know how ashamed it made me.... To know I was so helpless. That's what I came to say. I wanted you to know—on account of your smile. I didn't want you to think—I did it willingly.... And—sometimes it isn't easy to get another position—so—so I went to see a man, Malcolm Lightener, and told him about you. He manufactures automobiles—and he's—he's a better kind of man to work for than—we were. If you are willing you can—go there in the morning."

She showed him her smile now—but it was not the broad, beaming grin; it was a dewy, tremulous smile.

"That was good of you," she said, softly.

"I was just trying to be square," he said. "Will you take the place? I should like to know. I should like to know I'd helped to make things right."

"Of course I shall take it," she said.

"Thank you.... I—shall miss you. Really.... Good night, Miss Frazer—and thank you."

She pitied him from her heart. His position was not a joyful one.... And, as people sometimes do, she spoke on impulse, not calculating possible complications.

"If—you may come to see me again if you want to."

He took her extended hand. "I may?" he said, almost incredulously. "And will you smile for me?"

"Once, each time you come," she said.



CHAPTER X

Day after day and week after week the strike dragged on. Daily strength departed from it and entered into Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. The men had embarked upon it with enthusiasm, many of them with fanatic determination; but with the advent in their home of privation, of hunger, their zeal was transmuted into heavy determination, lifeless stubbornness. Idleness hung heavily on their hands, and small coins that should have passed over the baker's counter clinked upon mahogany bars.

Dulac labored, exhorted, prayed with them. It was his personality, his individual powers over the minds and hearts of men, that kept the strike alive. The weight rested upon his shoulders alone, but he did not bend under it. He would not admit the hopelessness of the contest—and he fought on. At the end of a month he was still able to fire his audiences with sincere, if theatrical, oratory; he could still play upon them and be certain of a response. At the end of two months he—even he—was forced to admit that they listened with stolidness, with apathy. They were falling away from him; but he fought on. He would not admit defeat, would not, even in his most secret thoughts, look forward to inevitable failure.

Every man that deserted was an added atom of strength to Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. Every hungry baby, every ailing wife, every empty dinner table fought for the company and against Dulac. Rioting ended. It requires more than hopeless apathy to create a riot; there must be fervor, determination, enthusiasm. Daily Dulac's ranks were thinned by men who slunk to the company's employment office and begged to be reinstated.... The back of the strike was broken.

Bonbright Foote saw how his company crushed the strike; how, ruthlessly, with machinelike certainty and lack of heart, it went ahead undeviatingly, careless of obstructions, indifferent to human beings in its path. There was something Prussian about it; something that recalled to him Bismarck and Moltke and 1870 with the exact, soulless mechanical perfection of the systematic trampling of the France of Napoleon III.... And, just as the Bonbright Foote tradition crunched the strike to pieces so it was crunching and macerating his own individuality until it would be a formless mass ready for the mold.

The will should be a straight steel rod urged in one undeviating direction by heart and mind. No day passed upon which the rod of Bonbright's will was not bent, was not twisted to make it follow the direction of some other will stronger than his—the direction of the accumulated wills of all the Bonbright Footes who had built up the family tradition.

No initiative was allowed him; he was not permitted to interest himself in the business in his own youthful, healthy way; but he must see it through dead eyes, he must initiate nothing, criticize nothing, suggest nothing. He must follow rule.

His father was not satisfied with him, that he realized—and that he was under constant suspicion. He was unsatisfactory. His present mental form was not acceptable and must undergo painful processes of alteration. His parents would have taken him back, as a bad bargain, and exchanged him for something else if they could, but being unable, they must make him into something else.

Humiliation lay heavy on him. Every man in the employ of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, must realize the shamefulness of his position, that he was a fiction, a sham held up by his father's hands. Orders issued from his lips to unsmiling subordinates, who knew well they were not his orders, but words placed in his mouth to recite parrot- like. Letters went out under his signature, dictated by him— according to the dictation of his father. He was a rubber stamp, a mechanical means of communication.... He was not a man, an individual—he was a marionette dancing to ill-concealed strings.

The thing he realized with abhorrence was that when he was remade, when he became the thing the artisans worked upon him to create—when at last his father passed from view and he remained master of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, it would not be Bonbright Foote VII who was master. It would be an automaton, a continuation of other automatons.... It is said the Dalai Lama is perpetual, always the same, never changing from age to age. A fiction maintained by a mystic priesthood supplying themselves secretly with fresh Dalai Lama material as needful—with a symbol to hold in awe the ignorance of their religionists.... Bonbright saw that he was expected to be a symbol....

He approached his desk in the morning with loathing, and left it at night without relief. Hopelessness was upon him and he could not flee from it; it was inescapable.

True, he sought relief. Malcolm Lightener had become his fast friend —a sort of life preserver for his soul. In spite of his youth and Lightener's maturity there was real companionship between them.... Lightener knew what was going on, and in his granite way he tried to help the boy. Bonbright was not interested in his own business, so Lightener awakened in him an interest in Lightener's business. He discussed his affairs with the boy. He talked of systems, of efficiency, of business methods. He taught Bonbright as he would have taught his own son, half realizing the futility of his teaching. Nor had he question as to the righteousness of his proceeding. Because a boy's father follows an evil course the parenthood does not hallow that course.... So Bonbright learned, not knowing that he learned, and in his own office he made comparisons. The methods of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, he compared with the methods of Malcolm Lightener. He saw where modern business would make changes and improvements—but after the first few trampled-on suggestions he remained silent and grew indifferent.

Once he suggested the purchase of dictating machines.

"Fol-de-rol," said his father, brusquely—and the matter ended.

