"I don't believe I shall be as happy as this for weeks. It comes over me

sometimes."

She leaned forward, her face already subdued with thought.

"It makes you beautiful to be happy," Dresser said, with clumsy

self-consciousness.

Alves's eyes responded quickly, and she leaned a little farther forward,

pondering the words. Suddenly Dresser took her hand, and then locked her in

his arms. Even in the roughness of his passion, he could not fail to see

her white face. She struggled in his grasp without speaking, as if knowing

that words would be useless. And Dresser, too embarrassed by his act to

speak, dragged her closer to him.

"Don't touch me," she gasped; "what have I done!"

"I _will_ kiss you," the man cried. "What difference is it, anyway?"

He wrested her from the low chair, and she fell without power to save

herself, to struggle further. The room was swimming before her eyes, and

Dresser had his arms about her. Then the door opened, and she saw Sommers

enter. Her eyes filled with tears.

"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, looking sharply about at the upset

chair, the prostrate form, and Dresser's red face.

"She has fallen--fainted," Dresser stammered.

Alves seemed to acquiesce for a moment, and her head sank back; then she

opened her eyes and looked at Sommers pitifully.

"No, Howard. Help me."

Sommers raised her, his face much troubled. While he held her, she spoke

brokenly, trying to hide her face.

"You must know. He kissed me. I don't know why. Make him go away. O Howard,

what am I?"

Sommers dropped his arm from Alves and started toward Dresser, who was

edging away.

"What is this?"

His dictatorial tone made Dresser pause.

"She told you. I was a fool. I tried to kiss her."

Sommers took him by the arm without a word.

"Yes, I am going. Don't make a row about it. You needn't get into a state

about it. She isn't Mrs. Sommers, you know!"

"Oh!" Alves groaned, closing her eyes again. "How can he say that!"

Sommers dropped his arm.

"Who told you that Alves was not my wife?" he asked drearily.

"Every one knows it. Lindsay has the whole story. You--"

"Don't say anything more," Sommers interrupted sternly. "You are too nasty

to kill."

His tone was quiet. He seemed to be questioning himself what he should do.

Finally, opening the door, he grasped Dresser by the neck and flung him

into the sand outside. Then he closed the door and turned to Alves. She was

crouching before the fire, sobbing to herself. He stroked her hair

soothingly.

"We must conform," he said at last.

She shook her head. "It is too late to stop that talk. I was wrong to care

about not having the ceremony, and it was foolish to tell Jane. But--to

have him think, his touch--how can you ever kiss me again! You let him go,"

she added, her passion flaming up; "I would have killed him. Why didn't you

let me kill him?"

"That is savage," he replied sadly. "What good is it to answer brutality by

crime? You cannot save your skirts from the dirt," he concluded softly to

himself. "I knew the fellow was bad; I knew it eight years ago, when he

took a Swiss girl to Augsburg and left her there. But I said to myself then

that, like many men, he had his moods of the beast which he could not

control, and thought no more about it. Now his mood of the beast touches

me. Society keeps such men in check; he will marry Laura Lindsay and make

an excellent, cringing husband, waiting for Lindsay's savings. You see," he

ended, turning to his work-table, "I suppose he felt released from the

bonds of society by the way we live, by--it all."

Alves rose and walked to and fro.

"Do you think," she asked at last, "that anything I could have done--he

could have felt that I--encouraged him?"

"I don't think anything more about it," Sommers answered, closing his lips

firmly. "It is part of the mire; we must avert our eyes, Alves."

But in spite of his mild, even gentle way of dealing with the affair, he

could not fall into his routine of work. He got up from the table and,

finding the room too warm, threw open a window to let the clear, cold

winter air rush over his face. He stood there a long time, plunged in

thought, while Alves waited for him to come back to her. At last she could

bear it no longer. She crept over to his side and placed her head close to

his.

"I wish you would even hate me, would be angry, would _feel_ it," she

whispered. "Will you ever care to kiss me again?"

"Foolish woman!" Sommers answered, taking her face in his hands. "Why

should _that_ make any difference to me, any more than if a drunken

brute had struck you?"

"But it does," she asserted sadly. "Everything does, Howard--all the past:

that I let my husband touch me; that I had to live with him; that you had

to know it, him--it all makes, oh, such a difference!"

"No," he responded, in a high voice. "By God, it makes no difference--only

one thing." He paused. Then with a wrench he went on, "Alves, did you--did

you--" But he could not make himself utter the words, and before he had

mastered his hesitation she had broken in impetuously:

"No, I am right; the great happiness that I wanted to give you must come

from the spirit and body of a woman untouched by the evil of living in the

world. The soiled people like me should not--"

He closed her lips with a kiss.

"Don't blaspheme our life," he answered tenderly. "One cannot live

unspotted except in the heart."

He kissed her again, tenderly, lovingly. But the kiss did not assuage her

burning shame; it savored of pity, of magnificent charity.

CHAPTER VIII

One still, frozen winter day succeeded another in changeless iteration. The

lake was a solid floor of gray ice as far as one could see. Along the shore

between the breakwaters the ice lay piled in high waves, with circles of

clear, shining glass beyond. A persistent drift from the north and east,

day after day, lifted the sheets of surface ice and slid them over the

inner ledges. At night the lake cracked and boomed like a battery of

powerful guns, one report starting another until the shore resounded with

the noise. The perpetual groaning of the laboring ice, the rending and

riving of the great fields, could be heard as far inshore as the temple all

through the still night.

Early every morning Sommers with Alves would start for the lake. At this

hour only an occasional fisherman could be seen, cutting fresh holes in the

ice and setting his lines. Sommers preferred to skate in the mornings, for

later in the day the smooth patches of inshore ice were frequented by

people from the city. He loved solitude, it seemed to Alves, more and more.

In the Keystone days he had been indifferent to the people of the house;

now he avoided people except as they needed him professionally. She

attributed it, wrongly, to a feeling of pride. In reality, the habit of

self-dependence was gaining, and the man was thrusting the world into the

background. For hours Sommers never spoke. Always sparing of words,

counting them little, despising voluble people, he was beginning to lose

the power of ready speech. Thus, living in one of the most jostling of the

world's taverns, they lived as in the heart of the Arizona desert.

They skated in these long silences, enjoying the exhilaration of the

exercise, the bitter air, the views of the huge, silent city. Now and then

they paused instinctively to watch the scene, without speaking, like great

lovers that are mute. Starting from the sheltered pool, where the yachts

lay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around which

the black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was a

snakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more open

fields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, and

then they sped away toward the little island made by the "intake" of the

water works.

These windless mornings the bank of city smoke northward was like gray

powder, out of which the skyscrapers stretched their lofty heads. The

buildings along the shore, etched in the transparent air, breathing

silently white mists of steam, lay like a mirage wonderfully touched with

purplish shadows. The great steel works rose to the south, visibly near,

mysteriously remote. The ribbons of fiery smoke from their furnaces were

the first signs of the city's awakening from its lethargic industrial

sleep. The beast was beginning to move along its score of miles of length.

But out here in the vacancies of the lake it seemed still torpid.

Eastward, beyond the dot which the "intake" made, the lake was a still

arctic field, furrowed by ice-floes, snowy here, with an open pool of water

there, ribbed all over with dark crevasses of oozing water. In the far east

lay the horizon line of shimmering, gauzy light, as if from beyond the

earth's rim was flooding in the brilliance of a perpetual morning. North

and south, east and west, along the crevasses the lake smoked in the

morning sun, as the vapor from the water beneath rose into the icy air.

Savage, tranquil, immense, the vast field of ice was like the indifferent

face of nature, like unto death.

One morning, as they waited breathlessly listening to the silence of the

ice sea, the lake groaned close beside them, and suddenly the floe on which

they stood parted from the field nearer shore. In a few minutes the lane of

open water was six feet in width. Sommers pointed to it, and without a word

they struck out to the north, weaving their way in and out of the floes,

now clambering over heaved-up barriers of ice, now flying along an

unscarred field, again making their way cautiously across sheets of

shivered surface ice that lay like broken glass beside a crevasse. Finally,

they reached the inner field. Sommers looked at his watch, and said:

"We might as well go ashore here. That was rather a narrow chance. I must

look in at the Keystone to see how Webber is. I shouldn't wonder if he had

typhoid."

"I wish we could go on," Alves replied regretfully. "I was hoping the lane

ran on and on for miles."

She put her hands under his coat and leaned against him, looking wistfully

into the arctic sea.

"Let me go back!" she pleaded. "I should like to skate on, on, for days!"

"You can't go back without me. Some day, if this weather keeps up, we'll

try for the Michigan shore."

"I should like to end things in this way," she continued musingly; "just us

two, to plunge on and on and on into that quiet ice-field, until, at last,

some pool shot up ahead--and then! To go out like that, quenched right in

the heat of our lives; not chilled, piece by piece."

Sommers moved impatiently.

"It isn't time for that."

"No?" she asked rather than assented, and turned her face to the city. "I

am not sure; sometimes I think it is the ripe time. There can be nothing

more."

