.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 48621
   :PG.Title: Light-Fingered Gentry
   :PG.Released: 2015-03-31
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: David Graham Phillips
   :DC.Title: Light-Fingered Gentry
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1907
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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LIGHT-FINGERED GENTRY
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   .. _`NEVA`:

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      :alt: NEVA.

      NEVA.

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      LIGHT-FINGERED
      GENTRY

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      BY

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      DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

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      AUTHOR OF "THE SECOND GENERATION," ETC.

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      \D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
      NEW YORK
      MCMVII

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      COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
      \D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

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      COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1907, BY
      THE PEARSON PUBLISHING COMPANY

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      *Published, September, 1907*

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   CONTENTS

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CHAPTER

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I.—`A Matrimonial Mistake`_
II.—`A Feast and a Fiasco`_
III.—`"Only Cousin Neva"`_
IV.—`The Fosdick Family`_
V.—`Narcisse and Alois`_
VI.—`Neva Goes to School`_
VII.—`A Woman's Point of View`_
VIII.—`In Neva's Studio`_
IX.—`Master and Man`_
X.—`Amy Sweet and Amy Sour`_
XI.—`At Mrs. Trafford's`_
XII.—`"We Never Were"`_
XIII.—`Overlook Lodge`_
XIV.—`Woman's Distrust—and Trust`_
XV.—`Armstrong Swoops`_
XVI.—`Hugo Shows His Mettle`_
XVII.—`Violette's Tapestries`_
XVIII.—`Armstrong Proposes`_
XIX.—`Two Telephone Talks`_
XX.—`Boris Discloses Himself`_
XXI.—`A Sensational Day`_
XXII.—`A Duel After Lunch`_
XXIII.—`"The Woman Boris Loved"`_
XXIV.—`Neva Solves a Riddle`_
XXV.—`Two Women Intervene`_
XXVI.—`Trafford as a Dove of Peace`_
XXVII.—`Breakfast al Fresco`_
XXVIII.—`Foraging for Son-in-Law`_
XXIX.—`"If I Married You"`_
XXX.—`By a Trick`_
XXXI.—`"I Don't Trust Him"`_
XXXII.—`Armstrong Asks a Favor`_

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   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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`Neva`_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . *Frontispiece*

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`"She was giving Alois a free hand in planning surroundings"`_

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`"'I felt I must see you—must see you at once'"`_

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`"'You are my life, the light on my path'"`_

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.. _`A MATRIMONIAL MISTAKE`:

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   LIGHT-FINGERED GENTRY

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   \I

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   A MATRIMONIAL MISTAKE

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Toward noon on a stifling July day, a woman, a
young woman, left the main walk through the deserted
college grounds at Battle Field, and entered the path
that makes a faint tracing down the middle of Pine
Point.  That fingerlike peninsula juts far into Otter
Lake; it is a thicket of white pines, primeval, odorous.
Not a ripple was breaking the lake's broad, burnished
reach.  The snowy islets of summer cloud hung motionless,
like frescoes in an azure ceiling.  But among
the pines it was cool, and even murmurously musical.

In dress the young woman was as somber as the
foliage above and around her.  Her expression, also,
was somber—with the soberness of the ascetic, or of the
exceedingly shy, rather than of the sad.  She seemed
to diffuse a chill, like the feel of a precious stone—the
absence of heat found both in those who have never
been kindled by the fire of life and in those in whom
that fire has burned itself out.  There was not a trace
of coquetry in her appearance, no attempt to display to
advantage good points that ought to have been charms.
She was above the medium height, and seemed taller by
reason of the singular conformation of her face and
figure.  Her face was long and slim, and also her body,
and her neck and arms; her hands, ungloved, and her
feet, revealed by her walking skirt, had the same
characteristic; the line from her throat to the curve of her
bosom was of unusual length, and also the line of her
back, of her waist, of her legs.  Her hair was abundant,
but no one would have guessed how abundant, or how
varied its tints, so severely was it plaited and bound to
her head.  Her eyes were of that long narrow kind
which most women, fortunate enough to possess them,
know how to use with an effect at once satanic and
angelic, at once provoking and rebuking passions
tempestuous.  But this woman had somehow contrived to
reduce even those eyes to the apparently enforced
puritanism of the rest of her exterior.  She had the
elements of beauty, of a rare beauty; yet beautiful she
was not.  It was as if nature had molded her for love
and life, and then, in cruel freakishness, had failed to
breathe into her the vital breath.  A close observer
might have wondered whether this exterior was not a
mask deliberately held immobile and severe over an
intense, insurgent heart and mind.  But close observers
are few, and such a secret—if secret she had—would
pass unsuspected of mere shallow curiosity.

Within a few yards of the end of the peninsula she
lifted her gaze from the ground, on which it had been
steadily bent.  Across her face drifted a slight
smile—cold, or was it merely shy?  It revealed the even edge
of teeth of that blue-white which is beautiful only when
the complexion is clear and fine—and her complexion
was dull, sallow, as if from recent illness or much and
harassing worry.  The smile was an acknowledgment of
the salutation of a man who had thrown away a half-finished
cigarette and had risen from the bench at the
water's edge.

"How d'ye do, Neva," said he, politely enough, but
with look and tone no man addresses to a woman who
has for him the slightest sex interest.

"How are you, Horace," said she, losing the faint
animation her smile had given her face.  Somewhat
constrainedly, either from coldness or from
embarrassment, she gave him her hand.

They seated themselves on the bench with its many
carvings of initials and fraternity symbols.  She took
advantage of his gaze out over the lake to look at him;
but her eyes were inscrutable.  He was a big,
powerful-looking man—built on the large plan, within as well
as without, if the bold brow and eyes and the strong
mouth, unconcealed by his close-cropped fair mustache,
did not mislead.  At first glance he seemed about
thirty; but there were in his features lines of
experience, of firmness, of formed character, of achievement,
that could not have come with many less than forty
years.  He looked significant, successful, the man who
is much and shall be more.  He was dressed more
fashionably than would be regarded as becoming in a man of
affairs, except in two or three of our largest cities.  In
contrast with his vivid, aggressive personality—or,
was it simply because of shy, supersensitive shrinking
in his presence?—the young woman now seemed
colorless and even bleak.

After a silence which she was unable or unwilling to
break, he said, "This is very mysterious, Neva—this
sending for me to meet you—secretly."

"I was afraid it might not be pleasant for you—at
the house," replied she hesitatingly.

His air of surprise was not quite sincere.  "Why
not?" he inquired.  "There isn't anyone I esteem
more highly than your father, and he likes me.  If he
didn't he would not have done all the things that put
me under such a heavy debt of gratitude to him."  His
tone suggested that he had to remind himself of the
debt often lest he should be guilty of the baseness of
forgetting it.

"It was eighteen months yesterday," said she,
"since you were—at the house."

He frowned at what he evidently regarded as a
disagreeable and therefore tactless reminder.  "Really?
Time races for those who have something to do besides
watch the clock."  Then, ashamed of his irritation, "I
suppose it's impossible, in an uneventful place like this,
to appreciate how the current of a city like Chicago
sweeps a man along and won't release him.  There's so
much to think about, one has no time for anything."

"Except the things that are important to one,"
replied she.  "Don't misunderstand, please.  I'm only
stating a fact—not reproaching you—not at all."

"So, your father has turned against me."

"He has said nothing.  But his expression, when I
happened to speak of you the other day, told me it
would be better for you not to come to the house—at
least, until we had had a talk."

"Well, Neva, I don't feel I have any reason to
reproach myself.  I'm not the sort of man who stands
about on the tail of his wife's dress or sits round the
house in slippers.  I'm trying to make a career, and
that means work."

"Chicago is only six hours from Battle Field," she
said with curiously quiet persistence.

"When I got the position in Chicago," he reminded
her with some asperity, "I asked you to go with me.
You refused."

"Did you wish me to go?"

"Did you wish to go?"

She was silent.

"You know you did not," he went on.  "We had
been married nearly six years, and you cared no more
about me—"  He paused to seek a comparison.

"Than you cared for me," she suggested.  Then,
with a little more energy and color, "I repeat, Horace,
I'm not reproaching you.  All I want is that you be
frank.  I asked you to come here to-day that we might
talk over our situation honestly.  How can we be
honest with each other if you begin by pretending that
business is your reason for staying away?"

He studied her unreadable, impassive face.  In all
the years of their married life she had never shown such
energy or interest, except about her everlasting
painting, which she was always mussing with, shut away
from everybody; and never had she been so communicative.
But it was too late, far too late, for any sign of
personality, however alluringly suggestive of mystery
unexplored, to rouse him to interest in her.  He was
looking at her merely because he wished to discover
what she was just now beating toward.  "In the fall,"
he said, "I'm going to New York to live.  Of course,
that will mean even fewer chances of my
coming—here—coming home."

At the word "home," which she had avoided using,
a smile—her secret smile—flitted into her face,
instantly died away again.  He colored.

"I heard you were going to New York," said she.
"I saw it in the newspapers."

"I suppose *you* will not wish to—to leave your
father," he resumed cautiously, as if treading
dangerous ground.

"Do you wish me to go?"

He did not answer.  A prolonged silence which she
broke: "You see, Horace, I was right.  We mustn't
any longer refuse to look our situation squarely in the
face."

His heart leaped.  When he got her letter with its
mysterious, urgent summons, a hope had sprung within
him; but he had quickly dismissed it as a mere offspring
of his longing for freedom—had there ever been an
instance of a woman's releasing a man who was on his
way up?  But now, he began to hope again.

"Ever since the baby was born—dead," she went
on, face and voice calm, but fingers fiercely interlocked
under a fold of her dress where he could not see, "I've
been thinking we ought not to let our mistake grow
into a tragedy."

"Our mistake?"

"Our marriage."

He waited until he could conceal his astonishment
before he said, "You, too, feel it was a mistake?"

"I feared so, when we were marrying," she replied.
"I knew it, when I saw how hard you ere trying to do
your 'duty' as a husband—oh, yes, I saw.  And, when
the baby and the suffering failed to bring us together,
only showed how far apart we were, I realized there
wasn't any hope.  You would have told me, would have
asked for your freedom—yes, I saw that, too—if it
hadn't been for the feeling you had about father—and,
perhaps also—"  She paused, then went bravely on,
"—because you were ashamed of having married me
for other reasons than love.  Don't deny it, please.
To-day, we can speak the truth to each other without
bitterness."

"I shan't deny," replied he.  "I saw that your
father, who had done everything for me, had his heart
set on the marriage.  And I'll even admit I was
dazzled by the fact that yours was one of the first and
richest families in the State—I, who was obscure and
poor.  It wasn't difficult for me to deceive myself into
thinking my awe of you was the feeling a man ought to
have for the woman he marries."  He seemed to have
forgotten she was there.  "I had worked hard, too
hard, at college," he went on.  "I was exhausted—without
courage.  The obstacles to my getting where
I was determined to go staggered me.  To marry you
seemed to promise a path level and straight to success."

"I understand," she said.  Her voice startled
him back to complete consciousness of her presence.
"There was more excuse for you than for me."

"That's it!" he cried.  "What puzzles me, what
I've often asked myself is, 'Why did she marry me?'"

"Not for the reason you think," evaded she.

"What is that?" he asked, his tone not wholly easy.

"It wasn't because I thought you were going to
have a distinguished career."

This penetration disconcerted him, surprised him.
And he might have gone on to suspect he would do well
to revise his estimate of her, formed in the first months
of their married life and never since even questioned,
had not her next remark started a fresh train of
thought.  "So," she said, with her faint smile, "you
see you've had no ground for the fear that, no matter
how plainly you might show me you wished to be free,
I'd hold on to you."

"A woman might have other reasons than mere
sordidness for not freeing a man," replied he, on the
defensive.

"She might *think* she had."

"That is cynical," said he, once more puzzled.

"The truth often is—as we both well know,"
replied she.  Then, abruptly, but with no surface trace
of effort: "You wish to be free.  Well, you are free."

"What do you mean, Neva?" he demanded,
ashamed of the exultation that surged up in him, and
trying to conceal it.

"Just what I say," was her quiet answer.

After a pause, he asked with gentle consideration of
strong for weak that made her wince, "Neva, have you
consulted with anyone—with your father or brother?"

"I haven't spoken to them about it.  Why should
I?  Are not our relations a matter between ourselves
alone?  Who else could understand?  Who could
advise?"

"What you propose is a very grave matter."

Again her secret smile, this time a gleam of irony in
it.  "You do not wish to be free?"

His expression showed how deeply he instantly
became alarmed.  She smiled openly.  "Don't pretend to
yourself that you are concerned about my interests,"
she said; "frankness to-day—please."

"I'm afraid you don't realize what you are doing,"
he felt compelled to insist.  "And that is honest."

"You don't understand me.  You never did.  You
never could, so long as I am your wife.  That's the
way it is in marriage—if people begin wrong, as we
did.  But, at least, believe me when I say I've thought
it all out—in these years of long, long days and weeks
and months when I've had no business to distract me."

"You are right," he said.  "We have never been
of the slightest use to each other.  We are utterly out
of sympathy—like strangers."

"Worse," she replied.  "Strangers may come together,
but not the husband and wife whose interest in
each other has been killed."  She gazed long out over
the lake toward the mist-veiled Wabash range before
adding, almost under her breath, "Or never was born."

"I have a naturally expansive temperament," he
went on, as if in her train of thought.  "I need friendship,
affection.  You are by nature reserved and cold."

She smiled enigmatically.  "I doubt if you know
me well enough to judge."

"At least, you've been cold and reserved with
me—always, from the very beginning."

"It would be a strange sort of woman, don't you
think, who would not be chilled by a man who regarded
everyone as a mere rung in his ladder—first for the
hand, then for the foot?  Oh, I'm not criticising.  I
understand and accept many things I was once foolishly
sensitive about.  I see your point of view.  You feel
you must get rid of whatever interferes with your
development.  And you are right.  We must be true to
ourselves.  Worn-out clothes, worn-out friends,
worn-out ties of every kind—all must go to the rag
bag—relentlessly."

He did not like it that she said these things so
placidly and without the least bitterness.  He admitted
they were true; but her wisdom jarred upon him as
"unwomanly," as further proof of the essential
coldness of her nature; he would have accepted as natural
and proper the most unreasonable and most intemperate
reproaches and denunciations.  He hardened his heart
and returned to the main question.  "Then you really
wish to be free?"  He liked to utter that last word, to
drink in the clarion sound of it.

"That has been settled," she replied.  "We *are* free."

"But there are many details——"

"For the lawyers.  We need not discuss them.
Besides, they are few and simple.  I give you your
freedom; I receive mine—and that is all.  I shall take
my own name.  And we can both begin again."

He was looking at her now; for the first time in their
acquaintance he was beginning to wonder whether he
had not been mistaken in assigning her to that
background of neutral-colored masses against which the
few with positive personalities play the drama of life.
As he sat silent, confused, she still further amazed him
by rising and extending her hand.  "Good-by," she
said.  "You'll take the four-fifty train back to
Chicago?"

It seemed to him they were not parting as should
two who had been so long and, in a sense, so intimately,
each in the other's life and thought.  Yet, what was
there to be said or done?  He rose, hesitated,
awkwardly touched her insistent hand, reluctantly released
it.  "Good-by," he stammered.  He had an uncomfortable
sense of being dismissed—and who likes summarily
to be dismissed, even by one of whose company
he is least glad?

Suddenly, upon a wave of color the beauty that
nature had all but given her, swept, triumphant and
glorious, into her face, into her figure.  It was as
startling, as vivid, as dazzling as the fair, far-stretching
landscape the lightning flash conjures upon the
black curtain of night.  While he was staring in dazed
amazement, the apparition vanished with the wave of
emotion that had brought it into view.

Before he could decide whether he had seen or had
only imagined, she was gone, was making her way up
the path alone.  A sudden melancholy shadowed him—the
melancholy of the closed chapter, of the thing that
has been and shall not be again, forever.  But the
exhilarating fact of freedom soon dissipated this thin
shadow.  With shoulders erect and firm, and confident
gait he strode toward the station, his mind gone ahead
of him to Chicago, to New York, to his future, his
career, his conquest of power.  An hour after his train
left Battle Field, Neva Carlin was to Horace Armstrong
simply a memory, a filed document to be left
undisturbed under its mantle of dust.





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.. _`A FEAST AND A FIASCO`:

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   \II


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   A FEAST AND A FIASCO

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"There'll be about six hundred of us," Fosdick
had said.  "Do your best, and send in the bill."

And the best it certainly was, even for New York
with its profuse ideas as to dispensing the rivers of
other people's money that flood in upon it from the
whole country.  The big banquet hall was walled with
flowers; there were great towering palms rising from
among the tables and so close together that their leaves
intermingled in a roof.  Each table was an attempt at a
work of art; the table of honor was strewn and
festooned with orchids at a dollar and a half apiece; there
was music, of course, and it the costliest; there were
souvenirs—they alone absorbed upward of ten thousand
dollars.  As for the dinner itself, the markets of the
East and the South and of the Pacific Coast had been
searched; the fish had come from France; the fruit
from English hothouses; four kinds of wine, but those
who preferred it could have champagne straight
through.  The cigars cost a dollar apiece, the boutonnières
another dollar, the cigarettes were as expensive
as are the cigars of many men who are particular as to
their tobacco.  Lucullus may have spent more on some
of his banquets, but he could have got no such results.
In fact, it was a "seventy-five a plate" dinner, though
Fosdick was not boasting it, as he would have liked; he
was mindful of the recent exposures of the prodigality
of managers of corporations with the investments of
"the widow and the orphan and the thrifty poor."

Fosdick, presiding, with Shotwell on his right and
Armstrong on his left, swelled with pride in his own
generosity and taste as he gazed round.  True, the
O.A.D. was to pay the bill; true, he had known nothing
about the arrangements for the banquet until he came
to preside at it.  But was he not the enchanter who
evoked it all?  He hadn't a doubt that his was the
glory, all the glory—just as, when he bought for a
large sum a picture with a famous name to it, he showed
himself to be greater than the painter.  He prided
himself upon his good taste—did he not select the man
who selected the costly things for him; did he not sign
the checks?  But most of all he prided himself on his
big heart.  He loved to give—to his children, to his
friends, to servants—not high wages indeed, for that
would have been bad business, but tips and presents
which made a dazzling showing and flooded his heart
with the warm milk of human kindness, whereas a small
increase of wages would be insignificant, without
pleasurable sensation, and a permanent drain.  Of all the
men who devote their lives to what some people call
finance—and others call reaping where another has
sown—he was the most generous.  "A great, big,
beating human heart," was what you heard about Fosdick
everywhere.  "A hard, wily fighter in finance, but a
man full of red blood, for all that."

Having surveyed the magic scene his necromancy
and his generosity had created, he shifted his glance
patronizingly to the man at his right—the man for
whom he had done this generous act, the retiring
president of the O.A.D., to whom this dinner was a
testimonial.  As Fosdick looked at Shotwell, his face
darkened.  "The damned old ingrate," he muttered.  "He
doesn't appreciate what I've done for him."  And there
was no denying it.  The old man was looking a sickly,
forlorn seventy-five, at least, though he was only
sixty-five, only two years older than Fosdick.  He was
humped down in a sort of stupor, his big flat chin on his
crushed shirt bosom, his feeble, age-mottled hand
fumbling with his napkin, with his wineglass, with the
knives, forks, and spoons.

"The boys are giving you a great send off," said
Fosdick.  As Shotwell knew who alone was responsible
for the "magnificent and touching testimonial,"
Fosdick risked nothing in this modesty.

Shotwell, startled, wiped his mouth with his napkin.

"Yes, yes," he said; "it's very nice."

Nice!  And if Fosdick had chosen he could have
had Shotwell flung down and out in disgrace from the
exalted presidency of the O.A.D., instead of retiring
him thus gloriously.  Nice!  Fosdick almost wished he
had—almost.  He would have quite wished it, if
retiring Shotwell in disgrace would not have injured the
great company, so absolutely dependent upon popular
confidence.  Nice!  Fosdick turned away in disgust.  He
remembered how, when he had closed his trap upon
Shotwell—a superb stroke of business, that!—not a soul
had suspected until the jaws snapped and the O.A.D. was
his—he remembered how Shotwell had met his
demand for immediate resignation or immediate
disgrace, with shrieks of hate and cursing.  "I suppose
he can't get over it," reflected Fosdick.  "Men blind
themselves completely to the truth where vanity and
self-interest are concerned.  He probably still hates
me, and can't see that I was foolishly generous with
him.  Where's there another man in the financial district
who'd have allowed him a pension of half his salary
for life?"

But such thoughts as these in this hour for
expansion and good will marred his enjoyment.  Fosdick
turned to the man at his left, to young Armstrong,
whom he was generously lifting to the lofty seat from
which he had so forbearingly ejected the man at his
right.  Armstrong—a huge, big fellow with one of
those large heads which show unmistakably that they
are of the rare kind of large head that holds a large
brain—was as abstracted as Shotwell.  The food, the
wine before him, were untouched.  He was staring into
his plate, with now and then a pull at his cropped, fair
mustache or a passing of his large, ruddy, well-shaped
hand over his fine brow.  "What's the matter,
Horace?" said Fosdick; "chewing over the speech?"

Armstrong straightened himself with a smile that
gave his face instantly the look of frankness and of
high, dauntless spirit.  "No, I've got that down—and
mighty short it is," said he; "the fewer words I say
now, the fewer there'll be to rise up and mock me, if I
fail."

"Fail!  Pooh!  Nonsense!  Cheer up!" cried Fosdick.
"It's a big job for a young fellow, but you're
bound to win.  You've got *me* behind you."

Armstrong looked uncomfortable rather than relieved.
"They've elected me president," said he, and
his quiet tone had the energy of an inflexible will.  "I
intend to be president.  No one can save me if I haven't
it in me to win out."

Fosdick frowned, and pursed his lips until his harsh
gray mustache bristled.  "Symptoms of swollen head
already," was his irritated inward comment.  "He's
been in the job forty-eight hours, and he's ready to
forget who made him.  But I'll soon remind him that I
could put him where I got him—and further down,
damn him!"

"Some one is signaling you from the box straight
ahead," said Armstrong.  "I think it's your daughter."

As the young woman was plainly visible and as
Armstrong knew her well, this caution of statement
could not have been quite sincere.  But Fosdick did
not note it; he was bowing and smiling at the
occupants of that most conspicuous box.  At the table of
honor to the right and left of him were the directors of
the O.A.D., the most representative of the leading
citizens of New York; they owned, so it was said, one
fifteenth and directly controlled about one half of the
entire wealth of the country; not a blade was harvested,
not a wheel was turned, not a pound of freight was
lifted from Maine to the Pacific but that they directly
or indirectly got a "rake off"—or, if you prefer, a
commission for graciously permitting the work to be
done.  In the horseshoe of boxes, overlooking the
banquet, were the families of these high mightinesses, the
wives and daughters and sons who gave the mightiness
outward and visible expression in gorgeous display and
in painstaking reproduction of the faded old
aristocracies of birth beyond the Atlantic.

Fosdick had insisted on this demonstration because
the banquet was to be not only a testimonial to Shotwell,
but also a formal installation of himself and his
daughter and son in the high society of the plutocracy.
Fosdick had long had power downtown; but he had
lacked respectability.  Not that his reputation was not
good; on the contrary, it was spotless—as honest as
generous, as honorable as honest.  Respectability,
however, has nothing to do with honesty, whether
reputed or real.  It is a robe, an entitlement, a badge; it
comes from associating with the respectable, uptown
as well as down.  Fosdick, grasping this fact, after
twenty years' residence in New York in ignorance of it,
had forthwith resolved to be respectable, to change the
dubious social status of his family into a structure as
firm and as imposing as his fortune.  His business
associates had imagined themselves free, uptown at least, from
his vast and ever vaster power; at one stroke he showed
them the fatuous futility of their social coldness, of
their carefully drawn line between doing business with
him and being socially intimate with him, made it
amusingly apparent that their condescensions to his
daughter and son in the matter of occasional invitations were
as flimsily based as were their elaborate pretenses of
superior birth and breeding.  He invited them to make
a social function of this business dinner; he made each
recipient of an invitation personally feel that it was
wise to accept, dangerous to refuse.  The hope of
making money and the dread of losing it have ever been the
two all-powerful considerations in an aristocracy of any
kind.  Respectability and fashion "accepted."

So, Fosdick, looking across that resplendent scene,
at the radiant faces of his daughter and son, felt the
light and the warmth driving away the shadows of
Shotwell's ingratitude and Armstrong's lack of deference.
But just as he was expanding to the full girth of his
big heart, he chilled and shrunk again.  There, beside
his daughter, sat old Shotwell's wife.  She was as cold
as so much marble; the diamonds on her great white
shoulders and bosom seemed to give off a chill from
their light.  She was there, it is true; but like a
dethroned queen in the triumphal procession of an upstart
conqueror.  She was a rebuke, a damper, a spoiler of
the feast.  She never had cared for old Shotwell; she
had married him because he was the best available catch
and could give her everything she wanted, everything
she could conceive a woman's wanting.  She had
tolerated him as one of the disagreeable but necessary
incidents of the journey of life.  But Shotwell's downfall
was hers, was their children's.  It meant a lower rank
in the social hierarchy; it meant that she and hers must
bow before this "nobody from nowhere" and his children.
She sat there, beside Amy, in front of Hugo,
the embodiment of icy hate.

"This damn dinner is entirely too long," muttered
Fosdick, though he did not directly connect his
dissatisfaction with the cold stare from Shotwell's wife.

But Mrs. Shotwell was not interfering with the
enjoyment of Amy and Hugo.

If Fosdick had planned with an inquisitor's cunning
to put her to the most exquisite torture, he could
not have been more successful.  From his box she had
the best possible view of the whole scene; and, while
Shotwell had told her only the smallest part of the truth
about his "resignation," she had read the newspaper
reports of the investigation of the O.A.D. which had
preceded his downfall, and, though that investigation
had changed from an attack on him to an exoneration,
after he yielded to Fosdick, she had guessed enough of
the truth to know that this "testimonial" to him was
in fact a testimonial to Fosdick.

Hugo and Amy, the children of a rich man and
unmarried, had long been popular with all the women who
had unmarried sons and daughters; this evening they
roused enthusiasm.  Everybody who hoped to make, or
feared to lose, money was impressed by their charms.
Amy, who was pretty, was declared beautiful; Hugo,
who looked as if he had brains, though in fact he had
not, was pronounced a marvel of serious intellectuality.
The young men flocked round Amy; Hugo's tour of the
boxes was an ovation.  To an observant outsider,
looking beneath surfaces to realities, the scene would have
been ludicrous and pitiful; to those taking part, it
seemed elegant, kindly, charming.  Mrs. Shotwell was
almost at the viewpoint of the outsider—not the
philosopher, but he who stands hungry and thirsty in
the cold and glowers through the window at the
revelers and denounces them for their selfish gluttony.
And by the way of chagrin and envy she reached the
philosopher's conclusion.  "How coarse and low!" she
thought.  "New York gets more vulgar every year."

Amy, accustomed all her life to have anything and
everything she wanted, had been dissatisfied about the
family's social position and eager to improve it; but
the instant she realized they were at last "in the push,"
securely there, she began to lose interest; after an hour
of the new adulation, she had enough, was looking
impatiently round for something else to want and to
strive for.

Not so Hugo.  Society had seemed a serious matter
to him from his earliest days at college, when he began
to try to get into the fashionable fraternities, and
failed.  He had been invited wherever any marriageable
girls were on exhibition; but he had noted, and had
taken it quickly to heart, that he was not often invited
when such offerings were not being made.  He had
gone heavily into a flirtation with a young married
woman, as dull as himself.  It was in vain; she had
invited him, but her friends had not, unless she was to be
there to take care of him.  He had attributed this in
part to his father, in part to his married sister—his
father, who made occasional slips in grammar and was
boisterous and dictatorial in conversation; his sister,
whose husband kept a big retail furniture store and
"looks the counter-jumper that he is," Hugo often
said to Amy in their daily discussions of their social
woes.  Now, all this worriment was over; Hugo,
touring the boxes, felt he had reached the summit of
ambition.  And it seemed to him he had himself brought
it about—his diplomatic assiduity in cultivating "the
right people," the steady, if gradual, permeation of his
physical and mental charms.

Amy sent a note down to Armstrong, asking him to
come to the box a moment.  As he entered, Hugo was
just leaving on another excursion for further whiffs of
the incense that was making him visibly as drunk, if in
a slightly different way, as the younger and obscurer
members of the staff of the O.A.D. downstairs.  At
sight of Armstrong he put out his hand graciously and
said: "Ah—Horace—howdy?" in a tone that made
it difficult for Armstrong to refrain from laughing in
his face.

"All right, Hugo," said he.

Hugo frowned.  For him to address one of his
father's employees by his first name was natural and
proper and a mark of distinguished favor; for one of
those employees to retort in kind was a gross impertinence.
He did not see just how to show his indignation,
just how to set the impudent employee back in his
place.  He put the problem aside for further thought,
and brushed haughtily by Armstrong, who, however,
had already forgotten him.

"Just let Mr. Armstrong sit there, won't you?"
said Amy to the young man in the seat immediately
behind hers.

The young man flushed; she had cut him off in the
middle of a sentence which was in the middle of the
climax of what he thought a most amusing story.  He
gave place to Armstrong, hating him, since hatred of
an heiress was not to be thought of.

"What is it you want so particularly to see me
about?" Armstrong said to her.

She smiled with radiant coquetry.  "Nothing at
all," she replied.  "I put that in the note simply to
make sure you'd come."

Armstrong laughed.  "You're a spoiled one," said
he.  And he got up, nodded friendlily to her, bowed to
her Arctic chaperon and departed, she so astonished
that she could think of nothing to say to detain him.

Her first impulse was rage—that *she* should be
treated thus! she whom *everybody* treated with
consideration!  Then, her vanity, readiest and most tactful
of courtiers, suggested that he had done it to pique her,
to make himself more attractive in her eyes.  That
mollified her, soon had her in good humor again.  Yes,
he was as much part of her court as the others; only,
being shrewder, he pursued a different method.  "And
he's got a right to hold himself dear," she said to
herself, as she watched him making his way to his seat at
the table of honor.  Certainly he did look as if he
belonged at or near the head of the head table.

Soon her father was standing, was rapping for
order.  Handsome and distinguished, with his keen face
and tall lean figure, his iron-gray hair and mustache, he
spoke out like one who has something to say and will be
heard:

"Gentlemen and ladies!" he began.  "We are
gathered here to-night to do honor to one of the men of
our time and country.  His name is a household word."
(Applause.)  "For forty years he has made comfortable
an ever increasing number of deathbeds, has stood
between the orphan and the pangs of want, has given
happy old age to countless thousands."  (Applause.
Cries of "Good!  Good!")  "Ladies and gentlemen,
we honor ourselves in honoring this noble character.
Speaking for the directors, of whom I am one of the
oldest—in point of service"—(Laughter.  Applause.)—"speaking
for the directors, I say, in all sincerity, it
is with the profoundest regret that we permit him to
partially sever his official connection with the great
institution he founded and has been so largely
instrumental in building up to its present magnificent
position.  We would fain have him stay on where his name
is a guarantee of honesty, security and success."
(Cheers.)  "But he has insisted that he must transfer
the great burden to younger shoulders.  He has earned
the right to repose, ladies and gentlemen.  We cannot
deny him what he has earned.  But he leaves us his
spirit."  (Wild applause.)  "Wherever the O.A.D. is
known—and where is it not known?"  (Cheers and
loud rattling of metal upon glass and china.)—"there
his name is written high as an inspiration to the young.
He has been faithful; he has been honest; he has
been diligent.  By these virtues he has triumphed."
(Cheers.)  "His triumph, ladies and gentlemen, is an
inspiration to us all."  (Cheers.  Cries of "Whoope-ee"
from several drunken men at the far tables.)

"Let us rise, gentlemen, and drink to our honored,
our honorable chief!"

The banqueters sprang to their feet, lifting their
glasses high.  Old Shotwell, his face like wax, rose
feebly, stared into vacancy, passed one tremulous hand
over the big, flat, weak chin, sunk into his chair again.
Some one shouted, "Three cheers for Shotwell!"  Floor
and boxes stood and cheered, with much waving of napkins
and handkerchiefs and clinking of glasses.  It was
a thrilling scene, the exuberant homage of affairs to
virtue.

"I see, ladies and gentlemen, that my poor words
have been in the direction of your thoughts," continued
Fosdick.  "And now devolves upon me the pleasant
duty of——"

Here a beflowered hand truck, bearing a large rosewood
chest, was wheeled in front of the table of honor.
The attendants threw back the lid and disclosed a
wonderful service of solid gold plate.  This apparition of
the god in visible, tangible form caused hysterical
excitement—cheers, shouts, frantic cranings and wavings
from floor and gallery.

"—The pleasant duty of presenting this slight
token of appreciation from our staff to our retiring
president," ended Fosdick in a tremendous voice and
with a vast, magnanimous sweep of the arms.

Old Shotwell, dazed, lifted his chin from his shirt
bosom, stared stupidly at the chest, rose at a prod from
his neighbor, bowed, and sat down again.  Fosdick
seated himself, nudged him under the table, whispered
hoarsely under cover of his mustache, "Get up.  Get
up!  Here's the time for your speech."

The old man fumbled in his breast pocket, drew out
a manuscript, rose uncertainly.  As he got on his feet,
the manuscript dropped to the floor.  Armstrong saw,
moved around between Shotwell and his neighbor, picked
up the manuscript, opened it, laid it on the table at
Shotwell's hand.  "Ladies and gentlemen," quavered
Shotwell, in a weak voice and with an ashen face, "I
thank you.  I—I—thank you."

The diners rose again.  "Three cheers for the old
chief!" was the cry, and out they rang.  Tears were
in Shotwell's eyes; tears were rolling down Fosdick's
cheeks; some of the drunken were sobbing.  As they
sang, "For he's a jolly good fellow," Fosdick's great
voice leading and his arm linked in Shotwell's,
Armstrong happened to glance down at the manuscript.
The opening sentence caught his eye—"*Fellow builders
of the Mutual Association Against Old Age and Death,
I come here to expose to you the infamous conspiracy
of which I have been the victim.*"  Before Armstrong
could stop himself, he had been fascinated into reading
the second sentence: "*I purpose to expose to you,
without sparing myself, how Josiah Fosdick has seized
the O.A.D. to gamble with its assets, using his
unscrupulous henchman, Horace Armstrong, as a blind.*"

Armstrong, white as his shirt, folded the manuscript
and held it in the grip a man gives that which is
between him and destruction.  The singing finished, all
sat down again, Shotwell with the rest.  Had his mind
given way, or his will?  Armstrong could not tell;
certain it was, however, that he had abandoned the
intention of changing the banquet into about the most
sensational tragedy that had ever shaken and torn the
business world.  Armstrong put the manuscript in his
pocket.  "I'll mail it to him," he said to himself.

But now Josiah was up again, was calling for a
"few words from my eminent young friend, whom the
directors of the O.A.D., in the wise discharge of the
trust imposed upon them by three quarters of a million
policy holders, have elected to the presidency.  His
shoulders are young, gentlemen, but"—here he laid his
hand affectionately upon Armstrong—"as you can see
for yourselves, they are broad and strong."  He
beamed benevolently down upon Armstrong's thick,
fair hair.  "Young man, we want to hear your pledge
for your stewardship."

Horace Armstrong, unnerved by the narrowly
averted catastrophe, drew several deep breaths before
he found voice.  He glanced along first one line,
then the other, of the eminent and most respectable
directors, these men of much and dubious wealth which
yet somehow made them the uttermost reverse of
dubious, made them the bulwarks of character and law
and property—of all they had trodden under foot to
achieve "success."  Then he gazed out upon the men
who were to take orders from him henceforth, the
superintendents, agents, officials of the O.A.D.  "My
friends," said he, "we have charge of a great
institution.  With God's help we will make it greater, the
greatest.  It has been one of the mainstays of the
American home, the American family.  It shall
remain so, if I have your coöperation and support."

And he abruptly resumed his seat.  There were
cheers, but not loud or hearty.  His manner had been
nervous, his voice uncertain, unconvincing.  But for
his presence—that big frame, those powerful
features—he would have made a distinctly bad impression.
As he sat, conscious of failure but content because he
had got through coherently, old Shotwell began
fumbling and muttering, "My speech!  Where's my
speech!  I've lost it.  Somebody might find it.  If
the newspapers should get it——"

But the dinner was over.  The boxes were emptying,
the intoxicated were being helped out by their
friends, the directors were looking uneasily at Fosdick
for permission to join their departing families.
Fosdick took Shotwell firmly by the arm and escorted him,
still mumbling, to the carriage entrance, there turning
him over to Mrs. Shotwell.

"He's very precious to us all, madam," said Fosdick,
indifferent to her almost sneering coldness, and
giving the old man a patronizing clap on the shoulder.
"Take good care of him."  To himself he added, "I'll
warrant she will, with that pension his for his lifetime
only."

And he went home, to sleep the sleep of a good man
at the end of a good day.





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.. _`"ONLY COUSIN NEVA"`:

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   \III


.. class:: center medium bold

   "ONLY COUSIN NEVA"

.. vspace:: 2

Letty Morris—"Mrs. Joe"—was late for her
Bohemian lunch.  She called it Bohemian because she
had asked a painter, a piano player and an actress,
and was giving it in the restaurant of a studio building.
As her auto rolled up to the curb, she saw at the
entrance, just going away, a woman of whom her first
thought was "What strange, fascinating eyes!" then,
"Why, it's only Cousin Neva"; for, like most New
Yorkers, she was exceedingly wary of out-of-town
people, looking on them, with nothing to offer, as a
waste of time and money.  As it was, on one of those
friendly impulses that are responsible for so much of the
good, and so much of the evil, in this world, she cried,
"Why, Genevieve Carlin!  What are *you* doing *here*?"  And
she descended from her auto and rushed up to Neva.

"How d'ye do, Letty?" said Neva distantly.  She
had startled, had distinctly winced, at the sound of
those affected accents and tones which the fashionable
governesses and schools are rapidly making the natural
language of "our set" and its fringes.

"Why haven't you let me know?" she reproached.
As the words left her lips, up rose within herself an
answer which she instantly assumed was *the* answer.
The divorce, of course!  She flushed with annoyance
at her tactlessness.  Her first sensation in thinking of
divorce was always that it was scandalous, disgraceful,
immoral, a stain upon the woman and her family; but
quick upon that feeling, lingering remnant of
discarded childhood training, always came the recollection
that divorce was no longer unfashionable, was therefore
no longer either immoral or disgraceful, was scandalous
in a delightful, aristocratic way.  "But," reflected
she, "probably Neva still feels about that sort of thing
as we all used to feel—at least, all the best people."  She
was confirmed in this view by her cousin's embarrassed
expression.  She hastened to her relief with
"Joe and I talk of you often.  Only the other day I
started a note to you, asking you when you could
visit us."

She did not believe, when Neva told the literal truth
in replying: "I came to work.  I thought I wouldn't
disturb you."

"Disturb!" cried Mrs. Morris.  "You are so
queer.  How long have you been here?"

"Several weeks.  I—I've an apartment in this house."

"How delightful!" exclaimed Letty absently.  She
was herself again and was thinking rapidly.  A new
man, even from "the provinces," might be fitted in to
advantage; but what could she do with another woman,
one more where there were already too many for the
men available for idling?

"You must let me see something of you," said she,
calmer but still cordial.  "You must come to
dinner—Saturday night."  That was Letty Morris's resting
night—a brief and early dinner, early to bed for a sleep
that would check the ravages of the New York season
in a beauty that must be husbanded, since she had
crossed the perilous line of thirty.  "Yes—Saturday—at
half-past seven.  And here's one of my cards to
remind you of the address.  I must be going now.
I'm horribly late."  And with a handshake and brush of
the lips on Neva's cheek, the small, brilliant, blonde
cousin was gone.

"What a nuisance," she was saying to herself.
"Why *did* I let myself be surprised into attracting her
attention?  Now, I'll have to do something for her—we're
really under obligations to her father—I don't
believe Joe has paid back the last of that loan yet.
Well, I can use her occasionally to take Joe off my
hands.  She looks all right—really, it's amazing how
she has improved in dress.  She seems to know how to
put on her clothes now.  But she's too retiring to be
dangerous.  A woman who's presentable yet not dangerous
is almost desirable, is as rare as an attractive man."

The delusion of our own importance is all but
universal—and everywhere most happy; but for it, would
not life's cynicism broaden from the half-hidden smirk
into a disheartening sneer?  Among fashionable people,
narrow, and carefully educated only in class prejudice
and pretentious ignorance, this delusion becomes an
obsession.  The whole hardworking, self-absorbed world
is watching them—so they delight in imagining—is
envying them, is imitating them.  Letty assumed that
Neva had kept away through awe, and that she would
now take advantage of her politeness to cling to her
and get about in society; as Mrs. Morris thought of
nothing but society, she naturally felt that the whole
world must be similarly occupied.  She would have been
astounded could she have seen into Neva's mind—seen
the debate going on there as to how to entrench herself
against annoyance from her cousin.  "Shall I refuse
her invitation?" thought Neva.  "Or, is it better to
go Saturday night, and have done with, since I must go
to her house once?"  She reluctantly decided for
Saturday night.  "And after that I can plead my work;
and soon she'll forget all about me.  It's ridiculous that
people who wish to have nothing to do with each other
should be forced by a stupid conventionality to irritate
themselves and each other."

Saturday afternoon, each debated writing the other,
postponing the engagement.  Neva had a savage
attack of the blues; at such times she shut herself in,
certain she could not get from the outside the cheer she
craved and too keen to be content with the cheer that
would offer shallow, wordy sympathy, or, worse still,
self-complacent pity.  As for Letitia, she was quarreling
with her husband—about money as usual.  She was
one of those doll-looking women who so often have
serpentine craft and wills of steel.  Morris adored her,
after the habit of men with such women; she made him
feel so big and strong and intellectually superior; and
her childish, clinging ways were intoxicating, as she
had great physical charm, she so cool and smooth and
golden white and delicately perfumed.  She always got
her own way with everyone; usually her husband, her
"master," yielded at the first onset.  Once in a
while—and this happened to be of those times—he held out for
the pleasure of seeing her pout and weep and then, as
he yielded, burst into a radiance like sunshine through
summer rain.  If she had had money of her own he
might have got a sudden and even shocking insight into
the internal machinery of that doll's head; as it was,
his delusion about the relative intelligence and strength
of himself and his Letty was intact.

Mrs. Joe did not share his enthusiasm for these
"love-tilts"; she did not mind employing the "doll
game" in her dealings with the world, but she would
have liked to be her real self at home.  This, however,
was impossible if she was to get the largest results in
the quickest and easiest way.  So she wearily played on
at the farce, and at times grew heartsick with envy of
the comparatively few independent—which means
financially independent—women of her set, and disliked her
Joe when she was forced to think about him distinctly,
which was not often.  In marriages where the spirit
has shriveled and died within the letter, habit soon
hardens a wife to an amazing degree toward practical
unconsciousness of the existence of her husband, even
though he be uxorious.  Letty's married life bored
her; but she had no more sense of degradation in thus
making herself a pander, and for hire, than had her
husband, at the same business downtown.  She saw so
many of the "very best" women doing just as she did,
using each the fittest form of cajolery and cozening to
wheedle money for extravagances out of their husbands,
that it seemed as much the proper and reputable
thing as going to bullfights seems to Spaniards, or
watching wild beasts devour men, women, and children
seemed to the "very best" people of imperial Rome.
For the same reason, her husband did not linger
upon the real meaning of the phrase "legal adviser"
whereunder the business of himself and his brother
lawyers was so snugly and smugly masked—the
business of helping respectable scoundrels glut bestial
appetites for other people's property without fear
of jail.

The quarrel had so far advanced that Saturday
night was the logical time for the climax in sentimental
reconciliation.  However, Mrs. Morris decided to
endure a twenty-four hours' delay and "get Neva over
with."  She repented the instant Neva appeared.  "I
had no idea she could be so good looking," thought she,
in a panic at the prospect of rivalry, with desirable
available men wofully scarce.  She swept Neva with a
searching, hostile glance.  "She's really almost
beautiful."

And, in fact, never before was Neva so good looking.
Vanity is an air plant not at all dependent upon
roots in realities for nourishment and growth.  Thus,
she, born with rather less than the normal physical
vanity, had been unaffected by the charms she could not
but have seen had she looked at herself with vanity's
sprightly optimism.  Nor was there any encouragement
in the atmosphere of old-fashioned Battle Field,
where the best people were still steeped in medieval
disdain of "foolishness" and regarded the modern passion
for the joy of life as sinful.  Also, she was without
that aggressive instinct to please by physical charm
which even circumvents the regulations of a chapter of
cloistered nuns.

Until she came to New York, she had given her
personal appearance no attention whatever, beyond
instinctively trying to be as unobtrusive as possible; and
even in New York her concessions to what she regarded
as waste of time were really not concessions at all, were
merely the result of exercising in the most indifferent
fashion her natural good taste, in choosing the best
from New York's infinite variety as she had chosen the
best from Battle Field's meager and commonplace
stocks of goods for women.  The dress she was
wearing that evening was not especially grand, seemed
quakerishly high in the neck in comparison with
Letty's; for Letty had a good back and was not one to
conceal a charm which it was permissible to display.
But Neva, in soft silver-gray; with her hair, bright,
yet neither gold nor red, but all the shades between,
framing her long oval face in a pompadour that merged
gracefully into a simple knot at the back of her small
head; with her regular features shown to that
advantage which regular features have only when shoulders
and neck are bared; and with her complexion cleared of
all sallowness and restored to its natural smooth pallor
by the healthful air and life of New York—Neva, thus
recreated, was more than distinguished looking, was
beautiful.  "Who'd have thought it?" reflected Letty
crossly.  "What a difference clothes do make!"  But
Neva was slender—"thin, painfully thin," thought
Mrs. Morris, with swiftly recovering spirits.  She
herself was plump and therefore thought "scrawniness"
hideous, though often, to draw attention to her rounded
charms, she wailed piteously that she was getting
"disgracefully fat."

Neither of the men—her husband and Boris
Raphael, the painter—shared her poor opinion of Neva
after the first glance.  Morris did not care for thin
women, but he thought Neva had a certain beauty—not
the kind he admired, but a kind, nevertheless.  Boris
studied the young woman with an expression that made
Mrs. Joe redden with jealousy.  "You think my cousin
pretty?" said she to him, as they went down to dinner
far enough ahead of Neva and Morris to be able to talk
freely.

"More than that," replied Boris, "I think her
unusual."

"If you ever chance to see her in ordinary dress,
you'll change your mind, I'm sorry to say," said Letty
softly.  "Poor Neva!  Hers is a sad case.  She's one
of the ought-to-bes-but-aren'ts."

"It's my business to see things as they are," was the
painter's exasperating reply.  "And I'd not in any
circumstances be blind to such a marvelous study in
long lines as she."

"Marvelous!" Mrs. Morris laughed.

"Long face, long neck, long bust, long waist, long
legs, long hands and feet," explained he.  "It's the
kind of beauty that has to be pointed out to ordinary
eyes before they see it.  I can imagine her passing for
homely in a rude community, just as her expression of
calm might pass for coldness."

Mrs. Morris revised her opinion of Boris.  She had
thought him a most tactful person; she knew the truth
now.  A man who would praise one woman to another
could never be called tactful; to praise enthusiastically
was worse than tactless, it was boorish.  "How impossible
it is," thought she, "for a man of low origin to
rise wholly above it."  She said, "I'm delighted that my
cousin pleases you," as coldly as she could speak to a
man after whom everyone was running.

"I must paint her," he said, noting Letty's anger,
but indifferent to it.  "If I succeed, everyone will see
what I see.  If that woman were to love and be loved,
her face would become—divine!  Divinely human, I
mean—for she's flesh and blood.  The fire's
there—laid and ready for the match."

When he and Morris were alone after dinner he
began on Neva again, unaffected by her seeming
incapacity to respond to his efforts to interest her.  "I
could scarcely talk for watching her," he said.  "She
puzzles me.  I should not have believed a girl—an
unmarried woman—could have such an expression."

"She's not a girl," explained Morris.  "She has
taken her maiden name again.  She was Mrs. Armstrong—was
married until last summer to the chap that
was made president of the O.A.D. last October."

"Never heard of him," said the artist.

"That shows how little you know about what's
going on downtown.  When Galloway died—you've
heard of Galloway?"

"I painted him—an old eagle—or vulture."

"We'll say eagle, as he's dead.  When he died,
there was a split in the O.A.D., which he had dominated
and used for years—and mighty little he let old Shotwell
have, I understand, in return for doing the dirty
work.  Well, Fosdick finally cooked up that investigation,
frightened everybody into fits, won out, beat down
the Galloway crowd, threw out Shotwell and put in this
young Western fellow."

"What is the O.A.D.?"

"You must have seen the building, the advertisements
everywhere—knight in armor beating off specters
of want.  It's an insurance company."

"I thought insurance companies were to insure people."

"Not at all," replied Morris.  "That's what
people think they're for—just as they think steel
companies are to make steel, and coal companies to mine
coal, and railway companies to carry freight and
passengers.  But all that, my dear fellow, is simply
incidental.  They're really to mass big sums of money for
our great financiers to scramble for."

"How interesting," said Raphael in an uninterested
tone.  "Some time I must try to learn about
those things.  Then your cousin has divorced her
husband?  That's the tragedy I saw in her face."

"Tragedy!" Morris laughed outright.  "There
you go again, Boris.  You're always turning your
imagination loose."

"To explore the mysteries my eyes find, my dear
Joe," said Boris, unruffled.  "You people—the great
mass of the human race—go through the world
blindfold—blindfolded by ignorance, by prejudice,
by letting your stupid brain tell your eyes what they
are seeing instead of letting your eyes tell your
brain."

"I never heard there was much to Neva Carlin."

"Naturally," replied Boris.  "Not all the people
who have individuality, personality, mind and heart,
beat a drum and march in the middle of the street to
inform the world of the fact.  As for emotions—real
emotions—they don't shriek and weep; they hide and
are dumb.  I, who let my eyes see for themselves, look
at this woman and see beauty barefoot on the hot
plowshares.  And you—do not look and, therefore, see
nothing."

Morris made no reply, but his expression showed he
was only silenced, not convinced.  He knew his old
friend Boris was a great painter—the prices he got for
his portraits proved it; and the portraits themselves
were certainly interesting, had the air that irradiates
from every work of genius, whether one likes or
appreciates the work or not.  He knew that the basis of
Raphael's genius was in his marvelous sight—"simply
seeing where others will not" was Boris's own description
of his gift.  Yet when Boris reported to him what
he saw, he was incredulous.  "An artist's wild
imagination," he said to himself.  In the world of the blind,
the dim-eyed man is king, not the seeing man; the seeing
man—the "seer"—passes for mad, and the blind
follow those with not enough sight to rouse the distrust
of their flock.

When the painter returned to the drawing-room
Neva was gone.  As his sight did not fail him when he
watched the motions of his bright, blond little friend,
Mrs. Joe, he suspected her of having had a hand in
Neva's early departure.  And she thought she had
herself.  But, in fact, Neva left because she was too shy to
face again the man whose work she had so long
reverenced.  She knew she ought to treat him as an
ordinary human being, but she could not; and she yielded
to the impulse to fly.

"You must take me to sec your cousin," said he,
his chagrin plain.

"Whenever you like," agreed Letty, with that
elaborate graciousness which raises a suspicion of
insincerity in the most innocent mind.

"Thank you," said Boris.  And to her surprise
and relief he halted there, without attempting to pin
her down to day and hour.  "He asked simply to be
polite," decided she, "and perhaps to irritate me a
little.  He's full of those feminine tricks."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FOSDICK FAMILY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FOSDICK FAMILY

.. vspace:: 2

In each of America's great cities, East, West,
South, Far West, a cliff of marble glistening down upon
the thoroughfare where the most thousands would see it
daily; armies of missionaries, so Fosdick liked to call
them, moving everywhere among the people; other
armies of officers and clerks, housed in the clifflike
palaces and garnering the golden harvests reaped by the
missionaries—such was the scene upon which Horace
Armstrong looked out from his aerie in the vastest of
the palaces o£ the O.A.D.  And it inspired him.

Institutions, like individuals, have a magnetism, a
power to attract and to hold, that is quite apart from
any analyzable quality or characteristic.  Armstrong
had grown up in the O.A.D., had preached it as he
rose in its service until he had preached belief in it into
himself—a belief that was unshaken by the series of
damning exposures of its Wall Street owners and users,
and had survived his own discoveries, as the increasing
importance of his successive positions had forced the
"inside ring" to let him deeper and deeper into the
secrets.  He had not been long in the presidency before
he saw that the whole system for gathering in more
and more policy holders, however beneficent incidental
results might be, had as its sole purpose the drawing of
more and more money within reach of greedy, unclean
hands.  The fact lay upon the surface of the O.A.D. as
plain as a great green serpent sprawled upon the
ooze of a marsh.  Why else would these multimillionaire
money hunters interest themselves in insurance?
And not a day passed without his having to condemn
and deplore—in his own mind—acts of the Fosdick
clique.  But morals are to a great extent a matter of
period and class; Armstrong, busy, unanalytic,
"up-to-date" man of affairs, accepted without much
question the current moral standards of and for the man of
affairs.  And when he saw the inside ring "going too
far," here and there, now and then, he no more thought
of denouncing it and abandoning his career than a
preacher would think of resigning a bishopric because
he found that his fellow bishops had not been made
more than human by the laying on of hands.

Where he could, Armstrong ignored; where he
could not ignore—he told himself that the end excused
the means.

The busy days fled.  He had the feeling of being
caught in a revolving door that took him from
bedtime to bedtime again without letting him out to
accomplish anything; and he was soon so well accommodated
to the atmosphere of high finance that he was
breathing it with almost no sensation of strangeness.
When old Shotwell died—of "heart failure"—Armstrong
took out the undelivered speech.

The day after the "testimonial," he had decided
that to read that speech would be dangerously near to
the line between honor and dishonor; besides, it
probably contained many things which, whether true or
prejudiced, might affect his peace of mind, might
inflict upon his conscience unnecessary discomforts.  A
wise man is careful not to admit to his valuable brain
space matters which do not help him in the accomplishment
of his purposes.  Should he mail the manuscript
to Shotwell?  No.  That might tempt the old man to
a course of folly and disaster.  Armstrong hid the
"stick of dynamite" among his private papers.  But
now, Shotwell was dead; and—well, he still believed in
the O.A.D.—in the main; but many things had
happened in the months since he came on from the West,
many and disquieting things.  He felt that he owed it
to himself, and to the O.A.D., to gather from any and
every source information about the Fosdick ring.  He
unfolded the manuscript, spread it before him on the
desk.

Eleven typewritten pages, setting forth in detail
how Fosdick had slyly lured Shotwell into committing,
apparently alone, certain "indiscretions" for which
there happened to be legal penalties of one to ten years
in the penitentiary at hard labor; how Shotwell, thus
isolated, was trapped—though, as he proceeded to
show, he had done nothing morally or legally worse than
all the others had done, the Fosdick faction being
careful to entangle in each misdeed enough of the Galloway
faction to make itself secure.  And all the offenses
were those "mere technicalities" which high finance
permits the law to condemn only because they, when
committed in lower circles, cease to be justifiable
exceptions to the rule and become those "grave infractions
of social order and of property rights" which Chamber
of Commerce dinners and bar associations of corporation
lawyers so strenuously lecture the people about.
And so, Shotwell had fallen.

Armstrong read the document four times—the first
time, at a gallop; the second time, line by line; the third
time, with a long, thoughtful pause after each
paragraph; the fourth time, line by line again, with one
hand supporting his brow while the index finger of the
other traced under each separate word.  Then he
leaned back and gazed from peak to peak of the
skyscrapers, stretching range on range toward harbor and
river.  He was not thinking now of the wrongs, the
crimes against that mass of policy holders, so remote,
so abstract.  He was listening to a different, a more
terrible sound than the vague wail of that vague mass;
he was hearing the ticking of a death-watch.  For he
had discovered that Fosdick had him trapped in just
the same way.

As a precaution?  Or with the time of his downfall
definitely fixed?

Armstrong began to pace the limits of his big
private room.  For a turn or so it surprised him to find
that he could move freely about; for, with the thought
that he was in another man's power, had come a
physical sensation of actual chains and bolts and bars, of
dungeon walls and dungeon air.  In another man's
power!  In Fosdick's power!  He, Horace Armstrong,
proud, intensely alive and passionately fond of
freedom, with inflexible ambition set upon being the master
of men—he, a slave, dependent for his place, for his
authority, for his very reputation.  Dependent on the
nod of a fellow man.  He straightened himself, shook
himself; he clenched his fists and his teeth until the
powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders and jaws
swelled to aching, until the blood beat in his skin like
flame against furnace wall.

The door opened; he saw as he was turning that it
was Josiah Fosdick; he wheeled back toward the window
because he knew that if he should find himself full face
to this master of his before he got self-control, he would
spring at him and sink his fingers in his throat and
wring the life out of him.  The will to kill!  To feel
that creature under him, under his knees and fingers; to
see eyes and tongue burst out; to know that the brain
that dared conceive the thought of making a slave of
him was dead for its insolence!

"Good morning, my boy!" Josiah was saying in
that sonorous, cheery voice of his.  He always wore
his square-crowned hard hat or his top hat well back
from his brow when he was under roof downtown; and
he was always nervously chewing at a cigar, which
sometimes was lighted and sometimes not.  Just now it was
not lighted and the odor of it was to Armstrong the
sickening stench of the personality of his master.

"My master!" he muttered, and wiped the sweat
from his forehead; with eyes down and the look of the
lion cringing before the hot iron in its tamer's hand he
muttered a response.

"I want you to put my son Hugo in as one of the
fourth vice-presidents," continued the old man, seating
himself and cocking his trim feet on a corner of the
table.  "He must be broken to the business, and I've
told him he's got to start at the bottom of the ladder."

Armstrong contrived to force a smile at this ironic
pleasantry of his master's.  He instantly saw Josiah's
scheme—to have the young man inducted into the business;
presently to give him the dignity and honor of the
presidency, ejecting Armstrong, perhaps in discredit
to justify the change and to make it impossible for him
to build up in another company.

"You'll do what you can to teach him the ropes?"

"Certainly," said Armstrong, at the window.

Fosdick came up close to him, put his hand
affectionately on his shoulder.  "You've grown into my
heart, Horace.  I feel as if you were another son of
mine, as if Hugo were your younger brother.  I want
you to regard him as such.  I'm old; I'll soon be off the
boards.  I like to think of you two young fellows
working together in harmony.  It may be that——"

Armstrong had himself well within the harness now.
He looked calmly at Fosdick and saw a twinkle in those
good-natured, wicked eyes of his, a warning that he had
guessed Armstrong's suspicion and was about to counter
with something he flattered himself was particularly
shrewd.

"It may be I'll want your present place for the
boy, after a few years.  Perhaps it will be better not
to put him there; again it may be a good thing.  If I
decide to do it, you'll have a better place—something
where there'll be an even bigger swing for your talents.
I'll see to that.  I charge myself with your future."

Armstrong turned away, bringing his jaws together
with a snap.

"You trust me, don't you?" said Fosdick, not
quite certain that Armstrong had turned to hide an
overmastering emotion of gratitude.

"I'd advise against making Hugo a vice-president
just at present," said Armstrong.

"Why?" demanded Fosdick with a frown.

"I think such a step wouldn't be wise until after
this new policy holders' committee has quieted down."

Fosdick laughed and waved his arm.  "Those
smelling committees!  My boy, I'm used to them.
Every big corporation has one or more of 'em on hand
all the time.  The little fellows are always getting
jealous of the men who control, are always trying to
scare them into paying larger interest—for that's what
it amounts to.  We men who run things practically
borrow the public's money for use in our enterprises.
You can call it stocks or bonds or mortgages or what
not, but they're really lenders, though they think
they're shareholders and expect bigger interest than
mere money is worth.  But we don't and won't give
much above the market rate.  We keep the rest of the
profits—we're entitled to 'em.  We'd play hob, wouldn't
we, lying awake of nights thinking out schemes to
enable John Jones and Tom Smith to earn thirty, forty,
fifty per cent on their money?"

"But this committee—"  There Armstrong halted,
hesitating.

"Don't fret about it, young man.  The chances
are it'll quiet down of itself.  If it doesn't, if it
should have in it some sturdy beggar who persists,
why, we'll hear from him sooner or later.  When we
get his figure, we can quiet him—put him on the pay
roll or give him a whack at our appropriation for legal
expenses."

"But this committee—"  Armstrong stopped
short—why should he warn Fosdick?  Why go out of
his way to be square with the man who had enslaved
him?  Had he not done his whole duty when he had
refused to listen to the overtures of the new combination
against Fosdick?  Indeed, was it more than a mere
suspicion that such a combination existed?

"This committee—what?"

"You feel perfectly safe about it?"

"It couldn't find out anything, if there was
anything to find out.  And if it did find out anything,
what'd it do with it?  No newspaper would publish
it—our advertising department takes care of that.  The
State Government wouldn't notice it—our legal
department takes care of them."

"Sometimes there's a slip-up.  A few years ago——"

"Yes," interrupted Fosdick; "it's true, once in a
while there's a big enough howl to frighten a few weak
brothers.  But not Josiah Fosdick, and not the O.A.D.
We keep books better than we did before the big
clean-up.  A lot of good those clean-ups did!  As if
anybody could get up any scheme that would prevent
the men with brains from running things as they damn
please."

"You're right there," said Armstrong.  He had
thought out the beginnings of a new course.  "Well,
if you put Hugo in, I suggest you give him my place
as chairman of the finance committee.  My strong hold
is executive work.  Let those that know finance attend
to taking care of the money.  I want to devote myself
exclusively to getting it in."

Armstrong saw this suggestion raised not the
shadow of a suspicion in Fosdick's mind that he was
trying to get rid of his share in the responsibility for
the main part of the "technically illegal" doings of
the controllers of the company.  "You simply to
retain your *ex officio* membership?" said he reflectively.

"That's it," assented Armstrong.

"If you urge it, I'll see that it is considered.  Your
time ought all to be given to raking in new business and
holding on to the old.  Yes, it's a good suggestion.
Of course, I'll see that you get your share of the profits
from our little side deals, just the same."

"Thank you," said Armstrong.  He concealed his
amusement.  In the company there were rings within
rings, and the profits increased as the center was
approached.  He knew that he himself had been put in a
ring well toward the outside.  His profits were larger
than his salary, large though it was; but they were
trifling in comparison with the "melons" reserved for
the inner rings, were infinitesimal beside the big melon
Josiah reserved for himself, as his own share in addition
to a share in each ring's "rake off."  The only ring
Josiah didn't put himself in was the outermost ring of
all—the ring of policy holders.  There was another
feature in which insurance surpassed railways and
industrials.  In them the controller sometimes had to lock
up a large part of his own personal resources in carrying
blocks of stock that paid a paltry four or five or
six per cent interest, never more than seven or eight,
often nothing at all.  But in insurance, the controller
played his game wholly with other people's money.
Josiah, for instance, carried a policy of ten thousand
dollars, and that was the full extent of his investment;
he held his power over the millions of the masses simply
because the proxies of the policy holders were made out
in blank to his creatures, the general agents, whom he
made and, at the slightest sign of flagging personal
loyalty, deposed.

Fosdick was still emitting compliment and promise
like a giant pinwheel's glittering shower when the boy
brought Armstrong a card.  He controlled his face
better than he thought.  "Your daughter," he said to
Fosdick, carelessly showing him the card.  "I suppose
she's downtown to see you, and they told her you were
in my office."

"Amy!" exclaimed Fosdick, forgetting his manners
and snatching the card.  "What the devil does
*she* want downtown?  I'll just see—it must be important."

He hurried out.  In the second of Armstrong's
suite of three offices, he saw her, seated comfortably—a
fine exhibit of fashion, and not so unmindful of the
impression her elegance was making upon the furtively
glancing underlings as she seemed or imagined herself.
At sight of her father she colored, then tossed her head
defiantly.  "What is it?" he demanded, with some
anxiety.  "What has brought *you* downtown to see me?"

"I didn't come to see you," she replied.  "I sent
my card to Mr. Armstrong."

"Well, what do you want of him?" said Josiah, regardless
of the presence of Armstrong's three secretaries.

"I'll explain that to *him*."

"You'll do nothing of the sort.  I can't have my
children interrupting busy men.  Come along with me."

"I came to see Mr. Armstrong, and I'm going to
see him," she retorted imperiously.

Her father changed his tactics like the veteran
strategist that he was.  "All right, all right.  Come
in.  Only, we're not going to stay long.

"I don't want you," she said, laughing.  "I want
him to show me over the building."

"Lord bless my soul!" exclaimed Fosdick, winking
at the three smiling secretaries.  "And he the
president!  Did anybody ever hear the like!"  And he took
her by the arm and led her in, saying as they came,
"This young lady, finding time heavy on her hands
uptown, has come to get you to show her over the
building."

Armstrong had risen to bow coldly.  "I'm sorry,
but I really haven't time to-day," said he formally.

Fosdick's brow reddened and his eyes flashed.  He
had not expected Armstrong to offer to act as his
daughter's guide; but neither had he expected this tone
from an employee.  "Don't be so serious, young man,"
said he, roughness putting on the manner of good
nature.  "Take my daughter round and bring her to
my office when you are through."

To give Armstrong time and the opportunity to
extricate himself from the impossible position into which
he had rushed, Amy said, "What grand, beautiful
offices these are!  No wonder the men prefer it
downtown to the fussy, freaky houses the women get
together uptown.  I haven't been here since the building
was opened.  Papa made a great ceremony of that,
and we all came—I was nine.  Now, Mr. Armstrong,
you can count up, if you're depraved enough, and know
exactly how old I am."

Armstrong had taken up his hat.  "Whenever
you're ready, we'll start," said he, having concluded that
it would be impossible to refuse without seeming
ridiculous.

When the two were in the elevator on their way to
the view from the top of the building, Amy glanced
mischievously up at him.  "You see, I got my way,"
said she.  "I always do."

Armstrong shrugged and smiled stolidly.  "In
trifles.  Willful people are always winning—in trifles."

"Trifles are all that women deal in," rejoined she.

.. vspace:: 2

At the top, she sent one swift glance round the
overwhelming panorama of peak and precipice and
canon swept by icy January wind and ran back to the
tower, drawing her furs still closer about her.  "I
didn't come to see this," she said.  "I came to find out
why you don't—why you have cut me off your visiting
list.  I've written you—I've tried to get you on the
telephone.  Never did I humiliate myself so abjectly—in
fact, never before was I abject at all.  It isn't like
you, to be as good friends as you and I have been, and
then, all at once, to act like this—unless there was a
reason.  I haven't many friends.  I haven't any I like
so well as you—that's frank, isn't it?  I thought we
were going to be *such* friends."  This nervously, with
an air of timidity that was the thin cover of perfect
self-possession and self-confidence.

"So did I," said Armstrong, his eyes on hers with a
steadiness she could not withstand, "until I got at your
notion of friendship.  You can have dogs and servants,
hangers-on, but not friends."

"What did I do?" she asked innocently.  "Gracious,
how touchy you are."

In his eyes there was an amused refusal to accept
her pretense.  "You understand.  Don't 'fake' with
me.  I'm too old a bird for that snare."

"If I did anything to offend you, it was unconscious."

"Perhaps it was—at the time.  You've got the
habit of ordering people about, of having everybody do
just what you wish.  But, in thinking things over,
didn't you guess what discouraged me?"

She decided to admit what could not be denied.
"Yes—I did," said she.  "And that is why I've
come to you.  I forgot, and treated you like the
others.  I did it several times, and disregarded the
danger signals you flew.  Let's begin once more—will
you?"

"Certainly," said Armstrong, but without enthusiasm.

"You aren't forgiving me," she exclaimed.  "Or—was
there—something else?"

His eyes shifted and he retreated a step.  "You
mustn't expect much from me, you know," said he,
looking huge and unapproachable.  "All my time is
taken up with business.  You've no real use for a man
like me.  What you want is somebody to idle about
with you."

"That's just what I don't want," she cried, gazing
admiringly up at him.  And she was sad and reproachful
as she pleaded.  "You oughtn't to desert me.  I
know I can't do much for you, but—  You found
me idle and oh, so bored.  Why, I used to spend hours
in trying to think of trivial ways to pass the time.  I'd
run to see pictures I didn't in the least care about, and
linger at the dressmakers' and the milliners' shops and
the jewelers'.  I'd dress myself as slowly as possible.
You can't imagine—you who have to fight against
being overwhelmed with things to do.  You can't
conceive what a time the women in our station have.  And
one suggestion you made—that I study architecture
and fit myself to help in building our house—it changed
my whole life."

"It was the obvious thing to do," said he, and she
saw he was not in the least flattered by her flattery
which she had thought would be irresistible.

"You forget," replied she, "that we women of the
upper class are brought up not to put out our minds on
anything for very long, but to fly from one thing to
another.  I'd never have had the persistence to keep at
architecture until the hard part of the reading was
finished.  I'd have bought a lot of books, glanced at the
pictures, read a few pages and then dropped the whole
business.  And it was really through you that I got
father to introduce me to Narcisse Siersdorf.  I've
grown *so* fond of her!  Why is it the women out
West, out where you come from, are so much more
capable than we are?"

"Because they're educated in much the same way as
the men," replied he.  "Also, I suppose the men out
there aren't rich enough yet to tempt the women to
become—odalisques.  Here, every one of you is either an
odalisque or trying to get hold of some man with money
enough to make her one."

"What is an odalisque?  It's some kind of a woman,
isn't it?"

"Well—it's of that sex."

"You think I'm very worthless, don't you?"

"To a man like me.  For a man with time for
what they call the ornamental side of life, you'd
be—just right."

"Was that why—the *real* reason why—you stopped
coming?"

"Yes."

He was looking at her, she at the floor, gathering
her courage to make a reply which instinct forbade and
vanity and desire urged.  Hugo's head appeared in the
hatchway entrance to the tower room.  As she was
facing it, she saw him immediately.  "Hello, brother,"
she cried, irritation in her voice.

He did not answer until he had emerged into the
room.  Then he said with great dignity, "Amy, father
wants you.  Come with me."  This without a glance
at Armstrong.

"Would you believe he is three years younger than
I?" said she to Armstrong with a laugh.  "Run along,
Hugo, and tell papa we're coming."

Hugo turned on Armstrong.  "Will you kindly
descend?" he ordered, with the hauteur of a prince in a
novel or play.

"Do as your sister bids, Hugo," said Armstrong,
with a carelessness that bordered on contempt.  He
was in no very good humor with the Fosdick family and
Hugo's impudence pushed him dangerously near to the
line where a self-respecting man casts aside politeness
and prudence.

Hugo drew himself up and stared coldly at the
"employee."  "You will please not address me as Hugo."

"What then?" said Armstrong, with no overt intent
to offend.  "Shall I whistle when I want you, or
snap my fingers?"

Amy increased Hugo's fury by laughing at him.
"You'd better behave, Hugo," she said.  "Come
along."  And she pushed him, less reluctant than he
seemed, toward the stairway.

The three descended in the elevator together, Amy
talking incessantly, Armstrong tranquil, Hugo sullen.
At the seventeenth floor, Armstrong had the elevator
stopped.  "Good-by," he said to Amy, without offering
to shake hands.

"Good-by," responded she, extending her hand,
insistently.  "Remember, we are friends again."

With a slight noncommittal smile, he touched her
gloved fingers and went his way.

There was no one in Fosdick's private room; so,
Hugo was free to ease his mind.  "What do you mean
by coming down here and making a scandal?" he burst
out.  "It was bad enough for you to encourage the
fellow's attentions uptown—to flirt with him.
You—flirting with one of your father's employees!"

Amy's eyes sparkled angrily.  "Horace Armstrong
is my best friend," she said.  "You must be
careful what you say to me about him."

"The next thing, you'll be boasting you're in love
with him," sneered her brother.

"I might do worse," retorted she.  "I could
hardly do better."

"What's the matter, children?" cried their father,
entering suddenly by a door which had been ajar, and
by which they had not expected him.

"Hugo has been making a fool of himself before
Armstrong," said Amy.  "Why did you send him
after me?"

"I?" replied Fosdick.  "I simply told him where
you were."

"But I suspected," said Hugo.  "And, sure enough,
I found her flirting with him.  I stopped it—that's all."

Fosdick laughed boisterously—an unnatural laugh,
Amy thought.  "Do light your cigar, father," she
said irritably.  "It smells horrid."

Fosdick threw it away.  "Horace is a mighty
attractive fellow," he said.  "I don't blame you,
Mimi."  Then, with good-humored seriousness, "But you must
be careful, girl, not to raise false hopes in him.  Be
friendly, but don't place yourself in an unpleasant
position.  You oughtn't to let him lose sight of the—the
gulf between you."

"What gulf?"

"You know perfectly well he's not in our class,"
exclaimed Hugo, helping out his somewhat embarrassed
father.

"What is our class?" inquired Amy in her most
perverse mood.

"Shut up, Hugo!" commanded his father.  "She understands."

"But I do not," protested Amy.

"Very well," replied her father, kissing her.  "Be
careful—that's all.  Now, I'll put you in your
carriage."  On the way he said gravely, tenderly, "I'll
trust you with a secret—a part of one.  I know
Armstrong better than you do.  He's an adventurer, and I
fear he has got into serious trouble, very serious.
Keep this to yourself, Mimi.  Trust your father's
judgment—at least, for a few months.  Be most polite
to our fascinating friend, but keep him at a safe distance."

Fosdick could be wonderfully moving and impressive
when he set himself to it; and he knew when to stop as
well as what to say.  Amy made no reply; in silence
she let him tuck the robe about her and start her homeward.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NARCISSE AND ALOIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \V


.. class:: center medium bold

   NARCISSE AND ALOIS

.. vspace:: 2

When Amy thought of her surroundings again,
she was within a few blocks of home.  "I won't lunch
alone," she said.  "I can't, with this on my
mind."  Through the tube she bade the coachman turn back to
the Siersdorf offices.

A few minutes, and her little victoria was at the curb
before a brownstone house that would have passed for a
residence had there not been, to the right of the
doorway, a small bronze sign bearing the words, "A. and
N. Siersdorf, Builders."  Two women were together
on the sidewalk at the foot of the stoop.  One, Amy
noted, had a curiously long face, a curiously narrow
figure; but she noted nothing further, as there was
nothing in her toilet to arrest the feminine eye, ever on
the rove for opportunities to learn something, or to
criticise something, in the appearance of other women.
The other was Narcisse Siersdorf—a strong figure,
somewhat below the medium height, like Amy herself; a
certain remote Teutonic suggestion in the oval features,
fair, fine skin and abundant fair hair; a quick, positive
manner, the dress of a highly prosperous working
woman, businesslike yet feminine and attractive in its
details.  The short blue skirt, for example, escaped the
ground evenly, hung well and fitted well across the hips;
the blue jacket was cut for freedom of movement
without sacrificing grace of line; and her white gloves were
fresh.  As Amy descended, she heard Narcisse say to
the other woman, "Now, please don't treat me as a
'foreign devil.'  If I hadn't happened on you in the
street, I'd never have seen you."