In Lightener's plant he saw lathes which roughed and finished in one process and one handling. In his own plant castings must pass from one machine to another, and through the hands of extra and unnecessary employees. It was economic waste. But he offered no suggestion. He saw time lost here, labor lavished there, but he was indifferent. He knew better. He knew how it should be done—but he did not care.... The methods of Bonbright Foote I not only suited his father, but were the laws of his father's life.

Not only had Bonbright established sympathetic relations with Malcolm Lightener, but with Lightener's family. In Mrs. Lightener he found a woman whose wealth had compelled the so-called social leaders of the city to accept her, but whose personality, once she was accepted, had won her a firm, enduring position. He found her a woman whose sudden, almost magical, change from obscurity and the lower fringe of salary- drawers to a wealth that made even America gasp, had not made her dizzy. Indeed, it seemed not to have affected her character at all. Her dominant note was motherliness. She was still the housewife. She continued to look after her husband and daughter just as she had looked after them in the days when she had lived in a tiny frame house and had cooked the meals and made the beds.... She represented womanhood of a sort Bonbright had never been on terms of intimate friendship with.... There was much about her which gave him food for reflection.

And Hilda.... Since their first meeting there had been no reference to the desire of their mothers for their marriage. For a while the knowledge of this had made it difficult for Bonbright to offer her his friendship and companionship. But when he saw, as the weeks went by, how she was willing to accept him unaffectedly as a friend, a comrade, a chum, how the maternal ambition to unite the families seemed to be wholly absent from her thoughts, they got on delightfully.

Bonbright played with her. Somehow she came to represent recreation in his life. She was jolly, a splendid sportswoman, who could hold her own with him at golf or tennis, and who drove an automobile as he would never have dared to drive.

She was not beautiful, but she was attractive, and the center of her attractiveness was her wholesomeness, her frankness, her simplicity. ... He could talk to her as he could not talk even to her father, yet he could not open his heart fully even to her. He could not show her the soul tissues that throbbed and ached.

He was lonely. A lonely boy thrown with an attractive girl is a fertile field for the sowing of love. But Bonbright was not in love with Hilda.... The idea did not occur to him. There was excellent reason—though he had not arrived at a realization of it, and this excellent reason was Ruth Frazer.

He had ventured to accept Ruth's impulsive invitation to come to see her. Not frequently, not so frequently as his inclinations urged, but more frequently than was, perhaps, wise in his position.... She represented a new experience. She was utterly outside his world, and so wholly different from the girls of his world. It was an attractive difference.... And her grin! When it glowed for him he felt for the moment as if the world were really a pleasant place to spend one's life.

He learned from her. New ideas and comprehensions came to him as a result of her conversations with him. Through her eyes he was seeing the other side. Not all her theories, not even all her facts, could he accept, but no matter how radical, no matter how incendiary her words, he delighted to hear her voice uttering them. In short, Bonbright Foote VII, prince of the Foote Dynasty, was in danger of falling in love with the beggar maid.

So, many diverse forces and individualities were at work upon the molding of Bonbright Foote. One, and one only, he recognized, and that was the stern, ever-apparent, iron-handed wrenching of his father. There were times, which grew more and more frequent, when he fancied he had surrendered utterly to it and had handed over his soul to Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. He fancied he was sitting by apathetically watching the family tradition squeeze it into the desired form....

After a wretched day he had called on Ruth. The next morning soft- footed Rangar had moved shadowlike into his father's office, and presently his father summoned him to come in.

"I am informed," said the gentleman who was devoting his literary talents to a philosophical biography of the Marquis Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds, friend of Liberty and Equality, "that you have been going repeatedly to the house of that girl who formerly was your secretary—whose mother runs a boarding house for anarchists."

The suddenness, the unexpectedness of attack upon this angle, nonplussed Bonbright. He could only stand silent, stamped with the guilty look of youth.

"Is it true?" snapped his father.

"I have called on Miss Frazer," Bonbright said, unsteadily.

Mr. Foote stood up. It was his habit to stand up in all crises, big or little.

"Have you no respect for your family name?... If you must have things like this in your life, for God's sake keep them covered up. Don't be infernally blatant about them. Do you want the whole city whispering like ghouls over the liaison of my son with—with a female anarchist who is—the daughter of a boarding-house keeper?"

Liaison!... Liaison!... The foreign term beat again and again against Bonbright's consciousness before it gained admission. Used in connection with Ruth Frazer, with his relations with Ruth Frazer, it was dead, devoid of meaning, conveyed no meaning to his brain.

"Liaison, sir!... Liaison?" he said, fumblingly.

"I can find a plainer term if you insist."

For a moment Bonbright felt curiously calm, curiously cold, curiously detached from the scene. He regarded the other man.... This man was his father. His FATHER! The laws of life and of humanity demanded that he regard this man with veneration. Yet, offhand, without investigation, this man could jump to a vile conclusion regarding him. Not only that, but could accuse him, not of guilt, but of failing to conceal guilt!... Respectability! He knew he was watching a manifestation of the family tradition. It was wrong to commit an unworthy act, but it was a sin unspeakable to be caught by the public in the commission.

His mind worked slowly. It was a full half minute before the thought bored through to him that HE was not the sole nor the greatest sufferer by this accusation. It was not HE who was insulted. It was not HE who was outraged.... It was HER!

His father could think that of her—casually. The mere fact that she was poor, not of his station, a wage-earner, made it plain to the senior Foote that Ruth Frazer would welcome a squalid affair with his son.... The Sultan throwing his handkerchief.

Bonbright's calm gave place to turmoil, his chill to heat.

"It's not true," he said, haltingly, using feeble words because stronger had not yet had time to surge up to the surface.

"Bosh!" said the father.

Then Bonbright blazed. Restraints crumbled. The Harvard manner peeled off and lay quivering with horror at his feet. He stepped a pace closer to his father, so that his face was close to his father's face, and his smoldering eyes were within inches of his father's scornful ones.