Sommers did not answer, but began to skate slowly. Half an hour later they

climbed over the hills of shore ice, and he hurried away to the Keystone.

Alves walked slowly south on the esplanade. The gray sea of ice was covered

now with the winter sun. The pools and crevasses sent up sheets of steam.

Her eyes followed the ice lingeringly. Once she turned back to the lake,

but finally she started across the frozen grass plots in the direction of

the temple. She could see from a distance a black figure seated on the

portico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat,

black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between the

broken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted that

she had turned back from the ice.

Mrs. Ducharme showed no sign of life until Alves reached the steps. She was

worn and unkempt. A ragged straw hat but partly disguised her rumpled hair.

Alves recalled what Miss M'Gann had said about her drinking.

"I've been to see you two, three times," Mrs. Ducharme said, in a hoarse,

grumbling tone; "but you'se always out. This time I was a-going to wait if

I'd stayed all night."

"Come in," Alves answered, unlocking the door. The woman dragged herself

into the temple.

"Not so tidy a place as you and the other one had," she remarked

mournfully.

Alves waited for her to declare her errand; but as she seemed in no haste

to speak, she asked,

"Did you ever find Ducharme?"

The Duchesse nodded sombrely, closing her eyes.

"The woman shook him time of the strikes, when his money was gone."

"Well, isn't that what you wanted?"

Mrs. Ducharme nodded her head slowly.

"She made him bad. He drinks, awful sometimes, and whenever I say anything,

he says he's going back to Peory, to that woman."

Alves waited for the expected request for money. "They'se awful, these men;

but a woman can't get on without _'em_, no more than the men without

_us_. Only the men don't care much which one. Any one will do for a

time. Do you find the new one any better?"

"I am very happy," Alves replied with a flush; "but I don't care to talk

about my affairs."

"You needn't be so close," the woman exclaimed irritably. "I know all about

_you_. The _real_ one was a fine gentleman, even if he did liquor

bad."

"I told you," Alves repeated, "that I didn't care to talk of my affairs.

What do you want?"

"I've come here to talk of your affairs," Mrs Ducharme answered insolently.

"And I guess you'll listen. He,--I don't mean the doctor,--the real 'un,

came of rich, respectable folks. He told me all about it, and got me to

write 'em for money, and his sister sent him some."

"So that was where he obtained the money to drink with when he got out of

the cottage!" Alves exclaimed.

The woman nodded, and added, "He gave me some, too."

Alves rose and opened the door.

"I don't see why you came here," she said briefly, pointing to the door.

But Mrs. Ducharme merely laughed and kept her seat.

"Did he, the doctor feller, ever ask you anything about his death?" she

asked.

Alves looked at her blankly.

"When he signed that paper you gave the undertaker?" continued the

Duchesse.

"I don't know what you mean!" Alves exclaimed, closing the door and walking

away from the woman.

"How did _he_ die?" Mrs. Ducharme whispered.

"You know as well as I," Alves cried, terrified now by the mysterious air

the woman assumed.

"Yes!" Mrs. Ducharme whispered again. "I know as well as you. I know, and I

can tell. I know how the wife gave him powders,--sleeping powders the

doctor ordered,--the doctor who was hanging around, and ran off with her

just after the funeral."

The woman's scheme of extracting blackmail flashed instantly into Alves's

mind.

"You foul creature," she gasped, "you know it is an abominable lie--"

"Think so? Well, Ducharme didn't think so when I told him, and there are

others that 'ud believe it, if I should testify to it!"

Alves walked to and fro, overwhelmed by the thoughts of the evil which was

around her. At last she faced Mrs. Ducharme, who was watching her closely.

"I see what it means. You want money--blackmail, and you think you've got a

good chance. But I will not give you a cent. I will tell Dr. Sommers first,

and let him deal with you."

"The doctor! What does he say about his dying quiet and nice as he did? I

guess the doctor'll see the point."

Alves started. What did Sommers think? What were his half-completed

inquiries? What did his conduct the night of Preston's death mean? This

wretched affair was like a curse left to injure her by the miserable

creature she had once been tied to. But Sommers would believe her! She had

given Preston but _one_ powder, and he had said two were safe. She

must tell him exactly what she had done.

"You had better go now," she said to the woman more calmly. "I shall let

Dr. Sommers know what your story is. He will answer you."

"Better not tell him," the woman replied, with a laugh. "He _knows_

all he wants to--or I'd 'a' gone to him at once. When he hears about the

scrape, he'll run and leave you. You ain't married, anyway!"

"Go," Alves implored.

Mrs. Ducharme rose and stood irresolutely.

"I don't want much, not to trouble you. I'll give you a day to think this

over, and to-morrer morning I'll be here at nine sharp to get your answer."

When the woman had gone, Alves tried to reason the matter out calmly. She

had been too excited. The charge was simply preposterous, and,

inexperienced as she was, she felt that nothing could be made of it in any

court. But the mere suggestion of a court, of a public inquiry, alarmed

her, not for herself but for Sommers, who would suffer grievously. And it

did not seem easy to discuss the matter with him as she must now; it would

bring up distressing scenes. Her face burned at the thought. The woman's

tale was plausible. Had Sommers wondered about the death? Gradually it came

over her that Sommers had always suspected this thing. She was sure of it.

He had not spoken of it because he wished to protect her from her own deed.

But, now, he would not believe her. The Ducharme woman's tale would fit in

with his surmises. No! he _must_ believe her. And beside this last

fear, the idea of publicity, of ventilating the old scandal, thus damning

him finally and hounding him out of his little practice, faded into

inconsequence. The terrible thing was that for eighteen months he had

carried this belief about her in his heart.

She tried to divert her excited mind from the throng of suspicions and

fears by preparing dinner. One o'clock came, then two, and Sommers did not

arrive. Mrs. Ducharme might have waited for him at the entrance to the

avenue, and he might have turned back to debate with himself what he should

do. But she acquitted him of that cowardice.

* * * * *

As the afternoon wore on, her mind turned to the larger thoughts of their

union. She saw with sudden clearness what she had done to this man she

loved. She had taken him from his proper position in the world; she had

forced him to push his theories of revolt beyond sane limits. She had

isolated him, tied him, and his powers would never be tested. A man like

him could never be happy, standing outside the fight with his equals. Worse

yet, she had soiled the reverences of his nature. What was she but a soiled

thing! The tenderness of his first passion had sprung amid the rank growth

of her past with its sordid little drama. And the soil in her fate had

tarnished their lives ever since, until this grievous...

And what had she given him? Love,--every throb of her passionate body,

every desire and thought. Was this enough? There sounded the sad note of

defeat: it was not, could not be, would never be enough! No man ever lived

from love alone. Passion was a torrid desert. Already she had felt him

fading out of her life, withdrawing into the mysterious recesses of his

soul. He did not know it; he did not willingly put her away. But as each

plant of the field was destined to grow its own way, side by side with its

fellows, so human souls grew singly by themselves from some irresistible

inner force. And she was but the parasite that fed upon this soul.

The room stifled her. She fetched her cape and hat. They were lying upon

his table, and as she took them she could see the sheets of an unfinished

letter. The writing was firm and fine, with the regular alignment and

spacing of one who is deft about handwork. Her eye glanced over the page;

the letter was in answer to a doctor in Baltimore, who had asked him to

cooperate in preparing a surgical monograph. "I should like extremely to be

with you in this," ran the lines, like the voice of the speaking man,

"but--and the refusal pains me more than you know--I cannot in honesty

undertake the work. I have not suitable conditions. It is eighteen months

since I entered a hospital, and I am behind the times. And, for the

present, I see no prospect of being in a condition to undertake the work. I

advise you to try Muller, or--" There the letter broke off, unfinished. She

raised it to her lips and kissed it. This was another sign, and she would

heed it. To be a full man he must return to the poor average world, or be

less than the trivial people he had always despised.

When she opened the door, the level rays of the western sun blinded her.

There was no wind. Eastward the purple shadows had thickened, effacing the

line of light along the horizon. The frozen lake stretched, ridged and

furrowed, into the gloom. Toward it she walked,--slowly, irresistibly drawn

by its limitless bosom.

She had boasted to Miss Hitchcock, "I will take myself out of his life, if

need be." It was not an empty, woman's boast. She was strong enough to do

what she willed. The time had come. She would not see him again. To break

with words the ties between them would but dishonor them both. They must

not discuss this thing. At the shore of the pool where they had put on

their skates in the morning she paused, shaken with a new thought. The

woman would come back on the morrow, and, without one word of denial from

her, would tell him that terrible lie, confirming his old suspicions. She

must see him,--she could not leave him with that foul memory,--and she

returned to the temple in the hope that he was already there. The little

building, however, was empty and desolate, and she sat down by the fire to

wait.

