"This fire has hit me hard. Of course the Glenmore will be a dead

loss, and the banks have begun to call my loans. Then it'll take a lot

of ready money to keep those fellers over there quiet, in case the

Grand Jury takes a hand. I was just getting where I couldn't be

touched when this fire came, and now I shall have to begin over pretty

nearly. You don't know, Hart, what hard sledding it's been to build up

my business with nothing back of me to start on."

The architect realized that Graves was making an appeal to his

sympathies, and although the wheedling tone, so unlike the man's usual

blustering self-confidence, roused his contempt, he began to see more

dispassionately the contractor's point of view. The man was fighting

for his life, and there could be nothing reasonable to him in a

determination to make a bad matter worse. For no amount of truth now

could save those hapless victims of greed who had lost their lives in

the wretched building.

"I don't want to ruin my family no more than you do, Mr. Hart," the

contractor persisted. "And you can't make me so much trouble as you

will yourself. You can see that," he added meaningly.

Hart turned on the man angrily:--

"I have heard about enough, Graves! It's no use your going on. I tell

you I mean to come back and stand my share of the trouble--yes--if it

breaks me! Do you hear? If it breaks me! Now good day."

The contractor turned away, scowling like a dog that had been kicked

into the street. Hart hurried into the station and bought his ticket.

He had not looked up his eastern connections, remembering merely that

Helen had left Chicago by this road, and he took the first train east

in his overwhelming desire to get to her, to tell her all, to submit.

And already, as the heavy train moved slowly out of the station, he

felt strangely relieved from the perplexities of the morning. The

unconscious physical influence of mere motion, of going somewhere,

soothed his irritated nerves.

He had been goaded into his final declaration to the contractor, for he

had felt the ground slipping from his resolution under the persistent

appeals of the man. As the train shot out into the prairie, however,

he turned the matter over in his mind again and again, trying to

consider it in all its varying aspects. After all, was it necessary

that he should come back as he had said in his first singleness of

resolution and bring on himself and his family the shame and disgrace

of public exposure? He comforted himself with the thought that he had

the courage to tell his story, that in leaving the city he was not

merely running away to escape the consequences of his connivance with

fraud. Yes, he could go back--if it were necessary; but for the time

being he put the question out of his mind. While the train moved

across the states, his heart grew calmer, stronger; whatever might be

the outcome, he knew that his instinct had been right--that he had done

well to go first to his wife. Then, whatever might seem best, he could

bring himself somehow to do it.

CHAPTER XXIX

The old Jackson homestead at Vernon Falls was a high, narrow, colonial

house with three gables. Upon the broad terrace facing the south side

there was a row of graceful, "wineglass" elms. Below the terrace

stretched a broad, level meadow, which was marked irregularly by a dark

line where a little brook wandered, and beyond the meadow passed the

white road to Verulam, the nearest station. From this highway a lane

led through copses of alder and birch along the east side of the meadow

to the old house, which was withdrawn nearly an eighth of a mile from

the public road.

It was an austere, silent, lonely place. Powers Jackson, during the

last years of his life, had built a great barn and sheds behind the

house with the purpose of making a stock farm, but since his death

these had been shut up. He had also built along the terrace a broad

veranda, which contrasted strangely with the weather-beaten, hand-made

clapboards of the old building. The gaunt, lofty house seemed to be

drawing itself away disdainfully from this frivolous addition at its

base.

Jackson had often spent his long vacations at the farm with his mother

when he was at college. Yet that April afternoon, when he came upon it

from the bend in the Verulam road, it seemed to him singularly unreal.

His memories of the house and the meadow in front of it had grown and

flowered, until in his imagination it had become a spot of tender,

aristocratic grace, a harmony of swaying elm branches and turfy lawn,

lichened stone walls and marvellous gray clapboards. To-day it rose

bare and severe across the brown meadow, unrelieved by the leafless

branches of the elms that crisscrossed the south front. The slanting

sun struck the little panes of the upper windows, and made them blaze

with a mysterious, intensely yellow fire. Involuntarily his pace

slackened as he turned from the highroad into the lane. The place

appeared strangely silent, deserted. Was Helen there in the old house?

Could she understand? Could she forgive him? ...

The northern spring had barely begun. It was cold, grudging,

tentative, scarcely touching the brown meadow with faint green. Hiding

its charm, like the delicate first bloom of Puritan women, it gave an

uncertain promise of future performance--of a hidden, reticent beauty.

Jackson lingered in the lane, watching the sun fade from the window

panes, until the air suddenly became chill and the scene was blank.

Then, as he stepped on toward the house, he caught sight of a woman's

figure stooping in the thicket beside the road. His heart began

suddenly to beat, telling him, almost before his eyes had recognized

the bent figure, that this was his wife. She looked up at last, and

seeing him coming toward her, rose and stood there, her hands filled

with the tendrils of some plant that she had been plucking up by its

roots, her face troubled and disturbed.