"It's a lie," he said, huskily, "a damned, abominable, insulting lie."

"Young man," his father shipped back, "be careful...."

"Careful!... I don't know who carried this thing to you, but whoever did was a miserable, sneaking mucker. He lied and he knew he lied. ... And you, sir, you were willing to believe. Probably you were eager to believe.... I sha'n't defend Miss Frazer. Only a fool or a mucker could believe such a thing of her.... Yes, I have been to see her, and I'll tell you why.... I'll tell you why, good and plenty! ... My first day in this place she was the only human, pleasant thing I met. Her smile was the only life or brightness in the place.... Everything else was dead men's bones. The place is a tomb and it stinks of graveclothes. Our whole family stinks of graveclothes. Family tradition!... Men dead and rotten and eaten by worms—they run this place, and you want me to let them run me.... Every move you make you consult a skeleton.... And you want to smash and crush and strangle me so that I'll be willing to walk with a weight of dead bones.... I've tried. You are my father, and I thought maybe you knew best.... I've submitted. I've submitted to your humiliations, to having everything that's ME—that is individual in me—stamped out, and stuff molded to the family pattern rammed back in its place. ... She was the only bright spot in the whole outfit—and you kicked her out.... And I've been going to see her—just to see her smile and to get courage from it to start another day with you.... That's what my life has been here, and you made it so, and you will keep on making it so.... Probably you'll grind me into the family groove. Maybe I'm ground already, but that doesn't excuse what you've just said, and it doesn't make it any less an abominable lie, nor the man who reported it to you any less a muck-hearted sewer..."

He stopped, pale, panting, quivering.

"How dare you!... How dare—"

"Dare!"... Bonbright glared at his father; then he felt a great, quivering emotion welling up within him, a something he was ashamed to have the eye of man look upon. His lips began to tremble. He swung on his heel and ran staggeringly toward his door, but there he stopped, clutched the door frame, and cried, chokingly, "It's a lie. ... A lie.... A slimy lie!"



CHAPTER XI

Mr. Foote stood motionless, staring after his son as be might have stared at some phenomenon which violated a law of nature; for instance, as he might have stared at the sun rising in the west, at a stream flowing uphill, at Newton's apple remaining suspended in air instead of falling properly to the ground. He was not angry—yet. That personal and individual emotion would come later; what he experienced now was a FAMILY emotion, a staggering astonishment participated in by five generations of departed Bonbright Footes.

He was nonplussed. Here had happened a thing which could not happen. In the whole history of the Foote family there had never been recorded an instance of a son uttering such words to his father or of his family. There was no instance of an outburst even remotely resembling this one. It simply could not be.... And yet it was. He had witnessed it, listened to it, had been the target at which his son's hot words had been hurled.

For most occurrences in his life Mr. Foote could find a family precedent. This matter had been handled thus, and that other matter had been handled so. But this thin—it had never been handled because it had never happened. He was left standing squarely on his own feet, without aid or support.

Mortification mingled with his astonishment. It had remained for him- -who had thought to add to the family laurels the literary achievement of portraying philosophically the life of the Marquis Lafayette—to father a son who could be guilty of thinking such thoughts and uttering such words. He looked about the room apprehensively, as if he feared to find assembled there the shades of departed Bonbrights who had been eavesdropping, as the departed are said to do by certain psychic persons.... He hoped they had not been listening at his keyhole, for this was a squalid happening that he must smother, cover up, hide forever from their knowledge.

These sensations were succeeded by plain, ordinary, common, uncultured, ancestorless anger. Bonbright Foote VI retained enough personality, enough of his human self, to be able to become angry. True, he did not do it as one of his molders would have done; he was still a Foote, even in passion. It was a dignified, a cultured, a repressed passion... but deep-seated and seething for an outlet, just the same. What he felt might be compared distantly to what other men feel when they seize upon the paternal razor strop and apply it wholesomely to that portion of their son's anatomy which tradition says is most likely to turn boys to virtue.... He wanted to compel Bonbright to make painful reparation to his ancestors. He wanted to inflict punishment of some striking, uncommon, distressing sort....

His anger increased, and he became even more human. With a trifle more haste than was usual, with the studied, cultured set of his lips less studied and cultured than ever they had been before, he strode to his son's door. Something was going to happen. He was restraining himself, but something would happen now. He felt it and feared it. ... His rage must have an outlet. Vaguely he felt that fire must be fought with fire—and he all unaccustomed to handling that element. But he would rise to the necessities....

He stepped into Bonbright's room, keyed up to eruption, but he did not erupt. Nobody was there to erupt AT. Bonbright was gone....

Mr. Foote went back to his desk and sat there nervously drumming on its top with his fingers. He was not himself. He had never been so disturbed before and did not know it was possible for him to be upset in this manner. There had been other crises, other disagreeable happenings in his life, but he had met them calmly, dispassionately, with what he was pleased to call philosophy. He had liked to fancy himself as ruled wholly by intellect and not at all by emotion. And now emotion had caught him up as a tidal wave might catch up a strong swimmer, and tossed him hither and thither, blinded by its spray and helpless.

His one coherent thought was that something must be done about it. At such a moment some fathers would have considered the advisability of casting their sons loose to shift for themselves as a punishment for too much independence and for outraging the laws requiring unquestioning respect for father from son. This course did not even occur to Mr. Foote. It was in the nature of things that it should not, for in his mind his son was a permanent structure, a sort of extension on the family house. He was THERE. Without him the family ended, the family business passed into the hands of strangers. There would be no Bonbright Foote VIII who, in his turn, should become the father of Bonbright Foote IX, and so following. No, he did not hold even tentatively the idea of disinheritance.