The story, the denial of it, no longer seemed important. She would write

him what she had to say, and go away. She would tell him that she had not

poisoned her husband like a sick dog, and he would believe the solemn last

words. She took a sheet of paper from his table and wrote hesitatingly:

"Dear Howard: I am leaving you----forever." Then she began again and again,

but at last she came back to the first words and wrote on desperately: "I

cannot make you understand it all. But one thing I must tell you, and you

must believe it. That horrible woman, Mrs. Ducharme, was here this morning

and told me that I had given opiates to my husband when he was ill in the

cottage, and had killed him, _and that you knew it_. Somehow I

remembered things that made me know you thought so, had always thought so.

Perhaps you will still think it must have been so, her story is so terribly

probable.

"O Howard, you used to think that it would be right--but I couldn't. I

might have in time, but I couldn't then. I did nothing to hasten his death.

Believe this, if you love me the least.

"That isn't the sole reason why I leave you. But it is all like that. I

ruin the world for you. Love is not all,--at least for a man,--and somehow

with me you cannot have the rest and love. We were wrong to rebel--I was

wrong to take my happiness. I longed so! I have been so happy!

"Alves."

It seemed pitifully inadequate--a few wavering lines--to tell the tale of

the volumes in her heart. But with a sigh she pushed back the chair and

gathered her hat and cape. Once more she hesitated, and seeing that the

fire in the stove was low, replenished it. Then she turned swiftly away,

locked the door,--putting the key where they hid it, in the hollow of a

pillar,--and walked rapidly in the direction of the lake.

It was already nearly dusk. Little groups of skaters were sauntering

homeward from the lagoons and the patches of inshore ice. The lake was gray

and stern. She gained the esplanade, with a vague purpose of walking into

the city, of taking the train for Wisconsin. But as she passed the long

pier, the desire to walk out on the ice seized her once more. With some

difficulty she gained the black ice after scrambling over the debris piled

high against the beach. When she reached the clear spaces she walked slowly

toward the open lake. The gloom of the winter night was already gathering;

as she passed the head of the pier, a park-guard hailed her, with some

warning cry. She paid no attention, but walked on, slowly picking her way

among the familiar ice hills, in and out of the floes.

Once beyond the head of the pier she was absolutely alone in the darkening

sea of ice. The cracks and crevasses were no longer steaming; instead, a

thin shell of ice was coating over the open surfaces. But she knew all

these spots and picked her way carefully. The darkness had already

enveloped the shore. Beyond, on all sides, rose small white hills of

drifted ice, making a little arctic ocean, with its own strange solitude,

its majestic distances, its titanic noises; for the fields of ice were

moving in obedience to the undercurrents, the impact from distant northerly

winds. And as they moved, they shrieked and groaned, the thunderous voices

hailing from far up the lake and pealing past the solitary figure to the

black wastes beyond. This tumult of the lake increased in fury, yet with

solemn pauses of absolute silence between the reports. At first Alves stood

still and listened, fearful, but as she became used to the noise, she

walked on calm, courageous, and strangely at peace in the clamor. Once she

faced the land, where the arc lights along the esplanade made blue holes in

the black night. Eastward the radiant line of illumined horizon reappeared,

creating a kind of false daybreak.

So this was the end as she had wished it--alone in the immensity of the

frozen lake. This was like the true conception of life--one vast, ever

darkening sphere filled with threatening voices, where she and others

wandered in sorrow, in regret, in disappointment, and, also, in joy. Oh!

that redeemed it. Her joy had been so beautiful, so true to the promise of

God in the pitiful heart of man. She said to herself that she had tasted it

without sin, and now had the courage to put it away from her before it

turned to a draught bitter to her and to others. There were more joys in

this life than the fierce love for man: the joy over a child, which had

been given to her and taken away; the joy of triumph, the joy--but why

should she remember the others? Her joy had its own perfection. For all the

tears and waste of living, this one passion had been given--a joy that

warmed her body in the cold gloom of the night.

There loomed in her path a black wall of broken ice. She drew herself

slowly over the crest of the massed blocks. Beyond lay a pleasant blackness

of clear water, into which she plunged,--still warm with the glow of her

perfect happiness.

CHAPTER IX

Webber had a well-developed case of typhoid, and Sommers had him moved to

St. Isidore's. The doctor accompanied him to the hospital, and once within

the doors of his old home, he lingered chatting with the house physician,

who had graduated from the Philadelphia school shortly after Sommers had

left. The come and go of the place, the air of excitement about the

hospital, stirred Sommers as nothing in months had done. Then the attention

paid him by the internes and the older nurses, who had kept alive in their

busy little world the tradition of his brilliant work, aroused all the

vanity in his nature. When he was about to tear himself away from the

pleasant antiseptic odor and orderly bustle, the house physician pressed

him to stay to luncheon. He yielded, longing to hear the talk about cases,

and remembering with pleasure the unconventional manners and bad food of

the St. Isidore mess-table. After luncheon he was urged to attend an

operation by a well-known surgeon, whose honest work he had always admired.

It was late in the afternoon when he finally started to leave, and then a

nurse brought word that Webber was anxious to see him about some business.

He found Webber greatly excited and worried over money matters. To his

surprise he learned that the foppish, quiet-mannered clerk had been

dabbling in the market. He held some Distillery common stock, and, also,

Northern Iron--two of the new "industrials" that were beginning to sprout

in Chicago.

"You must ask the brokers to sell if the market is going against me," the

clerk exclaimed feverishly. "Perhaps, if I am to be tied up here a long

time, they'd better sell, anyway."

"Yes," Sommers assented; "you must get it off your mind."

So, with a promise to see White and Einstein, the brokers, at once, and

look after the stock, he soothed the sick man.

"You're a good fellow," Webber sighed. "It's about all I have. I'll tell

you some time why I went in--I had very direct information."

Sommers cut him short and hastened away. By the time he had found White and

Einstein's office, a little room about as large as a cigar shop in the

basement of a large building on La Salle Street, the place was deserted. A

stenographer told him, with contempt in her voice, that the Exchange had

been closed for two hours. Resolving to return the first thing in the

morning, he started for the temple. He had two visits to make that he had

neglected for Webber's case, but he would wait until the evening and take

Alves with him. He had not seen her for hours. For the first time in months

he indulged himself in a few petty extravagances as he crossed the city to

get his train. The day had excited him, had destroyed the calm of his usual

controlled, plodding habits. The feverish buoyancy of his mood made it

pleasant to thread the chaotic streams of the city streets. It was

intoxicating to rub shoulders with men once more.

At Sixtieth Street he left the train and strode across the park, his

imagination playing happy, visionary tunes. He would drop in to-morrow at

St. Isidore's on his way back from White and Einstein's. He must see more

of those fellows at Henry's clinic; they seemed a good set. And he was not

sure that he should answer the Baltimore man so flatly. He would write for

further details. When he reached the temple, he found the place closed, and

he thought that Alves had gone to see one of his cases for him. The key was

in its usual hiding-place, and the fire looked as if it had been made

freshly. He had just missed her. So he filled a pipe, and hunted along the

table for the unfinished letter to the Baltimore man. It was blotted, he

noticed, and he would have to copy it in any case. As he laid it aside, his

eyes fell upon a loose sheet of note-paper covered with Alves's unfamiliar

writing. He took it up and read it, and then looked around him to see her,

to find her there in the next room. The letter was so unreal!

"Alves!" he called out, the pleasant glow of hope fading in his heart. How

he had forgotten her! She must be suffering so much! Mechanically he put on

his hat and coat and left the temple, hiding the key in the pillar. She

could not have been gone long,--the room had the air of her having just

left it. He should surely find her nearby; he must find her. Whipped by the

intolerable imagination of her suffering, he passed swiftly down the sandy

path toward the electric lights, that were already lamping silently along

the park esplanade. He chose this road, unconsciously feeling that she

would plunge out that way. What had the Ducharme woman said? What had made

her take this harsh step, macerating herself and him just as they were

beginning to breathe without fear? He sped on, into the gullies by the

foundations of the burnt buildings, up to the new boulevard. After one

moment of irresolution he turned to the right, to the lake. That icy sea

had fascinated her so strongly! He shivered at the memory of her words.

Once abreast of the pier he did not pause, but swiftly clambered out over

the ice hills and groped his way along the black piles of the pier. The

vastness of the field he had to search! But he would go, even across the

floes of ice to the Michigan shore. He was certain that she was out there,

beyond in the black night, in the gloom of the rending ice.

Suddenly, as he neared the end of the pier, the big form of a man, bearing,

dragging a burden, loomed up out of the dark expanse. It came nearer, and

Sommers could make out the uniform of a park-guard. He was half-carrying,

half-dragging the limp form of a woman. Sommers tried to hail him, but he

could not cry. At last the guard called out when he was within a few feet:

"Give me a hand, will you. It's a woman,--suicide, I guess," he added more

gently.

Sommers walked forward and took the limp form. The drenched garments were

already frosting in the cold. He turned the flap of the cape back from the

face.

"It is my wife," he said quietly.

"I saw her from the pier goin' out, and I called to her," the guard

replied, "but she kept on all the faster. Then I went back to the shore and

got on the ice and followed her as fast as I could, but--"

Together they lifted her and carried her in over the rough shore ice up to

the esplanade.