"Really, I've intended to stop in, every time I
passed," said the other, moving away as she saw Amy
approaching.  "Good-by.  I'll send you a note as
soon as I get back—about a week."

"One of the girls from out West," Narcisse
explained.  "We went to school together for a while.
She's as shy as a hermit thrush, but worth pursuing."

"You're to lunch with me," said Amy.

Narcisse shook her head.  "No—and you're not
lunching with me, to-day.  My brother's come, and
we've got to talk business."

Amy frowned, remembering that those tactics were
of no avail with Narcisse.  "Please!  I want to meet
your brother—I really ought to meet him.  And I'll
promise not to speak."

"He's a man; so he'd be unable to talk freely, with
a woman there," replied Narcisse.  "You two would
be posing and trying to make an impression on each
other."

"Please!"

They were in the doorway, Narcisse blocking the
passage to the offices.  "Good-by," she said.  "You
mustn't push in between the poor and their bread and
butter."

Amy was turning away.  Her expression—forlorn,
hurt, and movingly genuine—was too much for Narcisse's
firmness.  "You're not especially gay to-day,"
said she, relentingly.

Amy, quick as a child to detect the yielding note,
brought her flitting mind back to Armstrong and her
troubles.  "My faith in a person I was very fond of
has been—shaken."  There was a break in her voice,
and her bright shallow eyes were misty.

"Come in," said Narcisse, not wholly deceived, but
too soft-hearted not to give Amy the benefit of the
doubt, just as she gave to whining beggars, though she
knew they were "working" her.  Anyhow, was not
Amy to be pitied on general principles, and dealt gently
with, as a victim of the blight of wealth?

Amy never entered those offices without a new
sensation of pleasure.  The voluntary environment of a
human being is a projection, a reflection, of his inner
self, is the plain, undeceiving index to his real life—for,
is not the life within, the drama of thought, the real
life, and the drama of action but the imperfect,
distorted shadowgraph?  The barest room can be most
significant of the personality of its tenant; his failure
to make any impression on his surroundings is
conclusive.  The most crowded or the gaudiest room may
tell the same story as the barest.  The Siersdorfs
conducted their business in five rooms, each a different
expression of the simplicity and sincerity which
characterized them and their work.  There was the same
notable absence of the useless, of the merely
ornamental, the same making of every detail contributory
both to use and to beauty.  One wearies of rooms that
are in any way ostentatious; proclamation of simplicity
is as tedious as proclamation of pretentiousness.  Those
rooms seemed to diffuse serenity; they were like the
friends of whom one never tires because they always have
something new and interesting to offer.  Especially did
there seem to be something miraculous about Narcisse's
own private office.  It had few articles in it, and they
unobtrusive; yet, to sit in that room and look about was
to have as many differing impressions as one would get
in watching a beam of white light upon a plain of virgin
snow.

"How *do* you do it!" Amy exclaimed, as she seated
herself.  She almost always made the same remark in
the same circumstances.  "But then," she went on,
"*you* are a miracle.  Now, there's the dress you've got
on—it's a jacket, a blouse, a belt and a skirt.  But
what have you done to it?  How do you induce your
dressmaker to put together such things for you?"

"You have to tell a dressmaker what to do," replied
Narcisse, "and then you have to tell her how to do it.
If she knew what to make and how, she'd not stop at
dressmaking long.  As I get only a few things, I can
take pains with them.  But you get so many that you
have to accept what somebody else has thought out,
and just as they've thought it out."

"And the result is, I look a frump," said Amy, half
believing it for the moment.

"You look the woman who has too many clothes to
have any that really belong to her," replied Narcisse,
greatly to Amy's secret irritation.  "There's the curse
of wealth—too many clothes, to be well dressed; too
many servants, to be well served; too many and too big
houses, to be well housed; too much food, to be well
fed."  Then to the office boy for whom she had rung, "Please
ask my brother if he's ready."

Soon Siersdorf appeared—about five years younger
than his sister, who seemed a scant thirty; in his dress
and way of wearing the hair and beard a suggestion of
Europe, of Paris, and of the artist—a mere suggestion,
just a touch of individuality—but not a trace of pose,
and no eccentricity.  He was of the medium height,
very blond, with more sympathy than strength in his
features, but no defined weakness either.  A boy-man
of fine instincts and tastes, you would have said;
indolent, yet capable of being spurred to toil; taking his
color from his surroundings, yet retaining his own fiber.
He was just back from a year abroad, where he had
been studying country houses with especial reference to
harmony between house and garden—for, the Siersdorfs
had a theory that a place should be designed in its
entirety and that the builder should be the designer.  They
called themselves builders rather than architects,
because they thought that the separation of the two
inseparable departments was a ruinous piece of artistic
snobbishness—what is every kind of snobbishness in its
essence but the divorce of brain and hand?  "No
self-respecting man," Siersdorf often said, "can look on his
trade as anything but a profession, or on his profession
as anything but a trade."

During lunch Amy all but forgot her father's
depressing hints against Armstrong in listening as the
brother and sister talked; and, as she listened, she
envied.  They were so interested, and so interesting.
Their life revealed her own as drearily flat and wearily
empty.  They knew so much, knew it so thoroughly.
"How could anyone else fail to get tired of me when I
get so horribly tired of myself?" she thought, at the
low ebb of depression about herself—an unusual mood,
for habitually she took it for granted that she must be
one of the most envied and most enviable persons in the
world.

Narcisse suddenly said to her brother, "Whom do
you think I met to-day?  Neva Carlin."  At that name
Amy, startled, became alert.  "She's got a studio down
at the end of the block," Narcisse went on, "and is
taking lessons from Boris Raphael.  That shows she has
real talent, unless—"  She paused with a smile.

"Probably," said Alois.  "Boris is always in love
with some woman."

"In love with love," corrected Narcisse.  "Men
who are always in love care little about the particular
woman who happens to be the medium of the moment."

"I thought she was well off," said Alois; and then
he looked slightly confused, as if he was trying not to
show that he had made a slip.

Narcisse seemed unconscious, though she replied
with, "There are people in the world who work when
they don't have to.  And a few of them are women."

"But I thought she was married, too.  It seems to
me I heard it somewhere."

"I didn't ask questions," said Narcisse.  "I never
do, when I meet anyone I haven't seen in a long time.
It's highly unsafe."

With studied carelessness Amy now said: "I'd
like to know her.  She's the woman you were talking
with at the door just now, isn't she?"

"Yes," said Narcisse.

"She looked—unusual," continued Amy.  "I wish
you'd take me to see her."

"I'll be very glad to take you," Narcisse offered, on
impulse.  "Perhaps she's really got talent and isn't
simply looking for a husband.  Usually, when a woman
shows signs of industry it means she's looking for a
husband, whatever it may seem to mean.  But, if
Neva's in earnest about her work and has talent, you
might put her in the way of an order or so."

"I'll go, any day," said Amy.  "Please don't forget."

She departed as soon as lunch was over, and the
brother and sister set out for their offices—not for
their work; it they never left.  "Pretty, isn't she?"
said Alois.  "And extremely intelligent."

"She is intelligent in a scrappy sort of way,"
replied his sister.  "But she neither said nor did
anything in your presence to-day to indicate it."

"Well, then—she's pretty enough to make a mere
man think she's intelligent."

"I saw you were beginning to fall in love with her,"
said the sister.

"I?  Ridiculous!"

"Oh, I know you better than you know yourself in
some ways.  You've been bent on marriage for several
years now."

"I want children," said he, after a pause.

"That's it—children.  But, instead of looking for
a mother for children, you've got eyes only for the sort
of women that either refuse to have children, or, if they
have them, abandon them to nurses.  Let the Amy Fosdick
sort alone, Alois.  A cane for a lounger; a staff
for a traveler."

"You're prejudiced."

"I'm a woman, and I know women.  And I have interest
enough in you to tell you the exact truth about
them."

"No woman ever knows the side of another woman
that she shows only to the man she cares for."

"A very unimportant side.  Its gilt hardly lasts
through the wedding ceremony.  If you are going to
make the career you've got the talent for, you don't
want an Amy Fosdick.  You'd be better off without
any wife, for that matter.  You ought to have married
when you were poor, if you were going to do it.  You're
too prosperous now.  If you marry a poor woman,
you'll spoil her; if you marry a rich woman, she'll spoil
you."

"You're too harsh with your own sex, Narcisse,"
said Alois.  "If I didn't know you so well, I'd think
you were really hard.  Who'd ever imagine, just
hearing you talk, that you are so tender-hearted you
have to be protected from your own sentimentality?
The real truth is you don't want me to marry."

"To marry foolishly—no.  Tell me, 'Lois, what
could you gain by marrying—say, Amy Fosdick?  In
what way could she possibly help you?  She couldn't
make a home for you—she doesn't know the first thing
about housekeeping.  The prosperous people nowadays
think their daughters are learning housekeeping
when they're learning to ruin servants by ordering them
about.  You say I'm harsh with my sex, but, as a
matter of fact, I'm only just."

"Just!" Alois laughed.  "That's the harshest
word the human tongue utters."

"I've small patience with women, I will admit.
They amount to little, and they're sinking to less.
Girls used to dream of the man they'd marry.  Now
it's not the man at all, but the establishment.  Their
romance is of furniture and carriages and servants
and clothes.  A man, any man, to support them in
luxury."

"I've noticed that," admitted Alois.

"It's bad enough to look on marriage as a career,"
continued Narcisse.  "But, pass that over.  What do
the women do to fit themselves for it?  A man learns
his business—usually in a half-hearted sort of way, but
still he tries to learn a little something about it.  A
woman affects to despise hers—and does shirk it.  She
knows nothing about cooking, nothing about buying,
nothing about values or quantities or economy or health
or babies or—  She rarely knows how to put on the
clothes she gets; you'll admit that most women show
plainly they haven't a notion what clothes they ought to
wear.  Women don't even know enough to get together
respectably clever traps to catch the men with.
The men fall in; they aren't drawn in."

"Yet," said Alois, ironic and irritated, "the world
staggers on."

"Staggers," retorted Narcisse.  "And the prosperous
classes—we're talking about them—don't even
stagger on.  They stop and slide back—what can be
expected of the husbands of such wives, the sons and
daughters of such mothers?"

Narcisse was so intensely in earnest that her brother
laughed outright.  "There, there, Cissy," said he,
"don't be alarmed—I'm not even engaged yet."

Narcisse made no reply.  She knew the weak side of
her brother's character, knew its melancholy possibilities
of development; and she had guessed what was passing
in his mind as he and Amy were trying each to please
the other.

"You yourself would be the better—the happier,
certainly—for falling in love," pursued Alois.

"Indeed I should," she assented with sincerity.
"But the man who comes for me—or whom I set my
snares for—must have something more than a pretty
face or a few sex-tricks that ought not to fool a girl
just out of the nursery."

No arrow penetrates a man's self-esteem more
deeply than an insinuation that he is easy game for
women.  But Alois was no match for his sister at that
kind of warfare.  He hid his irritation, and said
good-humoredly, "When you fall in love, my dear, it'll be
just like the rest of us—with your heart, not with your
head."

Narcisse looked at him shrewdly, yet lovingly, too.
"I'm not afraid of your marrying because you've fallen
in love.  What I'm agitated about is lest you'll fall in
love because you want to marry."

Alois had an uncomfortable look that was confession.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NEVA GOES TO SCHOOL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   NEVA GOES TO SCHOOL

.. vspace:: 2

Boris let a week, nearly two weeks, pass before he
went to see Miss Carlin.  He thought he was delaying
in hope that the impulse to investigate her would wane
and wink out.  He had invariably had this same hope
about every such impulse, and invariably had been
disappointed.  The truth was, whenever he happened upon
a woman with certain lines of figure and certain
expression of eyes—the lines and the expression that
struck the keynote of his masculine nerves for the
feminine—he pursued and paused not until he was satisfied,
sated, calm again—or hopelessly baffled.  And as he
was attractive to women, and both adroit and reckless,
and not at all afraid of them, his failures were few.

In this particular case the cause of his long delay in
beginning was that he had just maneuvered his affair
with the famously beautiful Mrs. Coventry to the point
where each was trying to get rid of the other with full
and obvious credit for being the one to break off.
Mrs. Coventry was stupid; even her beauty, changelessly
lovely, bored and irritated him.  But nature had given
her in default of brains a subtle craftiness; thus, she
had been able to meet Boris's every attempt to cast her
off with a move that put her in the position of seeming
to be the one who was doing the casting—and Boris had
a feminine vanity in those matters.  At last, however,
his weariness of his tiresome professional beauty and
his impatience to begin a new adventure combined to
make him indifferent to what people might say and
think.  Instead of sailing with Mrs. Coventry, as he
had intended, he abruptly canceled his passage; and
while she was descending the bay on the *Oceanic*, he
was moving toward Miss Carlin's studio.

"You have not forgotten me?" said he in that delightfully
ingenuous way of his, as he entered the large
studio and faced the shy, plainly dressed young woman
from the Western small town.

"No, indeed," replied she, obviously fluttered and
flattered by this utterly unexpected visit from the great
man.

"I come as a brother artist," he explained.  He was
standing before her, handsome and picturesque in a
costume that was yet conventional.  He diffused the
odor of a powerful, agreeable, distinctly feminine
perfume.  The feminine details of his toilet made his
strong body and aggressive face seem the more masculine;
his face, his virile, clean, blond beard, his massive
shoulders, on the other hand, made his perfume, his
plaited shirt and flowing tie, his several gorgeous rings
and his too neat boots seem the more flauntingly
feminine.  "What I saw of you," he proceeded, "and what
your cousin told me, roused my interest and my
curiosity."

At "curiosity" his clear, boyish eyes danced and his
smile showed even, very white teeth and part of the
interior of a too ruddy, too healthily red mouth.  Like
everything about him that was characteristic, this smile
both fascinated and repelled.  Evidently this man drew
an intense physical joy from life, had made of his
intellect an expert extractor of the last sweet drop of
pleasure that could be got from perfectly healthy,
monstrously acute nerves.  When he used any nerve,
any of those trained servants of his sybarite passions,
it was no careless, ignorant performance such as
ordinary mortals are content with.  It was a finished and
perfect work of art—and somehow suggestive of a
tiger licking its chops and fangs and claws and fur that
it might not lose a shred of its victim's flesh.  But this
impression of repulsion was fleeting; the charm of the
personality carried off, where it did not conceal, the
sinister side.  Because Boris understood his fellow
beings, especially the women, so thoroughly, they could
not but think him sympathetic, could not appreciate
that he lured them into exposing or releasing their
emotions solely for his own enjoyment.

But Neva was seeing the artist so vividly that she
was seeing the man not at all.  Only those capable of
real enthusiasm can appreciate how keenly she both
suffered and enjoyed, in the presence of the Boris Raphael
who to her meant the incorporeal spirit of the art she
loved and served.  He, to relieve her embarrassment
and to give her time to collect herself, turned his
whole attention to her work—a portrait of Molly,
the old servant she had brought with her from Battle
Field.

He seemed absorbed in the unfinished picture.  In
fact, he was thinking only of her.  By the infection to
which highly sensitive people are susceptible, he had
become as embarrassed as she.  One of the chief sources
of his power with women was his ability to be in his own
person whatever the particular woman he was seeking
happened to be—foolish with the foolish, youthful with
the young, wise with the sensible, serpentine with the
crafty, coarse with the grossly material, spiritual with
the high-minded.  He had all natures within himself and
could show whichever he pleased.

As he felt Neva's presence, felt the thrill of those
moving graces of her figure, the passion that those
mysterious veiled eyes of hers inspired, he was still
perfectly aware of her defects, all of them, all that must
be done before she should be ready to pluck and enjoy.
It was one of her bad mornings.  Her skin was rather
sallow and her eyelids were too heavy.  Since she had
been in New York, she had adopted saner habits of
regular eating and regular exercise than she had had,
or had even known about, in Battle Field.  She was
beginning to understand why most people, especially most
women, go to pieces young; and for the sake of her
work, not at all because she hoped for or wished for
physical beauty, she was taking better care of herself.
But latterly she had been all but prostrate before a
violent attack of the blues, and had been eating and
sleeping irregularly, and not exercising.  Thus, only
a Boris Raphael would have suspected her possibilities
as she stood there, slightly stooped, the sallowness of
her skin harmonizing drearily with her long, loose
dark-brown blouse, neutral in itself and a neutralizer.  He
saw at a glance the secret of her having been able to
deceive everybody, to conceal herself, even from herself.
He felt the discoverer's thrill; his blood fired like
knight's at sight of secret, sleeping princess.  But he
pretended to ignore her as a personality of the opposite
sex pole, knowing that to see her and know her as she
really was he must not let her suspect she was observed.
He reveled in such adventures upon soul privacy, not
the least disturbed because they bore a not remote
resemblance to that of the spy upon a nymph at the forest
pool.  He justified himself by arguing that he made no
improper use of his discoveries, but laid them upon the
high and holy altars of art and love.

Far from being discouraged by the difficulties which
Neva was that morning making so obvious, he welcomed
the abrupt change from the monotonous beauty of
Doris Coventry.  She had given him no opportunity for
the exercise of his peculiar talents.  With her the
banquet was ready spread; with this woman practically
everything had to be prepared.  And what a banquet
it would be!  When he had developed her beauty, had
made her all that nature intended, had taught her
self-confidence and the value of externals and had given
her the courage to express the ideas and the emotions
that now shrank shyly behind those marvelous eyes of
hers—  How poor, how paltry, how tedious seemed
such adventures as that with Doris Coventry beside this
he was now entering!

As if he were her teacher, he took up the palette and
with her long-handled brushes made a dozen light, swift
touches—what would have been an intolerable insolence
in a less than he.  To be master was but asserting his
natural right; men hated him for it, but the women
liked him and it.

"Oh!" she cried delightedly as she observed the
result of what he had done.  Then, at the contrast
between his work and her own, cried "Oh," again, but
despondently.

"You must let me teach you," said he, as if
addressing the talent revealed in her picture.

"Do you think I could learn?" she asked wistfully.

He elevated his shoulders and brows.  "We must
all push on until we reach our limit; and until we reach
it, we, nor no man, can say where it is."

"But I've no right to *your* time," she said reluctantly.

"I teach to learn.  I teach only those from whom
I get more than I give.  You see," with his engaging
boyish smile, "I have the mercantile instinct."

She looked at him doubtfully, searching for the
motive behind an offer, so curious, so improbable in and of
itself.  She saw before her now the outward and visible
form of the genius she revered—a very handsome man,
a man whose knowledge how to make himself agreeable
to women must obviously have been got by much and
intimate experience; a man whose sensuous eyes and
obstreperous masculinity of thick waving hair and thick
crisp reddish beard, roused in her the distrust bred by
ages on ages of enforced female wariness of the male
that is ever on conquest bent and is never so completely
conqueror as when conquered.  But this primordial
instinct, never developed in her by experience, was
feeble, was immediately silenced by the aspect of him
which she clearly understood—his look of breadth and
luminousness and simplicity, the master's eye and the
master's air—the great man.

"You will teach me more than I you," he insisted.

"Why?" she managed to object, wondering at her
own courage as much as at his condescension—for such
an offer from such a man was, she felt, indeed a
condescension.

"Because you paint with your heart while I paint
rather with my head."

"But that is the greater."

"No.  It is simply different.  Neither is great."

"Neither?"

"Only he is supremely great who works with both
heart and mind."

She showed how well she understood, by saying,
"Leonardo, for example?"

Boris's face was the devotee's at mention of the god.
The worldliness, the aggressive animality vanished.
"Leonardo alone among painters," said he.  "And he
reached the pinnacle in one picture only—the picture of
the woman he loved yet judged."

Her own expression had changed.  The least
observant would have seen just then why Boris,
connoisseur, had paused before her.  She had dropped her
mask, had come forth as the shy beauties of the field
lift their heads above the snow in response to the sun of
early spring.  For the first time in her life she had met
a human being to whom life meant precisely what it
had meant to her.  His own expression of exaltation
passed with the impulse that had given it birth; but she
did not see.  He was for her Boris Raphael, artist
through and through.  Instead of suspicion and
shrinking, her long narrow eyes, luminous, mysterious, now
expressed confidence; she would never again be afraid
of one who had in him what this man had revealed
to her.  She had always seen it in his work; she
greeted it in the man himself as one greets an old, a
stanch friend, tested in moods and times of sorrow
and trial.

He glanced at her, glanced hastily away lest she
should realize how close he had thus quickly got to her
soul, shy and graceful and resplendent as a flamingo.
"You will let me teach you?" said he.

"I don't understand your asking."

"Nor do I," replied he.  "All I know is, I felt I
must come and offer my services.  It only remains for
you to obey your impulse to accept."

Without further hesitation she accepted; and there
was firmly established the intimate relations of master
workman and apprentice, with painting, and through
painting the whole of life, as the trade, to be learned.
For, the arts are a group of sister peaks commanding
the entire panorama of truth and beauty, of action and
repose; and to learn of a master at any one of them is
to be pupil to all wisdom.

.. vspace:: 2

Boris arranged with her to come three mornings a
week to the atelier, raftered and galleried, which he had
made of the top stories of two quaint old houses in
Chelsea's one remaining green square.  Soon he was
seeing her several afternoons also, at her apartment;
and they were lunching and dining together, both alone
and in the company of artists and the sort of fashionable
serious-idle people who seek the society of artists.
The part of her shyness that was merely strangeness
did not long withstand his easy, sympathetic manner,
his simplicity, his adroitness at drawing out the best
in any person with whom he took pains to exert himself.
It required much clever maneuvering before he got her
rid of the shyness that came from lack of belief in her
power to interest others.  The people out West, inexpert
in the social art, awkward and shy with each other, often
in intimate family life even, had without in the least
intending it, encouraged her and confirmed her in this
depressing disbelief.  In all her life she had never been
so well acquainted with anyone as with Boris after a
week of the lessons; and with him, even after two
months of friendship, she would suddenly and unaccountably
close up like a sensitive plant, be embarrassed
and constrained, feel and act as if he were a stranger.
Self-confidence finally came through others, not at all
through him.  Her new acquaintances, observant,
sympathetic, quickly saw what Boris pointed out to them;
and by their manner, by their many and urgent invitations
and similar delicate indirect compliments, they
made her feel without realizing it that she was not
merely tolerated for his sake, but was sought on her
own account.

We hear much of the effect of things internal, little
of the far more potent effect of externals.  Boris,
frankly materialistic, was all for externals.  For him the
external was not only the sign of what was within, but
also was actually its creator.  He believed that
character was more accurately revealed in dress than in
conversation, in manners than in professions.  "Show
me through a woman's living place," he often said, "and
I will tell you more about her soul than she could tell
her confessor."  His one interest in Neva was her
physical beauty; his one object, to develop it to the utmost
of the possibilities he alone saw.  But he was in no
hurry.  He had the assiduous patience of genius that
works steadily and puts deliberate thought into every
stroke.  He would not spoil his creation by haste; he
would not rob himself of a single one of the joys of
anticipation.  And his pleasure was enhanced by the
knowledge that if she so much as suspected his real
design, or any design at all, she would shut herself away
beyond his reach.

"I want you as a model," said he one day, in the
offhand manner he used with her to conceal direct
personal purpose.  "But you've got to make changes in
your appearance—dress—way of wearing the hair—all
that."

She alarmed him by coloring vividly; he had no
suspicion that it was because she had been secretly using
him as a model for several months.  "I've hurt your
vanity?" said he.  "Well, I never before knew you had
that sort of vanity.  I fancied you gave the least
possible attention to your outside."

"I'll be glad to help you in any way," she hastened
to assure him.  "You're quite wrong about my reason
for not accepting at once.  It wasn't wounded vanity....
I don't know whether I have much vanity or
not.  I've never thought about it."

He laughed.  "Well, you will have, when you've
seen the picture I'll make.  What a queer, puritanic lot
you Westerners are!"  He seated himself at ease
astride a chair, and gazed at her impersonally, as
artist at model in whom interest is severely professional.
"I suppose you don't know you are a very beautiful
woman—or could be if you half tried."

"No, I don't," replied she indifferently.  "What
do you wish me to do?"

"To become beautiful."

"Don't tease me," said she curtly.  "I hate my
looks.  I never see myself if I can help it."

He took the master's tone with her.  "You will
kindly keep this away from the personal," reprimanded
he.  "I am discussing you as a model.  I've no interest
in your vanity or lack of it."

She resumed her place as pupil with a meek "I beg
your pardon."

"First, I want you to spend time in looking at
yourself in the glass and in thinking about yourself,
your personal appearance.  I want you to do this, so
that you may be of use to me.  But you really ought
to do it for your own sake.  If you are to be an artist,
you must live.  To live you must use to its fullest
capacity every advantage nature has given you.  The
more you give others, the more you will receive.  It is
not to your credit that you don't think about dress or
study yourself in the mirror.  The reverse.  If you
are homely, thought and attention will make you less
so.  If you are beautiful, or could be—  What a
crime to add to the unsightliness of the world when one
might add to its sightliness!  And what an impertinence
to search for, to cry for beauty, and to refuse to
do your own part."

"I hadn't thought of it in that way," confessed she,
evidently impressed by this unanswerable logic.

He eyed her professionally through the smoke of
his cigarette.  "If you are to help me with the picture I
have in mind, you'll have to change your hair—for the
next few months.  Your way of wearing it, I mean—though
that will change the color too—or, rather,
bring out the color."

Neva colored with embarrassment, remembered she
was but a model, braced herself resolutely.

"For my purposes—  Just stand before that mirror
there."  He indicated the great mirror which gave
him double the width of the atelier as perspective for
his work.  "Now, you'll observe that by braiding your
hair and putting it on top of your head, you ruin the
lines I wish to bring out.  The beautiful and the
grotesque are very close to each other.  Your face and
figure ought to be notable as an exhibit of beautiful
lengths.  But when you put your hair on top of your
head, you extend the long lines of neck and face too
far—at least, for my purposes."

"I see," said she, herself quite forgotten; for, his
impersonal manner was completely convincing, and his
exposition of the principles of art was as important as
novel and interesting.

"Do your hair well down toward the nape of the
neck—and loosely.  Somewhat as it was that night at
the Morrises, only—more so."

"I'll try it," she said with what sounded hopefully
like the beginnings of acquiescence.

"That's better!" exclaimed he, in approval of her
docile tone.  "And keep on trying till you get it right.
You'll know.  You've got good taste.  If you hadn't,
it'd be useless to talk these things to you.  The thing
is to bring out your natural good taste—to encourage,
to educate, instead of repressing it....  No,
don't turn away, yet.  I want you to notice some color
effects.  That dress you have on—  You always wear
clothes that are severely somber, almost funereal—quite
funereal.  One would think, to look at your garb,
that there was no laughter anywhere in you—no
possibilities of laughter."

Neva's laughing face, looking at him by way of the
mirror, showed that she was now in just the mood he
wished.  "I want to make a very human picture," he
went on.  "And, while the dominant note of the human
aspect in repose is serious—pensive to tragic—it is
relieved by suggestions of laughter.  Your dress makes
your sadness look depressed, resigned, chronic.  Yet
you yourself are strong and cheerful and brave.  You
do not whimper.  Why look as if you did, and by
infection depress others?  Don't you think we owe it to
a sad world to contribute whatever of lightness we can?"

She nodded.  "I hadn't thought of that," said she.

"Well, don't you think it's about time you did? ... Now,
please observe that you wear clothes with
too many short lines in their making—lines that
contradict the long lines of your head and body."

She whirled away from the mirror, hung her head,
with color high and hands nervous.  "Don't, please,"
she said.  "You are making me miserably self-conscious."

"Oh, very well."  He seemed offended, hurt.  "I
see you've misunderstood.  How can I get any good
out of you as a model unless you let me be frank?
Why drag self, your personal feelings, to the fore?
That is not art."

A long silence, during which she watched him as
he scowled at his cigarette.  "I'm sorry," she
exclaimed contritely.  "I'm both ungracious and
ungrateful."

"Vanity, I call it," he said, with pretended disdain.
"Plain vanity—and cheap, and altogether unworthy of
you."

"Go on, please," she urged.  "I'll not give you
further trouble."  Then she added, to his secret
delight, "Only, *please* don't ask me to look at myself
before you—until—until—I've had a chance to improve
a little."

"To go back to the hair again," pursued he, concealing
his satisfaction over his victory.  "My notion—for
my picture—is much less severe than you are
habitually—in appearance, I mean.  The hair must be
easy, graceful, loose.  It must form a background for
the face, a crown for the figure.  And I want all the
colors and shades you now hide away in those plaits."  He
surveyed her absently.  "I'm not sure whether I
shall paint you in high or low neck.  Get both kinds
of dresses—along the lines I've indicated....  Have
them made; don't buy those ready-to-wear things you
waste money on now....  I want to be able to study
you at leisure.  So, you'll have to put aside that prim,
puritanic costume for a while.  You won't mind?"

She had her face turned away.  She simply shook
her head in answer.

"I know you despise these exterior things—so far
as you personally are concerned," he proceeded in a
kindlier tone.  "I've no quarrel with that.  My own
views are different.  You pride yourself on being free
from all social ties or obligations——"

"Not at all," cried she.  "Indeed, I'm not so
egotistical."

"Egotism!"  He waved it away.  "A mere word.
It simply means human nature with the blinds up.  And
modesty is human nature with the blinds down.  We
are all egotists.  How is it possible for us not to be?
Does not the universe begin when we are born and end
when we die?  Certainly, you are an egotist.  But you
are very short-sighted in your egotism, my friend."

"Yes?"  She was all attention now.

"You want many things in the world—things you
can't get for yourself—things you must therefore look
to others to help you get.  You want reputation,
friendship, love, to name the three principal wants,
bread being provided for you.  Well—your problem is
how to get them in fullest measure and in the briefest
time—for, your wants are great and pressing, and life
is short."

"But I must have them by fair means and they
must be really mine.  I don't want what mere externals
attract."

"Pish!  Tush!  Tommy rot!"  Boris left the
chair, took the middle of the floor and the manner of
the instructor of a class.  "To get them you must use
to the best advantage all the gifts nature has given
you—at least, you will, if you are wise, I think.  Some
of these gifts are internal, some are external.  We are
each of us encased in matter, and we get contact with
each other only by means of matter.  Externals are
therefore important, are they not?  To attract others,
those of the kind we like, we must develop our external
to be as pleasing as possible to them.  In general, we
owe it to our fellow beings to be as sightly a part of
the view as we can.  In particular, we owe it to
ourselves to make the best of our minds and bodies, for
our own pleasure and to attract those who are congenial
to us and can do us the most good."

"I shall have to think about that," said she, and he
saw that she was more than half converted.  "I've
always been taught to regard those things as trivial."

"Trivial!  Another word that means nothing.
Life—this life—is all we have.  How can anything that
makes for its happiness or unhappiness be trivial?
You with your passion for beauty would have everything
beautiful, exquisite, except yourself!  What
selfishness!  You don't care about your own appearance
because you don't see it."

She laughed.  "Really, am I so bad as all that?"

"The trouble with you is, you haven't thought
about these things, but have accepted the judgment of
others about them.  And what others?  Why, sheep,
cattle, parrots—the doddering dolts who make public
opinion in any given place or at any given time."

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully.

"Another point.  You are trying to have a career.
Now, that's something new in the world—for women to
have careers.  You face at best a hard enough struggle.
You must do very superior work indeed, to convince
anyone you are entitled to equal consideration with
men as a worker.  Why handicap yourself by creating
an impression that you are eccentric, bizarre?"

Neva looked astonished.  "I don't understand,"
said she.

"What is the normal mode for a woman?  To be
feminine—careful of her looks, fond of dress, as
pleasing to the eye as possible.  Do you strive to be normal
in every way but the one way of making a career, and
so force people to see you're a real woman, a
well-balanced human being?"

Neva had the expression of one in the dark, toward
whom light is beginning to glimmer.

"A woman," proceeded he, the impersonal instructor,
"a woman going in for a career and so, laying
herself open to suspicion of being 'strong-minded' and
'masculine' and all sorts of hard, unsympathetic,
unfeminine things that are to the mutton-headed a sign of
want of balance—a woman should be careful to remove
that impression.  How?  By being ultra-feminine, most
fashionable in dress, most alluring in appearance—  Do
you follow me?"

"Perfectly," said Neva.  "You've given me a great
deal to think about....  Why, how blind we are to
the obvious!  Now that I see it, I feel like a fool."

"Use the same good taste in your own appearance
that you use in bringing out beauty in your
surroundings.  Note that——"

Boris paused abruptly; his passion was betraying
itself both in his eyes and in his voice.  But he saw
that Neva had, as usual, forgotten the teacher in the
lesson.  He felt relieved, yet irritated, too.  Never
before had he found a woman who could maintain,
outwardly at least, the fiction of friendship unalloyed with
passion.  "She acts exactly as if she were another
man," said he discontentedly to himself, "except when
she treats me as if I were another woman."

He did not return to the subject of her appearance.
And his judgment that he had said enough—and his
confidence in her good taste—were confirmed a few days
later.  She came in a new hat, a new blouse, and with
her hair done as he had suggested.  The changes were
in themselves slight; but now that her complexion had
been cleared and taken on its proper color—a healthy
pallor that made her eyes sparkle and glow, every little
change for the better wrought marvels.  A good
complexion alone has redeemed many a woman from
downright ugliness; Neva's complexion now gave her
regular features and blue-white teeth and changeful,
mysterious eyes their opportunity.  The new blouse,
one of the prettiest he had ever seen, took away the
pinched-in look across the shoulders to which he had
objected.  As for her hair, it was no longer a *mélange* of
light brown and dark brown, but a halo of harmonizing
tints from deepest red to brightest gold, a merry
playground for sunbeams.  He was astounded, startled.
"Why, she has really marvelous hair!" he muttered.
Then he laughed aloud; she, watching him for signs of
his opinion, wore an expression like a child's before its
sphinxlike teacher.  She echoed his laugh.

"My advice about the mirror was not so bad, eh?"
said he.

"No, indeed," replied she, with the first gleam of
coquetry he had ever seen.

.. vspace:: 2

Puzzling over her seeming unconsciousness of the,
to him, all-important fact that she was a woman and he
a man, he decided that it must be a deliberately chosen
policy, the result of things she had heard about him.
He had always avoided talking of his conquests, though
he appreciated that it was the quick and easy road to a
fresh conquest; but it pleased him to feel that his
reputation as a rake, a man before whom women struck the
flag at the first sign from him, was as great as his fame
for painting.  And it seemed to him that, if Neva had
heard, as she must, she could not but be in a receptive
state of mind.  "That's why she's on her guard," he
concluded.  "She's secretly at war with the old-fashioned
notions in which she was bred."

He could not long keep silent.  "Has somebody
been slandering me to my friend?" asked he abruptly,
one day, after they had both been silently at work for
nearly an hour.

She paused, glanced at him, shook her head—a
very charming head it was now, with the hair free
about her temples and ears and in a loose coil low upon
her neck.  "No," said she, apparently with candor.  "Why?"

"It seemed to me you were peculiar of late—distant
with me."

"Really, it isn't so.  You know I'd not permit
anyone to speak against you to me."

"But—well, a man of my sort always has a lot of
stories going round about him—things not usually
regarded as discreditable—but you might not take so
lenient a view."

Her face turned toward her easel again, her
expression unreadably reserved.

"Not that I've been a saint," he went on.  "We
who have the artistic temperament—  What does that
temperament mean but abnormal sensibility of nerves,
all the nerves?"

"That is true," assented she.

Then she was not so cold as she seemed!  She
understood what it was to feel.  "Of course," he
proceeded, "I appreciate your ideas on those subjects.  At
least I assume you have the ideas of the people among
whom you were brought up."

She was silent for a moment.  Then she said, as if
she were carefully choosing her words, "I've learned
that standards of morals, like standards of taste, are
individual.  There are many things about human
nature as I see it in—in my friends—that I do not
understand.  But I realize I deserve no credit for being
what I am when I have not the slightest temptation to
be otherwise."

Silence again, as he wondered whether her remark
was a chance shot or a subtle way of informing him
that, if he were thinking of her as a woman and a
possibility, he was wasting energy.  "What I wished to
say," he finally ventured, "was that I had the right to
expect you to accept me for what I am to you.  You
cannot judge of what I may or may not have been to
anyone else, of what others may or may not have been
to me."

"What you are to me," replied she earnestly,
"I've no right, or wish, to go beyond that."

"And," pursued he with some raillery, "don't
forget we should be grateful for all varieties of human
nature—the valleys that make the peaks, the peaks that
make the abysses.  What a world for suicide it would
be, if human nature were one vast prairie and life one
long Sunday in Battle Field....  What did you hear
about me?"

"Nothing that interested me."

"Really?"  He could not help showing pique.

"Nothing that would have changed me, if I had
believed."

"I warned you it might be true," he interrupted.

"True or false, it was not part of the Boris
Raphael I admire and respect."

He shifted his eyes, colored, was silenced.  He did
not like her frank friendliness; he did not want her
respect, or the sort of admiration that goes with respect.
But he somehow felt cheap and mean and ashamed
before her, had a highly uncomfortable sense of being an
inferior before a superior.  He was glad to drop the
subject.  "At least," reflected he, "the longer the
delay, the richer the prize.  She was meant for some
man.  And what other has my chance?"

And, meanwhile, following his instinct and his
custom, he showed her of his all-sided nature only what he
thought she would like to see; time enough to be what
he wished, when he should have got her where he
wished—a re-creation for the gratification of as many
sides of him as she had, or developed, capacity to
delight.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW

.. vspace:: 2

Narcisse, summoned by a telephone message, went
to Fosdick's house.  As she entered the imposing
arched entrance, Amy appeared, on the way to take her
dog for a drive.  "It's father wants to see you," said
she.  "I'll take you to him, and go.  I'd send Zut
alone, but the coachman and footman object to driving
the carriage with no one but him in it.  Fancy!
Aren't some people too silly in their snobbishness—and
the upper class isn't in it with the lower classes, is it?"

"You don't begin to know how amusing you are
sometimes," said Narcisse.

"Oh, I'm always forgetting.  You've got ideas like
Armstrong.  You know him?"

"I've met him," said Narcisse indifferently.  "You
say your father wants to see me?"

Amy looked disappointed.  Her mind was full of
Armstrong, and she wished to talk about him with
Narcisse, to tell her all she thought and felt, or thought
she thought and felt.  "There's been a good deal of
talk that he and I are engaged," she persisted.  "You
had heard it?"

"I never hear things of that sort," said Narcisse
coldly.  "I'm too busy."

"Well—there's nothing in it.  We're simply friends."

"I'm sorry," said Narcisse.

Amy bridled.  "Sorry!  I'm sure *I* care nothing
about him."

"Then, I'm glad," said Narcisse.  "I'm whatever
you like.  Is your father waiting for me?"

Narcisse liked old Fosdick—his hearty voice, his
sturdy optimism, his genial tolerance of all human
weaknesses, even of crimes, his passion for the best of
everything, his careless generosity.  "It's fine," she
often thought, "to see a man act about his own
hard-earned wealth as if he had found it in a lump in the
street or had won it in a lottery."  He seemed in high
spirits that morning, though Narcisse observed that the
lines in his face looked heavier than usual.  "Sorry to
drag you clear up here about such a little matter," said
he when they two were seated, with his big table desk
between them.  "I just wanted to caution you and
your brother.  Quite unnecessary, I know; still, it's my
habit to neglect nothing.  I'm thinking of the two
buildings you are putting up for us—for the O.A.D.
How are they getting on?  I've so much to attend to, I
don't often get round to details I know are in
perfectly safe hands."

"We start the one in Chicago next month, and the
one here in May—I hope."

"Good—splendid!  Rush them along.  You—you
and your brother—understand that everything about
them is absolutely private business.  If any newspaper
reporter—or anybody—on any pretext whatever—comes
nosing round, you are to say nothing.  Whatever
is given out about them, we'll give out ourselves
down at the main office."

"I'll see to that," said Narcisse.  "I'm glad you
are cautioning us.  We might have given out
something.  Indeed, now that I think of it, a man was
talking with my brother about the buildings yesterday."

Fosdick leaned forward with sudden and astonishing
agitation.  "What did he want?" he cried.

"Merely some specifications as to the cost of
similar buildings."

"Did your brother give him what he asked for?"
demanded the old man.

"Not yet.  I believe he's to get the figures together
and give them to him to-morrow."

Fosdick brought his fist down on the table and
laughed with a kind of savage joy.  "The damned
scoundrels!" he exclaimed.  Then, hastily, "Just step
to the telephone, Miss Siersdorf, and call up your
brother and tell him on no account to give that
information."

Narcisse hesitated.  "But—that's a very common
occurrence in our business," objected she.  "I don't
see how we can refuse—unless the man is a trifler.
Anyone who is building likes to have a concrete example to
go by."

"Please do as I ask, Miss Siersdorf," said Fosdick.
"We'll discuss it afterwards."

Narcisse obeyed, and when she returned said,
"My brother will give out nothing more.  But I find
I was mistaken.  He gave the estimates yesterday
afternoon."

Fosdick sank back in his chair, his features contracted
in anger and anxiety.  When she tried to speak,
he waved her imperiously into silence.  "I must think,"
he said curtly.  "Don't interrupt!"  She watched his
face, but could make nothing definite of its vague
reflections of his apparently dark and stormy thoughts.
Finally he said, in a nearer approach to his usual tone
and manner, "It's soon remedied.  Your brother can
send for the man.  You know who he was?"

"His name was Delmar.  He represented the
Howlands, the Chicago drygoods people."

"Um," grunted Fosdick, reflecting again; then, as
if he had found what he was searching for, "Yes—that's
the trail.  Well, Miss Siersdorf, as I was saying,
your brother will send for Delmar and will tell him
there was a mistake.  And he'll give him another
set of figures—say, doubling or trebling the first
set.  He'll say he neglected to make allowance for finer
materials and details of stonework and woodwork—hardwood
floors, marble from Italy, and so forth and so
forth.  You understand.  He'll say he meant simply
the ordinary first-rate office building—and wasn't
calculating on such palaces as he's putting up for the
O.A.D."

Narcisse sat straight and silent, staring into her
lap.  Fosdick's cigar had gone out.  She had never
before objected especially to its odor; now she found it
almost insupportable.

"You'd better telephone him," continued Fosdick.
"No—I'll just have the butler telephone him to come
up here.  We might as well make sure of getting it
straight."

Narcisse did not stir while Fosdick was out of the
room, nor when he resumed his seat and went on, "All
this is too intricate to explain in detail, Miss Siersdorf,
but I'll give you an idea of it.  It's a question of the
secrecy of our accounts."

"But we know nothing of your company's accounts,
Mr. Fosdick," said she.  "You will remember that,
under our contracts, we have nothing whatever to do
with the bills—that they go direct to your own people
and are paid by them.  We warned you it was a
dangerous system, but you insisted on keeping to it.  You
said it was your long established way, that a change
would upset your whole bookkeeping, that——"

"Yes—yes.  I remember perfectly," interrupted
Fosdick, all good humor.

"You can't hold us responsible.  We don't even
know what payments have been made."

"Precisely—precisely."

"It's a stupid system, permit me to say.  It allows
chances for no end of fraud on you—though I think the
people we employed are honest and won't take advantage
of it.  And, if your auditors wanted to, they could
charge the company twice or three times or several times
what the building cost, and——"

"Exactly," interrupted Fosdick, an unpleasant
sharpness in his voice.  "Let's not waste time discussing
that.  Let me proceed.  We wish no one to know
what our buildings cost."

"But—you have to make reports—to your
stockholders—policy holders rather."

"In a way—yes," admitted Fosdick.  "But all the
men who have the direction and control of large enterprises
take a certain latitude.  The average citizen is a
picayunish fellow, mean about small sums.  He wouldn't
understand many of the expenditures necessary to the
conduct of large affairs.  He even prefers not to be
irritated by knowing just where every dollar goes.
He's satisfied with the results."

"But how does he know the results shown him are
the real results?  Why, under that system, figures
might be juggled to cheat him out of nearly all the
profits."

"The public is satisfied to get a reasonable return
for the money it invests—and *we* always guarantee
that," replied Fosdick grandly.

Narcisse looked at him with startled eyes, as if a
sharp turn of the road had brought her to the brink of
a yawning abyss.  It suddenly dawned on her—the
whole system of "finance."  In one swift second a
thousand disconnected facts merged into a complete,
repulsive whole.  So, *this* was where these enormous
fortunes came from!  The big fellows inveigled the public
into enterprises by promises of equal shares; then they
juggled accounts, stole most of the profits, saddled all
the losses on the investors.  And she had admired the
daring of these great financiers!  Why, who wouldn't
be daring, with no conscience, no honor, and a free hand
to gamble with other people's money, without risking a
penny of his own!  And she had admired their generosity,
their philanthropy, when it was simply the reckless
wastefulness of the thief, after one rich haul and
before another!  She saw them, all over the world,
gathering in the mites of toiling millions as trust
funds, and stealing all but enough to encourage the
poor fools to continue sending in their mites!  She read
it all in Josiah's face now, in the faces of her rich
clients; and she wondered how she could have been so
blind as not to see it before.  That hungry look,
sometimes frankly there, again disguised by a slimy
over-layer of piety, again by whiskers or fat, but always
there.  Face after face of her scores of acquaintances
among the powerful in finance rose beside Josiah's until
she shrank and paled.  Under the slather of respectability,
what gross appetites, what repulsive passions!
But for the absence of the brutal bruisings of ignorance
and drink, these facts would seem exhibits in a
rogues' gallery.

Josiah had no great opinion of the brains of his
fellow men.  Women he regarded as mentally
deficient—were they not incapable of comprehending
business?  So, while he saw that Narcisse was not accepting
his statement as the honorable, though practical, truth
he believed it to be, he was not disturbed.  "I see you
don't quite follow me," he said with kindly condescension.
"Business is very complex.  My point is, however,
that our accounts are for our own guidance, and
not for our rivals to get hold of and use in exciting a
lot of silly, ignorant people."

Alois Siersdorf now entered and was effusively
welcomed.  "What's the matter?" he exclaimed.  "Have
I made a mess of some sort?"

"Not at all, my boy," said Fosdick, clapping him
on the back.  "Our rivals have got up an investigating
committee—have set on some of our policy holders to
pretend to be dissatisfied with our management.  I
thought until yesterday that the committee was simply
a haphazard affair, got together by some blackmailing
lawyer.  Then I learned that it was a really serious
attempt of a rival of mine to take the company away
from me.  They're smelling round for things to
'expose'—the old trick.  They think this is a rare
good time to play it because the damn-fool public has
been liquored up with all sorts of brandy by reformers
and anarchists and socialists, trying to set it on to tear
down the social structure.  No man's reputation is
safe.  You know how it is in big affairs.  It takes a
broad-gage man to understand them.  A little fellow
thinks he sees thief and robber and swindler written
everywhere, if he gets a peep at the inside.  I don't
know what we're coming to, with the masses being
educated just enough to imagine they know, and to try to
take the management of affairs out of the hands of the
substantial men."

With lip curling Narcisse looked at her brother,
expecting to see in his face some sign of appreciation
of the disgusting comedy of Fosdick's cant; but he
seemed to be taking Josiah and his oration quite
seriously; to her amazement he said, "I often think of that,
Mr. Fosdick.  We must have a stronger government,
and abolish universal suffrage.  This thing of ignorant
men, with no respect for the class with brains and
property, having an equal voice with us has got to stop
or we'll have ruin."

A self-confessed thief trying to justify himself by
slandering those he had robbed, and angry with them
because they were not grateful to him for not having
taken all their property—and her brother applauding!

"You're right," said Fosdick, clapping him on the
knee.  "I've been trying to explain to your
sister—though I'm afraid I don't make myself clear.  The
ladies—even the smartest of them—are not very
attentive when we men talk of the business side of things.
However, I suggested to her that you recall those
specifications you gave my enemies——"

"Is it possible!" exclaimed Siersdorf, shocked.
"Yes—yes—I see—I understand.  But I can straighten
it all out.  I was rather vague with Delmar.  I'll
send for him and tell him I was calculating on very
different kinds of buildings for him—something much
cheaper——"

"Precisely!" cried Josiah.  "Your brother's got
a quick mind, Miss Siersdorf."

Narcisse turned away.  Her brother had not even
waited for Fosdick to unfold his miserable chicane; his
own brain had instantly worked out the same idea; and,
instead of in shame suppressing it, he had uttered it as
if it were honest and honorable!

"There's another matter," continued Fosdick.  He
no longer felt that he must advance cautiously.
Sometimes, persons not familiar with large affairs, not
accustomed to dealing under the conditions that compel
liberal interpretation of the moral code, had been known
to balk, unless approached gradually, unless led by
gentle stages above narrow ideas of the just and the
right.  But clearly, the Siersdorfs, living in the
atmosphere of high finance, did not need to be acclimated.
"It may be this committee can get permission from the
State Government to pry into our affairs.  I don't
think it can; indeed, I almost know it can't; we've got
the Government friendly to us and not at all
sympathetic with these plausible blackmailers and disguised
anarchists.  Still, it's always well to provide for any
contingency.  If you should get a tip that you were
likely to be wanted as witnesses you could arrange for
a few weeks abroad, and not leave anything—any books
or papers—for these scoundrels to nose into, couldn't
you?"

"Certainly," assented Siersdorf, with great
alacrity.  "You may be sure they'll get nothing out
of us."

"Then, that's settled," said Fosdick.  "And now,
let's have lunch, and forget business.  I want to hear
more about those plans for Amy's house down in Jersey.
She has told me a good deal, but not all."

"We can't stop to lunch," interposed Narcisse,
with a meaning look at her brother.  "We must go
back to the office at once."  And when she saw that
Fosdick was getting ready for a handshake, she moved
toward the door, keeping out of his range without
pointedly showing what she was about.  In the street
with her brother she walked silently, moodily beside
him, selecting the softest words that would honestly
express the thoughts she felt she must not conceal from
him.

"A great man, Fosdick," said Alois.  "One of the
biggest men in the country—a splendid character,
strong, able and honorable."

"Why do you say that just at this time?" asked
his sister.

Alois reddened a little, avoided meeting her glance.

"To convince yourself?" she went on.  "To make
us seem less—less dishonest and cowardly?"

He flashed at her; his anger was suspiciously ready.
"I felt you were taking that view of it!" he cried.
"You are utterly unpractical.  You want to run the
world by copybook morality."

"Because I haven't thrown 'Thou shalt not steal'
overboard?  Because I am ashamed, Alois, that we are
helping this man Fosdick to cover his cowardly thief
tracks?"

"You don't understand, Cissy," he remonstrated,
posing energetically as the superior male forbearing
with the inferior female.  "You oughtn't to judge
what you haven't the knowledge to judge correctly."

"He is a thief," retorted she bluntly.  "And we
are making ourselves his accomplices."

Alois's smile was uncomfortable.  With the manner
of a man near the limit of patience with folly, he
explained, "What you are giving those lurid names to
is nothing but the ordinary routine of business,
throughout the world.  Do you suppose the man of
great financial intellect would do the work he does for
small wages?  Do you imagine the little people he
works for and has to work through, the beneficiaries of
all those giant enterprises, would give him his just due
voluntarily?  He's a man of affairs, and he works
practically, deals with human nature on human
principles—just as do all the great men of action."

Narcisse stopped short, gazed at him in amazement.
"Alois!" she exclaimed.

He disregarded her rebuke, her reminder of the time
when he had thought and talked very differently.
"Suppose," he persisted, "these great fortunes didn't
exist; suppose Fosdick were ass enough to take a salary
and divide up the profits; suppose all these people of
wealth we work for were to be honest according to your
definition of the word—what then?  Why, millions of
people would get ten or twelve dollars a year, or
something like that, more than they now have, and there'd
be no great fortunes to encourage art, to employ people
like us, to endow colleges and make the higher and more
beautiful side of life."

"That's too shallow to answer," said Narcisse
sternly.  "You know better, Alois.  You know it's
from the poor that intellect and art and all that's
genuine and great and progressive come—never from the
rich, from wealth.  But even if it were not so, how can
*you* defend anything that means a sacrifice of
character?"  She stopped in the street and looked at him.
"Alois, *what* has changed you?"

"Come," he urged rather shamefacedly.  "People
are watching us."

They went on in silence, separated at the offices with
a few constrained words.  They did not meet again
until the next morning—when he sought her.  He
looked much as usual—fresh, handsome, supple in body
and mind.  Her eyes were red round the edges of the
lids and her usually healthy skin had the paleness that
comes from a sleepless night.  "Well," he said, with
his sweet, conciliatory smile—he had a perfect disposition,
while hers was often "difficult."  "Do you still
think I'm wrong—and desperately wicked?"

"I haven't changed my mind," she answered, avoiding
his gaze.

He frowned; his face showed the obstinacy that
passes current for will in a world of vacillators.

"You've always left business to me," he went on.
"Just continue to leave it.  Rest assured I'll do
nothing to injure my honor in the opinion of any rational,
practical person—or the honor of the firm."

She was not deceived by the note of conciliation in
his voice; she knew he had his mind fixed.  She was at
her desk, stiffly erect, gazing straight ahead.  Her
expression brought out all the character in her features,
brought out that beauty of feminine strength which
the best of the Greeks have succeeded in giving their
sculptured heroines.  Without warning she flung
herself forward, hid her face and burst into tears.  "Oh,
I *hate* myself!" she cried.  "I'm nothing but a woman,
after all—miserable, contemptible, weak creatures
that we are!"

He settled himself on the arm of her chair and drew
her into his arm.  "You're a finer person in every way
than I am," he said; "a better brain and a better
character.  But, Cissy dear, don't judge in matters that
aren't within your scope."

"Do as you please," she replied brokenly.  "I'm a
woman—and where's the woman that wouldn't sacrifice
anything and everything for love?"

She had, indeed, spent a night of horror.  She felt
that what he had done was frightful dishonor—was
proof that he was losing his moral sense and, what
seemed to her worse, becoming a pander to the class for
which they did most of the work they especially prided
themselves upon.  She felt that, for his sake no less
than for her own, she ought to join the issue squarely
and force him to choose the right road, or herself go
on in it alone.  But she knew that he would let her go.
And she had only him.  She loved him; she would not
break with him; she could not.

"You know nothing about those buildings, anyhow,"
he continued.  "Just forget the whole business.
I'll take care of it.  Isn't that fair?"

"Anything!  Anything!" she sobbed.  "Only, let
there be peace and love between us."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IN NEVA'S STUDIO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   IN NEVA'S STUDIO

.. vspace:: 2

Shown into the big workroom of Neva's apartment
with its light softened and diffused by skillfully
adjusted curtains and screens, Narcisse devoted the few
minutes before Neva came to that thorough inspection
which an intelligent workman always gives the habitat
of a fellow worker.

"What a sensitive creature she is!" was the reminiscent
conclusion of the builder after the first glance
round.  A less keen observer might have detected a
nature as delicately balanced as an aspen leaf in the
subtle appreciation of harmony and contrast, of light
and shade.  And there were none of the showy, shallow
tricks of the poseur; for, the room was plain, as a
serious worker always insists on having his surroundings.
It appeared in the hanging of the few pictures, in the
colors of the few rugs and draperies, of walls, ceiling,
furniture, in the absence of anything that was not
pleasing; the things that are not in a room speak as
eloquently of its tenant as do the things that are
there.

"Not a scrap of her own work," thought Narcisse,
with a smile for the shyness that omission hinted.

"Pardon my keeping you waiting," apologized
Neva, entering in her long, brown blouse with stains of
paint.  "I was at work when you were announced."

"And you had to hustle everything out of sight, so
I'd have no chance to see."

Neva nodded smiling assent.  "But I'm better than
I used to be.  Really, I am.  My point of view is
changing—rapidly—so rapidly that I wake up each
morning a different person from the one who went to
bed the night before."

Narcisse was thinking that the Neva before her was
as unlike the Neva of their school days as a spring
landscape is unlike the same stretch in the bleak monotones
of winter.  "Getting more confidence in yourself?"
suggested she aloud.  "Or are you beginning to see
that the world is an old fraud whose judgments aren't
important enough to make anyone nervous?"

"Both," replied Neva.  "But I can't honestly
claim to be self-made-over.  Boris teaches me a great
deal beside painting."

Narcisse changed expression.  As they talked on
and on—of their work, of the West, of the college and
their friendship there, Neva felt that Narcisse had some
undercurrent of thought which she was striving with,
whether to suppress or express, she could not tell.
The conversation drifted back to New York, to Boris.
There was something of warning in Narcisse's face, and
something of another emotion less clearly defined as she
said with a brave effort at the rigidly judicial, "Boris
is a great man; but first of all a man.  You know what
that means when a man is dealing with a woman."

Neva's lip curled slightly.  "That side of human
nature doesn't interest me."

Narcisse, watching her closely, could not but be
convinced that the indifference in her tone was not
simulated.  "Not yet," she thought.  Then, aloud, "That
side doesn't often interest a woman until she finds she
must choose between becoming interested in it and
losing the man altogether."

Neva looked at her with a strange, startled expression,
as if she were absorbing a new and vital truth,
self-evident, astonishing.

"Boris has lived a long time," continued Narcisse.
"And women have conquered him so often that they've
taught him how to conquer them."

"I don't know much about him, beyond the painting,"
said Neva.  "And I don't care to know."

The silence that fell was constrained.  It was with
tone and look of shyness more like Neva than like
herself that Narcisse presently went on, "I owe a great
deal to Boris.  He made me what I am....  He
broke my heart."

Neva gave her a glance of wonder and fear—wonder
that she should be confiding such a secret, fear lest
the confidence would be repented.  Narcisse's
expression, pensive but by no means tragic, not even
melancholy, reassured her.  "You know," she proceeded,
"no one ever does anything real until his or her heart
has been broken."

Neva, startled, listened with curious, breathless
intentness.

"We learn only by experience.  And the great
lesson comes only from the great experience."

"Yes," said Neva softly.  She nodded absently.
"Yes," she repeated.

"When one's heart is broken ... then, one discovers
one's real self—the part that can be relied on
through everything and anything."

Neva, with studied carelessness, opened a drawer in
the stand beside her and began to examine the tips of a
handful of brushes.  Her face was thus no longer
completely at the mercy of a possible searching glance from
her friend.

"Show me anyone who has done anything worth
while," continued Narcisse, "and I'll show you a man
or a woman whose heart has been broken—and mended—made
strong....  It isn't always love that does the
breaking.  In fact, it's usually something else—especially
with men.  In my case it happened to be love."

Neva's fingers had ceased to play with the brushes.
Her hands rested upon the edge of the drawer lightly,
yet their expression was somehow tense.  Her eyes were
gazing into—Narcisse wondered what vision was
hypnotizing them.

"It was ten years ago—when I was studying in
Paris.  I can see how he might not be attractive to
some women, but he was to me."  Narcisse laughed
slightly.  "I don't know what might have happened, if
he hadn't been drawn away by a little Roumanian
singer, like an orchid waving in a perfumed breeze.  All
Paris was quite mad about her, and Boris got her.  She
thought she got him; but he survived, while she—  When
she made her way back to Paris, she found it
perfectly calm."

"And you still care for him?" said Neva gently.

Narcisse laughed healthily.  "I mended my heart,
accepted my lesson....  Isn't it queer, how differently
one looks at a person one has cared for, after
one is cured?"

"I don't know," said Neva, in a slow, constrained
way.  "I've never had the experience."

After a silence Narcisse went on, "I've no objection
to your repeating to him what I've said.  It was a mere
reminiscence, not at all a confession."

Neva shook her head.  "That would bring up a
subject a woman should avoid with men.  If it is never
opened, it remains closed; if it's ever opened, it can't be
shut again."

Narcisse was struck by the penetration of this, and
proceeded to reëxamine Neva more thoroughly.  Nothing
is more neglected than the revision from time to
time of our opinions of those about us.  Though
character is as mobile as every other quantity in this
whirling kaleidoscope of a universe, we make up our
minds about our acquaintances and friends once for all,
and refuse to change unless forced by some cataclysm.
As their talk unfolded the Neva beneath the surface, it
soon appeared to Narcisse that either she or Neva had
become radically different since their intimacy of twelve
years before.  "Probably both of us," she decided.
"I've learned to read character better, and she has more
character to read.  I remember, I used to think she
was one of those who would develop late—even for a
woman."

"It was stupid of me," she said to Neva, "but I've
been assuming you are just as you were.  Now it dawns
on me that you are as new to me as if you were an entire
stranger.  You are different—outside and inside."

"Inside, I've certainly changed," admitted Neva.
"Don't you think we're, all of us, like the animals that
shed their skins?  We live in a mental skin, and it
seems to be ours for good and all; but all the time a
new skin is forming underneath; and then, some fine
day, the old skin slips away, and we're quite new from
top to tip—apparently."

Narcisse's expression was encouraging.

"That happened to me," continued Neva.  "But I
didn't realize it—not completely—until the divorce was
over and I was settled here, in this huge wilderness
where the people can't find each other or even see each
other, for the crowd.  It was the first time in my life.  I
could look about me with the certainty I wasn't being
watched, peeped at, pressed in on all sides by curious
eyes—hostile eyes, for all curious eyes are hostile.
But you were born and brought up in a small town.
You know."

"Yes," said Narcisse.  "Everybody lives a public
life in a little town."

"Here I could, so to speak, stand in the sun naked
and let its light beat on my body, without fear of
peepers and pryers."  She drew a long breath and
stretched out her arms in a gesture of enormous relief.
"I dare to be myself.  Free!  All my life I'd been shut
in, waiting and hoping some one would come and lead
me out where there was warmth and affection.  Wasn't
that vanity!  Now, I'm seeking what I want—the only
way to get it."

Narcisse's face took on an expression of cynicism,
melancholy rather than bitter.  "Don't seek among
your fellow beings.  They're always off the right
temperature—they either burn you or freeze you."

"Oh, but I'm not trying to get warmth, but to give
it," replied Neva.  "I'm not merchandising.  I'm in a
business where the losses are the profits, the givings the
gains."

"The only businesses that really pay," said
Narcisse.  "The returns from the others are like the
magician's money that seemed to be gold but was only
withered mulberry leaves.  Won't you let me see some of
your work—anything?"

Neva drew aside a curtain, wheeled out an easel, on
it her unfinished portrait of Raphael.  At first
glance—and with most people the first glance is the final
verdict—there seemed only an elusive resemblance to
Raphael.  It was one of those portraits that are
forthwith condemned as "poor likenesses."  But Narcisse,
perhaps partly because she was sympathetically
interested in Neva's work and knew that Neva must put
intelligence into whatever she did, soon penetrated to the
deeper purpose.  The human face is both a medium and
a mask; it both reveals and covers the personality
behind.  It is more the mask and less the medium when
the personality is consciously facing the world.  A
portrait that is a good likeness is, thus, often a meaningless
or misleading picture of the personality, because it
presents that personality when carefully posed for
conscious inspection.  On the other hand, a portrait that
is hardly recognizable by those who know best, and
least, the person it purports to portray, may be in fact
a true, a profound, a perfect likeness—a faithful
reproduction of the face as a medium, with the mask
discarded.  The problem the painter attempts, the
problem genius occasionally solves but mere talent rarely,
and then imperfectly, is to combine the medium and the
mask—to paint the mask so transparently that the
medium, the real face, shows through; yet not so
transparently that eyes which demand a "speaking
likeness" are disappointed.

Neva, taught by Raphael to face and wrestle with
that problem, was in this secret unfinished portrait
striving for his "living likeness" only.  She had learned
that painting the "speaking likeness" is an unimportant
matter to the artist as artist—however important
it may be to him as seeker of profitable orders or of
fame's brassy acclaim so vulgar yet so sweet.  She was
not seeking fame, she was not dependent upon commissions;
she was free to grapple the ultimate mystery of
art.  And this attempt to fix Raphael, the beautiful-ugly,
lofty-low, fine-coarse, kind-cruel personality that
walked the earth behind that gorgeous-grotesque
external of his, was her first essay.

"All things to all men—and all women, like the
genius that he is," said Narcisse, half to herself.  Then
to Neva, "What does *he* think of it?"

"He hasn't seen it....  I doubt if I'll ever show
it to him—or to anybody, when it's finished."

"It does threaten to be an intrusion on his right of
privacy," said Narcisse.  "No, he's not attracting you
in the least as a man."

Neva looked amused.  "Why did you say that?"

"Because the picture is so—so impersonal."  She
laughed.  "How angry it would make him."

When Narcisse, after a long, intimacy-renewing,
or, rather, intimacy-beginning, stop, rose to go, she
said, "I'm going to bring my friend, Amy Fosdick,
here some time soon.  She has asked me and I've
promised her.  She is very eager to meet you."

Instantly Neva made the first vivid show of her
old-time shy constraint.  "I've a rule against meeting
people," stammered she.  "I don't wish to seem
ungracious, but——"

"Oh!" said Narcisse, embarrassed.  "Very well."

An awkward silence; Narcisse moved toward the
door.  "I fear I've offended you," Neva said wistfully.

"Not at all," replied Narcisse, and she honestly
tried to be cordial in accepting denial.  "You've the
right to do as you please, surely."

"In theory, yes," said Neva, with a faint melancholy
smile.  "But only in theory."

Now unconsciously and now consciously we are constantly
testing those about us, especially our friends, to
learn how far we can go in imposing our ever aggressive
wills upon them; and the stronger our own personalities
the more irritating it is to find ourselves flung back
from an unyielding surface where we had expected to
advance easily.  In spite of her sense of justice,
Narcisse was irritated against Neva for refusing.  But she
also realized she must get over this irritation, must
accept and profit by this timely hint that Neva's will
must be respected.  Most friendship is mere selfishness
in masquerade—is mere seeking of advantage through
the supposedly blindly altruistic affections of friends.
Narcisse, having capacity for real friendship, was eager
for a real friend.  She saw that Neva was worth the
winning.  And now that Alois was breaking away—  Stretching
out her hands appealingly, she said, "Please,
dear, don't draw away from me."

Neva understood, responded.  Now that Narcisse
was not by clouded face and averted eye demanding
explanation as a right, she felt free to give it.  "There's
a reason, Narcisse," said she, "a good reason why I
shan't let Miss Fosdick come here and gratify her
curiosity."

"Reason or no reason," exclaimed Narcisse, "forget
my—my impertinence....  I—I want—I need
your friendship."

"Not more than I need yours," said Neva.  "Not
so much.  You have your brother, while I have no one."

"My brother!"  Tears glistened in Narcisse's
eyes.  "Yes—until he becomes some other woman's
lover."  She embraced Neva, and departed hastily,
ashamed of her unwonted show of emotion, but not
regretting it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MASTER AND MAN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   MASTER AND MAN

.. vspace:: 2

When Waller, the small, dark, discreet factotum to
Fosdick, came to Armstrong's office to ask him to go to
Mr. Fosdick "as soon as you conveniently can,"
Armstrong knew something unusual was astir.

Fosdick rarely interfered in the insurance department
of the O.A.D.  Like all his fellow financiers bearing
the courtesy title of "captains of industry," he
addressed himself entirely to so manipulating the sums
gathered in by his subordinates that he could retain as
much of them and their usufruct as his prudence,
compromising with his greediness, permitted.  In the
insurance department he as a rule merely noted
totals—results.  If he had suggestion or criticism to make, he
went to Armstrong.  That fitted in with the fiction that
he was no more in the O.A.D. than an influential
director, that the Atlantic and Southwestern Trunk Line
was his chief occupation.

Armstrong descended to the third floor—occupied
by the A.S.W.T.L. which was supposed to have no
connection with the purely philanthropic O.A.D.,
"sustainer of old age and defender of the widow and
the orphan."  He went directly through the suite of
offices there to Fosdick's own den.  Fosdick had four
rooms.  The outermost was for the reception of all
visitors and the final disposition of such of them as the
underlings there could attend to.  Next came the office
of the mysterious, gravely smiling Waller, with his
large white teeth and pretty mustache and the folding
picture frame containing photographs of wife and son
and two daughters on his desk before him—what an air
of the home hovering over and sanctifying the office
diffused from that little panorama!  Many callers
supposed that Waller's office was Fosdick's, that Fosdick
almost never came down there, that Waller was for all
practical purposes Fosdick.  The third room was for
those who, having convinced the outer understrappers
that they ought to be admitted as far as Waller,
succeeded in convincing Waller that they must be personally
inspected and heard by the great man himself.  In
this third room, there was no article of furniture but a
carpet.  Waller would usher his visitor in and leave
him standing—standing, unless he chose to sit upon the
floor; for there was no chair to sit upon, no desk or
projection from the wall to lean against.  Soon Fosdick
would abruptly and hurriedly enter—the man of
pressing affairs, pausing on his way from one supremely
important matter to another.  Fosdick calculated that
this seatless private reception room saved him as much
time as the two outer visitor-sifters together; for not
a few of the men who had real business to bring before
him were garrulous; and to be received standing, to be
talked with standing, was a most effective encouragement
to pointedness and brevity.

The fourth and innermost room was Fosdick's real
office—luxurious, magnificent even; the rugs and the
desk and chairs had cost the policy holders of the
O.A.D. nearly a hundred thousand dollars; the
pictures, the marble bust of Fosdick himself, the
statuary, the bookcases and other furnishings had cost
the shareholders of the A.S.W.T.L. almost as much more.

Armstrong found Fosdick talking with Morris, Joe
Morris, who was one of his minor personal counsel, and
was paid in part by a fixed annual retainer from the
A.S.W.T.L., in part from the elastic and generously
large legal fund of the O.A.D.  As Armstrong
entered, Fosdick said: "Well, Joe, that's all.  You
understand?"

"Perfectly," said Morris.  And he bowed distantly
to Armstrong, bowed obsequiously to his employer and
departed.

"What's the matter between you and Joe Morris?"
asked Fosdick, whose quick eyes had noted the not at
all obvious constraint.

"We know each other only slightly," replied
Armstrong.  Then he added, "Mrs. Morris is a cousin of
my former wife."

"Oh—beg pardon for intruding," said Fosdick
carelessly.  "Sit down, Horace," and he leaned
back in his chair and gazed reflectively out into
vacancy.

Armstrong seated himself and waited with the
imperturbable, noncommittal expression which had
become habitual with him ever since his discovery that he
was Fosdick's prisoner, celled, sentenced, waiting to be
led to the block at Fosdick's good pleasure.

At last Fosdick broke the silence.  "You were
right about that committee."

Apparently this did not interest Armstrong.

"That was a shrewd suspicion of yours," Fosdick
went on.  "And I ought to have heeded it.  How did
you happen to hit on it?"

Armstrong shrugged his shoulders.

"Just a guess, eh?  I thought maybe you knew who
was back of these fellows."

"Who is back of them?" asked Armstrong—a mere
colorless, uninterested inquiry.

"Our friends of the Universal Life," replied
Fosdick, assuming that Armstrong's question was an
admission that he did not know.  "They've plotted with
some of the old Galloway crowd in our directory to
throw me out and get control."  Fosdick marched
round and round the room, puffing furiously at his
cigar.  "They think they've bought the governor
away from me," he presently resumed.  "They think—and
he thinks—he'll order the attorney-general to
entertain the complaints of that damned committee."  Here
Fosdick paused and laughed—a harsh noise, a
gleaming of discolored, jagged teeth through heavy
fringe of mustache.  "I've sent Morris up to Albany
to see him.  When he finds out I've got a certain
canceled check with his name on the back of it, I guess—I
*rather* guess—he'll get down on that big belly of his
and come crawling back to me.  I've sent Morris up
there to show him the knout."

"Isn't that rather—raw?" said Armstrong, still stolid.

"Of course it's raw.  But that's the way to deal
with fellows like him—with most fellows, nowadays."  And
Fosdick resumed his march.  Armstrong sat—stolid,
waiting, matching the fingers of his big, ruddy
hands.

"Well, what do you think?" demanded his master,
pausing, a note of irritated command in his voice.

Armstrong shrugged his shoulders.  A disinterested
observer might have begun to suspect that he was
leading Fosdick on; but Fosdick, bent upon the game,
had no such suspicion.

"I want your opinion.  That's why I sent for you,"
he cried impatiently.

"You've got your mind made up," said Armstrong.
"I've nothing to say."

"Don't you think my move settles it?"

"No doubt, the governor'll squelch the investigation."

"*Certainly* he will!  And that means the end of
those fellows' attempt to make trouble for us through
our own policy holders."

"Why?" said Armstrong.

"Don't you think so?"  Fosdick dropped into his
chair.  "I'm not quite satisfied," he said.  "Give me
your views."

"This committee has made a lot of public charges
against the management of the O.A.D.  It may be
that when you try to smother the investigation, the
demand will simply break out worse than ever."

"Pooh!" scoffed Fosdick.  "That isn't worth
talking about.  I was thinking only of what other
moves that gang could make.  The public amounts to
nothing.  The rank and file of our policy holders is
content.  What have these fellows charged?  Why, that
we've spent all kinds of money in all kinds of ways to
build up the company.  Now, what does the average
investor say—not in public but to himself—when the
management of his company is attacked along that
line?  Why, he says to himself, 'Better let well enough
alone.  Maybe those fellows don't give me all my share;
but they do give me a good return for my money, as
much as most shareholders in most companies get.'  No,
my dear Horace, even a rotten management needn't
be afraid of its public so long as it gives the returns its
public expects.  Trouble comes only when the public
*gets less than it expected*."

Armstrong did not withhold from this shrewdness
the tribute of an admiring look.  "Still," he
persisted, "the public seems bent on an investigation."

"Mere clamor, and no backing from the press except
those newspapers that it ain't worth while to stop
with a chunk of advertising.  All the reputable press is
with us, is denouncing those blackmailers for throwing
mud at men of spotless reputation."  Fosdick swelled
his chest.  "The press, the public, know *us*, believe in
*us*.  Our directory reads like a roll call of the best
citizens in the land.  And the poor results from that last
big tear-up are still fresh in everybody's mind.  Nobody
wants another."

A pause, then Armstrong: "Still, it might be better
to have an investigation."

"What!" exclaimed Fosdick.

"You say we've nothing to conceal.  Why not
show the public so?"

"Of course we haven't got anything to conceal,"
cried Fosdick defiantly.  "At least, *I* haven't."

"Why not have an investigation, then?"

That reiterated word "investigation" acted on the
old financier like the touch of a red-hot iron.
"Because I don't want it!" he shouted.  "Damn it, man,
ain't I above suspicion?  Haven't I spent my life in
serving the public?  Shall I degrade myself by noticing
these lying, slandering scoundrels?  Shall I let 'em
open up my private business to the mob that would
misunderstand?  Shall I let them roll *me* in the gutter?
No—sir—ree!"