Something, however, must be done, and the something must result in his son's becoming what he wanted his son to become. Bonbright must be grasped and shoved into the family groove and made to travel and function there. There could be no surrender, no wavering, no concession made by the family.... The boy must be made into what he ought to be—but how? And he must have his lesson for this day's scene. He must be shown that he could not, with impunity, outrage the Family Tradition and flout the Family Ghosts.... Again—how?

What Bonbright intended in his present state of boyish rage and revolt, his father did not consider. It was characteristic of him that he failed to think of that. All his considerations were of what he and the Family should do to Bonbright.... A general would doubtless have called this defective strategy. To win battles one must have some notion of the enemy's intentions—and of his potentialities.... His determination—set and stiff as cold metal— was that something unpleasant should happen to the boy and that the boy should be brought to his senses.... If anyone had hinted to him that the boy was just coming to his senses he would have listened as one listens to a patent absurdity.

He pressed the buzzer which summoned Rangar, and presently that soft- footed individual appeared silently in the door—looking as Mr. Foote had never seen him look before. Rangar was breathing hard, he was flustered, his necktie was awry, and his face was ivory white. Also, though Mr. Foote did not take in this detail, his eyes smoldered with restrained malignancy.

"Why, Rangar," said Mr. Foote, "what's wrong?"

"Wrong, Mr. Foote!... I—It was Mr. Bonbright."

"What about Mr. Bonbright?"

"A moment ago he came rushing out of his office—I use the word rushing advisedly.... He was in a rage, sir. He was, you could see it plain. I—I was in his way, sir, and I stepped aside. But he wouldn't have it. No, sir, he wouldn't.... He reached out, Mr. Foote, and grabbed me; yes, sir, grabbed me right before the whole office. It was by the front of the shirt and the necktie, and he shook me.... He's a strong young man.... And he said, 'You're the sneak that's been running to father with lies,' and then he shook me again. 'I suppose,' he says in a second, 'that I've got to expect to be spied on.... Go ahead, it's a job that fits you.' Yes, sir, that's exactly what he said in his own words. 'Fits me,' says he. And then he shook me again and threw me across the alleyway so that I fell over on a desk. 'Spy ahead,' he says, so that everybody in the office heard him and was snickering at me, 'but report what you see after this—and see to it it's the truth.... One more lie like this one,' he says, and then stopped and rushed on out of the office. It was a threat, Mr. Foote, and he meant it. He means me harm."

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Foote, holding himself resolutely in the character he had built for himself. "A fit of boyish temper."

Rangar's eyes glinted, but he made no rejoinder.

"He rather lost his temper with ME," said Mr. Foote, "when I accused him of a liaison with that girl.... He denied it, Rangar, or so I understood. He was very young and—tempestuous about it. Are you sure you were right?"

"What else would he be going there for, Mr. Foote?"

"My idea exactly."

"Unless, sir, he fancies he's in love with the girl.... I once knew a young man in a position similar to Mr. Bonbright's who fell in love with a girl who sold cigars in a hotel.... He fairly DOGGED her, sir. Wanted to marry her. You wouldn't believe it, but that's what he did, and his family had to buy her off and send her away or he'd have done it, too.... It might happen to any young man, Mr. Foote."

"Not to a member of my family, Rangar."

"I can't agree with you, sir.... Nobody's immune to it. You can't deny that Mr. Bonbright has been going to see her regularly. Five or six times he's been there, and stayed a long time every visit.... It was one thing or the other he went for, and you can't deny that. If he says it wasn't what you accused him of, then it was the other."

"You mean that my son—a Foote—could fall in love, as you call it, with the daughter of a boarding house and a companion of anarchists?"

"I hate to say it to you, sir, but there isn't anything else to believe.... He's young, Mr. Foote, and fiery. She isn't bad looking, either, and she's clever. A clever girl can do a lot with a boy, no matter who he is, if she sets her heart on him. It wouldn't be a bad match for a girl like her if she was to entice Mr. Bonbright into a marriage."

"Impossible, Rangar.... However, you have an eye kept on him. I want to be told every move he makes, where he goes, who he sees. I want to know everything about him, Rangar. Will you see to it?"

"Yes, sir," said Rangar, a gleam of malice again visible in his eyes.

"What do you know about this girl? Have you had her looked up?"

"Not fully, sir. But I've heard she was heart and soul with what these anarchists believe. Her father was one of them. Killed by the police or soldiers or somebody.... The unions educated her. That's why Dulac went to live there—to help them out.... And it's been reported to me, Mr. Foote, that Dulac was sweet on her himself. That came from a reliable source."

"My son a rival of an anarchist for the favor of the daughter of a cheap boarding house!" exclaimed Mr. Foote.

"This Dulac was seen, Mr. Foote, with reference to the strike. He's a fanatic. Nothing could be done with him. He actually offered violence to our agent who attempted to show him how it would be to his benefit to—to be less energetic. We offered him—"

"I don't care to hear what we offered him. Such details are distasteful, Rangar. That's what I hire you for, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir.... Anyhow, Mr. Foote, he couldn't be bought."

"Yes.... Yes. Well, we'll have to continue along the lines we've been following. They have been not unsuccessful."

"True enough. It's just a question of time now. It might do some good, Mr. Foote, to have the rumor get about that we wouldn't take back any men who did not apply for reinstatement before the end of next week.... There's considerable discontent, due largely to insufficient nourishment. Yes, we can lay it to that, I imagine. It's this man Dulac that holds the strike together. If only every laboring man had a dozen babies there'd be less strikes," Rangar finished, not exactly callously, but in a matter-of-fact way. If he had thought of it he might have added, "and a sick wife." Rangar would not have hesitated to provide each striker with the babies and the wife, purely as a strike-breaking measure, if he could have managed the matter.