"Nell!" he called as he came nearer, "Nell!"

And then he stopped, baffled. For long hours on the train he had

thought what he should say when he met her, but now his premeditated

words seemed to him futile. He saw the gulf that might lie between

them forever, and he looked hesitatingly into her troubled face. She

was wonderfully, newly beautiful. Her hair was parted in the middle

and rippled loosely over the temples to the ears, in the way she had

worn it as a girl, a fashion which he had laughed her out of. She had

grown larger, ampler, these last months, and in her linen dress, with

its flat collar revealing the white neck, without ornament of any sort,

her features came out strong and distinct. That curve of the upper

lip, which had always made the face appealing, no longer trembled at

the touch of emotion. There was a repression and mature self-command

about her, as if, having been driven back upon her own heart, she had

recovered possession of herself once more, and no longer belonged to a

man. She was beautiful, wholly woman, and yet to her husband waiting

there she seemed to be his no longer.

"Nell," he began once more, still standing at a little distance from

her, "I have come here to you, as you said."

Her arms hung limply at her sides, with the trailing plant drooping

across her skirt, as though, thus taken by surprise, she were waiting

for him to declare himself. He stepped nearer quickly, his heart sick

with the fear that, after all, it was too late, that she had passed

beyond his reach.

"You know what I mean! I have come to tell you that you were right

when you went away. You were right all along, and I have been wrong."

But as he spoke she reached out her arms to him, beseeching him,

drawing him to her, in commiseration for him. She put her arms on his

shoulders, clasping them behind his neck, thus drawing him and holding

him from her at the same time. Her lips trembled, and her breath

fluttered as she looked into his eyes....

"Francis! Francis!" she murmured, holding him a little from her when

he tried to take her in his arms....

And in her eyes and trembling mouth he knew that she could forgive him;

but he felt strangely humble and little beside her. He saw himself in

her eyes as he had never seen himself before. Slowly she drew him to

her and kissed his lips, tenderly, unpassionately.

"The boys are over there by the brook," she said, nodding across the

meadow.

They sat down on the crumbling stone wall to wait for them, and

presently, catching sight of their father, they came tumbling over the

wall with cries of "Dad, it's dad--he's come!" and together they all

went on to the house.

Mrs. Spellman received her son-in-law in her equable, unknowing manner,

as if she had expected him to arrive on that day. After supper she

took the boys to their room while husband and wife sat in the west

parlor, which the architect remembered just as it was this day, with

the same faded drab carpet, the brass fire-irons, and worn furniture.

The high-backed walnut writing-table stood in its familiar corner

beside the window. Outside, a drooping elm branch swept softly across

the glass pane. Nothing here was altered, nothing added, save the new

lives of the modern generation. They watched the leaping flames lick

the fire-eaten bricks of the old fireplace for a time, and then he

turned to her with a sigh:--

"Now I must tell you the whole story, Nell."

"Yes," she answered, letting her hand fall softly on his arm. "Tell me

everything."

And he began slowly to tell her the story as he had lived through it

that night when he lay exhausted on the earth beneath the stars--the

story of his work in the city, of the acts which for eight years he had

hidden from all, even himself. He explained as well as he could the

tangled web of his dealings with the contractor from the day when he

had met him in the Canostota until the time of the arrangement over the

school and the hotel. When he came to the end, to the horrible fire

which had licked up the fraudulent Glenmore before his own eyes, hot

tears fell upon his hands, which his wife held tightly in hers, and he

could feel her body tremble against his.

"And that was the end! It made me see in one flash what it all meant.

Of course, those men and women might have been caught anyway, no matter

how well the building was put up,--there's no telling,--and Graves

would have done the same job whether I had been in with him or not.

Still, that doesn't count. When I saw them there, trapped, fighting

helplessly for their lives, I felt as if I had stood by and let them be

murdered--and made money by it, too!"

The horror of those minutes revived as he went over the story, and he

paused wearily.

"Somehow," he resumed, "it was all of a piece--dirty work. Everything

I had touched, pretty nearly, since I had started seemed rotten. It

made me sick all over.... Well, that was the end. I went to Everett

and tried to square the school matter as well as I could. I gave him

all I had made out of it and more,--about every dollar I had. It

leaves us where we started. But, Nell, I knew you would want me to do

that first before I came here."

It seemed a pitifully trivial act, now that he had told it, yet he was

glad that he could give her this proof of his sincerity. She said

nothing, but she raised her eyes, still filled with tears, to his face

with a calm, answering look.