"Then, you are against a policy of aggression?
You intend simply to sit back and content yourself with
ignoring attacks."

Fosdick subsided, scowling.

"Suppose you allowed an investigation——"

"I don't want to hear that word again!" said
Fosdick between his teeth.

Armstrong slowly rose.  "Any further business?"
he asked curtly.

"Sit down, Horace.  Don't get touchy.  Damn it,
I want your advice."

"I haven't any to offer."

"What'd you do if you were in my place?"

This was as weak as it sounded.  In human societies
concentrations of power are always accidental, in the
sense that they do not result from deliberation; thus,
the men who happen to be in a position to seize and
wield the power are often ill-equipped to use it
intelligently.  Fosdick had but one of the two qualities
necessary to greatness—he could attack.  But he could not
defend.  So long as his career was dependent for
success upon aggression, he went steadily ahead.  It is not
so difficult as some would have us believe to seize the
belongings of people who do not know their own rights
and possessions, and live in the habitual careless,
unthinking human fashion.  But now that his accumulations
were for the first time attracting the attention of
robbers as rich and as unscrupulous as himself, he was
in a parlous state.  And, without admitting it to
himself, he was prey to uneasiness verging on terror.  Our
modern great thieves are true to the characteristics of
the thief class—they have courage only when all the
odds are in their favor; let them but doubt their
absolute security, and they lose their insolent courage and
fall to quaking and to seeing visions of poverty and
prison.

"What would you do?" Fosdick repeated.

"What do your lawyers say?"

Fosdick sneered.  "What do they always say?
They echo *me*.  I have to tell them what to do—and,
by God, I often have to show 'em how to do it."  The
fact was that Fosdick, like almost all the admired
"captains of industry," was a mere helpless appetite with
only the courage of an insane and wholly unscrupulous
hunger; but for the lawyers, he would not have been
able to gratify it.  In modern industrialism the lawyer
is the honeybird that leads the strong but stupid bear
to the forest hive—and the honeybird gets as a reward
only what the bear permits.  "Give me your best judgment,
Horace," pursued Fosdick.

"In your place, I'd fight," said Armstrong.

"How?"

"I'd order the governor to appoint an investigating
committee, made up of *reliable* men.  I'd appoint one
of my lawyers as attorney to it—some chap who wasn't
supposed to be my lawyer.  I'd let it investigate me,
make it give me a *reasonably, plausibly* clean bill of
health.  Then, I'd set it on the other fellows, have it
tear 'em to pieces, make 'em too busy with home
repairs to have time to stick their noses over my back
fence."

Fosdick listened, appreciated, and hated Armstrong
for having thought of that which was so obvious once it
was stated and yet had never occurred to him.

"Of course," said Armstrong carelessly, "there are
risks in that course.  But I don't believe you can stop
an investigation altogether.  It's choice among evils."

"Well, we'll see," said Fosdick.  "There's no
occasion for hurry.  This situation isn't as bad as you
seem to think."

It had always been part of his basic policy to
minimize the value of his lieutenants—it kept them modest;
it moderated their demands for bigger pay and larger
participation in profits; it enabled him to feel that he
was "the whole show" and to preen himself upon his
liberality in giving so much to men actually worth so
little.  He was finding it difficult to apply this policy
to Armstrong.  For, the Westerner was of the sort of
man who not only makes it a point to be more necessary
to those he deals with than they are to him, but also
makes it a point to force them to see and to admit it.
Armstrong's quiet insistence upon his own value only
roused Fosdick to greater efforts to convince him, and
himself, that Armstrong was a mere cog in the machine.
He sent him away with a touch of superciliousness.
But—no sooner was he alone than he rang up Morris.

"Come over at once," he ordered.  "I've changed
my mind.  I've got another message for you to take up
there with you."

It would have exasperated him to see Armstrong as
he returned to his own offices.  The Westerner had lost
all in a moment that air of stolidity under which he had
been for several months masking his anxiety.  He
moved along whistling softly; he joked with the elevator
boy; he shut himself in his private office, lit a cigar and
lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his
expression that of a man whose thoughts are delightful
company.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AMY SWEET AND AMY SOUR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \X


.. class:: center medium bold

   AMY SWEET AND AMY SOUR

.. vspace:: 2

Now that Fosdick saw how he could clear himself,
and more, of those he had been variously describing as
pryers, peepers, ingrates, traitors and blackmailers, he
was chagrined that he had been so near to panic.  He
couldn't understand it, so he assured himself; with
nothing to conceal, with hands absolutely clean, with not an
act on the record that was not legitimate, such as the
most respectable men in the most respectable circles not
only approved but did—with these the conditions, how
had he been so upset?

"I suppose," he reflected, "as a man gets older, he
becomes foolishly sensitive about his reputation.  Then,
too, the world is eager to twist evil into everything—and
I have so many in my own class who are jealous of
me, of my standing."

The silliest thing he had done, he decided, was that
talk with the Siersdorfs.  Why, if they were at all
evil-minded, they might suspect he was using those
construction accounts for swindling purposes, instead
of making a perfectly legitimate convenience of them
to adjust the bookkeeping to the impossible requirements
of law and public opinion.  "It's an outrage,"
he thought, "that we can't have the laws fixed so it
would be possible to carry on business without having
to do things liable to misconstruction, if made
generally public.  But we can't.  As it is, look at the
swindlers who have taken advantage of the laws we
absolutely had to have the legislature make."  Yes, it
was a blunder to take the Siersdorfs into his
confidence—though the young man did show that he had
brains enough to understand the elements of large
affairs.  Still, he might some time make improper use
of the knowledge—unless——

Fosdick decided that thereafter the vouchers should
pass through Siersdorf's hands, should have Siersdorfs
O.K.  "Then, if any question arises, it will
be to his interest to treat confidential matters
confidentially.  Or, if he should turn against me, he'd be
unable to throw mud without miring himself."

And now Fosdick saw why he had instantly jumped
for the Siersdorfs.  They alone were not personally
involved in any of the "private business" of the O.A.D.
All the directors, all the officials, all the important
agents, were involved, and therefore would not dare
turn traitor if they should be vile enough to
contemplate it.  But the Siersdorfs were independent, yet
perilously in possession of the means to make trouble.

"I must fix them," said Fosdick.  "I must clinch them."

Thus it came about that within a week Alois was
helping the directors of the O.A.D. to keep their
accounts "adjusted"—was signing vouchers for many
times the amounts that were being actually expended
upon the building.  He hesitated before writing the
firm name upon the first of these documents.  On the
face of it, the act did look—peculiar.  True, it was a
simple matter of bookkeeping; still, he'd rather not be
involved.  There seemed no way out of it, however.
To refuse was to insult Fosdick—and that when
Fosdick was showing his confidence in and affection for him.
Also, it meant putting in jeopardy three big orders in
hand—the two office buildings and Overlook.

"It'd break Narcisse's heart to have to give up
doing Overlook," he said to himself.  Yes, he would
sign the vouchers; now that he felt he was acting, at
least in large part, for his dear sister's sake, he had no
qualms.  Having passed the line, he looked back with
amusement.  He debating as a moral question a matter
of business routine!  A matter approved by such a
character, such a figure as Josiah Fosdick!

Some of these "technically inaccurate" vouchers
were before him when Narcisse happened into his office.
Though there was "nothing wrong with them—nothing
whatever," and though she would not have known it
if there had been, he instinctively slipped the blotting
pad over them.

"What are you hiding there?" she teased
innocently.  "A love letter?"

He frowned.  "You've got that on the brain," he
retorted, with a constrained smile.  "What do you
want—now?"

"Amy's here.  Have you time to go over the plans?"

"Yes—right away," said he, with quick complete
change of manner.

She winced.  So sensitive had she become on the
subject of her brother and her friend that she was hurt
by the most casual suggestion from either of interest
in the other.  Regarding her brother as irresistible,
she assumed that, should he ask Amy, he would be
snapped in, like fly by frog.  "Yet," said she to
herself, "they're utterly unsuited.  He'd realize it as soon
as he was married to her.  Why can't a man ever see
through a woman until he's had an affair with her and
gotten over her?"

"Shall we look at the plans here or in your room?"
he asked.

"I'll send her here....  It won't be necessary for
me to come, will it?"

"No.  We'll hardly get round to your part
to-day," said Alois.  And Amy went in alone, and spent
the entire afternoon with Alois.  And most attractive
he made himself to Amy.  In his profession, he had
many elements of strength; he hated shams, had a
natural sense of the beautiful, unspoiled by the
conventionalities that reduce most architects to slavish
copyists.  He did not think things fine simply because they
were old; neither did he think them ugly or stale for
that reason.  He knew how to judge on merit alone;
and he had educated Amy Fosdick to the point where
she at least appreciated his views and ideas.  When a
man gets a woman trained to that point, he thinks her
a marvel of independent intellect, with germs of
genius—if she is at all attractive to him physically.  He
forgot that, until Amy had "taken up" the Siersdorfs,
she had been as enthusiastic about the barren
and conventional Whitbridge as she now was about
them.  Appreciation is one of the most deceptive
qualities in the world, where it is genuine.  Through
it we are all constantly disguising from ourselves and
from others our own mental poverty.

Usually appreciation is little more than a liking for
the person whose ideas we think we understand and
share.  In Amy's case, there was a good deal of real
understanding.  She had much natural good taste,
enough to learn to share in the amusement of Narcisse
and Alois at the silly imitations of old-world palaces
her acquaintances were hastening to house themselves
in—palaces built for a forever departed era of the
human race, for a past people of a past and gone social
order; she also saw, when Alois pointed it out to her,
the silliness of the mania for antiques which in our day
is doing so much to suffocate originality and even good
taste.  She learned to loathe the musty, fusty rags and
worm-eaten woods the crafty European dealers
manufacture, "plant," and work off on those Americans who
are bent upon the same snobbishness in art education
that they are determined to have in the other forms of
education.  Encouraged by Narcisse and Alois, she
came boldly out against that which she had long in
secret doubted and disliked.  She was more than willing
that they should build her a house suitable as a
habitation for a human being in the twentieth century—a
house that was ventilated and convenient and scientific.
And she was giving Alois a free hand in planning
surroundings of spontaneous beauty rather than of the
kind that pleased the narrower and more precise fancy
of a narrower age, to which the idea of freedom of any
sort was unknown.

.. _`"She was giving Alois a free hand in planning surroundings"`:

.. figure:: images/img-120.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "She was giving Alois a free hand in planning surroundings."

   "She was giving Alois a free hand in planning surroundings."

"Gracious!  It's after half past four!" she exclaimed,
as if she had just become conscious of the fact,
when in truth she had been impatiently watching the
clock by way of a mirror for nearly an hour.

"So it is!" said Alois, immensely flattered by her
unconsciousness of time.

"I want to take these plans with me—to show them
to some one."

Alois felt that the "some one" was a man, and a
very particular friend—else, she would have spoken the
name.  "Very well," he said, faintly sullen.

"Don't be disturbed," was her absent reply.  "I'll
take good care of them."  She saw the change in him;
but, not thinking of him as a man, but as an intelligence
only, she did not grasp the cause.  "Thank you so
much," she went on, "for being so patient with me.
How splendid it must be to have always with one a mind
like yours—or Narcisse's.  Well, until to-morrow, or
next day."  And, looking as charming as only a pretty
woman with a fortune can look to a man who wants
both her and her fortune, she left him desolate.

The "some one" was indeed a man.  But he—Armstrong—did
not arrive until half an hour after the appointed
time.  She came into the small salon into which
he had been shown, her gloves, hat and wraps on and
the big roll of plans under her arm; and no one would
have suspected that she had been waiting for him since
ten minutes before five and had spent most of the time
in primping.  "I'm all blown to pieces," she
apologized, as she entered.  "Have I kept you waiting?  I
really couldn't help it."

"I just got here," said Armstrong.  "I, too, was
late—business, as always."  Which was true enough;
but the whole truth would have been that he forgot the
appointment until its very hour.  "I'll not keep you
long," he continued.  "I've got to dress for an early
dinner."

She was so disappointed that she did not dare speak,
lest she should show her ill humor—and she knew
Armstrong detested a bad disposition in a woman.  She
rang for tea; when the servants had brought it and
were gone, she began fussing with her coat.  He,
preoccupied, did not see her hinted signals until she said,
"Please, do help me."

As he drew off the coat there floated to him a
delightful perfume, a mingling of feminine and flowers,
of freshness and delicacy, a stimulating suggestion of
the sensuous refinements which a woman with taste and
the means can employ as powerful allies in her siege of
man.  She looked up at him—her eyes were, save her
teeth, her best feature.  She just brushed his arm in
one of those seemingly unconscious, affectionate-friendly
gestures which are intended to be encouraging
without being "unwomanly."  "How is my friend
to-day?" she inquired.

"So-so," replied he, taking her advances at their
face value.

"You never come here unless I send for you, and
you always have some excuse for going soon."

He smiled good-natured raillery.  "How sure of
yourself you feel!"

"Why do you say that?"

"Your remark.  You are always making that kind
of remarks.  They're never made except by women who
feel sure."

"But I don't," protested she.  "On the contrary,
I'm very humble—where you're concerned."  She gave
him a long look.  "And you know that's true."

He laughed at her with his eyes.  "No.  I shan't
do it.  You'll have only your trouble for your pains."

She colored.  "What *do* you mean?"

"That I won't propose to you.  You've been trying
to inveigle me into it for nearly a year now.  But
you'll have to do without my scalp."

The big Westerner's jesting manner carried his
remark, despite its almost insolent frankness.  Besides,
what with Amy's content with herself and partiality for
him, it would have been difficult for him to offend her.
Never before had she been able to lure him so near to
the one subject she wished to discuss with him.  "What
conceit," cried she, all smiles.  "You fancy I've been
flirting with you.  I might have known!  Men always
misunderstand a woman's friendship.  I suppose you
imagine I'm in love with you."

"Not in the least.  No more than I with you."

She looked crestfallen at this.  Whether a woman
has much or little to give a man, whether she wants his
love or not, she always wishes to feel that it is there
waiting for her.  "Why do you imagine I wish you to
ask me to marry you?" she asked, swiftly recovering
and not believing him.

He did not answer that.  Instead he said: "You
came very near to getting your way about a year ago.
I had about made up my mind to marry you."

"To marry me," she echoed ironically.

"To marry you," he repeated in his attractive,
downright fashion.

"Well—why didn't you?"

"I decided I didn't need you," said he, most
matter-of-fact.  "I saw I'd be repeating the blunder I made
when I married before.  When I got out of college, I
was so discouraged by the prospect, I felt so weak
without money or influence, that I let myself drift into a
great folly—for it is a folly to imagine that money or
influence are of any value in making a career.  They're
the results of a career, not its cause.  Once more, when
I faced the big battle here in New York, I was fooled
for a while in spite of myself by the same old delusion.
I saw that the successful men all had great wealth, and
I made the same old shallow mistake of supposing their
wealth gave them their success.  But I got back to the
sensible point of view very quickly."

"And so—I—escaped."

"Escaped is the word for it."

"You are flattering—to-day."

"That sarcasm because I did not so much as speak
of your charms, I suppose?"

"You might have said I was personally a little of a
temptation."

"Why go into that?" rejoined he, with an intonation
that gave her a chance to be flattered, if she chose.
"Of course, if I had decided I needed you in my career,
I'd have flung myself over ears into love.  As it was,
don't you think my keeping away from you complimentary?"

This was the nearest he had ever come to an admission
that she was attractive to him; she straightway
exaggerated it into a declaration of love.  Very few
women make or even understand a man's clear distinction
between physical attraction and love; Amy thought
them one and the same.

"You are so hard!" said she.  "I wonder at myself
for liking you."  As she spoke, she rapidly thought it
out with the aid of her vanity; men and women, in their
relations with each other, always end by taking counsel
of vanity.  He wanted her; he had taken this subtle
means to get within her defenses and, without running
the risk of a refusal, find out whether he could get her,
whether a woman of her wealth and position would
condescend to him.  It was with her sweetest, candidest
smile that she went on, "Now it is all settled.  You
don't want to marry me; you aren't in love with me.  I
need not be afraid of any designs, mercenary or
otherwise.  At last, we can be real friends."

He reflected, then said with a judicial, impersonal
air, "No matter how well a man plays the game of man
and man, he usually plays the game of man and woman
badly.  Why?  Because he thinks the conditions are
different.  He is deceived by woman's air of guilelessness
into imagining he has the game all his own way."

"What has that got to do with what I said to
you?" asked she, her color a confession that the
question was unnecessary.

He again laughed at her with his eyes.  "Why did
you think it had?"

She pouted.  "You are in a horrible mood to-day."

He rose.  "Thanks for the hint."

She began to unroll the plans.

"Now, *there's* the man for you," said he, with a
gesture toward her bundle of blue prints.

"Who?"

"Siersdorf."

"If I had to choose, I'd prefer—even you."

"Siersdorf is adaptable and appreciative.  He's
good to look at, has a good all-round mind, is
extraordinary in his specialty.  You couldn't do better."

"I don't want him," she cried impatiently.  "I
prefer to suit myself in marrying."  She stood before
him, her hands behind her, the pretty face tilted
daringly upward.  "Are you trying to make me dislike you?"

He looked down at her; there was not a hint in his
expression that her dare was a temptation.  "I must
be going," said he.

Tears gathered in her eyes, made them brilliant,
took away much of their natural hardness.  "Won't
you be friends?" she appealed.

He continued to look straight into her eyes until
her expression told him she knew he was not deceived
by her maneuverings and strategies.  Then he said,
"No," with terse directness of manner as well as of
speech.  "No, because you do not want friends.  You
want victims."

In sudden anger she flung off her mask.  "I am a
good hater," she warned.  "You don't want me to turn
against you, do you?"

His face became sad and somewhat bitter.  There
had been a time when such a menace from a source so
near his career would have alarmed him, would have set
him to debating conciliation.  But his self-confidence
had developed beyond that stage, had reached the point
where a man feels that, if any force from without can
injure him, the sooner he finds it out, the more quickly
he will be able to make a career founded upon the only
unshakable ground, his own single strength.

"I've taken a great deal off you," she went on in a
menacing tone, a tone intended to remind him that he
was an employee.  "You ought to be more careful.
I'm not all sweetness.  I can be hard and unforgiving
when I cease to like."

He laughed unpleasantly as vanity thus easily
divested itself of its mask of love.  "And to cross you
is all that's necessary to rouse your dislike."

"That's all," said she.  And now she looked like
her father in his rare exhibitions of his true self.  She
had never deceived Armstrong altogether.  But he was
too masculine not to have lingerings of the universal
male delusion that feminine always and necessarily
means at least something of sweetness and tenderness.

"Shall we be friends?" she demanded sharply,
imperiously.  At bottom, she could not believe anyone
would stand against the power that gave her a
scepter—the power of wealth.  "Friends, or—not?"

"As you please," replied he, bowing coldly.  And
he went, his last look altogether calm, not without a
tinge of contempt.  He realized that he had come there
to put an end to his flirtation with her, to assert his own
independence, to free himself from the entanglement
which his temporary weakness of the first days in
overwhelming New York had led him into.  The swimmer,
used only to pond or narrow river, is unnerved for a
moment when he finds himself in the sea; but if he knows
his art, he is soon reassured, because he discovers that
no more skill is needed for sea than for pond, only a
little more self-confidence.

He was not clear of the house when she was saying
to herself, "Hugo is right about him.  Father must
take him in hand.  He shall be taught his place."





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.. _`AT MRS. TRAFFORD'S`:

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   \XI


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   AT MRS. TRAFFORD'S

.. vspace:: 2

Armstrong felt that he had regained his liberty.

The principal feature of every adequate defense is
vigorous attack; and, so long as Amy was pretending
to be and was thinking herself his friend, was in fact as
much his friend as it was possible for one to be who had
been bred to self-worship, Armstrong could take only
lame, passive measures against Fosdick.  But now—  In
the oncoming struggle in which he would get no quarter,
he need give none.  Several times, as he was dressing
for dinner, a cynical smile played over his features.
What a queer game life was!  In other circumstances,
that might easily have come about, he and Amy would
have plunged into a romantic love affair; they would
have been standing by each other against all the world,
the stronger in their love and devotion for the opposition.
A few words, and off flies her mask of sweetness,
so deceptive that it almost deceived herself, and away
goes her pretense of friendship; the friends become
enemies, liking becomes hate.  No real change in either
of them; each just as likable as before; yet, what a
difference!  It amused him.  It saddened him.  "Probably
at this very moment she's edging her father on to
destroy me," he thought.  But that disturbed him not
at all.  He had no fear of enemies; he knew that they
fling themselves against the gates in vain, unless there
are traitors within.

This break with Amy was most opportune.  He
was dining at the Traffords that evening; he could tell
Trafford he would accept without any reservations the
long-standing invitation to enter the Atwater-Trafford
plot to seize the O.A.D.

Trafford was one of the rising stars in finance.  He
originated in a village in southern New Jersey where he
was first a school teacher, then a lawyer.  He spent
many years in studying the problem of success—success,
of course, meaning the getting of a vast fortune.
He discovered that there were two ways to enormous
wealth—by seizing an accumulation amassed by some
one else; by devising a trap that would deceive or
compel a multitude of people to contribute each his mite of
a few dimes or dollars.  The first way was the quicker,
of course; but Trafford saw that the number of
multi-millionaires incapable of defending at least the bulk of
their wealth was extremely limited, and that, of them,
few indeed kept their wealth together so that one swoop
could scoop it all.  His mind turned to the other way.
After carefully examining the various forms of trap,
he was delighted to discover that the one that was easiest
to use was also the best.  Insurance!  To get several
hundred thousand people to make you absolute trustee
of their savings, asking no real accounting; and all you
had to do was to keep a certain part of the money safely
invested so that, when anybody died, you could pay his
heirs about what he had paid you, with simple interest,
or less, added.  Trafford studied the life insurance
tables, and he was amazed that nobody had ever taken
the trouble to expose the business.  He stood astounded
before the revelation that the companies must be
earning, on "risks" alone, from ten to thirty per cent,
this in addition to what clever fellows on the inside must
be doing in the way of speculation; that policy holders
got back in so-called dividends less than five, usually
less than four, often less than three per cent!

Trafford's fingers twitched.  Rich?  Why, he would
be worth millions!

He made choice among the different kinds of
insurance.  The object was to get a company that would
draw in the greatest number of "beneficiaries" and
would have to pay the smallest proportion of
"benefits."  The greatest number were obviously the very
poor; and, by happy coincidence, the very poor could
also be exploited more easily and more thoroughly and
with less outcry than any other class.  So, Trafford
made burial insurance his "graft."  He would play
upon the horror the poor have of Potter's Field.

He began in a small way in Trenton; he presently
had several thousand policy holders, each paying ten
cents a week to his agent-collectors.  As soon as a
policy of this kind has run for several months, it is to the
advantage of both agent and company for it to lapse.
Thus, Trafford's policies, obscurely worded,
unintelligible to any but a lawyer, read that the weekly
payments must be made at the office of the company; that
an omission promptly to pay a single month's dues made
the policy lapse; that a lapsed policy had no surrender
value.  He was too greedy at first, and Trenton was
too small a place.  When it became "too hot to hold
him," he went to New York—New York with its vast,
ignorant, careless tenement population, with its
corrupt government, with its superb opportunities for
floating and expanding a respectable grafting scheme.

If he had stayed in Trenton, he would probably
have gone to the penitentiary.  But in New York he
became ever richer, ever more respectable; he attracted
about him a group of eminently respectable sustainers
of church and society, always eager to get their noses
into a large, new trough of swill.  The Home and
Hearth Mutual Defense Company soon dwelt in a
palace, built at a cost of many millions, every penny
of it picked from the pockets of ragged trousers
and skirts; Trafford himself dwelt in another and
even more costly palace farther uptown, built with
the same kind of money.  He was a vestryman in
the fashionable Church of the Holy Family, a
subscriber to all the fashionable charities, an
authority on the fashionable theories as to the tenement
house question and other sociological problems
relating to the slums.  And he thought as well of
himself as did his neighbors.  Was it *his* business if the
company's collectors forgot to be accommodating and
to relieve the poor of the necessity of making their
payments at the offices?  Was it *his* business if policies
lapsed by the thousands, by the tens of thousands,
through the carelessness or ignorance of the policy
holders?  Look at the hundreds of thousands whose
funeral expenses were provided by the Home and
Hearth!  Look at the charities he subscribed to; listen
to the speeches in behalf of charity and philanthropy
he made!  Did he not give the policy holders all that
was legally theirs?—at least, all that was *rightfully*
theirs under the accepted business code; certainly, more
than the law would have allowed them, if laws could be
made so that the good could carry on "practical"
business and yet the wicked not get undue license.
Trafford had never been a moral theorist.  He had
accepted the code known as legal morals—"the world's
working compromise with utopianism," he sonorously
called it.  As he expanded financially, he expanded
morally; by the time he became a high financier, he was
ready for the broader code known as financial morals—wherein
allowances are made for all those moral difficulties
which the legal code, being of necessity of wider
application, cannot take into account.

A fine man was Trafford, with a face that the
women and the clergy called "sweet" and "spiritual,"
with a full gray beard, young eyes, bright blue and
smiling, iron-gray hair that waved a little, and the dress
of the substantial citizen.

His home life was beautiful.

He had made his first and false start with a school
teacher—she had had the first grade in the school where
he taught the sixth grade.  She was of about his own
age, and indolent, and had never heard that a married
woman ought to keep herself up to the mark; she was,
therefore, old at thirty-two, and he still a mere boy in
looks and in feeling.  She said rather severe things
when he so narrowly escaped disgrace during his
apprenticeship at Trenton; they quarreled, they
separated.

In the boarding house where he first stopped in
New York there was a serious, shrewd, pretty girl, the
daughter of the landlady and the niece of one of the
high dignitaries of the church.  Trafford induced his
wife to divorce him—before she discovered how swiftly
and luxuriantly he was putting forth bough and leaf in
congenial New York.  He married the niece of the
church dignitary in the parlor of the boarding house;
a "most elegant function" it was pronounced by the
boarders—and, as they read all the "fashionable
intelligence" and claimed kinship with various fashionable
people, they ought to have known.  The wedding was
like the bright dawn of a bright day—a somewhat
cool, even frosty day, but brilliant.  Neither Trafford
nor the second Mrs. Trafford had much affection in
them.  Who knows, perhaps the marriage was the
more cloudless for that.  Instead of exploiting each
other, as loving couples too often do, they exploited
their fellow beings, he downtown, she up.  As he grew,
she grew.  As he became rich, she became fashionable;
ten years after that wedding, hardy indeed would have
been the person who would have dared remind her that
she had once lived in a boarding house.

Conventionally, it is man's chief business to get
rich, woman's chief business to keep young looking;
the Traffords were nothing if not conventional.
Mrs. Trafford appreciated that she lived in a land where
beauty in a woman counts more than seventy-five points
in the hundred, that she lived in a city where it counts
at least ninety points in the hundred.  She had no use
for her charms beyond mere show—show, the sole
purpose of all she did and thought and was.  She took
herself in hand, after the true New York fashion, at
Time's first sign of malice.  She had herself cared for
from top to toe, and that intelligently—no credulous
prey to fake beautifiers was Lily Trafford.  When
Trafford was fifty-two, though he did not look so much
by half a dozen years, his wife was thirty-eight, and
looked less than thirty.

Nor had she neglected her other duties as woman
and wife.  Her husband was rich; she had learned how
to spend money.  The theory among those who have
no money "to speak of," and never had, is that
everyone is born with the knowledge how to spend money.
In fact, there are thousands who know how to make
money where there are ten who know how to spend it.
The whole mercantile class fattens on the ignorance
of this neglected science—fattens by selling at high
prices to those who do not know what they want or
how much they should pay.  Mrs. Trafford knew
exactly what she wanted—she wanted to be fashionable.
She had fashion as an instinct, as a passion.  She
wanted the "latest thing" in mental and material
furnishings.  She cared nothing for knowledge; she was
determined to have culture, because culture was
fashionable.  She had no ideas of her own, and wanted
none; she followed the accepted standards.  It was the
fashion to go to church; she went to church.  It was
the fashion to be a little skeptical; she was cautiously
skeptical.  It was the fashion to live in a palace; in
a palace she lived.  She went to the fashionable
dressmakers and art stores and book stores.  She filled her
house with things recommended by the fashionable
architects.  She had the plainest personal tastes in
food, but she ate three fashionable meals a day; and,
though she loved coffee with cream, took it with hot
milk in the mornings and black after lunch and dinner,
because cream was unfashionable.  Yes, Mrs. Trafford
knew how to spend money.  The science of spending
money is getting what you want at as low a price as
anybody can get it.  Mrs. Trafford got exactly what
she wanted, and got it with no more waste than is
inevitable in spending large sums with people who lie
awake of nights plotting to get more than they are
entitled to.

As Armstrong looked round the salon into which
he was shown, it seemed to him he had never seen
anything so magnificent or so stiff.  Trafford was housed
exactly like a king—and, like a king, he had the air
of being a temporary tenant of the magnificence about
him.  It was the typical great house—a crude, barbaric
structure, an exhibition of wealth with no individuality,
no originality, ludicrous to the natural eye, yet
melancholy; for, from every exhibit of how little wealth buys
there protrudes the suggestion of how much it has
deprived how many.  In such displays the absence of
price marks is a doubtful concession to canons of taste
which in no wise apply; the price mark would at once
answer the only question that forms in the mind as the
glance roams.  The Traffords, however, were as
content as royalty in their uncomfortable and unsightly
surroundings; they had attained the upper class
heaven.

"So glad you could come," said Mrs. Trafford
graciously to Armstrong.  Her toilet was the extreme
of the fashion, and without a glimmer of individual
taste.  "This is my small daughter."  And she smiled
up at the thin, pretty young woman beside her in
diaphanous white over palest yellow.  "We are to be
six this evening," she went on.  "And Boris is
coming—you know Boris Raphael?"

"Never heard of him," said Armstrong.

Miss Trafford smiled broadly.  Mrs. Trafford was
pained, and showed it—not at her daughter's smile, for
it she did not see, but at Armstrong's ignorance of so
important a fact in the current fashionable fund of
information.  Ignorance of literature, science, art,
politics, of everything of importance in the great
world, would not have disturbed Mrs. Trafford; but
ignorance of any of the trivialities it was fashionable
to know—what vulgarity, what humiliation!  "He
is *the* painter of portraits," she explained.  "Everyone
has him.  He gets really fabulous prices."

"An American?" inquired Armstrong.

"I believe he was born here.  But, of course, he
has spent his life abroad.  We are so commercial.  No
artist could develop here."

"Is there any place on earth where they don't take
all they can get?" asked Armstrong.  "Does Raphael
refuse 'fabulous prices'?"

Miss Trafford laughed.  Mrs. Trafford looked
pained again.  "Oh—but the spirit is different over
there," she replied vaguely.

"Where the men won't marry unless the girl
brings a dowry?"

"The customs are different from ours," said
Mrs. Trafford, patiently and pleasantly.  "Raphael has
done me a great honor.  He has asked to paint me."

"Naturally, he's on the lookout for all the jobs
he can get," said Armstrong, his mind really on his
impending treaty with her husband—arranging the
articles, what he would give, what demand in exchange.
The instant the words were out he realized their
inexcusable rudeness.  He reddened and looked
awkwardly big and piteously apologetic.

Trafford, who had been stroking the huge deerhound
on the tiger skin before the fire, now burst in.
"What's that about Raphael?  Did my wife tell you
she has at last persuaded him to paint her picture?"

A miserable silence.  Miss Trafford had to turn
away to restrain her laughter.  Mrs. Trafford became
white, then scarlet, then white again.

"The airs he's putting on!" continued Trafford,
unconscious.  "Why, they tell me his father was a
banana peddler and——"

"Mr. Raphael," announced the butler, holding
aside one of the ten-thousand-dollar portières.

"Oh—Raphael!" exclaimed Trafford, with enthusiasm.

"So glad you could come," said Mrs. Trafford,
gracious and sweet.

"Miss Carlin," announced the butler.

Armstrong, studying Raphael's face, which
instantly attracted him, wheeled toward the door at the
sound of this name as if he had been shot at from
that direction.  He might not have been noted, had
he not straightway got a far greater shock.  In
abandon of sheer amazement he stared at the figure in the
doorway—Neva, completely transformed in the two
years since he saw her.  The revolution in her whole
mode of life and thought had produced results as
striking inwardly as outwardly.

In America, transformations usually cause, at
most, only momentary surprise; for almost everyone
above the grade of day laborer, and not a few there,
changes his environment completely, not once but
several times in the lifetime, readjusting himself to
his better or worse circumstances.  After an interval
one sees the man or the woman he has known as poor
and obscure; success has come in that interval, and
with it all the external and internal results of
success.  Or, failure has come, and with it that general
sloughing away and decay which is the inevitable
consequence of profound discouragement; the American,
most adaptable of human beings, accepts defeat as
facilely as victory.

In Neva's case, however, the phenomenon was somewhat
different.  It is not often that circumstance
drags an obstinately retiring person into
activity, breaks the shell and compels that which was
hidden to become open, to develop, to dominate.  The
transformation of Neva seemed somewhat as if a
violet had become a tall-stemmed rose; it was, in fact,
no miracle of transubstantiation, but one of those
perfectly natural marvels, like the metamorphosis of
grub into butterfly.  Armstrong had seen the chrysalis,
all unsuspicious of its true nature; now, with no
knowledge of the stages between, he was seeing the
ethereal beauty the chrysalis had so securely concealed.
It must be said, however, that Boris, though he had
seen the day-to-day change, the gradual unfolding of
wing and color and grace, was almost as startled as
the big, matter-of-fact Westerner.  In the evolution
of every living thing, there comes a definite moment
when the old vanishes and the new bursts forth in full
splendor—when bud ceases to be bud and is in a
twinkling leaf or bloom, when awkward boy or girl is all
at once graceful youth, full panoplied.  Neva,
knowing she was to see Armstrong that night, had put
forth the last crucial effort, had for the first time
spread wide to the light her new plumage of body
and soul.  And there stood in the doorway of
Trafford's salon the woman grown, radiant in that
luminous envelope which crowns certain kinds of beauty
with the supreme charm of mystery.

She paused an instant before Armstrong's stare,
which was disconcerting the whole company.  In spite
of her forewarned self-control, her eyes sparkled
and her cheeks flushed; that stare of his was the
triumph of which she had dreamed.  She came on to
her hostess and extended her hand.  Mrs. Trafford,
who prided herself on being the "complete hostess,"
equal to any emergency, for once almost lost her head;
something in Armstrong's face, in his eyes, raised in
her the dread of a scene, and she showed it.  But Neva
restored her—Neva, tranquil and graceful, a "study
in lengths" to delight the least observant eye now,
her faintly shimmering evening dress of pale gray
leaving bare her beautiful arms and shoulders and
neck, and giving full opportunity to the poise of her
small head with its bright brown crown of thick, vital
hair; and her eyes, gleaming from the long, narrow
lids, seemed at once to offer and refuse the delights
such words as youth and passion conjure.

"I don't wonder you can't keep from staring,"
said Miss Trafford in an undertone to Armstrong, with
intent to recall him to himself.

With that, he did contrive to get himself together;
Mrs. Trafford introduced him to Neva, not without a
nervous flutter in her voice.  Neva put her hand out
to him.  "How d'ye do, Horace?" she said, with a
faint smile, neither friendly nor cold.

Armstrong took her hand without being able to
speak.  Mrs. Trafford was about to say, "You have
met before," when it occurred to her that this might
precipitate the scene.  Dinner was announced; she
paired her guests—Lona with Armstrong, Neva with
Trafford, she herself taking Boris.

"Did you see him stare at her?" she asked, on
the way to the dining room.

Boris laughed unpleasantly.  "And so should I,
in the circumstance," replied he.

"What circumstance?"

"Seeing such a beautiful woman so suddenly," he
said, after just an instant's hesitation.

Mrs. Trafford looked shrewdly at him.  "Is it a
scandal?" she asked, at the same time sending a
beaming glance at Armstrong who was entering the door at
the other end of the room with her daughter on his arm.

"Not at all," replied Boris.

The dinner went placidly enough.  Raphael had
been almost as startled as Armstrong when Neva
appeared in the door of the salon, though he did not
show it.  Expert in women's ways, he knew it was for
some specific reason that she had thus taken
unprecedented pains with her toilet.  Why had she striven
to outshine herself?  Obviously because she wished to
punish the man who had so stupidly failed to
appreciate her.  A perfectly natural desire, a perfectly
natural seizing of a not to be neglected opportunity
for revenge.  Still—Boris could not but wish she
had shown some such desire to dazzle him; he would
have preferred that she had been absolutely indifferent
to the man of whom he often thought with twinges
of rakish jealousy.  He affected high spirits, was
never more brilliant, and helped Neva to shine by
giving her every encouragement and chance to talk and
talk well.

In contrast to them, Armstrong was morosely
silent; occasionally he ventured a glance across the
table at Neva, and each time into his face came the
expression that suggested he was suspecting his eyes
or his mind of playing him a wildly fantastic trick.
So far as he could judge, Neva was not at all
disturbed by his presence.  Raphael went upstairs soon
after the women; he refused to be bored with the
business conversation into which Trafford had drawn
Armstrong.

"Well," said Trafford, the moment Boris was out
of the way, "what have you decided to do?"

"I'll go in with you," said Armstrong.

Trafford rubbed his hands and his eyes sparkled—like
a hungry circuit rider at sight of the heaping
platter of fried chicken.  "Good!  Splendid!" he
exclaimed.  He glanced at butler and waiters busy
clearing the sideboard; but they took no hints that
would delay their freedom, and Trafford did not dare
give an order that would put them out of humor and
the domestic machinery out of gear.  "No matter,"
said he.  "This isn't the time to talk business.  We'll
arrange the details to-morrow.  Or, shall we adjourn
to my study?"

"I'll come to you in a few days when I have my
plans formed," said Armstrong.  "Wait till you hear
from me."  He tossed his cigar into a plate.  "Let's
go upstairs.  I must leave soon."

Meanwhile, Raphael, in the salon, had bent over
Neva and had said in an undertone, "You would like
to leave?  You can have my cab—it's waiting.  I'll
take yours when it comes."

"Thanks, no," answered Neva.  "I'm not the least
in a hurry."

Her tone ruffled him.  His ears had been sentinels
and his eyes scouts from the instant he knew who
Armstrong was and with one expert glance took his
measure mentally and physically.  He appreciated that the
female method in judging men is not at all like the
male method, is wholly beyond the comprehension of
a man; still, he could not believe that any man of the
material, commercial type would attract a sincerely
artistic, delicate, spiritual woman like Neva Carlin.  He
could not, as an expert in mankind, deny to Armstrong
a certain charm of the force that in repose is like the
mountain and in action is like the river.  "But,"
reasoned he, "she knows him through and through,
knows him as he is.  For her, he's a commonplace tale
that is told."

As Armstrong entered, his glance darted for Neva.
It had first to meet Raphael smiling friendlily and
suggesting anything but the man on guard, every nerve
alert.  Armstrong frowned frank dislike.  He felt at
a disadvantage before this superelegantly dressed and
delicately perfumed personage.  While he was not
without experience with women, he had known only
those who had sought him; his expertness was, thus,
wholly in receiving advances and turning them to such
advantage as suited his fancy, not at all in making
overtures or laying siege.  He saw at once that Boris
was a master at the entire game of man and woman;
he recalled Neva's passion for things artistic, her
reverence for those great in artistic achievement; despite
his prejudice against Boris, he measured him as a man
of distinction and force.  It seemed to him that this
handsome master-painter, so masculine in feature and
figure, so effeminately dandified in dress and manner,
this fascinating specimen of the artistic sex that is
the quintessence of both sexes, must have hypnotized
his wife.  Yes, his wife!  For, now that Neva's
revealed personality inspired in him wonder, awe, desire,
he began to think of her as his property.  He had
quit title under a misapprehension; he had been
cheated, none the less because the cheater happened to
be himself.

Boris, ignoring his unfriendliness, advanced,
engaged him, drew in Lona Trafford.  Before he could
contrive a move toward Neva, Boris had him securely
trapped in a far corner of the salon with Lona as
his watchful keeper, and was himself retreated in
triumph to sit beside Neva.  So thoroughly had Boris
executed the maneuver, Armstrong was seated at such
an angle that he could not even see Neva without
rudely twisting away from Miss Trafford.  He did not
appreciate that he was the victim of a deliberate
strategy.  But Miss Trafford did; and when she found
herself unable to fix his attention, she took a
vengeful pleasure in keeping him trapped, enjoying his
futile struggles, his ill-concealed wrath, his
unconcealed jealousy.

That was a miserable half hour he passed; Lona
talked of the painter and Neva—"his latest flame—you
know, he's very inconstant—has the most dreadful
reputation.  Mamma wouldn't let him speak half a
dozen words to me, unless she was there.  They do
say that Miss Carlin is making a saint of him—though,
no doubt it's a disguise that'll be thrown off as soon
as—  I don't admire that sort of man, do you,
Mr. Armstrong?  I like a simple, honest man—"  This
with a look that said she regarded Armstrong as
such—"a man that doesn't understand feminine tricks
and the ways to circumvent women."  There her
cynical eyes smiled amusement at Armstrong's ruddy,
lip-biting jealousy.

"It's rather cold, so far from the fire," said
Armstrong, rising.

Lona rose also; she saw that Neva was about to
go.  "Just a minute," said she.  "Miss Carlin is
leaving.  You can take the sofa as soon as she's out
of the way."

Armstrong wheeled, left Miss Trafford precipitately.
He was barely in time to intercept Neva, on
her way to the door with Trafford.  "Good night,
Horace," she said.  He could only stand and stare.
For the first time she looked directly at him, her eyes
full upon his.  He remembered that in the old days,
when their eyes occasionally met thus, hers had made
him vaguely uncomfortable; he understood why, now.
What was the meaning of this look she was giving
him—this look from long, narrow lids, this look that
searched him out, thrilled him with longing and with
fear?  He could not fathom it; he only knew that
never before in his entire singly intent, ambitious life
had the thought occurred to him that there might be
some other worth while game than the big green tables
of finance, some other use for human beings than as
pawns in that game.  She drew her hand away from
his confused, detaining grasp, and was gone, leaving
him an embarrassed, depressed, ludicrous figure, to be
later the jeer of his own sense of humor.

Before Trafford had time to return from escorting
her to her cab, Armstrong took leave.  A brief
silence in the salon; then Mrs. Trafford said to
Raphael, "There is some mystery here, which I feel
compelled to ask you to explain.  You introduced
Miss Carlin to me."  She noted her daughter listening
eagerly.  "Lona, you would better go.  Good night,
my child."

Boris looked the amusement this affectation
roused in him.  "Don't send her away, Mrs. Trafford.
The mystery is quite respectable.  Miss Carlin used
to be Mrs. Armstrong.  As there were no children,
she took her own name, when it became once more
the only name she was entitled to."

"He divorced her!" exclaimed Mrs. Trafford,
rearing.  "And you brought her to *my* house!"  She
held it axiomatic that no woman would divorce a
well-appearing breadwinner of the highest efficiency.

"*She* divorced *him*," corrected Raphael.

"I can't believe it," replied Mrs. Trafford.  "If
she did, he let her, to avoid scandal."

"Not at all," protested Boris.  "They come from
a state which has queer, sentimental divorce laws,
made for honest people instead of for hypocrites.
They didn't get on well; so, the law let them go their
separate ways—since God had obviously not joined
them."

"I must look into it," said Mrs. Trafford, with
a frown at Raphael and a significant side glance
toward Lona.  "People in our position can't afford
to——"

"I have the honor to wish you good evening," said
Boris with a formal bow.  And before she could
recover herself, he was gone.

"You *have* made a mess, mamma!" exclaimed Lona.

Mrs. Trafford seemed on the verge of hysterics.
"Was there *ever* a more unfortunate evening!" she
cried.  Then: "But he'd not have been so touchy, if
there wasn't something wrong."

Trafford came sauntering in and she explained the
situation to him.  He flamed in alarm and anger,
impatiently cut off her explanations with, "You've got
to straighten this, Lily.  If Armstrong should hear
of it, and be offended, it'd cost me—I can't tell you
how much!"

Mrs. Trafford looked as miserable as she felt.
"I'll send off a note apologizing to Raphael this very
night," she said.  "And in the morning I'll ask her
to the opera.  Why didn't you warn me?"

"Warn!" exclaimed Trafford, bustling up and
down, and plucking at his neat little beard.  "How
was I to know?  But I supposed you'd understand that
we never have anybody—any man—here unless he's of
use.  It's all very well to be strict, Lily; but——"

"Let's not talk about it," wailed his wife.  "I'll
do my best to straighten it.  I shan't sleep a wink
to-night."

Lona—"the child"—slipped away, a smile on her
lips—a cynical smile which testified that the lesson in
life as it is lived in the full stench of "respectability,"
had not failed to impress her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"WE NEVER WERE"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   "WE NEVER WERE"

.. vspace:: 2

For the first time in Armstrong's career, it was
imperative that he concentrate his whole mind; and,
for the first time, he could not.  In the midst of
conferences with Trafford, with Atwater even, his
attention would wander; forgetful of his surroundings, he
would stare dazedly at a slim, yet not thin, figure,
framed in the heavy purple and gold curtains of a
doorway—the figure of his former wife, of the
recreated Neva, on the threshold of Mrs. Trafford's
salon.  He had the habit of judging himself impartially,
and this newly developed weakness of character,
as strange in its way as the metamorphosis of Neva,
roused angry self-contempt; but the apparition persisted,
and also his inability to keep his thoughts off it.

Passion he understood, but not its compulsion, still
less its tyranny.  Love—except love of mother and
child—he regarded as a myth that foozled only the
foolish.  He had sometimes thought he would like a
home, a family; but a glance at the surface of the
lives of his associates was enough to put such
sentimentalities out of his head.  He saw the imbecilities
of extravagance and pretense into which the wife and
daughters plunged as soon as the wealth of the head
of the family permitted, the follies into which they
dragged the "old man"—how, in his own home, just
as downtown, he was not a man but a purse.  No,
Armstrong had no disposition to become the drudge
and dupe of a fashionable family.  So, in his life he
had put woman in what he regarded as her proper
place of merest incident.  He spent a great deal of
time with women—that is, a great deal for so busy
a man.  He liked women better than he liked men
because with them he was able to relax and lower his
guard, where with men he always had the sense of
the game.  For intelligence in women he cared not at
all.  Beauty and a good disposition—those were the
requirements.  It was not as at a woman that he looked
at this unbanishable figure—not with the longing,
thought he, or even the admiration of the masculine
for the feminine—simply with wonder, a stupid stare,
an endless repetition of the query, *Who* is it?

His vanity of self-poise was even more hard pressed
to explain why he always saw, in sinister background
to the apparition of Neva, the handsome, dandified
face of Boris, strong, sensual, triumphant.  He
recalled what Lona Trafford had said of the painter.
Yes, that explained it.  Neva, guileless, inexperienced
in the ways of the world, was being ensnared, all
unsuspicious, by this rake.  And, even though she might,
probably would, have the virtuous fiber to stand out
against him, still she would lose her reputation.
Already people must be talking about her; so far as
he could learn, no woman could associate with Raphael
without it being assumed that she was not wasting
his time.  "The scented scoundrel!" muttered
Armstrong.  "Such men should be shot like mad dogs."  This
with perfect sincerity; with not a mocking suggestion
that he himself had been as active in the same
way as his time and inclination had permitted.

"Really, somebody ought to warn her," was naturally
the next step.  "What the devil do her people
mean by letting her come here alone?"  Yes,
somebody ought to warn her.  Of course, he couldn't
undertake the office; his motive might be misunderstood.
Still, it ought to be done.  But—  "Maybe, he's
really in love with her—wants to marry her."  This
reflection so enraged him that he was in grave danger
of discovering to himself the truth about his own state
of mind.  "Why not?" he hastily retorted upon
himself.  "What do I care?  I must be crazy, to spend
any time at all in thinking about matters that are
nothing to me."

And he ordered the subject out of his mind.  He
was not surprised to discover that it had not obeyed
him.  Now, hatred of Boris became a sort of obsession
with him.  He found in, or imagined into, his
memory picture of the painter's face, many repellant
evidences of bad character.  Whenever he heard
Raphael's name, or saw it in a newspaper, he paused
irritably upon it; he was soon in the habit of
thinking of him as "that damned hound."  Nor did this
development unsettle his confidence in his freedom
from heart interest in Neva; he was sure his antipathy
toward the painter was the natural feeling of the
normal man toward the abnormal.  "Where's the man
that wouldn't despise a creature who decks himself
out with jewelry and wears rolling collars because he
wants to show off his throat, and scents himself like
a man-chasing woman?"

The longer he revolved it, the more clearly he
saw the necessity that she be warned—and the
certainty that his warning would be misunderstood.  "I
couldn't speak of him without showing my feelings,
and women always misinterpret that sort of thing."  He
looked up her address; and, as he was walking
to his hotel from the office in the late afternoon, or
was strolling about after dinner, developing his vast
and complex scheme to pile high the ruins of his
enemies that he might rise the higher upon them, he
would find himself almost or quite at the entrance
to the apartment house where she lived.  "I think
I must be going crazy," he said to himself one night,
when he had twice within two hours drawn himself
from before her door.  Then a brilliant idea came
to him: "I'll go to see her, and end this.  To put a
woman out of mind, all that's necessary is to give
her a thorough, impartial look-over.  Also, in ten
minutes' talk with her I can judge whether it would
be worth while to warn her against that damned
hound."

And at five the very next day he sent up his card.
"She'll send down word she isn't at home," he decided.

He was astonished when the boy asked him into
the elevator; he was confused when he faced at her
door old Molly who had lived with them out in Battle
Field.  "Step in, sir," she said stiffly, as if he were
a stranger, and an unwelcome one.  He entered with
his head lowered and a pink spot on either cheek.
"What the devil am I doing here?" he muttered.
"Yes, I'm losing my mind."

He heard indistinctly a man's voice in the room
shut off by the curtains at the far end of the
hall—evidently she had a caller.  He went in that direction.
"Is this the right way?" he called, hesitating at the
curtain.

"Yes, here," came in Neva's voice.  Had he not
been expecting it, he would hardly have recognized it,
so vibrant now with life.

He entered—found her and Boris.  "I might have
known *he'd* be here," he said to himself.  "No doubt
he's *always* here."

He ignored Boris; Boris stared coldly at him.
"You two have met before?" said Neva, with a glance
from one to the other, her eyes like those of a nymph
smiling from the dark, dense foliage round a forest
pool.  "Yes, I remember.  Let me give you some tea,
Horace."

As she spoke that name, Boris set down his cup
abruptly.  He debated whether he should defy
politeness and outsit the Westerner.  He decided that to
do so would be doubly unwise—would rouse resentment
in Neva, who had had the chance to ask him to spare
her being left alone with her former husband and had
not; would give him an appearance of regarding the
Westerner as an important, a dangerous person.
With a look in his eyes that belied the smile on his
lips, he shook hands with her.  "Until Thursday," he
said.  "Don't forget you're to come half an hour
earlier."  And Armstrong was alone with her, was entirely
free to give her the "thorough, impartial lookover."

He saw his imagination had not tricked him at
Trafford's—his imagination and her dress.  The
change in her was real, was radical, miraculous,
incredible.  It was, he realized, in part, in large part,
a matter of dress, of tasteful details of toilet—hair
and hands and skin not merely clean and neat but
thoroughly cared for.  This change, however, was
evidently permanent, was outward sign of a new order
of thought and action, and not the accident of one
evening's effort as he had been telling himself.  Their
eyes met and his glance hastily departed upon a slow
tour of the room; in what contrast was it to his own
apartment, which cost so much and sheltered him so
cheerlessly.  "You are very comfortable here," said
he.  "That, and a great deal more."

"The Siersdorfs built this house," replied she.
"They have ideas—especially Narcisse."  He thought
her wonderfully, exasperatingly self-possessed; his
own blood was throbbing fiercely and her physical
charms gave him the delicious, terrifying tremors of
a boy on the brink of his first love leap.

"What is it that women"—he went on, surprised
by the steadiness of his voice, "*some* women—do to
four walls, a floor, and ceiling, and a few pieces of
furniture to get a result like this?  It isn't a question
of money.  The more one spends in trying to get it,
the worse off he is."

"It seems to me," said she, "that, in arranging a
place to live, the one thing to consider is that it's not
for show or for company, but to live in—day and
night, in all kinds of weather, and in all kinds of
moods.  Make it to suit yourself, and then it'll fit you
and be like you—and those who care for you can't
but be pleased with it."

"It does resemble you—here," said he.  "And it
doesn't suggest a palace or an antique store or a model
room in a furniture display, or an auction room....
You work hard?"

His glance had come back to her, to linger on the
graceful lines of her throat and slim, pallid neck,
revealed by the rounding out of her tea-gown.  Never
before had he been drawn to note the details of a
woman's costume.  He would not have believed
garments could be surcharged with all that is magnetic
in feminine to masculine as was this dress of cream
white edged with narrow bands of sable.

"It would be impossible not to work, with Raphael
to spur one on," was her reply.  Her accent in
pronouncing that name gave him the desire to grind
something to powder between his strong, white teeth.
"The better I know him, the more wonderful he
seems," continued she, a gleam in her eyes that would
have made a Raphael suspect she was not unaware of
the emotion Armstrong was trying to conceal.  "I
used to think his work was great; but now it seems a
feeble expression of him—of ideas he, nor no man,
could ever materialize for a coarse sense like sight."

"You don't like his work, then?" said Armstrong,
pleased.

Neva looked indignant.  "He's the best we have—one
of the best that ever lived," exclaimed she.  "I
didn't mean his work by itself wasn't great, but that
it seemed inadequate, compared with the man.  When
one meets most so-called great men—your great men
downtown for example—one realizes that they owe
almost everything to their slyness, that they steal the
labor of the hands and brains of others who are
superior to them in every way but craft and
unscrupulousness.  A truly great man, a man like Boris
Raphael, dwarfs his reputation."

Armstrong suspected a personal thrust, a contrast
between him and Boris, and was accordingly uncomfortable.
"I'd like to see some of *your* work," said
he, to shift the subject.

"Not to-day.  I don't feel in the mood."

"You mean, you think I wouldn't care about it—that
I never was interested in that sort of thing."

"Perhaps," she admitted.

He laughed.  "There's truth in that."  He was
about to say, "I'm still just as much of a Philistine
as I used to be"; but he refrained—something in her
atmosphere forbade reminiscence or hint of any
connection whatever between their present and their past.

"You're like Boris in one respect," she went on.
"Nothing interests you but what is immediately useful
to you."

"He's over head in love with you—isn't he?" Armstrong
blurted.

Her face did not change by so much as a shade.
She gave not an outward hint that she knew he had
rudely flung himself against the barrier between them,
to enter her inmost life on his own ruthless terms of
masculine intolerance of feminine equality of right.
She continued to look tranquilly at him, and, as if she
had not heard his question, said, "You don't go out
home often?"

The rebuke—the severest, the completest, a woman
can give a man—flooded his face with scarlet to the
line of his hair.  "Not—not often," he stammered.
"That is, not at all."

"Father and I visit with each other every few
weeks," she continued.  "And I take the home paper."  She
nodded toward a copy of the Battle Field *Banner*,
conspicuous on the table beside him.  "Even the
advertisements interest me—'The first strawberries now
on sale at Blodgett's'—you remember Blodgett, with
his pale red hair and pale red eyes and pale red skin,
and always in his shirt sleeves, with a tooth-brush,
bristle-end up, in his vest pocket?  And I read that
Sam Warfield and his sister Mattie 'Sundayed' at
Rabbit's Run, as if I knew and loved the Warfields."

This connecting of her present self with her past
had the effect of restoring him somewhat.  It
established the bond of fellow-townsmen between them.  "I
too take the *Banner*," said he.  "It's like a visit at
home.  I walk the streets and shake hands with the
people.  I'm glad I come from there—but I'm glad I came."

But he could not get his ease.  It seemed incredible,
not, as he would have expected, that they were such
utter strangers, but that they had ever been even
acquaintances.  Not the present, but the past, seemed
a trick of the imagination upon his sober senses.  His
feeling toward her reminded him of how he used to
regard her when he, delivering parcels from his
father's little store, came upon her, so vividly
representing to him her father's power and position in
the community that he could not see her as a person.
While she continued to talk, pleasantly, courteously,
as to an acquaintance from the same town, he tried
to brace himself by recalling in intimate detail all they
had been to each other; but by no stretch of fancy
could he convince himself of the truth.  No, it was
not this woman who had been his wife, who had dressed
and undressed before him in the intimacy of old-fashioned
married life, who had accepted his embraces, who
had borne him a child.

When he rose to go, it was with obvious consciousness
of his hands and feet; and he more than suspected
her of deliberately preventing him from recovering
himself.  "She's determined I shan't fail to learn my
lesson," he thought, as he stood in the outer hall,
waiting for the elevator, and recovering from his
awkward exit.

.. vspace:: 2

A week, almost to the minute, and he came
again.  She received him exactly as before—like an
old acquaintance.  She had to do the talking; he could
only look and listen and marvel.  "I certainly wasn't
so stupid," he said to himself, "that I wouldn't have
noticed her if she had had eyes like these, or such teeth,
or that form, or that beautiful hair."  He would have
suspected that she had been at work with the beauty
specialists who, he had heard, were doing a smashing
business among the women, had he not seen that her
manners, her speech, the use of her voice, everything
about her was in keeping with her new physical
appearance; she had expanded as symmetrically as a
well-placed sapling.  The change had clearly come from
within.  There was a new tenant who had made over
the whole house, within and without.

What seemed to him miracle was, like all the
miracles, mysterious only because the long chain of
causes and effects between beginning and end was not
visible.  There probably never lived a human being to
whom fate permitted a full development of all his
possibilities—there never was a perfect season from
seed-time to harvest.  The world is one vast exhibit of
imperfect developments, physical, mental, moral; and to
get the standard, the perfection that might be, we have
to take from a thousand specimens their best qualities
and put them together into an impossible ideal—impossible
as yet.  For one fairly well-rounded human being,
satisfying to eye and mind and heart, we find ten
thousand stunted, blighted, blasted.  Each of us knows
that, in other, in more favorable, in less unfavorable
circumstances, he would have been far more than he
is or ever can be.  But for Boris, Neva might have
gone through life, not indeed as stunted a development
as she had been under the blight of her unfortunate
marriage, but far from the rounded personality,
presenting all sides to the influences that make for growth
and responding to them eagerly.  Heart, and his
younger brother, Mind, are two newcomers in a
universe of force.  They fare better than formerly; they
will fare better hereafter; but they are still like
infants exposed in the wilderness.  Some fine natures
have enough of the tough fiber successfully to make
the fight; others, though they lack it, persist and
prevail by chance—for the brute pressure of force is
not malign; it crushes or spares at haphazard.  Again,
there are fine natures—who knows? perhaps the finest
of all, the best minds, the best hearts—that either
cannot or will not conform to the conditions.  They
wither and die—not of weakness, since in this world
of the survival of the fittest, the fit are often the weak,
the unfit the strong.  All around us they are withering,
dying, like the good seed cast on stony ground—the
good minds, the good hearts, the men and women
needing only love and appreciation and encouragement,
to shine forth in mental, moral, and physical
beauty.  Of these had been Neva.

Boris, with eyes that penetrated all kinds of human
surfaces and revealed to him the realities, had seen at
first glance what she was, what she could be, what she
was longing and striving to be against the wellnigh
hopeless handicaps of shyness and inexperience and
solitude.  For his own sybarite purposes, material and
selfish, from mere wanton appetite, he set his noble
genius to helping her; and the creative genius finds
nothing comparable in interest to the development of
the human plant, to watching it sprout and put forth
leaves, blossoms, flowers, perfume, spread into an
individuality.

Every day there was some progress; and now and
then, as in all nature, there were days when overnight
a marvelous beautiful change had occurred.  In scores
on scores of daily conversations, between suggestions
or instructions as to painting, much of the time
consciously, most effectively and most often unconsciously,
never with patronage or pedantry, he encouraged and
trained her to learn herself, the world, the inner
meaning of character and action—all that distinguishes fine
senses from coarse, the living from the numb, all that
most of us pass by as we pass a bank of wild flowers—with
no notion of the enchanting history each petal
spreads for whoever will read.  Boris cleared away the
weeds; he softened the soil; he gave the light and the
air access.  And she grew.

But Armstrong had no suspicion of this.  Indeed,
if he had been told that Boris Raphael, cynic and
rake, had been about such an apparently innocent
enterprise, he would have refused to believe it; for the
Raphael temperament, the temperament that is soft
and savage, sympathetic to the uttermost refinement of
delicacy and appreciation, and hard and cruel as
death, was quite beyond his comprehension.  Armstrong,
looking at Neva, saw only the results, not the
processes; and he could scarcely speak for marvel, as
he sat, watching and listening.  "May I come again?"
he asked, when he felt he must stay no longer.

"I'm usually at home after five."

Her tone was conventional—alarmingly so.  With
a pleading gesture of both hands outstretched and a
youthful flush and frank blue eyes entreating, he burst
out, "I have no friends—only people who want to get
something out of me—or whom I want to get
something out of.  Can't you and I be friends?"

She turned abruptly away to the window.  It was
so long before she answered that he nerved himself for
an overwhelming refusal of his complete, even abject
surrender with its apology for the past, the stronger
and sincerer that it was implied and did not dare
narrow itself to words.  When she answered with a
hesitating, "We might try," he felt as happy as if she
had granted all he was concealing behind that request
to be tolerated.  He continued in the same tone of
humility, "But your life is very different from mine.
I feared—  And you yourself—  I can't believe we
were ever—anything to each other."

There was her opportunity; she did not let it slip.
She looked straight into his eyes.  "We never were,"
she said, and her eyes piercing him from their long,
narrow lids and deep shadowing lashes forbade him
ever to forget it again.

He returned her gaze as if mesmerized.  Finally,
"No, we never were," he slowly repeated after her.
And again, "We never were," as if he were learning
a magic password to treasures beyond those of the
Forty Thieves.

He drew a long breath, bowed with formal constraint,
and went; and as he walked homeward he kept
repeating dazedly, "We never were—never!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`OVERLOOK LODGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   OVERLOOK LODGE

.. vspace:: 2

Overlook Lodge was Amy's first real success at
amusing those interminable hours of hers that were like
a nursery full of spoiled children on a rainy day.
Every previous device, however well it had begun, had
soon been withered and killed by boredom, nemesis of
idlers.  Overlook was a success that grew.  It began
tediously; to a person unaccustomed to fixing the mind
for longer than a few minutes, the technical part of
architecture comes hard.  But before many months
Overlook had crowded out all the routine distractions;
instead of its being a mere stop-gap between them,
they became an irritating interruption to its absorbing
interest.  It even took the sharp edge off her
discomfiture with Armstrong; for interest is the mental
cure-all.  She dreaded a return of her former state,
when an empty hour would make her walk the floor,
racking her brains for something to do; she spun this
occupation out and out.  Narcisse Siersdorf lost all
patience; the patience of feminine with feminine, or
of masculine with masculine, is less than infinite.
"We'll never get anywhere," she protested.  "You
linger over the smallest details for weeks, and you make
all sorts of absurd changes that you know can't stand,
when you order them."

Narcisse did not comprehend the situation.  Who
with so much to do that the months fairly flash by, can
sympathize with the piteous plight of those who have
nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it?
Alois was not so unsympathetic.  When the Overlook
plans were begun, he was away; but, soon after his
return, Amy fastened upon him, and presently he had
abandoned all other business of the firm to his sister,
that he might devote himself to making this work
"really great."

"Concentration's the thing," said he to Narcisse,
in excusing himself to her—and to himself.  "Miss
Fosdick has the true artistic spirit.  She is willing to
let me give full play to my imagination, and she interferes
only to help and to stimulate.  I feel I can afford
to devote an unusual amount of time and thought.
When the work is done, it'll be a monument to us."

Narcisse gave him a queer glance, and her laugh
was as queer as her eyes.  He colored and frowned—and
continued to dawdle with Amy over the plans.
It was not his fault, nor hers, that the actual work
finally did begin; it was the teasing of her father and
Hugo about these endless elaborations of preparation.
"When Overlook is begun" became the family synonym
for never.  She and Alois suddenly started the
work, and pushed it furiously.

The site selected had nothing to recommend it but
a view that was far and away the most extensive and
varied in that beautiful part of New Jersey—mountains,
hills, plains, rivers, lakes, wildernesses, villages,
farms, two cities—a vast sweep of country, like a
miniature summary of the earth's whole surface.  But
Overlook Hill was in itself barren and shapeless.
Many times, rich men in search of places where they
could see and be seen had taken it under
consideration; but always the natural difficulties and the
expense had discouraged them.  Fosdick had bought the
site before investigating; he had been about to sell,
when Amy took Narcisse out there.  The builder
instantly saw, and unfolded to Amy, a plan for making
the hill as wonderful in itself as in its prospect; and
that original inspiration of hers was the basis of all
that was done.

When Amy and Alois did set to work, they at once
put into motion thousands of arms and wheels.  The day
came when the whole hill swarmed with men and carts,
with engines and hoisting machines and steam diggers
and blasting apparatus; and the quiet valley resounded
with the uproar of the labor.  Amy took rooms at the
little hotel in the village, had them costlily refurnished,
moved in with a cook and staff of servants; Alois came
out every morning, even Sundays.  The country people
watched the performance in stupefaction; it was their
first acquaintance with the audacities upon nature
which modern science has made possible.  And
presently they saw a rugged cliff rise where there had
been a commonplace steep, saw great terraces, slopes,
levels, gentle grades, supersede the northern ascents of
Overlook.  The army of workmen laid hold of that
huge upheaval of earth and rock and shaped it as if
it had been a handful of potter's clay.

Near the base of the cliff ran the river; barges
laden with stone began to arrive—stone from Vermont
and from Georgia, from Indiana, from Italy.  A
funicular clambered up the surface of the cliff; soon its
cars were moving all day, bearing the stone to the
lofty top of the hill; and there appeared the
beginnings of foundations—not of a house alone, but of a
dozen buildings, widely separated, and of terraces and
lake bottoms and bridges—for a torrent, with several
short falls and one long leap, was part of the plans.
At the same time, other barges, laden with earth and
with great uprooted living trees, arrived in interminable
procession, and upon bare heights and slopes now
began to appear patches of green, clumps of wood.
And where full-grown transplanted trees were not set
out, saplings were being planted by the hundreds.  As
the stone walls rose, sod was brought—acres of grass
of various kinds; and creepers and all manner of wild
growing things to produce wilderness effects in those
parts of the park which were not to be constructed
with all the refinements of civilization.  These marvels
of nature-manufacture were carried on in privacy;
for the very first work had been to enclose the hill,
from cliff edge round to cliff edge on the other side,
with a high stone wall, pierced by only two entrances—one,
the main entrance with wrought-iron gates from
France, and a lodge; the other, the farm or service
entrance, nearer the village and the river.

Amy and Alois had begun as soon as the frost was
out of the ground.  By June they had almost all the
trees planted.  The following spring, and the
transformation was complete.  Overlook Hill, as it had been
for ages, was gone; in its place was a graceful height,
clad in a thousand shades of green and capped by a
glistening white bastionlike building half hid among
trees that looked as if they had been there a century
at least.  Indeed, except the buildings, nothing seemed
new, everything seemed to belong where it was, to have
been there always.  The sod, the tangle of creepers
and underbrush on the cliff and in the ravines, the cliff
and the ravines themselves, all looked like the product
of nature's slow processes.  The masonry, the roads,
the drives—signs of age and of long use.  One would
have said that the Fosdicks were building on an old
place, a house better suited to modern conditions than
some structure, dating from Revolutionary days at
least, which must have stood in those venerable
surroundings and had been torn down to make room for
the new.

"The buildings are going to look too new," said
Alois.  And he proceeded to have them more artfully
weather-stained.

Narcisse had preached the superiority of small
houses to Amy until she had convinced her.  So,
Overlook Lodge, while not so small as it looked, was
still within the sane limits for a private house.  And
the interior arrangements—the distribution of large
rooms and less, of sunny rooms, of windows, of
stairways, of closets—were most ingenious.  No space was
wasted; no opportunity for good views from the windows
or for agreeable lines, without or within, was
neglected.  Through and through it was a house to be
lived in, a house whose comfort obtruded and whose
luxury retired.

In the woodwork, in the finishing of walls and ceilings,
in the furniture, Alois followed out the general
scheme of the appearance of an old-established
residence, a family homestead that had sent forth many
generations.  Before a stone had been blasted at
Overlook, the furniture and the woven stuffs were designed
and manufacturing.  While the outer walls of the
house were finishing, the rooms were beginning to look
as if they had been lived in long.  There was nothing
new-looking anywhere except the plumbing; nothing
old-looking, either.  The air was that of things created
full grown, things which have not had a shiny,
awkward youth and could not have a musty, rickety, rotten
old age.

There came a day when the last rubbish was
cleared, when the last creeper was in leaf, the last
flower in bloom, when the grass and the trees seemed
green with their hundredth summer, when the settees
and chairs and hammocks were on the verandas and
porticos as if they had been there for many a year,
when no odor of fresh paint or varnish or look of
newness could be detected anywhere about the
house—and the "work of art" was finished.  Alois and
Amy, in an automobile, went over every part of the
grounds, examined them from without and from
within; then they made a tour of the house, noting
everything.  Changes, improvements, could be made,
would be made; but the work as a work was finished.
They seated themselves on a veranda overlooking the
valley, and listened to the rush of the torrent,
descending through the ravines, in banks of moss and wild
flowers, to spring from the edge of the cliff.  Amy
burst into tears.

"You're very tired, aren't you!" said Alois
sympathetically.  There were tears in his eyes.

"No, that isn't it," she answered, her face hidden—she
knew she didn't look at all well when she was
crying.

"I understand," said he.  "There's something
tragic about finishing anything.  It's like bringing up
a child, and having it marry and go away."  He
sighed.  "Yes, we're done."

"I feel horribly lonely," she cried.  "I've lost my
occupation.  It's the first great real sorrow of my
life.  I wish we hadn't been in such a hurry!  We might
have made it last a year or two longer."

"I wish we had!"

"You can't wish it as I do.  You will go on and
build other houses.  You have a career.  It seems to
me that *I've* come to the very end."

"You don't realize," he said hesitatingly, "that
it was the personal element in this that gave—that
gives it its whole meaning, to me.  I was working with
you and—for you."

He glanced at her eagerly, but with a certain
timidity, for some sign that would encourage him.  A
hundred times at least, in those months when he had
spent the whole of almost every day with her, he had
been on the point of telling her what was in his heart,
why he was so tireless and so absorbed in their task.
But he had never had the courage to begin.  By what
he regarded as a malicious fatality, she had always
shifted the conversation to something with which
sentiment would not have harmonized at all.  Apparently
she was quite unconscious that he was a man; and how
she could be, when he was so acutely alive to her as a
woman, he could not understand.  Sometimes he
thought she was fond of him—"as fond as a nice girl
is likely to be, before the man declares himself."  Again,
it seemed to him she cared nothing about him
except as an architect.  Her wealth put around her,
not only physically but also mentally, a halo of
superiority.  He could not judge her as just a woman.
He always saw in her the supernal sheen of her
father's millions.  He knew he had great talent; he was
inordinately vain about it in a way—as talented people
are apt to be, where they stop short of genius,
which—usually, not always—has a true sense of proportion
and gets no pleasure from contrasting itself with its
inferiors.  He would have been as swift as the next
man to deny, with honest scorn, that he was a wealth
worshiper; and as he was artist enough to worship
it only where it took on graceful forms, he could have
made out a plausible case for himself.  Amy, for
example, was not homely or vulgar—or petty.  She had
good ideas and good taste and concealed the ugly part
of her nature as dexterously as by the arrangement
of her hair she concealed the fact that it was neither
very long nor very thick.  Besides, in her intercourse
with Alois, there was no reason why any but the best
side of her should ever show.

Narcisse gave over trying to make him sensible
where Amy was concerned, as soon as she saw upon
what he was bent.  "He wouldn't think of her seriously
if she weren't rich," she said to herself.  "But,
since he is determined to take her seriously, it's
better that he should be able to delude himself into
believing he loves her.  And maybe he does.  Isn't love
always nine tenths delusion of some sort?"  So, she
left him free to go on with Amy, to love her, to win
her love if he could.  But—could he?  He feared
not.  That so wonderful a creature, one who might
marry more millions and blaze, the brightest star in
the heavens of fashionable New York, should take
him—it seemed unlikely.  "She ought to prefer
congeniality to wealth," thought he, "but"—with an
unconscious inward glance—"it's not in human nature
to do it."

As they sat there together in the midst of their
completed work, he waiting for some hopeful sign, she
at least did not change the subject.  "Hasn't what
we've been doing had any—personal interest for
you?" he urged.

She nodded.  "Yes, I owe my interest in it to
you," she conceded.  But she went on to discourage
him with, "We have been *such* friends.  Usually, a
young man and a young woman can't be together, as
have we, without trying to marry each other."

"That's true," assented he, much dejected.  Then,
desperately, "That's why I've put off saying what I'm
going to say until the work should be done."

"Oh!" she exclaimed.  "Don't say it, please—not now."

"But you must have known," he pleaded.

"I never thought of it," replied she with an air
of frankness that convinced him.

"Well—won't you think of it—now?"

"Not to-day," was her answer, in the tone a
woman uses when she is uncertain and wishes to convince
herself that she is certain.  She rose and crossed
to the edge of the veranda.

In such circumstances, when the woman turns her
back on the man, it is usually to signify that she has
a traitor within, willing to yield to a surprise that
which could not be won by a direct assault; and, had
Alois's love been founded in passion instead of in
interest, he would not have followed her hesitatingly,
doing nothing, simply saying stumblingly: "I don't
wish to annoy you.  But let me say one thing—Amy—I
love you, and to get you means life to me,
and not to get you means the death of all that is really
me.  I think I could make you happy—you who are
so interested in what is my life work.  It must be our
life work."

"I've thought of that," responded she softly.
"But, not to-day—not to-day."  A pause during
which she was hoping, in spite of herself, that he would
at least insist.  When he remained silent and
respectful, she went on: "Don't you think we may let father
and Hugo come?"

"By all means.  Everything is ready."  And they
went back to talking of the work—of the surprise
awaiting Fosdick.