"We live over there." Sommers pointed in the direction of the temple. The

man nodded; he seemed to know the young doctor.

"I shall not need your help," Sommers continued, wrapping the stiff cape

about the yielding form. He took her gently in his arms, staggered under

the weight, then started slowly along the esplanade. The guard followed for

a few steps; but as the doctor seemed able to carry his burden alone, he

turned back toward the city.

Sommers walked on slowly. The stiff cape slipped back from Alves's head,

revealing in the blue electric light the marble-white pallor of the flesh,

the closed eyes. Sommers stopped to kiss the cold face, and with the

movement Alves's head nestled forward against his hot neck. Tears rose to

his eyes and fell against her cheek; he started on once more, tracing

carefully the windings of the path.

* * * * *

So this was the end! The little warmth and love of his cherishing arms

about her cold body completed the pittance of happiness she had craved.

The story was too dark for him to comprehend now--from that first

understanding moment in St. Isidore's receiving room to this. Here was his

revolt, in one cold burden of dead love. She had left him in some delusion

that it would be better thus, that by this means he would find his way,

free and unshackled, back to the world of his fellows. And, perhaps, like a

creature of love, she had blindly felt love's slow, creeping paralysis,

love's ultimate death. Even now, as he staggered along the lighted avenue

of the park, in the silence of death and of night, that pregnant reproach

oppressed his heart. He had not loved her enough! She had felt a wall that

was building impalpably between them, a division of thought and of feeling.

She had put her arms against his man's world of secret ambition and desire

and had found it cold.

She had struggled for her bit of happiness, poor, loving woman! She had

suffered under her past error, her marriage with Preston, and had endured,

until, suddenly relieved, she had embraced her happiness, only to find it

slowly vanishing in her warm hands. He had suspected her of grasping this

happiness without scruple, clamorously; but her sweet white lips spoke out

the falseness of this accusation. It was bitter to know that he had covered

her with this secret suspicion. He owed her a sea of pardons!

So he labored on into the dark stretches of the park, among the debris of

the devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the

lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little

his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe.

That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all

too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and

rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in

the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,--some

average marriage with children and home would have given her more fully the

human modicum of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In no

other circumstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made for

joy--so strong to love, to endure; so true to the eternal passions. But not

mere household love, the calm minutes of interlude in the fragments of a

busy day! They would not satisfy the deep thirst for love in her heart. He

had given the best he had--all, nearly all, as few men could give, as most

men never give. He must content himself there.

He started again and strode on to the end of the journey. Within the temple

he placed her on their bed, taking off her stiff clothes and preparing her

for sleep. Then he remade the fire, and opening a window for the low night

wind to draw across her face as she liked to have it, he sat down for his

vigil.

Yes, it was the end! It was the end of his little personal battle with the

world, the end of judging and striving, the end of revolt. He should live

on, strangely enough, into many years, but not as they had tried to live in

self-made isolation. He should return to that web of life from which they

had striven to extricate themselves. She bade him go back to that fretwork,

unsolvable world of little and great, of domineering and incompetent wills,

of the powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poor

struggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds and

blind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of his

self-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their wills

to themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. They

could never have known each other in the world; they had to withdraw

themselves apart. He looked at her afresh, lying on the pillow by his side,

her hair twining carelessly about the white arm. She was infinitely greater

than he,--so undivided and complete a soul! She had left him for the

commoner uses of life. And all the stains of their experience had been

removed, washed out by the pure accomplishment of her end.

Already so cold, so sweetly distant, that face,--so done with life and with

him! He leaned over it and burst into tears. The dream of the summer night

had passed away.

CHAPTER X

Mrs. Ducharme returned to the temple at an early hour the next morning.

Sommers saw her mumbling to herself as she came across the park. Before she

knocked, he opened the door; she started back in fear of the sombre,

bearded face with the blood-shot eyes that seemed lying in wait for her.

"Is the missus at home?" she murmured, drawing back from the door.

"Come in," the doctor ordered.

As soon as she entered, Sommers locked the door.

"Now," he said quietly, pointing to a chair, "the whole story and no lies."

The woman looked at the doctor and trembled; then she edged toward the

inner door. Sommers locked this, flung the key on the table, and pointed

again to the chair.

"What did you tell her yesterday?" he demanded.

Mrs. Ducharme began an incoherent tale about her head hurting her, about

the sin which the "healer" commanded her to rid her conscience of. Sommers

interrupted her.

"Answer my questions. Did you threaten _her_?"

The woman nodded her head.

"Did you accuse her of drugging her husband?"

She nodded her head again reluctantly; then cried out,--"Let me go! I'll

have the police on you two."

Sommers stood over the woman as if he were about to lay hands on her.

"You know the facts. Tell them. What happened to Preston that day?"

"He'd been drinking."

"You got him the liquor?"

She nodded.

"Then you gave him a powder from that box in Mrs. Preston's room?"

The woman looked terrified, and did not answer.

"If you don't tell me every word of truth," Sommers said, slowly drawing a

little syringe from his pocket, "you will never see anything again."

"Yes, I gave him a powder."

"One?"

She nodded, her hands shaking.

"Two?"

"Yes," she gasped. "I was afraid Mrs. Preston would find out what I had

done, and one powder wasn't enough, didn't keep him quiet. So I put two

more in--thought it wouldn't do no harm. Then I guess Mrs. Preston gave him

some, when she came in. But you can't touch me," she added impudently. "The

healer said you had done a criminal act in signing that certificate. You

and she better look out."

Sommers stepped across the room and opened the inner door. Mrs. Ducharme

gave one glance at the silent figure and shrieked:

"You killed her! You killed her! Let me out!"

Sommers closed the door softly and returned to the shrieking creature.

"Keep quiet," Sommers ordered sternly, "while I think what to do with you."

She held her tongue and sat as still as her quaking nerves permitted.

Sommers reviewed rapidly the story as he had made it out. At first it

occurred to him, as it had to Alves, that the woman had been drinking. But

his practised eyes saw more surely than Alves, and he judged that her

conduct had been the result of mental derangement. Probably the blow over

the eye, from which she was suffering when she came to Lindsay's office,

had hurt the brain. Otherwise, she would not have been silly enough to go

to Alves with her foolish story. It was possible, also, that the night of

Preston's death she had not known what she was doing. His resentment gave

place to disgust. The sole question was what to do with her. She would

talk, probably, and in some way he must avoid that danger for a few days,

at least. Then it would not matter to Alves or to him what she said.

Finally he turned to the miserable, shaking figure, and said sternly:

"You have committed one murder, and, perhaps, two. But I will not kill you

_now_, or put out your eyes, unless you get troublesome. Have you any

money? I thought not. You are going with me to the railroad station, where

I shall buy you a ticket."

He unlocked the door and motioned to the woman. She followed him to the

station without protest, fascinated by his strong will. Sommers bought a

ticket to St. Louis and handed it to her with a dollar.

"Remember, if I see or hear of you again,"--he put his finger in his

waistcoat pocket, significantly. "And there are other powders," he added

grimly.

"Ducharme has gone back to Peory. I s'pose I can stop off there?" she asked

timidly, as the express arrived.

"You can stop off anywhere on your way to hell," the doctor replied

indifferently. "But keep away from Chicago. There is no quicker way of

making that journey to hell than to come back here."

Mrs. Ducharme trembled afresh and bundled herself on board the train.

Sommers returned to the temple, feeling assured that the next few hours

would not be disturbed by the ill-omened creature. This vulgar, brutal act

had to be performed; he had been preparing himself for it since daylight,

when his mind had resumed the round of cause and effect that answers for

life. It was over now, and he could return to Alves. There were other petty

things to be done, but not yet. As he came across the park he noticed that

the door of the temple was open. Some one had entered while he was away. At

his step on the portico a figure rose from the inner room and came to meet

him. It was Louise Hitchcock. The traces of tears lay on her face.

"I knew this morning," she said gently. "I thought you might be alone--and

so I came."

"Sit down," Sommers replied wearily. In a few moments he added, "I suppose

you saw it in the papers--the guard must have told. Strange! that even in

death the world must meddle with her, the world that cared nothing for

her."

"I am sorry." Miss Hitchcock blushed as she spoke. "I will go away--I

didn't mean to intrude--I thought--"

"No, don't go! I didn't mean you. I wanted to be alone, all alone for a

little while, but I am glad now that you came, that you cared to come. You

didn't know Alves."

"She wouldn't let me know her," Miss Hitchcock protested gently.

"Yes, I remember. You see, our life was peculiar. I think Alves was afraid

of you, of all the world."

"I knew how you loved her," Miss Hitchcock exclaimed irrelevantly.

Sommers tried to answer. He felt like talking to this warm-hearted woman;

he wanted to talk, but he could not phrase the complex feeling in his

heart. Everything about Alves had something in it he could not make

another, even the most sympathetic soul in the world, understand. It was

like trying to explain an impression of a whole life.

"There is so much I can't tell any one," he said at last, with a wan smile.