"They're improvident," said Mr. Foote, sagaciously. "If they must strike and cut off their earnings every so often, why don't they lay up savings to carry them through?"

"They seem to have the notion, sir, that they don't earn enough to save. That, while it isn't their main grievance, is an important one. But the idiots put nonsensical, immaterial grievances ahead of money matters mostly.... Rights! Rights to do this or not to do that—to organize or to sit at board meetings. They're not practical, Mr. Foote. If it was just money they wanted we might get on with them. It's men like this Dulac putting notions into their heads that they haven't brains enough to think of themselves. Social revolution, you know—that sort of thing."

"Do what you like about it. You might have notices tacked up outside the gates stating that we wouldn't take back men who weren't back by the date you named. And, Rangar, be sure Mr. Bonbright's name is signed to it. I want to rid the men thoroughly of any absurd ideas about him."

"You have, sir. If Dulac is a fair sample, you have. Why, he seems regularly to HATE Mr. Bonbright. Called him names, and that sort of thing.... Maybe, though, there's something personal mixed up in it."

"That girl?..."

"Very likely, sir."

"You know her, Rangar. She worked under you. What sort of girl is she?... I mean would you consider it wise to approach her with a proposition—delicately put, of course—to—say—move to another city, or something of the sort?"

"My observation of her—while not close—(you understand I have little opportunity for close observations of unimportant subordinates)—was that it would be unwise and—er—futile. She seemed to have quite a will. Indeed, I may say she seemed stubborn ... and no fool. If she's got a chance at Mr. Bonbright she wouldn't give it up for a few dollars. Not her, sir."

"I don't recall her especially. Small—was she not? Not the—ah— ripe—rounded type to attract a boy? Eh?"

"Curves and color don't always do it, Mr. Foote, I've observed. I've known scrawny ones, without a thing to stir up the imagination, that had ten boys running after them to one running after the kind they have pictures of on calendars.... I don't know if it's brains, or what, but they've got something that attracts."

"Hum!... Can't say I've had much experience. Probably you're right. Anyhow, we're faced by something definite in the way of a condition. ... If the thing is merely a liaison—we can break it up, I imagine, without difficulty. If my son is so blind to right and wrong, and to his position, as to want to MARRY the girl, we'll have to resort promptly to effective measures."

"Promptly," said Rangar. "And quietly, Mr. Foote. If she got an idea there was trouble brewing, she might off with him and get married before we could wink."

"Heavens!... An anarchistic boarding-house girl for a daughter-in- law! We'd be a proud family, Rangar."

"Yes, sir. I understand you leave it with me?"

"I leave it with you to keep an eye on Bonbright. Consult with me before acting. My son is in a strange humor. He'll take some handling, I'm afraid, before we bring him to see things as my son ought to see them. But I'll bring him there, Rangar. I should be doing my duty very indifferently, indeed, if I did not. He's resentful. He wants to display a thing he calls his individuality—as if our family had use for such things. We're Footes, and I rather fancy the world knows what that means.... My son shall be a Foote, Rangar. That's all.... Stay a moment, though. Hereafter bear in mind I do not care to be troubled with squalid details. If things have to be done, do them.... If babies must be hungry—why, I suppose it is a condition that must exist from time to time. The fault of their fathers.... However, I do not care to hear about them. I am engaged on an important literary work, as you know, and such things tend to distract me."

"Naturally, sir," said Rangar.

"But you will on no account relax your firmness with these strikers. They must be shown."

"They're being shown," said Rangar, grimly, and walked out of the office. In the corridor his face, which had been expressionless or obsequious when he saw the need, changed swiftly. His look was that of a man thinking of an enemy. There was malice, vindictiveness, hatred in that look, and it expressed with exactness his sentiments toward young Bonbright Foote.... It did not express all of them, for, lurking in the background, unseen, was a deep contempt. Rangar despised Bonbright as a nincompoop, as he expressed it privately.

"If I didn't think," he said, "I'd get all the satisfaction I need by leaving him to his father, I'd take a hand myself. But the Foote spooks will give it to him better than I could.... I can't wish him any worse luck than to be left to THEM." He chuckled and felt of his disarranged tie.

As for Bonbright Foote VI, he was frightened. No other word can describe his sensations. The idea that his son might marry—actually MARRY—this girl, was appalling. If the boy should actually take such an unthinkable step before he could be prevented, what a situation would arise!

"Of course it wouldn't last," he said to himself. "Such marriages never do.... But while it did last—And there might be a child—a SON!" A Bonbright Foote VIII come of such a mother, with base blood in his veins! He drew his aristocratic shoulders together as though he felt a chill.

"When he comes back," Mr. Foote said, "we'll have this thing out."

But Bonbright did not come back that day, nor was he visible at home that night.... The next day dragged by and still he did not appear. ...



CHAPTER XII

Ruth Frazer had been working nearly two months for Malcolm Lightener, and she liked the place. It had been a revelation to her following her experience with Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. It INTERESTED her, fascinated her. There was an atmosphere in the tremendous offices—a tension, a SNAPPINESS, an alertness, an efficiency that made Bonbright Foote, Incorporated, seem an anachronism; as belonging in an earlier, more leisurely, less capable century. There was a spirit among the workers totally lacking in her former place of employment; there was an attitude in superiors, and most notable in Malcolm Lightener himself, which was so different from that of Mr. Foote that it seemed impossible. Foote held himself aloof from contacts with his help and his business. Malcolm Lightener was everywhere, interested in everything, mixing into everything. And though she perceived his granite qualities, experienced his brusqueness, his gruffness, she, in common with the office, felt for him something that was akin to affection. He was the sort to draw forth loyalty.