Fosdick had gratified her and delighted himself by
playing the fondly indulgent father throughout the
building of Overlook.  He had put the widest limits on
expense, he had asked no questions; he had let her
keep him ignorant of all that was being done.  It was
a remarkable and most characteristic display of
generosity.  When a man earns a fortune by his own
efforts, by risking his own property again and again,
he is rarely "princely" in his generosity.  But with
the men who grow rich by risking other people's
money in campaigns against rival captains of finance
and industry who are also submitting to the fortunes
of commercial war little or nothing that is rightfully
theirs, then the princely qualities come out—the
generosity with which the prince wastes the substance of
his subjects in luxury, in largesse, and in wars.
Fosdick felt most princely in relation to the properties
he controlled.  Whatever he did, if it was merely
eating his breakfast or consulting a physician when
he was ill, he did it for the benefit of the multitude
whose money was invested in his various enterprises.
Thus, when he took, he could take only his own; when
he gave, he was "graciously pleased" to give up his own.

This simple, easy, and most natural theory reduced
all divisions of profits, losses, expenses, to mere
matters of bookkeeping.  If his losses or expenses were
heavy, the dividends to policy holders and stockholders
must be small—clearly, he who had done his best and
had acted only for the good of others ought not to
cripple or hamper his future unselfish endeavors.  If
the profits were large—why dribble them out to
several hundred thousand people who had done nothing to
make them, who did not deserve, did not expect, and
would not appreciate?  No; the extra profits to the
war-chest—which was naturally and of necessity and
of right in the secure possession of the commander-in-chief.
So, Fosdick, after the approved and customary
manner of the princely industrial successors to the
princely aristocratic parasites on mankind, was able to
indulge himself in the luxury of generosity without
inflicting any hardship upon his conscience or upon his
purse.

The distribution of the cost of the new house had
presented many nice problems in bookkeeping.  Some
of the expense—for raw materials, notably—was
merged into the construction accounts of the
O.A.D. and two railway systems; but the largest part was
covered by the results of two big bond deals and a
stock manipulation.  This part appeared on the
records as an actual payment by Fosdick out of his own
private fortune; but on the other side of the ledger
stood corresponding profits from the enterprises
mentioned, and these profits, on careful analysis, were seen
to have come from the fact that, when profits were
to be distributed, Fosdick the private person was in
no way distinguishable from Fosdick the trustee of
the multitude.

If the old man had not had confidence in his
daughter's good sense and good taste and in Siersdorf's
ability, he would not have given them the absolutely
free hand.  It was, therefore, with the liveliest
expectations that he took the train for Overlook.
As he and Hugo descended at the station, they looked
toward Overlook Hill, so amazingly transformed.
"Well, you've certainly done *something*!" he
exclaimed to Amy, as she came forward to meet him.
"Why, I'd not have known the place.  Splendid!
Superb!"  And he kissed her and shook hands warmly
with Alois.

On the way through the village in the auto, he
gushed a stream of enthusiasm and comment.  "That
cliff, now—what a fine idea!  And the cascade—why,
you've doubled the value of real estate throughout this
region.  I must quietly gather in some land round
here—  You are in on that, Siersdorf.  The railway
station must be improved.  I'll see Thorne—he's
president of the road and a good friend of mine—he'll put
up a proper building—you must draw the plans, Siersdorf.
This village—it's unsightly.  We must either
wipe it out or make it into a model."

His enthusiasm continued at the boiling point until
they ascended the hill and had the first full view of
the house.  Then his face lengthened and he lapsed
into silence.  Hugo was not so considerate.  "Do you
mean to tell me *this* is the house?" demanded he of
Amy.  "Why, it's a cottage.  How ridiculous to put
such a climax to all these preparations!"

Amy's eyes flashed and she tossed her head scornfully.

Hugo continued to look and began to laugh.
"Ridiculous!" he repeated.  "Don't you think so,
father?"

"It is hardly what I expected," confessed Fosdick.
"It isn't done yet, is it, Amy?"

"Yes, it's done," she said angrily.  "And it's the
best thing about the place.  I don't want you to say
anything more until you've gone over it.  The trouble
with you and Hugo is that your taste has been
corrupted by the vulgarity in New York.  You don't
appreciate the difference between beauty and ostentation.
Mr. Siersdorf has built a house for a gentleman,
not for a multimillionaire."

That silenced them; and in silence she led the way
into and through the house, by a route that would
present all its charms and comforts in effective
succession.  She made no comments; she simply regulated
the speed of the tour, trusting to their eyes to show
them what she could not believe any eyes could fail
to see.  At the veranda commanding the most magnificent
of the many views, she brought the tour to an
end.  The luncheon table was there, and she ordered
the servants to bring lunch.  And a delicious lunch it
was, ending with wonderful English strawberries,
crimson, huge, pink-white within and sweet as their own
fragrance—"grown on the place," explained Amy,
"and this cream is from our own dairy down there."

"I take it all back," said Fosdick.  "You and
Siersdorf were right.  Eh, Hugo?"

"It's better than I thought," conceded Hugo.
"There certainly is a—a tone about the house that
I've not often seen on this side of the water."

"And there's a comfort you've never seen on the
other side," said Amy.  "You are satisfied, father?"

"Satisfied!" exclaimed Fosdick.  "I'm overwhelmed."

And when they had had coffee, which, Hugo said,
reminded him of the Café Anglais at Paris, Siersdorf
took them for a second tour of the house, pointing out
the conveniences, the luxuries, the evidences of good
taste, expanding upon them, eulogizing them, feeling
as he talked that he had created them.  "A gentleman's
home!" he cried again and again.  "It'll be a rebuke
to all these vulgarians who are trying to show how
much money they've got.  Why, you never think, as
you walk around here, 'How much this cost,' but only,
'How beautiful it is, and how comfortable.'  A house
for a gentleman.  A gentleman's *home*—that's what I
call it."

At each burst of enthusiasm from her father, Amy
beamed on Alois.  And Alois was dizzy with happiness
and hope.





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.. _`WOMAN'S DISTRUST—AND TRUST`:

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   \XIV


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   WOMAN'S DISTRUST—AND TRUST

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Having got what she wanted of Alois, Amy now
permitted her better nature to reproach her for
having absorbed him so long and so completely.  She
assumed Narcisse was blaming, was disliking, her for it;
and, indeed, Narcisse had been watching the
performance with some anger and more disgust.  Before
Alois came upon the scene, and while Amy was still
in the first flush of enthusiasm for her new friend,
Narcisse had begun to draw back.  She saw that Amy,
like everyone who has always had his own way and so
has been made capricious, was without capacity for
real friendship.  If she had thought Amy worth while,
she would have held her—for Narcisse was many-sided
and could make herself so interesting that few
indeed would not have seemed tame and dull after her.
But she decided that Amy was not worth while; and
to cut short Amy's constant attempts to interfere
between her and her work, she emphasized her positive,
even aggressive, individuality, instead of softening it.
Servants, fortune-hunters, flatterers, the army of
parasites that gathers to swoop upon anyone with
anything to give, had made Amy intolerant of the least
self-assertiveness; and to be a very porcupine of prickly
points; Narcisse had only to give way to her natural
bent for the candid.

For example, Narcisse had common sense—like
most people of good taste; for, is not sound sense the
basis of sound taste, indeed the prime factor in all
sound development of whatever kind?  Now, there is
nothing more inflammatory than steadfast good sense.
It rebukes and mocks us, making us seem as stupid
and as foolish as we fear we are.  Narcisse would not
eat things that did not agree with her; it irritated
self-indulgent Amy against her, when they lunched
together and she refused to eat as foolishly as did Amy.
Again, Narcisse would not drive when she could walk,
because driving was as bad for health and looks as
walking was good for them.  Amy knew that, with her
tendency to fat, she ought never to drive.  But she
was lazy, doted on the superiority driving seemed to
give, was nervous about the inferiority "the best
people" attached to a woman's walking.  So she persisted
in driving, and ruffled at Narcisse for being equally
persistent in the sensible course.  It is the common
conception of friendship that one's friend must do what
one wishes and is no friend if he does not; Amy felt
that way about it.

Alois had come back from abroad just in time to
save the Fosdick architectural trade to the firm.
Narcisse would soon have alienated it—and would have
been glad to see it go; in fact, since she had realized
where the Fosdick money came from, she with the
greatest difficulty restrained herself from bursting
forth to Alois in "impractical sentimentalities" which
she knew would move him only against herself.

Amy expected Narcisse's enthusiasm toward Overlook
to be very, very restrained indeed.  "She must
be jealous," thought Amy, "because she has had so
little to do with it, and I so much."  But she had
to admit that she had misjudged the builder.  It is
not easy satisfactorily to praise to anyone a person
or a thing he has in his heart; the most ardent praise
is likely to seem cold, and any lapse in discrimination
rouses a suspicion of insincerity.  If Narcisse had not
felt the beauty of what her brother and Amy had done,
she could not have made Amy's enthusiasm for her
flame afresh, as it did.  Before Narcisse finished, Amy
thought that she herself had not half appreciated how
well she and Alois had wrought.  "But it would never
have been anything like so satisfactory," said she in
a burst of impulsive generosity, "if you hadn't
started it all."

"I wish I could feel that I had some part in it,"
said Narcisse, "but I can't, in honesty."

And she meant it.  Those who have fertile, luxuriant
minds rarely keep account of the ideas they are
constantly and prodigally pouring out.  Narcisse had
forgotten—though Amy had not—that it was she who
was inspired by that site to dream the dream that her
brother and Amy had realized.  It was on the tip of
Amy's tongue to say this; but she decided to refrain.
"I probably exaggerate the influence of what she
said," she thought.  "We saw it together and talked it
over together, and no doubt each of us borrowed from
the other"—let him who dares, criticise this, in a
world that shines altogether by reflected lights.

As the two young women talked on, the builder
gradually returned to her constrained attitude.  She
saw that Amy was taking to herself the whole credit
for Overlook, was looking on Alois as simply a
stimulant to her own great magnetism and artistic sense,
was patronizing him as a capable and satisfactory
agent for transmitting them into action.  And this
made her angry, not with Amy but with Alois.  "Amy
isn't to blame," she said to herself.  "It's his fault.
To please her he has been exaggerating her importance
to herself, and he has succeeded in convincing her.
She has ended up just where people always end up,
when you encourage them to give their vanity its
head."  She tried to devise some way of helping her
brother, of reminding Amy that he was entitled to
credit for some small part of the success; but she could
think of nothing to say that Amy would not misinterpret
into jealousy either for herself or for her brother.
When she got back to the offices, she said to him:

"If I were you, I'd not let a certain young woman
imagine she has *all* the brains."

"What do you mean?" said he, clouding at once.
He showed annoyance nowadays whenever she
mentioned the Fosdicks.

"She'll soon be thinking you couldn't get along
without her to give you ideas," replied Narcisse.
"It's bad all round—bad for the woman, bad for the
man—when he gets her too crazy about herself.  She's
likely to overlook his merits entirely in her excitement
about her own."

"You are prejudiced against her, Narcisse," said
Alois angrily.  "And it isn't a bit like you to be so."

Narcisse, not being an angel, flared.  "I'm not
half as prejudiced against her as you'd be three
months after you married her," she cried.  "But
you'll not get her, if you keep on as you're going now.
Instead of showing her how awed you are by her, you'd
better be teaching her that she ought to be in awe
of you, that it's what *you* give her that makes her
shine so bright."

And she fled to her own office, fuming against the
folly of men and the silliness of women, and
thoroughly miserable over the whole situation; for, at
bottom she believed that such a woman as Amy must have
feminine instinct enough fairly to jump at such a
man as Alois, if there was a chance to attach him
permanently; and, the prospect of Alois marrying a
woman who could do him no good, who was all take
and no give, put her into such a frame of mind that
she wished she had the mean streak necessary to
intriguing him and her apart.

It was on one of the bluest of her blue days of
forebodings about Alois and Amy that Neva came in
to see her; and a glance at Neva's face was sufficient
to convince her that bad news was imminent.  "What
is it, Neva?" she demanded.  "I've felt all the
morning that something rotten was on the way.  Now, I
know it's here.  Tell me."

"Do you recall Mrs. Ranier?  She was at my place
one afternoon——"

"Perfectly," interrupted Narcisse, "Amy Fosdick's sister."

"She took a great fancy to you.  And when she
heard something she thought you ought to know, she
came to me and asked me to tell you.  She said she
knew you'd be discreet—that you could be trusted."

"I liked her, too," said Narcisse.  "I think she
can trust me."

"It's about—about—those insurance buildings,"
continued Neva, painfully embarrassed.  "I'm afraid
I'm rather incoherent.  It's the first time I ever
interfered in anyone else's business."

"Tell me," urged Narcisse.  "I suppose it's
something painful.  But I'm good and tough—-speak
straight out."

"Mrs. Ranier's husband is in the furniture business,
and through that he found out there's a scandal
coming.  She says those people downtown will drag
you and your brother in, will probably try to hide
themselves behind you.  She heard last night, and
came early this morning.  'Tell her,' she said, 'not to
let her brother reassure her, but to look into it—clear
to the bottom.'"

Narcisse was motionless, her eyes strained, her face
haggard.

"That's all," said Neva, rising.  "I shouldn't have
come, shouldn't have said anything to you, if I had not
known that Mrs. Ranier has the best heart in the
world, and isn't an alarmist."

Narcisse faced Neva and pressed her hands, without
looking at her.

"If there is anything I can do, you have only to
ask," said Neva, going.  She had too human an
instinct to linger and offer sympathy to pride in its hour
of abasement.

"There's one thing you can do," said Narcisse,
nervous and intensely embarrassed.

Neva came back.  "Don't hesitate.  I meant just
what I said—anything."

Narcisse blurted it out: "Is Horace Armstrong a
man who can be trusted?  Is he straight?"  Then, as
Neva did not answer immediately, she hastened on,
"Please forget what I asked you.  It really doesn't
matter, and——"

Neva interrupted her with a frank, friendly smile.
"Don't be uneasy," she said.  "He and I are excellent
friends.  He calls often.  I don't know a thing about
him in a business way.  But—  Well, Narcisse, I'm
sure he'd not do anything small and mean."

"That's all I wished to know."

A few minutes after Neva left, Narcisse, white but
calm, sent for her brother.  "How deeply have you
entangled yourself in those fraudulent vouchers?" she
asked, when they were shut in together.

He lifted his head haughtily.  "What do you
mean, Narcisse?"

"As we are equal partners, I have the right to
know all the affairs of the firm.  I want to see the
accounts of those insurance buildings, at once—and to
know the exact truth about them."

"You left that matter entirely to me," replied he,
sullen but uneasy.  "I haven't time to-day to go into
a mass of details.  It'd be useless, anyhow.  But—I
do not like that word you used—fraudulent."

She waved her hand impatiently.  "It's the word
the public will use, whatever nice, agreeable expression
for it you men of affairs may have among yourselves.
Have you signed vouchers, as you said you were going
to do?"

"Certainly.  And, I may add, I shall continue to
sign them."

"Haven't you heard that that investigation is coming?"

He gave a superior, knowing smile.  "Those
things are always fixed up.  There's a public side, but
it's as unreal as a stage play.  Fosdick controls this
particular show."

"So I hear," said she, with bitter irony.  "And he
purposes to throw you to the wild beasts—you and me."

Siersdorf laughed indulgently.  "My dear sister,"
he said, "don't bother your head about it."  The idea
seemed absurd to him: Fosdick sacrifice him, when they
were such friends!—it was an insult to Fosdick to
entertain the suspicion.  "When the proper time comes,"
he continued, "I shall be away on business—and the
matter will be sidetracked, and nothing more will be
said about me.  Trust me.  I know what I am about."

"Yes, you will be away," cried she, suddenly
enlightened.  "And the whole thing will be exposed, and
they'll have their accounts so cooked that the guilt will
all be on you.  And before you can get back and clear
yourself, you will be ruined—disgraced—dishonored."

The situation she thus blackly outlined was within
the possibilities; her tone of certainty had carrying
power.  A chill went through him.  "Ridiculous!" he
protested loudly.

"You have put your honor in another man's keeping,"
she went on.  "And that man is a thief."

"Narcisse!"

"A thief!" she repeated with emphasis.  "They
don't call each other thieves downtown.  They've
agreed to call themselves respectabilities and
financiers and all sorts of high-flown names.  But thieves
they are, because they're loaded down with what don't
belong to them, money they got away from other
people by lying and swindling.  Is your honor *quite* safe
in the keeping of a thief?"

"Narcisse!" repeated Alois, wincing again at that
terse, plain word, rough and harsh, an allopathic dose
of moral medicine, undiluted, uncoated.

"*I* don't think so," she pursued.  "What precautions
do you purpose to take?"

He looked at her helplessly.  "If I say anything
to Fosdick," said he, "he will be justified in getting
furiously angry.  He might think he had the right
to act as you accuse him of plotting."

"But you must do something."

He shook his head.  "I have trusted Fosdick," said
he.  "I still think it was wise.  But, however that may
be, the wise course now certainly is to continue to
trust him."

"Trust him!" exclaimed Narcisse bitterly.  "I
might trust a thief who wasn't a hypocrite—he might
not squeal on a pal to save himself.  But not a
Fosdick.  A respectable thief has neither the honor of
honest men nor the honor of thieves."

"Prejudice!  Always prejudice, Narcisse."

"You will do nothing?"

"Nothing."  And he tried to look calm and firm.

She went into her dressing room with the air of
one bent on decisive action.  He could but wait.  When
she came back she was dressed for the street.

"Where are you going?" he demanded in alarm.

"To save myself and—you," she replied with a
certain sternness.  It was unlike her to put herself first
in speech—she who always considered herself last.

"Narcisse, I forbid you to interfere in this affair.
I forbid you to go crazily on to compromising us both."

She looked straight into his eyes.  "The time has
come when I must use my own judgment," said she.

And, with that, she went; he knew her, knew when
it was idle to oppose her.  Besides—what if she should
be right?  In all their years together, as children, as
youths, as workers, he had always respected her
judgment, because it had always been based upon a common
sense clearer than his own, freer from those passions
which rise from the stronger appetites of men to
befog their reason, to make what they wish to be the
truth seem actually the truth.

"She's wrong," he said to himself.  "But she'll
not do anything foolish.  She's the kind that can go
in safety along the wrong road, because they always
keep a line of retreat open."  And that reflection
somewhat reassured him.

Narcisse went direct to Fosdick at his office.  As
there was only one caller ahead of her, she did not
have long to wait in the anteroom guarded by Waller
of the stealthy, glistening smile.  "Mr. Fosdick is
very busy this morning," explained he.  It was the
remark he always made to callers as he passed them
along; it helped Fosdick to cut them short.  "The big
railway consolidation, you know?"

"No, I don't know," replied Narcisse.

"Oh—you artists!  You live quite apart from our
world of affairs.  But I supposed news of a thing
of such tremendous public benefit would have reached
everybody."

Narcisse smiled faintly.  She could not imagine
any of these gentlemen, roosted so high and with eyes
training in every direction in search of prey, occupying
themselves for one instant with a thing that was
a public benefit, except in the hope of changing it into
a "private snap."

"It's marvelous," continued Waller, "how Fosdick
and these other men of enormous wealth go on working
for their fellow men when they might be taking their
ease and amusing themselves."

"Amusing themselves—how?" asked she.

"Oh—in a thousand ways."

"I'm afraid they'd find it hard to pass the time,
if they didn't have their work," said she.  "The world
isn't a very amusing place unless one happens to have
work that interests him."

"There's something in that—there's something in
that," said Waller, in as good an imitation as he could
give of his master's tone and manner.  It had never
before occurred to him to question the current theory
that, while poor men toiled for bread and selfishness,
rich men refrained from boring themselves to death in
idling about, only because they passionately yearned
to serve their fellow beings.

"Do you still teach a class in Mr. Fosdick's Sunday school?"

"I'm assistant superintendent now," replied he.

"That's good," said she, as if she really meant it.
She was feeling sorry for him.  He had worked so long
and so hard, and had striven so diligently to please
Fosdick in every way; Fosdick had got from him
service that money could not have bought.  And the
worst of it was, Fosdick had never tried to find a
money expression for it that was anything like
adequate, but had ingeniously convinced poor Waller he
was more than well paid in the honor of serving in
such an intimate capacity such a great and generous
man.  The mitigating circumstance was that Fosdick
firmly believed this himself—but Narcisse that
day was not in the humor to see the mitigations of
Fosdick.

And now Fosdick himself came hurrying in, eyes
alight, strong face smiling—"Miss Siersdorf—this is
a surprise!  I don't believe I ever before saw you
downtown—though, of course, you must have come."  He
looked at her with an admiration that was genuine.
"Excuse an old man for saying it, but you are
so beautifully dressed—as always—and handsome—that
goes without saying.  Come right in.  You can
have all the time you want.  I know you—know you
are a business woman.  Now, that man who was just
with me—Bishop Knowlton—a fine, noble man, with a
heart full of love for God and his fellows—but not
an idea of the value of a business man's time.  Finally
I had to say to him, 'I'll give you what you ask—and
I'll double it if you don't say another word but go
at once.'"

They were now in the innermost room, and Fosdick
had bowed her into a chair and had seated himself.  "I
came to see you," said Narcisse, formal to coldness,
"about the two office buildings—about the accounts
our firm has been approving."

"Oh, but you needn't fret about them," said Fosdick,
in his bluff, hearty, offhand manner.  "Your
brother is looking after them."

"Then they are all right?" she said, fixing her
gaze on him.

"Why, certainly, certainly.  I have absolute confidence
in your brother.  Have you seen Overlook?  Yes—of
course—my daughter told me.  You delighted
her by what you said.  It is beautiful——"

"To keep to the accounts, Mr. Fosdick," Narcisse
interrupted, "I am not satisfied with our firm's
position in the matter."

"My dear young lady, talk to your brother about
that.  I've a thousand and one matters.  I really know
nothing of details, and, as you are perhaps aware, my
interest in the O.A.D. is largely philanthropic.  I can
give but little of my time."

"I've come," said Narcisse, as he paused for
breath, "to get from you a statement relieving us
from all responsibility as to those accounts, and
authorizing us to sign them as a mere formality, to
expedite their progress."

Fosdick laughed.  "I'd like to do anything to
oblige you," said he, "but really, I couldn't do
that.  You must know that I have nothing to do with
the buildings—with the details of the affairs of the
O.A.D."

"You gave us the contracts," said Narcisse.

"Pardon me, *I* did not give you the contracts.
They were not mine to give.  What you mean to say
is that I used for you what influence I have.  It was
out of friendship for you and your brother."

There he touched her.  "We had every reason to
believe that we got the contracts solely because our
plans were the most satisfactory," said she coldly.
"If we had suspected that friendship had anything to
do with it, we should certainly have withdrawn.  I
assure you, sir, we feel under no obligation—and my
present purpose is to prevent you from putting
yourself under obligation to us."

"I don't quite follow you," said Fosdick, most
conciliatory.

"There has been some kind of—'bookkeeping,'
I believe you call it—in connection with the payments
for the work on those buildings.  If we were to aid
you in your—'bookkeeping,' you would certainly be
under heavy obligations to us.  We cannot permit that."

Fosdick laughed with the utmost good nature.  "I
see you misunderstood some remarks I made to you and
your brother one day at my house.  However, anything
to keep peace among friends.  I'll do as you
wish."

His manner was so frank and so friendly, and his
concession so unreserved, that Narcisse was surprised
into being ashamed of her suspicions.  "I believe 'Lois
is right," she said to herself.  "I've been led astray
by my prejudice."

Those shrewd old eyes of Fosdick's could not have
missed an opportunity for advantage so plain as was
written on her honest face.  He hastened to score.
"I'll dictate it to Waller," said he, rising, "when he
comes in to round up the day.  You'll get it in the
early morning mail.  Good-by.  You don't come to
see us up at the house nearly often enough—at least,
not when I'm there."  He had opened the door.
"Waller, conduct Miss Siersdorf to the elevator.
Good-by, again."

With nods and smiles he had cleared himself of her,
easily, without abruptness, rather as if she were
hurrying him than he her.  And Waller, quick to take his
cue, had passed her into the elevator before she was
quite aware what was happening.  Not until she was
on the ground floor and walking toward the door did
her mind recover.  "What have you *got*?" it said, and
promptly answered, "Nothing—for, what is a promise
from Josiah Fosdick?"  That seemed cynical, unjust;
as Fosdick not only was by reputation a man of his
word, but also had always kept his word with her.  But
she stopped short and debated; and it was impossible
for her to shake her conviction that the man meant
treachery.  "He'll sacrifice us," she said to herself,
"if it's necessary to save intact the name and fame of
Josiah Fosdick—or even if he should think it would
be helpful."  What were two insignificant mere
ordinary mortals in comparison with that name and fame,
that inspiration to honesty and fidelity for the youth
of the land, that bulwark of respectability and religion—for,
as all the world knows, the eternal verities are
kept alive solely by the hypocrites who preach and
profess them; if those "shining examples" were
exposed and disgraced, down would crash truth and
honor.  No, Josiah Fosdick was not one to hesitate
before the danger of such a cataclysm.  Further, she felt
that he had been plotting while he and she were
talking and had found some way to pinion her and her
brother during the day he had gained.  "To-morrow
morning," she decided, "I'll not get the paper, and
it'll be useless to try to get it.  Something must be
done, and at once."

She turned back, reëntered the elevator.  "To
Mr. Armstrong," she said.

Armstrong, whom she knew but slightly, received
her with great courtesy, and an evident interest that
in turn roused her curiosity.  "It's as if he knew about
our affairs," she thought.  To him she said, "I want
to see you a few minutes alone."

He took her into his inner room.  "Well, what
is it?" he asked, with the sort of abruptness that
invites confidence.

She had liked what she had seen of him; her good
impression was now strengthened.  She thought there
was courage and honesty in his face, along with that
look of experience and capacity which is rarely seen
in young faces, except in America with its group of
young men who have already risen to positions of great
responsibility.  There was bigness about him,
too-bigness of body and of brow and of hands, and the
eyes that go with large ways of judging and
acting—eyes at once keen and good-humored.  A man to
turn a shrewd trick, perhaps; but it would be exceedingly
shrewd, and only against a foe who was using
the same tactics.  Half confidences are worse than
none, are the undoing weakness of the timid who,
though they know they must play and play desperately,
yet cannot bring themselves to play in the one
way that could win.  Narcisse flung all her cards upon
the table.

"I've got to trust somebody," she said.  "My best
judgment is that that somebody is you.  Here is my
position."  And she related fully, rapidly, everything
except the source of her warning against Fosdick.
She told all she knew about the unwarranted vouchers
A. & N. Siersdorf had been approving—"at least, I
think they are unwarranted," she said.  "We know
nothing about them."

"And why do you come to *me*?" said Armstrong
when he had the whole affair before him from the first
interview with Fosdick to and including the last
interview.

"Because you are president of the O.A.D.," she
replied.  "We have nothing to conceal.  You are the
responsible executive officer.  If you do not know
about these things, you ought to be told.  And I am
determined that our firm shall not remain in its present
false position."

Armstrong sat back in his chair, his face heavy
and expressionless, as if the mind that usually
animated it had left it a lifeless mask and had withdrawn
and concentrated upon something within.  No one ever
got an inkling of what Armstrong was turning over
in his mind until he was ready to expose it in speech.
When he came back to the surface, he turned his chair
until he was facing her squarely.  His scrutiny seemed
to satisfy him, for presently he said, "I see that you
trust me," in his friendliest way.

"Yes," she replied.

"It's a great gift—a great advantage," he went
on, "to make up one's mind to trust and then to do
it without reserve....  I think you will not falter, no
matter what happens."

"No," she said.

"Well—you came to just the right person.  I
don't understand it."

"Woman's instinct, perhaps."

He shook his head.  "I doubt it.  That's simply a
phrase to get round a mystery.  No, your judgment
guided you somehow.  Judgment is the only guide."

Narcisse had been debating; she could not see how
it could possibly do any harm to mention Neva.
"Before I came downtown," said she, "it drifted into my
mind that I might have to come to you.  So I asked
Neva Carlin about you."

"Oh!"  Armstrong settled back in his chair
abruptly and masked his face.  "And what did she say?"

"That she was sure you wouldn't do anything
small or mean."

The big Westerner suddenly beamed upon her.
"Well, she ought to know," said he with a blush and a
hearty, boyish laugh.  Then earnestly: "I think I can
do more for you than anyone else in this matter—and
I will.  You must say nothing, and do nothing.  Let
everything go on as if you had no suspicion."

"But, when Mr. Fosdick does not send me the
authorization?"

"Wait a few days; write, reminding him; then let
the matter drop."

She reflected; the business seemed finished so far as
she could finish it.  She rose and put out her hand.
"Thank you," she said simply, and again, with a fine
look in her fine eyes, "Thank you."

"You owe me nothing," he replied.  "In the first
place, I've done nothing, and I can't promise
absolutely that I can do anything.  In the second place,
you have given me some extremely valuable information.
In return I merely engage not to use it to as
great advantage as I might in some circumstances."

In the entrance hall once more, she wondered at
the complete change in her state of mind.  She now
felt content; yet she had nothing tangible, apparently
less than at the end of her interview with Fosdick—for
he had promised something definite, while Armstrong
had merely said, "I'll do my best."  She
wondered at her content, at her absolute inability to
have misgiving or doubt.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ARMSTRONG SWOOPS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   ARMSTRONG SWOOPS

.. vspace:: 2

About an hour after Narcisse left Fosdick, he
sent for Westervelt, the venerable comptroller of the
O.A.D.  But Westervelt came before the message
could possibly have reached him.

Westervelt's position—chief financial officer of one
of the greatest fiduciary institutions of a world whose
fiduciary institutions have become more important than
its governments—would have made him in any event
important and conspicuous; but he was a figure in
finance large out of all proportion to his office.  He
was one of the stock "shining examples" of Wall
Street.  If industry was talked of, what more natural
than to point to old Westervelt, for fifty years at his
desk early and late, without ever taking a vacation?
If honesty was being discussed, where a better instance
of it than honest old Bill Westervelt, who had handled
billions yet was worth only a modest three or four
millions?  If fidelity was the theme, there again was
old Bill with his long white whiskers, refusing offer
after offer of high stations because he was loyal to the
O.A.D.  Why, he had even refused the financial place
in the Cabinet!  If anyone had been unkind enough to
suggest, in partial mitigation of this almost oppressive
saintliness, that old Bill had no less than ninety-six
relatives by blood and marriage in good to splendid
berths in the O.A.D.; that he had put his brother,
his two sons and his three sons-in-law in positions
where they had made fortunes as dealers in securities
for the O.A.D. and its allied institutions; that a
Cabinet position at eight thousand a year, where such
duties as were not clerical consisted in obeying the
"advice" of the big financial lords, would have small
charm for a man so placed that he was a real influence
in the real financial councils of the nation—if such
suggestions as these had been made, the person who
made them would have been denounced as a cynic,
gangrened with envy.  If anyone had ventured to hint
that, in view of the truly monstrous increase in the
expenses of the O.A.D., old Bill's industry seemed to
be bearing rather strange fruit for so vaunted a tree,
and that his fidelity ought to have a vacation while
expert accountants verified it—such insinuations would
have been repelled as sheer slander, an attempt to
undermine the confidence of mankind in the reality of
virtue.  So great was Westervelt's virtue that he himself
had come to revere it as profoundly as did the rest of
the world; it seemed to him that one so wholly right
could do no wrong; that evil itself, passing through
the crucible of that white soul of his, emerged as good.

Fosdick simply glanced at his old friend and
associate as he entered.  "Hello, Bill," he exclaimed.
"I was just going to send for you.  I want the
Siersdorfs suspended from charge of those new buildings.
And give the head bookkeeper of the real estate
department a six months' vacation—say, for a tour of
the world."

But Westervelt had not heard.  He had dropped
into a chair, and was white as his whiskers, and the
hand with which he was stroking them was shaking.
As he did not reply, Fosdick looked at him.  "Why,
Bill, what's the matter?" he cried, friendly alarm in
voice and face.  "Not sick?"

"I've been—suspended," gasped Westervelt.  "I—suspended!"

Josiah stared at him.  "What are you talking about?"

"Armstrong has just suspended me."

"Armstrong!" cried Fosdick.  "Why, you're
crazy, man!  He's got no more authority over you
than he has over me."

"He sent for me just now," said Westervelt, "and
when I came in he looked savagely at me and said,
'Mr. Westervelt, you will take a vacation until
further notice.  I put it in that way to keep the scandal
from becoming public.  You can say you have become
suddenly ill.  You will leave the offices at once, and
not return until I send for you.'"

Fosdick was listening like a man watching the
fantastic procession of a dream which not even the wild
imagination of a sleeper could credit.  "You're crazy,
Bill," he repeated.

"I laughed at him," continued Westervelt.  "And
then he said—it seems to me I must really be crazy—but,
no, he said it—'We have reason to believe that
the books are in wild, in criminal disorder,' he said.
'I have telegraphed for Brownell.  He will be here
in the morning to take charge.'"

Fosdick bounded to his feet.  "Brownell!  Why,
he's Armstrong's old side-partner in Chicago.
Brownell!"  Fosdick's face grew purple, and he jerked at his
collar and swung his head and rolled his eyes and
mouthed as if he were about to have a stroke.  Then
he rushed to his bell and leaned upon the button.
Waller came into the room, terror in his face.
"Armstrong!" cried Fosdick.  "Bring him here—instantly!"

But it was full ten minutes before Waller could
find and bring him.  In that time Fosdick's mind
asserted itself, beat his passion into its kennel where it
could be kept barred in or released, as events might
determine.  "Caution—caution!" he said to Westervelt.
"Let *me* do all the talking."

The young president entered deliberately, with
impassive countenance.  He looked calmly at Westervelt,
then at Fosdick.

"I suppose you know what I want to see you
about, Horace," Fosdick began.  "Sit down.  There
seems to be some sort of misunderstanding between you
and Westervelt—eh?"

Armstrong simply sat, the upper part of his big
frame resting by the elbows upon the arms of his chair,
a position which gave him an air of impenetrable
stolidity and immovable solidity.

When Fosdick saw that Armstrong was determined
to hold his guard, he went on, "It won't do for you
two to quarrel.  At any price we must have peace,
must face the world, united and loyal.  I want to make
peace between you two.  Westervelt has told me his
side of the story.  Now, you tell me yours."

"I suspended him, pending a private investigation—that's
all," said Armstrong.  And his lips closed as
if that were all he purposed to say.

Fosdick's eyes gleamed dangerously.  "You know,
you have no authority to suspend the comptroller?"
he said quietly.

"That's true."

"Then he is not suspended."

"Yes, he is," said Armstrong.  "And on my way
down here I looked in at his department and told them
he was ill and wouldn't be back to-day."

Westervelt started up.  "How dare you!" he
shrilled in the undignified fury of the old.

"Bill, Bill!" warned Fosdick.  Then to Armstrong,
"The way to settle it is for Bill to go home
for to-day.  In the morning, he will return to his work
as usual."

"Brownell will be here, will be in charge," said
Armstrong.  "If Westervelt returns, I'll have him put
out."

"Will you permit me to ask the why of all this?"
inquired Fosdick.

"The man's been up to some queer business,"
replied Armstrong.  "The books have got to be
straightened out, and it looks as if he'd have to
disgorge some pretty big sums."

Westervelt groaned and fell heavily back into his
chair.  "That I should live to hear such insults to
me!" he cried, and the tears rolled down his cheeks.
Armstrong simply looked at him.

"You are mistaken, terribly mistaken, Horace,"
said Fosdick smoothly.  "You have been woefully
misled."  He did not know what to do.  He dared not
break with Westervelt, the chief stay of his power over
the staff of the O.A.D.; yet neither did he dare, just
then and over just that matter, break with Armstrong.

"If Westervelt is innocent," replied Armstrong,
"he ought to be laughing at me—for, if he's innocent,
I have ruined myself."

"I know you have no honor, no pride," cried
Westervelt.  "But have you no sense of what honor and
pride are?  After all my years of service, after
building high my name in this community, to be insulted
by an adventurer like you!  How do I know what you
would cook up against me, if you had control of the
books?  Fosdick, we'll have the board together this
afternoon, and suspend him!"

Fosdick saw the look in Armstrong's face at this.
"No, no, Bill," he said.  "We must sleep on this.  By
morning a way out will be found."

"By morning!" exclaimed Westervelt.  "I'll not
see the sun go down with a cloud shadowing my
reputation."

"Leave me alone with my old friend for a few
minutes, Horace," said Fosdick.

"Certainly," agreed Armstrong, rising.

"I'll come up to see you presently," Fosdick called
after him, as he was closing the door.  The two
veterans were alone.  Fosdick said, "That young man is
a very ugly customer, Westervelt.  We must go slowly
if we are to get rid of him without scandal."

"All we've got to do is to throw him out," replied
Westervelt.  "What reputable man or newspaper
would listen to him?  And if he has hold of the books
for a few weeks, a few days even, he can twist and
turn them so that he will at least be stronger than he
is now.  The stupendous impudence of the man!  Why
did you ever let him get into the company?"

"Bad judgment," said Fosdick gloomily.  "I had
no idea he was so short-sighted or so swollen with his
own importance.  I saw only his ability.  But we'll
soon be rid of him."

"Can it be that he has gotten wind of our plans
about him?" said Westervelt uneasily.

Fosdick waved his hand.  "Nobody knows them
but you and I.  Impossible.  I haven't even let Morris
into that secret yet.  Armstrong's quite sure of his
ground—and he must be kept sure.  When he goes,
it must be with a brand on him that will make him
as harmless a creature as there is in the world."

"But the books—he must not get hold of the
books," persisted Westervelt.

"I'll see to that.  Can you suggest any way to
keep him quiet, except pretending to give him his head
at present?"

Westervelt reflected.  Suddenly he cried out, "No,
Josiah; I can't let him—anyone—handle those books.
They're my reputation."

"But you have got them into good shape for the
legislative investigation, haven't you?"

"Yes—certainly.  But there are the private books!"

"Um," grunted Fosdick.  "How many of them?"

"Three—beside the one I slipped into my pocket
on my way down here.  They're too big to take away."

"They must be destroyed," said Fosdick.  "Go
now and get them.  Have them carried down here at
once."

Westervelt hurried away.  As he entered his office,
he was astounded at seeing Armstrong seated at a side
desk, dictating to a stenographer.  At sight of
Westervelt, Armstrong started up and went to meet him.
"You ought not to be lingering here, Mr. Westervelt,"
he said, so that all the clerks could hear.  "You
owe it to yourself to take no such risk."

"I forgot a little matter," explained Westervelt
confusedly.  And he went uncertainly into his private
office, had his secretary put the three ledgers and
account books together and wrap them up.  "Now," said
he, "take the package down to Mr. Fosdick's office.
I'll go with you."

As they emerged into the outer room, he glanced
furtively and nervously at Armstrong; Armstrong
seemed safely absorbed in his dictation.  Just as the
two reached the hall door, Armstrong, without looking
up, called, "Oh, by the way, Mr. Westervelt—just a
moment."

Westervelt jumped.  "Go on with the books," said
he in an undertone to his secretary.  "I'll come
directly."

Armstrong was looking at the secretary now.
"Just put down the package, please," he said carelessly.
"I wish to speak to the comptroller about it."

The young man, all unsuspicious of what was below
the smooth surface, obediently put down the package.
Armstrong drew Westervelt aside.  "You are taking
those three books, and the one I see bulging in your
pocket, down to Mr. Fosdick, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Westervelt.

"Take my advice," said Armstrong.  "Don't."

"It's merely a little matter I wish to go over with
him—a few minutes," stammered Westervelt.

"I understand perfectly," said Armstrong.  "But
is it wise for you to put yourself in *anybody's* power?
Don't hand all your weapons to a man who could use
them against you—and, as you well know, would do
it if he felt compelled.  I could stop you from making
off with those books.  I'm tempted to do it—curiously
enough, for your own sake.  *I* don't need them."

Westervelt was studying Armstrong's frank
countenance in amazement.  "He expects me," he
suggested uncertainly.

"Don't leave the books with him," repeated
Armstrong.  "Don't put yourself in his power."  He
looked at Westervelt with an expression like that of
a man measuring a leap before taking it.  "Take the
books home," he went on boldly.  "Fosdick has been
cheating you for years.  I will come to see you at your
house to-morrow morning."  And he returned to his
dictation, leaving the old man hesitating in the
doorway, thoughtfully fumbling in his long white whiskers
with slow, stealthy fingers.

In the corridor, Westervelt said to his secretary,
"I think I'll work over the matter at home.  I'm not
so sick as they seem to imagine.  Jump into a cab
and drive up to my house, and give the package to
my wife.  Tell her to take care of it."

When Fosdick saw him empty-handed, he was
instantly ablaze.  "Has that scoundrel——"

"No, no," explained his old friend, "I got the
books, all right."

"Where are they?"

"I sent them uptown—up to my house."

"What the hell did you do that for?" cried Fosdick.

"I thought it best to have them where I could
personally take care of them," said Westervelt, his
heart bounding with delight.  For Fosdick's
unguarded tone had set flaming in him that suspicion
which thoroughly respectable men always have latent
for each other, in circles where respectability rests
entirely upon deeds that in the less respectable or on
a less magnificent scale would seem quite the reverse
of respectable.  They know how dear reputation is,
how great sacrifices of friendship and honor even the
most honorable and generous men will make to
safeguard it.

"Well, well," said Fosdick, heaving but oily of
surface, and not daring to pursue the subject lest
Westervelt should suspect him.  "You sent them by safe
hands?"

"By my secretary, and to my wife," said Westervelt.

They kept up a rather strained conversation for
half an hour, chiefly devoted to abuse of Armstrong—Westervelt's
abuse was curiously lacking in heartiness,
though Fosdick was too busy with his own thoughts
to note it.  He suddenly interrupted himself to say:
"Oh, I forgot.  Excuse me a moment."  And he went
into the next room.  He was gone three quarters of
an hour.  When he came back, he said, with not very
convincing carelessness, "While I was out there talking
with Waller, it occurred to me that, on the whole,
the books'd be safer in my vaults.  So I took the
liberty of sending him up to get them.  Your wife knows
him."

Westervelt smiled in such a way that his white hair
and beard and patriarchal features combined in an
aspect of beautiful benevolence.  "I fear he won't get
them, Josiah," said he, chuckling softly.

"Then you'd better telephone her," said Fosdick.

"I have, Josiah," said his old pal, with a glance
at the telephone on Fosdick's desk.

The veterans looked each at the other, Josiah
reproachfully.  "Billy, you don't trust even me," he said
sadly.

"I trust no one but the Lord, Josiah," replied
Westervelt.





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.. _`HUGO SHOWS HIS METTLE`:

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   \XVI


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   HUGO SHOWS HIS METTLE

.. vspace:: 2

Fosdick did not go up to parley with the insurgent
until after lunch, until he had thought out his
game.  He went prepared for peace, for a truce, or
for war.  "Horace," he began, "there are many
phases to an enterprise as vast as this.  You can't
run it as you would a crossroads grocery.  You have
got to use all sorts of men and measures, to adapt
yourself to them, to be broad and tolerant—and
diplomatic.  Above all, diplomatic."  And he went on for
some time in this strain of commercial commonplaces,
feeling his way carefully.  "Now, it may be true—I
don't know, but it may be true," he ended, "that
Westervelt, in conducting his part of the affairs, has taken
wider latitude than perhaps might be tolerated in a
man of less strength and standing.  We must consider
only results.  On the other hand, it is just as well
that we should know precisely what his methods have
been."

At this Armstrong's impassive face showed a
gleam of interest.  "That's what *I* thought," said he.

"But it wouldn't do—it wouldn't do at all, Horace,
for us to let an outsider like Brownell, at one jump,
into the secrets of the company.  Why, there's no
telling what he would do.  He might blackmail us, or
sell us out to one of our rivals."

"What have you to propose?" said Armstrong,
impatient of these puerile preliminaries.  Fosdick was
as clever at trickery as is the cleverest; but at its best
the best trickery is puerile, once the onlooker, or even
the intended victim, is on the alert.

"We must give the accounts a thorough overhauling,"
answered Fosdick.  "But it must be done by
our own people.  I propose the ordinary procedure
for that sort of thing—different men doing different
parts of it piecemeal, and sending their reports to one
central man who collates them.  In that way, only the
one man knows what is going on or what is found out."

"Who's the man?" asked Armstrong.

"It struck me that Hugo, being one of the fourth
vice-presidents and so in touch with the comptroller's
department, would most naturally step into
Westervelt's place while he was away."

"Certainly," said Armstrong cordially.  "Hugo's
the very person."

Fosdick had not dismissed Westervelt's suggestion
that Armstrong might be countermining so summarily
as he had led Westervelt to believe; he did dismiss it
now, however.  "The young fool," he decided, "just
wanted to show his authority."  To Armstrong he said,
"You and Hugo can work together."

"No, leave it to Hugo," said Armstrong.  "I am
content so long as it is definitely understood that I
am not responsible.  Let the Executive Committee meet
and put Hugo formally in charge during Westervelt's
absence."

Fosdick went up to Westervelt's house to see him
a few days later; to his surprise the old bulwark of
public and private virtue seemed completely restored.
And Fosdick, with a blindness which he never could
account for, was content with his explanation that he
had been thinking it over and had reached the conclusion
that his interests were perfectly secure, so long
as he had the four books.  Without a protest he
acquiesced in the appointment of Hugo.  And so it
came peacefully about that Hugo, convinced that no
one had ever undertaken quite so important a task
as this of his, set himself to investigating the whole
financial department of the O.A.D.  That is to say,
he issued the orders suggested by his father, issued
them to subordinates suggested by his father, and
brought to his father the reports they made to him.

On the third or fourth day of Westervelt's
"illness," Fosdick caught a cold which laid him up with
a ferocious attack of the gout.  Most of the reports
which the subordinates brought to Hugo he did not
understand; but he felt that it was his duty to
examine them, and spent about three of the four hours
he gave to business each day in marching his eye
solemnly down the columns of figures and explanations.
And thus it came about that he discovered Armstrong's
"crime"—twenty-five thousand dollars, which had
been paid to Horace Armstrong on his own
order and never accounted for; a few months later,
a second item of the same size and mystery; a
few months later, a third; a fourth, a fifth, a sixth
and so on, until in all Armstrong had got from
the company on his own order no less than three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for which he never
accounted.  "A thief!" exclaimed Hugo.  "I might
have known!  These low-born fellows of no breeding,
that rise by impudence and cunning, always steal."

Hugo did not go to his father with his startling
discovery of this shameful raid on the sacred funds
of the widows and orphans of the O.A.D.  "I'll not
worry the governor when he's ill," he reasoned.
"Besides, he's far too gentle and easygoing with
Armstrong.  No, this is a matter for me to attend to,
myself.  When it's all over, the governor'll thank me.
Anyhow, it's time I showed these people downtown that
I understand the game and can play it."  And Hugo
sent for Armstrong.

Not to come to him at his office; but to call on
him at his apartment on the way downtown: "Dear
Sir—Mr. Hugo Fosdick wishes you to call on him
at the above address at nine to-morrow morning"—this
on his private letter paper and signed by his secretary.

Hugo had taken an apartment in a fashionable
bachelor flathouse a few months after he became a
fourth vice-president.  He was not ready to get
married.  There were only a few women—nine girls and
two widows—in the class he deemed eligible, that is,
having the looks, the family, and the large fortune,
all of which would be indispensable to an aspirant for
his hand.  And of these eleven, none had as yet shown a
sufficient degree of appreciation.  Four treated him as
they did the other men in their set—with no
distinguishing recognition of his superiority of mind and
body.  Five were more appreciative, but they were,
curiously and unfortunately enough, the least pleasing
in the three vital respects.  However, while he must
put off marriage until he should find his affinity, there
was no reason why he should continue in the paternal
leading strings; so, he set up an establishment befitting
his rank and wealth.  He took the large flat with its
three almost huge general rooms; and, of course he
furnished it in that comfortless splendor in which live
those of the civilized and semicivilized world in whom
prosperity smothers all originality or desire for
originality.  For Hugo was most careful to do everything
and anything expected of his "set" by the sly middle-class
purveyors who think out the luxuries and fashions
by which they live off the vanities and
conventionalities of the rich.

When Armstrong appeared, Hugo had been shaved
and bathed and massaged and manicured and perfumed
and dressed; he was seated at a little breakfast table
drawn near the open fire in the dining room, two men
servants in attendance—a third had ushered
Armstrong in.  He was arrayed in a gray silk house suit,
with facings of a deeper gray, over it a long grayish-purple
silk and eiderdown robe.  He was in the act of
lighting a cigarette at the cut glass and gold lamp
which his butler was holding respectfully.

"Ah—Armstrong!" he said, with that high-pitched
voice and affected accent which makes the person
who uses it seem to say, "You will note that I am
a real aristocrat."  Then to the butler, "I wish to
be alone."

"Yes, sir," said the butler, with a bow.  The other
servant bowed also, and they left the room.

"Well, what is it, Fosdick?" said Armstrong,
seating himself.

Hugo frowned at that familiarity, aggravated by
the curt tone.  "I shall not detain you long enough
for you to be at the trouble of seating yourself," said
he.

Armstrong reflected on this an instant before he
grasped what Hugo was driving at.  Then he smiled.
"Go on—what is it?" he said, settling himself.

"I directed you to come here," said Hugo,
"because I wished to avoid every possibility of scandal.
I assume you understood, as soon as you got my note?"

Armstrong looked at him quizzically.  "And I
came," said he, "because I assumed you had some
important, very private, message from your father.  I
thought perhaps your father would be here."

"My father knows nothing of this," said Hugo.
"I thought it more humane to spare him the pain of
discovering that a servant he regarded as faithful had
shamefully betrayed him."

"I might have known!" exclaimed Armstrong
with good-natured disgust, rising.  "So you brought
me here to discuss some trifle about your servants.
Some day, if I get the leisure, my young friend, I'll
tell you what I think of you.  But not to-day.  Good
morning."

"Stop!" commanded Hugo.  As Armstrong did
not stop, he said, "I have discovered your thefts from
the company."

Armstrong wheeled, blanched.  He looked hard at
young Fosdick; then he slowly returned to his chair.
"I understand," he said, in a voice most unlike his own.

"And I sent for you," continued Hugo triumphantly,
"to tell you I will permit you quietly to resign.
You will write out your resignation at the desk
in the next room.  I shall present it to the Board,
and shall see that it is accepted without scandal or
question.  Of course, so far as you are able, you must
make good your shortage.  But I shall not be hard
on you.  I appreciate that chaps like you are often
tempted beyond their powers of resistance."

By this time Armstrong was smiling so broadly
that Hugo, absorbed though he was in his own rôle of
the philosophic gentleman, had to see it.  He broke off,
reddened, rose and drew himself to his full height—and
a very elegant figure he was.  Armstrong looked
up at him from his indolent lounge in the big chair.
"Did you pose that before a cheval glass, Hugo?"
he said, in a pleasant, contemptuous tone.

"You will force me to the alternative," cried
Hugo furiously.

Armstrong got up.  "Go ahead, old man," he said.
"Do whatever you please.  Better talk to your father
first, though."  He glanced round.  "You're very
gorgeous here—too gorgeous for the hard-working,
poor people who pay for it.  I'll have to interfere."  He
smiled at Hugo again, but there was an unpleasant
glitter in his eyes.  "You are suspended from the
fourth vice-presidency," he went on tranquilly.  "And
you will vacate these premises before noon to-day.  See
that you take nothing with you that belongs to the
O.A.D.  If you do, I'll have you in a police court.  Be
out before noon.  Brownell will be up at that hour."

Hugo stood staring.  This effrontery was unbelievable.
Before he could recover himself, Armstrong
was gone.  He sat down and slowly thought it out.
Yes, it was true, the flat had been taken nominally as
an uptown branch of the O.A.D. home office; much of
the furniture had been paid for by the company;
several of the servants were on the pay roll as clerks and
laborers; yes, he had even let the O.A.D. pay grocery
and wine bills—was he not like his father—did not
everything he did, everything he ate and drank,
contribute to the glory and stability of the O.A.D.?  He
was but following the established usage among the
powers that deigned to guard the financial interests
of the people.  Perhaps, he carried the system a little
further, more frankly further, than some; but logically,
legitimately.  Still, Armstrong was president,
had nominally the authority to make things unpleasant
for him.

He looked at the clock—it was ten; no time to lose.
He rushed into his clothes, darted into his waiting
brougham and drove home.  The doctor was with his
father; he had to wait, pacing and fuming, until nearly
eleven before he could get admission.  The old man,
haggard and miserable, was stretched on a sofa-bed
before the fire in his sitting room.  "Well, what do you
want?" he said sharply.

Hugo did not pause to choose words.  "I found
in the books," said he, "where Armstrong had taken
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars from
us—from the company.  I thought I'd not worry you with
it.  So I sent for him to come to my rooms."

"What!" yelled Fosdick, getting his breath which
had gone at the first shock.  "What the damnation!
You sprung *my* trap!  You *fool*!"

"I ordered him to resign," Hugo hastened on.
"And he refused, and ordered me to vacate my rooms
before noon—because the lease stands in the name of
the company.  And he suspended me as vice-president."

"Good, good!" shouted Fosdick, his thin, wire-like
hair, his gaunt face, his whole lean body streaming
fury.  "Why has God cursed me with such a son as
this!  How dare you!  You wretched idiot!  You have
ruined us all!"

Hugo cowered.  Making full allowance for his
father's physical pain and violent temper, there was
still that in the old man's face which convinced Hugo
he had made a frightful blunder.  "I'll vacate," he
said, near to whimpering, "I'll do whatever you say."

"Give me that telephone!" ordered the old man.

Fosdick got the O.A.D. building and Armstrong's
office.  And soon Armstrong's voice came over the wire.
"Is that you, Armstrong—Horace—?  Yes, I recognize
your voice.  This is Fosdick.  That fool boy of
mine has just told me what he did."

"Yes," came in Armstrong's noncommittal voice.

"I want to say you did perfectly right in ordering
him to vacate."

"Thanks."

"He'll be out by the time you set.  His resignation
as vice-president is on the way downtown.  I'm
sending him to apologize to you.  I want to do
everything, anything to show my deep humiliation, my deep
regret."

No answer from the other end of the wire.

"Are you there, Horace?"

"Yes."

"Have I made myself clear?  Is there anything
I can do?"

"Nothing.  Is that all?"

"Can you come up here?  It's impossible for me
to leave my bedroom—simply out of the question."

"I'm too busy this morning."

"This afternoon?"

"Not to-day.  Good-by."

The ring-off sounded mockingly in the old man's
ear.  With an oath he caught up the telephone
apparatus and flung it at Hugo's head.  "Ass!  Ass!"
he shouted, shaking his cane at his son, who had barely
dodged the heavy instrument.  "Vacate that apartment!
Take the first steamer for Europe!  And don't
you show up in town again until I give you leave.
Hide yourself!  Ass!  Ass!"

Hugo scudded like a swallow before a tempest.
"Is there any depth," he said when he felt at a safe
distance, "*any* depth to which father wouldn't descend,
for the sake of money—and drag us down with him?"  He
admitted that perhaps he had not acted altogether
discreetly.  "I oughtn't to have roused Armstrong's
envy by letting him see my rooms."  Still, that could
have been easily repaired.  Certainly, it wasn't
necessary to grovel before an employee—"and a damned
thief at that."  By the time he reached his apartments,
he was quite restored to favor with himself.  He
hurried the servants away, telephoned for a firm of
packers and movers to come at once.  As he rang off, a
call came for him.  He recognized the voice of
Armstrong's secretary.

"Is that Mr. Hugo Fosdick?  Well, Mr. Armstrong
asks me to say that it won't be necessary for
you to give up those offices uptown to-day, that you
can keep them as long as you please."

"Aha!" thought Hugo, triumphant again.  "He
has come to his senses.  I knew it—I knew he
would!"  To the secretary he simply said, "Very well," and
rang up his father.  It was nearly half an hour
before he could get him; the wire was busy.  At his first
word, the old man said, "Ring off there!  I don't
want to hear or see you.  You take that steamer to-morrow!"

"Armstrong has weakened, father," cried Hugo.

"What!" answered the old man, not less savage,
but instantly eager.

"He has just telephoned, practically apologizing,
and asking me not to disturb myself about the
apartment.  I knew he'd come down when he thought it
over."

A silence, then his father said in a milder tone:
"Well—you keep away from the office.  Don't touch
business, don't go near it, until I tell you to.  And
don't come near me till I send for you.  What else
did Armstrong say?"

"Just what I told you—nothing more.  But when
I see him, he'll apologize, no doubt."

"See that you don't see him," snapped the old man.
"Keep away from anybody that knows anything of
business.  Keep to that crowd of empty-heads you
travel with.  Do you understand?"

"Yes, father," said Hugo, in the respectful tone
he never, in his most supercilious mood, forgot to use
toward the custodian and arbiter of his prospects.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VIOLETTE'S TAPESTRIES`:

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   \XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   VIOLETTE'S TAPESTRIES

.. vspace:: 2

Armstrong would not have protested Raphael's
favorite fling at the financial district as "a wallow of
dishonor"; and Boris's description of him as reeking
the slime of the wallow was no harsher than what he
was daily thinking about himself.

The newspapers were shrieking for a "real cleaning
of the Augean stables of finance"; the political
figureheads of "the interests" were solemnly and
sonorously declaiming that there must be no repetition
of former fiascos and fizzles, when nobody had been
punished, though everybody had been caught black-handed.
The prosecuting officers were protesting that
the plea of the guilty that they were "gentlemen" and
"respectable" would not again avail.  So, Wall
Street's wise knew that the struggle between Fosdick
and Atwater was near its crisis.  Throughout the
"wallow" banks and trust companies, bond houses and
bucket shops, all the eminent respectabilities, were
"hustling" to get weathertight.  Everyone appreciated
that Fosdick and Atwater, prudent men, patron
saints of "stability," would be careful to confine the
zone of war strictly.  But—what would they regard
as the prudent and proper limits of this release and
use of public anger?  Neither faction was afraid of
law, of serious criminal prosecution; however the
authorities might be compelled to side, they would not
yield to popular clamor—beyond making the usual
bluff necessary to fool the public until it forgot.  But
these exposures which had now become a regular part
of the raids of the great men on each other's
preserves always tended to make the public shy for a while;
and the royalty, nobility, and gentry of the fashionable
hierarchy, had to meet the enormous expenses of
their families, their establishments, and their retinues
of dependents, never less, ever more.  They could ill
afford any cessation or marked slackening of the
inflow of wealth from the industrious and confiding,
or covetous, masses—covetous rather than confiding,
since the passion of the average man for gambling, for
getting something for nothing, is an even larger
factor in the successful swindling operations of enthroned
respectability than is his desire for a safe, honest
investment of his surplus.  Finally, the uneasy upper
classes remembered that usually these exposures
resulted in the sacrifice of some of them; an unlucky
financier or group of financiers was loaded down with
the blame for the corruption and, amid the execration
of the crowd and the noisy denunciation of fellow
financiers, was sent away into the wilderness, disgraced
so far as a man can be disgraced in the eyes of
money-worshipers when he still has his wealth.  Rarely did
the sacrifice extend further than disgrace; still, that
was no light matter, as it meant lessened opportunities
to share in the looting which was soon resumed with
increased energy and success.  The disgraced financier
had to live on what he had acquired before his
disgrace, instead of keeping that intact, and paying his
expenses, and adding to his fortune, too, out of fresh
loot.

Altogether, it was wise to get good and ready—to
"dress" the shelves and the back of the shop as
well as the windows and front cases; to destroy or
hide suspicious books and memoranda; to shift
confidential clerks; to distribute vacations to Europe
among employees, open and secret, with dangerous
information and a tendency toward hysterical and loose
talking under cross-examination; to retain all the able
lawyers, and all those related by blood, marriage, or
business to legislators, prosecuting officers, and
powerful politicians; to confer discreetly as to the exact
facts of certain transactions, "so that we may not
make any blunders and apparent contradictions on the
witness stand."  And the lawyers—how busy they
were!  The aristocrats of the legal profession were
as brisk as are their humbler fellows on the eve of a
"tipped-off" raid on a den of "swell crooks."  In
fact, the whole business had the air of a very cheap
and vulgar kind of crookedness; and the doings of
the great men were strange indeed, in view of their
pose as leaders by virtue of superiority in honest skill.
An impartial observer might have been led to wonder
whether honest men had not been driven from leadership
because they would not stoop to the vilenesses
by which "success" was gained, and not because they
were less in brain.  As for such conduct in men lauded
as "bold," "brave," "courageous beyond the power
to quail"—it was simply inexplicable.  The
"dare-devil leaders" were acting like a pack of shifty
cowards engaged in robbing a safe and just hearing
the heavy, regular tread of a police patrol under the
windows.

Armstrong was too absorbed in the game for much
analysis or theorizing; still, his lip did curl at the
spectacle—and in part his sneer was self-contempt.  "It's
disgusting," said he to himself, "that to keep alive
among these scoundrels and guard the interests one is
intrusted with, one must do or tolerate so many
despicable things."  As that view of the matter was the
one which every man in the district was taking, each
to excuse himself to himself, there was not an
uncomfortable conscience or a shame-reddened cheek or a
slinking eye.  Once a man becomes convinced that his
highest duty is not to himself, but to his fellow man,
the rest is easy; the greater his "self-sacrifice" of
honesty, decency, and self-respect for the sake of the
public good—for country or religion or "stability"
or "to keep the workingman's family from starving"—the
more sympathetic and enthusiastic is his conscience.

When the financial district was at the height of
its activity in getting weathertight for the approaching
investigation, Fosdick shook off his savage enemy,
the gout, and got downtown again.  He went direct
from his carriage to Armstrong's offices.  He greeted
his "man" as cordially as if he had not just been
completing the arrangements by which he expected
to make Armstrong himself the first conspicuous
victim of the investigation.  And Armstrong received
and returned the greeting with no change in his
usual phlegmatic manner to hint his feelings or his
plans.

"About Hugo—" began Josiah.

Armstrong made a gesture of dismissal.  "That's
a closed incident.  Any news of the committee?"

Josiah accepted the finality of Armstrong's manner.
"You show yourself a man in ignoring the flappings
and squawkings of that young cockatoo," said
he cheerfully.  "As for the committee—  What do
you think of Morris for counsel?"

"You've decided on him?" said Armstrong.  His
eyes wandered.

But Fosdick was not subtle, and thought nothing
of that slight but, in one so close, most significant
sign of a concealing mind.  "It's settled," replied he.
"Joe's an honorable man.  Also, he's tied fast to us,
and at the same time the public can't charge that he's
one of our lawyers.  I know, you and he—"  There
Fosdick stopped.  He prided himself on a most
gentlemanly delicacy in family matters.

"He'll take orders?" said Armstrong, with no
suggestion that he either saw cause for "delicacy" or
appreciated it.

"I suppose he would, if it were necessary.  But,
thank God, Horace, it isn't.  As I told him at my
house last night, after the governor and I had decided
on him—I said to him: 'Joe, go ahead and make a
reputation for yourself.  We fear nothing—we've got
nothing to hide that the public has a right to know.
Tear the mask off those damned scoundrels who are
trying to seize the O.A.D. and change it from a great
bulwark of public safety into a feeder for their
reckless gambling.'"

"And what did he say?" inquired Armstrong—a
simple inquiry, with no hint of the cynical amusement
it veiled.

"He was moved to tears, almost," replied Fosdick,
damp of eye himself at the recollection.  "And he
said: 'Thank you, Mr. Fosdick, and you, Governor
Hartwell.  I'll regard this commission as a sacred
trust.  I'll be careful not to give encouragement to
calumny or to make the public uneasy and suspicious
where there is no just reason for uneasiness and
suspicion; and at the same time I'll expose these men who
have been prostituting the name of financier.'  You
really ought to have heard him."

An inarticulate sound came from behind the
Westerner's armor of stolid apathy.

"Horace, he's a noble fellow," continued Fosdick,
assuming that his "man" was sympathetic.  "And he
knows the law from cover to cover.  He has drawn
some of our best statutes, and whenever I've got into
a place where it looked as if the howling of the mob
was going to stop business, I've always called on him
to get up a statute that would make the mob happy
and not interfere with us, and he has never failed me.
By the time he's fifty, he'll be one of the strongest men
in the country—the kind of man the business interests
'd like to see in the White House.  If it weren't
for that fool wife of his!  Do you know her?"

"No," replied Armstrong.

Fosdick decided that "delicacy" was unnecessary,
as Armstrong was out of the Carlin family.  "It's all
very well," said he, "for a young fellow to go crazy
about a girl when he's courting.  But to keep on being
crazy about her after they've got used to each other
and settled down—it's past me.  It defeats the whole
object of marriage, which is to steady a man, to take
woman off his mind, and give him peace for his work.
In my opinion, there's too much talk about love
nowadays.  It ain't decent—it ain't *decent*!  And it's
setting the women crazy, with so much idle time on their
hands.  Morris is stark mad about that wife of his,
and all he gets out of it is what a man usually gets
when he makes a fool of himself for a woman.  She
thinks of nothing but spending money, and she keeps
him poor.  The faster he earns, the wilder she spends.
I suppose he thinks she cares for him—when working
him is simply a business with her."

If Fosdick had known what Mrs. Morris was about
at that very hour, there would have been even more
energy in his denunciation of her.  As soon as her
husband had got home the previous night, he had confided
to her the whole of his new and dazzling opportunity—not
only all that his secret employer expected him
to make of it but all that he purposed to make of it.
She was not a discreet woman; so, it was fortunate
for him that her listening when he talked "shop," as
she called his career, was a pretense.  She gathered
only what was important to her—that he felt sure of
making a great deal out of the new venture.

He meant reputation; she assumed that he meant
money.  She began to spend it the very next day.
Even as Josiah Fosdick was denouncing her, she was
in an art store negotiating for a set of medieval
tapestries for her salon.  As antiques, the tapestries were
wonderful—wonderful, like so large a part of the
antiques that multimillionaires have brought over for
their houses and for the museums—wonderful as
specimens of the ingenuity of European handicraftsmen at
forgery.  As works of art, the tapestries were atrocious;
as household articles, they were dangerous—filthy,
dust- and germ-laden rags.  But "everybody"
was getting antique tapestries; Mrs. Morris must have
them.  She was an interesting and much-admired
representative of the American woman who goes in
*seriously* for art.  To go in *seriously* for art does not
mean to cultivate one's sense of the beautiful, to learn
to discriminate with candor among good, not so good,
not so bad, and bad.  It means to keep in touch with
the European dealers in things artistic, real and
reputed; to be the first to follow them when, a particular
fad having been mined to its last dollar, they and
their subsidized critics and connoisseurs come out
excitedly for some new period or style or school.
Mrs. Morris was regarded as one of the first authorities in
fashionable New York on matters of art.  Her house
was enormously admired; she was known to every
dealer from Moscow to the tip of the Iberian peninsula;
and incredible were the masses of trash they had
worked off upon her and, through her recommendations,
upon her friends.

Her "amazing artistic discernment"—so Sunnywall,
the most fashionable of the fashionable architects,
described it—was the bulwark of her social position.
Whenever a voice lifted against the idle lives of
fashionable people, how conclusive to reply, "Look at
Mrs. Joe Morris—she's typical.  She devotes her life to
art.  It's incalculable what she has done toward
interesting the American people in art."  She even
had fame in a certain limited way.  Her name
was spoken with respect from Maine to California
in those small but conspicuous circles where
possession of more or less wealth and a great deal of
empty time has impelled the women to occupy themselves
with books, pictures, statuary, furniture they
think they ought to like.  To what fantastic climaxes
prosperity has brought the old American passion for
self-development!  The men, to shrewd and shameless
prostitution in the market-places; the women, to the
stupefying ignorance of the culture that consists in
the mindless repetitions of the slang and cant and
nonsense of intellectual fakirs.

Mrs. Morris told her husband about the new
tapestries at dinner.  That was her regular time for
imparting to him anything she knew he would be
"troublesome" about; and it was rapidly ruining his
digestion.  She chose dinner because the presence of
the servants made it impossible for him to burst out
until the fact that the thing was done and could not
be undone had time to batter down his wrath.  Usually
she spoke between soup and fish—she spoke thus early
that she might gain as much time as possible.  So
often did she have these upsetting communications to
make that he got in the habit of dreading those two
courses as a transatlantic captain dreads the Devil's
Hole; and on evenings when the fish had come and gone
with nothing upsetting from her, he had a sudden,
often exuberant rush of high spirits.

"I dropped in at Violette's to-day for another
look at those tapestries," she began.

At "Violette's" he paused in lifting the spoon to
his lips; at "tapestries" he pricked his ears—one of
the greatest trials of his wife's married life was that
independent motion of his ears, "just like one of the
lower animals or something in a side show," she often
complained.

"And I simply couldn't resist," she ended, looking
like a happy, spoiled child.  He dropped the spoon
with a splash.

"Do be careful, Joe," she remonstrated sweetly.
"We can't change the dinner-cloth every night,
and such frequent washing is *ruinous*.  I had them
sent home, and you'll be entranced when you see them."

"Did you give Violette his original price?" he
demanded, as his color, having reached an apoplectic
blue-red, began to pale toward the normal.

"He wouldn't come down a cent.  And I don't
blame him."

Morris glowered at the butler and the footman.
They went about their business as if quite unconscious
of the work of peace they were doing—and were
expected by their mistress to do.  Mrs. Morris talked on
and on, pretending to assume that he was as delighted
with her purchase as was she.  She discoursed of these
particular tapestries, of tapestries in general, of the
atmosphere they brought into a house—"the suggestion,
the very spirit of the old, beautiful life of the
upper classes in the Middle Ages."  By the time
dinner was over she had talked herself so far away from
the sordid things of life that the coarsest nature would
have shrunk from intruding them.  But on that
evening Morris was angry through and through.  When
they left the dining room, she said, "Now, come and
look at them, dear."

"No," he said savagely.  He threw open the door
of his study.  "Come in here.  I want to talk to you."

She hesitated.  A glance at his fury-blanched face
convinced her that, if she made it necessary, he would
seize her and thrust her in.  As the door closed on
them with a bang, the butler said to the footman,
"Letty's done it once too often."

The footman tiptoed toward the door.  The butler
stopped him with, "You couldn't hear bloody murder
through that study door, and the keyhole's no good."

"Why didn't he take her to her boudoir?" grumbled
the footman.

She had indeed "done it once too often."  As soon
as Morris had the door locked he blazed down at her—she
fresh and innocent, with her fluffy golden hair
and sweet blue eyes and dimples on either side of her
pretty mouth.  "Damn you!" he exclaimed through
his set teeth.  "You want to ruin me, body and
soul—you vampire!"

Two big slow tears drenched her eyes.  "Oh,
Joe!" she implored.  "What have I done!  Don't be
angry with me.  It kills me!"  And she caught her
breath like a child trying bravely not to cry and
put out her rosy arms toward him, her round, rosy
shoulders and bosom rising and falling in a rhythmic
swell.

"Don't touch me!" he all but shouted.  "That's
part of your infernal game.  Oh, you think I'm a
fool—and so I am—so I am!  But not the kind you
imagine.  It hasn't been your cleverness that has made
me play the idiot, but my own weakness."  He caught
her by the shoulders.  "What is it?" he cried furiously,
shaking her.  "What's the infernal spell I get
under whenever you touch me?"

"You love me," she pleaded, "as I love you."

"Love!" he jeered.  "Well, call it that—no
matter.  Those tapestries have got to go back—do you
hear?"

"Yes—you needn't shout, dear.  Certainly they'll
go back."

"You say 'certainly,' but you've no intention of
sending them back.  You think this'll blow over, that
you'll wheedle me round as you have a hundred times.
But I tell you, *this* time, what I say *goes*!"

"What's the trouble, Joe?  You were never like
this before."

He was gnawing at his thin gray mustache and
was breathing heavily.  "When I married you I was
a decent sort of fellow.  I had a sense of honor and
a disposition to be honest.  You—you've made me into
a bawd.  I tell you, not the lowest creature that
parades the streets of the slums is viler than I.  That's
what you and love—love!—have done for me.  My
wife and love!  God, woman, what you have made me
do to get money for those greedy hands of yours!
Now, listen to me.  You evidently didn't listen last
night when I told you my plans.  No matter.  Here's
the point.  I'm going to sell out once more—going to
play the traitor for as big stakes as ever tempted a
man.  Then, I'll make the career I once dreamed of
making, and you will be second to no woman in the
land.  But, no more extravagance."

"I always knew you'd be rich and famous," she
cried, clasping her hands and looking the radiant
child.

"Famous, but not rich.  I'm not playing for
money this time.  And we're not going to have much
money hereafter.  I've thought it all out.  We're
going to move into a smaller house; all your junk is
to be sold, and what little money it'll bring we'll put
by."

She seemed to be freezing.  The baby look died out
of her face.  Her eyes became hard, her mouth cruel.
"I don't understand," she said.

"Yes, you do, madam," he retorted.  "You need
not waste time in scheming or in working your
schemes.  I've thought it all out.  You were driving
me straight to ruin; and, when you got me there,
if I hadn't conveniently died or blown my brains out,
you'd have divorced me and fastened on some one else.
I think that, like me, you used to be decent.  You've
been led on and on until you've come pretty near to
losing all human feeling.  Well, it's to be a right
about, this instant.  I'm going back—and you've got
to go back with me."

There was a note in his voice, an expression in his
eyes that disquieted her; but she had ruled him so
long, had softened him from the appearance of
strength into plastic weakness so often, that she saw
before her simply a harder task than usual, perhaps
the hardest task she had yet had.

"I'll be very busy the next few months," he went
on.  "You must go away—to your mother—or
abroad—anywhere, so that I shan't be tempted."

"I don't want to leave you!" she cried.  "I want
to stay and help you."

His smile was sardonic.  "No!  You shall go.  I've
an offer for this house, as it stands.  In fact, I've sold
it."

She stared wildly.  "Joe!" she screamed.

"I've sold it," he repeated.

"To whom?"

His eyes shifted, and he flushed.  "To Trafford,"
he replied, with a sullenness, a shamefacedness that
would not have escaped her had she not been
internally in such a commotion that nothing from the
outside could impress her.

"But you couldn't get a tenth what the things
are worth, selling that way."

"I got a good price," said he, his eyes averted.
"Never mind what it was."

"Why, the Traffords would have no use for this
house.  They've got a palace."

"He bought it," said Morris doggedly.

"I don't believe it."

"He bought it; and I want you to tell everybody
we sold at a loss—a big loss.  You can say we're
thinking of living in the country.  Not a word to
anyone that'd indicate there's any mystery about the
sale."  This without looking up.

She studied his face—the careworn but still handsome
features, the bad lines about the eyes and mouth,
the splendid intellectuality of the brow, a confused but
on the whole disagreeable report upon the life and
character within.  "I think I do understand," she said
slowly.  Then, like a vicious jab, "At least, as much
as I want to understand."

She strolled toward the door, sliding one soft,
jeweled hand reflectively over her bare shoulders.  She
paused before a statuette and inspected it carefully,
her hands behind her back, her fingers slowly locking
and unlocking.  Presently she gave a queer little laugh
and said, "It wasn't the house, it was *you* Trafford
bought."