"Don't misunderstand--you'd have to know the whole, and I couldn't begin to

make you know it."

"Don't try," she said, tears coming to her eyes. "I know that it has been

noble and generous--on both sides," she added.

"It has ended," he answered drearily. "I don't know where to begin."

"Can't I send for some one, some friend?" she suggested.

"I haven't any friend," he replied absently. "And Alves wouldn't want any

one. She would have done everything for me. I will do everything for her."

"Then I will stay here, while you are away," Miss Hitchcock replied

quickly. "Don't hurry. I will wait here in this room."

Sommers thought a moment and then answered gently:

"I think not. I think Alves would rather be alone. Let me go back to the

city with you. I have some errands there."

Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disappointment. She had triumphed

impulsively over so many conventions in coming to him unasked that she felt

doubly hurt.

"Very well. Only you will not always put me outside, in this way?" she

implored, bravely stifling her pride. "It will not be so easy to say it

later, and it will hurt if you refuse to have anything to do with my father

and me."

"_I_ shall not refuse," Sommers responded warmly. "I am grateful for

what you want to do."

"You know--" She completed the sentence with a sigh and prepared to

accompany him. Sommers locked the door, putting the key in the usual

hiding-place, and together they crossed the park to the railroad station.

There they separated.

"I shall not come out to-morrow," Miss Hitchcock said, as if she had

arrived at the decision after some wavering.

He did not urge her to come, and they shook hands.

"Remember," she said hesitatingly, "that ideas don't separate people. You

must _trust_ people, those who understand and care."

"I shan't forget," he answered humbly.

On the train he remembered Webber's business, and as soon as he reached the

city he went to the brokers' office. The morning session of the Exchange

had just closed, and Einstein was fluttering in and out of his private

office, sending telegrams and telephone messages. Sommers got his ear for a

moment and explained his errand.

"I don't know anything about the stocks," he concluded. "But I think you

had best close his account, as it will be some weeks before he should be

troubled with such things."

"Damn shame!" Einstein remarked irritably, removing his cigar from his

mouth. "I could have got him out even this morning. Now, it's too late."

As Sommers seemed ignorant of the market, the broker went on to explain,

meanwhile sending a telegram:

"Most of his is Consolidated Iron--one of Carson's new promotions. Porter

is in it, and a lot of big men. Splendid thing, but these new industrials

are skittish as colts, and the war talk is like an early frost. Yesterday

it was up to ninety, but to-day, after that Venezuelan business in the

Senate, it backed down ten points. That about cleans our friend out."

"He doesn't own the stock, then?" Sommers asked.

Einstein looked at the doctor pityingly.

"He's taken a block of two hundred on margins. We hold some Baking Powder

common for him, too. But he owns that."

Sommers lingered about, irresolute. He didn't like to take the

responsibility of selling out Webber, nor the equal responsibility of doing

nothing. Miss M'Gann's hopes, he reflected, hung on this stock trade.

"What is the prospect to-morrow?" Sommers asked timidly. He felt out of

place in all the skurry of the brokers' office, where men were drinking in

the last quotations as the office boy scratched them on the board.

"Dunno. Can't tell. Good, if the Senate doesn't shoot off its mouth any

more."

"How much is Webber margined for?"

"Say, Phil," Einstein sang out to his partner, who came out from another

cubbyhole, "how much has Webber on Iron?"

"Six points," White replied. He nodded to Sommers. The doctor remembered

White as one of the negative figures of his early months in Chicago,--a

smiling, slim, youthful college boy. Evidently he was the genteel member of

the firm. Sommers thought again. He could not wait. "Will you carry him

five points more?" he asked.

"Can you put up the money?" White replied indifferently.

"No," the doctor admitted. "But I will try to get it at once."

Einstein shook his head. But White asked, good-naturedly, "Are you sure?"

"I think so," the doctor replied.

"Well, that'll tide him over; the market is sure to go back next week."

Sommers escaped from the heated room with its noise and jostling men. He

realized vaguely that he had made himself responsible for a thousand

dollars--foolishly, he thought now. He had done it on the spur of the

moment, with the idea that he would save Webber from a total loss, and

thereby save Miss M'Gann. He felt partly responsible, too; for if he had

not lingered at St. Isidore's yesterday, he could have delivered the order

before the reaction had set in. He wondered, however, at his ready promise

to find the thousand dollars for the extra margin. As he had told Miss

Hitchcock, he had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply for

help. Even the last duties to Alves he must perform alone, and to those he

turned himself now.

As he passed the Athenian Building, he remembered Dr. Leonard and went up

to his office. The old dentist was the one friend in Chicago whom Alves

would want near her to-morrow. Dr. Leonard came frowning out of his office,

and without asking Sommers to sit down listened to what he had to say.

"Yes," he replied, without unwrinkling his old face, "I saw it in the

papers. I'll come, of course I'll come. I set an awful store by Alves, poor

girl! There weren't nothing right for her in this world. Maybe there will

be in the next."

Sommers made no reply. He felt the kind old dentist's reproach.

"Young feller," the dentist exclaimed sharply as Sommers turned to go, "I

mistrust you have much to answer for in that poor girl's case. Does your

heart satisfy you that you have treated her right?"

Sommers bowed his head humbly before this blunt speech. In the sense that

Dr. Leonard meant, perhaps, he was not guilty, but in other ways he was not

sure. It was a difficult thing to treat any human soul justly and tenderly.

The doctor took his silence for confession.

"Well," he added, turning away and adjusting his spectacles that were

lodged above his watery blue eyes, "I ain't no call to blame you. It's

enough blame anyway to have hurt _her_--there wasn't a nicer woman

ever born."

As Sommers left the Athenian Building, his mind reverted to the talk with

the brokers. He was glad that he had undertaken to save Webber from his

loss. Alves would have liked it. Miss M'Gann had been kind to her when she

was learning how to teach. Probably Webber would lose the money in some

other venture, but he would do what he could to save the clerk's little

capital now. Where could he get the money? There was but one person on whom

he could call, and overcoming his dislike of the errand he went at once to

Miss Hitchcock.

The house was pleasantly familiar. As he waited for Miss Hitchcock in the

little library that belonged especially to her, he could detect no changes

in the conglomerate furnishing of the house. He had half expected to find

that it had yielded to the younger generation, but something had arrested

the march of innovation. The steel engravings still hung in the hall, and

the ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchcock came into the

house, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started to

intercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss Hitchcock

appeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as if

it were the most natural thing to meet him there.

"I have come to ask you to do something for me," Sommers began at once,

still standing, "because, as I told you, I have no one else to ask for

help."

"You take the bloom off kindnesses in a dreadfully harsh way," Miss

Hitchcock responded sadly.

"But it's something one doesn't usually ask of a young woman," Sommers

added. He told her briefly the circumstances that led to his visit. "I

haven't literally any friend of whom I could properly ask five cents."

"Don't say that. It sounds so forlorn!"

"Does it? I never thought about it before. I suppose it is a reflection

upon a man that at thirty-three he hasn't any one in the world to ask a

favor of. It looks as if he had lived a pretty narrow life."

"Hard, not narrow," Miss Hitchcock interposed quickly. "I will send the

money to-morrow. John will take it to the brokers, if you will write them a

note."

As he still stood, she went on, to avoid the awkward silence: "Those horrid

industrials! I am sure Uncle Brome will lose everything in them. He's a

born gambler. Mr. Carson has got him interested in these new things."

"Is his picture still on exhibition?" Sommers inquired, with a faint smile.

"I don't know. I haven't seen much of them lately." She spoke as if Carson

and his kind were completely indifferent to her. Her next remark surprised

Sommers.

"I think I can see now why you felt as you did about--well, Mr. Carson. He

is a sort of shameless ideal held up before such people as this young man

who is speculating. Isn't that it?"

Sommers nodded.

"Uncle Brome, too? When he makes several hundred thousand dollars in

Consolidated Iron, every clerk, every little man who knows anything about

it has all his bad, greedy, envious passions aroused."

The doctor smiled at the serious manner in which the young woman explored

the old ground of their differences.

"But," she concluded, "they aren't _all_ like Mr. Carson and Uncle

Brome. You mustn't make that mistake. And Uncle Brome is so generous, too.

It is hard to understand."

"No," Sommers said, preparing to leave. "Of course they are not all alike,

and it is hard to judge. No man knows what he is doing--to any great

extent."

"What will you do?" Miss Hitchcock asked abruptly.

As Sommers's careworn face flushed, she added hurriedly,--"How cruel of me!

Of course you don't know. That will settle itself."

"I have had some notion of trying for a hospital again. It doesn't take

much to live. And I don't believe in a doctor's making money. If it isn't

the hospital--well, there's enough to do."

Miss Hitchcock thought a moment, and then remarked unexpectedly, "I like

that idea!"

"About all my kick over things has come to that point. There are some

people who should be willing to--no, not willing, who should _want_ to

do things without any pay. The world needs them. Most people are best off

in the struggle for bread, but the few who see how--unsatisfying that end

is, should be willing to work without profits. Good-by."