Her first encounter with him occurred a couple of days after her arrival in the office. She was interrupted in the transcription of a letter by a stern voice behind her, saying:

"You're young Foote's anarchist, aren't you?"

She looked up frightened into the unsmiling eyes of Malcolm Lightener.

"Mr. Foote—got me my place here," she said, hesitatingly.

"Here—take this letter." And almost before she could snatch book and pencil he was dictating, rapidly, dynamically. When Malcolm Lightener dictated a letter he did it as though he were making a public speech, with emphasis and gesture. "There," he said, "read it back to me."

She did, her voice unsteady.

"Spell isosceles," he demanded.

She managed the feat accurately.

"Uh!... That usually gets 'em.... Needn't transcribe that letter. Like it here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

She looked up at him, considering the matter. Why did she like it there? "Because," she said, slowly, "it doesn't seem like just a—a— big, grinding machine, and the people working here like wheels and pulleys and little machines. It all feels ALIVE, and—and—we feel like human beings."

"Huh!..." he grunted, and frowned down at her. "Brains," he said. "Mighty good thing to have. Took brains to be able to think that—and say it." He turned away, then said, suddenly, over his shoulder, "Got any bombs in your desk?"

"Bombs!..."

"Because," he said, with no trace of a smile, "we don't allow little girls to bring bombs in here.... If you see anything around that you think needs an infernal machine set off under it, why, you come and tell me. See?... Tell me before you explode anything—not after. You anarchists are apt to get the cart before the horse."

"I'm not an anarchist, Mr. Lightener."

"Huh!... What are you, then?"

"I think—I'm sure I'm a Socialist."

"All of the same piece of cloth.... Mind, if you feel a bomb coming on—see me about it." He walked away to stop by the desk of a mailing clerk and enter into some kind of conversation with the boy.

Ruth looked after him in a sort of daze. Then she heard the girls about her laughing.

"You've passed your examination, Miss Frazer," said the girl at the next desk. "Everybody has to.... You never can tell what he's going to do, but he's a dear. Don't let him scare you. If he thought he had he'd be tickled to death—and then he'd find some way to show you you needn't be at all."

"Oh!" said Ruth.

More than once she saw laboring men, machinists, men in greasy overalls, with grimy hands and smeared faces, pass into Malcolm Lightener's office, and come out with the Big Boss walking beside them, talking in a familiar, gruff, interested way. She was startled sometimes to hear such men address him by his first name—and to see no lightning from heaven flash blastingly. She was positively startled once when a machinist flatly contradicted Lightener in her hearing on some matter pertaining to his work.

"That hain't the way at all," the man said, flatly. Ruth waited for the explosion.

"Landers planned it that way." Landers was chief engineer in the plant, drawing a princely salary.

"Landers is off his nut. He got it out of a book. I'm DOIN' it. I tell you it won't work."

"Why?" Always Lightener had a WHY. He was constantly shooting it at folks, and it behooved them to have a convincing answer. The machinist had, and he set it forth at length and technically. Lightener listened.

"You win," he said, when the man was done. That was all.

More than once Ruth saw Hilda Lightener in the office. Usually the girls in an office fancy they have a grudge against the fortunate daughter of their employer. They are sure she snubs them, or is a snob, or likes to show off her feathers before them. This was notably absent in Hilda's case. She knew many by name and stopped to chat with them. She was simple, pleasant, guiltless of pomp and circumstance in her comings and goings.

"They say she's going to marry young Foote. The Foote company makes axles for us," said Ruth's neighbor, and after that Ruth became more interested in Hilda.

She liked Bonbright Foote and was sorry for him. Admitting the unwisdom of his calls upon her, she had not the heart to forbid him, especially that he had shown no signs of sentiment, or of stepping beyond the boundary lines of simple friendship.... She saw to it that he and Dulac did not meet.

As for Dulac—she had disciplined him for his outbreak as was the duty of a self-respecting young woman, and had made him eat his piece of humble pie. It had not affected her veneration for his work, nor her admiration for the man and his sincerity and his ability.... She had answered his question, and the answer had been yes, for she had come to believe that she loved him....

She saw how tired he was looking. She perceived the discouragements that weighed on him, and saw, as he refused to see, that the strike was a failure in spite of his efforts. And she was sensible. The strike had failed; nothing was to be gained by sustaining the ebbing remnants of it, by making men and women and children suffer futilely. ... She would have ended it and begun straight-way preparing a strike that would not fail. But she did not say so to him. He HAD to fight. She saw that. She saw, too, that it was not in him to admit defeat or to surrender. It would be necessary to crush him first.

And then, at five o'clock, as she came out of the office she found Bonbright Foote waiting for her in his car. It had never happened before.

"I—I came for you," he said, awkwardly, yet with something of tenseness in his voice.

"You shouldn't," she said, not unkindly. He would understand the reasons.

"I had to," he said. "I—all day I've done nothing but wait to see you. I've got to talk to you.... Please, now that I'm here, won't you get in?"

She saw that something was wrong, that something out of the ordinary had happened, and as she stepped into the car she shot a glance at his set face and felt a wave of sympathy for him.

"I want you to—to have something to eat with me—out in the country. I want to get away from town. Let me send a messenger to your mother. I know you don't want to, and—and all that, but you'll come, won't you?"

Ruth considered. There was much to consider, but she knew he was an honest, wholesome boy—and he was in trouble.

"This once," she said, and let him see her grin.

"Thank you," he said, simply.

It was but a short drive to an A. D. T. office, where Bonbright wrote a message to Mrs. Frazer:

I'm taking your daughter to Apple Lake to dinner. I hope you won't mind. And I promise to have her home safe and early.

A boy was dispatched with this, and Bonbright and Ruth drove out the Avenue with the evening sun in their faces, toward distant, beautiful Apple Lake. Bonbright drove in silence, his eyes on the road. Ruth was alone in her appreciation of the loveliness of the waning day.