A pause, then he: "He *thinks* so."

Again a pause, she smiling softly up at the statuette.
Without facing him she said, "I must have my
share, Joe."

He did not answer.

She waited a few minutes, repeated, "*I* must have
my share."

"Yes," he replied.

A pause; then, "Are you coming up to bed?"

"I shall sleep here."

She had passively despised him, whenever she had
thought about him at all in those years of his
subservience to her.  For the first time she was looking
at him with a feeling akin to respect.

"Good night," she murmured sweetly.

"Good night," curtly from him.

The watching servants were astonished at her
expression of buoyant good humor, were astounded when
she said with careless cheerfulness to the butler,
"Thomas, telephone Violette the first thing in the
morning to come for those tapestries he brought
to-day.  Tell him I'll call and explain."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ARMSTRONG PROPOSES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ARMSTRONG PROPOSES

.. vspace:: 2

Armstrong lingered in the entrance to the apartment
house where Neva lived, dejection and irritation
plain upon his features.  At no time since he met her
at Trafford's had he so longed to see her; and the
elevator boy had just told him she was out.  The boy's
manner was convincing, but Armstrong was supersensitive
about Neva.

She had received him often, and was always
friendly; but always with a reserve, the more disquieting
for its elusiveness.  And whenever he tried to see
her and failed, he suspected her of being unwilling to
admit him.  Sometimes the suspicion took the form
of a belief it was a *tête-à-tête* with the painter which
she would not let him interrupt.  Again, he feared she
had decided not to admit him any more.  It would
be difficult to say which made him the gloomier—the
feeling that he was, at best, a distant second, or the
feeling that he was not placed at all.  Never before
in his relation with any human being, man or woman,
had he been so exasperatingly at a disadvantage as
with her.  The fact that they had been married, which
apparently ought to have made it impossible for her
to maintain any barrier of reserve against him, once
she had accepted him as a friend, was somehow just
the circumstance that prevented him from making any
progress whatever with her.  And this was highly
exasperating to a man of his instinct and passion and
ability for conquest and dominion over all about him,
men as well as women.

"I'm making a fool of myself.  I'm letting her
make a fool of me," he thought angrily, as he stood
in the entrance.  "I'll not come again."  But he had
made this same decision each time he was met with
"Not at home," and had nevertheless reappeared at
her door after a few weeks of self-denial.  So, he
mocked himself even as he was bravely resolving.  He
gazed up and down the street.  His face brightened.
Far down the long block, toward Fifth Avenue, he saw
a slim, singularly narrow figure, thin yet nowhere
angular; beautiful shoulders and bust, narrow hips; a
fascinating simple dress of brown, a sable stole and
muff, a graceful brown hat with three plumes.
"Distinguished" was the word that seemed to him to
describe what he could see, thus far.  As she drew near,
he noted how her clear skin, her eyes, her hair all had
the sheen that proclaims health and vivid life.  "But
she would never have looked like this, or have been
what she is, if she had not got rid of me," he said
to himself by way of consolation.

"Won't you take a walk?" he asked, when they
met half way between the two avenues.  The friendliness
of her greeting dispelled his ill humor; sometimes
that same mere friendliness was the cause of a stinging
irritation.

"Come back with me," she replied.  "I'm always
in at this time.  Besides, to-day I have an engagement—no,
not just yet—not until Boris comes.  Then, he
and I are going out."

"Oh—Raphael!  Always Raphael."

"Almost always," said she.  "Almost every day—often
twice a day, sometimes three times a day."

His dealings with women had been in disregard and
disdain of their "feminine" methods; but he did know
the men who use that same indirection to which women
are compelled because nature and the human societies
modeled upon its savage laws decree that woman shall
deal with men in the main through their passions.  He,
therefore, suspected that Neva's frank declaration was
not without intent to incite.  But, to suspect woman's
motive rarely helps man; in his relations with her he
is dominated by a force more powerful than reason,
a force which compels him to acts of which his reason,
though conscious and watchful, is a helpless spectator.
Armstrong's feeling that Neva was not unwilling to
give herself the pleasure of seeing him jealous of
Raphael did not help him toward the self-control necessary
to disappoint her.  Silent before his rising storm,
he accompanied her to the studio.  Alone with her
there, he said abruptly:

"Do you think any human being could fall in love
with me?"

She examined him as if impartially balancing
merits and demerits.  "Why not?" she finally said.

"I've sometimes thought there was a hardness in
me that repels."

"Perhaps you're right," she admitted.  "You'll
probably never know until you yourself fall in love."

"What is your objection to me?"

"Mine?"  She seemed to reflect before answering.
"The principal one, I think, is your tyranny.
You crush out every individuality in your neighborhood.
You seem to want a monopoly of the light and air."

"Was that what used to make you so silent and
shut up in yourself?"

She nodded.  "I simply couldn't begin to grow.
You wouldn't have it."

"But now?" he said.

She smiled absently.  "It often amuses me to see
how it irritates you that you can't—crowd me.  You
do so firmly believe that a woman has no right to
individuality."

He was not really listening.  He was absorbed in
watching her slowly take off her long gloves; as her
white forearms, her small wrists, her hands, emerged
little by little, his blood burned with an exhilaration
like the sting of a sharp wind upon a healthy
skin——

"Neva, will you marry me?"

So far as he could see, she had not heard.  She
kept on at the gloves until they were off, were lying
in her lap.  She began to remove her hat pins; her
arms, bare to the elbows, were at their best in that
position.

"A year ago, two years ago," he went on, "I
thought we had never been married.  I know now that
we have never been unmarried."

"And when did you make that interesting discovery?"
inquired she, still apparently giving her hat her
attention.

"When I saw how I felt toward Raphael.  You
think I am jealous of him.  But it is not jealousy.  I
know you couldn't fall in love with a fellow that rigs
himself out like a peacock."

The delicate line of Neva's eyebrows lifted.  "Boris
dresses to suit himself," said she.  "I never think of
it—nor, I fancy, does he."

"Besides," continued Armstrong, "you could no
more fall in love with him than you could at any other
place step over the line between a nice woman and the
other kind."

"Really!"

"Yes—really!" he retorted, showing as much anger
as he dared.  "My feeling about Raphael is that
he has no right to hang about another man's wife as
he does.  And you feel the same way."

With graceful, sure fingers she was arranging her
hair where it had been pressed down by her hat.
"That is amusing," she said tranquilly.  "You must
either change your idea of what 'nice woman' means
or change your idea of me.  I haven't the slightest
sense of having been married to you."

"Impossible!" he maintained.

"I know why you say that—why men think that.
But I assure you, my friend, I have no more the
feeling that I am married than that I am still sick
because I had a severe illness once."

His mind had been much occupied by memories of
their married days; their dead child so long, so
completely forgotten by him and never thought of as
a tie between him and his wife, had suddenly
become a thing of vividness, the solemn and eternal
sealing of its mother to him.  Her calm repudiation of
him and his rights now seemed to him as unwomanly
as would have seemed any attempt on her part to claim
him, had he not begun to care for her.

"Don't say those things," he protested angrily.
"You don't mean them, and they sound horrible."

She looked at him satirically.  "You men!" she
mocked.  "You men, with your coarse, narrow ideas
of us women that encourage all that is least
self-respecting in us!  I do not attach the same importance
to the physical side of myself that you do.  I try
to flatter myself there is more to me than merely my
sex.  I admit, nature intended only that.  But we are
trying to improve on nature."

"I suppose you think you have made me ashamed
because I am still in a state of nature," he rejoined.
"But you haven't.  No matter what any man may
pretend, he will care for you in the natural way as long
as you look as you do."  And his glance swept her in
bold admiration.  "As I said a while ago, I'm not
jealous of Raphael.  I'm jealous of all men.
Sometimes I get to thinking about you—that you are
somewhere—with some man, several men—their heads full
of the ideas that steam in my head whenever I look at
you—and I walk the floor and grind my teeth in fury."

The color was in her cheeks, though her eyes were
mocking.  "Go on," she said.  "This is interesting."

"Yes—it must be interesting, and amusing, in view
of the way I used to act.  But that was your fault.
You hid yourself from me then.  You cheated me.
You let me make a fool of myself, and throw away the
best there was in my life."

"You forget your career," said she.  "You aren't
a human being.  You are a career."

"I suppose you—a woman—would prefer an obscurity,
a nobody, provided he were a sentimental,
Harry-hug-the-hearth."

"I think so," she said.  "A nobody with a heart
rather than the greatest somebody on earth without
one.  Heart is so much the most important thing in
the world.  You'll find that out some day, when you're
not so strong and self-reliant and successful."

"I have found it out," replied he.  "And that is
why I ask you to marry me."

"Ask me to become an incident in your career."

"No.  To become joint, equal partner in our career."

She shook her head.  "You couldn't, wouldn't have
a partner, male or female—not yet.  Besides it would
be impossible for me to interest myself in getting rich
or taking care of riches or distributing them among
a crowd of sycophants."

"I'm not getting rich," replied he.  "I'm making
a good salary, and spending it almost all.  But I'm
not making much, outside."

"I had heard otherwise.  They tell me your sort
of business is about the best 'graft'—isn't that the
word?—downtown, and that you are where you can get
as much as you care to carry away."

"Yes.  I *could*."

"But you don't?  I knew it!"

Her belief in his honesty made him uncomfortable.
"I didn't say I was different from the others—really
different," he said hesitatingly.  That very morning
he had been forced to listen to a long series of reports
on complaints of O.A.D. policy holders—how some
had been swindled by false promises of agents whom he
must shield; how others had been cheated on lapsed
or surrendered policies; how, in a score of sly ways,
the "gang" in control were stealing from their wards,
their trusting and helpless victims.  "I can't, and
don't purpose to, deny," he went on to her, "that I'm
part of the system of inducing some other fellow to
sow, and then reaping his harvest, or most of it.  I
don't put it in my own barn, but I do help at the
reaping.  Oh, everything's perfectly proper and
respectable—at least, on the surface.  But—well,
sometimes I get desperately sick of it all.  Just now, I'm
in that mood; it brought me here to-day.  There's a
row on down there, and it's plot and counterplot, move
and check, all very exciting, but I—hate it!  Nobody's
to blame.  It's simply a system that's grown up.  And
if one plays the game, why, he's got to conform to
the rules."

"*If* one plays the game."

"What's a man to do?  Go back to the farm and
become a slave to a railroad company or a mortgage?
We can't all be painters."

She glanced at him quickly with a sudden narrowing
of the eyelids that seemed to concentrate her gaze
like a burning glass.  "I hadn't thought of that," said
she.

"If you had to be either a sheep or a shearer,
which would you choose?"

"Is that how it is?"

"Pretty nearly," was his gloomy reply.

A long silence, he staring at the floor, she watching
him.  At last she said, "Haven't they—got—something
on you—something they can use against you?"

He startled.  "Where did you hear that?  What
did you hear?" he demanded, with an astonished look
at her.

"I was lunching to-day with some people who
know we used to be married, but they don't know we're
good friends.  They supposed I'd be glad to hear of
any misfortune to you.  And they said a mine was
going to blow up under you, and that you'd disappear
and never be heard of again."

"You can't tell me who told you?"

"No—unless it's absolutely necessary.  It has
something to do with an investigating committee.
You're to be called quite suddenly and something is
to come out—something you did that will look
bad—"  She came to a full stop.

His face cleared.  "Oh—I know about that.  I've
arranged for it."  His mind was free to consider her
manner.  "And you assumed I was guilty?"

"I didn't know," she replied.  "I was sure you
were no worse than the rest of them.  If you hadn't
come to-day, I'd have sent you warning."

His eyes lighted; he smiled triumphantly.  "I told
you!" he cried.  "You see, you still feel that we're
married, that our interests are the same."

She colored, but he could not be sure whether her
irritation was against herself or against him.  "You
are very confident of yourself—and of me," said she
ironically, and her eyes were laughing at him.  "And
this is the man," she mocked, "who less than three brief
years ago was so eager to be rid of me!"

"Yes," he admitted, with a brave and not unsuccessful
effort at brazening out what could not be denied
or explained away.  "But you were not the same
person then that you are now."

"And whose fault was that?" retorted she.  "You
married me when I was a mere child.  You could have
made of me what you pleased.  Instead, you——"

"I admit it all," he interrupted.  "I married
you—from a base motive, though I can plead that I
glamoured it over to myself.  Still, I owed it to myself
and to you to have done my level best with and for
you.  And I shirked and skulked."

She did not show the appreciation of this abjectness
which he had, perhaps unconsciously, expected.
Instead, she laughed satirically, but with entire good
humor.  "How clever you think yourself, Horace,"
said she, "and how stupid you think me.  That's a
very old trick, to try to make a crime into a virtue
by confessing it."

He hung his head, convicted.  "At least," he said
humbly, "I love you now.  If you will give me
another chance——"

"You had as good a chance as a man could ask,"
she reminded him, without the anger that would have
made him feel sure of her.  "How you used to
exasperate me!  You assumed I had neither intelligence
nor feeling.  You were so selfish, so self-centered.  I
don't see how you can hope to be trusted, even as a
friend.  You shake me off; you see me again; find I
have been somewhat improved by a stay in New York;
find I am not wholly unattractive to others.  Your
jealousy is roused.  No, please don't protest.  You
see, I understand you perfectly."

"I deserve it," he said.

"Do you think a woman would be showing even
the small good sense you concede women, if she were
to trust a man whose interest in her was based upon
jealousy of another man?"

"I'm not jealous of that damned, scented foreigner,
with his rings and his jeweled canes and his
hand-kissing.  I know it must make your honest American
flesh creep to have him touch his lips to the back
of your hand."

Neva blazed at him.  "How dare you!" she cried,
rising in her wrath.  "How dare *you* stand in my
house, in my presence, and insult thus the best friend
I ever had—the only friend!"

"Friend!" sneered Armstrong.  "I know all
about the sort of friendship that rake is capable of."

Neva was facing him with a look that blanched
his face.  "You will withdraw those insults to Boris,"
she said, in that low, even voice which is wrath's
deadliest form of expression, "and you will apologize to
me, or you will leave here, never to return."

"I beg your pardon," he responded instantly.  "I
am ashamed of having said those things.  I—I ... It
was jealousy.  I love you, and I can't bear to think
of the possibility of rivalry."

"You are swift with apologies.  In the future,
be less swift with impertinence and insult," she
answered, showing in manner, as well, that she was far
from mollified.  "As between Boris's friendship and
professions of love from a man who only a little while
ago neglected and abandoned and forgot me——"

"For God's sake, Neva," he pleaded.  "I've been
paying for that.  And now that you have shown me
how little hope there is for me, I shall continue to
suffer.  Be a little merciful!"

His agitation, where usually there was absolute
self-control, convinced and silenced her.  Presently he
said, "Will you be friends again—if I'll behave myself?"

She nodded with her humorous smile and flash of
the eyes.  "*If* you behave yourself," replied she.
"We were talking of—of Fosdick, was it not?"

"Fosdick!"  He made a gesture of disgust.
"That name!  I never hear it or think of it except
in connection with something repulsive.  It's always
like a whiff from a sewer."

"And you were about to marry his daughter!"
said she, with a glance of raillery.

He reddened; anything that was past for him was
so completely shut out and forgotten that, until she
reminded him, the sentimental episode with Amy was
as if it had not been.  "Where did you hear that?"
he asked, his guilty eyes lowering; for he felt she
must have suspected why he had thought of
marrying Amy.

"Everybody was talking about it when I came to
New York."

He was silent for a moment.  "Well," he finally
continued, "she and I are not even friends."  Into
his eyes came the steely, ruthless look.  "Within a
week I'm going to destroy Josiah Fosdick."  Then, in
comment on her swiftly changing expression, "I see
you don't like that."

"No," she replied bluntly.

"I'm going to do a public service," said he, absolutely
unconscious of the real reason why his threat
so jarred upon her.  "I ought to have a vote of
thanks."

She could not tell him that it was not his
condemnation of Josiah but his merciless casting out of
his friendship with Amy that revolted and angered and
saddened her.  If she did tell him, he, so self-absorbed
and so bent upon his own inflexible purposes that he
was quite blind to his own brutality, would merely
think her jealous.  Besides, she began to feel that her
real ground for anger against him ought to be Josiah's
fate, even if her femininity made the personal reason
the stronger.  She accordingly said, "You just got
through telling me it was a system, and not any one
man's fault."

Armstrong dismissed that with a shrug.  "I'm in
his way, he's in mine.  One or the other has to go
down.  I'm seeing to it that it's not I."  Then,
angered by her expression, and by the sense of accusing
himself in making what sounded like excuse, he cried,
"Say it!  You despise me!"

"It isn't a judgment," she answered; "it's a feeling."

"But you don't know what the man has done."

"One should not ask himself, What has the other
man done? but, What will my self-respect let me do?"

He ignored this.  "Let me tell you," he said, with
a return of the imperious manner that was second
nature to him nowadays.  "This man brought me to New
York because he found I knew how to manage the
agents so that they would lure in the most suckers—that's
the only word for it.  When I came, I believed
the O.A.D. was a big philanthropic institution—yes,
I did, really!  Of course I knew men made money out
of it.  I was making money out of it, myself.  But I
thought that, in the main, the object was to give
people a chance to provide against old age and death."

"Yes, I remember," she said.  "You used to talk
about what a grand thing it was."

He laughed.  "Well, we do give 'em *some* return
for their money—if they aren't careless and don't give
us a chance to cheat them out of part or all of it,
under the laws we've been fixing up against them.  But
we never give anything like what's their due.  I found
I was little more than a puller-in for a den of
respectable thieves—that life insurance is simply
another of the devices of these oily rascals here in New
York—like all their big stock companies and bonding
schemes and the rest of it—a trick to get hold of
money and use it for their own benefit.  Ours is the
vilest trick of all, though—it seems to me.  For we
play on people's heart strings, while the other swindles
appeal chiefly to cupidity."  He took a magazine from
the table.  "Look here!"  He pointed to an illustrated
advertisement.  "It's the 'ad' of one of our
rivals—same business as ours.  See the widow with the
tears streaming down her cheeks, and the three little
children clinging to her; see the heap of furniture on
the sidewalk—that means they've ejected her for not
paying the rent.  And the type says, 'This wouldn't
have happened if the father had been insured in the
Universal.'  Clever, isn't it?  Well, the men back of
that company and those back of ours and, worst of all,
Trafford's infamous gang, all get rich by stealing
from poor old people, from widows and orphans.
That is Fosdick's business—robbing dead bodies,
picking the pockets of calico mourning dresses."

It gave him relief and a sense of doing penance,
to utter these truths about himself and his associates
that had been rankling in him.  As he believed she knew
nothing of business and as he thought her sex did not
reason but only felt, he assumed she would accept his
own lenient view of his personal part in the infamy,
of his own deviations from the "ideal" standards.
Her expression disquieted him.  "The most respectable
people in the country are in it, in some branch
of it," he hastened to explain, without admitting to
himself that he was explaining.  "You must read the
list of our directors."

Her silence alarmed him.  He wished he had not
been so frank.  Recalling his words he was appalled by
their brutality; he could not deny to himself that they
stated the truth, and he wondered that he had not
seen that truth in its full repulsiveness until now.
"Of course, they don't look at it that way," he went
on.  "A man can get his conscience to applaud almost
anything he's making money out of—the more money,
the easier."

"Then they do these things quite openly?" said
Neva, in amazement.

"Openly?  Certainly not," replied Armstrong,
with a slight smile at her innocence.

"If they don't do them openly, they know just
what they're about."

"No," he said, imperious and impatient.  "You
don't understand human nature.  You don't appreciate
how men delude themselves."

His tone, its reminder of his intolerance of any
independence of thought in a woman, or in anyone
around him for that matter, brought the color to her
cheeks.  "A man who does wrong, but thinks he is
doing right, is not ashamed," she answered.  "If he
shuffles and conceals, you may be sure he does not
deceive himself, no matter how completely his pretense
deceives you."

There seemed to be no answer to this.  It made
ridiculous nonsense of the familiar excuse for reputable
rascality, the excuse he had heard a thousand times,
and had accepted without question.  But it also
somehow seemed a home thrust through his own armor.
With anger that was what he would have called
feminine in its unreasonableness, he demanded, "Then you
don't think I have the right to tear Fosdick down?"

"If you are going to tear them all down, and
yourself, too," was her answer, slowly spoken, but
firm.

He laughed ironically.  "That's practical!"

"Does a thing have to be dishonorable and
dishonest, to be practical?"

"From your standpoint, yes," he replied.  "At
this very moment Fosdick is chuckling over the scheme
he thinks will surely disgrace me forever!  And you
are urging me to let him disgrace me.  Is that what
you call friendship?  Is that your idea of 'heart'?"

She flushed, but rejoined undaunted, "You can
juggle with your conscience all you please, Horace—just
like the other men downtown.  But you know the
truth, in the bottom of your heart, just as they do.
And if you rise by the way you've planned, you know
that, when you've risen, you'll do just as he was
doing."

"Then," said he, "your test of me is whether I'll
let you beg off this old buzzard, Fosdick."

She made a gesture of denial and appeal.  "On the
contrary, I'd despise a man who did for a woman what
he wouldn't do for his own self-respect."  She was
pale, but all the will in her character was showing
itself in her face.  "What is Fosdick to me?  Now that
you've told me about him, I think it's frightful to send
men to jail for stealing bread, and leave such a
creature at large.  But—as to you—"  Her bosom was
rising and falling swiftly—"as to you, I'm not
indifferent.  You have stood for strength and courage, for
pride—for manliness.  I thought you hard and cold—but
brave—really brave—too brave to steal, at least
from the helpless, or to assassinate even an assassin.
Now, I see that you've changed.  Your ambition is
dragging you down, as ambition always does.  And
what an ambition!  To be the best, the most successful,
at cheating the helpless, at robbing the dead!"

As she spoke, his expression of anger faded.  When
she ended, with unsteady voice and fighting back the
tears, he did not attempt to reply.  He had made of
his face an impassive mask.  They were still silent, he
standing at the window, she sitting and gazing into
the fire, when Molly entered to announce Raphael.  He
threw his coat over his arm, took up his hat.  She
searched his face for some indication of his thoughts,
but could find none.  He simply said, "I'll think it over."





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.. _`TWO TELEPHONE TALKS`:

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   \XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   TWO TELEPHONE TALKS

.. vspace:: 2

As Armstrong, at Fosdick's house, was waiting in
a small reception room just off the front hall, he
heard the old man on the stairs, storming as he
descended.  "It's a conspiracy," he was shouting.  "You
all want to kill me.  You've heard the doctor say I'll
die if I don't stop driving, and walk.  Yet, there's that
damned carriage always at the door.  I can't step out
that it isn't waiting for me, and you know I can't
resist if I see it.  It's murder, that's what it is."

"Shall I send the carriage away, sir?" Armstrong
heard the butler say.

"No!" cried Fosdick, rapping the floor with his
cane.  "No!  You know I won't send it away.  I've
got to get some air, and it seems to me I can't walk."

By this time he was at the door of the reception
room.  "Good morning, Armstrong," he said with
surly politeness.  "I'm sick to-day.  I suppose you
heard me talking to this butler here.  I tell you, things
to drive in are the ruin of the prosperous classes.  Sell
that damn motor of yours.  Never take a cab, if you
can help it.  They're killing me with that carriage
of mine.  Yes—and there's that infernal cook—chef,
as they call him.  He's trying to earn his salary, and
he's killing me doing it.  I eat the poison stuff—I can't
get anything else.  No wonder I have indigestion and
gout.  No wonder my head feels as if it was on fire
every morning.  And my temper—I used to have a
good disposition.  I'm getting to be a devil.  It's a
conspiracy to murder me."  There Fosdick noted
Armstrong's expression.  He dropped his private woes
abruptly and said, with his wonted suavity, "But
what can I do for you to-day?"

"I came to ask you to do an act of justice,"
replied the Westerner, looking even huger and more
powerful than usual, in contrast with the other, whom
age and self-indulgence were rapidly shriveling.

Armstrong's calm was aggressive, would better
have become a dictator than a suitor.  It was highly
offensive to Fosdick, who was rapidly reaching the
state of mind in which obsequiousness alone is tolerable
and manliness seems insolence.  But he reined in his
temper and said, smoothly enough, "You can always
count on me to do justice."

"I want you to give me a letter, explaining that
those three hundred and fifty thousand dollars were
drawn by me and paid over, at your order."

Fosdick stared blankly at him.  "What three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"

Armstrong's big hands clenched into fists and he
set his teeth together sharply.  Each man looked the
other full in the eyes.  Armstrong said, "Will you
give me the letter?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," replied
Fosdick steadily.  "And don't explain.  I can't talk
business to-day."

"I've come to you, Mr. Fosdick," continued Armstrong,
"not on my own account, but on yours.  I
ask you to give me the letter, because, if you do not,
the consequences will be unfortunate—not for me, but
for you."

"My dear Armstrong," said Fosdick, with wheedling
familiarity of elder to younger, "I don't know
what you're talking about, and I don't want to know.
Look at me, and spare me.  Come for a drive.  I'll
set you down anywhere you say.  Don't be foolish,
young man.  Don't use language to me that suggests
threats."

"That is your final answer?  Is it quite useless to
discuss the matter with you?"

"I'm too sick to wrangle with business to-day."

"Then you refuse to give me the letter?"

"If my doctor knew I had let anybody mention
business to me, he'd desert me."

Without a further word Armstrong turned, left
the room and the house.  Fosdick did not follow
immediately.  Instead, he seated himself to puzzle at this
development.  "Hugo stirred him up about that, and
he's simply trying to get ready for the committee,"
he decided.  "If he knew, or even suspected, he'd act
very differently.  He's having his heart broken none
too soon.  I've never seen a worse case of swollen head.
I pushed him up too fast.  I'm really to blame; I'm
always doing hasty, generous things, and getting
myself into trouble, and those I meant to help.  Poor
fool.  I'm sorry for him.  I suppose once I get him
down in his place, I'll be soft enough to relent and
give him something.  He's got talent.  I can use him,
once I have him broken to the bit."

In came Amy, the color high in her cheeks from
her morning walk.  She kissed him on both cheeks.
"Well, well, what do *you* want?" said he.

"How do you know I want anything?" she cried.

"In the first place, because nobody ever comes near
me except to get something."

"Just as you never go near anybody except to
take something," she retorted, with a pull at his
mustache.

Fosdick was amused.  "In the second place," he
went on, "because you are affectionate—which not
only means that you want something, but also that the
something is a thing you feel I won't give.  And you're
no doubt right."

"What are you in such a good humor about?" said
she.  "You were cross as a bear in a swarm of bees,
at breakfast."

"I'm not in a good humor," he protested.  "I'm
depressed.  I'm looking forward to doing a very
unpleasant duty to-morrow."

His daughter laughed at him.  "You may be trying
to persuade yourself it's unpleasant.  But the
truth is, you're delighted.  Papa, I've been thinking
about the entrance."

"Keep on thinking, but don't speak about it,"
retorted he, frowning.

"Really—it's an eyesore—so small, so out of
proportion, so cheap——"

"Cheap!" exclaimed Fosdick.  "Why, those
bronze doors alone cost seventeen thousand dollars."

"Is *that* all!" scoffed his daughter.  "Trafford's
cost forty thousand."

"But I'm not a thief like Trafford.  And let me
tell you, my child, seventeen thousand dollars at four
per cent would produce each year a larger sum than
the income of the average American family."

"But I've often heard you say the common people
have entirely too much money, more than they know
how to spend.  Now—about the entrance.  Alois and I——"

"When you marry Fred Roebuck, I'll let you
build yourself any kind of town house you like,"
interrupted her father.

She perched on the arm of his chair.  "Now,
really, father, you know you wouldn't let me marry a
man it makes me shudder to shake hands with?"

"Nonsense—a mere notion.  You try to feel that
way because you know you ought to marry him."

"Never—never—*never*!" cried Amy, kissing him
at each "never."  "Besides, he's engaged to Sylvia
Barrow.  He got tired of waiting for me."

Fosdick pushed away from her.  "I'm bitterly
disappointed in you," he said, scowling at her.  "I've
been assuming that you would come to your senses.
What would become of you, if I had as little regard
for your wishes as you have for mine?"

"Fred Roebuck was a nobody," she pleaded.
"You despised him yourself.  Now, papa dear, I'm
thinking of marrying a somebody, a man who really
amounts to something in himself."

"Who?" demanded Fosdick, bristling for battle.

"Alois Siersdorf."

Fosdick sprang up, caught her roughly by the
arm.  "What!" he shouted.  "*What!*"

"A man you like and admire," Amy went on, getting
her tears ready.  "He *looks* distinguished, and
he *is* distinguished, and is certain to be more so.
Besides, what's the use of being rich, if one can't please
herself when it comes to taking a husband?  I want
somebody I won't be ashamed of, somebody I can live
near without shuddering."  And the tears descended
in floods.

Her father turned his rage against Alois.  "The
impudence of a fellow like that aspiring to a girl in
your position."

"But he hasn't been impudent.  He's been very
humble and backward."

Josiah was busy with his own rage.  "Why, he's
got *nothing*!"

"Nothing but brains."

"Brains!" Fosdick snorted contemptuously.
"Why, they're a drug on the market.  I can buy
brains by the hundred.  Men with brains are falling
over each other downtown, trying to sell out for a
song."

"Not brains like his," she protested.

"Better—a hundred times better.  Why, his brain
belongs to me.  I've bought it.  I have it whenever and
for whatever I want."

"I—I love him, father," she sobbed, hiding her
face in his shoulder.  "I've tried my best not to.  But
I can't live without him.  I—I—*love* him!"

Fosdick was profoundly moved.  There were tears
in his eyes, and he gently stroked her hair.  She
reached out for his hand, took it, kissed it, and put
it under her cheek—she hated to have anyone touch
her hair, which was most troublesome to arrange to
her liking.  "Listen to me, child," said the old man.
"You remember when Armstrong was trying to
impose on your tender heart?  You remember what I
said?  Was I not right?  Aren't you glad you took
my advice?"

"But I never loved him—really," said Amy.

"And you don't love Alois.  You couldn't love one
of our dependents.  You have too much pride for that.
But, again I want to warn you.  There's a
reason—the best of reasons—why you must not be even friendly
with—this young Siersdorf.  I can't explain to you.
He's an adventurer like Armstrong.  Wait a few
days—a very few days, Amy.  He has been careful to let
you see only the one side of him.  There's another side.
When you see that, you'll be ashamed you ever thought
of him, even in jest.  You'll see why I want you to be
safely established as the wife of some substantial man."

"Tell me what it is, father."

"I tell nothing," replied Fosdick.  "Wait, and
you will see."

"Is it something to his discredit?  If so, I can
tell you right now it isn't true."

"Wait—that's all.  Wait."

"But, father—after all he's done for us, isn't it
only fair to warn him?"

"Warn him of what?"

"Of what you say is going to happen."

"If you want to do yourself and me the greatest
possible damage, you'll hint to him what I've said.  Do
you understand?"

"It isn't fair not to warn him," she insisted.  And
she released herself from his arms and faced him
defiantly.  "I tell you, I love him, father!"

"Was ever parent so cursed in his children!" cried
Fosdick.  "I'm in the house of my enemies.  I tell
you, Amy, you are to keep your mouth *shut*!"  He
struck the floor sharply with his cane.  "I will be
obeyed, do you hear?"

"And I tell you, father," retorted Amy, "that I'm
going to warn him.  He's straight and honest, and
he loves me and he has done things for me, for us,
that make us his debtor."

Fosdick threw up his arms in angry impotence.
"Do your damnedest!" he cried.  "After all, what can
you tell him?  You can only throw him into a fever
and put him in a worse plight.  But I warn you that,
if you disobey me, I'll make you pay for it.  I'll cut
off your allowance.  I'll teach you what it means to
love and respect a father."  And he raged out of the
house.

Even as her father went, Amy felt in the foundation
of her defiance the first tremors of impending
collapse.  She rushed upstairs to the telephone; she would
not let this impulse to do the generous, no, simply the
decent, thing ooze away as her impulses of that sort
usually did, if she had or took time to calculate the
personal inconvenience from executing them.  After a
rather common and most pleasing human habit, she
regarded herself as generous, and was so regarded,
because she had generous impulses; to execute them was,
therefore, more or less superfluous.  In this particular
instance, however, she felt that impulse was not
enough; there must be action.

"Is it you?" came in Alois's voice, just in time
to stimulate her flagging energy.  "I was about to
call *you* up."

"I must see you at once," said Amy, with feverish
eagerness.  "I've got something very, very important
to say to you."  She hesitated, decided that she
must commit herself beyond possibility of
evasion—"something about an attempt to do you a great
injury."

"Oh!"  His tone was curiously constrained; it
seemed to her that there was terror, guilt, in it.
"Shall I come up?  I've just found out I must sail
for Europe at noon."

"At noon!  *To-day?*"

"In about two hours.  And I must say good-by
to you.  It's very sudden.  I haven't even told my
sister yet, though she's in the next room, here."

"I'll come down—that is—I'll try to."  Amy felt
weak, sick, sinking, suffocating in a whirl of doubts
and fears.  "You are going on business?"

"Yes," came the answer in a voice that rang false.
"On business.  I'll be away only a few weeks, I think."

"If I shouldn't be able to come—good-by," said Amy.

"But I hope—  Let me come—  Wouldn't that be better?"

Not a word about what she had said, when it ought
to have put him into a quiver of anxiety; certainly,
his going abroad looked like knowledge, guilt, flight.
"No—no—you mustn't come," she commanded.  "I'll
do my best to get to you."  And she added, "We
might simply miss each other, if you didn't wait there."

"Please—Amy!"

She shivered.  How far she had gone with him!
And her father was right!  "Good-by," she faltered,
hastily ringing off.

.. vspace:: 2

If she could have seen him, her worst suspicions
would have been confirmed; for his hair was mussed
and damp with sweat, his skin looked as if he were
in a garish light.  He tried to compose himself, went
in where his sister was at work—absorbed in making
the drawings of a new kind of chimney-piece she had
been thinking out.  "Cis," he said, in an uncertain
voice, "I'm off for Europe at noon."

She wheeled on him.  "Fosdick?"

He nodded.  "His secretary, Waller, was just here."

A few seconds during which he could feel the
energy of her swift thoughts.  Then, "Wait!" she
commanded, and darted into her private office, closing
the door.

She was gone twenty minutes.  "The person I was
calling up hadn't got in," she explained, when she
returned.  "I had to wait for him.  You are to stay
here—you are not to go in any circumstances."

"I must go," was his answer in a dreary tone.  "I
promised Fosdick, and I daren't offend him.
Besides—well, it's prudent."

"'Lois," said Narcisse earnestly, "I give you my
word of honor, it would be the very worst step you
could take, to obey Fosdick and go.  I promise you
that, if you stay, all will be well.  If you go, you would
better throw yourself into the sea, midway, for you
will ruin your reputation—ours."

He dropped into a chair.  "My instinct is against
going," he confessed.  "I've done nothing.  I haven't
got a cent that doesn't belong to me honestly.  But,
Cis, I simply mustn't offend Fosdick."

"Because of Amy?"

"Yes."

"If you go, you'll have no more chance for her
than—than a convict in a penitentiary."

"You know something you are not telling me?"

"I do.  Something I can't tell you."

He supported his aching head with his hands and
stared long at the floor.  "I'll not go!" he exclaimed,
springing to his feet suddenly.  "I've done nothing
wrong.  I'll not run away."

Narcisse had been watching him as if she were
seeing him struggling for his life in deep water before
her very eyes.  At his words, at his expression, like
his own self, the brother she had brought up and
guarded and loved with the love that is deeper than
any love which passion ever kindled—at this proclamation
of the victory of his better self, she burst into
tears.  "'Lois!  'Lois!" she sobbed.  "Now I can be
happy again.  If you had gone it would have killed
me."  And the tone in which she said it made him
realize that she was speaking the literal truth.

The natural color was coming back to his face.  He
patted her on the shoulder.  "I'm not a weak, damn
fool clear through, Cissy," cried he, "though, I must
say, I've got a big, broad streak of it.  You are sure
of your ground?"

"Absolutely," she assured him, radiant now, and
so beautiful that even he noted and admired.  But
then, he was in the mood to appreciate her.  So long
as the way was smooth, he could neglect her and put
aside her love, as we all have the habit of neglecting
and taking for granted, in fair weather, the things
that are securely ours.  But, let the storms come, and
how quickly we show that we knew all the time, in our
hearts, whom we could count on, could draw upon for
strength and courage—the few, real friends—perhaps,
only one—and one is quite enough, is legion, if it be
the right one.

"You're not trusting to somebody else?" said he.

"Of course I am.  But he's a real somebody, one
I'd stake my life on.  'Lois, I know."

"That settles it," said he.  "But even if you
weren't sure, even if I were certain the worst would
overtake me, I'd not budge out of this town.  As for
Amy, if she's what I think her, she'll stand the test.
If not—  After all, I don't need anybody but you,
Cissy."

And he embraced and kissed her, and went back to
his own part of the offices, head high and step firm.
He stirred round there uneasily for a while, then shut
himself in with the telephone and called up Fosdick's
house.  "I wish to speak to Miss Fosdick," he said.
Presently he heard Amy's voice.  "Well, Hugo?"

"It isn't your brother," said Alois.  "It's I."

"Oh!"  Her tone was very different—and he did
not like it, though he could not have said why.  "The
servant," she explained, "said she thought it was
Hugo."

"I've changed my mind about going abroad.  You
said you wanted to see me about some matter.  I
think—in fact, I'm sure—I know what you mean.  Don't
trouble; I'll come out all right.  By the way, please
tell your father I'm not going, will you?"

"Father!" she exclaimed.  "Did *he* want you to go?"

"I'd rather not talk about that.  It's a matter
of business.  Please don't give him the impression I
told you anything.  Really, I haven't—have I?"

"Did father want you to go abroad?" insisted Amy.

"I can't talk about it over the telephone.  I'll tell
you when I see you—all about it—if you think you'd
be interested."

"Please answer my one question," she pleaded.
"Then I'll not bother you any more."

"Then—yes."  He waited for her next remark,
but it did not come.  "Are you still there?"

"Yes," came her answer, faint and strange.

"What is it?" he cried.  "What's the matter?"

"Nothing.  Good-by—and—I'm *so* glad you're
not going—oh, I can't express how glad—*Alois*!"

She did not give him the chance to reply.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BORIS DISCLOSES HIMSELF`:

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   \XX


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   BORIS DISCLOSES HIMSELF

.. vspace:: 2

Hugo, sitting to Boris for the portrait afterward
locally famous as "The Young Ass," fell into the habit
of expatiating upon Armstrong.  His mind was full
of the big Westerner, the author of the most abject
humiliation of his life, the only one he could not explain
away, to his own satisfaction, as wholly some one else's
fault.  Boris humored him, by discreetly sympathetic
response even encouraged him to talk freely; nor was
Boris's sole reason the undeniable fact that when Hugo
was babbling about Armstrong, his real personality
disported itself unrestrained in the features the
painter was striving to portray.  The wisest parent
never takes a just measure of his child; and, while the
paternal passion is tardier in beginning than the
maternal, it is full as deluding once it lays hold.  Fosdick
thought he regarded Hugo as a fool; also he had fresh
in mind proof that Hugo was highly dangerous to
any delicate enterprise.  Yet he confided in him that
they would both be soon signally revenged upon the
impudent upstart.  He did not tell how or when; but
Hugo guessed that it would be at the coming "investigation."

A very few days after his father had told him, he
told Boris.  What possible danger could there be in
telling a painter who hadn't the slightest interest in
business matters, and who hadn't the intellect to
understand them?  For Hugo had for the intellect of
the painter the measureless contempt of the
contemptible.  Also, Boris patterned his dress after the
Continental fashions for which Hugo, severely and
slavishly English in dress, had the Englishman's
derisive disdain.  Boris listened to Hugo's confidence with
no sign, of interest or understanding, and Hugo
babbled on.  Soon, Boris knew more than did Hugo of
the impending catastrophe to the one man in the whole
world whom he did the honor of hating.

Hate is an unusual emotion in a man so tolerant,
so cynical, at once superior and conscious of it.  But,
watching Armstrong with Neva, watching Neva when
Armstrong was about, Raphael had come to feel rather
than to see that there was some tie between them.  He
had no difficulty in imagining the nature of this tie.
A man and a woman who have lived together may,
often do, remain entire strangers; but however
constrained and shy and unreal their intimacy may have
been, still that intimacy has become an integral part
of their secret selves.  It is the instinctive realization
of this, rather than physical jealousy, that haunts and
harrows the man who knows his wife or mistress did
not come to him virgin, and that does not leave him
until the former husband or lover is dead.  Boris did
not for an instant believe Neva could by any
possibility fall in love with Armstrong—what could she,
the artistic and refined, have in common with Armstrong,
crude, coarse, unappreciative of all that meant
life to her?  A man could care without mental or heart
sympathy, and a certain kind of woman; but not a
Neva, whose delicacy was so sensitive that he, with all
his expert delicacy of touch, all his trained softness
of reassuring approach, was still far from her.  No,
Neva could never love Armstrong.  But why did she
not detest him?  Why did she tolerate a presence that
must remind her of repulsive hours, of moments of
horror too intense even to quiver?  "It is the feminine,
the feline in her," he reflected.  "She is avenging
herself in the pleasure of watching his torment."

That was logical, was consoling.  However, Boris
was wishing she would get her fill of vengeance and send
the intruder about his stupid, vulgar business.  Hugo's
news thrilled him.  "I hope the hulk will have to fly
the country," he said to himself.  He did not hope, as
did Hugo, that Armstrong would have to go to the
penitentiary.  Such was his passion for liberty, for
the free air and sunshine, that he could not think with
pleasure of even an enemy's being behind bolts and
bars and the dank dusk of high, thick prison walls.
As several weeks passed without Armstrong's calling—he
always felt it when Armstrong had been there—he
became as cheerful, as gay, and confident as of old.

But he soon began to note that Neva was not up
to the mark.  "What is it?" he at once asked
himself in alarm whose deep, hidden causes he did not
suspect, so slow are men of his kind to accuse
themselves of harboring so vanity-depressing a passion as
jealousy.  "Has he got wind of his danger?  Has he
been trying to work on her sympathies?"  He
proceeded to find out.

"What's wrong, my dear?" asked he, in his gentle,
caressing, master-to-pupil way.  "You aren't as
interested as you were.  This sunshine doesn't reflect
from your face and your voice as it should."

"I've been worried about a friend of mine,"
confessed she.  "There's no real cause for worry, but I
can't shake off a foreboding."

"Tell me," urged he.  "It'll do you good."

"It's nothing I can talk about.  Really, I'm not
so upset as you seem to imagine."

But a few moments later he heard a deep sigh.  He
glanced at her; she was staring into vacancy, her face
sad, her eyes tragic.  In one of these irresistible gusts
of passion, he flung down his brushes, strode up to her.
"What has that scoundrel been saying to you?" he
demanded.

She startled, rose, faced him in amazement.

"Boris!" she cried breathlessly.

The body that is molded upon a spirit such as
his—or hers—becomes as mobile to its changes as cloud
to sun and wind.  Boris's good looks always had a
suggestion of the superhuman, as if the breath of life
in him were a fiercer, more enduring flame than in
ordinary mortals.  That superhuman look it was that
had made Neva, the sensitive, the appreciative, unable
ever quite to shake off all the awe of him she had
originally felt.  The man before her now had never looked
so superhuman; but it was the superhumanness of the
fiend.  She shrank in fascinated terror.  His sensuous
features were sensuality personified; his rings, his
jeweled watch guard, his odor of powerful perfume,
all fitted in with his expression, where theretofore they
had seemed incongruous.  "Boris!" she repeated.
"Is that *you*?"

Her face brought him immediately back to himself,
or rather to his normal combination of cynical
good-humored actuality and cynical good-humored pose.
The vision had vanished from her eyes, so utterly, so
swiftly, that she might have thought she had been
dreaming, had it not remained indelibly upon her
mind—especially his eyes, like hunger, like thirst, like
passion insatiable, like menace of mortal peril.  It is
one thing to suspect what is behind a mask; it is quite
another matter to see, with the mask dropped and the
naked soul revealed.  As she, too, recovered herself, her
terror faded; but the fascination remained, and a
certain delight and pride in herself that she was the
conjurer of such a passion as that.  For women never
understand that they are no more the authors of the
passions they evoke than the spark is the author of
the force in the dynamite it explodes or of the ensuing
destruction; if the dynamite is there, any spark,
rightly placed, will do the work.

"Yes, it's I," replied Raphael, rather confusedly.
He was as much disconcerted by what he had himself
seen of himself, as by having shown it to her.  A storm
that involves one's whole being stirs up from the
bottom and lifts to the surface many a strange secret of
weakness and of wickedness, none stranger than the
secrets of one's real feelings and beliefs, so different
from one's professions to others and to himself.
Raphael had seen two of these secrets—first, that he was
insanely jealous of Armstrong; second, that he was in
love with Neva.  Not the jealousy and the love that
yet leave a man master of himself, but the jealousy
and the love that enslave.  In the silence that followed
this scene of so few words and so strong emotions,
while Neva was hanging fascinated over the discovery
of his passion for her, he was gazing furtively at her,
the terror that had been hers now his.

He had been fancying he was leading her along the
flower-walled path he had trod so often with some
passing embodiment of his passing fancy, was luring
her to the bower where he had so often taught what
he called and thought "the great lesson."  Instead,
he was himself being whirled through space—whither?
"I love her!" he said to himself, tears in his eyes and
tears and fears in his heart.  "This is not like the
others—not at all—not at all.  I love her, and I am
afraid."  And then there came to him a memory—a
vision—a girl whom he had taught "the great lesson"
years before; she had disappeared when he grew
tired—or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, when
he had exhausted for the time the capacity of his
nerves; for how can a man grow tired of what he never
had?—and the rake kills the bird for the one feather
in its crest.  At any rate, he sent her away; he was
seeing now the look in her eyes, as she went without
a murmur or a sigh.  And he was understanding at
last what that look meant.  In the anguish of an
emotion like remorse, yet too selfish, perhaps, too
self-pitying for remorse, he muttered, "Forgive me.  I
didn't know what I was doing."

The vision faded back to the oblivion from which it
had so curiously emerged.  He glanced at Neva again,
with critical eyes, like a surgeon diagnosing stolidly his
own desperate wound.  She was, or seemed to be, busy
at her easel.  He could study her, without interruption.
He made slow, lingering inventory of her physical
charms—beauties of hair and skin and contour,
beauties of bosom's swell and curve of arm and slant
of hip and leg.  No, it was not in any of these, this
supreme charm of her for him.  Where then?

For the first time he saw it.  He had been assuming
he was regarding her as he had regarded every
other woman in the long chain his memory was weaving
from his experiences and was coiling away to beguile
his days of the almond tree and the bated sound of
the grinding.  And he had esteemed these women at
their own valuation.  It was the fashion for women to
profess to esteem themselves, and to expect to be
esteemed, for reasons other than their physical charms.
But Boris, searcher into realities, held that only those
women who by achievement earn independence as a man
earns it, have title to count as personalities, to be taken
seriously in their professions.  He saw that the women
he knew made only the feeblest pretense to real
personal value other than physical; they based themselves
upon their bodies alone.  So, women had been to him
what they were to themselves—mere animate flesh.

He attached no more importance—beyond polite
fiction—than did they themselves to what they thought
and felt; it was what men thought of their persons,
what feelings their persons roused in men—that is, in
him.  And he meted out to them the fate they expected,
respected him the more for giving them; when they
ceased to serve their sole purpose of ornament or
plaything he flung them away, with more ceremony,
perhaps, but with no less indifference than the emptied
bottles of the scent he imported in quantity and
drenched himself with.

But he saw the truth about Neva now—saw why,
after the few first weeks of their acquaintance, he had
not even been made impatient by her bad days—the
days when her skin clouded, her eyes dimmed, her hair
lost its luster, and the color, leaving her lips, seemed
to take with it the dazzling charm of her blue-white
teeth.  Why?  Because her appeal to his senses was
not so strong as her appeal to—  He could not tell
what it was in him this inner self of hers appealed
to.  Heart?  Hardly; that meant her physical beauty.
Intellect?  Certainly not that; intellect rather wearied
him than otherwise, and the sincerest permanent longing
of his life was to cease from thinking, to feel, only
to feel—birds, flowers, perfumed airs, the thrill of
winds among grasses and leaves, sunshine, the play of
light upon women's hair, the ecstasy of touch drifting
over their smooth, magnetic bodies.  No, it was neither
her intellect nor her heart, any more than it was her
loveliness.  Or, rather, it was all three, and that
something more which makes a man happy he knows not
why and cares not to know why.

"I would leave anyone else to come to her," he said
to himself.  "And if anyone else lured me away from
her, it would be only for the moment; I would know I
should have to return to her, as a dog to its
master."  He repeated bitterly, mockingly, "As a dog to its
master.  That's what it means to be artist—more
woman than man, and more feminine than any woman
ever was."

He stood behind her, looking at her work.  "You'd
better stop for to-day," he said presently.  "You're
only spoiling what you did yesterday."

"So I am," said she.

She put down palette and brushes with a sigh and
a shrug.  When she turned, he stood his ground and
looked into her eyes.  "I've been letting outside things
come between me and my work," she went on, pretending
to ignore his gaze.

"You guessed my secret a few minutes ago?" he asked.

She nodded, and it half amused, half hurt him to
note that she was physically on guard, lest he should
seize her unawares.

His smile broadened.  "You needn't be alarmed,"
said he, clasping his hands behind his back.  "I've no
intention of doing it."

She was smiling now, also.  "Well," she said.
"What next?"

"Why are you afraid?"

"I am not afraid."  She clasped her hands behind
her, like his, looked at him with laughing, level eyes;
for he and she were of the same height.  "Not a bit."

"Why were you afraid?" he corrected.  "You
never were before."

She seemed to reflect.  "No, I never was," she
admitted.  Her gaze dropped and her color came.

"Neva," he said gently, "do you love me?"

She lifted her eyes, studied him with the characteristic
half closing of the lids that made her gaze
so intense and so alluring.  He could not decide
whether that gaze was coquetry, as he hoped, or simply
sincere inquiry, as he feared.  "I do not know," she
said.  "I admire and respect you above all men."

He laughed, carefully concealing how her words
had stung him.  "Admire!  Respect!"  He made a
mocking little bow.  "I thank you, madam.  But—in
old age—after death—is soon enough for that cold
grandeur."

"I do not know," she repeated.  "I had never
thought about it until a while ago—when you—when
your expression—"  She dropped her gaze again.  "I
can't explain."

Coquetry or shyness?  He could not tell.  "Neva,
do you love anyone else?"

"I think—not," replied she, very low.

His eyes were like a tiger peering through a
flower-freighted bush.  "You love Armstrong," he urged,
softly as the purr before the spring.

She was gazing steadily at him now.  "We were
talking of you and me," rejoined she, her voice clear
and positive.  "If I loved you, it would not be
because I did not love some other man.  If I did not
love you it would not be because I did love some
other."

There might be evasion in that reply, but there
could be no lack of sincerity.  "I beg your pardon,"
he apologized.  "I forgot.  The idea that there could
be such a woman as you is very new to me.  A few
minutes ago, I made a discovery as startling as when
I first saw you—there at the Morrises."

"How much I owe you!" she exclaimed, and her
whole face lighted up.

But his shadowed; for he remembered that of all
the emotions gratitude is least akin to love.  "I made
a startling discovery," he went on.  "I discovered
you—a you I had never suspected.  And I discovered a
me I had never dreamed of.  Neva, I love you.  I
have never loved before."

She grew very pale, and he thought she was trembling.
But when, with her returning color, her eyes
lifted to his, they were mocking.  "Why, your tone
was even better than I should have anticipated.
You—love?" scoffed she.  "Do you think I could study
you this long and not find out at least that about you?"

"I love you," he insisted, earnestly enough, though
his eyes were echoing her mockery.

"You could not love," affirmed she.  "You have
given yourself out little by little—here and there.
You have really nothing left to give."

A man of less vision, of slower mind would have
been able to protest.  But Boris instantly saw what
she meant, felt the truth in her verdict.  "Nothing left
to give?" he repeated.  "Do you think so?"

"I know it," replied she.

There are some words that sound like the tolling
of the bells of fate; those words of hers sounded thus
to him.  "Nothing left to give," he repeated.  Had
he indeed wasted his whole self upon trifles?  Had
he lit his lamps so long before the feast that now,
with the bride come, they were quite burned out?  He
looked at her and, like the vague yet vivid visions
music shows us and snatches away before we have seen
more than just that they were there, he caught a
haunting glimpse of the beauty supernal which he
loved and longed for, but with his tired, blunted senses
could not hope to realize or attain....  The blasphemer's
fate!—to kiss the dust before the god he
had reviled....  He burst out laughing, his hearty,
sensuous, infectious laughter.  "I'm getting senile,"
said he.  With a flash of angrily reluctant awe, "Or
rather, you have bewitched me."  He got ready to
depart.  "So, my lady of joy and pain, you do not
love me—yet?" he inquired jestingly.

She shook her head with a smile which the gleam
of her eyes from their narrow lids and the sweeping
lashes made coquettish.  "Not yet," replied she, in
his own tone.

"Well, don't try.  Love doesn't come for must.
To-morrow?  Yes.  A new day, a new deal."

They shook hands warmly, looked at each other
with laughing eyes, no shadow of seriousness either in
him or in her.  "You are the first woman I ever loved,"
said he.  "And you shall be the last.  I do not like
this love, now that I am acquainted with it."  The
sunlight pouring upon his head made him beautiful
like a Bacchus, with color and life glittering in his
crisp, reddish hair and virile, close-cropped beard.  "I
do not feel safe when my soul's center of gravity is
in another person."  He kissed her hand.  "Till to-morrow."

She was smiling, coloring, trying to hide the smile;
but he could not tell whether it was because she was
more moved than she cared to have him see, or merely
because his curious but highly effective form of
adoration pleased her vanity and she did not wish him to
see it.  "To-morrow," echoed she.

He bowed himself out, still smiling, as if once
beyond the door he might burst into laughter at himself
or at her—or might wearily drop his merry mask.
Her last look that he saw was covertly inquiring,
doubtful—as if she might be wondering, Is he in
earnest, does he really care, or was he only imagining
love and exaggerating the fancy to amuse himself and me?

Outside the door, he did drop his mask of comedy
to reveal a face not without the tragic touch in its
somberness.  "Does she care?" he muttered.  And he
answered himself, "After all my experience! ...
Experience!  It simply puts hope on its mettle.  Do I
not know that if she loved she would not hesitate?
And yet—  Hope!  You Jack-o'-lantern, luring man
deeper and deeper into the slough of despond.  I know
you for the trickster you are, Hope.  But, lead on!"

And he went his way, humming the "March of the
Toreadors" and swinging his costly, showy,
tortoise-shell cane gayly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A SENSATIONAL DAY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A SENSATIONAL DAY

.. vspace:: 2

When Fosdick, summoned by telephone, entered
the august presence of the august committee of the
august legislature of the august "people of the State
of New York, by the grace of God free and independent,"
there were, save the reporters, a scant dozen
spectators.  The purpose of the committee had been
dwindled to "a technical inquiry with a view further
to improve the excellent laws under which the purified
and at last really honest managements of insurance
companies and banks had brought them to such a high
state of honest strength."  So, the announcement in
the morning papers that the committee was to begin
its labors for the public good attracted attention only
among those citizens who keep themselves informed of
loafing places that are comfortable in the cold weather.
Fosdick bowed with dignified deference to the
committee; the committee bowed to Fosdick—respectfully
but nervously.  There were five in the row seated
behind the long oak table on the rostrum under the
colossal figure of Justice.  Furthest to the left sat
Williams, in the Legislature by grace of the liquor
interests; next him, Tomlinson, representing certain
up-the-country traction and power interests; to the right
of the chairman were Perry and Nottingham, the
creatures of two railway systems.  The
chairman—Kenworthy, of Buffalo—had been in the Assembly
nearly twenty years, for the insurance interests.  He
was a serious, square-bearded, pop-eyed little old man,
most neat and respectable, and without a suspicion
that he was not the most honorable person in the world,
doing his full duty when he did precisely what the
great men bade.  Since the great capitalists were the
makers and maintainers of prosperity, whatever they
wanted must be for the good of all.  The fact that
he was on the private pay rolls of five companies and
got occasional liberal "retainers" from seven others,
was simply the clinching proof of the fitness of the
great men to direct—they knew how properly to
reward their helpers in taking care of the people.  There
are good men who are more dangerous than the slyest
of the bad.  Kenworthy was one of them.

The committee did not know what it was assembled
for.  It is not the habit of the men who "run things"
to explain their orders to understrappers.  Smelling
committees are of four kinds: There is the committee
the boss sets at doing nothing industriously because
the people are clamoring that something be done.
There is the committee the boss sends to "jack up"
some interest or interests that have failed to "cash
down" properly.  There is the committee that is sent
into doubtful districts, just before election, to pretend
to expose the other side—and sometimes, if there has
been a quarrel between the bosses, this kind of
committee acts almost as if it were sincere.  Finally, there
is the committee the boss sends out to destroy the rivals
of his employers in some department of finance or
commerce.  This particular smelling committee suspected
it was to have some of the shortcomings of the
rivals of the O.A.D. put under its nostrils by its
counsel, Morris; it knew the late Galloway had owned
the governor and the dominant boss, and that
Fosdick was supposed to have inherited them, along with
sundry other items of old Galloway's power.  Again,
the object might be purely defensive.  There had been,
of late, a revival of popular clamor against insurance
companies, which the previous investigation, started by
a quarrel among the interests and called off when that
quarrel was patched up, had left unquieted.  This
committee might be simply a blindfold for the eyes
of the ass—said ass being the public with its loud
bray and its long ears and its infinite patience.

As Fosdick seated himself, after taking the oath,
he noted for the first time the look on all faces—as
if one exciting act of a drama had just ended and
another were about to begin.  Out of the corner of
his eye he saw Westervelt and Armstrong, seated side
by side—Westervelt, fumbling with his long white
beard, his eyes upon the twenty-thousand-dollar sable
overcoat lying across Fosdick's knees; Armstrong,
huge and stolid, gazing straight at Fosdick's face with
an expression inscrutable beyond its perfect calm.
"He's taking his medicine well," thought Fosdick.
"For Westervelt must have testified, and then, of
course, he had his turn."

Morris, a few feet in front of him, was busy with
papers and books that rustled irritatingly in the tense
silence.  Fosdick watched him tranquilly, as free from
anxiety as to what he would do as a showman about
his marionette.  Morris straightened himself and
advanced toward Fosdick.  They eyed each the other
steadily; Fosdick admired his servant—the broad,
intelligent brow, the pallor of the student, the keen eyes
of the man of affairs, the sensitive mouth.  The fact
that he looked the very opposite of a bondman, at
least to unobservant eyes, was not the smallest of his
assets for Fosdick.

"Mr. Fosdick," began the lawyer, in his rather
high-pitched, but flexible and agreeable tenor voice,
"we will take as little of your time as possible.  We
know you are an exceedingly busy man."

"Thank you, sir," said Fosdick, with a dignified
bend of the head.  A very respectable figure he made,
sitting there in expensive looking linen and well cut
dark suit, the sable overcoat across his knee and over
one arm, a top hat in his other hand.  "My time is
at your disposal."

"In examining some of the books of the O.A.D.—you
are a director of the O.A.D.?"

"Yes, sir.  I have been for forty-two years."

"And very influential in its management?"

"They frequently call on me for advice, and, as
the institution is a philanthropy, I feel it my duty
always to respond."

Fosdick noted that a smile, discreet but unmistakably
derisive, ran round the room.  Morris's face was
sober, but the smile was in his eyes.  Fosdick sat still
straighter and frowned slightly.  He highly disapproved
of cynicism directed at himself.

"In looking at some of the books with Mr. Westervelt
a while ago," continued Morris, "we came upon
a matter—several items—which we thought ought to
be explained at once.  We wish no public
misapprehensions to arise through any inadvertence of ours.
So we have turned aside from the regular course of the
investigation, to complete the matter."

Fosdick's face betrayed his satisfaction—all had
gone well; Armstrong was in the trap; it only
remained for him to close it.  Morris now took up a
thin, well-worn account book which Fosdick recognized
as the chief of Westervelt's four treasures.  "I find
here," he continued, "fourteen entries of twenty-five
thousand dollars each—three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, in all—drawn by the President of the
O.A.D., Mr. Armstrong here.  Will you kindly tell
us all you know about those items?"

Mr. Fosdick smiled slightly.  "Really, Mr. Morris,"
replied he, with the fluency of the well-rehearsed
actor, "I cannot answer that question, as you put it.
Even if I knew all about the items, I might not
recognize them from your too scanty description."

"We have just had Mr. Armstrong on the stand,"
said the lawyer.  "He testified that he drew the money
under your direction and paid it—the most of it—in
your presence to Benjamin Sigourney, who looked
after political matters for your company."

Fosdick's expression of sheer amazement was
sincerity itself.  He looked from Morris to Armstrong.
With his eyes and Armstrong's meeting, he said
energetically, "I know of no such transaction."

"You do not recall any of the *fourteen* transactions?"

"I do not recall them, because they never occurred.
So far as I know, the legislative business of the
O.A.D. is looked after by the legal department exclusively.
I have been led to believe, and I do believe that, since
the reforms in the O.A.D. and the new management
of which Mr. Shotwell was the first head, the former
reprehensible methods have been abandoned.  It is
impossible that Mr. Armstrong should have drawn such
amounts for that purpose.  You must—pardon me—have
misunderstood his testimony."

"Let the stenographer read—only Mr. Armstrong's
last long reply," said Morris.

The stenographer read: "Mr. Armstrong: 'Mr. Fosdick
explained to me that the bills would practically
put us out of business, except straight life
policies, and that they would pass unless we submitted to
the blackmail.  As he was in control of the O.A.D.,
when he directed me to draw the money, I did so.  All
but two, I think, perhaps three, of the payments were
made to Sigourney in his presence.'"

"That will do—thank you," said Morris to the
stenographer.

There was a pause, a silence so profound that
it seemed a suffocating force.  Morris's clear,
sharp tones breaking it, startled everyone, even
Fosdick.  "You see, Mr. Fosdick, Mr. Armstrong was
definite."

"I am at a loss to understand," replied Fosdick,
gray with emotion, but firm of eye and voice.  "I am
profoundly shocked—I can only say that, so far as I
am concerned, no such transaction occurred.  And I
regret exceedingly to have to add that if any such
moneys were taken from the O.A.D. they must have
gone for other purposes than to influence the Legislature."

"Then, you wish to inform the committee that to
the best of your recollection you did not authorize or
suggest those drafts, and did not and do not know
anything about them?"

"I know nothing about them."

"But, Mr. Fosdick," continued Morris slowly,
"we have had Mr. Westervelt on the stand, and he has
testified that he was present on more than half a
dozen occasions when you told Mr. Armstrong to
draw the money, and that on one occasion you yourself
took the money when Mr. Armstrong brought it
from the cash department."

Fosdick stiffened as if an electric shock had passed
through him.  For the first time he lowered his eyes.
Behind that veil, his brain was swiftly restoring order
in the wild confusion which this exploding bomb had
made.  There was no time to consider how or why
Westervelt had failed him, or how Morris had been stupid
enough to permit such a situation.  He could only
make choice between standing to the original
programme and retreating behind a pretense of bad
memory.  "I can always plead bad memory," he reflected.
"Perhaps the day can be saved—Morris would have
sent me a warning if it couldn't be."  So he swept
the faces of the committeemen and the few spectators
with a glance like an unscathed battery.  "I am
astounded, Mr. Morris," said he steadily.  "In search
of an explanation, I happen to remember that Mr. Armstrong
was recently compelled to relieve Mr. Westervelt
from duty because of his failing health—failing
faculties."  His eyes turned to Westervelt with an
apologetic look in them—and Westervelt was, indeed,
a pitiful figure, suggesting one broken and distraught.
Fosdick saw in the faces of committeemen and
spectators that he had scored heavily.  "I repeat," said
he boldly, "it is impossible that any such transactions
should have occurred."

He was addressing Morris's back; the lawyer had
turned to the table behind him and was examining the
papers there with great deliberation.  Not a sound in
the room; all eyes on Fosdick, who was quietly
waiting.  "Ah!" exclaimed Morris, wheeling suddenly like
a duelist at the end of the ten paces.

Fosdick startled at the explosive note in his
servant's voice, then instantly recovered himself.

"This letter—is it in your handwriting?"  Fosdick
took the extended paper, put on his nose-glasses,
and calmly fixed his eyes upon it.  His hand began to
shake, over his face a dreadful, unsteady pallor, as
if the flame of life, sick and dying, were flaring and
sinking in the last flickerings before the final going-out.

"Is it your writing?" repeated Morris, his voice
like the bay of the hound before the cornered fox.

Fosdick's hand dropped to his lap.  His eyes
sought Morris's face and from them blazed such a
blast of fury that Morris drew back a step.

Morris was daunted only for a second.  He said
evenly, "It is your handwriting, is it not?"

Fosdick looked round—-at Westervelt, whose
wrinkled hand had paused on his beard midway between its
yellowed end and his shrunken, waxen face; at
Armstrong, stolid, statuelike; at the reporters, with
pencils suspended and eyes glistening.  He drew a long
breath and straightened himself again.  "It is," he
said.

Morris extended his hand for the letter.  "Thank
you," he said with grave courtesy, as Fosdick gave it
to him.  "I will read—'Dear Bill—Tell A to draw
three times this week—the usual amounts and give
them to S.'  Bill—that is Mr. Westervelt, is it not?
And does not A stand for Armstrong?  And is not S,
Sigourney, at that time the O.A.D.'s representative
in legislative and general political matters?"

"Obviously," said Fosdick, promptly and easily.
"I see my memory has played me a disgraceful trick.
I am getting old."  He smiled benevolently at Morris,
then toward Westervelt.  "I, too, am losing my
faculties."  Then, looking at Armstrong, and not changing
from kindly smile and tone, "But my teeth are still
good."

"You now remember these transactions?"

"I do not.  But I frankly admit I must have been
mistaken in denying that they ever occurred."

"I trust, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, "your memory
will not fail you to the extent that you will
forget you are on oath."

The muscles in Fosdick's spare jaws could be seen
working violently.  Morris was going too far, entirely
too far, in realism for the benefit of the public.  "Is
it part of your privilege as examiner," said he, with
more than a suggestion of master-to-servant, "to
insult an old man upon his failing mind?"

"As none of these transactions was of older date
than three years ago," replied Morris coldly, "and
as the note bore date of only six months ago—the
week before Sigourney died—it was not unnatural that
I should be anxious about your testimony.  We do
not wish false ideas, detrimental to the standing of
so notable and reputable a man as yourself, to get
abroad."

A titter ran around the room; Fosdick flushed and
the storm veins in his temples swelled.  He evidently
thought his examination was over, for he took a
better hold on his coat and was rising from the chair.
"Just a few minutes more," said Morris.  "In the
course of Mr. Westervelt's testimony another
matter was accidentally touched on.  We feel that it
should not go out to the public without your
explanation."

Fosdick sank back.  Until now, he had been
assuming that by some accident his plan to destroy
Armstrong had miscarried, that Morris and Westervelt,
to save the day, had by some mischance been forced
into a position where they were compelled to involve
him.  But now, it came to him that Morris's icily
sarcastic tone was more, far more, arrogant and
insolent than could possibly be necessary for
appearances with the public.  The lawyer's next words
changed suspicion into certainty.  "We found several
other items, Mr. Fosdick, which we requested Mr. Westervelt
to explain—payments of large sums to your
representatives—so Mr. Westervelt testifies they
are—and to your secretary, Mr. Waller, and to your
son—Hugo Fosdick.  He is one of the four vice-presidents
of the O.A.D., is he not?"

"He is," said Fosdick, and his voice was that of
a sick old man.

"It was on your O.K. that one hundred thousand
dollars were paid out to furnish his apartment?"

"You mean the uptown branch of the O.A.D.?"
said Fosdick wearily, his blue-black eyelids drooped.

"Oh!  We will inquire into that, later.  But—take
last year, Mr. Fosdick.  Take this omnibus lease,
turning over to corporations you control properties in
Boston and Chicago which cost the O.A.D. a sum,
two per cent. interest on which would be double the
rental they are getting from you.  Mr. Westervelt
informs us that he knows you get seventeen times the
income from the properties that you pay the
O.A.D. under the leases they executed to you—you practically
making the leases, as an officer of the company,
to yourself as another corporation.  My question is
somewhat involved, but I hope it is clear?"

"I understand you—in the main," replied Fosdick.
"But you will have to excuse me from answering any
more questions to-day.  I did not come prepared.  My
connection with the O.A.D. has been philanthropic,
rather than businesslike.  Naturally, though perhaps
wrongly, I have not kept myself informed of all details."

He frowned down the smiles, the beginnings of
laughter.  "But the record is sound!" he went on in
a ringing voice.  "The O.A.D. has cost me much
time and thought.  I have given more of both to it
than I have to purely commercial enterprises.  But
moneymaking isn't everything—and I feel more than
rewarded."

"We all know you, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris,
with an air of satiric respect.

"I ask you to excuse me to-day," continued the
old man, in his impressive manner.  "I wish to prepare
myself.  To-morrow, or, at most, in two or three days,
I shall *demand* that you let me resume the stand.  I
have nothing to conceal.  Errors of judgment I may
have committed.  But my record is clear."  He raised
his head and his eyes flashed.  "It is a record with
which I shall soon fearlessly face my God!"

Josiah Fosdick felt that he was himself again.  His
eyes looked out with the expression of a good man
standing his ground unafraid.  And he smiled
contemptuously at the faint sarcasm in Morris's cold
voice, saying, "That is quite satisfactory—most
satisfactory."

The committee rose; the reporters surrounded Fosdick.
He was courteous but firm in his refusal to say
a word either as to the testimony he had given or
as to that he would give.  A dozen eager hands helped
him on with his coat, and he marched away, sure that
he was completely reëstablished—in the public esteem;
his self-esteem had not been shaken for an instant.
The good man doubts himself; not the self-deceiving
hypocrite.  There was triumph in the long look he
gave Morris—a look which Morris returned with the
tranquil shine of a satisfied revenge, a revenge of
payment with interest for slights, humiliations, insults
which the old tyrant had put upon him.  Long
trafficking upon the cupidity and timidity of men gives
the ruling class a false notion of the discernment of
mankind and of their own mental superiority, as well
as moral.  It was natural that Fosdick should believe
himself above censure, above criticism even.  He
returned to his office, like a king upon whom the vulgar
have sought to put indignities.  His teeth fairly
ached for the moment when they could close upon the
bones of these "insolent curs."

It was not until he set out for lunch that another
view of the situation came in sight.  As he was
crossing Waller's office, he was halted by that faithful
servant's expression, the more impressive because it was
persisting in spite of hysterical efforts to conceal it
and to look serenely worshipful as usual.  "What is
it, Waller?" he demanded.

"Nothing—nothing at all, sir," said Waller, as
with a clumsy effort at pretended carelessness he tossed
into the wastebasket a newspaper which Fosdick had
surprised him at reading.

"Is that an afternoon paper?"

Waller stammered inarticulately.

Fosdick shot a quick, sharp glance at him.  "Let
me see it."

Waller took the paper out of the basket, as if
he were handling something vile to sight, touch and
smell.  "These sensational sheets are very impudent
and untruthful," he said, as he gave it to his
master.

Fosdick spread the paper.  He sprang back as if
he had been struck.  "God!" he cried.  "God in
heaven!"

In the committee room, after the first unpleasantness,
all had been smooth, and there was not to
his self-complacent security of the divine right
monarch the remotest suggestion of impending disgrace.
Now—from the front page of this newspaper,
flying broadcast through the city, through the country,
shrieked, "Fosdick Perjures Himself!  The eminent
financier and churchman caught on the witness stand.
Denies knowledge of political bribery funds and is
trapped!  Evades accusations of gigantic swindles and
thefts."

Disgrace, like all the other strong tragic words,
conveys little of its real meaning to anyone until it
becomes personal.  Fosdick would have said beforehand
that the publication of an attack on him in the
low newspapers would not trouble him so much as the
buzzing of a fly about his bald spot.  He would have
said that there was in him—in his conscience, in his
confidence in the approval of his God—a tower of
righteous strength that would stand against any
attack, as unimperiled as a skyscraper by a summer
breeze.  But, with these huge, coarse voices of the
all-pervading press shrieking and screaming "Perjurer.
Swindler!  Thief!" he shook as with the ague and
turned gray and groaned.  He sat down that he might
not fall.

"God!  God in heaven!" he muttered.

"It's infamous," cried Waller, tears in his eyes and
anger in his voice.  "No man, no matter how upright
or high, is safe from those wretches."

Fosdick gripped his head between his hands.  "It
hurts, Waller—it *hurts*," he moaned.

"Nobody will pay the slightest attention to it,"
said Waller.  "We all know you."

But Fosdick was not listening.  He was wondering
how he had been able to delude himself, how he had
failed to realize the construction that could, and by
the public would, be put upon his testimony.  Many's
the thing that sounds and looks and seems right and
proper in privacy and before a few sympathetic
witnesses, and that shudders in the full livery of shame
when exposed before the world.  Here was an instance—and
he, the shrewd, the lifelong dealer in public
opinion, had been tricked at his own trade as he had
never been able to trick anyone else in half a century
of chicane.

"I want to die, Waller," he said feebly.  "Help
me back into my office.  I can't face anybody."

.. vspace:: 2

Into Armstrong's sitting room, toward ten that
night, Fosdick came limping and shuffling.  Even had
Armstrong been a "good hater" he could hardly have
withstood the pathos of that abject figure.  Being too
broadly intelligent for more than a spasm of that
ugliest and most ignorant of passions, he felt as if
the broken man before him were the wronged and he
himself the wronger.  "But this man made a shameful,
treacherous, unprovoked attempt to disgrace me,"
he reminded himself, in the effort to keep a just point
of view for prudence's sake.  It was useless.  That
ghastly, sunken face, those frightened, dim old eyes,
the trembling step—  If a long life of
soul-prostitution had left Josiah Fosdick enough of natural human
generosity to appreciate the meaning of Armstrong's
expression, he might have been able to change his
crushing defeat into what in the circumstances would
have been the triumph of a drawn battle.  But, except
possibly the creative geniuses, men must measure their
fellows throughout by themselves.  Fosdick knew what
he would do, were he in Armstrong's place.  He
clutched at Armstrong's hand with a cringing hypocrisy
of deference that made Armstrong ashamed for
him—and that warned him he dared not yet drop his guard.

"I've been trying to get you since three o'clock
this afternoon," said Fosdick.  "I had to see you
before I went to bed."  He sank into a chair and sat
breathing heavily.  He looked horribly old.  "You
don't believe I deliberately lied about that money, do
you, Horace?"