"It's a bad story, as bad as it could well be," he resumed. "I see it

clearly enough now. I wanted uncle's money, wanted the easy time, and

the good things, and all that. Then when I didn't get it, I went in to

make a big success and have the things I was after, anyhow. I saw men

out there no more able than I who were making a lot of money, and

nothing seemed to count so long as somehow you made good. I wanted to

make good. It was a pretty cheap ambition."

"Yes!" she exclaimed fervently, "cheap! Oh, so cheap!"

Nevertheless she did not despise him as she might have despised him at

the time of their marriage for his sordid soul. During these eight

months that she had lived by herself she had come to see more justly

the causes of things--she had grown wiser. She held him now less

rigidly, less remorselessly, to her own ideal of life. For she had

begun to understand that the poison which had eaten him was in the air

he had breathed; it was the spirit of the city where he worked, of the

country, of the day--the spirit of greed. It presented itself to men

in the struggle for existence at every turn of the road, insidiously

and honorably disguised as ambition and courage. She saw the man's

temptation to strive with his competitors, as they strove for the

things which they held desirable. And she had come to realize that to

stand firmly against this current of the day demanded a heat of nature,

a character that the man she had married and worshipped, had never

possessed. He was of his time neither better nor worse than his

fellows, with their appetite for pleasure, their pride--that ancient

childish pride of man in the consideration and envy of his kind....

"So you have it all, and it's bad enough, God knows. Nell, can you

ever really forgive it, forget it, and love me again?"

For answer she leaned toward him and kissed him, understandingly. Now

that her heart knew him utterly, with all his cowardice and common

failings, she might still love him, even foreseeing the faltering and

unideal way of his steps, giving him, like many women, her second love,

the love that protects in place of the love that adores. And with that

kiss there began for her a new marriage with the man she had seen large

in her dreams, the man who had been her hero....

The elms swayed softly in the night wind, brushing across the window by

their side. The old house was very still with the subdued calm of age,

and man and wife sat there together, without words, looking far beyond

them toward the future that was to be theirs.

CHAPTER XXX

The next day and the next went by in the peace of the old house. Now

that the event which had so wholly occupied the man's mind since the

night when the Glenmore burned had come about; now that he was here in

the old place, and had his wife and children once more, he began to

consider personally the wreck of his affairs which had been left behind

in Chicago. And he began to ask himself whether, after all, it was

necessary for him to return to the city and make public his shame at

the hearing before the coroner. He was not clear what service to

justice or to the dead who had been sacrificed, as much through the

corruption of civic government as by his own wrong-doing, his testimony

would accomplish. That it would surely ruin him professionally was

beyond the shadow of a doubt. He could picture to himself well enough

the ferocious glee with which the _Thunderer_ would receive his

evidence! Was it necessary to give his wife and his children into the

merciless hands of the malicious newspapers?

The evening mail of the second day brought a letter from Wheeler. The

coroner's inquest, the lawyer wrote, was likely to drag on for a week

or more. The coroner was a Republican, and "had it in for the city

administration." He was trying, also, to make all the personal and

political capital that he could out of the affair. At present, as

Jackson could see from the newspapers, they were engaged in examining

minor witnesses,--the servants and employees of the Glenmore, the

police and the firemen,--trying to account for the origin of the fire.

So the architect could be of no use now, at any rate, and had better

stay quietly where he was until the matter took more definite shape.

As far as the coroner's inquest was concerned, it was a public

farce,--trial by newspaper,--and it would be well to wait and see

whether the affair was to reach a responsible court. In the meantime

it was understood that he was ill at his summer home. Graves, so

Wheeler added, had been in to see him again before he left the city.

It was foolish to irritate the contractor and make the matter worse

than it was already, etc.

Then Hart opened the bundle of newspapers, and glanced through their

padded pages. His eye was caught immediately by an editorial caption:--

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLENMORE TRAGEDY?

The article was a sarcastic summary of the results thus far from the

inquest, done in the _Thunderer's_ best manner. So far, the editorial

writer pointed out, the inquiry had been confined to examining

chambermaids, bell-boys, and the police, and to quarrelling about the

exact location of the fire when it started. The _Thunderer_ hoped that

before closing the inquest the coroner would have the courage to go

higher, and to probe the building department, and to ascertain what Mr.

Bloom's connection with the matter was, and whether his inspectors had

ever made a report on the Glenmore. Further, the coroner might to

advantage summon the officers of the hotel company, who had erected

this fire-trap, and the architect whose plans for a fire-proof

structure had been so lamentably inadequate. The _Thunderer_

understood that the Glenmore Hotel Corporation was one of those paper

corporations, officered by clerks, behind which unscrupulous

capitalists so often shielded themselves. Of the officers whose names

appeared in the papers of incorporation, three were clerks in the

employ of a contractor named Graves, who had built the hotel, and a

fourth was a prominent young architect, who had prepared the plans for

the building. The people of Chicago wanted to hear what these men had

to say about the Glenmore hotel, especially Bloom, Graves, and Hart.