As they shook hands, Sommers added casually: "I shouldn't wonder if I went

away from Chicago--for a time. I don't know now, but I'll let you know, if

you care to have me."

"Of course I shall care to know!"

Miss Hitchcock's voice trembled, and then steadied itself, as she

added,--"And I am glad you are thinking of it."

* * * * *

With a sense of relief Sommers found himself alone, and free to return to

the temple, to Alves, for the last time. The day had been crowded with

insistent, petty details, and he marvelled that he had submitted to them

patiently. In the chamber where the dead woman lay it was strangely

still--deserted by all things human. He locked the doors and sat down for

his second night of watch, reproaching himself for the hours he had lost

this day. But when he looked at the cold, white face upon the pillow, that

already seemed the face of one who had travelled far from this life, he

felt that it had been best as it was. He kissed the silent lips and covered

the face; he would not look at it again. Alves had gone. To-morrow he would

lay this body in the little burial plot of the seminary above the Wisconsin

lakes.

Already Alves had bequeathed him something of herself. She had returned him

to his fellow-laborers with a new feeling toward them, a humbleness he had

never known, a desire to adjust himself with them. He was sensitive to the

kindness of the day,--White's friendly trust, Leonard's just words, Miss

Hitchcock's generosity. As the sense of this life faded from the woman he

loved, the dawn of a fairer day came to him. And his heart ached because

she for whom he had desired every happiness might never respond to human

joy.

CHAPTER XI

During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling the

blood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonder

at its own folly. Some said the spirit of hope was due to the gold basis;

some said it was the good crops; some said it was the prospect of national

expansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks;

trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened--a

current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business

with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and

to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro

tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New

industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned

by the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothouse

growth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "little

people," and all worked to the glory of the great god. In the breast of

every man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mighty

country, and I am going to get something out of it.' The stock market might

bob up and down; the gamblers might gain or lose their millions; the little

politicians of the hour might talk blood and iron by the pound of

_Congressional Record_; but the great fact stared you in the

face--every one was hopeful; for every one there was much good money

somewhere. It was a rich time in which to live.

Remote echoes of this optimism reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly through

the newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity of

Chicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "the

successful flotation of several specialties." Mr. Brome Porter, he gathered

from the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogether

shaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers passed him occasionally

in the unconsolidated air of Fifth Avenue, but the young doctor had long

since sunk out of Brome Porter's sphere of consciousness. Sommers thought

Porter betrayed his need of Carlsbad more than ever, and he wondered if the

famous gambler had beguiled Colonel Hitchcock into any of his ventures. But

Sommers did not trouble himself seriously with the new manifestations of

gigantic greed. Unconscious of the fact that from collar-button to

shoe-leather he was assisting Mr. Carson's industries to yield revenues on

their water-logged stocks, he went his way in his profession and labored.

For the larger part of the time he was an assistant in a large New York

hospital, where he found enough hard work to keep his thoughts from

wandering to Carson, Brome Porter, and Company. In the feverish days that

preceded the outbreak of the Cuban war, he heard rumors that Porter had

been caught in the last big "flotation," and was heavily involved. But the

excitement of those days destroyed the importance of the news to the public

and to him.

Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals that

before long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at

Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives

of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government

could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant

physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved.

Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital,

Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with

disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted,

partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and

partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come

down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left

in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a

welcome he had never given it in Chicago.

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

to him in the evening.

"I can't say," the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good deal

better off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, and

we will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?"

"No," the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring to

restrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place--Uncle Brome, you

know--and I guess if it hadn't been for my damn foolishness in New York--"

He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommers

stopped to telegraph Miss Hitchcock. A few days later he met her at the

railroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from her

hurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancy

and capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to her

what Parker had said about not letting his people know.

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

"I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But loneliness

kills some of these fellows."

"Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "He

thought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors of

the season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him,

and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance for

all his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down with

typhoid--due to pure carelessness, I am afraid."

"That is a familiar story," the doctor observed, with a grim smile,

"especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match--and

it is just as well they did."

"You are the ones that really know what it means--the doctors and the

nurses," Miss Hitchcock said warmly.

"Here is our San Juan," Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle of

tents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp.

After they had visited Parker Hitchcock, Sommers conducted her over the

camp. Some of the cots were occupied by gaunt figures of men whom she had

known, and at the end of their inspection, she remarked thoughtfully:

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

more."

The next month, while Parker dragged slowly through the stages of the

disease, Miss Hitchcock worked energetically with the nurses. Sommers met

her here and there about the camp and at their hurried meals. The heat and

the excitement told upon her, but her spirited, good-humored mood, which

was always at play, carried her on. Finally, the convalescents were sent

north to cooler spots, and the camp was closed. Parker Hitchcock was well

enough to be moved to Chicago, and Sommers, who had been relieved, took

charge of him and a number of other convalescents, who were to return to

the West.

The last hours of the journey Sommers and Miss Hitchcock spent together.

The train was slowly traversing the dreary stretches of swamp and

sand-hills of northern Indiana.

"I remember how forlorn this seemed the other time--four years ago!"

Sommers exclaimed. "And how excited I was as the city came into view around

the curve of the lake. That was to be my world."

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

little smile.

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

"I think I understand now what the matter has always been," she resumed

after a little interval. "You thought we were all exceptionally selfish,

but we were all just like every one else,--running after the obvious,

common pleasures. What could you expect! Every boy and girl in this country

is told from the first lesson of the cradle, over and over, that success is

the one great and good thing in life. The people here are young and strong,

and you can't blame them if they interpret that text a little crudely. But

I am beginning to understand what you feel."

"We can't escape the fact, though," Sommers responded. "Life must be based,

to a large extent, on gain, on mere living. Nature has ordered it."

"Only in cases like yours," she murmured. "_I_ can never free myself

from the order of nature. I shall always be the holder of power accumulated

by some one else."

As Sommers refrained from making the platitudinous reply that such a remark

seemed to demand, they were silent for several minutes. Then she asked,

with an air of constraint:

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

rest."

Sommers smiled ironically.

"That is the question every one asks. 'What will you do? what will you do?'

Suppose I should say _'Nothing'_? We are always planning. No one is

ready to wait and turn his hand to the nearest job. To-morrow, next month,

in good time, I shall know what that is."

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

"Yes," he answered quickly. "And could you do that? Could you care for a

man who will have no career, who has no 'future'?"

Sommers's voice had taken a new tone of earnestness, unlike the sober

speculation in which they had been indulging. Miss Hitchcock turned her

face to the faded landscape of the suburban fields, and failed to reply.

"I have lived out my egotism," he continued earnestly. "What you would call

ambition has been dead for long months. I haven't any lofty ambition even

for scientific work. Good results, even there, it seems to me, are not born

of personal desire, of pride. I am content to be a failure--an honest

failure," he ended sharply.

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

agree to that."

The people around them began to bestir themselves with the nervous

restlessness of pent-up energy. Parker Hitchcock came into the car from the

smoking-room.

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

coming, doctor?"

Sommers shook his head negatively, and Miss Hitchcock, who was putting on

her veil, did not urge him to join them. The Hitchcock carriage was waiting

outside the Twenty-second Street station, and, as the train moved on,

Sommers could see Colonel Hitchcock's bent figure through the open window.

When Sommers left the train at the central station, the September twilight

had already fallen; and as he crossed the strip of park where the troops

had bivouacked during the strike, the encircling buildings were brilliantly

outlined in the evening mist by countless points of light. The scene from

Twelfth Street north to the river, flanked by railroad yards and grim

buildings, was an animated circle of a modern inferno. The cross streets

intersecting the lofty buildings were dim, canon-like abysses, in which

purple fog floated lethargically. The air was foul with the gas from

countless locomotives, and thick with smoke and the mist of the lake. And

through this earthy steam, the myriad lights from the facades of the big

buildings shone with suffused splendor. It was large and vague and, above

all, gay, with the grim vivacity of a city of shades. Streams of people

were flowing toward the railroad, up and down the boulevard, in and out of

the large hotels. A murmur of living, striving humanity rose into the murky

air; and from a distance, through the abysses of the cross streets, sounded

the deeper roar of the city.

The half-forgotten note of the place struck sharply upon the doctor's ear.

It excited him in some strange way. Two years had dropped from his life,

and again he was turning, turning, with the beat of the great machine.

CHAPTER XII

"Yes, he lost that--what was left when you sold for him," Miss M'Gann

admitted dejectedly. "And so we had to start over again. Part of it was

mine, too."

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

"It was that Dresser man. I wish we'd never laid eyes on him--he kept

getting tips from Carson, the man who owned most of his paper. I guess

Carson didn't take much interest in giving _him_ the right tip, or

perhaps Dresser didn't give _us_ what he knew straight out. Anyway,

Jack's been losing!"

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

"Jack's pride is up. You see he wanted to begin with a nice flat, not live

on here in this boarding-house. And I was to leave the school. But I guess

there isn't much chance _now_. You've been away a long time--to the

war?"