"Is it necessary to discuss that, Mr. Fosdick?
Hadn't we better get right at what you've come to
see me about?"

"I've wired the governor.  He don't answer.
Morris refuses to see me.  Westervelt—it's useless to
see him—he has betrayed me—sold me out—he on
whom I have showered a thousand benefits.  I made
that man, Horace, and he has rewarded me.  That's
human nature!"

Armstrong recalled that, when he was winning over
Westervelt by convincing him of Fosdick's perfidy to
him, Westervelt had made the same remark, had cried
out that he loaned Fosdick the first five hundred
dollars he ever possessed and had got him into the O.A.D.
"It seems to me, Mr. Fosdick, that recriminations
are idle," said he.  "I assume you have something to
ask or to propose.  Am I right?"

"Horace, you and I are naturally friends.  Why
should we fight each other?"

"You have come to propose a peace?"

"I want us to continue to work together."

"That can be arranged," said Armstrong.

"I hoped so!" Fosdick exclaimed.  "I hoped so!"

"But," proceeded Armstrong, seeing the drift of
the thought behind that quick elation, "let us have no
misunderstanding.  You were permitted to leave the
witness stand when you did to-day because I wished
you to have one more chance to save yourself.  That
chance will be withdrawn if you begin to act on the
notion that my forbearance is proof of my weakness."

"All I want is peace—peace and quiet," said Fosdick,
with his new revived hope and craft better hid.
But Armstrong saw that it was temperamentally
impossible for Fosdick to believe any man would of his
own accord drop the sword from the throat of a
beaten foe.

"You can have peace," continued Armstrong,
"peace with honor, provided you give a guarantee.
You cannot expect me to trust you."

"What guarantee do you want?"

"Control of the O.A.D."

Fosdick's feebleness fell from him.  He sprang
erect, eyes flashing, fists shaking.  "Never!" he
shouted.  "So help me God, never!  It's mine.  It's
part of my children's patrimony.  I'll keep it, in spite
of hell!"

"You will lose it in any event," said Armstrong,
as calm as Fosdick was tempestuous.  "You have
choice of turning it over to me or having it snatched
from you by Atwater and Trafford and Langdon."

"Atwater!" exclaimed Fosdick.

"When I found you had arranged to destroy me,"
explained Armstrong, "I formed a counter-arrangement,
as I wasn't strong enough to fight you alone."

"You sold me out!"

Armstrong winced.  Fosdick's phrase was unjust,
but since his talk with Neva he was critical and
sensitive in the matter of self-respect; and, while his
campaign of self-defense, of "fighting the devil with fire,"
still seemed necessary and legitimate, it also seemed
lacking in courage.  If Fosdick had crept and crawled
up on him, had he not also crawled and crept up on
Fosdick?  "I defended myself in the only way you
left me," replied Armstrong.  "I formed an alliance
with the one man who could successfully attack you."

"So, it is Atwater who has bought the governor—and
Morris—yes, and that ingrate, Westervelt!"

"However that may be," replied Armstrong, "you
will be destroyed and Atwater will take the
O.A.D. unless you meet my terms."  He was flushing deep
red before Fosdick's look of recognition of a brother
in chicane.

He knew Atwater was simply using him, would
destroy him or reduce him to dependence, as soon as
Fosdick was stripped and ruined.  He felt he was as
fully justified in eluding the tiger by strategy as he
had been in procuring the tiger to defeat and destroy
the lion that had been about to devour him.  Still,
the business was not one a man would preen himself
upon in a company of honest men and women.  And
Fosdick's look, which said, "This man, having sold me
out, is now about to sell out his allies," hit home and
hit hard.

But he must carry his project through, or fall
victim to Atwater; he must not let this melting mood
which Neva had brought about enfeeble his judgment
and disarm his courage.  "If you refuse my offer,"
he said to Fosdick, "the investigation will go on, and
Atwater will get the O.A.D. and take from you every
shred of your character and much of your fortune—perhaps
all.  If you accept my offer, the investigation
will stop and you will retire from the O.A.D. peaceably
and without having to face proceedings to
compel you to make restitution."

"How do I know you can keep your bargain?"

"I have the governor and Morris with me,"
replied Armstrong, frankly exposing his whole hand.
"They, no more than myself, wish to become the
puppets of the Atwater-Langdon-Trafford crowd."

Fosdick reflected.  Now that he knew the precise
situation, he felt less feeble.  Before Armstrong
explained, he had been like a man fighting in a pitch dark
room against foes he could not even number.  Now,
the light was on; he knew just how many, just who
they were; and, appalling though the discovery was, it
was not so appalling as that struggle in the pitch
dark.  "You evidently think I'm powerless," he said
at last.  "But if you press me too far, you will see
that I am not.  For instance, you *need* me.  You must
have me or fall into Atwater's clutches.  You see, I
am far from powerless."

"But you forget," replied Armstrong, "you are
heavily handicapped by your reputation.  A man who
has to fight for his good name is like a soldier in
battle with a baby on his arm and a woman clinging
to his neck.  How can you fight without losing your
reputation?  The committee is against you.  At Monday's
session, if you let matters take their course, all
that Westervelt's books show of your profits from the
O.A.D. will be exposed—even the way you made it
pay for the carpets on your floors, for the sheets on
your beds, for towels and soap and matches."

Armstrong would not have believed there was in
Fosdick's whole body so much red blood as showed in
his face.  "It's a custom that's grown up," he
muttered shufflingly.  "They all do it—in every big
company, more or less, directly or indirectly."

"True enough," said Armstrong.  "But you'll be
the only one on trial.  If you accept my offer, you'll
be let alone.  Cancel the worst of those leases, settle
the ugliest accounts, all at comparatively trifling cost,
and the public will soon forget."

"And what guarantee do you give that the agreement
would be carried out?"

"My pledge—that's all," replied Armstrong—and
again he flushed.  He had avoided specifically giving
his word to the Atwater crowd when he formed alliance
with them; still, his "my pledge" had a hollow,
jeering echo.  "It's the only possible guarantee
in the circumstances—and, as you are solely responsible
for the circumstances, Mr. Fosdick, I do not see
how you can complain."

Fosdick again reflected; the awful, deathly pallor,
the deep scams, the palsylike trembling came back.
After a long wait, with Armstrong avoiding the sight
of him, he quavered, "Horace, I'll agree to anything
except giving up the O.A.D."  There he broke down
and wept.  "You don't know what that institution
means to me.  It's my child.  It's my heart.  It's my
reason for being alive."

"Yes, it has been a source of enormous profit to
you, Mr. Fosdick," said Armstrong calmly, for his
own strengthening more than to get Fosdick back to
facts.  "I appreciate how hard it must be to give up
such a source of easy wealth.  But it must be done."

"You don't understand," mourned the old man.
"You have no sentiment.  You do not *feel* those
hundreds of thousands, those millions of helpless
people—how they look up to me, how they pray for me
and are full of gratitude to me.  Do you think I could
coldly turn over their interests to strangers?  Why,
who knows what might not be done with those sacred
trust funds?"

"If you persist in letting Atwater get control,"
said Armstrong, "I fear those sacred trust funds will
soon be larger by about two thirds of what you
regard as your private fortune.  I do not like to say
these things; you compel me, Mr. Fosdick.  It is waste
of time and breath to cant to me."

If Fosdick had had anything less at stake than
his fortune, he would have broken then and there with
Armstrong.  As it was, his prudence could not
smother down the geyser of fury that boiled and
spouted up from his vanity.  "I must be mad," he
cried, "to imagine that such matters of conscience
would make an impression on you."

Armstrong laughed slightly.  "When a man is in
the jungle, is fighting with wild beasts, he has to put
forward the beast in him.  You tried to ruin me—a
more infamous, causeless attack never was made on a
man.  You have failed; you are in the pit you dug
for me.  I am letting you off lightly."  And now
Armstrong's blue eyes had the green gray of steel
and flashed with that furious temper which he had been
compelled to learn to rule because, once beyond
control, it would have been a free force of sheer
destruction.  "If you had not been interceded for, you
would now be a pariah, with no wealth to buy you the
semblance of respect.  Don't try me too far!  I do not
love you.  I have the normal instinct about reptiles."

At that very moment Fosdick was looking the
reptile.  "Yes, I did try to tear you down," he hissed.
"And I'll tell you why.  Because I saw your ambition—saw
you would never rest until you had robbed me
and mine of that which you coveted.  Was I not right?"

Armstrong could not deny it.  He had never
definitely formed such an ambition; but he realized, as
Fosdick was accusing him, that had he been permitted
to go peacefully on as president, the day would have
come when he would have reached out for real power.

Fosdick went on, with more repression and dignity,
but no less energy of feeling, "I cannot but believe
that God in His justice will yet hurl you to ruin.  You
are robbing me, but as sure as there is a God, Horace
Armstrong, He will bring you low!"

Well as Armstrong knew him, he was for the
moment impressed.  The only born monsters are the
insane criminals; the monstrous among our powerful and
eminent and most respectable are by long and
deliberate indulgence in self-deception manufactured into
monsters, protected from public exposure by their
position, wealth, and respectability.  We do not realize
any more than they do themselves, that they have
become insane criminals like the monsters-born.  There
is a majesty in the trappings of virtue that does not
altogether leave them even when a hypocrite wears
them; also, Armstrong was more than half disarmed
by his new-sprung doubts whether he was wholly
justified in meeting treachery with treachery.  He
surprised Fosdick by breaking the silence with an almost
deprecating, "I said more than I intended.  What you
have done, what I have done, is all part of the game.
Let us continue to leave God and morals—honesty and
honor—out of it.  Let us be practical, businesslike.
You wish to save your reputation and your fortune.
I can save them for you.  I have given you my condition—it
is the least I will ask, or can ask.  What do
you say?"

"I must have time to think it over," replied
Fosdick.  "I cannot decide so important a matter in
haste."

"Quite right," Armstrong readily assented.  "It
will not be necessary to have your decision before noon
to-morrow.  The committee has adjourned until
Monday.  That will give us half of Saturday and Sunday
to settle the plans that hang on your decision."

"To-morrow noon," said Fosdick, sunk into a
stupor.  "To-morrow noon."  And he moved vaguely
to the door, one trembling hand out before him as
if he were blind and feeling his way.  And, so
all-powerful are appearances with us, Armstrong hung
his head and did not dare look at the pitiful spectacle
of age and feebleness and misery.  "He's a villain,"
said the young man to himself, "as nearly a
through-and-through villain as walks the earth.  But he's still
a man, with a heart and pride and the power to
suffer.  And what am I that I should judge him?  In
his place, with his chances, would I have been any
different?  Was I not hell-bent by the same route?
Am I not, still?"

He walked beside Fosdick to the elevator, waited
with him for the car.  "Good night," he said in a
tone of gentlest courtesy.  And it hurt him that the
old man did not seem to hear, did not respond.  He
wished that Fosdick had offered to shake hands with
him.

He went to Morris, expecting him at a club across
the way, and related the substance of the interview.
Morris, who had both imagination and sensibility,
guessed the cause of his obvious yet apparently
unprovoked depression, guessed why he had been so
tender with Fosdick.  Nevertheless he twitted him on his
soft-heartedness: "The old bunco-steerer hasn't
disgorged yet, has he?—and hasn't the remotest
intention of disgorging.  So, my tears are altogether for
the policy holders he has been milking these forty
years."  Then he added, "Though, why careless damn
fools should get any sympathy in their misfortunes
does not clearly appear.  As between knaves and fools,
I incline toward knaves.  At least, they are teachers
of wisdom in the school of experience, while fools
avail nothing, are simply provokers and purveyors to
knavery."





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.. _`A DUEL AFTER LUNCH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A DUEL AFTER LUNCH

.. vspace:: 2

In the respectable morning newspaper the Fosdicks
took in, the facts of Josiah's latest public appearance
were presented with those judicious omissions and
modifications which the respectable editor feels it his
duty to make, that the lower classes may not be led
to distrust and deride the upper classes.  Thus, Amy,
glancing at headlines in search of the only important
news—the doings of "our set"—got the impression
that her father had had an annoying lapse of memory
in testifying about something or other before
somebody or other.  But the servants took in a newspaper
that had no mission to safeguard the name and fame
and influence of the upper classes; probably not by
chance, this newspaper was left where its vulgar but
vivid headlines caught her eye.

She read, punctuating each paragraph with explosions
of indignation.  But when she had finished, she
reread—and began to think.  As most of us have
learned by experience in great matters or small, truth
is rubberlike—it offers small resistance to the blows of
prejudice, and, as soon as the blow passes, it straightway
springs back to its original form and place.  Amy
downfaced a thousand little facts of her own
knowledge as to where the money came from—facts which
tried to tell her that the "low, lying sheet" had
revealed only a trifling part of the truth.  But, when
she saw her father, saw how he had suddenly broken,
his very voice emasculate and thin, she gave up the
struggle to deceive herself.  There is a notion that
a man's family is the last to believe the disagreeable
truth about his relations with the outside world.  This
is part of the theory that a man has two characters,
that he can be a saint at six o'clock in the morning
and a scoundrel at six o'clock in the evening, that he
is honest at a certain street and number and a liar and
a thief at another street and number.  But the fact
is that character is the most closely woven and
homogeneous of fabrics, and, though a man's family do not
admit it publicly when the truth about him is exposed,
they know him all the time for what he really is.
Amy knew; her father's appearance, indicating not
that he was guilty but that he was found out and was
in an agony of dread of the consequences, threw her
into a hysteria of shame and terror.  She avoided the
servants; she startled each time the door bell rang; it
might mean the bursting of the real disgrace, for, in
her ignorance of political conditions, she assumed that
arrest and imprisonment would follow the detection of
her father and probably Hugo in grave crimes.  She
dared not face any of the few that called; she would
not even see Hugo.

On Sunday morning came a note from Alois—a
love letter, begging to see her.  She read it with tears
flowing and with a heart swelling with gratitude.  "He
does love me!" she said.  "He must know we are about
to be disgraced, yet he has only been strengthened in
his love."  Though the actual state of the family's
affairs was vastly different from what she imagined,
though she would have been little disturbed had she
known that publicity was the only punishment likely
to overtake persons so respectable as Fosdick and his
son, still the crisis was none the less real to Amy.  In
such crises the best qualities of human nature rise in
all their grandeur and exert all their power.  She sent
off an immediate answer—"Thank you, Alois—I need
you—  Come at three o'clock.  Yours, Amy."

When he came, she let him see what she wanted;
how, with all she had valued and had thought valuable
transforming into trash and slipping away from her,
she had turned to him, to the only reality—to the love
that welcomes the storm which gives it the opportunity
to show how strong it is, how firmly rooted.  With
his first stammering, ardent protestations, she flung
herself into his arms.  "I have loved you from the
beginning," she sobbed.  "But I didn't realize it until
I looked round for some one to turn to.  You do love me?"

"I am here," he said simply, and there is nothing
finer than was the look in his eyes, the feeling in his
heart.  "And we must be married soon.  We must be
together, now."

"Yes, yes—soon—at once," she agreed.  "And
you will take me away, won't you?  Ah, I love you—I
love you, Alois.  I will show you how a woman can
love."  And never had she been so beautiful, both
without and within.

"As soon as you please," said he.  He was not
inclined to interrogate his happiness; but he was
surprised at her sudden and unconditional surrender.  He
guessed that some quarrel about him with her father
or with Hugo had roused her to assert what he was
quite ready to believe had been in her heart all the
time; or, it might be that she wished to make amends
for her father's having planned to send him away when
honor commanded him to stay and guard his reputation.
Had the cause of her hysteria been real, or had
he known why she was so clinging and so eager, he
would not have changed—for he loved her and was
never half-hearted in any emotion.  Though her money
and her position were originally her greatest attractions
for him, his ideal of his own self-respect was too
high and too real for him to rest content until he
had forced love to put him under its spell.

When he left her she sent for Hugo and told him.
Hugo went off like a charge at the snap of the spark.
"You must be mad!" he shouted.  "Why, such a
marriage is beneath you—is almost as bad as your
sister's.  It's your duty to bring a gentleman into the
family."

She would not argue that; she would at any cost
be forbearing with Hugo, who must be in torture, if
he was not altogether a fool—and sometimes she
thought he was.  She restrained herself to saying
gently, "You don't seem to appreciate our changed
position."

"What 'changed position'?  What are you talking
about?" demanded Hugo, rearing and beginning
to stride the length of the room.

She did not answer; answer seemed unnecessary,
when Hugo was so obviously blustering to hide his real
state of mind.

"You mean father's testimony?" he said.  "What
rot!  Why, nobody that is anybody pays the slightest
attention to that.  Everyone understands how
things are in finance and how vital it is to guard the
secrets from lying demagogues and the mob.  There
isn't a man of consequence, of high respectability, on
Manhattan Island, or in big affairs anywhere in the
country, who wouldn't be in as difficult or more difficult
a position, if he happened to be cornered.  Everyone
whose opinion we care anything about is in the
game, and this attack on us is simply a move of our
enemies."

"Deceive yourself, if you want to," replied Amy.
"But I know I can't get married any too soon."

"And marrying a nobody, a mere architect, whose
sister works for a living.  You haven't even the
excuse of caring for him."

"Don't be too sure about that!  In the last
twenty-four hours I've learned a great deal about life,
about people.  Everybody talks of love, and of
wanting love.  But nobody knows what it really means,
until he has suffered.  Oh, Hugo, don't be so hard!
I need Alois!"  And there were tears in her eyes.

Hugo tossed his head; but he was not unimpressed.
"I'm sorry to see you so weak," said he in a tone
that was merely surly and therefore, by contrast,
kindly.  "Of course, it's none of *my* business.  But
I don't approve it, I want you distinctly to understand."

"You won't be disagreeable to Alois?"

"I don't blame *him*," said Hugo.  "It's natural
he should be crazy to marry you.  And, in his way, he
isn't a bad sort.  He's been about in our set long
enough to get something of an air."  Hugo was
thinking that Amy had now lost young Roebuck, the
only eligible in her train; that, after all, since he
himself was to be the principal heir to his father's
estate, she was not exactly a first-class matrimonial
offering and might have to take something even less
satisfactory than Alois, if she continued to wait for
the husband he could warm to.  "Go ahead, if you
must," was his final remark.  "I'll not interfere."

This was equivalent to approval, and Amy,
strengthened, moved upon her father.  To her astonishment,
he listened without interest.  She had to say
pointedly, "And I've come to find out whether you
approve," before he roused himself to respond.

"Do as you like," he said wearily, not lifting his
eyes from the sheet of paper on which he had been
making aimless markings, when she interrupted him.

"You wouldn't object if I married—soon?"

"Don't bother me," he flamed out.  "Do as you
please.  Only, don't fret me.  And, no splurge!  I'm
sick.  I want quiet."

Thus it came about that on the Thursday following
the engagement, a week almost to the hour from
Fosdick's tumble into his own carefully and deeply
dug pit, Amy married Alois Siersdorf, "with only the
two families present, because of Mr. Fosdick's age and
illness"; and at noon they sailed away on the almost
empty *Deutschland*.

Alois did not let his perplexity before Amy's
astounding docility interfere with his happiness.  He
saw that, whatever the cause, she was in love with him,
so deeply in love that she had descended from the
pedestal, had lifted him from his knees, had set him
upon it, and had fallen down meekly to worship.
There were a few of "our people" on the steamer—half
a dozen families or parts of families, of "the
push," who were on their way to freeze and sneeze in
the "warm" Riviera for the sake of fashion.  Alois
was delighted that Amy was so absorbed in him that
she would have nothing to do with them—this for the
first three days.  He had not believed her capable of
the passion and the tenderness she was lavishing upon
him.  She made him hold her in his arms hours at a
time; she developed amazing skill at those coquetries
of intimacy so much more difficult than the enticements
that serve to make the period of the engagement
attractive.  And he found her more beautiful, too,
than he had thought.  She was one of those women who
are not at their best when on public or semipublic view,
but reserve for intimacy a charm which explains the
otherwise inexplicable hold they get upon the man to
whom they fully reveal and abandon themselves.

And Alois, in love with the woman herself now
rather than with what she represented to his rather
material imagination, surprised her in turn.  She had
thought him somewhat stilted, a distinctly professional
man, with too little lightness of mind—interesting,
satisfactory beyond the prosy and commonplace and
patterned run of men she knew; but still with a
tendency to be wearisome if taken in too large doses.  She
had to confess that she had misjudged him.  He was
no longer under the nervous strain of trying to win
her, was no longer handicapped by a vague but
potent notion that he would get more than he gave in
a marriage with her.  He revealed his real
self—light-hearted, varied, most adaptable; thoroughgoing
masculine, yet with a femininity, a knowledge of and
interest in matters purely feminine, that made
companionship as easy as it was delightful.

They were in the full rapture of these agreeable
surprises each about the other when the representatives
of "our set" began to insist upon associating
with them.  Amy shrank from the first advances; this
only made the bored fashionables the more determined.
Even in her morbidness about the lost reputation and
the menace of prison, she could not deceive herself as
to the meaning of their persistent friendliness.  And
soon she was delighted by a third surprise.  She found
that Hugo had been right, and she absurdly wrong,
about public opinion.  There might be, probably was,
a public opinion that misunderstood her father and
judged him by provincial, old-fashioned standards.
But it was not *her* public opinion.  All the people of
her set were more or less involved, directly or through
their relations by blood and marriage, in enterprises
that necessitated what in the masses—the "lower
classes" and the "criminal classes"—would be called
lying, swindling, and stealing; they, therefore, had no
fault to find with Fosdick.  Had he not his fortune
still?  And was he not impregnable against the mob
howling that he be treated as a common malefactor?
Where, then, was the occasion for Phariseeism?  Was
it not the plain duty of respectable people to stand
firmly by the Fosdicks and show the mob that respectability
was solidly against demagogism, against attempts
to judge the upper class by lower class standards?  Yes;
that was the wise course, and the safe course.  Why,
even the public prosecutor, a suspiciously demagogical
shouter for "equal justice"—respectability appreciated
that he had to get the suffrages of the mob, but
thought he went a little too far in demagogic
speech—why, even he had shown that the gentleman was
stronger in him than the politician.  Had he not, after
a few days of silence, come out boldly rebuking "the
attempt to defame and persecute one of the country's
most public-spirited and useful citizens, in advance of
judicial inquiry"?

Amy was amazed that she had been so preposterously
unnerved by what she now saw was literally
nothing at all, a mere morbid phantasy.  But at the
same time, she was devoutly thankful that she had been
deluded.  "But for that," said she to herself, "I
might not have married 'Lois, might have stifled the
best, the most beautiful emotion of my life, might have
missed happiness entirely."  This thought so moved her
that she rose—it was in the dead of night—and went
into his room and bent over him, asleep, and kissed him
softly.  And she stood, admiring in the dim light the
manliness and the beauty of his head, his waving hair,
his small, becoming blond beard.

"I love you," she murmured passionately.  "No
price would have been too dear to pay for you."

.. vspace:: 2

Meanwhile Fosdick was settling to the new conditions
with a facility that admirably illustrated the
infinite adaptability of the human animal.  The inevitable,
however cruel, is usually easy to accept.  It is always
mitigated by such reflections as that it could not have
been avoided and that it might have been worse.  The
more intelligent the victim, the shorter his idle
bewailings and the quicker his readjustment—and Fosdick
was certainly intelligent.  Also, among "practical"
men, as youth with its ardent courage and its enthusiasms
retreats and old age advances, there is a steady
decay of self-respect, a rapid decline of belief that in
life, so brief, so unsatisfactory at best, so fundamentally
sordid, anything which interferes with comfort,
personal comfort, is worth fighting for; where a young
man will challenge an almost fanciful infringement of
his self-respect, an old man will accept with a resigned
and cynical shrug the most degrading conditions, if
only they leave him material comfort and peace.

To aid old Fosdick in making the best of it, the
sensational but influential part of the press each
morning and each afternoon girded at him, at Morris and
at the authorities, asking the most impertinent
questions, making the most disgusting demands.  Thus, the
old man was not permitted to lose sight or sound of
the foaming-jowled bloodhounds Armstrong was
protecting him from.  And when he gave full weight to
the fact that Armstrong was also saving him from the
Atwater-Langdon-Trafford crowd, he ceased to hate
him, began to look on him as a friend and ally.

Now that Fosdick and Armstrong were on a basis
on which he was compelled to respect the young man,
each began to take a more favorable view of the other
than he had ever taken before.  Rarely indeed is any
human being—any living being—altogether or even
chiefly bad.  If the evil is the predominant force in a
man's life, it is usually because of some system of which
he is the victim, some system whose appeal to
appetite or vanity, or, often, to sheer necessities, is too
strong for the natural instincts of the peaceful,
patient human animal.  And even the man who lives
wholly by outrages upon his fellow men lives so that
all but a very few of his daily acts are either not bad,
or positively good.  The mad beasts of creation, high
and low, are few—and they are mad.  All Fosdick's
strongest instincts—except those for power and
wealth—were decent, and some of them were fine.  It was
not surprising that, with so much of the genuinely
good in him, he was able to delude himself into
believing there was reality behind his reputation as a
philanthropic business man.

The hard part of his readjustment was requesting
those through whom he had controlled the O.A.D. to
transfer their allegiance to Armstrong.  It is a
tribute to Armstrong's diplomacy—and where was
there ever successful diplomat who was not at bottom
a good fellow, a sympathetic appreciator of human
nature?—it is a tribute to Armstrong's diplomatic skill
that Fosdick came to look on this transfer—and to
hasten it and to make it complete—as the best, the
only means of checking that "infamous Atwater-Trafford
gang."  He felt he was simply retreating
one step further into that shadow behind the throne
of power in which he had always been careful to keep
himself pretty well concealed.  He felt—so considerate
and delicate was Armstrong—that he would still be a
power in the councils of the O.A.D.  He himself
suggested that Hugo should retire from the fourth
vice-presidency "as soon as this thing blows over."

The public knew nothing of the transfer.  Even
when one gang bursts open the doors to fling another
gang out, the public gets no more than a hasty and
shallow glimpse behind the façade of the great
institutions that exploit it and administer its affairs.  It
was not let into the secret that for the first time in
the history of the O.A.D. its president did preside,
and that he not only presided but ruled as
autocratically as Fosdick had ruled, as some one man
always does rule sooner or later in any human
institution.  But the Atwater-Langdon-Trafford "gang"
soon heard what was occurring, and, as Armstrong had
known that they must hear, he awaited results with
not a little anxiety.  Of Trafford he was not at all
afraid—Trafford's tricks were the familiar common-places
by which most men who get on in the world
of chicane achieve their success.  About Langdon, he
was somewhat more unquiet; but Atwater was the one
he dreaded.  What was Atwater doing, now that he
realized—as he must realize—that he had been duped,
that Armstrong had used him to conquer Fosdick and
was now facing him, armed with Fosdick's weapons
and with youth and energy and astuteness; that Morris
and the governor were not his tools, as he had been
imagining, but Armstrong's allies; that, instead of
being about to absorb the O.A.D., he might, should
Armstrong force the fighting, lose the great Universal,
the greater Gibraltar Mutual, and the Hearth and
Home, which gathered in, and kept, the pennies of
poverty?

A few days before the committee was to reassemble,
Atwater telephoned Armstrong, asking him to come to
lunch with him.  Armstrong accepted and drew a long
breath of relief.  He knew that Atwater's agents had
been sounding both the governor and Morris, had
"persuaded" little Kenworthy to pretend to be ill,
and to put off the reassembling of the committee.  So,
this invitation, this request for a face-to-face talk,
must mean that neither the governor nor Morris had
yielded.

When Armstrong and Atwater met, each looked the
other over genially but thoroughly.  "I congratulate
you, my young friend," said Atwater heartily.  "I
can admire a stroke of genius, even though it cuts my
own plans."

No reference from Armstrong to the fact that
Atwater had planned to destroy him as soon as he had
used him to get the O.A.D.; no reference from
Atwater, beyond this smiling and friendly hint, to the
fact that Armstrong had allied himself with Atwater
ostensibly to destroy Fosdick, and had shifted just in
time to outgeneral his ally.  Atwater was a fine,
strong-looking man of sixty and odd years, with the
kindest eyes in the world, and the wickedest jaw—in
repose.  When he smiled, his whole face was like his
eyes.  He had a peculiarly agreeable voice, and so
much magnetism that his enemies liked him when with
him.  He was a man of audacious financial dreams,
which he carried out with dazzling boldness—at least,
carried out to the point where he himself could "get
from under" with a huge profit and could shift the
responsibility of collapse to others.  He was a born
pirate, the best-natured of pirates, the most chivalrous
and generous.  He was of a type that has recurred
in the world each time the diffusion of intelligence and
of liberty has released the energy of man and given it
a chance to play freely.  Such men were the distinction
of Athens in the heyday of its democracy; of
Rome in the period between the austere and cruel
republic of the patricians and the ferocious tyranny of
Cæsardom; of Bagdad and Cordova after the Moslems
became liberalized and before they became degenerate;
of Italy in the period of the renaissance; of France
after the Revolution and before Friedland infatuated
Napoleon into megalomania.

During the lunch the two men talked racing and
automobile and pictures—Atwater had a good eye for
line and color.  They would have gone on to talk
music, had there been time—for Atwater loved music
and sang well and played the violin amazingly, though
he practiced only about two hours a day, and that
not every day.  But they did not get round to music;
the coffee and cigars were brought, and the waiters
withdrew.

"What is your committee going to do, when it gets
together, day after to-morrow?" said Atwater, the
instant the door closed on the head waiter.

"You'll have to see Morris, to find out that,"
replied Armstrong.

Atwater smiled and waved his hand.  "Bother!"
he retorted.  "What's your programme?"

"Morris is the man to see," repeated Armstrong.
"I wouldn't give up his secrets, if I knew them."

"Our man up at Buffalo wires," continued Atwater,
"that you have got Kenworthy out of bed and
completely cured.  So, you are going on.  And I
know you are not the man to wait in the trenches.
Now, it happens that Langdon and I have several
matters on at this time—as much as we can conveniently
look after.  Besides, what's to be gained by tearing up
the public again, just when it was settling down to
confidence?  I like a fight as well as any man; but I
don't believe in fighting for mere fighting's sake, when
there are so many chances for a scrimmage with something
to be gained.  It ain't good business.  The first
thing we know, the public is going to have some things
impressed on it so deeply that even its rotten bad
memory will hold the stamp."

"I agree with you," said Armstrong.  "I love
peace, myself.  But I don't believe in laying down
arms while the other fellow is armed to the teeth, and
hiding in the bushes before my very door."

"That means me, eh?" inquired Atwater cheerfully.

"That means you," said Armstrong.  "And it
isn't of any use for you to call out from the bushes
that you've gone away and are back at your plowing."

"But I haven't gone away," replied Atwater; "I'm
still in the bushes.  However, I'm willing to go.

"On what condition?"

"Give us the two first vice-presidents of the O.A.D.
and the chairmanship of the Finance Committee."

That meant practical control.  Armstrong knew
that his worst anticipations were none too gloomy.
"And if we don't?" said he.

"Our people have been collecting inside facts
about the O.A.D., about its management ever since
you came on to take old Shotwell's place—poor old
Shotwell!  If we are not put in a position where we
can bring about reforms in your management and a
better state of affairs, we'll have to take the only other
alternative.  We have the arrangements made to fire
a broadside from four newspapers to-morrow morning.
And we've got it so fixed that any return fire you
might make would get into the columns of only two
newspapers—and one of them would discredit you
editorially.  Also, we will at the same time expose
your committee."  Atwater set out this programme
with the frankness of a large man of large affairs
to one of his own class, one with whom evasions,
concealments, and circumlocutions would be waste of
time.

Armstrong smiled slightly.  "Then it's war?" he said.

"If you insist."

"You know we've got the governor and the
attorney-general?"

"But we've got the press, practically all respectability,
and a better chance with the Grand Jury and
the judges."

Armstrong gazed reflectively into space.  "A
good fight!" he said judicially.  "If I were a very
rich man I should hesitate to precipitate it.  But,
having nothing but my salary—and a *good, clean,
personal* record—I think I'll enjoy myself.  I'll not try
to steal the credit of making the fight, Mr. Atwater.
I'll see that you get all the glory that comes from
kicking the cover off hell."

"Speaking of your personal record," said Atwater
absently.  "Let me see, you were in the A. & P. bond
syndicate, in the little steel syndicate last spring, in
two stock syndicates a couple of months ago.  Your
profits were altogether $72,356—I forget the odd
cents.  And they tell me you've sworn to three reports
that won't stand examination."

Armstrong lifted his eyebrows, drew at his cigar
awhile.  "I see you've been looking me up," he said,
unruffled apparently.  "Of course," he went on, "I
shouldn't expect to escape an occasional shot.  But
they'd hardly be noted in the general fusillade.  The
Universal has been a mere shell ever since you used
it, in that traction reorganization which failed—I've
got a safe full of facts about it.  And Morris tells me
he can have mobs trying to hang Trafford and his
board of directors for their doings in the Home Defender."

Atwater smiled grimly.  "I'm sorry to say,
Armstrong, we'd concentrate on you.  Several of the
strong men look on you as a dangerous person.  They
don't like new faces down in this part of the town,
unless they wear a more deferential expression than
yours does.  Personally, I'd miss you.  You're the kind
of man I like as friend or as foe.  But I couldn't
let my personal feelings influence me or oppose the
advice of the leading men of finance."

"Naturally not," assented Armstrong.

"I've got to be off now," continued Atwater, rising.

"So have I," said Armstrong.

They went to the street door of the building,
Atwater holding Armstrong by the arm.  There,
Armstrong put out his hand.  "Good-by, Mr. Atwater,"
he said; "I'll meet you at Philippi."

"Think it over, young man, think it over," said
Atwater, a friendly, sad expression in his handsome,
kind eyes.  "I don't want to see you come a nasty
cropper—one that'll make you crawl about with a
broken back the rest of your life.  Put off your
ambitions—or, better still, come in with us.  We'll do
more for you than you can do for yourself."

"Thank you," replied Armstrong ironically.

"Consult with your people.  The governor has almost
weakened, and I'm sure Morris will fall in line
with whatever you do."

"You've got my answer," said Armstrong, unruffled
in his easy good nature.  "And I'll tell you,
Mr. Atwater, that if you do take the cover off hell,
I'll see that it isn't put on again until you've had a
look-in, at least."

"You know the situation too well to imagine you
can win," urged Atwater.  "You must be thinking I'm
bluffing."

"Frankly, I don't know," replied Armstrong.
"As you will lose so much and I so little, I rather
believe you are."

"Put that idea out of your mind," said Atwater;
and now his face, especially his eyes, gave Armstrong
a look full into the true man, the reckless and
relentless tyrant, with whom tyranny was an instinct
stronger than reason.

"I have," was Armstrong's quiet answer.

"Then—you agree?"

Armstrong shook his head, without taking his eyes
off Atwater's.

Atwater shrugged his shoulders.

"Fallen women have been known to reform," said
Armstrong.  "But there's no recorded case of a fallen
man's reforming.  I find nothing to attract me,
Atwater, in the lot of the most splendid of these male
Messalinas you and your kind maintain in such luxury
as officials, public and private.  I belong to
myself—and I shall continue to belong to myself."

Atwater's smile was cynical; but there was the cordiality
of respect in the hand clasp he abruptly forced
on Armstrong, as he parted from him.





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.. _`"THE WOMAN BORIS LOVED"`:

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   \XXIII

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   "THE WOMAN BORIS LOVED"

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At last Neva had made a portrait she could look
at without becoming depressed.  For the free
workman there is always the joy of the work itself—the
mingling of the pain which is happiness and the
happiness which is pain, that resembles nothing so much
as what a woman experiences in becoming a mother.
But, with the mother, birth is a climax; with the
artist, an anti-climax.  The mother always sees that her
creation is good; her critical faculty is the docile echo
of her love.  With the artist, the critical faculty must
be never so mercilessly just as when he is judging
the offspring of his own soul; he looks upon the
finished work, only to see its imperfections; how woefully
it falls short of what he strove and hoped.  The joy
of life is the joy of work—the prize withers in its
winner's hand.

After her first year under Raphael, Neva's portraits
had been successful—more successful, perhaps,
than they would have been if she had had to succeed
in order to live.  She suspected that her work was
overpraised; Raphael said not, and thought not, and
his critical faculty was so just that neither vanity nor
love could trick it.  But when she finished the
portrait of Narcisse—Narcisse at her drawing table, her
face illumined from within—her eyes full of dreams,
one capable yet womanly hand against her smooth,
round cheek, the background a hazed, mysterious
mirage of fairylike structures—when this portrait was
done, Neva looked on it and knew that it was good.
"It might be better," said she.  "It is far, far from
best—even *my* best, I hope.  But it is good."

She did not let her master see it until she had made
the last stroke.  Theretofore he had always said some
word of encouragement the moment he looked at any
of her work submitted to him.  Now, he stood silent,
his eyes searching for flaws, instead of for merits.
There was no mistaking the meaning of that criticism;
Neva thrilled until she trembled.  It was the happiest
moment of her life.

"I guess you've hit it, this time," he said at length.
"Worse work than that has lived—on its merits."

"I'm afraid I'll never be able to do it again," she
sighed.  "It seems to me an accident."

"And so it was," replied he.  "So is all inspired
work.  Yes, it's an accident—but that kind of
accidents happen again and again to those who keep good
and ready for good luck."  He turned and, almost
forgetting the woman in the artist, put his hand
affectionately, admiringly, on her shoulder.  "And
you—my dear—you have worked well."

"Not so well as I shall hereafter," replied she.
"I've been discouraged.  This will put heart into me."

He smiled with melancholy.  "Yes—you'll work
better.  But not because you're less discouraged.  This
picture gives you pleasure now.  Six months hence it
will be a source of pain every time you think of it.
There's a picture I did about twelve years ago that has
stretched me on the rack a thousand times.  I never
think of it without a twinge.  Why?  Because I feel
I've never equaled it since.  They say I have—say it's
far inferior to my later work.  But I know—and it galls."

The bell rang and presently Molly appeared with
Raphael's man-of-all-work carrying a large canvas,
covered.  "Ah—here it is!" cried Boris, and when the
two servants were gone, he said to Neva: "Now, shut
your eyes, and don't open them till I tell you."

A few seconds, then he cried laughingly, "Behold!"  She
looked; it was a full-length portrait of
herself.  She was entering a room, was holding aside a
dark purple curtain that was in daring, exquisite contrast
with her soft, clinging, silver-white dress, and the
whiteness of her slender, long, bare arms.  The darkness
in which her figure, long and slim and slight, was
framed, the flooding light upon it as if from it, the
exceeding beauty of her slender face, of her dreaming,
dazzled eyes, all combining to suggest a soul, newly
awakened from a long, long sleep, and entering life,
full equipped for all that life has for a mind that can
think and a heart that can love and laugh and
weep—  It was Neva at her best, Boris at his best.

He looked from the portrait to her, and back
again.  "Not right," he muttered discontentedly.
"not yet.  However, I'll touch it up here."  Then to
her, "I want a few sittings, if you'll take the trouble
to get out that dress."

She was gazing at his work with awe; it did not
seem to her to be herself.  "It is finished, now," said
she to him.

"It will never be finished," he replied.  "I shall
keep it by me and work at it from time to time."  He
stood off and looked at it lovingly.  "You're mine,
there," he went on.  "All mine, young woman."  And
he took one of her long brushes and scrawled "Boris"
across the lower left corner of the canvas.  "It shall
be my bid for immortality for us both.  When you've
ceased to belong to yourself or anyone, when you shall
have passed away and are lost forever in the abyss of
forgotten centuries, Boris's Neva will still be Boris's.
And men and women of races we never dreamed of will
stand before her and say, 'She—oh, I forget her name,
but she's the woman Boris loved.'"

A note in his mock-serious tone, a gleam in his
smiling gaze made the tears well into her eyes; and
he saw them, and the omen put him in a glow.  In
his own light tone, she corrected, "*A* woman Boris
*fancied*."

"*The* woman Boris *loved*," he repeated.  "The
woman he was never separated from, the woman he
never let out of his sight.  There are two of you,
now.  And I have the immortal one.  What do *you*
think of it?"

"There's nothing left for the mortal one but to
get and to stay out of sight.  No one that once
saw your Neva would take much interest in mine."

"It's a portrait that's a likeness," said he.  "With
you, the outside happens to be an adequate reflection
of the inside."  And he smiled at her simplicity, which
he knew was as unaffected as it always is with those
who think little about themselves, much about their
surroundings.

"I wish I could see it," she said wistfully.

"You can see it in the face of any man who
happens to be looking at you."

But she had turned to her portrait of Narcisse
and was eying it disdainfully.  "I must hide that,"
she went on, "as long as yours is in this room.  How
clumsy my work looks—how painstaking and
'talented.'"  She wheeled it behind a curtain.

"None of that!  None of that!" he protested
severely.  "Never depreciate your own work to
yourself.  You can't be like me, nor I like you.  Each
flower its own perfume, each bird its own song.  You
are a painter born; so am I.  No one can be more."

"I know, I know," she apologized.  "I'm not as
foolishly self-effacing as when you first took me in
hand, am I?"

"You make a braver front," replied he, "but
sometimes I suspect it's only a front.  Will you give
me a sitting this afternoon?"

"I'll change to that dress, and tell Molly not to let
anyone in."

She had been gone about ten minutes when the bell
rang again.  Boris continued to busy himself with
paints and brushes until he caught Armstrong's voice.
He frowned, paused in his preparations, and listened.

"Is Miss Genevieve at home?" Armstrong was saying.

To Boris's astonishment, he heard the old woman
answer, in a tone which did not conceal her dislike for
the man she was addressing, "Yes, sir.  Go into the
studio.  She will be in shortly."

Armstrong entered, to find himself facing Raphael's
most irritating expression—an amused disdain,
the more penetrating for a polite pretense of
concealment.  "Come in, Mr. Armstrong," cried he.  "But
you mustn't stay long, as we're at work."

"How d'ye do," said Armstrong, all but ignoring
him.  "Sorry to annoy you.  But don't mind me.  Go
right on."  And he began to wander about the
room—Raphael had thrown a drape over his picture of
Neva.  The minutes dragged; the silence was oppressive.
Finally Armstrong said, "Miss Carlin must be
dressing."

"Beg pardon?" asked Boris, as if he had not heard.

"Nothing," replied Armstrong.  "Perhaps I was
thinking aloud."

Silence again, until Raphael, in the hope of inducing
this untimely visitor to depart, said, "Miss Carlin
is getting ready for a sitting."

"You are painting her portrait?"

"Yes."

"That will be interesting.  I'd like to see how it's
done.  I'll sit by quite quietly.  You won't mind me."

"I'm afraid you'll have to go," replied the painter.
"I'd not be disturbed, but a spectator has a disastrous
effect on the sitter."

"I see," said Armstrong.  "Well, I'll wait until
she comes.  Are you just beginning?"

"No," replied Raphael curtly.

"Is that the portrait?" asked Armstrong, indicating
the covered canvas.

Boris hesitated, suddenly flung off the cover.

"Ah!" exclaimed Armstrong, under his breath,
drawing back a step.

He gazed with an expression that interested Boris
the lover even more than Boris the student and painter
of human nature.  Since the talk with Atwater,
Armstrong had been casting this way and that, night and
day, for some means, any means, to escape from the
sentence the grandee of finance had fixed upon him;
for he had not even considered the alternative—to
strike his flag in surrender.  But escape he could not
contrive, and it had pressed in upon him that he must
go down, down to the bottom.  He might drag many
with him, perhaps Atwater himself; but, in the depths,
under the whole mass of wreckage would be himself—dead
beyond resurrection.  At thirty a man's reputation
can be shot all to pieces, and heal, with hardly a
scar; but not at forty.  Still young, with less than half
his strength of manhood run, he would be of the
living that are dead.  And he had come to see Neva for
the last time, after fighting in vain against the folly
of the longing—of yielding to the longing, when
yielding could mean only pain, more pain.

And now that he had weakly yielded, here was this
creation of the genius who loved her, to put him quite
down.  He was like one waking to the sanity of reality
from a dream in which he has figured as all that he
is not but longs to be.  "Even if there had been no
one else seeking her," he said to himself, "what hope
was there for me?  And with this man loving her—  Whether
she loves him as yet or not, she will, she must,
sooner or later."  Beside the power to evoke such
enchantment as that which lived and breathed before him,
his own skill at cheating and lying in order to shift the
position of sundry bags of tawny dirt seemed to him
so mean and squalid that he felt as if he were
shrinking in stature and Raphael were towering.  At last,
he was learning the lesson of humility—the lesson that
is the beginning of character.

"I'll not wait," said he, in a voice that smote the
heart of Boris, the fellow being sensitive to feeling's
faintest, finest note.  "Say, please, that I had to go."

Raphael astonished himself by having an impulse of
compassion.  But he checked it.  "He'd better go,"
he said to himself.  "Seeing her would only increase
his misery."  And he silently watched Armstrong move
heavily toward the door into the hall.  The big
Westerner's hand was on the portière and his sad gray eyes
were taking a last look at the picture.  The faint
rustle of her approach made him hesitate.  Before he
could go, she entered.  She was not in the silver-white
evening dress Raphael expected, but in the house dress
she was wearing when he came.

"I'm just going," Armstrong explained.  "I
shan't interrupt your sitting."

"Oh, that's off for to-day," replied she.  "Now
that I've had the trouble of changing twice on your
account, you'll have to stop awhile.  Morning is better
for a sitting, anyhow.  We shouldn't have had more
than half an hour of good light."

Boris was tranquilly acquiescent.  "To-morrow
morning!" he said, with not a trace of irritation.

"If you can come at noon."

"Very well."

He covered the picture, which had been quite
forgotten by all three in the stress of the meeting of
living personalities.  He had a queer ironic smile as he
pushed it back against the wall, took up his hat and
coat.

"You're not going," she objected.

His face shadowed at her tone, which seemed to him
to betray a feeling the opposite of objection.  "Yes,"
said he—"since I can't do this, I must do something
else.  I haven't the time to idle about."

She colored at this subtle reflection upon her own
devotion to work.  All she said was, "At noon
to-morrow, then.  And I'll be dressed and ready."

When he heard the outer door close Armstrong
said, "I understand now why you like him."  He was
looking at the draped easel with eyes that expressed
all he was thinking about Neva, and about Neva and
Boris.

"You liked the picture?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied.  And there he stopped; his
expression made her glance away and color faintly.

"What's the trouble?" she inquired with friendly
satire.  "Have you lost a few dollars?"

He lowered his head.  "Don't," he said humbly.
"Please—not to-day."

As he sat staring at the floor and looking somewhat
shorn, yet a shorn Samson, she watched him, her
expression like a veil not thick enough to hide the fact
that there is emotion behind it, yet not thin enough
to reveal what, or even what kind of, emotion.
Presently she went toward the curtain behind which she
had put her portrait of Narcisse.  "I don't think I've
ever shown you any of my work, have I?" said she.

"No, but I've seen—almost everything."

"Why, you never spoke of it."

"No," he said.  Then he added, "I've always hated
your work—not because it was bad, but because it
was good."

She dropped her hand from the curtain she had
been about to draw aside.

"Let me see it," said he.  "All that doesn't
matter, now."

She brought out the portrait.  He looked in
silence—he had hid himself behind that impenetrable
stolidity which made him seem not only emotionless but
incapable of emotion.  When he took his gaze from the
picture, it was to stare into vacancy.  She watched
him with eyes shining softly and sadly.  As he
became vaguely conscious of the light upon the dark
path and stirred, she said with irresistible gentleness,
"What is it, Horace?"

"Blues—only the blues," replied he, rousing
himself and rising heavily from his chair.  "I must go.
I'll end by making you as uncomfortable as I am
myself.  In the mood I'm in to-day, a man should hide
in his bed and let no one come near him."

"Sit down—please," said she, touching his arm in
a gesture of appeal.  She smiled with a trace of her
old raillery.  "You are more nearly human than I've
ever seen you."

He yielded to the extent of seating himself
tentatively on the arm of a chair.  "Human?  Yes—that's
it.  I've sunk down to where I think I'd almost be
grateful even for pity."  The spell of good luck, of
prosperity without reverse, that had held him a mere
incarnate ambition, was broken, was dissolving.

She seated herself opposite, leaned toward him.
"Horace," she said, "can I help you?" And so
soothing was her tone that her offer could not have
smarted upon the wound even of a proud man less
humbled than he.

"It's nothing in which you could be of the slightest
assistance," replied he.  "I've got myself in a
mess—who was ever in a mess that wasn't of his own
making?  I jumped in, and I find there's no jumping
out.  I might crawl out—but I never learned that
way of traveling, and at my age it can't be learned."

"Whatever it is," she said, very slow and deliberate,
"you must let me help you bear it."

In the silence that followed, the possible meaning
of her words penetrated to him.  He looked at her in
a dazed way.  "What did you say—just now?" he asked.

"No matter what it is," she repeated, "we can
and will bear it together."

"Does that mean you *care* for me?" he asked, as
if stunned.

"It means I am giving you the friendship you
once asked," was her answer, in the same slow, earnest
way.

"Oh," he said.  Then, as she colored and shrank,
"I didn't mean to hurt you.  Yes, I want your friendship.
It's all—it's more than I've the right to ask,
now.  You did well to refuse me, when I wanted you
and thought I had something to give in return."

"You didn't want *me*," she replied.  "You wanted
only what almost any man wants of almost any woman.
And you had nothing to give me in return—for,
I don't want from any man only what you think
is all a man ought to give a woman, or could give
her.  I am like you, in one way.  I want all or
nothing."

"Well—you'd get nothing, now, from me," said he
with stolid bitterness.  "I'm done for.  I wouldn't
drag you down with me, even if you'd let me."  And
he seized his hat and strode toward the door.  But
she was before him, barring the way.  "Drag me
down!" she exclaimed.  "A few months ago, when you
asked me to marry you—then you did want to drag
me down.  The name of wife doesn't cover the shame
of the plaything of passion.  Now——"

His stern face relaxed.  He looked down at her
doubtfully, longingly.  It seemed to him that, if he
were to try now, if he were to ask of her pity what
she had denied to his passion in his strength and pride,
he might get it.  The perfume of her bright brown
hair intoxicated him; his whole body was inhaling her
beauty, which seemed to be flowing like the fumes of
ecstasy itself through her delicate, almost diaphanous
draperies of lace and silk and linen.  She had offered
only friendship, but passion was urging that she would
yield all if he would but ask.  All!  And what would
be the price?  Why, merely yielding to Atwater.  He
need not tell her until he had made terms with him,
had secured something of a future materially,
perhaps a great future, for he could make himself most
useful to Atwater——

"No matter what it is," she said, "you can count on me."

—Yes, most useful to Atwater; and all would be
well.  Trick her into marrying him—then, compromise
with Atwater—and all would be well.  He thought he
was about to stretch out his arms to take her, when
suddenly up started within him the will that was his
real self.  "I can't do it," he cried roughly.  "Stand
away from the door!"

"Can't—do—what?" she asked.

"Can't give in to Atwater."  Rapidly he gave
her an outline of the situation.  Partly because he
abhorred cant, partly because he was determined not
to say anything sounding like an appeal for her
admiration and sympathy, he carefully concealed the real
reasons of pride and self-respect that forbade him to
make terms with Atwater.  "I won't bend to any
man," he ended.  "I may be, shall be, struck down.
But I'll never kneel down!"

She seemed bewildered by the marshy maze of
trickery through which his explanation had been
taking her.  "It seems to me," she urged, "that if you
don't make terms with Mr. Atwater, don't return to
what you originally agreed to do, it'll mean disgrace
you don't deserve, and injury to the men who have
stood by you."

"So it will," was his answer in a monotonous,
exasperating way.  "Nevertheless—"  He shrugged his
shoulders—"I can't do it.  I've always been that
way.  I don't know, myself, till the test comes, what
I may do and what I may not do."

Her eyes lowered, but he thought he could see and
feel her contempt.  She left the door, seated herself,
resting her head on her arms.  He shifted awkwardly
from one leg to the other.  He felt he had accomplished
his purpose, had done what was the only decent
thing in the circumstances—had disgusted her.  It was
time to go.  But he lingered.

She startled him by suddenly straightening herself
and saying, or rather beginning, "If you really loved
me——"

He, stung with furious anger, made a scornful
gesture.  "Delilah!" he cried.  "It's always the same
story.  Love robs a man of his strength.  You would
use love to tempt me to be a traitor to myself.  Yes,
a traitor.  I haven't much morality, or that sort of
thing.  But I've got a standard, and to it I must hold.
If I yielded to Atwater, I should go straight to hell."

"Ah," she exclaimed, as if the clouds had suddenly
opened, "then you are right, Horace.  You must not
yield!  Why did you frighten me?  Why didn't you
say that before?  Why did you pretend it was mere
stubbornness?"

"Because that's what it is—mere stubbornness.
Stubbornness—that's my manhood—all the manhood
I've got.  I grant terms—I do not accept them."

His manner chilled, where his words would have had
small effect.  And it conveyed no impression of being
an assumed manner; on the contrary, the cold,
immovable man before her seemed more like the
Armstrong she had known than the man of tenderness and
passion.  Her words were braver than her manner, and
more hopeful, as she said, "You can't deceive me,
Horace.  It must be that it is impossible to make honorable
terms with Atwater."

"As you please."

"You are, for some reason, trying to drive away
my friendship.  Your pride in your own
self-sufficience——"

"You force me to be perfectly frank," he interrupted.
"My love for you is nothing but a passion.
It has been tempting me to play the traitor to myself.
I caught myself in time.  I stand or fall alone.  You
would merely burden and weaken me."

She sat still and white and cold.  Without looking
at her, he, in a stolid, emotionless way, and with
a deliberation that seemed to have no reluctance in it,
left her alone.

"Horace!" she cried, starting up, as the portière
dropped behind him.

The only answer was the click of the closing
outside door.  She sank back, stared in a stupor at the
shrine which the god had visited after so many
years—had visited only to profane and destroy.





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.. _`NEVA SOLVES A RIDDLE`:

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   \XXIV


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   NEVA SOLVES A RIDDLE

.. vspace:: 2

Next morning she sent Boris a note asking him
not to come until afternoon.  When he entered the
studio he found her before the blazing logs in the big
fireplace, weary, depressed, bearing the unbecoming
signs of a sleepless night and a day crouched down in
the house.  "We must go and walk this off," said he.

"No," replied she listlessly.  "Nothing could induce
me to dress."

He lit a cigarette, stretched himself at ease in a big
chair opposite her.  "You have had bad news—very
bad news."

"I feel as if I had been ill—on the operating
table—and the cocaine were wearing off."

"Armstrong?"

Her answer was the silence of assent.

"When you told Molly not to let anyone in, yesterday,
you excepted him?"

"Yes."

"I thought it over afterwards and decided that
must be so."  Several reflective puffs at the cigarette.
Then, not interrogating, but positively, "You care for
him."

"Do I?" she said, as if the matter were doubtful
and in any event not interesting.

Boris drew a long breath.  "That's why I've been
unable to make a beginning with you.  I ought to have
seen it long ago, but I didn't—not until yesterday—not
until I had solved the riddle of his being able to
get in."

"That's rather a strong conclusion from such a
trifling incident."

"Proof is proof enough—to a discerning mind,"
replied he.  A pause, she staring into the fire, he
studying her.  "Strange!" he went on, suspiciously
abstract and judicial.  "He's a man I'd have said you
couldn't care for."

"So should I," said she, to herself rather than to him.

He was more astonished and interested than he let
appear.  "There's no accounting for caprices of the
heart," he pursued.  "But it's a fairly good rule that
indifference is always and hugely inflammatory—provided
it conveys the idea that if it were to take fire,
there would be a flame worth the trouble of the
making."

She made no comment.

"And you came on here to win him back?"

"Did I?"

"A woman always does everything with a view to
some man."  He smiled in cheerful self-mockery.
"And I deluded myself into believing you thought
only of art.  Yes, I believed it.  Well—now what?"

"Nothing," she said drearily.  "Nothing."

"You won, and then discovered you didn't care?"

"No."  She made a gesture that suggested to him
utter emptiness.  "I lost," she said, as her hands
dropped listlessly back to her lap.

Boris winced.  Usually a woman makes a confession
so humiliating to vanity, only to one whom,
however she may trust and like him, she yet has not the
slightest desire to attract.  Then he remembered that
it might have a different significance, coming from her,
with her pride so large and so free from petty vanity
that the simple truth about a personal defeat gave her
no sense of humiliation.

"I don't know what to do next," she continued,
thinking aloud.  "I seem to have no desire to go on,
and, if I had, there doesn't seem to be any path to go
on upon.  You say I care for him.  I don't know.  I
only know I seem to have needed him—his friendship—or,
rather, my friendship for him."

Boris smiled cynically.  But her words impressed
him.  True friendship was, as a rule, impossible
between women and men; but every rule has exceptions,
and this woman was in so many other ways an exception
to all the rules that it might be just possible
she had not fallen in love with Armstrong's strength
of body and of feature and of will.  At any rate, here
was a wound, and a wound that was opportunity.  The
sorer the heart, the more eagerly it accepts any
medicine that offers.  So Boris suggested, with no
apparent guile in his sympathy, "Why not go abroad for
a year—two years?  We can work there, and perhaps—I
can help you to forget."  Her expression made him
hasten to add, "Oh, I understand.  I'm merely the
artist to you."

"*Merely* the artist!  It's because you are 'merely
the artist' that I could not look on you as just a man."

Boris's smile was sardonic.  "The women the men
respect too highly to love!  The men the women
revere too deeply for passion!  Poor wretches."  The
smile was still upon his lips as he added, "Poor, lonely
wretches!"  But in his eyes she saw a pain that made
her own pain throb in sympathy.

"We are, all, alone—always," said she.  "But
only those like you are great enough to realize it.  I
can deceive myself at times.  I can dream of perfect
companionship—or the possibility of it."

"But not with me?"

"I don't trust you—in that way," she replied.
"I estimate your fancy for me at its true value.  You
see, I know a good deal of your history, and that
has helped me to take you—not too seriously as a
lover."

"How you have misread!" said he, and no one
could have been sure whether he was in earnest or not
under the manner he wore to aid him in avoiding what
he called the colossal stupidity of taking oneself
solemnly.  "I'm astonished at your not appreciating
that a man who lives in and upon his imagination can't
be like your sober, calculating, bourgeois friends who
deal in the tangible only.  Besides, since I've had you
as a standard, my imagination has been unable to cheat
me.  I've even begun to fear I'll never be able to put
you far enough into the background to become
interested again."

As he thus brought sharply into view the line of
cleavage between their conceptions of the relations of
men and women, she drew back coldly.  "I don't
understand your ideas there," said she, "and I don't like
them.  Anyone who lives on your theory fritters away
his emotions."

"Not at all.  He makes heavy investments in education.
He accumulates a store of experience, of
appreciation, of discrimination.  He learns to
distinguish pearl from paste.  It's the habit of women of
your kind to become offended if men tell them the
honest truth....  Doubtless, Armstrong——"

"Don't!  I don't care to hear."

"You interrupt too quickly.  I question whether
women interest him at all, he's so busy with his
gambling.  Sensible man, happy man—to have a passion
for inanimate things.  What I was about to say is
that you women, with all your admiration for strength,
are piqued and angered by the discovery that a man
who is worth while is stronger than any of his
passions, even the strongest, even love."

"When a woman gives, she gives all."

"Not a woman such as you are.  And that's why
I know you will recover, will go on, the stronger and,
some day, the happier for it.  The broken bone, when
it has healed, is stronger than one that has never been
broken—and the broken heart also.  The world owes its
best to strong hearts that have been broken and have
healed."  He let her reflect on this before he repeated,
"You should go abroad."

"Not yet—not just yet."

"Soon," said he.  "It will be painful for you to
stay here—especially as the truth about him is coming
out now."

"The truth!" she exclaimed.  Her look, like a deer
that has just caught the first faint scent and sound
of alarm, warned him he had blundered.

"Oh, nothing new," replied he carelessly.  "You
know the life of shame they lead, downtown."

"But what of him?" she insisted.  She was sitting
up in her chair now, her face, her whole body, alert.

"I hear he went too far—or put a paw on prey
that belonged to some one of the lions.  So, he's going
to get his deserts.  Not that he's any worse than the
others.  In fact, he's the superior of most of
them—unless you choose to think a man who has remnants
of decent instinct left and goes against them is worse
than the fellow who is rotten through and through and
doesn't know any better."  Raphael realized he was
floundering in deeper and deeper with every word; but
he dared not stop, and so went floundering on, more
and more confused.  "You'll not sympathize with him,
when the facts are revealed.  It's all his own fault."

A long pause, with him watching her in dread as
she sat lost in thought.  Presently she came back, drew
a long breath, said, "Yes, all and altogether his own
fault."

He felt enormously relieved.  "Come abroad!" he
cried.  "Yours is simply a case of a woman's being
irritated by indifference into some emotion which, for
lack of another name, she calls love.  Come abroad and
forget it all.  Come abroad!  Art is there, and
dreams!  Paris—Italy—flowers—light—and love,
perhaps.  Come—Neva!  Do you want fame?  Art will
give you that.  Do you want love?"  Her quickened
breath, her widening, wistful eyes made him boldly
abandon the pretense that he was lingering with her
in friendship's by-path, made him strike into the main
road, the great highway.  "I will give you love, if
you'll not shut your heart against me.  You and I
have been happy together, haven't we—in our
work—happy many an hour, many a day?"

"Yes," she admitted.  "I owe you all the real
happiness I've ever had."

"Over there, with all this far away and vague—over
there, you would quite forget.  And happiness
would come.  What pictures we would paint!  What
thoughts!  What dreams!  You still have youth—all
of the summer, all of the autumn, and a long, long
Indian summer.  But no one has youth enough to waste
any of it.  Come, Neva.  Life is holding the brimming,
sparkling glass to your lips.  Drink!"

As he spoke, he seemed Life itself embodied; she
could not but feel as if soft light and sweet sound
and the intoxicating odor of summer were flooding,
billow on billow, into the sick chamber where her heart
lay aching.

"If I can," she said.  And her glance made him
think of morning sunbeams on leaping waters.  "If
I can....  What a strange, stubborn thing a sense
of duty is!"

"You're really just as far from your father here
as you would be there."

"I can't explain," said she.  "I'll think it over."

And he saw he would have to be content with that
for the present.

.. vspace:: 2

About eleven that night Armstrong, his nerves on
edge from long, incessant pacing of the cage in which
Atwater had him securely entrapped, was irritated by
a knock at his door.  "Come in!" he called sharply.

He heard the door, which was behind him, open and
close with less noise than the hall boy ever made.  Then
nothing but the profound silence again.

"Well, what is it?" he demanded, turning in his
chair—he was sitting before an open fire.

He started up, instantly recognized her, though
her figure was swathed in an opera wrap, and the lace
scarf over and about her head concealed her features
without suggesting intent.

"I was at the opera," she began.  "All at
once—just before the last act—I felt I must see you—must
see you to-night.  I knew you'd not come to me.  So,
I had to come to you."  And she advanced to the
middle of the room.  As he made no movement toward her,
said nothing, she flung aside the scarf and opened her
wrap with a single graceful gesture.  She was in
evening dress, and the upturned ermine of the collar
of her wrap made a beautiful setting for those slender
white shoulders, the firm round throat, the small,
lightly poised head, crowned with masses of bright
brown hair.

He took her hand.  It was ice.  "Come to the
fire," said he.

"I'm cold—with fright," she explained.  And then
he noted how pale she was.  "It wasn't easy to induce
the hall boy to let me up unannounced.  I told him
you were expecting me."

She stretched one hand, one slender, round, bare
arm toward the flames.  She put one foot on the
fender, and his glance, dropping from the allurement of
the slim fingers, was caught by the narrow pale-gray
slipper, its big buckle of brilliants, the web of
pale-gray translucent silk over her instep——

"You've no business here," he said angrily.  "You
must go at once."

"Not until I am warm."

He looked as helpless as he was.

"Won't you smoke—please?" she asked, after a
brief silence.

He took a cigarette from the box on the table, in
mechanical obedience.  As he was lighting it, he felt
that to smoke would somehow be a concession.  He
tossed the cigarette into the fire.  "You simply can't
stay here," he cried.

"I simply can't go," she replied, "until I am warm."

In his nervousness he forgot, lit a cigarette, felt
he would look absurd if he threw it away, continued
to smoke—sullen, impatient.

"Ever since you left, yesterday," she went on,
"I've been thinking of what you said, or, rather, of
how you said it.  And to-night, sitting there with the
Morrises, I saw through your pretenses."

He turned upon her to make rude denial.  But her
eyes stopped him, made him turn hastily away in
confusion; for they gave him a sense that she had been
reading his inmost thoughts.

"Horace," she said, "you came to say good-by."

"Ridiculous," he scoffed, red and awkward.

"Horace, look at me."

His gaze slowly moved until it was almost upon
hers, and there it rested.

"You have made up your mind to get out of the
world, if they defeat you."

He laughed noisily.  "Absurd!  I'm not a romantic
person, like your friend Boris.  I'm a plain man of
business.  We don't do melodramatic things....
Come!"  He took her scarf from the chair where she
had dropped it.  "You must go."

For answer she slipped off the cloak, deliberately
lined a chair with it, and seated herself.  "I shall stay,"
said she, "until I have your promise not to be a coward."

He looked at her with measuring eyes.  She was
very pale and seemed slight and frail; her skin was
transparent, her expression ethereal.  But the curve of
her chin, though oval and soft, was as resolute as his
own.

.. _`"'I felt I must see you—must see you at once'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-332.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'I felt I must see you—must see you at once.'"

   "'I felt I must see you—must see you at once.'"

"You asked for my friendship," she continued.
"I gave it.  Now, the time has come for me to show
that my words were not an empty phrase....
Horace, you are in no condition to judge of your own
affairs.  You live alone.  You have no one you can
trust, no one you can talk things over with."

He nodded in assent.

"You must tell me the whole story.  Bring it out
of the darkness where you've been brooding over it.
You can trust me.  Just talking about it will give
you a new, a clearer point of view."

"To-morrow—perhaps I'll come to you," he said,
his voice hushed and strained.  "But you mustn't stay
here.  You've come on impulse——"

"Where her reputation's concerned a woman never
acts on impulse.  You might not come to-morrow.  It
must be to-night."  Her voice was as strange as his
had been, was so low that its distinctness seemed weird
and ghostly.  "Come, Horace, drop your silly
melodramatics—for it's you that are acting melodrama.
Can't you see, can't you feel, that I am indeed your
friend?"

He seated himself and reflected, she watching him.
The stillness had the static terror of a room where a
soul is about to leave or about to enter the world.
It was not her words and her manner that had moved
him, direct and convincing though they were; it was
the far subtler revelation of her inmost self, and,
through that, of a whole vast area of human nature
which he had not believed to exist.  Suddenly, with
a look in his eyes which had never been there before,
he reached out and took her hand.  "You don't know
what this means to me," he said in a slow, quiet voice.
And he released her hand and went to lean his
forehead against the tall shelf of the chimney-piece, his
face hidden from her.

She did not interrupt his thoughts and his emotions
until he was lighting a fresh cigarette at the
table.  Then she said, "Now, tell me—won't you,
please?"

"It's a long story," he began.

"Don't try to make it short," urged she.  And she
settled herself comfortably.

It took him an hour to tell it; they discussed it for
an hour and a half afterwards.  Whenever he became
uneasy about the time, she quieted him by questions or
comments that made him feel her interest and forget
the clock.  At the last quarter before two, he rose
determinedly.  "I'm going to put you into a cab," said
he.  "You have accomplished all you came for—and
more—a great deal more."

She made no attempt to stay on longer.  He helped
her into her cloak, helped her to adjust the scarf so
that it would conceal her face.  They were both
hysterically happy, laughing much at little or nothing.
He rang for the elevator, then they dashed down the
stairs and escaped into the street before the car could
ascend and descend again.  At the corner where there
was a cab stand, he drew her into the deep shadow of
the entrance to the church, took both her hands
between his.  "It will be a very different fight from the
one I was planning when you came," said he.

"And you'll win," asserted she confidently.

"Yes, I'll win.  At least, I'll not lose—thanks to
you, Neva."  He laughed quietly.  "When I'm old,
I'll be able to tell how once the sun shone at
midnight and summer burst out of the icy heart of
January."

She nodded gayly.  "Pretty good for a plain business
man," said she.

Another moment and she was in the cab and away,
he standing at the curb watching with an expression
that made the two remaining cabmen grin and wink
at each other by the light of the street lamp.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TWO WOMEN INTERVENE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   TWO WOMEN INTERVENE

.. vspace:: 2

"If I could find some way of detaching Trafford
from Atwater," Armstrong had said to her as he was
explaining.  "But," he had added, "that's hopeless.
He's more afraid of Atwater than of anybody or
anything on earth—and well he may be."  Neva seized
upon the chance remark, without saying anything to
him.  She knew the Traffords well, knew therefore that
there was one person of whom his fear was greater
than of Atwater, and whose influence over him was
absolute.  Early the following morning she called the
Traffords on the telephone.  Mrs. Trafford was in the
country, she learned, but would be home in the afternoon.
Neva left a message that she wished particularly
to see her; at five o'clock she was shown into the
truly palatial room in which Mrs. Trafford always had tea.

"Narcisse has just left," said Mrs. Trafford.
"She's been rummaging for me in Letty Morris's rag
bag—you know, my husband bought it.  She has
found a few things, but not much.  Still, Letty wasn't
cheated any worse than most people.  The trash!  The
trash!"

Neva was too intent upon her purpose to think of
her surroundings that day; but she had often before
been moved to a variety of emotions, none of them
approaching admiration or approval or even tolerance,
by Mrs. Trafford's procession of halls and rooms in
gilt and carving and brocade, by the preposterous
paintings, the glaring proclamation from every wall
and every floor and every ceiling of the alternately
arid and atrocious taste of the fashionable architects
and connoisseurs to whom Mrs. Trafford had trusted.
As in all great houses, the beauties were incidental and
isolated, deformed by the general effect of coarse
appeal to barbaric love of the thing that is gaudy and
looks costly.

"You aren't going to move into Letty's house?"
said Neva absently.  She was casting about for some
not too abrupt beginning.

"Heavens, no!" protested Mrs. Trafford, in horror
and indignation.  "John bought it—some time ago.
I don't know why."  She laughed.  "But I do know
he wishes he hadn't now.  He wouldn't tell me the price
he paid.  I suspect he found out that he had made a
bad bargain as soon as it was too late.  There's some
mystery about his buying that house.  I
don't—"  Mrs. Trafford broke off.  Well as she knew Neva, and
intimate and confidential though she was with her,
despite Neva's reserve—indeed, perhaps because of
it—still, she was careful about Trafford's business.  And
Neva and Letty were cousins—not intimates or
especially friendly, but nevertheless blood relations.  "I
suppose he's ashamed of not having consulted me,"
she ended.

"How is Mr. Trafford?" asked Neva.  "I haven't
seen him for months.  He must be working very hard?"

"He *thinks* he is.  But, my dear, I found the men
out long, long ago, in their pretense of hard work.
They talk a great deal downtown, and smoke and eat
a great deal.  But they work very little—even those
that have the reputation of working the hardest.
Business—with the upper class men—is a good deal
like fishing, I guess.  They spread their nets or drop
their hooks and wait for fish.  My husband is killing
himself, eating directors' lunches.  You know, they
provide a lunch for the directors, for those that meet
every day—and give them a ten- or twenty-dollar gold
piece for eating it.  It's a huge dinner—a banquet,
and all that have any digestion left stuff themselves.
No wonder the women hold together so much better
than the men.  If the men had to wear our clothes,
what sights they would be!"

Neva returned to the business about which she had
come.  "They're having an investigating committee
down there now, aren't they?"

"Not to investigate their diet," said Mrs. Trafford.
"There'd be some sense in that.  I suppose it's
another of those schemes of the people who haven't
anything, to throw discredit on the men who do the
work of the world.  Universal suffrage is a great
mistake.  Only the propertied class ought to be
allowed to vote, don't you think so?  Mr. Trafford
says it's getting positively dreadful, the corruption
good men have to resort to, with the legislatures
and with buying elections, all because everybody can
vote."

"I've not given the subject much thought," said
Neva.  "I heard— Some one was talking about the
investigating committee—and said it was the
beginning of another war downtown."

Mrs. Trafford looked amused.  "I didn't dream
you had any interest in that sort of thing.  I don't
see how you can be interested.  I never let my
husband talk business to me."

"Usually I'm not interested," said Neva, now
fairly embarked and at ease.  "But this particular
thing was—different.  It seems, there are two factions
fighting for control of some insurance companies, and
each is getting ready to accuse the other of the most
dreadful things.  Mr. Atwater's faction is going to
expose Mr. Fosdick's, and Mr. Fosdick's is going to
expose Mr. Atwater's."

Mrs. Trafford's expression had changed.  "Neva,
you've got a reason for telling me this," said she.

"Yes," frankly admitted Neva.

"Why?"

"Because I thought you—Mr. Trafford—ought
to be warned of what's coming."

"What *is* coming?"

"I don't know all the details.  But, among other
things, there's to be a frightful personal attack on
Mr. Trafford because he is one of Mr. Atwater's
allies.  Mr. Atwater thinks, or pretends, he can prevent
it; but he can't.  The attack is sure to come."

"They couldn't truthfully say anything against
Mr. Trafford," said his wife, with a heat that was
genuine, yet perfunctory, too.  "He's human, of
course.  But I who have lived with him all these years
can honestly say that he spends his whole life in
trying to do good.  He slaves for the poor people who
have their little all invested with his company."  Neva
had not smiled, but Mrs. Trafford went on, as if she
had: "I suppose you're thinking that sounds familiar.
Oh, I know every man downtown pretends he is
working only for the good of others, to keep business
going, and to give labor steady employment, when of
course he's really working to get rich, and—  Well,
*somebody* must be losing all this money that's piling
up in the hands of a few people who spend it in silly,
wicked luxury.  Now, we have always frowned on that
sort of thing.  We—Mr. Trafford and I—set our
faces against extravagance and simply live comfortably.
He often says, 'I don't know what the country's
coming to.  The men downtown, the leaders, seem
to have gone mad.  They have no sense of responsibility.
They aren't content with legitimate profits,
but grab, grab, until I wonder people don't rise
up.'  And he says they will, though, of course, that
wouldn't do any good, as things'd just settle back and
the same old round would begin all over again.  If
people won't look after their own property, they can't
expect to keep it, can they?"

"No," assented Neva.  "Still—I sometimes wonder
that the robbing should be done by the class of
men that does it.  One would think he wouldn't need
to protect himself against those who claim to be the
leaders in honesty and honor.  It's as if one should
have to lock up all the valuables if the bishop came
to spend the night."