The messenger left on his bicycle, but had not gone farther than around the first corner when a gentleman drew up beside him in an automobile.

"Hey, kid, I want to speak to you," said Mr. Rangar.

The boy stopped and the car stopped.

"You've got a message there that I'm interested in," said Rangar. "It isn't sealed. I want a look at it." He held out a five-dollar bill. The boy pocketed the bill and handed over the message, which Rangar read and returned to him. Then Rangar drove to the office from which the boy had come and dispatched a message of his own, one not covered by his instructions from Mr. Foote. It was a private matter with him, inspired by an incident of the morning having to do with a rumpled necktie and a ruffled dignity. The malice which had glittered in his eyes then was functioning now.

Rangar's message was to Dulac.

"Your girl's just gone to Apple Lake with young Foote in his car," it said. That was all, but it seemed ample to Rangar.

Bonbright was not a reckless driver, but he drove rapidly this evening, with a sort of driven eagerness. From, time to time Ruth turned and glanced at his face and wondered what could have happened, for she had never seen him like this before, even in his darkest moments. There was a new element in his bearing, an element never there before. Discouragement, apathy, she had seen, and bitterness. She had seen wistfulness, hopelessness, chagrin, humiliation, but never until now had she seen set determination, smoldering embers of rage. What, she wondered, could this boy's father have done to him now?

Soon they were beyond the rim of industry which banded the city, and, leaving behind them towering chimneys, smokeless for the night, clouds of released working-men waiting their turns to crowd into overloaded street cars, the grimy, busy belt line which extended in a great arc through the body of the manufacturing strip, they passed through sprouting, mushroomlike suburban villages—villages which had not been there the year before, which would be indistinguishable from the city itself the year after. Farther on they sped between huge- lettered boards announcing the location of real-estate developments which as yet consisted only of new cement sidewalks, immature trees promising future shade, and innumerable stakes marking lot boundaries. Mile after mile these extended, a testimonial to the faith of men in the growth of their city.... And then came the country, guiltless of the odors of gregarious humanity, of gasses, of smokes, of mankind itself, and of the operations which were preparing its food. Authentic farms spread about them; barns and farmhouses were dropped down at intervals; everywhere was green quiet, softened, made to glow enticingly by the sun's red disk about to dip behind the little hills.... All this Ruth saw and loved. It was an unaccustomed sight, for she was tied to the city. It altered her mood, softened her, made her more pliable. Bonbright could have planned no better than to have driven her along this road....

Presently they turned off at right angles, upon a country road shaded by century-old maples—a road that meandered leisurely along, now dipping into a valley created for agriculture, now climbing a hillside rich with fruit trees; and now and then, from hilltop, or through gap in the verdure, the gleam of quiet, rush-fringed lakes came to Ruth—and touched her, touched her so that her heart was soft and her lashes wet.... The whole was so placid, so free from turmoil, from competition, from the tussling of business and the surging upward of down-weighted classes. She was grateful to it.

Yet when, as she did now and then, she glanced at Bonbright, she felt the contrast. All that was present in the landscape was absent from his soul. There was no peace there, no placidity, but unrest, bitterness, unhappiness—grimness. Yes, grimness. When the word came into her mind she knew it was the one she had been searching for.... Why was he so grim?

Presently they entered upon a road which ran low beside Apple Lake itself, with tiny ripples lapping almost at the tire marks in the sand. She looked, and breathed deeply and gladly. If she could only live on such a spot!...

The club house was deserted save by the few servants, and Bonbright gave directions that they should be served on the veranda. It was almost the first word he had uttered since leaving the city. He led the way to a table, from which they could sit and look out on the water.

"It's lovely," she said.

"I come here a good deal," he said, without explanation, but she understood.

"If I were you, I'd LIVE here. Every day I would have the knowledge that I was coming home to THIS in the evening.... You could. Why don't you, I wonder?"

"I don't know. I can't remember a Foote who has ever lived in such a place. If it hasn't been done in my family, of course I couldn't do it."

She pressed her lips together at the bitter note in his voice. It was out of tune. "Have the ancestors been after you?" she asked. She often spoke of the ancestors lightly and jokingly, which she saw he rather liked.

"The whole lot have been riding me hard. And I'm a well-trained nag. I never buck or balk.... I never did till to-day."

"To-day?"

"I bucked them off in a heap," he said, with no trace of humor. He was dead serious. "I didn't know I could do it, but all of a sudden I was plunging and rearing—and snorting, I expect.... And they were off."

"To stay?"

He dropped his eyes and fell silent. "Anyhow," he said, presently, "it's a relief to be running free even for an hour."

"When they go to climb back why don't you buck some more? Now that they're off—keep them off."

"It's not so easy. You see, I've been trained all my life to carry them. You can't break off a thing like that in an instant. A priest doesn't turn atheist in a night... and this Family Tradition business is like a religion. It gets into your bones. You RESPECT it. You feel it demanding things of you and you can't refuse.... I suppose there is a duty."

"To yourself," she said, quickly.

"To THEM—and to the—the future.... But I bucked them off once. Maybe they'll never ride so hard again, and maybe they'll try to break me by riding harder.... Until to-day I never had a notion of fighting back—but I'm going to give them a job of it now.... There are things I WILL do. They sha'n't always have their way. Right now, Miss Frazer, I've broken with the whole thing. They may be able to fetch me back. I don't know.... Sometime I'll have to go. When father's through I'd have to go, anyhow—to head the business."

"Your father ought to change the name of the business to Family Ghosts, Incorporated," she said, with an attempt to lighten his seriousness.