They were sitting on the steps of the Keystone, which at this hour in the

morning they had to themselves. Miss M'Gann's glory of dress had faded,

together with the volubility of her talk, and the schoolroom air had

blanched her high color.

"Jack wanted to go off to Cuba," she continued. "But he got sick again,

worrying over stocks, and I guess it was just as well. If he don't keep

straight now, and brace up, I'll let him go. I'm not the one to hang around

all my life for a silly."

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

"No, it was Dresser. He was sporting a lot of money and going with

high-toned folks, and it made Jack envious."

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

Miss M'Gann moved uneasily on the stone seat.

"He's down there again to-day, I just know. He's given up the Baking Powder

place,--they crowded him out in the reorganization,--and Dresser got him a

place down town."

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

Miss M'Gann nodded and then added:

"Do you remember Dr. Leonard? Well, he made a pile out of a trust, some

dentist-tools combine, I think."

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

"Are you going to stay in Chicago?" Miss M'Gann asked, with renewed

curiosity. "We shall be glad to see you at the Keystone."

Sommers got up to leave, and asked for Webber's address in the city. "I may

look him up," he explained. "I wish you could keep him away from Dresser.

The converted socialist is likely to be a bad lot."

"Socialist!" Miss M'Gann exclaimed disdainfully. "He isn't any socialist.

He's after a rich girl."

* * * * *

Sommers left Miss M'Gann with a half-defined purpose of finding Webber and

inducing him to give up the vain hope of rivalling the editor of _The

Investor's Monthly_. He had always liked the clerk, and when he had

helped to pull him out of the market without loss before, he had thought

all would go well. But the optimism of the hour had proved too much for

Webber's will. Carson's cheap and plentiful stocks had made it dangerously

easy for every office boy to "invest." If Webber had been making money

these last months, it would be useless to advise him; but if the erratic

market had gone against him, he might be saved.

On the way to the city he called at St. Isidore's to see if any one in that

hive would remember him. The little nurse, whom he recalled as one of the

assistants at Preston's operation, had now attained the dignity of the

"black band." There was hardly any one else who knew him, except the

elevator boy; and he was leaving when he met Dr. Knowles, an old physician,

who had a large, old-fashioned family practice in an unfashionable quarter

of the city. Dr. Knowles had once been kind to the younger doctor, and now

he seemed glad to meet him again. From him Sommers learned that Lindsay had

about given up his practice. The "other things," thanks to his intimacy

with Porter, and more lately with Carson, had put him outside the petty

needs of professional earnings. Dr. Knowles himself was thinking of

retiring, he told Sommers, not with his coffers full of trust certificates,

but with a few thousand dollars, enough to keep him beyond want. They

talked for a long time, and at the end Dr. Knowles asked Sommers to

consider taking over his practice. "It isn't very swell," he explained

good-humoredly. "And I don't want you to kill off my poor patients. But

there are enough pickings for a reasonable man who doesn't practise for

money." Sommers promised to see him in a few days, and started for the

office where Webber worked.

Lindsay's final success amused him. He had heard a good deal about Porter

and Carson; their operations, reported vaguely by the public, interested

him. They formed a kind of partnership, evidently. Porter "financed" the

schemes that Carson concocted and talked into being. And a following of

small people gleaned in their train. Lindsay probably had gleaned more than

the others. It was all the better, Sommers reflected, for the state of the

medical profession.

As he sauntered down La Salle Street, the air of the pavement breathed the

optimism of the hour. Sommers was amazed at the number of brokers' offices,

at the streams of men going and coming around these busy booths. The war

was over, or practically over, and speculation was brisker than ever. To be

sure, the bills for the war were not paid, but success was in the air, and

every one was striving to exploit that success in his own behalf. Sommers

passed the blazing sign of WHITE AND EINSTEIN; the firm had taken larger

offices this year. Sommers stopped and looked at the broad windows, and

then, reflecting that he had nothing to do before dining with the

Hitchcocks except to see Webber, he went in with a file of other men.

White and Einstein's offices were much more resplendent than the little

room in the basement, where they had started two years before. There were

many glass partitions and much mahogany-stained furniture. In the large

room, where the quotations were posted, little rows of chairs were ranged

before the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch the

game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was

covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators,

Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,--the names of

the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed

the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of

quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of

spectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation under the

rapid chalk of the office boy.

The place was feverish with excitement, which Sommers could feel rather

than read in the dull faces of the men. From time to time White or Einstein

bobbed out of an inner office, or a telephone booth, and joined the

watchers before the blackboards. Their detached air and genial smiles gave

them the appearance of successful hosts. White recognized Sommers and

nodded, with one eye on the board. "Rag's acting queer," he said casually

in the doctor's ear. "Are you in the market? Rag is Carson's latest--ain't

gone through yet, and there are signs the market's glutted. Look at that

thing slide, waltz! Gee, there'll be sore heads to-morrow!"

Sommers leaned forward and touched Webber, who, with open mouth, was

following the figures. Webber turned round, but his head went back to the

board. The glance he had given was empty--the glance of the drunkard.

"Your young friend's got hit," White remarked apathetically. "He shouldn't

try to play marbles with _this_ crowd. Carson is just chucking new

stocks at the public. But he has a clique with him that can do anything."

In spite of this opinion "Rag" tottered and wavered. Rumors rapidly spread

among the onlookers that Carson had failed to put "Rag" through; that the

consolidated companies would fall asunder on the morrow, like badly glued

veneer; that Porter "had gone back on Carson" and was selling the stock.

The quotations fell: common stock 60, 59, 56, 50, 45, 48, 50, 52, 45,

40--so ran the dazzling line of figures across the blackboard, again and

again.

"There'll be fun to-morrow," White remarked, moving away. "Better come in

and see Vinegar and Oil and the rest of Carson's list get a black eye."

Sommers touched Webber, then shook him gently, asking,

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

"Rag," Webber snapped, recognizing the doctor. "And I'm done for this time

sure thing--_every red copper_. I made two thousand last week on Tin,

and this morning I chucked the whole pile into Rag."

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

to-day, anyway."

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

to get drunk on."

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

"I'll be drunker before the morning," the clerk remarked, with a feeble

laugh. "I wish I had Dresser here; I'd like to pound him once."

That desire was repeated in the looks of many men, who were still glowering

at the afternoon's quotations. Carson, the idol of the new "promotions,"

seemed to be the man most in demand for pounding. Einstein was explaining

to a savage customer why he had advised him to buy "Rag."

"I got it over the telephone this morning from a man very close to Carson

that Rag was the thing, the peach of the whole lot. He said it was slated

to cross Biscuit to-day."

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

"Come, we'll have a drink," a white-faced young fellow called out to an old

man, an acquaintance of the hour. "Somebody's got my money!" The two passed

out arm in arm.

Webber had his drink, and then another. Then he leaned back in the

embrasure of the bar-room window and looked at Sommers.

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

all up."

Sommers watched the man closely, trying to determine how far the disease

had gone. Webber's vain, rather weak face was disguised with a beard, which

made him look older than he was, and the arm that rested on the table

trembled nervously from the flaccid fingers to the shoulder-blades.

"They've put up some trick between them," Webber continued, in a grumbling

tone. "Carson or Porter is making something by selling Rag. They'd ought to

be in the penitentiary."

"What rot!" Sommers remarked deliberately. "They've beaten you at your

game, and they will every time, because they have more nerve than you, and

because they know more. There's no use in damning them. You'd do the same

thing if you knew when to do it."

"They're nothing but sharps!" the clerk protested feebly, insistent like a

child on his idea that some one had done him a personal injury.

Sommers shrugged his shoulders in despair. "I must be going," he said at

last. "I don't suppose you'll take my advice, and perhaps the lake would be

the best thing for you. But you'd better try it again--it's just as well

that everything has gone this time. There won't be any chance of going back

to the game. Tell her, and if she'll take you, marry her at once, and start

with the little people. Or stay here and have a few more drinks," he added,

as he read the irresolute look upon Webber's face.

The clerk rose wearily and followed the doctor into the street, as if

afraid of being alone.

"You needn't be so rough," he muttered. "There are lots of the big fellows

who started the same way--in the market, wheat or stocks. And I had a

little ambition to be something better than a clerk. I wanted her to have

something different. She's as good as those girls Dresser is always talking

to her about."

Sommers made no reply to his defence, but walked slowly, accommodating his

pace to Webber's weary steps. When they reached Michigan Avenue, he stopped

and said,

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

fellow."

Webber shook hands listlessly and started toward the railroad station with

his drooping, irresolute gait. Sommers watched him until his figure merged

with the hurrying crowd. Habit was taking the clerk to the suburban train,

and habit would take him to the Keystone and Miss M'Gann instead of to the

lake. Habit and Miss M'Gann would probably take him back to his desk. But

the disease had gone pretty far, and if he recovered, Sommers judged, he

would never regain his elasticity, his hope. He would be haunted by a

memory of hot desires, of feeble defeat.