"There's the shame of it!" exclaimed Mrs. Trafford.
"Sometimes Trafford tells me about the men
that come here, the really fine, distinguished, gentlemanly
ones—well, if I could repeat some of the things
to you!"

"I should think," suggested Neva, "it would be
dangerous to have business dealings with such men.
If trouble came, people might not discriminate."

Mrs. Trafford caught the under-meaning in Neva's
words and tone.  She reflected a moment—thoughts
that made her curiously serious—before replying,
"Sometimes I'm afraid my husband will get himself
into just that sort of miserable mess.  He is so
generous and confiding, and he believes so implicitly in
some of those men whom I don't believe in at all.  Tell
me, Neva, are you sure—about that attack, and about
Mr. Atwater's being mistaken?"

"There isn't a doubt of it," replied Neva.
"Mr. Trafford ought not to let anything anyone says to
the contrary influence him."  And Mrs. Trafford's
opinion of her directness and honesty gave her words
the greatest possible weight.

"I'm ever so much obliged to you, dear," said she.
"It isn't often one gets a proof of real friendship in
this walk of life."

"I didn't do it altogether for your sake," replied
Neva.  "It seemed to me, from what I heard, that the
men downtown were rushing on to do things that
would result in no good and much harm and—unhappiness.
I suppose, if evil has been done, it ought to
be exposed; but I think, too, that no good comes of
malicious and vengeful exposures."

"Especially exposures that tend to make the lower
classes suspicious and unruly," said Mrs. Trafford.

Neva colored and glanced at the two strapping
men-servants who were removing the tea table.  But
Mrs. Trafford was quite unconscious.  A few years
before, when the English foreign habit of thinking and
talking about "lower classes" was first introduced, she
had indulged in it sparingly and nervously.  But,
falling in with the fashion of her set, she had become as
bold as the rest of these spoiled children of democracy
in spitting upon the parents and grandparents.  It no
longer ever occurred to her to question the meaning
of the glib, smug, ignorant phrase; and, like the rest,
she did not even restrain herself before the "lower
classes" themselves.  It was a settled conviction with
her that she was of different clay from the working
people, the doers of manual labor, that their very
minds and souls were different; the fact that they
seemed to think and act in much the same way as the
"upper classes" would have struck her, had she
thought about it at all, as a phenomenon not unlike
the almost human performances of a well-trained,
unusually intelligent monkey.  Indeed, she often said,
without being aware of the full implication of the
speech, "In how many ways our servants are like us!"

Neva went away, dissatisfied, depressed, as if she
were retreating in defeat.  She felt that she had gained
her point; she understood Mrs. Trafford, knew that
her dominant passion of spotless respectability had
been touched, that the fears which would stir her most
deeply had been aroused; Mrs. Trafford, worldly
shrewd, would put her husband through a cross-examination
which would reveal to her the truth, and would
result in her bringing to bear all her authority over
him.  And she knew that Mrs. Trafford could compel
her husband, where no force which Armstrong could
have brought to bear downtown would have the least
effect upon him.  "I think I've won," Neva said to
herself; but her spirits continued to descend.  Before
the victory, she had thought only about winning, not
at all about what she was struggling for.  Now she
could think only of that—the essential.

Like almost all women and all but a few men, Neva
was densely ignorant of and wholly uninterested in
business—the force that has within a few decades
become titanic and has revolutionized the internal as well
as the external basis of life as completely as if we
had been whisked away to another planet.  She still
talked and tried to think in the old traditional lines
in which the books, grave and light, are still written
and education is still restricted—although those lines
have as absolutely ceased to bear upon our real life
as have the gods of the classic world.  It had never
occurred to her that what the men did when they went
to their offices involved the whole of society in all its
relations, touched her life more intimately than even
her painting.  But, without her realizing it, the idea
had gradually formed in her mind that the proceedings
downtown were morally not unlike the occupation of
coal-heaver or scavenger physically.  How strong this
impression was she did not know until she had almost
reached home, revolving the whole way the thoughts
that had started as Trafford's bronze doors closed
behind her.

She recalled all Armstrong and others had told her
about the sources of Trafford's wealth—Trafford,
with his smooth, plausible personality that left upon
the educated palate an after taste like machine oil.
From Trafford her thoughts hastened on to hover and
cluster about the real perplexity—Armstrong himself—what
he had confessed to her; worse still, what he
had told her as matter-of-course, had even boasted as
evidence of his ability at this game which more and
more clearly appeared to her as a combination of
sneak-thieving and burglary.  And heavier and heavier
grew her heart.  "I have done a shameful thing," she
said to herself, as the whole repulsive panorama
unrolled before her.

She was in the studio building, was going up in the
elevator.  Just as it was approaching her landing,
Thomas, the elevator boy, gave a sigh so penetrating
that she was roused to look at him, to note his
expression.

"What is it, Thomas?" she asked.  "Can I do
anything for you?"

"Nothing—nothing—thank you," said Thomas.
"It's all over now.  I was just thinking back over it."

She saw a band of crape round his sleeve.  "You
have lost some one?" she said gently.

"My father," replied the boy.  "He died day
before yesterday.  And we had to have the money for
the funeral.  We're all insured to provide for that.
And my mother went down to collect father's insurance.
It was for a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
We'd paid in a hundred and forty on the policy, it
had been running so long.  And when my mother went
to collect, they told her they couldn't get it through
and pay it for about three weeks—and she had to have
the money right away.  So, they told her to go down
to some offices on the floor below—it was a firm that's
in cahoots with them insurance sharks.  And she went,
and they give her eighty-two dollars for the policy—and
she had to take it because we had to bury father
right away.  Only, they didn't give her cash.  They
gave her a credit with an undertaker—he's in cahoots,
too.  And it took all the eighty-two dollars, and father
was buried like a pauper, at that.  I tell you, Miss
Carlin, it's mighty hard."  His voice broke.  "Them
rich people make a fellow pay for being poor and
having no pull.  That's the way we get it soaked to us,
right and left, especially in sickness or hard luck or
death."

Neva lingered, though she could not trust herself
to speak.

"You wouldn't think," Thomas went on, "that
such things'd be done by such a company as——"

"Don't!" cried Neva, pressing her hands hysterically
to her ears.  "I mustn't hear what company it was!"

And she rushed from the car and fled into her
apartment, all unstrung.  At last, at last, she not
merely knew but felt, and felt with all her sensitive
heart, the miseries of thousands, of hundreds of
thousands, out of which those "great men" wrought their
careers—those "great men" of whom her friend
Armstrong was one!

.. vspace:: 2

Trafford reached home at half past six and,
following his custom, went directly to his dressing room.
Instead of his valet, he found his wife—seated before
the fire, evidently waiting for him.  "Is the door
closed?" she said.  "And you'd better draw the
curtain over it."

"Well, well," he cried, all cheerfulness.  "What
now?  Have the servants left in a body?"  It had been
a banner day downtown, with several big nets he had
helped to set filled to overflowing, and the fish running
well at all his nets, seines, lines, and trap-ponds.
He felt the jolly fisherman, at peace with God and
man, brimming generosity.

"I want to talk to you about that investigation,"
said his wife in a tone that cleared his face instantly
of all its sparkling good humor.

"Whatever started you in that direction?" he
exclaimed.  "Don't bother your head about it, my dear.
There'll be no investigation.  Not that I was afraid
of it.  Thank God, I've always tried to live as if each
moment were to be my last."

"Mr. Atwater is going to attack Mr. Fosdick, isn't he?"

Trafford showed his amazement.  "Why, where did
you hear *that*?"

"And he thinks Mr. Fosdick and his friends won't
be able to retort," continued Mrs. Trafford.  "Well,
he's mistaken.  They are going to retort.  And you
are the man they'll attack the most furiously."

Trafford sat down abruptly.  All the men who are
able to declare for themselves and their families such
splendid dividends in cash upon a life of self-sacrifice
to humanity, are easily perturbed by question or threat
of question.  Trafford, with about as much courage as
a white rabbit, had only to imagine the possibility of
being looked at sharply, to be thrown into inward
tremors like the beginnings of sea-sickness.

"It don't matter," continued his wife, "whether
you are innocent or not.  They are going to hold
you up to public shame."

"Who told you this?"

"Neva."

"She must have got it from the Morrises—or Armstrong."

"She came here especially to tell me, and she would
not have come if she did not know it was serious."

"They sent her here to frighten me," said Trafford.
"Yes, that's it!"  And he rose and paced the
floor, repeating now aloud and now to himself, "That's
it!  That's undoubtedly it."

"Tell me the whole story," commanded his wife,
when the limit of her patience with his childishness had
been reached.  "You need an outside point of view."

She had told Neva she never permitted Trafford to
talk business with her.  In fact, he consulted her at
every crisis, both to get courage and to get advice.
He now hastened to comply.  "It's very simple.  Some
time ago, a few of us who like to see things run
on safe, conservative lines, decided that Fosdick's and
Armstrong's management of the O.A.D. was a
menace to stability.  Armstrong and Fosdick had
quarreled.  It was Armstrong who came to us and
suggested our interfering.  I thought the man was
honest, and I did everything I could to help him and
Morris."

"Including buying Morris's house," interjected
Mrs. Trafford, to prevent him from so covering the
truth with cant that it would be invisible to her.

"That did figure in it," admitted Trafford, in
some confusion.  "Then, we found out they were
simply using us to get control of the O.A.D. for
themselves.  So we—Atwater and Langdon and
I—arranged quietly to drop them into their own trap.
We've done it—that's all.  Next week we're going to
expose them and their false committee; and the policy
holders of the O.A.D. will be glad to put their
interests in the hands of men we can keep in order.
Fosdick and Armstrong can't retaliate.  We've got the
press with us, and have made every arrangement.
Anything they say will be branded at once as malicious
lies."

"What kind of malicious lies will they tell?"

"How should I know?"  And Trafford preened,
with his small, precisely clad figure at its straightest.

"But you do know," said Mrs. Trafford slowly and
with acidlike significance.

Trafford made no reply in words.  His face, however,
was eloquent.

"You've been hypnotized by Atwater," pursued
Mrs. Trafford.  "You think him more powerful than
he is.  And—he isn't in any insurance company
directly, is he?"

"No."

"Mr. Langdon?"

"No—they keep in the background."  Trafford's
upper lip was trembling so that she could see it despite
his mustache.

"Then you'll be right out in front of the guns.
You—alone."

"There aren't any guns."

"I'm surprised at you!" exclaimed his wife.
"Don't you know Horace Armstrong better than that!"

"The treacherous hound!"

"He has his bad side, I suppose, like everybody
else," said Mrs. Trafford, who felt that it was not wise
to humor him in his prejudices that evening.  "His
character isn't important just now.  It's his ability
you've got to consider."

"Atwater's got him helpless."

"Impossible!" declared Mrs. Trafford, in a voice
that would have been convincing to him, had her words
and his own doubts been far less strong.  "You may
count on it that there's to be a frightful attack on you
next week.  Neva Carlin knew what she was about."

"There's nothing they can say—nothing that
anybody'd believe."  His whiskers and his hair were
combed to give him a resolute, courageous air.  The
contrast between this artificial bold front and the look
and voice now issuing from it was ludicrous and pitiful.

Mrs. Trafford flashed scorn at him.  "What nonsense!"
she exclaimed.  "I never heard of a big
business that could stand it to have the doors thrown open
and the public invited to look where it pleased.  I
doubt if yours is an exception, whatever you may
think."

"But the doors won't be thrown open," he pleaded
rather than protested.  "Our private business will
remain private."

"Armstrong is going to attack you, I tell you.
He's not the man to fire unless he has a shot in his
gun—and powder behind it."

"But he can't.  He knows nothing against me."  And
Trafford seated himself as if he were squelching
his own doubts and fears.

"He knows as much about the inside of your company
as you know about the inside of his.  You can
assume that."

Trafford shifted miserably in his chair.

"What reason have you to suppose that as keen a
man as he is would not make it his business to find
out all about his rivals?"

"What if he does know?" blustered Trafford.
"To hear you talk, my dear, you'd think I ran some
sort of—of a"—with a nervous little laugh—"an
unlawful resort."

"I know you wouldn't do anything you thought
was wrong," replied his wife, in a strained, insincere
voice.  "But—sometimes the public doesn't judge
things fairly."

"People who have risen to our position must
expect calumny."  He was of the color of fear and his
fingers and his mouth and his eyelids were twitching.

"What difference would it make to Atwater and
Langdon, if you were disgraced?" she urged.
"Mightn't they even profit by it?"

At this he jumped up, and began to pace the floor.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he cried.
"To put suspicion in my head against these honorable men!"

"I want you to protect yourself and your family,"
she retorted crushingly.  "The temptation to make
a little more money, or a good deal more, ought not
to lead you to risk your reputation.  Look at the men
that were disgraced by that last investigation."

"But they had done wrong."

"They don't think so, do they?  How do you know
what some of the things you've done will look like
when they're blazoned in the newspapers?"

"I'm not afraid!" declaimed Trafford, fright in
his eyes and in his noisy voice.

"No," said his wife soothingly.  "Of course,
you've done nothing wrong.  You needn't tell *me* that.
But it's just as bad to be misunderstood as to be
guilty."

During the silence which fell he paced the floor
like a man running away, and she gazed thoughtfully
into the fire.  When she spoke again it was with a
subdued, nervous manner and as if she were telling
him something which she wished him to think she did
not understand.  "One day I was driving in the East
Side, looking after some of my poor.  There was a
block—in the Hester Street market.  A crowd got
around the carriage, and a man—a dreadful, dirty,
crazy-eyed creature—called out, 'There's the wife of
the blood-sucker Trafford, that swindles the poor on
burial insurance!'  And the crowd hissed and hooted
at me, and shook their fists.  And a woman spat into
the carriage."  Mrs. Trafford paused before going
on: "I get a great many anonymous letters.  I never
have worried you about these things.  You have your
troubles, and I knew it was all false.  But——"

Her voice ceased.  For several minutes, oppressive
and menacing silence brooded over that ostentatious
room.  Its costly comforts and costlier luxuries
weighed upon the husband and wife, so far removed
from the squalor of those whose earnings had been
filched to create this pitiful, yet admired, flaunting of
vanity.  Finally he said, speaking almost under his
breath, "What would you advise me to do?"

Although she had long had ready her answer to
that inevitable question, she waited before replying.
"Not to pull Atwater's chestnuts out of the fire for
him," said she slowly.  "Stop the attack.  I've an
instinct that evil will come of it—evil to us.  Let
Armstrong alone.  If he's not managing his business
right, what concern is it of yours?  And if you try
to get it, what if, instead of making money, you lose
your reputation—maybe, more?  What does Atwater
risk?  Nothing.  What does Langdon risk?  Nothing.
What do you risk?  Everything.  That's not sensible,
is it?"

"But I can't go back on Atwater," he objected in
the tone that begs to be overruled.  "Armstrong
would attack me, anyhow, and I'd simply have both
sides against me."

She turned upon him, amazed, terrified.  "Do you
mean to say you've got no hold on Atwater?" she
exclaimed.

"I am a gentleman, dealing with gentlemen," said
he, with dignity.

She made a gesture of contempt.  "But suppose
Atwater should prove not to be a gentleman—what
then?"

"He'd hesitate to play fast and loose with me,"
Trafford now confessed.  "He owes our allied
institutions too many millions."

"Oh," she said, relieved.  Then—"And what
precaution has he taken against your deserting him?"

"None, so far as I know, except that he would
probably join in Armstrong's attack.  But, my dear,
you entirely misunderstand.  Atwater and I have the
same interests.  We——"

"I know, I know," she interrupted impatiently.
"What I'm trying to get at is how you can induce
him to come to an agreement with Armstrong.  Can
you think of no way?"

"I had never contemplated this emergency," he
replied apologetically.  His conduct now seemed to
him to have been headlong, imbecile.

"You must do something this very night," said
his wife.  "There might be a change of plan on one
side or the other.  You must see that your position,
unprotected among these howling beasts, is perilous."

At that, Trafford fell to trembling so violently
that, ashamed though he was to have any human being,
even his wife, see the coward in him, he yet could not
steady himself.  "I can offer Armstrong peace and
a voice in our company.  If he accepts, I can stop
Atwater.  I can frankly show him that I am not
prepared to withstand an attack and that it is surely
coming.  He will not refuse.  He won't dare.
Besides—"  He stopped suddenly.

"Besides—what?"

"It is upon me—upon my men—that Atwater
relies to make the attack.  He hasn't the necessary
information—at least, I don't think he has."

Mrs. Trafford gave a long sigh of relief.  "Why
didn't you say that at first?" she cried.  "All you
have to do is to put Atwater off and make terms with
Armstrong."

"Atwater is a very dangerous man to have as an enemy."

"But he's not a fool.  He'll never blame you for
saving yourself from destruction."

Neither seemed to realize how much of their secret
thought—thought not clearly admitted even to their
secret selves—was revealed in her using that terrible
word, and in his accepting it.

He glanced at his watch.  "I think I'll go now."

"Yes, indeed," said she.  "This is the best time to
catch them.  They'll be dressing for dinner."

And he hurried away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TRAFFORD AS A DOVE OF PEACE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   TRAFFORD AS DOVE OF PEACE

.. vspace:: 2

As Trafford sprang from his cab at Armstrong's
hotel, Armstrong was just entering the door.
"Mr. Armstrong!  Mr. Armstrong!" he cried, hastening
after him.

The big, easy-going-looking Westerner—still the
Westerner, though his surface was thoroughly
Easternized—turned and glanced quizzically down at the
small, prim-looking Trafford.  "Hello!  What do you
want?"

"To see you for a few minutes, if it is quite
convenient," replied Trafford, still more nervous before
Armstrong's good-natured contempt.

"A very few minutes," conceded the big man.
"I've a pressing engagement."

They went up to his apartment.  As he opened the
door, he saw a note on the threshold.  "Excuse me,"
he said, picking it up, and so precipitate that he did
not stand aside to let Trafford enter first.  In the
sitting room he turned on the light, tore open the
note and read; and Trafford noted with dismay that,
as he read, his face darkened.  It was a note from
Neva, saying that she had just got a telegram from
home, that her father was ill; she had scrawled the
note as she and Molly were rushing away to catch the
train.  He glanced up, saw Trafford.  "Oh—beg
pardon—sit down."  And he read the note again; and
again his mind wandered away into the gloom.  Once
more, after a moment or two, his eyes reminded him
of Trafford.  "Beg pardon—a most annoying
message—  Do sit down.  Have a cigar?"

"Not at present, thank you," said Trafford in his
precise way, reminiscent of the far days when he had
taught school.

"Well—what can I do for you?" inquired Armstrong,
adding to himself, "This is Atwater's first
move."  But he was not interested; his mind was on
Neva, on the note that had chilled him—"unreasonably,"
he muttered, "yet, she might have put in just
the one word—or something."

Trafford saw that he had no part of Armstrong's
attention.  He coughed.

"If you can give me—" he began.

"Yes, yes," said Armstrong impatiently.  "What
is it?  You can't expect me to be enthusiastic,
exactly, about you, you know.  I didn't expect anything
of the others; but I was idiot enough to think you
weren't altogether shameless—you, the principal owner
of the Hearth and Home!"  Armstrong's sarcasm was
savage.

"You are evidently laboring under some misapprehension,
Mr. Armstrong," cried Trafford, pulling at
his neat little beard, while one of his neat little feet
tapped the carpet agitatedly.

"Bosh!" said Armstrong.  "I know all about you.
Don't lie to me.  What do you want?  Come to the
point!"

There was a pink spot in each of Trafford's cheeks.
"I have been much distressed," said he, "at the
confusion downtown, at the strained relations between
interests that ought to be working together in harmony
for the general good."  Armstrong's frown hastened
him.  "I have come to see if it isn't possible to bring
about good feeling and peace."

"You come from Atwater?"

"No—that is—Frankly, no."

Armstrong rose with a gesture of dismissal.
"We're wasting time.  Atwater is the man.  Unless
you have some authority from him, I'll not detain you."

"But, my dear sir," cried Trafford, in a ferment
to the very depths now, because convinced by
Armstrong's manner that he was not dealing with a beaten
man but with one champing for the fray.  "You do
not seem to hear me," he implored.  "I tell you I can
make terms.  In this matter Atwater is dependent
upon me."

"You've come about the attack he's going to make
on the O.A.D.?"

"Precisely.  I've come to arrange to stop it, to
say I wish to make no attack."

"You mean, you don't wish to be attacked,"
rejoined Armstrong with a cold laugh that made
Trafford's flesh creep.  "By the time Morris gets through
with you, I don't see how you can possibly be kept
out of the penitentiary.  He has all the necessary
facts.  I think he can compel you to disgorge at least
two thirds of what you've stolen and salted away.  I
don't see where you got the courage to go into a fight,
when you're such an easy target.  The wonder is you
weren't caught and sent up years ago."

"This is strange language, very strange language,"
said Trafford in an injured tone, and not
daring to pretend or to feel insulted.  "I am
surprised, Mr. Armstrong, that you should use it in your
own house."

"I didn't ask you here.  You thrust yourself in,"
Armstrong reminded him, but his manner was less
savage.

"True, I did come of my own accord.  And I still
venture to hope that you will see the advantages of
a peaceful solution."

"What do you propose?—in as few words as possible,"
said Armstrong, still believing Trafford was
trying to trifle with him, for some hidden purpose.

"To call off our attack," Trafford answered,
"provided you will agree to call off yours.  To give
you a liberal representation in our board of
directors, including a member of the executive committee."

Armstrong was astounded.  He could not believe
that Trafford's humble, eager manner was simulated.
Yet, these terms, this humiliating surrender of assured
victory—it was incredible.  "You will have to explain
just how you happened to come here," said he, "or
I shall be unable to believe you."

The pink spots which had faded from Trafford's
cheeks reappeared.  "It was my wife," he replied.
"She heard there was to be a scandal.  She has a
horror of notoriety—you know how refined and sensitive
she is.  She would not let me rest until I had
promised to do what I could to bring about peace."

Armstrong was secretly scorning his own stupidity.
He had spent days, weeks on just this problem
of breaking up the combination against him, of
separating Trafford or Langdon from Atwater; and the
simple, easy, obvious way to do it had never occurred
to him, who dealt only with the men and disregarded
the women as negligible factors in affairs.  To
Trafford he said, "You've not seen Atwater?"

"No, but I shall go to him as soon as I have some
assurance from you."

Atwater—there was the rub.  Armstrong felt that
the time to hope had not yet come.  Still he would not
discourage Trafford.  He simply said, "I can't give
any assurance until I consult Morris."

"But, as I understand it—at least, his original
motive was simply a political ambition.  We can easily
gratify that."

"He wants fireworks—something that'll make the
popular heart warm up to him.  He has a long head.
He wants some basis, at least, in popularity, so that
he won't be quite at the mercy of you gentlemen,
should you turn against him."

"I see—I see," said Trafford.  "He was counting
on the reputation he would make as an inquisitor.  Yes,
that would give him quite a push.  But—there ought
to be plenty of other matters he might safely and
even, perhaps, beneficially, inquire into.  For instance,
there is the Bee Hive Mutual—a really infamous
swindle.  I've had dealings with many unattractive
characters in the course of my long business career,
Mr. Armstrong, but with none so repellent in every way
as Dillworthy.  He has made that huge institution a
private graft for himself and his family.  He is shocking,
even in this day of loose conceptions of honesty
and responsibility."

"Have you any facts?"

"Some, and they are at Mr. Morris's disposal.
But all he needs to do is to send for the books of the
Bee Hive.  I am credibly informed—you can rely on
it—that the Dillworthys have got so bold that they do
not even look to the books.  The grafting in that
company is quite as extensive and as open as in our
large industrial and railway corporations—and, you
know, they haven't profited by the lesson we in the
insurance companies had in the great investigation."

"Your proposal will content Morris, I think,"
Armstrong now said.  "As the Dillworthys aren't
entangled with any of the other large interests,
showing them up will not cause a spreading agitation."  He
laughed.  "There's a sermon against selfishness!
If old Dillworthy hadn't been so greedy, so determined
to keep it all in the family, he wouldn't be in this
position."

"There will be general satisfaction over his exposure,"
replied Trafford.  "And it will greatly benefit,
tone up, the whole business world."

"Really, it's our Christian duty to concentrate on
the Busy Bee, isn't it?" said Armstrong sardonically.
"Well—  Can you see Atwater to-night?"

"I'm going direct to his house.  But where shall I
find you?  You said you had an engagement."

Armstrong winced as if a wound had been roughly
set to aching.  "I'll be here," he said gruffly.

"We might dine together, perhaps?  Atwater may
be able to come, too."

"No—can't do it," was Armstrong's reply.  "But
I'll be here from half past eight on."

Trafford, so much encouraged that he was almost
serene again, sped away to Atwater's palace in Madison
Avenue.  The palace was a concession to Mrs. Atwater
and the daughters.  They loved display and had the
tastes that always accompany that passion; they,
therefore, lived in the unimaginative and uncomfortable
splendor of the upper class heaven that is
provided by the makers of houses and furniture, whose
one thought, naturally, is to pile on the cost and thus
multiply the profits.

But Atwater had part of the house set aside for
and dedicated to his own personal satisfaction.  With
the same sense of surprise that one has at the abrupt
transition of a dream from one phantasy to another
resembling it in no way except as there is a resemblance
in flat contradictions, one passed out of the great,
garish, price-encrusted entrance hall, through a door
to the left into a series of really beautiful rooms—spacious,
simple, solidly furnished; with quiet harmonies
of color, with no suggestions of mere ornamentation
anywhere.  The Siersdorfs had built and
furnished the whole house, and its double triumph was
their first success.  With the palace part they had
pleased the Atwater women and the crowd of rich
eager to display; with the part sacred to Atwater, they
had delighted him and such people as formed their
ideas of beauty upon beauty itself and not upon
fashion or tradition or outlay.  Trafford was shown into
a music room where Atwater was playing on the piano,
as he did almost every evening for an hour before
dinner.  It was a vast room, walls and ceilings paneled
in rosewood; there were no hangings, except at the
windows valances of velvet of a rosewood tint, relieved
by a broad, dull gold stripe; a few simple articles of
furniture; Boris Raphael's famous "Music" on the
wall opposite the piano, and no other picture; a huge
vase of red and gold chrysanthemums at the opposite
side of the room to balance the painting; Atwater at
the piano, in a dark red, velvet house suit, over it a
silk robe of a somewhat lighter shade of red, as the
room was not heated.

"Business?" he said, pausing in his playing, with
a careless, unfriendly glance at Trafford.

"I'll only trouble you a moment," apologized the
intruder.  His prim, strait-laced appearance gave
those surroundings, made sensuous by Boris's
intoxicatingly sensuous picture, an air of impropriety, of
immorality—like a woman in Quaker dress among the
bare shoulders, backs, and bosoms of a ballroom.

"Business!" exclaimed Atwater, rising.  "Not in
this room, if you please."

He led the way to a smaller room with a billiard
table in the center and great leather seats and benches
round the walls.  "Do you play, Trafford?  Music, I
mean."

"I regret to say, I do not," replied Trafford.

"Then you ought to get a mechanical piano.
Music in the evening is like a bath after a day in the
trenches.  Try it.  It'll soothe you, put you into a
better condition for the next day's bout.  What can I
do for you?"

"I've come about the O.A.D. matter.  Atwater,
don't you think we might lose more than we stand to
gain?"

Atwater concealed his satisfaction.  Since his talk
with Armstrong, he had been remeasuring with more
care that young man's character, and had come to the
conclusion that he was entering upon a much stiffer
campaign than he had anticipated.  Atwater's dealings
were, and for years had been, with men of large
fortune—industrial "kings," great bankers, huge
investors.  Such men are as timid as a hen with a brood.
They will fight fiercely—if they must—for their brood
of millions.  But they would rather run than fight, and
much rather go clucking and strutting along
peacefully with their brood securely about them.  To
manage such men, after one has shown he knows where the
worms are and how they may be got, all that is
necessary is inflexible, tyrannical firmness.  Their minds,
their hearts, their all, is centered in the brood;
personal emotions, they have none—that is, none that need
be taken into account.  Atwater ruled, autocratic,
undisputed.  Who would dare quarrel with such a liberal
provider of the best worms?

But Armstrong's personality presented another
proposition.  Here was a man with no fortune, not
even enough to have roused into a fierce passion the
universal craving for wealth.  He had a will, a brain,
courage—and nothing to lose.  And he, still comparatively
poor, had succeeded in lifting himself to a position
of not merely nominal but actual power.  The
misgivings of Atwater had been growing steadily.
The price of pulling down this man might too easily
be far, far beyond its profits.  "We shall have to come
together for a finish fight sooner or later—if I live,"
reasoned Atwater.  "But this is not the best time I
could have chosen.  He isn't deeply enough involved.
He isn't helpless enough.  I'm breaking my rule never
to fight until I'm ready and the other fellow isn't."

Instead of answering Trafford's pointed and
anxious question, Atwater was humming softly.  "I can't
get that movement out of my head," he broke off to
explain.  "I'm very fond of Grieg—aren't you?"

"I know about music only in the most general way.
My wife——"

"You let your women attend to the family
culture, eh?" interrupted Atwater.  "You originally
suggested this war on Fosdick and Armstrong.  By
the way, you heard the news this afternoon?
Armstrong has thrown out the whole executive staff of the
O.A.D.—at one swoop—and has put in his own
crowd."

Trafford leaped in the great leather chair in which
his small body was all but swallowed up.  "Impossible!"
he cried.  "Why, such a thing would be
illegal."

"Undoubtedly.  But—how many years would it
be before a court can pass on it—pass on it finally?
Meanwhile, Armstrong is in possession."

"That completely alters the situation," said Trafford,
in dismay.  "Atwater, it would be folly—madness!—for
us to go on, if we could make a treaty with
Armstrong."

"I don't agree with you," said Atwater, with
perfect assurance now that he saw that Trafford would
not call his bluff by acquiescing.  "Trafford, I'm
surprised; you're losing your nerve."

"Using sound business judgment is not cowardice,"
retorted Trafford.  "I owe it to my family, to
the stability of business, not to encourage a senseless,
a calamitous war."

Atwater shrugged his shoulders.  "As you please.
I feel that, in this affair, your wishes are
paramount.  But, at the same time, Trafford, I tell you
frankly, I don't like to be trifled with.  Nor does
Langdon."

"Perhaps Morris and Armstrong might be induced
to turn their attention elsewhere—say, to the Busy
Bee.  Would you not feel compensated by getting
control there?"

"Not a bad idea," mused Atwater aloud.  "Not
by any means a bad idea."  He reflected in silence.
"If you could arrange that, it would be even better
than the plan you ask me to abandon at the eleventh
hour."

"Then you agree?" said Trafford, quivering with
eagerness.

"If we can get the Busy Bee.  I've had an eye
on that chap Dillworthy, for some time."

"I am much relieved," said Trafford, rising.  His
face was beaming; there was once more harmony between
his expression and the aggressive, unbending cut
of his hair and whiskers.

Atwater looked at him sharply.  "You've seen
Armstrong," he jerked out.

Trafford hesitated.  "I thought," he said apologetically,
"it would be best to have a general talk with
Armstrong first—just to sound him."

"I understand."  Atwater laughed sarcastically.
"And may I ask, if it wasn't the news of the upset
in the O.A.D., what was it that set you to running
about so excitedly?"

Trafford gave a nervous cough.  "My wife—you
know how refined and sensitive she is—  She got wind
of the impending scandal, and, being very tender-hearted
and also having a horror of notoriety, she
urged me to try to find a peaceful way out."

"Petticoats!" said Atwater, with derision, but
tolerant.

"Not that I would have—" Trafford began to protest.

"No apology necessary.  I comprehend.  I've got
them in the house."

Trafford laughed, relieved.  "The ladies are
difficult at times," said he, "but, how would we do
without them?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," said Atwater dryly.
"I never had the good fortune of the opportunity to
try it.  What did Armstrong say, when you sounded
him?  I believe you called it 'sounding,' though I
suspect—  No matter.  What did he say?"

"I think you may safely assume the matter is
settled.  In fact, Armstrong has shown a willingness
to make peace."

"Rather!" said Atwater, edging his visitor toward
the door.  "Good night," he added in the same breath;
and he was rid of Trafford.  He went slowly back to
the piano, and resumed the interrupted symphony
softly, saying every now and then, in a half
sympathetic, half cynical undertone, "Poor Dillworthy!
Poor devil!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BREAKFAST AL FRESCO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BREAKFAST AL FRESCO

.. vspace:: 2

Armstrong sent Neva a prompt telegram of
sympathy and inquiry.  He got a telegraphed reply—her
thanks and the statement that her father was desperately
ill, but apparently not in immediate danger.  He
wrote her about the highly satisfactory turn in his
affairs; to help him to ease, he tried to dismiss herself
and himself, but at every sentence he had to stem again
the feeling that this letter would be read where he was
remembered as the sort of person it made him hot
with shame to think he had ever been.  He waited two
weeks; no answer.  Again he wrote—a lover's appeal
for news of her.  Ten days, and she answered, ignoring
the personal side of his letter, simply telling how ill
her father was, what a long struggle at best it would
be to save him.  Armstrong saw that nursing and
anxiety were absorbing all her time and thought and
strength.  He wrote a humble apology for having
annoyed her, asked her to write him whenever she could,
if it was only a line or so.

Two more increasingly restless weeks, and he
telegraphed that he was coming.  She telegraphed an
absolute veto, and in the first mail came a letter that
was the more crushing because it was calm and free
from bitterness.  "In this quiet town," wrote she,
"where so little happens, you know how they
remember and brood and become bitter.  What is past and
forgotten for us is still very vivid to him and magnified
out of all proportion.  Please do not write again,
until you hear from me."

Thus, he learned that his worst fears were justified.
If she had shown that, in the home atmosphere again,
she was seeing him as formerly, he could have
protested, argued, appealed.  But how strive against her
duty to her sick, her dying father whose generous
friendship he had ruthlessly betrayed and whose life
he had embittered?  He debated going to Battle Field
and seeing Mr. Carlin and asking forgiveness.  But
such an agitating interview would probably hasten
death, even if he could get admittance; besides, he
remembered that Frederic Carlin, slow to condemn, never
forgave once he had condemned.  "He feels toward
me as I'd feel in the same circumstances.  I have got
only what I deserve."  No judgments are so terrible
as those that are just.

The state of Armstrong's mind so preyed upon
him that it affected even his giant strength and health,
and his friends urged him to take a vacation.  He
worked only the harder, because in work alone could
he get any relief whatever from the torments of his
remorse and his baffled love.  He became morose, given
to bursts of unreasonable anger.  "Success is turning
his head," was the general opinion.  "He's getting to
be a tyrant, like the others."  In some moods, he saw
the lessons of gentleness and forbearance in the fate
his selfish arrogance had brought upon him; but it is
not in the nature of men of strong individuality and
unbroken will to practice such lessons.  The keener his
sufferings, the bitterer, the harder he became.  And
soon he began to feel that there was nearly if not
quite a quittance of the balance between him and the
man he had wronged.  He convinced himself that, if
Neva's father were dead, he could speedily win her.
"Meanwhile," he reflected, "I must take my punishment";
and with the stolid, unwhimpering endurance
of those whose ancestors have through countless
generations been schooled in the fields, the forests, and the
camps, he waited for the news that would mean the end
of his expiation.

Raphael, taking his walk in Fifth Avenue late one
afternoon instead of in Central Park, saw him in a
closed motor in the halted mass of vehicles at the
Forty-second Street crossing.  Boris happened to be
in his happiest mood.  Always the philosopher, he was
too catholic in his interests and tastes to permit
disappointment in any one direction or even in many
directions to close the other avenues to the joy of life.
There were times when he could not quite banish
the shadows which the thought of death cast over
him—death, so exasperating to men of pride and imagination
because, of all their adversaries, it alone cannot
be challenged or compromised.  But on that day,
Boris had only the sense of life, life at its best, with
the sun bright and not too warm, with the new garb
of nature and of womankind radiantly fresh, and the
whole world laughing because the winter had been
vanquished once more.  As his all-observing eyes noted
Armstrong's profile, his face darkened.  There was for
him, in that profile, rugged, stern, inflexible, a
challenge of the basis of his happiness.

In all his willful life Boris had never wanted
anything so intensely, so exclusively as he wanted Neva.
Every man who falls in love with a woman feels that
he is her discoverer, that he has a property right
securely based upon discovery.  Raphael's sense of his
right to Neva was far stronger; it was the creator's
sense.  Had he not said, "Let there be beauty and
light and capacity to give and receive love"?  And
had not these wonders sprung into existence before his
magic?  True, the beauty and the light and the power
to give and to receive were different both in kind and
in degree from what he had commanded.  But that did
not alter his right.  And this Armstrong, this coarse
savage who would take away his Galatea to serve in a
vulgar, sooty tent of barbaric commerce—  The very
sight of Armstrong set all his senses on edge, as if each
were being assailed by its own particular abhorrence.

That day the stern, inflexible profile somehow
struck into him the same chill that always came at the
thought of death with its undebatable "must."  Yet
there was in his pocket, at the very moment, warming
his heart like a flagon of old port, a long letter
from Neva, a confidential letter, full of friendly,
intimate things about herself, her anxieties, her hopes,
and fears; and she asked him to stop off on his way
to or from his lectures before the Chicago art
students.  "Narcisse is here," she wrote.  "She will be
leaving about that time, she says, and if you stop on
your way, she and you can go back together.  How
I wish I could go, too!  Not until I settled down here
did I appreciate what you—and New York—had done
for me.  Yet I had thought I did.  Do stop off here.
It will be so good to see you, Boris."

As he looked at Armstrong's profile, he laid his
hand on his coat over the letter and remembered that
sentence—"It will be so good to see you."  But the
shadow would not depart.  That profile persisted; he
could not banish it.

When he descended from the train at the Battle
Field station and saw Neva, with Narcisse beside her
in a touring car, he saw that ominous profile, plain
as if Armstrong were there, too.  This, though Neva's
welcome was radiantly bright.  "What's the matter,
Boris?" cried Narcisse, climbing to the seat beside the
chauffeur before Neva could prevent.  "Get in
beside your hostess and cheer up.  You ought to look
like a clear sunrise.  The lecture was a triumph.  I
read two whole columns of it aloud to Neva and her
father this morning.  No cant.  No hypocrisy.  They
agreed with me that your art ideas are like an island
in the boundless ocean of flap-doodle."

"My father used to sell bananas from a cart in
Chicago," said Boris, "and we lived in the cellar where
he ripened them."

Neva glanced at him with quick sympathetic
interest.  It was the first time he had happened to
speak of his origin.  "I always thought you were
born abroad," said she.

"I think not," replied he.  "I really don't know
at exactly what point I broke into the world.  Those
things matter so little.  Countries, governments,
races—they mean nothing to me.  I meet my fellow beings
as individuals."

There he caught Neva studying him with an expression
so curious that he paused.  She forestalled
his question by plunging into an animated talk about
his lecture.  He was well content to listen, enjoying
now the surroundings and now the beauty of the
woman beside him.  Both were wonderfully soothing
to him, filled him with innocent, virtuous thoughts,
made him envy, and half delude himself into fancying
he wished for himself, the joys of somnolescent,
corpulent, middle-class life—the life obviously led by
the people dwelling in these flower-embedded houses
on either side of these shady streets.  He sighed;
Neva laughed.  And he saw that she was laughing at him.

"Well, why not?" he demanded, knowing she
understood his sigh.  But before she could answer he
was laughing at himself.  "Still, I like it, for a
change," said he.  "And—" he was speaking now in
an undertone—"with you I could be happy in such
a place—always.  Just with you; not if we let these
stupid burghers in to fret me."

She laughed outright.  "I understand you better
than you understand yourself," said she.  "Change
and contrast are as necessary to you as air.  If you
had to live here, you would commit suicide or become
commonplace....  And so should I."

"Not with a husband you loved and children you
adored and a home you had created yourself.  As the
world expands, it contracts; as it contracts, it
expands.  From end to end the universe is not so vast
as such a love."

Neva, coloring deeply and profoundly moved,
leaned forward.  "I'm sorry you're missing this,"
said she, lightly to Narcisse.  "Boris is sentimentalizing
about the vine-clad cottage with children clambering."

"It's about time you quit and came in to settle
down," called Narcisse.  "A few years more and
you'll cease to be romantic.  An old beau is
ridiculous."

Boris gave Neva a triumphant look.  "Narcisse
votes yes," said he.

But they were arriving at the house.  As the motor
ran up the drive under the elms toward the gorgeous
masses of forsythia about the entrance steps, Boris's
eyes were so busy that he scarcely heard, while Neva
explained that her father was too weak to withstand
the excitement of visitors—"especially anyone
distinguished.  We're not telling him you're here.  He would
feel it his duty to exert himself."

"Distinguished!" he exclaimed.  "In presence of
these elms and this house built for all time, and these
eternal colors, how could mere mortal be distinguished?"

It was not until the next morning that he had a
chance to talk with her alone.  He rose early and went
out before breakfast.  He strolled through the woods
back of the house until he came to a pavilion with a
creek rushing steeply down past it toward Otter Lake.
In the pavilion he found Neva with a great heap of
roses in her lap, another on the table, another on the
bench.  On her bright hair was a huge garden hat, its
broad streamers of pink ribbon flowing upon her
shoulders.

She dropped her shears and watched him with the
expression in her eyes that he had surprised there, as
they were coming from the station in the motor.
"May I ask," said he, "what is the meaning of that
look?"

"Did you sleep well?" parried she.

"Without a dream."

"I don't know," replied she—"Let us have breakfast
here—you and I....  Washington!" she called.

There rose from a copse below, near the brim of
the creek, a small colored boy, barefooted, bareheaded,
with no garments but a blue shirt and a pair of blue
cotton jean trousers.  She sent him off to the house
to tell them to bring breakfast.  And soon a maid
appeared with a tray whose chief burden was a
heating apparatus for coffee and milk.

"I've heard you say you detested cold coffee," said
Neva.  "Your frown when I suggested breakfast out
here was premature."

She scattered and heaped the roses into an odorous,
dew-sprinkled mat of green and pink and white,
in the center of the rustic table.  Then she served the
coffee.  It was real coffee, and the milk was what is
called cream in many parts of the world.  "Brother
Tom has a model farm," she explained.  "These eggs
were laid this morning."

"So they were," exclaimed Boris, as he broke one.
His eyes were sparkling; all that was best in his looks
and in his nature was irradiating from him.  Her
sweet, lovely face, her delicate fresh costume, the sight
and odor of the roses, of the forest all round them,
the melody of the descending waters, and the superb
coffee, crisp rolls, and freshest of fresh eggs—  "You
criticise me for my appreciation of the sensuous side
of life, my dear friend," said he.  "But, tell me, is
there anywhere anything more delicious, more
inspiring than this breakfast?"

"I never criticised you for loving the joys of the
senses," cried she.  "Never!  We are too much alike
there."

"What happiness we could have!" exclaimed he.
"For do we not know how to make life smooth and
comfortable and beautiful, you and I?"

"Only too well," confessed she.  "I often think
of it.  But——"

He waited for her to continue.  When he saw that
she would not, but was lost in a reverie, he said, "You
promised you would think about our going abroad.
Have you thought?"

She nodded.

"You will go?"

She slowly shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I want to, but—I can't."

"Why?"

He had paused in buttering a bit of roll.  Anyone
coming up just then would have thought he was looking
at her, awaiting an answer to an inquiry after salt
or something like that.  She said: "Because I do not
love you."

He waved his knife in airy dismissal.  "A trifle!
And so easily overcome."

"Because I cannot love you, my dear."  She looked
at him affectionately.

He balanced the bit of bread before his lips.  "Not
that brotherly look, please," said he.  "It—it
hurts!"  He put the bread in his mouth.

She leaned forward and laid her hand on his.  "We
are too much alike.  You are too subtle, too nervous,
too appreciative, too changeable.  You would soon
cease to fancy you loved me.  I—it so happens—have
never begun to fancy I loved you.  That is fortunate
for us both."

"Armstrong!" he exclaimed.  And suddenly, despite
his ruddy coloring, he suggested a dark Sicilian
hate peering from an ambush, stiletto in impatient
hand.

"Don't show me that side of you, Boris," she
entreated.  "Whether it is Armstrong or not, did I not
say the fact that I don't fancy I love you is fortunate
for us both?"

"You love Armstrong," he insisted sullenly.

"How can you know that, when I don't know it
myself?" replied she.  "As I told you once before,
the only matter that concerns you is that I do not
love you."  She spoke sharply.  Knowing him so well,
she had small patience with his childish, barbaric
moods; she could not bear pettiness in a man really
and almost entirely great.  "Will you be yourself?"
she demanded, earnest beneath her smiling manner.
"How can I talk to you seriously if you act like a
spoiled, bad boy?  If you'll only think about the
matter, as I've been compelled to think about it, you'll see
that you don't really love me—that I'm not the woman
for you at all.  We'd aggravate each other's worst.
What you need is a woman like Narcisse."

"You are most kind," he said sarcastically.

"As she told you yesterday, you've got to settle
down within a few years or become absurd.  And
she——"

"It is because of the women I have known that you
will not give me yourself," he said.  "Oh, Neva, I
have never loved but you."  And in his agitation he
clasped her hands and, dropping into French, cried
with flaming eyes, "I adore you.  You are my life,
the light on my path—my star shining through the
storm.  You make me tremble with passion and with
fear.  Neva, my love, my soul——"

She snatched her hands away.  She tried to look
at him mockingly, but could not.

"Neva, my girl," he said in English again.  "Do
not wither my heart!"

"Boris," she answered gently, "I've tried to care
for you as you wish me to care.  I sent for you because
I thought I had begun to succeed.  But when I saw
you again—  I liked you, admired you, more than
ever, more than anyone.  But my dear, dear friend, I
cannot give you what you ask.  It simply will not
yield."

He became calm as abruptly as he had burst into
passion.  Taking his heavily jeweled and engraved
gold cigarette case from his pocket, he slowly
extracted a cigarette, lighted it with great deliberation,
blew out the match, blew out the lamp of the portable
stove.  "Why?" he said in a tone of pleasant
bantering inquiry.  "Please tell me why you do not and
cannot love me."

She colored in confusion.

"Do not fear lest you will offend," urged he.
"I ask impersonally.  Feminine psychology is interesting."

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"Let me help you," he persisted amiably, so
amiably that she had to remind herself of the sort
of nature she knew he had, to quell a suspicion of
treachery under his smoothness.  "Because I am
too—feminine?" he went on.

She nodded hesitatingly.  Then, encouraged by
his cynical, good-humored laugh, "Though feminine
doesn't quite express it.  There isn't enough of the
primitive man left in you for a woman of my
temperament.  You have been superrefined, Boris.  You are
too understanding, too sympathetic for a feminine
woman like me.  There are two persons to you—one
that feels, one that reasons—criticises—analyzes—laughs.
I couldn't for a moment forget the one that
laughs—at yourself, at any who respond to the you
that feels.  I suppose you don't understand.  I'm sure
I don't."

.. _`"'You are my life, the light on my path'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-376.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "'You are my life, the light on my path.'"

   "'You are my life, the light on my path.'"

"Vaguely," said he, somewhat absently.  "Who'd
suspect it?"

"Suspect what?"

"That there was this—this coarse streak in *you*—this
craving for the ultramasculine, the rude, rough,
aggressive male, inconsiderate, brutal, masterful?"

"A coarse streak," she repeated, half in assent,
half in mere reflection.

He surveyed impersonally her delicately feminine
charms, suggesting fragility even.  "And yet," he
mused aloud, "I should have seen it.  What else could
be the meaning of those sharp, even teeth—of the long
slits through which your green-gray-brown-blue eyes
look.  And your long, slim, sensitive lines——"

The impersonal faded into the personal, the Boris
that analyzed into the Boris that felt.  The appeal of
her beauty to his senses swept over and submerged his
pose of philosopher.  His eyes shone and swam, like
lights seen afar through a mist; the fingers that held
the cigarette trembled.  But, as he realized long
afterwards, he showed then and there how right she was as
to his masculinity.  For, his was the passive intensity
of the feminine, not the aggressive intensity of the
male; instead of forgetting her in the fury of his own
baffled desire and seizing her, to crush her until he
had wrung some sensation, no matter what, from those
unmoved nerves of hers, he restrained himself, hid his
emotion as swiftly as he could, turned it off with a
jest—"And I've let my coffee grow cold!"  He was
once more Boris of the boyish vanity that feared, more
than ridicule, the triumph of a woman over him.  He
would rather have risked losing her than have given
her the opportunity to see and perhaps enjoy her power.

Presently Narcisse came into view.  The lamp was
relighted; the three talked together; he was not alone
with Neva again, made no attempt to be.

.. vspace:: 2

That afternoon, just before the time for him and
Narcisse to depart, Neva took her in to say good-by
to her father—a mere shadow of a wreck of a man,
whose remnant of vitality was ebbing almost breath by
breath.  As they came from his room, it suddenly
struck Narcisse how profoundly Neva was being affected
by her father's life, now that his mortal illness
was bringing it vividly before her.  A truly noble
character moves so tranquilly and unobtrusively that
it is often unobserved, perhaps, rather, taken for
granted, unless some startling event compels attention
to it.  Neva was appreciating her father at last; and
Narcisse saw what there was to appreciate.  No human
being can live in one place for half a century without
indelibly impressing himself upon his surroundings;
Narcisse felt in the very atmosphere of the rooms he
had frequented a personality that revealed itself
altogether by example, not at all by precept; a human
being that loved nature and his fellow beings, lived in
justice and mercy.

"How much it means to have a father like yours!"
she exclaimed.

Neva did not reply for some time.  When she did,
the expression of her eyes, of her mouth, made
Narcisse realize that her words had some deeper, some
hidden meaning: "If ever I have children," she said,
"they shall have that same inheritance from their
father."  And presently she went on, "I often,
nowadays, contrast my father with the leading men
there in New York.  What dreadful faces they have!
What tyranny and meanness and trickery!  And, how
wretched!  It is hard to know whether most to pity
or to despise them."

Narcisse knew instinctively that she meant Armstrong,
and perhaps, to a certain extent, Boris also.
"We've no right to condemn them," said she.  "They
are the victims of circumstances too strong for them."

"*You* have the right," insisted Neva.  "You have
been tempted; yet, you are not like them.  You have
not let New York enslave you, but have made it your
servant."

"The temptations that would have reached my
weaknesses didn't happen to offer," replied she.  And
there she sighed, for she felt the ache of her
wound—Alois.

But it was time to go.  Neva took them to the
station; at the parting Boris kissed her hand in
foreign fashion, after his habit, with not a hint of
anything but self-control and ease at heart and mind,
not even such a hint as Neva alone would have
understood.  She bore up bravely until they were gone;
then solitude and melancholy suddenly enveloped her
in their black fog, and she went back home like a
traveler in a desert, alone and aimless.  "He didn't
really care," she thought bitterly, indifferent to her
own display of selfishness in having secretly and
furtively wished for a love that would only have brought
unhappiness to him, since, try however hard, she could
not return it.  "Does anyone care about anyone but
himself? ... If I could only have loved him enough to
deceive myself.  He's so much more worth while than—than
any other man I ever knew or ever shall know."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FORAGING FOR SON-IN-LAW`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   FORAGING FOR SON-IN-LAW

.. vspace:: 2

Narcisse had gone to Neva at Battle Field to get
as well as to give sympathy and companionship; to
get the strength to tread alone the path in which she
had always had her brother to help her—and he had
helped her most of all by getting help from her.  She
had assumed that her brother would marry some day;
she herself looked forward to marrying, as she grew
older and appreciated why children are something
beside a source of annoyance and anxiety.  But she had
also assumed that he would marry a woman with whom
she would be friends, a woman in real sympathy with
his career.  Instead, he married Amy, stunted in mind
and warped in character and withered in heart by the
environment of the idle rich.  She knew that the end
of the old life had come; and it was to get away from
the melancholy spectacle of her new brother that, two
months after his return from the honeymoon, she went
West for that visit with Neva.

"Amy has ruined him," she said, when she had been
at Battle Field long enough to feel free to open her
heart wide.  "It's only a question of time; he will
give up his career entirely."

And, like the beginning of the fulfillment of her
prophecy, there soon came a letter from him which she
showed Neva.  With much beating round the bush,
he hinted dissolution of partnership.  It gave Neva the
heartache to read, and she hardly dared look at
Narcisse.  "I'm afraid you were right in your suspicions,"
she had to admit.

"Certainly I was right," replied Narcisse.  "But
I'm not really so cut up as you think.  Nothing comes
unannounced in this world, thank heaven.  I've been
getting ready for this ever since he told me they were
engaged."

"How brave you are!" exclaimed Neva.  "I know
what you must feel, yet you can hide it."

"I'm hiding nothing," Narcisse assured her.
"I've lived a long time—much longer than my
birthdays show.  I've been making my own living since I
was thirteen—and it wasn't easy until the last few
years.  But I've learned to take life as I take weather.
There are sunny seasons, and stormy seasons, and
middling seasons.  When the sun shines, I don't
enjoy it less, but rather more, because I know foul
weather is certain to come.  And when it does come,
I know it won't last forever."  There were tears in
her eyes, but through them she smiled dauntlessly.
"And the sun *will* shine again—warm and bright and
streaming happiness."

Neva's own heart was suddenly buoyant.  "It
will—it surely will!" she cried.

"And," proceeded Narcisse, "my troubles are
trifles compared with Alois's.  I know him; I know
he's unhappy.  If ever there was a man cheated in a
marriage, that man is my poor brother.  And he must
realize it by this time."

She had guessed close to the truth.  Alois and his
bride had not been honeymooning many weeks before
he confessed to himself that he had overestimated—or,
perhaps, misestimated—her intellect.  Not that she was
stupid or ignorant; no, merely, that she lacked the
originality he had attributed to her.  He had pictured
himself doing great work under her inspiration, his
own skill supplemented by her taste and cleverness in
suggesting and designing.  He found that she knew
only what he or some book had told her, that her
enthusiasm for architecture was in large part one
of those amiable pretenses wherewith the female aids
the passions of the male to beguile him to her will.

But this discovery did not depress him.  No man
ever was depressed by finding out that his wife was
his mental inferior, though many a man has been
pitched headlong into permanent dejection by the
discovery of the reverse.  She was more beautiful than
he had thought, more loving and more lovable—and
those compensations more than made good the
vanished dream of companionship.  Soon, however, her
intense affection began to wear upon him.  Not that
he liked it less or loved her less; but he saw with the
beginnings of alarm that he was on the way to being
engulfed, that he either must devote himself entirely to
being Amy's husband or must expect to lose her.  It
was fascinating, intoxicating, to be thus encradled in
love; but it was not exactly his notion of what was
manly.

He talked of the work "they" would do, of the
fame "they" would win; she responded with rapidly
decreasing enthusiasm, finally listened without
comment.  Once, when he was expanding upon this subject,
with some projected public buildings at Washington
as the text, she suddenly threw herself into his arms,
and cried, "Oh, let Narcisse take care of those things.
We—you and I, dearest—have got only a little while
to live.  Let us be happy—happy—*happy*!"

"But you forget, you've married a poor man," he
protested.  "We've got our living to make."

"Oh—of course," said she.  "I'd hate for you
to be anything but independent."

"If I were, you'd soon lose respect for me, as I
should for myself."

"Yes—you must work," she conceded.  "But not
too hard.  You mustn't crowd *me* aside."  She clasped
her arms more tightly about his neck.  "I'd *hate* you,
if you made me second to anybody or anything.  I'm
horribly jealous, and I know I'd end by hating you."

The way to reassure her, for the moment, was
obvious and easy; and he took it.  They talked no more
of "our" work until they got back to New York.
There, it was hard for him to find time to go to the
office; for she was always wanting him to do
something with her, and as luck would have it, the things
he really couldn't get out of doing without offending
her always somehow came in office hours.  Sometimes
he had a business appointment he dared not break; he
would explain to her, and she would try to be
"sensible."  But she felt irritated—was he not her husband,
and is not a husband's first duty to his wife?

"Why do you make so many appointments just
when you know I'll need you?" she demanded.  "I
believe you do it on purpose!"

He showed her how unreasonable this was, and she
laughed at herself.  But her feeling at bottom was
unchanged.  After much casting about for some one to
blame for this, to her, obvious conspiracy to estrange
her husband from her, she fixed upon Narcisse.  "She
hates me because I took him away from her," she
thought; and when she had thought it often enough,
she was convinced.  Yes, Narcisse was trying to drift
them apart.  And she ought to be doubly ashamed of
herself, because what would the firm of A. & N. Siersdorf
amount to but for Alois?  Narcisse was, no doubt,
clever in a way—but almost anybody who had to work
and kept at it for years, could do as well.  "Why, I,
with no experience at all, did wonders down at
Overlook—better than Narcisse ever did anywhere."  Indeed,
had Narcisse really ever done anything alone?
"She has been living off Alois's brains, and she's
trying to get him back."

That was all quite clear; also, a loving and watchful
wife's duty in the circumstances.  She gave Alois
no rest until he had agreed to break partnership and
take offices alone.  "When you've got your own
offices," she cried, "what work we shall do!  You must
go down early and stay late, and I'll have an office
there, too."

So weak is man before woman on her knees and
worshipful, Alois began dimly to believe that his wife
was, in a measure, right; that Narcisse had been
something—not much, but something—of a handicap to
his genius; that her prudence and everyday practicality
had chained down his soaring imagination.  He
had no illusions as to the help Amy would give him;
there, she had not his vanity to aid her in deluding
him.  But he felt he owed it to himself to free
himself from the partnership.  Anyhow, something was
wrong; something was preventing him from doing
good work—and it was just as well to see if that
something was his sister.  "The sooner I discover just what
I am, the better," he reasoned.  And he had no
misgivings as to the event.

Narcisse made the break easy for him.  When she
came back from Neva's, she met him in her usual
friendly way, and herself opened the subject.  "I
think we'd better each go it alone," said she, as if she
had not penetrated the meaning of his letter.  "You've
reached the point where you don't want to be bothered
with the kind of things I do best.  What do you say?"

"I had thought of that, too," confessed he.  "But
I—  Do you really want it, Cis?"

"No sentiment in business," replied she in her
most offhand manner.  "If each of us can do better
alone, it'd be silly not to separate.  Anyhow, where's
the harm in trying?"

"I was going to suggest that we take offices a little
further uptown," he went on.  "We might do that,
and keep on as we are for a while."

"No.  You move; let me keep these offices.  I'm
like a cat; I get attached to places."

And so it was settled.  "Narcisse Siersdorf, Builder,"
appeared where "A. & N. Siersdorf, Builders,"
had been.  "Alois Siersdorf, Architect," appeared
upon the offices, spacious and most imposing, in a small
but extravagantly luxurious bank building in Fifth
Avenue, within a few blocks of home—"home" being
Josiah Fosdick's house.

.. vspace:: 2

Amy insisted on their living "at home" because
her father couldn't be left quite alone; and Alois sat
rent and food free; he had made a vigorous fight for
complete independence in financial matters, but
nothing had come of it—he felt that it was ridiculous
solemnly to give Amy each month a sum which would
hardly pay for her dresses.  "You are too funny
about money," she said.  "Why attach so much
importance to it?  We put it all in together, and no
doubt some months you pay more than our share, other
months less—but what of that?  You can't expect me
to bother my head with horrid accounts.  And I simply
won't have you talking such matters with the
housekeeper—and who else is there?"

Alois grumbled, but gradually yielded.  He consoled
himself with the reflection that presently his
business would pay hugely, and then the equilibrium
would be restored.  And after a while—an extremely
short while—he thought no more about the matter.
This, in face of the fact that the business did not
expand as he had dreamed.  He was offered plenty to
do at first, for he had reputation and the rich were
eager for his services.  But he simply could not find
time to attend to business; he had to leave everything,
even the making of plans, to assistants.  There were
all sorts of entertainments to which he must go with
Amy—rides, coaching expeditions, luncheons, afternoon
bridge parties, week-end visits.  And often he was
up until very late at balls; she loved to dance, and he
found balls amusing, too.  Indeed, he was well pleased
with all the gayety.  Everybody paid court to him; the
husband of an heiress, and a distinguished, a successful,
a famous man, one whose opinions in professional
matters were quoted with respect.  And as everybody
talked and acted as if he were doing well, were rising
steadily higher and higher, he could not but talk and
act and feel so, himself—most of the time.  He knew,
as a matter of theory, that success of any kind, except
in being rich, and that exception only for the
enormously rich, is harder to keep than to win, must be
won all over again each day.  But in those
surroundings he could not feel this; he seemed secure,
permanent.

It was not long before all their world, except only
her and him, knew he had practically given up the
profession of architect for that of husband.  The
outward forms of deference to the famous young
architect deceived him, enabled him to deceive himself; but
his friends, in his very presence, and just out of
earshot, often in undertones at his father-in-law's table,
were sneering or, what is usually the same thing,
moralizing.  "Poor Siersdorf!  How he has fagged
out.  Well, was there as much to him as some
people said?  And they tell me he is living off his wife."

When matters reach this pass, and when the man
is really a man, the explosion is not far off.  It came
with the first bitter quarrel he and Amy had.  She
wished him to go away with her for two months; he
wished to go, and it infuriated him against himself that
he had so far lost his pride that he could even
consider leaving his business when it needed him
imperatively.  He curtly refused to go; by degrees their
discussion became a wrangle, a quarrel, a pitched
battle.  She was the first completely to lose control of
temper.  She cast about for some missile that would
hit hard.

"What does this business of yours amount to,
anyhow?" she jeered.  "Sometimes, I can't help
wondering what would have become of you if you hadn't
married me."

She didn't mean it; she was hardly conscious that
she was saying it until the words were out.  She grew
white and shrank before the damage she knew she must
have done.  He did not, could not, answer immediately.
When he did, it was a release of all that had been
poisoning him for months.

"You think that, do you?" he cried.  "I might
have known!  You dare to think that, when you are
responsible!"

"That's manly," she retorted, eager to extricate
herself by putting him in the wrong.

He strode to her; he was shaking with fury.
"We'll not talk about what's manly or womanly.
Let's look at the facts.  I loved you, and you took
advantage of it to ruin my career, to make it
impossible for me to work, to drive away my clients.  You
have taken my reputation, my brain, my energy.  And
you dare to taunt me!  Men have killed women for less."

"Alois!" she sobbed.  "Don't frighten me.  Don't
look—speak—like that!  Oh, I'm not responsible for
what I say.  I know I've been selfish—it's all my fault.
But what does anything matter except our happiness?
Forgive me.  You know why I'm so bad tempered
now—so different from my usual self."  And the sobs
merged into a flood of hysterical tears.

The reference to her condition, to their expectations,
softened him, caused his anger at once to begin
to change into bitter shame, a shame to be concealed,
to eat, acidlike, in and in and make a wound that
would never heal, but would grow in venom until it
would torture him without ceasing.

"I don't want you to work," she wept.  "I want
you all to myself.  Ah, Alois, some time you'll appreciate
my love; you'll realize that love is better than a
career.  And for you"—sob—"to reproach me"—sob,
sob—"when I thought you were as happy as I!"  A
wild outburst of grief.

And he was consoling her, had her in his arms, was
lulling her and himself in the bright waves of the
passion which she could always evoke in him, as he in her.
Never again did she speak of his dependent position;
it always made her flesh creep and chill to remember
what she had said.  But from that time she was
distinctly conscious that he was a dependent—and she
no longer respected him.  From that time, he clearly
recognized his own position.  He thought it out,
decided to make a bold stand; but he felt he could not
begin at once.  In her condition she must not be
crossed; he must go away with her, since go she must
and go alone she could not.  He would make a new
beginning as soon as the baby was born.

.. vspace:: 2

Meanwhile, his office expenses were heavy, and the
money he had saved before he was married was gone.
He went into debt fast, terrifyingly fast.  He
borrowed two thousand dollars of Narcisse; he hoped it
would last, as usually Amy's bills were all paid by her
father.  But they were away from Fosdick's house,
and she, thinking and knowing nothing about money,
continued to spend as usual.  He got everything on
credit that did not have to be paid for at once; but
in spite of all his contriving, when they reached New
York again he was really penniless.  He went to
Narcisse's office; she was out of town.  In desperation he
borrowed five hundred dollars from his brother-in-law.

Hugo loaned the money as if the transaction were
a trifle that was making no impression on him.  Like
all those who think of nothing but money, he affected
to think nothing of it.  He noted Alois's nervousness,
then his thin and harassed look.  "How do Amy and
Alois live?" he asked his father.

"Live?  What do you mean?" said Josiah.
"Why, they're perfectly happy.  What put such
nonsense in your head?"

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Hugo.  "Certainly
they're happy.  Amy'd be a fool not to be happy with
as decent a chap as he is.  I mean, how do they get
along about money?"

"He's got a good business," said Fosdick.  "You
know it as well as I do."

"He used to have," replied Hugo.  "But he's too
busy with Amy to be doing much else.  He's always
standing on her dress.  And he has no partner."

"I don't know anything about it," said Fosdick.
"If Amy needed money, she'd come to me."  Fosdick
recalled that he had been paying even heavier bills for
her since she was married; but he had no mind to speak
of it to Hugo, as he did not wish Hugo to misunderstand.
"You attend to your own affairs, boy," he
continued.  "Those two are all right."  And he
beamed benevolently.  He delighted in Amy's
happiness, felt that he was entirely responsible for it.

But Hugo was not to be put off.  "Believe me,
father, Alois is down to bed-rock.  He can't speak to
Amy about it, or to you.  He's a gentleman.  It's up
to you to do something for him."

"I guess looking after Amy does keep his time
pretty well filled up," chuckled the old man, much
amused.  "I'll fix him a place in the O.A.D.—something
that'll give him a good income and not take his
mind entirely off his job."

"Why not get Armstrong to make him supervising
architect?  A big public institution like that ought to
pay more attention to cultivating the artistic side.  He
could think out and carry out some general plan that'd
harmonize to high standards all the buildings, especially
the dwelling and apartment houses they own in the
provinces."  Hugo spoke of the O.A.D. as "they"
nowadays, though he still thought of it as "we."

"That's a good idea, Hugo, as good as any other.
I'll see Armstrong to-day.  I oughtn't to have
neglected putting Alois on the pay rolls.  I'll give him
something in the railway, too.  We'll fix him up
handsomely.  He's a fine young fellow, and he has made
Amy happy.  You don't appreciate that, you young
scoundrel, as we of the older generation do."  And
Hugo had to listen patiently to a discourse on
decaying virtue and honor and family life; for, like all
decaying men, Fosdick mistook internal symptoms
for an exterior and universal phenomenon, just as a
man who is going blind cries, "The light is getting dim!"

Fosdick did not forget.  Now that his attention
was upon the matter, he reproached himself severely
for his oversight.  "I've been taking care of scores
of people, and neglecting my own.  But I'll make up
for it."  He ordered the president of the railway to
put Alois on the pay rolls at once with a salary of
twelve thousand a year.  "You need somebody to
supervise the stations.  Everybody's going in for art,
nowadays, and we want the best.  Mail him his first
check to-day, with the notice of his appointment."

In the full glow of generosity, he went up to
see Armstrong.  They were great friends nowadays.
Since the peace, not a trace of cloud had come
between them; he was careful to keep his hands entirely
off the O.A.D.; Armstrong, on his side, gave the
Fosdick railway and industrial enterprises the same
"courtesies" they had always enjoyed, except that he
charged them the current rate of interest, instead of
the old special rate.

"Horace," he began, "I suppose you'll soon be
organizing the construction department on broader
lines.  I've come to put in a good word for my
son-in-law.  I don't need to say anything about his merits
as an architect.  As you know, there's none better."

"None," said Armstrong heartily.  "Anything we
want in his line, he'll get."

"Thanks.  Thanks.  My idea, though, was a little
more definite.  I was thinking you might want a man
to pass on all buildings, plans, improvements.  He
could raise the value of the company's
property—particularly the dwelling and apartment houses."

"That's a valuable suggestion," said Armstrong.
"And Siersdorf would be just the man for the place.
But will he take it?"

"I think so."

"But he'd have to be traveling about, most of the
time.  He'd be in the West and South, where we're
trying to get back the ground lost in those big exposés.
I shouldn't think he'd care for that sort of life."

Fosdick was disconcerted.  "I suppose that could
be arranged.  You wouldn't expect a man of Siersdorf's
caliber to go chasing about the country like a
retail drummer.  He'd have assistants for that, and
drawings and pictures and those sort of things could
be forwarded to him here."

"That would hardly do," replied Armstrong, like
a man advancing cautiously, but determined to
advance.  "Then, there's the matter of pay.  The work
would take all of his time, and we couldn't afford much
of a salary.  I should say the job was rather for some
talented young fellow, trying to get a start."

"You'd simply waste whatever money you paid
such a man," Fosdick objected with a restraint of tone
and manner that astonished himself.  "No, what you
want is a high-class, a first-class, man at a good
salary—a first-class man's salary."

"Say—how much?" inquired Armstrong.

"I was thinking twenty thousand a year—or,
perhaps fifteen."  The lower figure was an amendment
suggested by the tightening of Armstrong's lips.

Armstrong saw the point.  What Fosdick was
after was a sinecure; a soft berth for his son-in-law
to luxuriate idly in; another and a portly addition
to the O.A.D's vast family of "fixed charges."  "I'd
like to oblige you, Mr. Fosdick," said he, with the
reluctance of a man taking a new road where the
passage looks doubtful and may be dangerous.  "And I
hate to deprive the O.A.D. of the chance to get
Siersdorf's services at what is undoubtedly a bargain.  But,
as you may perhaps have heard, I'm directing all my
efforts to lopping off expenses.  I'm trying to get the
O.A.D. on a basis where we can pay the policy holders
a larger share of the profits we make on their money.
Perhaps, later on, I can take the matter up.  But I
hope you won't press it at present."

The words were careful, the tone was most courteously
regretful.  But the refusal was none the less
a slap in the face to a man like Fosdick.  "As you
please, as you please," he said hurriedly, and with
averted eyes.  "I just thought it was a good
arrangement all around....  Everything going smoothly?"

"So-so."

"Well, good day."

And he went, with a friendly nod and handshake
that did not deceive Armstrong.  He drove to the
magnificent Hearth and Home Defender building which
Trafford and his pals had built for their own profit
out of their stealings from millions of working men
and women and children of the poorest, most ignorant
class.  Trafford received his fellow adept in the art
of exploiting as Fosdick loved to be received; he did
not let him finish his request before granting it.  "An
excellent idea, Fosdick," he cried.  "I understand
perfectly.  I'll see that we get Siersdorf at once.  Would
fifteen thousand be too small?"

"About right, as a starter, I should say," was
Fosdick's judicial answer.  "You see, the thing's more
or less an experiment."

"But certain to succeed," said Trafford confidently.
"And, of course, we'll accept any arrangements
Mr. Siersdorf may make about assistants.  We
can't expect him to give us all his time.  We'll be quite
content with his advice and judgment.  You've put me
under obligations to you."

Fosdick's eyes sparkled.  As he went away, he
said to himself, "Now, there's a big man, a gentleman,
one who knows how to do business, how to treat
another gentleman.  I must put him in on something
good."

And he did.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"IF I MARRIED YOU"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   "IF I MARRIED YOU"

.. vspace:: 2

When Armstrong saw the announcement of Frederic
Carlin's death, he assumed Neva would soon be in
New York, to escape the loneliness of Battle Field.  He
let three weeks pass, after her brief but gentle and
friendly answer to his telegram of condolence.  Then,
he wrote her he was going to Chicago and wished to
stop at Battle Field; she replied that she would be
glad to see him.  He took the first Westbound express—the
through limited which, at his request, dropped
him at the little town it had always before rushed past
at disdainful speed.  The respect with which he was
treated, the deference of those who recognized him at
the station, the smallness and simplicity of the old
town, all combined to put the now triumphant and
autocratic president of the mighty O.A.D. in the
mood to appreciate every inch of the dizzy depth down
from where he now blazed in glory to where he had
begun, a barefoot boy in jeans, delivering groceries
at back doors and alley gates.  It was not in
Armstrong to condescend; but it is in the sanest of us
poor mortals, with our dim sense of proportion and
our feeble sense of humor where we ourselves are the
joke, to build up a grandiose mood upon less
foundation of vanity of achievement than had Armstrong.
The mood gave him a feeling of confidence, of conquest
impending, as he strode in at the gate beside the drive
into the Carlin place a full hour before he was
expected.  Memory was busy—not by any means
altogether unpleasantly—as he went more slowly up the
narrow walk to the old square stone house, with its
walls all but hidden under the ivy, with its verandas
draped in honeysuckle, and its peaceful, dignified
foreground of primeval elms.  The past was not quite
forgotten; but he felt that it was completely expiated.
He had paid for his ingratitude, his selfishness, his
blindness, his folly—had paid in full, with interest.

He ascended to the veranda before the big oak
front doors.  The only life in view was a hummingbird
flitting and balancing like a sprite among the
honeysuckle blooms.  The doors, the windows on either
side, were open wide; he looked in with the
future-focused eyes of the practical man of affairs.  His
past did not advance from those familiar rooms to
abash him.  On the contrary his eager gaze entered,
searching for his future.

"We must have, will have, a place like this near
New York," thought he.  "Why not in New York?
I can afford it."

He rang several times at long intervals; it was
Neva herself who finally came—Neva, all in black and,
so it seemed to him, more beautiful than ever.  That
she was glad, more than glad, at sight of him was
plain to be seen in the color which submerged her
pallor, in the swift lighting up of her eyes, like the
first flash of stars in the night sky.  But there was
in her manner, as well as in her garb, a denial of
the impulse of his impetuous passion; the doubts that
had tormented him began to bore into his mood of
self-confidence.  She took him to the west veranda, with its
luminous green curtains of morning-glory.  She made
him seat himself in the largest and laziest chair there,
all the while covering the constraint with the neutral
conversation which women command the more freely,
the more difficult the situation.  When the pause came
he felt that she had permitted it, that she was ready
to hear—and to speak.  The doubts had made such
inroads upon his assurance that his tone was less
conclusive than he would have liked, as he began:

"Neva, I've come to take you back to New York."

Her expression, her manner brought vividly back
to him that crucial talk of theirs at the lake shore.
Only, now the advantage was wholly with her, where
then it had been so distinctly on his side that he had
pitied her, had felt almost cowardly.  He looked at her
impassive face, impossible to read, and there rose in
him a feeling of fear—the fear every man at times has
of the woman into whose hands his love has given his
destiny.

"Everything is waiting on you," he went on.
"The way lies smooth before us.  You have brought
me good fortune, Neva.  My future—our future—is
secure.  With you to help me I shall go to the top.
So—come, Neva!"  And his heart filled his eyes.

She waited a moment before answering.  "If we
should fail this time, it would be the end, wouldn't it?"
she said.

"But we can't fail!" he protested.  He was strong
in his assurance once more; did not her question imply
that she loved him?

