Light-Fingered Gentry

NEVA.

LIGHT-FINGERED
GENTRY

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

AUTHOR OF "THE SECOND GENERATION," ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
MCMVII

Published, September, 1907

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

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]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Neva] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

["She was giving Alois a free hand in planning surroundings"]

["'I felt I must see you—must see you at once'"]

["'You are my life, the light on my path'"]

LIGHT-FINGERED GENTRY

A MATRIMONIAL MISTAKE

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.

A FEAST AND A FIASCO

"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.

III

"ONLY COUSIN NEVA"

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."

THE FOSDICK FAMILY

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.

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.

NARCISSE AND ALOIS

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.

NEVA GOES TO SCHOOL

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.

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.

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.

VII

A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW

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."

VIII

IN NEVA'S STUDIO

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.

MASTER AND MAN

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.

AMY SWEET AND AMY SOUR

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."

"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."

AT MRS. TRAFFORD'S

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.

XII

"WE NEVER WERE"

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.

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!"

XIII

OVERLOOK LODGE

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.

XIV

WOMAN'S DISTRUST—AND TRUST

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.