The wavering clerk had succumbed to the mood of the hour. And the mood of

the hour in this corner of the universe was hopeful for weak and strong

alike. Cheap optimism, Sommers would have called it once, but now it seemed

to him the natural temper of the world. With this hope suffused over their

lives, men struggled on--for what? No one knew. Not merely for plunder, nor

for power, nor for enjoyment. Each one might believe these to be the gifts

of the gods, while he kept his eyes solely on himself. But when he turned

his gaze outward, he knew that these were not the spur of human energy. In

striving restlessly to get plunder and power and joy, men wove the

mysterious web of life for ends no human mind could know. Carson built his

rickety companies and played his knavish tricks upon the gullible public,

of whom Webber was one. Brome Porter rooted here and there in the

industrial world, and fattened himself upon all spoils. These had to be;

they were the tools of the hour. But indifferent alike to them and to

Webber, the affairs of men ebbed and flowed in the resistless tide of fate.

CHAPTER XIII

The dinner at the Hitchcocks' was very simple. Parker had gone out "to

enjoy his success in not getting to Cuba," as Colonel Hitchcock expressed

it grimly. The old merchant's manner toward the doctor was cordial, but

constrained. At times during the dinner Sommers found Colonel Hitchcock's

eyes resting upon him, as if he were trying to understand him. Sommers was

conscious of the fact that Lindsay had probably done his best to paint his

character in an unflattering light; and though he knew that the old

colonel's shrewdness and kindliness would not permit him to accept bitter

gossip at its face value, yet there must have been enough in his career to

lead to speculation. While they were smoking, Colonel Hitchcock remarked:

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

Sommers described the offer Dr. Knowles had made.

"I used to see Knowles,--a West Side man,--not very able as a money-getter,

I guess, but a good fellow," Colonel Hitchcock emitted meditatively.

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

kind of practice."

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

bluntly.

"I haven't thought much about that," the doctor admitted, uncomfortably. He

felt that the kind old merchant had lost whatever interest he might have

had in him. Any man who played ducks and drakes with his chances in life

was not to be depended upon, according to Colonel Hitchcock's philosophy.

And a man who could not be depended upon to do the rational thing was more

or less dangerous. It was easier for him to understand Parker's defects

than Sommers's wilfulness. They were both lamentable eccentricities.

"Chicago isn't what it was," the old man resumed reminiscently. "It's too

big, and there is too much speculation. A man is rich to-day and poor

to-morrow. That sort of thing used to be confined to the Board of Trade,

but now it's everywhere, in legitimate business. People don't seem to be

willing to work hard for success." He relapsed into silence, and shortly

after went upstairs, saying as he excused himself,--"Hope we shall see you

again, Dr. Sommers."

When Colonel Hitchcock had left the room, Miss Hitchcock said, as if to

remove the sting of her father's indifference:

"Uncle Brome's transactions worry papa,--for a time papa was deeply

involved in one of his schemes,--and he worries over Parker, too. He

doesn't like to think of--what will happen when he is dead. Parker will

have a good deal of money, more than he will know what to do with. It's

sad, don't you think so? To be ending one's life with a feeling that you

have failed to make permanent your ideals, to leave things stable in your

family at least?"

Instead of replying Sommers left his chair and walked aimlessly about the

room. At last he came back to the large table near which Miss Hitchcock was

seated.

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

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

to him.

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

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

"Can I?"

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

else."

"I would not have it different, not one thing changed," she protested with

warmth. "What I cannot understand in it, I will believe was best for you

and for me."

"And the lack of success, the failure?" Sommers questioned eagerly; a touch

of fear in his voice. "I am asking much and giving very little."

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

that it is failure."

CHAPTER XIV

Miss Hitchcock's wedding was extremely quiet. It was regarded by all but

the two persons immediately concerned as an eccentric mistake. Even Colonel

Hitchcock, to whom Louise was almost infallible, could not trust himself to

discuss with her, her decision to marry Dr. Sommers. It was all a sign of

the irrational drift of things that seemed to thwart his energetic,

honorable life. Even Sommers's attitude in the frank talk the two men had

about the marriage offended the old merchant. Sommers had met his distant

references to money matters by saying bluntly that he and Louise had

decided it would be best for them not to be the beneficiaries of Colonel

Hitchcock's wealth to any large extent. He wished it distinctly understood

that little was to be done for them now, or in the future by bequest.

Louise had agreed with him that for many reasons their lives would be

happier without the expectation of unearned wealth. He did not explain that

one potent reason for their decision in this matter was the hope they had

that Colonel Hitchcock would realize the futility of leaving any

considerable sum of money to Parker, and would finally place his money

where it could be useful to the community in which he had earned it.

Colonel Hitchcock rather resented the doctor's independence, and, at the

same time, disliked the direct reference to his fortune. Those matters

arranged themselves discreetly in families, and if Louise had children,

why....

It did not take Louise and Sommers long, however, to convince Colonel

Hitchcock that they were absolutely sincere in their decision, and to

interest him in methods of returning his wealth, at his death, to the

world. As the months wore on, and Sommers settled into the peaceful routine

of Dr. Knowles's mediocre practice, Colonel Hitchcock revised, to a certain

extent, his judgment of the marriage. It must always remain a mystery to

him, however, that the able young surgeon neglected the brilliant

opportunities he had on coming to Chicago, and had, apparently, thrown away

four years of his life. Probably he attributed this mistake to the young

doctor's ignorance of the world, due to the regrettable fact that Dr. Isaac

Sommers had remained in Marion, Ohio, instead of courting cosmopolitan

experiences in Chicago. When his grandchild came, he saw that Louise was

entirely happy, and he was content. Neither Louise nor Sommers looked back

into the past, or troubled themselves about the future. The practice which

Dr. Knowles had left, if not lucrative, was sufficiently large and varied

to satisfy Sommers.

Brome Porter had transferred all his interests to New York. He had recouped

himself by selling "Rag" short before it was really launched and by some

other clever strokes of stock manipulation, and had undertaken at length

the much-needed trip to Carlsbad. The suspicion that Porter had won back

the money he owed to Colonel Hitchcock by a trick upon the small fry of

speculators, such as Webber, had its influence in the feeling which Sommers

and his wife had about the Hitchcock money. The last move of the "operator"

had made something of a scandal in Chicago, for many of Porter's friends

and acquaintances lost heavily in "Rag," and felt sore because "they had

been left on the outside." If Porter was not in good odor in Chicago,

Carson's name was anathema, not only to a host of little speculators, who

had followed this ingenious promoter's star, but to substantial men of

wealth as well. After the first flush of optimism, people began to examine

Carson's specialties, and found them very rotten. Carson, and those who

were near him in these companies, it turned out, had got their holdings at

low figures and made money when those not equally favored lost. When "Rag"

went to pieces, it was rumored that Carson had been caught in his own leaky

tub; but, later, it turned out that Carson and Porter had had an

understanding in this affair. "Rag" was never meant to "go." So Carson

betook himself to Europe, and the great Sargent was removed from public

exhibition to a storage warehouse. In some future generation, on the

disintegration of the Carson family, the portrait may come back to the

world again, labelled "A Soldier of Fortune."

Sommers met Dr. Lindsay at rare intervals; the great specialist treated him

with a nice discrimination of values, adjusting the contempt he felt for

the successor of Dr. Knowles to the respect he felt for the son-in-law of

Colonel Alexander Hitchcock. Report had it that Lindsay had been forced to

return to office practice after virtually retiring from the profession.

And, in the fickle world of Chicago, the offices on the top floor of the

Athenian Building did not "take in" what they once had gathered. For this

as well as other reasons Sommers was not surprised when his wife opened

Miss Laura Lindsay's wedding cards one morning, and read out the name of

the intended bridegroom, _Mr. Samuel Thompson Dresser_.

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

"I have reasons for not going," Sommers answered hesitatingly. "But you

used to know Laura Lindsay, and--"

"I think she will not miss me," Louise answered quickly. "It was queer,

though," she continued, idly waving the invitation to and fro, "that a girl

like Laura should marry a man like Dresser."

"Did I ever hear you say that it was to be expected that Miss Blank should

marry Mr. Blank?" her husband asked. "In this case I think it is

beautifully appropriate."

"But he was not exactly in our set, and you once said he was given to

theories, was turned out of a place on account of the ideas he held, didn't

you?"

"He has seen the folly of those ideas," Sommers responded dryly. "He has

become a bond broker, and has a neat little office in the building where

White and Einstein had their trade."

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

serious."

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

Mrs. Sommers looked puzzled.

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

laugh.

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

the remark.

"A handsomely bound copy of the 'Report of the Commission to Examine into

the Chicago Strike, June-July, 1894.'"

As Louise failed to see the point, he remarked:

"I think I hear your son talking about something more important. Shall we

go upstairs to see him? I must be off in a few minutes."

They watched the little child without speaking, while he cautiously

manipulated his arms and interested himself in the puzzle of his own

anatomy.

"What tremendous faith!" Sommers exclaimed at last.

"In what?"

"In the good of it all--in life."