"I'll be general manager—responsible to a board of directors from across the Styx," he said, with an approach to a smile. "Here's our waiter. I telephoned our order. Hope I've chosen to please you."

"Indeed you have," she replied. "I feel quite the aristocrat. I ought not to do this sort of thing.... But I'm glad to do it once. I abhor the rich," she said, laughing, "but some of the things they do and have are mighty pleasant."

After a while she said: "If I were a rich man's wife I'd be something more than a society gadabout. I'd insist on knowing his business... and I'd make him do a lot of things for his workmen. Think of being a woman and able to do so much for thousands of—of my class," she finished.

"Your class!" he said, sharply.

"I belong to the laboring class. First, because I was born into it, and, second, because my heart is with it."

"Class doesn't touch you. It doesn't concern you. You're YOURSELF." For the first time in her acquaintance with him he made her uneasy. His eyes and the way he spoke those sentences disturbed her.

"Nonsense!" she said.

Neither spoke for some time. It was growing dark now, and lights were glowing on the veranda. "When we're through," Bonbright said, "let's walk down by the lake. There's a bully walk and a place to sit.... I asked you to come because I wanted to take you there—miles away from everybody...."

She was distinctly startled now, but helpless. She read storm signals, but no harbor was at hand.

"We must be getting back," she said, lamely.

"It's not eight. We can go back in an hour.... Shall we walk down now? I can't wait, Ruth, to say what I've got to say...."

It was impossible to hold back, futile to attempt escape. She knew now why he had brought her and what he wanted to say, but she could not prevent it.... If he must have his say let it be where he desired. Very grave now, unhappy, her joy marred, she walked down the steps by his side and along the shore of the lake. "Here," he said, presently, drawing her into a nook occupied by a bench. She sat down obediently.

Was it fortunate or unfortunate that she did not know an automobile was just turning into the lake road, a hired automobile, occupied by her fiance, Dulac? Rangar's note had reached his hands and he had acted as Rangar had hoped....



CHAPTER XIII

Until a few moments before Ruth had never had a suspicion of Bonbright's feeling for her; she had not imagined he would ever cross that distinct line which separates the friend from the suitor. It was an unpleasant surprise to her. Not that he was repugnant to her, but she had already bestowed her affections, and now she would have to hurt this boy who had already suffered so much at the hands of others. She recoiled from it. She blamed herself for her blindness, but she was not to blame. What she had failed to foresee Bonbright himself had realized only that morning.

He had awakened suddenly to the knowledge that his sentiment for Ruth Frazer was not calm friendship, but throbbing love. He had been awakened to it rudely, not as most young men are shown that they love.... When he flung out of his father's office that morning he had recognized only a just rage; hardly had his feet carried him over the threshold before rage was crowded out by the realization of love. His father's words had aroused his rage because he loved the woman they maligned! Suddenly he knew it....

"It's SO," he said to himself. "It's so—and I didn't know it."

It was disconcerting, but he was glad. Almost at once he realized what a change this thing brought into his life, and the major consequences of it.... First, he would have her—he must have her— he would not live without her. It required no effort of determination to arrive at that decision. To win her, to have her for his own, was now the one important thing in his life. To do so would mean—what would it mean? The Family, dead and living, would be outraged. His father would stand aghast at his impiousness; his mother, class conscious as few of the under dogs are ever class conscious, would refuse to receive this girl as her daughter.... There would be bitterness—but there would be release. By this one step he would break with the Family Tradition and the Family Ghosts. They would cast him out.... But would they cast him out? He was Bonbright Foote VII, crown prince of the dynasty, vested with rights in the family and in the family's property by family laws of primogeniture and entail.... No, he would not be cast out, could not be cast out, for his father would let no sin of his son's stand in the way of a perpetuation of the family. Bonbright knew that if a complete breach opened between his father and himself it must be his hand that opened it. His father's would never do so.... He wondered if he could do so—if, when he was calm, he would desire to do so.

Once he recognized his love he could not be still; office walls could not contain him. He was in a fever to see Ruth with newly opened eyes, with eyes that would see her as they had not seen her in the days before.... He rushed out—to encounter Hangar, and to experience a surging return of rage.... Then he went on, with no aim or purpose but to get rid of the time that must pass before he could see Ruth. It was ten o'clock, and he could not see her until five. Seven hours....

Now she was here, within reach of his hand, her face, not beautiful by day, very lovely to his eyes as the rising moon stretched a ribbon of light across the lake to touch her with its magic glow... and he could not find words to say what must be said.

He had seated her on the bench and now paced up and down before her, struggling to become coherent.

Then words came, a torrent of them, not coherent, not eloquent, but REAL. Ruth recognized the reality in them. "I want you," he said, standing over her. "I didn't know—I didn't realize... until to-day. It's so.... It's been so right along. That's why I had to come to you.... I couldn't get along without seeing you, but I didn't know why.... I thought it was to see you smile. But it was because I had to be near you.... I want to be near you always. This morning I found out—and all day I've waited to see you.... That's all I've done—thought about you and waited. It seems as if morning were years away.... I don't know what I've done all day—just wandered around. I didn't eat—until to-night. I couldn't. I couldn't do anything until I saw you—and told you.... That's why I brought you here.... I wanted to tell you HERE—not back there.... Away from all that. ... I can't go on without you—that's what you mean to me. You're NECESSARY—like air or water.... I—Maybe you haven't thought about me this way. I didn't about you.... But you MUST... you MUST!"

It was pitiful. Tears wet Ruth's cheeks and she caught her breath to restrain a rising sob.

He became calmer, gentler. "Maybe I've surprised you," he said. "Maybe I've frightened you—I hope not. I don't mean to frighten you. I don't want you ever to be frightened or worried.... I want to keep all kinds of suffering out of your life if you'll let me. Won't you let me?..." He stood waiting.