"We failed before, and we were younger and more
adaptable."

"But now we understand each other."

"Do we?" she said, her eyes gravely upon him.

"How can you ask that!"

"Because so much depends on our seeing the truth
exactly.  The rest of our lives is at stake."

"Yes.  I can't go on without you.  Can *you* go
on without me?"

"Each of us," she replied, "can go on without
the other.  I can paint pictures; you can make money.
The question is, what will we mean to each other if
we go on together?  We aren't children any more,
Horace.  We are a man and a woman full grown,
experienced, unable to blind ourselves even in our follies.
And we aren't simply rushing into an episode of
passion that will rage and die out.  If it were merely
that, I shouldn't be asking you and myself questions.
When the end came, we could resume our separate lives;
and, even if our experience had cost us dear instead of
helping us, still we could recover, would in time be
stronger and better for having had it.  But you offer
me your whole self, your whole life, and you ask me
to give you mine.  You ask me to marry you."

He did not understand this; woman meant to him
only sex, and the difference between love and passion
was a marriage ceremony.  He felt that in what she
said there lurked traces of the immorality of the
woman who tries to think for herself instead of
properly selecting a proper man and letting him do the
thinking for both.  "I love you," said he, "and there's
the whole story.  Love doesn't reason; it feels."

"Then it ought never to get married," she said.
"We tried marriage once on the basis of husband and
wife being absolute strangers to each other, and at
cross purposes."  She paused; he did not suspect it
was to steady her constantly endangered self-control.
"And," she added, "I shall never try that kind of
marriage again.  Passion is a better kindler than
worldliness, but it is just as poor fuel."

"Neva!" he exclaimed.

"I couldn't be merely your mistress, Horace.  I'd
want *you*, and I'd want you to take me, all of me.
I'd want it to be our life, and not merely an episode
in our life.  Can't you see what would come
afterwards—when you had grown calm about me—and I about
you?  Can't you see that you'd turn back to your
business and prostitute yourself for money, while I'd
turn perhaps to luxury and show and prostitute
myself to you for the means to exhibit myself?  Don't
you see it on every side, there in New York—the traffic
in the souls of men and women viler than any on the
sidewalks at night—the brazen faces of the men,
flaunting their shame, the brazen faces of the women,
the so-called wives, flaunting *their* shame?"

"But you could never be like them," he protested.  "Never!"

"As strong women as I, stronger, have been
dragged down.  No human being can resist the slow,
steady, insidious seduction of his daily surroundings."

"I don't understand this at all, Neva," he said,
though his ill-concealed anger showed that he did.
Indeed, so angry was he that he was almost forgetting
his own warnings to himself of the injustice of holding
her responsible for anything she said in her obviously
unstrung condition.  He asked, "What have you to
do with that sort of woman?"  He hesitated, forced
himself to go boldly on.  "Why do you compare me
to those men?  *I* do not degrade myself."

She did not answer immediately, but looked away
across the beds of blooming flowers.  When she began
again, she seemed calmer, under better control.  "All
the time I was in New York," she said, "the life
there—the real life of money getting and money
spending—never touched me personally until toward the last.
Then—I saw what it really meant, saw it so plainly
that I can't ever again hide the truth from myself.
And since I came away—out here—where it's calm, and
one thinks of things as they are—where father and
the other way of living and acting toward one's fellow
beings, took strong hold of me——"

"But, Neva—you——"

"*Please*, let me finish," she begged, all excitement
once more.  "It's so hard to say—so much harder
than you think.  But I must—must—*must* let you see
what kind of woman I am, who it is you've asked to
be your wife.  As I remember my acquaintances in
New York, *our* friends, do you know what I always
feel?  I remember their palaces, their swarms of
servants, their jewels, their luxuries, the food they eat,
the wine they drink, all of it; and I wonder just whose
dollar was stolen to help pay for this or that luxury,
just who is in want, how many are in want, that that
carriage might roll or the other automobile go darting
about.  You *know* the men steal it; they don't know
from whom, and so they can brazen it out to themselves."

"That is harsh—too harsh, Neva!"

She did not heed his interruption.  "They can
brazen it out," she went on, "because no one can or
will come forward and say, 'Take off that new string
of pearls.  Your husband stole the money from me
to-day to buy it.'  He did steal it, but not that day,
not directly from one person, but indirectly from
many who hardly, if at all, knew they were being
robbed.  That is what New York has come to mean
to me these last few weeks—my New York and
yours—the people we know best."

"But we need not know *them*.  Have what friends
you please."  He took an air of gentleness, of forbearance
with her.  He reminded himself that she was overwrought
by her father's illness and death, that she was
not in condition to see things normally and practically;
such hysterical ideas as these of hers naturally bred
and flourished in the miasmatic soil and atmosphere of
the fresh grave.

"Don't you see it?" she cried desperately.  "I
mean you—Horace—*you*, that ask me to be your wife."

"Me!"  His amazement was wholly genuine.

"Yes—you!"  And she lost all control of herself,
was seized and swept away by the emotions that had
grown stronger and stronger during her father's
illness, and since his death had dominated her day and
night in her loneliness.  The scarlet of fever was in
her cheeks, its flame in her eyes.

"Yes, you, Horace," she repeated.  "Can't you see
I'd be worse than uneasy about everything we bought,
about every dollar we spent?  When you left me to go
downtown in the morning, I'd be thinking, 'Who is
the man I love going to rob to-day?'  And when you
came back at night, when your hands touched mine,
I'd be shuddering—for there might be blood on
them!"  She covered her face.  "There *would* be
blood on them.  Happiness!  Why, I should be in
hell!  And soon you'd hate me for what I would be
thinking of you, would despise me for living a life I
thought degrading."

If he had been self-analytic, he would have
suspected the origin of the furious anger that surged up
in him.  "I see!" said he, his voice hard.  "If these
notions," he sneered, "were to prevail among the
women, about all the strongest men in the country
would lose their wives."

"That is not the question," she answered, maddened
by his manner.  "I'm only trying to make *you*
acquainted with *me*.  I don't understand, as I look at
it, now that my eyes have opened, how a woman can
live with a man who kills hundreds, thousands with his
railway, to make dividends, or who lets thousands live
in hovels and toil all the daylight hours and half starve
part of the year that he may have a bigger income.
Oh, I don't know the morals of it or the practical
business side of it.  And I don't want to know.  My
instinct tells me it's wrong, *wrong*.  And I dare not
have anything to do with it, Horace, or I'd become like
those women, those so-called respectable women, one
sees driving every afternoon in Fifth Avenue, with
their hard, selfish faces.  Ah, I see blood on their
carriage wheels, the blood of their brothers and
sisters who paid for carriage and furs and liveries and
jewels.  It would be dreadful enough for the intelligent
and strong—for men like you, Horace—to take
from the ignorant and weak to buy the necessities of
life.  But to snatch bread and shelter and warmth
and education from their fellow beings to buy
vanities—  It isn't American—it isn't decent—it isn't
brave!"

He saw that it would be idle to argue with her.
Indeed, he began to feel, rather than to see, that
beneath her hysteria there was something he would have
to explore, something she was terribly in earnest
about.  There was a long silence, she slowly calming,
he hidden behind the mask of that handsome, rugged
face in which strength yielded so little for grace.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" he said
unemotionally.

"All I can," she replied.  "I can refuse to live
that sort of life, to live on human flesh and blood.  I
know good people do it, people who are better than
I.  And if it seems right to them, why, I don't judge
them.  Only, it doesn't seem right to me.  I wish it
did.  I wish I could shut my eyes again.  But—I can't.
My father won't let me!"

He made a movement that suggested shrinking.
But he said presently, "I still don't see where I come
in.  In our business we don't get money that way."

"How do you get it?" she asked.

He stared, stolid and silent, at the floor.

"You told me once that——"

"In some moods I say things I don't altogether
mean....  I don't moon about the miseries I can't
possibly cure," he went on.  "I don't quibble; I act.
I don't criticise life; I live.  I don't create the world
or make the law of the survival of the fittest; I simply
accept conditions I could not change.  As for this
so-called stealing, even the worst of the big men take
only what's everybody's property and therefore anybody's."

"It seems to me," said she, "the question always
is, 'Does this property belong to me?' and if the
answer is 'No,' then to take it is—"  She paused
before the word.

"To steal," he said bluntly.

She made no comment.  Finally he went on: "Let
us understand each other.  You refuse to marry me
unless I abandon my career, and sink down to a position
of no influence—become a nobody.  For, of course,
I can't play the game unless I play it under the
rules.  At least, I can think of no way."

"I see I didn't express myself well," she replied.
"I've not tried to make conditions.  I've simply shown
you what kind of woman you were asking to marry
you—and that you don't want her—that you want
only the part of me that for the moment appeals to
your senses.  If I had married you without telling you
what was in my mind and heart would it have been
fair to you?"

He did not answer.

"Would it have been fair, Horace?"

"No," he said—a simple negative.

"You see that you do not want me—that you
would find me more, far more, of a drag on your
career than I was before—a force pulling back
instead of merely a dead weight."

He was looking at her—was looking from behind
his impenetrable mask.  He looked for a long time,
she now meeting his gaze and now glancing away.  At
last he said, with slow deliberateness: "I see that I came
seeking a mistress.  Whether I want her as a wife, I
don't know.  Whether she wants me as a husband—I
don't know."  He relapsed into thought which she did
not interrupt.

When he rose to go, he did not see how she flushed
and trembled, and fought down the longing to say
the things that would have meant retreat.

"I feel," said he with a faint smile, "like a man
who goes down to the pier thinking he is about to take
an outing for the day, and finds that if he goes aboard
he will be embarked for a life journey into new lands
and will never come back.  I never before really
grasped what marriage means."

She had always been fascinated by his eyes, which
seemed to her to contain the essence of all that
attracted and thrilled and compelled her in the idea,
man.  As she stood touching the hand he extended,
she had never felt his eyes so deeply; never before had
there been in them this manly gentleness of respect and
consideration.  And her faltering courage took heart.

"I am going back to New York," he said.  "I
want to look about me."

She looked straight and calm; but, through her
hand, he felt that she was vibrating like a struck, tense
violin string.  "Some men want a mistress when they
marry," she went on, smiling-serious, "and some want
a housekeeper, and some a parlor ornament, and some
a mother for their children.  But very few want a
wife.  And I"—she sighed.  "I couldn't do anything
at any of the other parts, unless I were also the
wife."

"I understand—at last," he said.  "Or rather, I
begin to understand.  You have thought it out.  I
haven't—and I must."

She hoped he would kiss her; but he did not.  He
reluctantly released her hand, gave her a lingering
look which she had not the vanity or the buoyance
rightly to interpret, then gazed slowly round the
gardens, brilliant, alluring, warm.  She stood motionless
and tense, watching his big form, his strong shoulders
and forcefully set head as he crossed the gardens, went
down the walk and through the gate, to be hidden by
the hedge between the lawns and the street.  When the
last echo of his firm step had ceased in her ears, she
collapsed into the chair in which he had sat, and was
all passion and tenderness and tears and longings and
fears.

"He thinks me cold!  He thinks me cold!" she
cried.  "Oh, Father, why won't You let me be weak?
Why can't I take less than all?  Why can't I trust
him, when I love him so!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BY A TRICK`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXX


.. class:: center medium bold

   BY A TRICK

.. vspace:: 2

By itself, Armstrong's insult to Fosdick in refusing
to "take care of" his son-in-law would have been
of small consequence, unpleasant reminder of his shorn
power and rude check to his benevolent instincts though
it was.  Fosdick was not likely, at least soon, to
forget his lesson in the wisdom of letting the big
Westerner alone.  Also, Armstrong was useful to him—not
so useful as a tool in the same position would have
been; still, far more useful than a representative of
some hostile interest.  But this insult was the latest
and the rashest of a series of similar insults which
Armstrong had been distributing right and left with an
ever freer, ever bolder hand.  While he was "thinking
over" Neva's plain talk with him, he, by more than
mere coincidence, was experimenting with a new policy
which was in the general direction of the one he had
adopted as soon as he got control of the O.A.D.  It
was a policy of "anti-graft"; and once he had
inaugurated it, once he had begun to look about him in
the O.A.D. for opportunities to stop the plundering,
and the pilfering as well, he had pushed on far beyond
where he originally intended to halt—as a strong man
always does, whatever the course he chooses.

Everyone belongs to some section or class.  He
may quarrel with individuals in that class, he may
quarrel with individuals in another class, or with the
whole of it; but he may not break with the whole
of his own class.  Be he cracksman or financier or
preacher or carpenter or lawyer or what not, he must
be careful not to get his own class, as a class, against
him.  If he does, he will find himself alone, defenseless,
doomed.  Armstrong belonged to the class financier;
he had been in finance all his grown-up life.  He
stood for the idea financier in the minds of financiers,
in his own mind, in the public mind.  His battles with
his fellow-financiers, being within the class lines, had
strengthened him, had given him clear title to
recognition as a power in finance; he had been like the
politician who fights his way through and over his
fellow politicians to a nomination or a boss-ship,
like the preacher who bears off the bishopric from his
rivals, the doctor who absorbs the patronage of the
rich, the lawyer who succeeds in the competition among
lawyers for the position of chief pander to the
plutocratic appetite for making and breaking laws.

But this new policy of Armstrong's was a policy
of war on his own class.  Cutting down commissions,
cutting out "good things," lopping off sinecures,
bisecting salaries—why, he was hacking away at the
very foundations of the dominance of his class!  No
privileges, no parasitism, no consideration for
gentlemen, no "soft snaps," no ornaments on the pay
rolls—where were the profits to come from, the profits that
enabled the big fellows to fatten, that filled the crib
for their business and social hangers-on?  Reform,
economy, stoppage of waste, all these were excellent
to talk about; and, within limits that recognized the
rights of the dominant classes, even might be practiced
without offense, especially by a fellow trying to
make a reputation and judiciously doing it at the
expense of financiers who had lost their grip and so could
expect no quarter.  But to raise the banner of "anti-graft"
for a serious campaign—  Anarchy, socialism, chaos!

Armstrong had inaugurated and was pressing a
war on his own class.  And for whose benefit?  Not
for his own; he wasn't enriching himself—and therein
was a Phariseeism, an effort to pose as a censor of
his class, that alone would have made him a suspicious
character.  He was fighting his own class, was
making traitorous, familicidal war for the benefit of the
common enemy—the vast throng of the people who
hated the upper classes, as everybody knew, and were
impudently restless in their God-appointed position of
hewers of wood and drawers of water for the financial
aristocracy.  Were not the people weakening dangerously
in reverence for and gratitude to their superiors,
the great and good men who provided them with work,
took care of their savings for them, supported the
church that guarded their souls and the medical
profession that healed their bodies, paid all the taxes,
undertook all the large responsibilities—and did
this truly godlike work, supported this Atlantean
burden, in exchange for a trivial commission that
brought no benefit but the sorrows of luxury?  These
were the ignoramuses Armstrong was inflating, these
the ingrates he was encouraging.  Already he had
doubled the dividends of the O.A.D., had made them
a seeming rebuke to the other insurance companies.
Competition—yes!  But not the cutthroat, wicked,
ruinous competition that would destroy his own class,
its profits and its power.  If he were permitted to
persist, the clamor for so-called "honesty" might
spread from policy holders to stockholders, to wage
earners, to the whole mass of the wards of high
finance.  And they might compel the upper class to
grant them more money to waste in drink and in
wicked imitation of the luxury of their betters!

Armstrong was expelling himself from his own
class—into what?  Except in finance, high finance,
what career was there for him?  He would be like a
politician without a party, like a general without an
army, like a preacher without a parish, like a disbarred
lawyer.  His reputation would be gone—for morality
is a relative word, and by his conduct he was
convincing the only class important to him as a man of
action that he had not the morality of his class, that
he could not be trusted with its interests.  Every era,
every race, every class has its own morality, its own
practical application of the general moral code to its
peculiar needs.  The class financier, in the peculiar
circumstances surrounding life in the new era, had its
code of what was honest and what dishonest, what
respectable and what disreputable, what loyal and
what disloyal.  Under that code his new course was
disloyal, disreputable, was positively dishonest.  It
would avail him nothing, should other classes vaguely
approve; if his own class condemned, he was damned.

"A hell of a mess I'm getting into," reflected he,
"with trying to play one game by the rules of
another."  He saw his situation clearly, but he had no
disposition to turn back.  "All in a lifetime!" he
concluded with a shrug.  "I'll just see what comes of
it.  Anything but monotony."  To him monotony, the
monotony of simply taking in and putting away for
his own use money confided to him, was the dullest of
lives—and it was beginning to seem the most
contemptible—"like going through the pockets of sleepers,"
said he to himself.

He saw the storm coming.  Not that there were
any clouds or gusty winds; the great storms, the
cyclones, don't come that way.  No, his sky was serene
all round; everything looked bright, brilliant.  But
there was an ominous stillness in the air—that dead,
dead calm which fills an experienced weather expert
with misgivings.  Before the great storms that
explode out of those utter calms, the domestic animals
always act queerly; and, in this case, that sign was
not lacking.  The big fellows beamed on him, were
most polite, most eager for his friendship.  Not so
the little fellows—the underlings, both in the
O.A.D. and in its allied banks and in the institutions of
high finance into which Armstrong happened to go.
At sight of him they became agitated, nervous, stood
aloof, watched him furtively.

But he went his new way steadily, as if he did not
know what was impending.  It secretly amused him
greatly to observe his directors.  The new board he
had selected was composed of men of substantial
fortune, who were just outside high finance—business
men, trained in business methods.  But they had been
agitated by what they had seen and heard and read
of the financiers—of the vast fortunes quickly made,
of the huge mysterious profits, of the great enterprises
where the financier risked only other people's money,
and stood to lose nothing if the venture failed, kept
all the profits if it succeeded.  They longed for these
fairylike lands where money grew on bushes and the
rivers ran gold.  And when they were invited into
the directory of the O.A.D., they thought they were
at last sweeping through the gates from the real world
of business to the Hesperian Gardens of finance.  As
they sat at the meetings, hearing Armstrong and his
lieutenants give accounts of economies and safe investments
and profits for the policy holders, each felt like
a child who had been led to believe it was going to
a Christmas festival and finds that it has been lured
into a regular session of the Sunday school.  Why, the
honor and the director's fees were all there was in it!

Then there were the agents, the officials, the staff
of the company, high and low, far and near.  To the
easy-going, golden days of finance had succeeded these
sober days of business.  Instead of generosity, free
flinging about of the money that came in so easily,
there was now the most rigid economy—"regular,
damn, pinch-penny honesty," complained Duncan, the
magnificent agent at Chicago.  "I tell you frankly,
Armstrong, I'm going to get out.  It isn't worth the
while of a man of my ability to work for what the
company now allows."

"Sorry to lose you, old man," said Armstrong,
"but we can't allow any secret rake-offs."

It was Duncan who precipitated the cyclone.  A
cyclone at its start is a little eddy of air which
happens to be set whirling by a chance twist of a
sunbeam glancing from a cloud.  Millions of these eddies
occur every hour everywhere.  Only when conditions
are just right does a cyclone result, does the eddy
continue to whirl, draw more and more air in
commotion, get a forward impulse that increases, until in
an incredibly short space of time destruction is
raging over the land.  The conditions in the O.A.D. were
just right.  Armstrong was hated by the whole
personnel, at home and abroad, and hated as only the
man is hated who cuts his fellows off from "easy
money."  And he had not a friend.  Throughout high
finance, he was hated and feared; at any moment, as
the result of his doings, some other big institution,
all other big institutions might have to adopt his
policy.  Directors, presidents, officials great and small,
all the recipients of the profits from the system of
using other people's money as if it were your own,
regarded him as a personal enemy.  When Duncan said
to one of his fellow agents, "We must get that chap
out," the right eddy had been started.

Within two weeks, Duncan was at the head of an
association of agents gathering proxies from the
policy holders to oust the Armstrong régime.  Duncan
and his fellow conspirators sent out a circular, calling
attention to the recent rise in the profits to policy
holders.  "It is evident," said the circular, "that
there has been mismanagement of our interests, and
that the present powers have been frightened into
giving us a little larger part of our own.  We ought to
have it all!  Send your proxies to the undersigned, that
the O.A.D. may be reorganized upon an honest,
democratic basis.  A new broom, a clean sweep!"

Duncan in person came to Armstrong with one of
the circulars.  "There's nothing underhand about
me," said he as he handed it to the president.  "Here's
our declaration of war."

Armstrong glanced at it, smiled satirically.
"You've sent copies to the newspapers also, haven't
you?" replied he.  "As you couldn't possibly keep
the matter secret, I can't get excited about your
candor."  And he tossed the circular on his desk.

"When you read it, you'll see we're fighting fair,"
said Duncan.

"I've read it," was Armstrong's answer.  "One of
my friends among the agents sent me a copy a week
ago—the day you drew it up."

Duncan began to "hedge."  "I don't want you to
have any hard feelings toward me," said he.  "All the
boys were hot for this thing, and I had to go in with
them."

"You were displaced as general Western agent
this morning," said Armstrong tranquilly.  "I
telegraphed your assistant to take charge.  I also
telephoned him a memorandum of what you owe the
company, with instructions to bring suit unless you
paid up in three days."

"It ain't fair to single me out this way," cried
Duncan.  "It's persecution."

"I haven't singled you out," said Armstrong.  "I
bounced the whole crowd of you at the same time, and
in the same way.  You charge me with extravagance.
Well, you see, I've admitted the charge and have
begun to retrench."

Duncan's fat, round face was purple and his brown
eyes were glittering.  "You think you've done us up,"
said he, with a nasty laugh.  "But you're not as
'cute' as you imagine.  We provided against just that
move."

"I see that your committee of policy holders to
receive proxies are dummies," replied Armstrong.  "I
know all about your arrangements."

"Then you know we're going to win."

Armstrong looked indifferent.  "That remains to
be seen," said he.  "Good morning."

When Duncan had got himself out of the room,
Armstrong laid the circular beside the one he himself
had written and sent to each of the seven hundred
thousand policy holders.  His circular was a
straight-forward statement of the facts—of how and why his
policy of economy had stirred up all the plunderers of
the company, great and small.  It ended with a
request that proxies be sent direct to him, by those who
wished the new order to persist and did not wish a
return to the old order with its long-standing and
grave abuses.  He compared the two circulars and
laughed at himself.  "Mine's the unvarnished truth,"
thought he.  "But it doesn't sound as probable, as
reasonable, as Duncan's lies.  If the policy holders do
stand by me, it'll be because most people are fools
and hit it right by accident.  Most of us are never so
wrong as in our way of being right.  The wise thing is
always to assume that the crowd that's in is crooked."

If Armstrong had been a reformer, with the passion
to reorganize the world on his own private plan,
and in the event of the world's failure to recognize
his commission as vice-regent of the Almighty, ready
to denounce it as a hopeless case—if Armstrong had
been a professional regenerator, those would have
been trying days for him.  The measures he took that
were the most honest and the most honorable were the
very measures that made the other side strong.  He
had weeded out a multitude of grafters and had shown
an inflexible purpose to weed out the rest; and so
he had organized and made powerful the conspiracy
to restore graft.  He had attacked the men—the big
agents—who were using their influence with the policy
holders to enable them to rob freely; and so he had
stirred up those traitors still further to cozen their
victims.  He had cut down the enormous subsidies to
the press, had cut off the graft of the great financiers
who were the powers behind the great organs of public
opinion; and so he had enlisted the press as an open
and most helpful ally of the conspirators.  The policy
holders were told by agents—whom they knew
personally and regarded as their representatives—that
Armstrong was the "thieving tool of the Wall Street
crowd"; the policy holders read in their newspapers
that "on the whole the O.A.D. would probably
benefit by a new management selected by the body of the
policy holders themselves."  It was ridiculous, it was
tragic.  Armstrong laughed, with a heavy and at
times a bitter heart.  "I don't blame the poor devils,"
he said.  "How are they to know?  I'm the damn
fool, not they—I who, dealing with men all these years,
have put myself in a position where I am appealing
from the men who run the people to the people, who
always have been run and always will be."

Still, he began to hope against hope, as the proxies
rolled in for him—by hundreds, by thousands, by tens
of thousands.  Most of the letters accompanying the
proxies justified his cynical opinion that the average
man is never so wrong as when he is right; the writers
gave the most absurd reasons for supporting him, not
a few of them frankly saying that it was to the best
interest of the company to leave the control to the
man who was in with the powers of Wall Street!  But
there were letters, hundreds of them, from men and
women who showed that they understood the situation;
and, curiously enough, most of these letters were badly
written, badly spelled, letters from so-called ignorant
people.  It was a striking exhibit of how little
education has to do with brains.  "I've always said,"
thought Armstrong, "that our rotten system of education
is responsible for most of the fools and all the
damn fools, but I never before knew how true it was."

And the weeks passed, and the annual meeting
and election drew nearer and nearer.  Instead of
Armstrong's agitation increasing, it disappeared entirely.
Within, he was as calm as he had all along seemed at
the surface.  It was an unexpected reward for trying
to do the square thing.  He was eminently practical in
his morals, was the last man in the world to turn the
other cheek, was disposed to return a blow both in
kind and in degree.  But he knew, also, that the calm
he now felt was due to the changed course, could never
have been his in the old course.

On the morning of the great day, he stopped shaving
to look into his own eyes reflected in the glass.
"Old man," said he aloud, "there's much to be said
for being clean—reasonably, humanly clean.  It begins
to have compensations sooner than the preachers seem
to think."

.. vspace:: 2

As Armstrong entered the splendid assembly chamber
of the new O.A.D. building, the first figure his
eyes hit upon was that of Hugo Fosdick, entering at
the opposite door.  To look at him was like hearing a
good joke.  He was walking as if upon air, head
rearing, lofty brow corrugated, eyes rolling and serious,
shoulders squared as if bearing lightly a ponderous
burden.  Of all the trifles that flash and wink out upon
the expanse of the infinite, the physically vain man
seems the most trivial.  The so-called upper classes,
being condemned to think about themselves almost all
the time, furnish to the drama of life the most of
the low comedy, with their struttings and swellings
and posings.  Those who in addition to class vanity
have physical vanity are the clowns of the great show.
Hugo was of the clowns—and he dressed the part,
that day.  He had on a tremendously loud tweed suit,
a billycock hat of a peculiar shade of brown to match,
a huge plaid overcoat; he was wearing a big, rough-looking
chrysanthemum that seemed of a piece with his
tie; he diffused perfume like a woman who wishes to
be known by the scent she uses.  As he drew off his
big, thick driving gloves, he gazed grandly around.
His eyes met Armstrong's, and his haughty lip curled
in a supercilious smile.

"Did you come down in an auto?" some one asked him.

"No, not in an auto," he said in a voice intended
to be heard by all.  "I drove down.  I've dropped
the auto—it's become vulgar, like the bicycle.  It was
merely a fad, and the best people soon exhausted it.
There's no chance for individual taste in those
mechanical things, as there is in horses.  Anyone can
get together the best there is going in automobiles;
but how many men can provide themselves with well
turned out traps—horses, harness, the men on the box,
just as a gentleman's turnout should be?"

One of the Western men laughed behind his hand,
and said, "Wot t' hell!"  But most of the assembly
gazed rather awedly at Hugo.  They would have
thought him ridiculous had he been presented to them
as a laugh-provoker; but, as he was presented as a
representative of the "top notch" of New York, they
were respectfully silent and obediently impressed.

And now, with Randall, a Duncan man, in the
chair, the meeting began—formalities, reading of
reports to which nobody listened, making of motions in
which nobody was interested.  Half an hour of this,
with the tension increasing.  Duncan had dry-smoked
three cigars, and the corners of his fat mouth were
yellow with tobacco stains; Hugo, struggling hard for
a gentleman's *sang froid*, had half torn out the sweat
band of his pot hat, had bit his lip till it bled.  He
was watching Armstrong, was hating him and envying
him—for the big Westerner sat at the right of the
chairman with no more trace of excitement on his
face than there is in the features of a bronze Buddha
who has been staring cross-legged into Nirvana for
twenty-five centuries.

Nor did he rouse himself when the election began,
though a nervous shiver like an electric shock visibly
shook every other man in the room.  His lieutenants
proposed his list of candidates; Duncan's men
proposed the "Popular" list; the voting began.  Barry,
for Armstrong, cast sixty-two thousand four
hundred and fifteen votes—the proxies that had come in
for Armstrong in answer to his appeal and also the
uncanceled proxies of those he had had since the
beginning of his term.  Duncan and his crowd burst into
a cheer, and in rapid succession nine of them cast
forty-three thousand and eleven votes.  Then they turned
anxious eyes on Hugo.  Armstrong, too, looked at
him.  He could not understand.  Hugo's name was not
on the Duncan list of persons to whom the "new
broom" proxies were to be sent.  Hugo, pale and
trembling, rose.  He fixed revengeful, triumphant,
gloating eyes upon Armstrong and addressed him, as
he said to the chairman, "For Mr. Wolcott here, I
cast for the Popular, or anti-Armstrong ticket, the
proxies of ninety thousand six hundred and four
policy holders."

Armstrong looked at Hugo as if he were not seeing
him; indeed, he seemed almost oblivious of his
surroundings, as if he were absorbed in some tranquil,
interesting mental problem.  Silence followed Hugo's
announcement, and the porters brought in and piled
upon the huge table, over against the now insignificant
bundles of Armstrong's proxies, the packages which
were the tangible demonstration of the overwhelming
force and power of his foes.  As the porters completed
their task, the spectacle became so inspiring to
Duncan and his friends that they forgot their dignity, and
gave way to their feelings.  They yelled, they tossed
their hats; they embraced, shook hands, gave each
other resounding slaps upon the shoulders.  Hugo
condescended to join in their jubilations, never
taking his eyes off Armstrong's face.  Armstrong and
Barry and Driggs sat silent, Armstrong impassive,
Barry frowning, Driggs gnawing his mustache.
Armstrong's gaze went from face to face of these "policy
holders"; on each he saw written the basest
emotions—emotions from the jungle, emotions of tusk and
claw.  The O.A.D. with all its vast treasures was
theirs to despoil—and they were clashing their fangs
and licking their savage chops in anticipation of the
feast.  The vast majority of the policy holders had
been too indifferent to respond to the appeal of either
side—this, though the future of their widows and their
orphans was at stake!  Of those who had responded,
the overwhelming majority had declared against Armstrong.

He had long known it would be so and had
resolved to accept the "popular mandate."  But the
gleam of those greedy eyes, the grate of that greedy,
gloating laughter, was too horrible.  "I *can't* let
things go to hell like this!" he muttered—and he
leaned toward Driggs and said in an undertone, "I've
changed my mind.  Carry out my original programme."

Driggs suddenly straightened himself, and his
face changed from gloom to delight, then sobered into
alert calmness.  Gradually the victors quieted down.
"Close the polls!" called Duncan.  "Nobody else is
going to vote."

"Before closing the polls, Mr. Chairman," said
Driggs, "or, rather, before the proxies offered by
Mr. Fosdick are accepted, I wish to ask Mr. Wolcott
a question."  And he turned toward young Wolcott,
a distant relative and henchman of Duncan's and one
of the three men in whose names stood all the
"new-broom" proxies.

"How old are you, Mr. Wolcott, please?"

Wolcott stared at him, glanced at Hugo, at Duncan,
grinned.  "None of your business," drawled he.
"I may say none of your damn business."

Driggs smiled blandly, turned to the chairman.
"As a policy holder in the O.A.D.," he said gently,
"I ask that all the proxies on which the name of
Howard C. Wolcott appears be thrown out."

Duncan and Hugo sprang up.  "What kind of
trick is this?" shouted Duncan at Armstrong.

Armstrong seemed not to be listening, was idly
twisting his slender gold watch guard round his
forefinger.

"By the constitution of the association," proceeded
Driggs, "proxies given to anyone under thirty
years of age or to any committee any of whose members
is under thirty years are invalid.  I refer you to
Article nine, Section five."

"But Wolcott's over thirty," bawled Duncan.

"I'm thirty-one—thirty-two the sixth of next
month," blustered Wolcott.  "I demand to be sworn."

Driggs drew several papers from his pocket.  "I
have here," he pursued, "an official copy of Wolcott's
application for a marriage license, in which he gives
the date of his birth.  Also the sworn statement of
the physician who presided over his entrance into this
wicked world.  Also, an official copy of Wolcott's
statement to the election registrars of Peoria, where
he lives.  All these documents agree that Mr. Wolcott
is not yet twenty-nine."  Driggs leaned back and
smiled benevolently at Wolcott.  "I think Mr. Wolcott's
own testimony would be superfluous."

"This is infamous—infamous!" cried Hugo, hysterically
menacing Armstrong with his billycock hat
and big driving gloves and crimson-fronted head.

"Of all the outrages ever attempted, this is the
most brazen!" shouted Duncan.

"Mr. Chairman," said Driggs, in that same gentle
voice, not unlike the purring of a stroked cat, "I
believe the Constitution is self-executing.  As I
understand it, all the proxies collected for the
Duncan-Fosdick party are on the same form—the one
authorizing Wolcott and two others to cast the vote.  Thus,
the only legal votes cast are those for the regular
ticket."

"The election must be postponed!" Duncan
screamed, waving his fists and then beating them upon
the table.  "This outrage must not go on."

The chairman, Randall, had been a Duncan man.
He now fled to the victors.  "There is no legal way
to postpone, Mr. Duncan," he responded coldly.
"No other votes offering, I declare the polls closed.
Shall we adjourn until this day week, gentlemen,
according to custom, so that the tellers may have time
to examine the vote and report?"

Armstrong spoke for the first time.  "Move we
adjourn," he said, rising like a man who is weary from
sitting too long in the same position.  Barry seconded;
the meeting stood adjourned.  Armstrong, followed by
Barry and Driggs, withdrew.

As soon as they had gone, Hugo blazed on Duncan.
"You are responsible for this!" he cried.
"You damn fool!"

Duncan stared stupidly.  Then, by a reflex action
of the muscles rather than as the result of any order
from his dazed brain, his great, fat-cushioned fist
swung into Hugo's face and Hugo was flat upon his
back on the floor.

"Come on, boys," said Duncan.  "Let's go have
a drink and feel ourselves for broken bones."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"I DON'T TRUST HIM"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   "I DON'T TRUST HIM"

.. vspace:: 2

Armstrong was now the man of the hour, the one
tenant of the public pillories who was sure of a fling
from every passer.  The press shrieked at him, the
pulpit thundered; the policy holders organized into
state associations and threatened.  Those who had sent
him proxies wrote revoking them and denouncing him
as having betrayed their confidence.  Those who had
given the Duncan crowd their proxies wrote excoriating
him for taking advantage of a technicality to cheat
them out of their rights and to gain one year more
of power to plunder.

"It's a blistering shame!" cried Barry, wrought
up over some particularly vicious attack.  "It's so
infernally unjust!"

"I don't agree with you," replied Armstrong, as
judicial as his friend was infuriate.  "The people are
right; they simply are right in the wrong way.  They
think I'm part of the system of wholesale, respectable
pocket-picking that has grown up in this country.
You can't blame 'em.  And it does look ugly, my using
that technical point to save myself."

"I suppose you wish you had stuck to your first
scheme," said Barry, sarcastic, "and had let the
Duncan broom sweep the safes."

"No, I don't repent," replied Armstrong.
"When I decided to save the policy holders in spite
of themselves, I knew this was coming.  When you
try to save a mule from a burning stable, you're a
fool to be surprised if you get kicked."

"You're not going to pay any attention to these
yells for you to resign?" Barry asked, even more
alarmed than he showed.

"No, I'll not resign," said Armstrong.

"Then you ought to do something, ought to meet
these charges.  You ought to fight back."  Barry had
been waiting for three weeks in daily expectation; but
Armstrong had not moved, had given no sign that
he was aware of the attack.

"Yes, it is about time, I guess," said he.
"Beginning to-day, I am going to clean out of the
O.A.D. all that's left of the old gang."

Barry looked at him as if he thought he had gone
crazy.  "Why, Horace, that'll simply raise hell!" he
said.  "We'll be put out by force.  You know what
everybody'll say."

Armstrong leaned back in his chair, put his big
hands behind his head and beamed on his first lieutenant.
"It wouldn't surprise me if we had to call on the
police for protection before the end of next week."

"The governor'll be forced to act," urged Barry.
"As it is, he's catching it for keeping his hands off."

"Don't be alarmed.  Morris understands the
situation.  We had a talk last night—met on a corner
and walked round in quiet streets for two hours."

"He sent for you, did he?"

"Yes.  He was weakening.  But he's all right again."

"Well, I don't see the advantage in this new move,
in making a bad matter worse."

"The worse it gets, the quicker it'll improve when
the turn comes," Armstrong answered.  "I've got to
get rid of the old gang—you know that.  They were
brought up on graft.  They look on it as legitimate.
They never'll be right again, and if a single one of
them stays, he'll rot our new force.  So out they all
go.  Now, as it's got to be done, the best time is right
now, and have it over with.  I tell you, Jim," and
Armstrong brought his fist down on the desk, "I'm
going to put this company in order if I'm thrown
into jail the day after I've done it!  But I ain't going
to jail.  I'm going to stay right here, and, inside of
six months, the crowd that's howling loudest for my
blood will be sending me proxies and praying that I'll
live forever."

"I wish I could think so," muttered Barry gloomily.

"So you've lost confidence in me, too?" Armstrong
said this with more mockery than reproach.
"It's lucky I don't rely on confidence in me to get
results, isn't it?  Well, Jim——"

"Oh, I'll stand by you, Armstrong, faith or no
faith," interrupted Barry.

"Thanks," said Armstrong, somewhat dryly.
"But I'm bound to tell you that the result will be
just the same, whether you do or not.  If you want to
accept Trafford's offer that you have taken under
consideration, don't hesitate on my account."

Barry was scarlet.  "It was on account of my
family," he stammered.  "My wife's been at me to——"

"Of course she has," said Armstrong.  "Don't
say any more."

"She's like all the women," Barry insisted on
saying.  "She likes luxury and all that, and she's afraid
I'll lose my hold, and she knows how generous Trafford is."

"Yes," drawled Armstrong.  "This country is
full of that kind of generosity nowadays—generosity
with other people's money."

"The women don't think about that side of it,"
said Barry.  "They think that as pretty much
everybody's doing that sort of thing—everybody that is
anybody—why, it must be all right.  And, by gad,
Horace, sometimes it almost seems to me I'm a fool,
a dumb one, to stick to the old-fashioned ways.  Why
be so particular about not taking people's property
when they leave it around and don't look after it
themselves, and when somebody else'll take it, if I
don't—somebody who won't make as good use of it
as I would?"

"The question isn't whose property it is, but whose
property it isn't," said Armstrong.  "And, when it
isn't ours, why—I guess 'hands off' is honest—and
decent."  And then he colored and his eyes shifted,
as if the other could read in them the source of this
idea which he had thought and spoken as if it were his
own.

"That's my notion, too," said Barry.  "I suppose
I'll never be rich.  But—"  His face became
splendidly earnest—"by heaven, Armstrong, I'll never
leave my children a dollar that wasn't honestly got."

"We're rowing against the tide, Jim.  You can't
even console yourself that your children would rather
have had the heritage of an honest name than the
millions.  And if you don't leave 'em rich, they'll either
have to plunge in and steal a fortune or become the
servants of some rich man or go to farming.  No, even
independent farming won't be open by the time they
grow up."

"Well, I'm going to keep on," replied Barry.
"And so are you."

Armstrong laughed silently.  "Guess you're
right," said he.  "God knows, I tried hard enough to
turn my boat round and row the other way.  But she
would swing back.  Queer about that sort of thing,
isn't it?  I wonder, Jim, how many of the men most
of us look on as obscurities and failures are in the
background or down because there was that queer
something in them that wouldn't let them subscribe
to this code of sneak, stab, and steal?  We're in luck
not to have been trampled clean under—and our luck
may not hold."

A few days, and Barry decided that their luck was
in the last tailings.  Armstrong's final move produced
results that made the former tempests seem mere fresh
weather.  The petty grafters and parasites he now
dislodged in a body were insignificant as individuals; but
each man had his coterie of friends; each was of a
large group in each city or town, a group of people
similarly dependent upon small salaries and grafting
from large corporations.  The whole solidarity burst
into an uproar.  Armstrong was getting rid of all the
honest men; he was putting his creatures in their
places, so that there might be no check on the flow
of plunder from the pockets of policy holders into
his own private pocket.  The man was the greediest as
well as the most insolent of thieves!  This was the
cry in respectable circles throughout the country—for
his "victims" were all of "good" families, were
the relatives, friends, dependents of the leading
citizens, each in his own city or town.

"Don't you think you'd better stop until things
have quieted down a bit?" asked Barry, when the work
was about half done.

"Go right on!" said Armstrong.  "Tear up the
last root.  We must stand or fall by this policy.  If
we try to compromise now, we're lost.  The way to
cut off a leg is to cut it off.  There's a chance to
survive a clean cut, but not a bungle."

A fortnight, and all but a few of his personal
friends in the board of directors resigned after the
board had, with only nine negative votes, passed a
resolution requesting him to resign.  And finally, the
policy holders held a national convention at Chicago,
and appointed a committee of five to go to New York
and "investigate the O.A.D. from garret to cellar,
especially cellar."

"Now!" cried Armstrong jubilantly, when the
telegram containing the news was laid before him.

.. vspace:: 2

On a Thursday morning the newspapers told the
whole country about the convention, the committee, the
impending capture of "the bandit."  On Saturday
toward noon, Armstrong got a note: "I am stopping
with Narcisse.  Won't you come to see me this
afternoon, or to-morrow—any time?—Neva."

He read the note twice, then tore it into small
pieces and tossed them into the wastebasket.  "Not
I!" said he aloud, with a frown at the bits of violet
note paper.  Through all those weeks he had been
hoping for, expecting, a message from her—something
that would help him to feel there was in this world of
enemies and timid, self-interested friends, at least the
one person who understood and sympathized.  But not
a word had come; and his heart, so hard when it was
hard, and so sensitive when it was touched at all, was
sore and bitter.

Nevertheless, it was he and none other who appeared
at five that afternoon, less than a block from
Narcisse's house; and he wandered in wide circles
about the neighborhood for at least an hour before
his pride could shame him into dragging himself away.
At three the next afternoon he rang Narcisse's bell.
The man servant showed him into her small oval gray
and dull gold salon which Raphael once said was
probably the most perfect room in the modern world.
Adjoining it was a conservatory, the two rooms being
separated only by an alternation of mirrors and
lattices, the lattices overrun with pink rambler in full
bloom—and in the mirrors and through the opposite
windows Armstrong saw the snow falling and lying
white upon the trees and the lawns of the Park.  In
the center of the room was an open fire, its flue
descending from the ceiling, but so constructed that it
and its oval chimney-piece added to the effect of the
room almost as much as the glimpses of the conservatory,
seen through the rambler-grown lattices.  And
the scent of-growing flowers perfumed the air.  These
surroundings, this sudden summer bursting and beaming
through the snow and ice of winter, had their
inevitable effect upon Armstrong.  He was beginning to
look favorably upon several possible excuses for Neva.
"She may not have heard of my troubles," he reflected.
"She doesn't read the newspapers, and people wouldn't
talk to her of anything concerning me."

She came in hurriedly, swathed in a coat of black
broadtail, made very simply, its lines following her
long, slim figure.  The color was high in her cheeks;
from her garments diffused the freshness of the
winter air.  "I shouldn't have been out," she explained,
"but I had to go to see some one—Mrs. Trafford,
who is ill."

Then he noted that her face was thinner than when
he last saw it, that the look out of the eyes was weary.
And for the moment he forgot his bitterness over her
"utter desertion" of him when he really needed the
cheer only a friend, a real friend, one beyond the
suspicion of a possibility of self-interest, can give;
deserted him in troubles which she herself had edged him
on to precipitate.  "When did you come?" he asked.

"Yesterday—yesterday morning.  You see I sent
you word immediately."

He looked ironic.  "I saw in the newspaper this
morning that Raphael landed yesterday."

"He dined here last night," replied she.

He turned as if about to go.  "I can't imagine
why you bothered to send for me," he said.

She showed that she was astonished and hurt.
"Horace," she appealed, "why do you say that?  I
read about all those troubles."

"So, you did know!"  He gave an abrupt, grim
laugh.  "And as you were coming on to see Raphael,
why, you thought you'd do an act of Christian charity.
Well, I wish I could oblige, but really, I don't need
charity."

She made no answer, simply sighed and drooped.
When the country was ringing with denunciations of
him, "He will see the truth now," she had said to
herself, "now that the whole world is showing it to him
instead of only one person and she a woman."  Then,
with the bursting of the great storm over his single
head, she dismissed all but the one central truth, that
she loved him, and came straightway to New York.

Well, here they were face to face; and as she looked
at him in his strength and haughtiness, she saw in his
face, as if etched in steel, inflexible determination to
persist in the course that was making him an object
of public infamy, justly, she had to admit.  "The
madness for money and for crushing down his fellow
beings has him fast," she thought.  "There isn't
anything left in him for his good instincts to work
on."  She seated herself wearily.

"Let's talk no more about it," she said to him.

"You've been reading the papers?" he asked.

"Yes—I read—all."

"It must have been painful to you," said he with
stolid sarcasm.

She did not answer.  In this mood of what seemed
to her the most shameless defiance of all that a human
being would respect if he had even a remnant of
self-respect, he was almost repellent.

"So," he went on, in that same stolid way, "you
sent for me to revel in that self-righteousness you
paraded the last time I saw you.  Well, it will chagrin
you, I fear, to learn that the *scoundrel* you tried to
redeem will escape from the toils again, and resume his
wicked way."

"I wish you would go," she entreated.  "I can't
bear it to-day."

She was taking off her hat now, was having great
difficulty in finding its pins; its black fur brought out
all the beauty of her bright brown hair.  The graceful,
fascinating movements of her head, her arms, her
fingers, put that into his fury which made it take the
bit in its teeth.

"Are you and Raphael going to marry?" he demanded
so roughly that she, startled, stood straight
up, facing him.  "Yes, I see that you are," he rushed
on.  "And it puts me beside myself with jealousy.
But you would be mistaken if you thought I meant
I would have you, even if I could get you.  What you
said the last time I saw you, interpreted by what
you've done since, has revealed you to me as what I
used to think you—a woman incapable of love—not
a woman at all.  You are of this new type—the woman
that uses her brain.  Give me the old-fashioned
kind—the kind that loved, without question."

She blazed out at him—at his savage, sneering
voice and eyes.  "Without question," she retorted,
"and whether he was on the right side or the wrong.
Loved the man who won, so long as he won; was
gladly a mere part of the spoils of victory—that was
the feature of her the poets and the novel writers
neglect to mention.  But it was important.  You like that,
however—you who think only of fighting, as you call
it—though that's rather a brave name for the game
you play, as you yourself have described it to me and
as the whole world now knows you play it.  You'd
have no use for the woman who really loves, the woman
who would be proud to bear a man's name if she
loved him, though it were black with dishonor, provided
he said, 'Help me make this name clean and bright
again.'  Why should not a woman be as jealous of
dishonor in her husband as he is of it in her?"

Narcisse entered, hesitated; then, seeing Armstrong
hat in hand and apparently going, she came on.
"Hello," said she, shaking hands with him.  She took
a cigarette from the big silver box on the table, lit
it, held the box toward Armstrong.  "Smoke, and
cheer up.  The devil is said to be dying."

"Thanks, no, I must be off," replied Armstrong.
He took a long look round the room, ending at the
rambler-grown lattices.  He bowed to Narcisse.  His
eyes rested upon Neva; but she was not looking at him,
lest love should win a shameful victory over
self-respect and over her feeling of what was the right
course toward him if there was any meaning in the
words woman and wife.

When he was gone, Narcisse stretched herself out,
extended her feet toward the flames.  "What a
handsome, big man he is," said she, sending up a great
cloud of cigarette smoke.  "How tremendously a man.
If he had some of Boris's temperament, or Boris some
of his, either would be perfect."

A pause, with both women looking into the fire.

"After you left us last night," Narcisse continued,
"Boris asked me to marry him."

Neva was startled out of her brooding.

"I refused," proceeded Narcisse.  Another
silence, then, "You don't ask why?"

"Why?"

"Because he's in love with *you*.  He told me so.
He made quite an interesting proposition.  He
suggested that, as we were both alone and got on so well
together and worked along lines that were sympathetic
yet could not cross and cause clashes, that—as the
only way we could be friends without a scandal was
by marrying—why, we ought to marry."

"It seems unanswerable," said Neva.

"If you had been married, *and* in love with your
husband, I think I'd have accepted."

"What nonsense!"

"Not at all," replied Narcisse.  "I don't trust any
man, least of all a Boris Raphael; and I don't trust
any woman—not even you.  The time might come when
you would change your mind.  Then, where should *I* be?"

"I'll not change my mind."

"That's beyond your control," retorted Narcisse.
"But—when you marry, I may risk it."

Neva's thoughts went back to Armstrong.  Presently
she vaguely heard Narcisse saying, "I've got
to put up a stiffer fight against this loneliness.  Do
you ever think of suicide?"

"I don't believe any sane person ever does."

"But who is sane?  Solitary confinement will upset
the steadiest brain."  She gazed strangely at Neva.
"Look out, my dear.  Don't *you* act so that you'll
sentence yourself to a life of solitary confinement.
Some people are lucky enough not to be discriminating.
They can be just as happy with imitation friendship
and paste love as if they had the real thing.  But not
you—or I."

"There's worse than being alone," said Neva.

Another silence; then Narcisse, still in the same
train of thought, went on, "Several years ago we made
a house for a couple up on the West Side—a good-looking
young husband and wife devoted to each other
and to their two little children.  He lavished everything
on her.  I got to know her pretty well.  She was
an intelligent woman—witty, with the streak of
melancholy that always goes with wit and the other keen
sensibilities.  I soon saw she was more than unhappy,
that she was wretched.  I couldn't understand it.  A
year or so passed, and the husband was arrested, sent
to the 'pen'—he made his money at a disreputable
business.  Then I understood.  Another year or so,
and I met her in Twenty-third Street.  She was radiant—I
never saw such a change.  'My husband is to be
released next month,' said she, quite simply, like a
natural human being who assumes that everybody
understands and sympathizes.  'And,' she went on,
'he has made up his mind to live straight.  We're
going away, and we'll take a nice, new name, and be
happy.'"

Neva had so changed her position that Narcisse
could not see her slow, hot tears that are the sweat of
a heart in torment.  To Narcisse, the reason for that
wife's wretchedness was an ever-present terror lest the
husband should be exposed.  But Neva, more acutely
sensitive, or perhaps, because of what she had passed
through, saw, or fancied she saw, a deeper cause—beneath
material terror of "appearances" the horror of
watching the manhood she loved shrivel and blacken,
the horror of knowing that the lover who lay in her
arms would rise up and go forth to prey, a crawling,
stealthy beast.

To understand a human being at all in any of his
or her aspects, however far removed from the apparently
material, it is necessary to understand how that
man or woman comes by the necessities of life—food,
clothing, shelter.  To study human nature either in
the broad or in detail, leaving those matters out of
account, is as if an anatomist were to try to
understand the human body, having first taken away the
vital organs and the arteries and veins.  It is the
method of the man's income that determines the man;
and his paradings and posings, his loves, hatreds,
generosities, meannesses, all are either unimportant or are
but the surface signs of the deep, the real emotions
that constitute the vital nucleus of the real man.  In
the material relations of a man or a woman, in the
material relations of husband and wife, of parents and
children, lie the ultimate, the true explanations of
human conduct.  This has always been so, in all ages
and classes; and it will be so until the chief concern
of the human animal, and therefore its chief compelling
motive, ceases to be the pursuit of the necessities
and luxuries that enable it to live from day to day and
that safeguard it in old age.  The filling and emptying
and filling again of the purse perform toward the
mental and moral life a function as vital as the filling
and emptying and refilling of heart or lungs performs
in the life of the body.

Narcisse suspected Neva had turned away to hide
some sad heart secret; but it did not occur to her
to seek a clew to it in the story she had told.  She
had never taken into account, in her estimate of
Armstrong, his life downtown—the foundations and
framework of his whole being.  This though, under her
very eyes, to the torture of her loving heart, just those
"merely material" considerations had determined her
brother's downfall, while her own refusal of whatever
had not been earned in honor and with full measure of
service rendered had determined her salvation.

In the "Arabian Nights" there is the story of a
man who marries a woman, beautiful as she in Solomon's
Song.  He is happy in his love for her and her
love for him until he wakens one night, as she is
stealing from his side.  He follows; she joins a ghoul
at a ghoul's orgy in a graveyard.  Next morning
there she lies by his side, in stainless beauty.  Since
her father's death, not even when Armstrong was
before Neva and his magnetism was exerting its full
power over her, not even then could she quite forget
the other Armstrong whom she had surprised at his
"business."  She could no longer think of that
"business" merely as "doing what everybody has to do,
to get on."  She had seen what "finance" meant; she
could not picture Armstrong without the stains of the
ghoul orgy upon him.

"And now," she thought despairingly, "he has
broken finally and altogether with honor and
self-respect; has flung me out of his life—forever!"

.. vspace:: 2

That night Narcisse took her to a concert at the
Metropolitan.  Her mind was full of the one thought,
the one hatred and horror, and she could not endure
the spectacle.  The music struck upon her morbid
senses like the wailing and moaning of the poverty and
suffering of millions that had been created to enable
those smiling, flashing hundreds to assemble in
splendor.  "I must go!" she exclaimed at the first
intermission.  "I can think only of those jewels and
dresses, this shameless flaunting of stolen
goods—bread and meat snatched from the poor.  You know
these women round us in the boxes.  You know whose
wives and daughters they are.  Where did the money
come from?"  She was talking rapidly, her eyes
shining, her voice quivering.  "Do you see the Atwaters
there with Lona Trafford in their box?  Do you know
that Atwater just robbed a hundred thousand more
people of their savings by lying about an issue of
bonds?  Do you know that Trafford steals outright
one-third of every dollar the poor people, the day
laborers, intrust to him as insurance for their old age
and for their orphans?  Do you know that Langdon
there robs a million farmers of their earnings and
drives them to the mortgage and the tax sale and
pauperism and squalor—all so that the Langdons may
have palaces and carriages and the means to degrade
thousands into dependence and to steal more and more
money from more and more people?"

Narcisse's eyes traveled slowly round the circle,
then rested in wonder on Neva.  "What set you to
thinking of these things?" she asked.

"What always sets a *woman* to thinking?"

When they reached home, Narcisse broke the silence
to say, "After all, it's nobody's fault.  It's a system
and they're the victims of it."

"Because one has the chance to steal—that's no
excuse for his stealing," replied Neva, with a certain
sternness in her face that curiously reminded Narcisse
of Armstrong.  "Nor is it any excuse that everyone
is doing it, and so making it respectable.  I'm
going back home—back where at least I shan't be
tormented by seeing these things with my very eyes."

On impulse, perhaps tinged with selfishness, Narcisse
exclaimed, "Neva, why don't you marry Armstrong?"

"Because I don't trust him," replied she.  "One
may love without trust, but not marry."

"Yet," said Narcisse, "I'd marry Boris, though
I never could trust him—never!"

"If you had been married, you wouldn't do it,"
replied Neva.  Then, "But every case is individual,
and everyone must judge for himself."

"You know best—about Armstrong."

"I should say I did!" exclaimed Neva bitterly.
"There's no excuse for my folly—none!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ARMSTRONG ASKS A FAVOR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \XXXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ARMSTRONG ASKS A FAVOR

.. vspace:: 2

Neva, arranging to go West on the afternoon
express, was stopped by a note from Armstrong:

"I hope you will come to my office at eleven to-morrow.
I beg you not to refuse this, the greatest
favor, except one, that I have ever asked."

At eleven the next morning she entered the ante-room
to his office.  He and his secretary were alone
there, he walking up and down with a nervousness
Morton had never seen in him.  At sight of her, his
manner abruptly changed.  "I was afraid something
would happen to prevent your coming," he said as
they shook hands.  He avoided her glance.  "Thank
you.  Thank you."  And he took her into his inner
office.  "I have an engagement—a meeting that will
keep me a few minutes," he went on.  "It's only in
the next room here."

"Don't hurry on my account," said she.

"I'll just put you at this desk here," he continued,
with a curious elaborateness of manner.  "There are
the morning's papers—and some magazines.  I shall
be back—as soon as possible.  You are sure you don't
mind?"

"Indeed, no," she replied, seating herself.  "This
is most comfortable."

There were sounds of several persons entering
the adjoining room.  "I'll go now," said he.  "The
sooner I go, the sooner I shall be free.  You will
wait?"

"Here," she assured him, wondering that he would
not let his eyes meet hers even for an instant.

He went into the next room, leaving the door ajar,
but not widely enough for her to see or to be seen.
She took up a magazine, began a story.  The sound
of the voices disturbed her.  She heard enough to
gather that some kind of business meeting was going
on, resumed the story.  Suddenly she heard Armstrong's
voice.  She listened.  He, all of them, were
so near that she could hear every word.

"You will probably be surprised to learn, gentlemen,"
he was saying, loudly, clearly, "that I have been
impatiently awaiting your coming.  And now that you
are here, I shall not only give you every opportunity
to examine the affairs of the O.A.D., but I shall
insist upon your taking advantage of it to the
fullest.  I look to you, gentlemen, to end the campaign
of calumny against your association and its management."

Neva's magazine had dropped into her lap.  She
knew now why he had asked her to come.  If only
she could see!  But no—that was impossible; she must
be content with hearing.  She sat motionless, eager,
yet in dread too; for she knew that Armstrong had
summoned her to his trial, that she was to hear with
her own ears the truth, the whole truth about him.
The truth!  Would it seem to her as it evidently
seemed to him?  No matter; she believed in him
again.  "At least," she said, "he *thinks* he's right,
and the best man can get no nearer right than that."

If she could have looked into the next room, she
would have seen two large tables, men grouped about
each.  At one were Armstrong and the five committee-men,
and the lawyer, Drew, whom they had brought
with them from Chicago to conduct the examination
and cross-examinations.  At the other sat a dozen
reporters from the newspapers.

"I have told the gentlemen of the press," said
Armstrong, "that my impression was that the sessions
of the committee were to be public.  It is, of course,
for you to decide."

Drew rubbed his long lean jaw reflectively.  "I see,
Mr. Armstrong," said he, in a slow, bantering tone,
"that you are disposed to assist us to the extent of
taking charge of the investigation.  Now, I came
with the notion that *I* was to do that, to whatever
extent the committee needed leading."

"Then you do not wish the investigation to be
public?" said Armstrong.

"Public, yes," replied Drew.  "But I doubt if we
can conduct it so thoroughly or so calmly, if our every
move is made under the limelight."

"Before we go any further," said Armstrong,
"there is a matter I wish to bring to the attention of
the committee, which it might, perhaps, seem better to
you to keep from the press.  If so, will you ask the
reporters to retire for a few minutes?"

"Now, *there's* just the kind of matter I think the
press ought to hear," said Drew.  "*We* haven't any
secrets, Mr. Armstrong."

"Very well," said Armstrong.  "The matter is
this: The campaign against the O.A.D. and against
me was instigated and has been kept up by Mr. Atwater
and several of his associates, owners and
exploiters of our rivals in the insurance business.  In
view of that fact, I think the committee will see the
gross impropriety, the danger, the disaster, I may say,
of having as its counsel, as its guide, one of
Mr. Atwater's personal lawyers?"

"That's a lie," drawled Drew.

Armstrong did not change countenance.  He
rested his gaze calmly on the lawyer.  "Where did you
dine last night, Mr. Drew?" he asked.

"This is the most impertinent performance I was
ever the amused victim of," said Drew.  "You are on
trial here, sir, not I.  Of course, I shall not answer
your questions."

Farthest from Drew and facing him sat the chairman
of the committee, its youngest member, Roberts
of Denver—a slender, tall man, with sinews like steel
wires enwrapping his bones, and nothing else beneath
a skin tanned by the sun into leather.  He had eyes
that suggested the full-end view of the barrel of a
cocked revolver.  "Speak your questions to me,
Mr. Armstrong," now said this quiet, dry, dangerous-looking
person, "and I'll put 'em to our counsel.
Where *did* you dine last night, Mr. Drew?"

Drew glanced into those eyes and glanced away.
"It is evidently Mr. Armstrong's intention to foment
dissension in the committee," said he.  "I trust you
gentlemen will not fall headlong into his trap."

"Why do you object to telling us where you dined
last night?" asked Roberts.

"I can see no relevancy to our mission in the
fact that I dined with my old friend, Judge Bimberger."

"Ask him how long he has known Judge Bimberger,"
said Armstrong.

"I have known him for years," said Drew.  "But
I have not seen much of him lately."

"Then, ask him," said Armstrong to Roberts,
"why it was necessary for Mr. Atwater to give Bimberger
a letter of introduction to him, a letter which
the judge sent up with his card at the Manhattan
Hotel at four o'clock yesterday afternoon."

Drew smiled contemptuously, without looking at
either Armstrong or the chairman.  "It was not a
letter of introduction.  It was a friendly note
Mr. Atwater asked the judge to deliver."

"It had 'Introducing Judge Bimberger' on the
envelope," said Armstrong.  "There it is."  And he
tossed an envelope on the table.

Drew sprang to his feet, sank back with a ghastly
grin.  "You see, we have a very clever man to deal
with, gentlemen," said he, "a man who stops at
nothing, and is never so at ease as when he is stooping."

"Ask him," pursued Armstrong tranquilly, "how
much he made in counsel fees from Atwater, from the
Universal Life, from the Hearth and Home Defender,
last year."

"I am counsel to a great many men and corporations,"
cried Drew, ruffled.  "You will not find a
lawyer of my standing who has not practically all the
conspicuous interests as his clients."

"Probably not," said Roberts dryly.  "That's the
hell of it for us common folks."

"Ask him," said Armstrong, "what arrangements
he made with Bimberger to pervert the investigation,
to make it simply a slaughter of its present
management, to——"

"Gentlemen, I appeal to you!" exclaimed Drew
with great dignity.  "I did not come here to be
insulted.  I have too high a position at the bar to be
brought into question.  I protest.  I demand that this
cease."

"Ask him," said Armstrong, "what he and Bimberger
and Atwater and Langdon talked about at the
dinner last night."

"You have heard my protest, gentlemen," said
Drew coldly.  "I am awaiting your answer."

A silence of perhaps twenty seconds that seemed
as many minutes.  Then Roberts spoke: "Well,
Mr. Drew, in view of the fact that the reporters are
present——"

Involuntarily Drew wheeled toward the reporters'
table, wild terror in his eyes.  He had forgotten that
the press was there; all in a rush, he realized what
those silent, almost effaced dozen young men meant—the
giant of the brazen lungs who would in a few brief
hours be shrieking into every ear, from ocean to
ocean, the damning insinuations of Armstrong.  He
tried to speak, but only a rattling sound issued from
his throat.

"As the reporters are present," Roberts went on
pitilessly—he had seen too much of the tragic side
of life in his years as Indian fighter and cowboy to
be moved simply by tragedy without regard to its
cause—"I think, and I believe the rest of the
committee think, that you will have to answer
Mr. Armstrong's grave charges."

Drew collected himself.  "I doubt if a reputable
counsel has ever been subjected to such indignities,"
said he in his slow, dignified way.  "I not only
decline to enter into a degrading controversy, I also
decline to serve longer as counsel to a committee which
has so frankly put itself in a position to have its work
discredited from the outset."

"Then you admit," said Roberts, "that you have
entered into improper negotiations with parties
interested to queer this investigation?"

"Such a charge is preposterous," replied Drew.

"You admit that you deceived us a few moments
ago as to your relations with this judge?" pursued
Roberts.

Drew made no answer.  He was calmly gathering
together his papers.

"I suggest that some one move that Mr. Drew's
resignation be not accepted, but that he be dismissed."

"I so move," said Reed, the attorney-general of Iowa.

"Second," said Bissell, a San Franciscan.

The motion was carried, as Drew, head in the air,
and features inscrutably calm behind his dark, rough
skin, marched from the room, followed by several of
the reporters.

"As there are two lawyers on the committee," said
Roberts, "it seems to me we had better make no more
experiments with outside counsel."

The others murmured assent.  "Let Mr. Reed
do the questioning," suggested Mulholland.  It was
agreed, and Reed took the chair which Drew had occupied,
as it was conveniently opposite to that in which
Armstrong was seated.  The reporters who had
pursued Drew now returned; one of them said in an
audible undertone to his fellow—"He wouldn't
talk—not a word," and they all laughed.

"Now—Mr. Armstrong," said Reed, in a sharp,
businesslike voice.

"I was summoned," began Armstrong, "as the
first witness, I assume.  I should like to preface my
examination with a brief statement."

"Certainly," said Reed.  Roberts nodded.  He had
his pistol-barrel eyes trained upon Armstrong.  It was
evident that Armstrong's exposure of Drew, far from
lessening Roberts's conviction that he was a bandit,
had strengthened it, had made him feel that here was
an even wilier, more resourceful, more dangerous man
than he had anticipated.

"For the past year and a half, gentlemen," said
Armstrong, "I have been engaged in rooting out a
system of graft which had so infected the O.A.D. that
it had ceased to be an insurance company and had
become, like most of our great corporations, a device
for enabling a few insiders to gather in the money
of millions of people, to keep permanently a large
part of it, to take that part which could not be
appropriated and use it in gambling operations in which
the gamblers got most of the profits and the people
whose money supplied the stakes bore all the losses.  As
the inevitable result of my effort to snatch the O.A.D. from
these parasites and dependents, who filled all the
positions, high and low, far and near, there has been
a determined and exceedingly plausible campaign to
oust me.  Latterly, instead of fighting these plotters
and those whom they misled, I have been silent, have
awaited this moment—when a committee of the policy
holders would appear.  Naturally, I took every
precaution to prevent that committee from becoming the
unconscious tool of the enemies of the O.A.D."

Armstrong's eyes now rested upon the fifth member
of the committee, De Brett, of Ohio.  De Brett's
eyes slowly lowered until they were studying the dark
leather veneer of the top of the table.

"I think," continued Armstrong, "that I have
gone far enough in protecting the O.A.D. and myself
and my staff which has aided me in the big task
of expelling the grafters.  I have here——"

Armstrong lifted a large bundle of typewritten
manuscript and let it fall with a slight crash.  De
Brett jumped.

"I have here," said Armstrong, "a complete account
of my stewardship."

De Brett drew a cautious but profound breath of
relief.

"It shows who have been dismissed, why they were
dismissed, each man accounted for in detail; what
extravagances I found, how I have cut them off; the
contrast of the published and the actual conditions
of the company when I became its president, the
present condition—which I may say is flourishing, with
the expenses vastly cut down and the profits for the
policy holders vastly increased.  As soon as your
committee shall have vindicated the management, the
O.A.D. will start upon a new era of prosperity and
will soon distance, if not completely put out of
business, its rivals, loaded down, as they are, with
grafters."

Armstrong took up the bundle of typewriting and
handed it to Reed.  "Before you give that document
to the press," he went on, "I want to make one
suggestion.  The men who have been feeding on the
O.A.D. are, of course, personally responsible—but only in
a sense.  They are, rather, the product of a system.
No law, no safeguards will ever be devised for
protecting a man in the possession of anything which he
himself neglects and leaves open as a temptation to
the appetites of the less scrupulous of his fellow men.
These ravagers of your property, of our property,
are like a swarm of locusts.  They came; they found
the fields green and unprotected; they ate.  They have
passed on.  They are simply one of a myriad of similar
swarms.  If we leave our property unguarded again,
they will return.  If we guard it, they will never
bother us again.  The question is whether we—you—would
or would not do well to publish the names and
the records of these men.  Will it do any good
beyond supplying the newspapers with sensations for a
few days?  Will the good be overbalanced by the
harm, by the—if I may say so—the injustice?  For
is it not unjust to single out these few hundreds of
men, themselves the victims of a system, many of them
the unconscious victims—to single them out, when, all
over the land, wherever there is a great unguarded
property, their like and worse go unscathed, and will
be free to swell the chorus of more or less hypocritical
denunciations of them?"

"We shall let no guilty man escape," said Roberts,
eying Armstrong sternly, "not even you, Mr. Armstrong,
if we find you guilty."

"If there is any member of the committee who
can, after searching his own life, find no time when
he has directly or indirectly grafted or aided and
abetted graft or profits by grafting—or spared
relatives or friends when he caught them in the devious
but always more or less respectable ways of the
grafter—if there is such a one, then—" Armstrong
smiled—"I withdraw my suggestion."

"We must recover what has been stolen!  We must
send the thieves to the penitentiary!" exclaimed Mulholland.

"But you can do neither," said Armstrong.

"And why not?" demanded Reed.

"Because they have too many powerful friends.
They own the departments of justice here and at
Washington.  We should only waste the money of the
O.A.D., send good money after bad.  As you will
see in my statement there, I have recovered several
millions.  That is all we shall ever get back.
However, I shall say no more.  I am ready to answer any
questions.  My staff is ready.  The books are all at
your disposal."

"I think we had better adjourn now," said Reed,
"and examine the papers Mr. Armstrong has
submitted—adjourn, say until Thursday morning.  And
in the meanwhile, we will hold the document, if the
rest of the committee please, and not give it to the
press.  We must not give out anything that has not
been absolutely verified."

"I can't offer the committee lunch here," said
Armstrong.  "We have cut off the lunch account of
the O.A.D.—a saving of forty thousand a year
toward helping the policy holders buy their lunches."  And
he bowed to the chairman, and withdrew by the
door by which he had entered.

"A smooth citizen," said Roberts, when the
reporters were gone.

"Very," said De Brett, at whom he was looking.

"He's that—and more," said Mulholland.  "He's
an honest man."

"We must be careful about hasty conclusions,"
replied Roberts.

"He is probably laughing at us, even now," said
De Brett.

Roberts turned the pistol-barrel upon him again.
"We've got to be a damned sight more careful about
prejudice against him," said he.

And De Brett hastily and eagerly assented.

.. vspace:: 2

In the next room the man who "is probably laughing
at us, even now" was standing before a woman
who could not lift her burning face to meet his gaze.
But he, looking long at her, thought he saw that there
was no hope for him, and shut himself in behind his
stolidity of the Indian and the pioneer.

"Well," he said, "you don't believe.  I was afraid
it'd be so.  Why should you?  I hardly believe in
myself as yet."  And he turned to stare out of the
window.

She came hesitatingly, slid her arm timidly through
his.  She entreated softly, earnestly, "Forgive me,
Horace."  Then in response to his quick glance,
"Forgive me, I won't again, ever."

"Oh," was all he said.  But his tone was like the
arm he put round her shoulders to draw her close
against his broad chest, the rampart of a dauntless
soul.  And as with one pair of eyes, not his nor hers,
but theirs, they gazed serenely down upon the vast
panorama of snow-draped skyscrapers, plumed like
volcanoes and lifting grandly in the sparkling air.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center

   THE END

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS.

.. vspace:: 2

**The Second Generation.**

.. vspace:: 1

Illustrated.  Cloth, $1.50.

.. vspace:: 1

"The Second Generation" is a double-decked romance
in one volume, telling the two love-stories of a young
American and his sister, reared in luxury and suddenly left
without means by their father, who felt that money was
proving their ruination and disinherited them for their own
sakes.  Their struggle for life, love and happiness makes a
powerful love-story of the middle West.

.. vspace:: 2

"The book equals the best of the great story tellers of all
time."—*Cleveland Plain Dealer*.

"'The Second Generation,' by David Graham Phillips, is not
only the most important novel of the new year, but it is one of the
most important ones of a number of years past."—*Philadelphia
Inquirer*.

"A thoroughly American book is 'The Second Generation.'
... The characters are drawn with force and
discrimination."—*St. Louis Globe Democrat*.

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written and intensely interesting.  The story 'works out' well,
and though it is made to sustain the theory of the writer it does
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'problem novel' Mr. Phillips has won a foremost place among our
younger American authors."—*Boston Herald*.

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way, of cutting through the veneer of snobbishness and bringing
real men and women to the surface.  He strikes at shams, yet has
a wholesome belief in the people behind them, and he forces them
to justify his good opinions."—*Kansas City Times*.



.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3



.. class:: center large bold

   THE LEADING NOVEL OF TODAY.

.. vspace:: 2

**The Fighting Chance.**

.. vspace:: 1

By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.  Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell.
12mo.  Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.

.. vspace:: 1

In "The Fighting Chance" Mr. Chambers has taken
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brush and a big heart.

.. vspace:: 2

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has to be very good not to suffer fearfully by comparison.
'The Fighting Chance' is very good and it does not
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than Sylvia Landis."—*New York Evening Sun*.

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to the end."—*Detroit Free Press*.

"Mr. Chambers has written many brilliant stories, but
this is his masterpiece."—*Pittsburg Chronicle Telegraph*.



.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   A MASTERPIECE OF FICTION.

.. vspace:: 2

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.. vspace:: 1

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.. vspace:: 1

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Independent*.

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thinkers."—*St. Louis Post-Dispatch*.



.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3



.. class:: center large bold

A ROMANCE OF THE CIVIL WAR.

.. vspace:: 2

**The Victory.**

.. vspace:: 1

By MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL, author of "The
Chateau of Montplaisir," "The Sprightly Romance
of Marsac," etc.  Illustrated.  Cloth, $1.50.

.. vspace:: 2

"With so delicate a touch and appreciation of the detail
of domestic and plantation life, with so wise comprehension
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on a reader that 'The Victory' is the truest and most
tragic presentation yet before us of the rending of home
ties, the awful passions, the wounded affections personal
and national, and the overwhelming questions of honor
which weighed down a people in the war of son against
father and brother against brother."—*Hartford Courant*.

"Among the many romances written recently about the
Civil War, this one by Miss Seawell takes a high place....
Altogether, 'The Victory,' a title significant in several
ways, makes a strong appeal to the lover of a good
tale."—*The Outlook*.

"Miss Seawell's narrative is not only infused with a
tender and sympathetic spirit of romance and surcharged
with human interests, but discloses, in addition, careful and
minute study of local conditions and characteristic
mannerisms.  It is an intimate study of life on a Virginia
plantation during an emergent and critical period of
American history."—*Philadelphia North American*.

"It is one of the romances that make, by spirit as well as
letter, for youth and high feeling.  It embodies, perhaps, the
best work this author yet has done."—*Chicago Record-Herald*.

"Aside from the engaging story itself and the excellent
manner in which it is told there is much of historic interest
in this vivid word-picture of the customs and manners of a
period which has formed the background of much
fiction."—*Brooklyn Citizen*.

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\D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK



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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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   OTHER NOVELS BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

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THE SECOND GENERATION
THE COST
THE DELUGE
THE MASTER ROGUE
THE SOCIAL SECRETARY
GOLDEN FLEECE
THE PLUM TREE
A WOMAN VENTURES

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