"Look higher, Mr. Coroner!" the _Thunderer_ concluded solemnly.

When Helen came into the room a little later, she found her husband

plunged in thought, the sheets of the newspaper scattered about him.

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

He picked up the paper and handed it to her. She read the article in

the _Thunderer_, her brow wrinkling in puzzle as she went on. When she

had finished it, she let it fall from her hands, and looked at her

husband inquiringly.

"They want you to go out there and tell about the building of the

hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered dully. "I knew it would come sooner or later. You

see I was not only the architect, but Graves made me the treasurer of

the corporation. I was only a dummy like the others," he explained.

"The corporation was just Graves! But I told Everett that I should go

back and tell what I knew. Only he doesn't think it necessary, now!"

"What would happen? What does it all mean?"

He explained to her what the legal results might be in case the

coroner's jury held him and others to the Grand Jury, as criminally

liable for the disaster. Then, if the Grand Jury found a true bill

against him, whenever he returned to Chicago he could be tried for

manslaughter. But even if in his absence he should be held to the

Grand Jury, there were many steps in the complex machinery of legal

justice, and he could probably escape without trial. Evidently

Wheeler, who knew the involutions of the district attorney's office,

was counting on the probability that no one would be brought to trial

in this hotel case,--that the disaster would be buried in that gulf of

abortive justice where crimes against the people at large are smothered.

"And in that case," Hart concluded, "there would be no use in letting

them tear me to pieces in the papers!"

"But you must go back!" she exclaimed, brushing aside his reasoning.

"You must tell them all you know!"

"Everett doesn't think so," he protested, "and I can't see the good of

it, either. They won't do anything, probably. It's just politics, the

whole investigation. But the newspapers are full of it just now, and

they would hound me to a finish. It would be impossible for me to get

work in Chicago for a long time, if ever again. And it would cover you

and the boys with disgrace--that's the worst! I have paid enough!"

"But it must be done," she repeated in a low voice.

She was not clear what good might come of his testimony: she was

ignorant of the legal conditions. But she had a fundamental sense of

justice: men must pay for the evil they do,--pay fully and pay

publicly. A private repentance and a private penance were to her

incomplete and trivial.

"I've got to earn our living," he urged. "You must think of that! If

I am shut out of Chicago, we must begin somewhere else at the bottom."

She was not ready yet to consider that question.

"You mustn't think of us," she answered. "Francis, you can't really

pay for all the wrong that has been done. But perhaps the truth will

do some good. And unless you are ready to face the open

disgrace,--why, you have done nothing! The money you gave back to the

trustees was nothing. This is the only way!"

It was the only way for him, at least. With his buoyant, pliant

nature, as she understood it, some final act, definite, done in the

eyes of the world that knew him, was needed to strengthen the fibre of

his being, to record in his own soul its best resolve. For already he

had begun to waver, to quibble with his repentance.

He had been ready enough in the stress of his first feeling after the

catastrophe to stand before the world and confess his share in the

wrong that had been done. Then he was eager to free his mind of its

intolerable burden. But now that the excitement had faded, leaving him

to face the difficulties of his future, he saw in all its fatal detail

what public disgrace would mean, and he drew back. It was folly to

invite ruin!

Yet in the end the woman held him to her ideal. Late that night he

consented to telegraph Wheeler of his immediate return, and to take the

first train on the morrow for the west, there to await the coroner's

summons.

"I shall go on with you, of course," she said. "We will all go,--the

boys, too. Mamma will stay and close the house. Perhaps you can't get

away very soon after it is over. And I want to be there with you," she

answered to all his objections.

"You know what it will mean!" he exclaimed warningly, as the last log

burst into ashes on the hearth. "Nell, it's worst for you and the

boys. It means ruin, nothing less!"

"Never!" she protested with flashing eyes. "Other people, the

newspapers, can't make ruin. Ruin is in ourselves. It merely means

that we shall have to do without friends, and society, and things,

especially things. And I have come to hate things. They make one

small and mean. I never thought we should have them, when we were

married. And I don't want them for the boys, either. There is work!

the best thing in life,--work for itself, without pay in things,

without bribes! We'll have that and bread, Francis!"

"But the public disgrace," he objected, still sensitive to the opinion

of the world in which he had lived.

"Better even that than the disgrace between us," she whispered. "No,

no! There is no other way."

At least there was no other way to her love, and that love he could not

live without, cost him what it might.

"You are strong, Nell!" he confessed his admiration.

"And you, too!" she whispered back, her face illumined with the courage

of her nature.

Little Powers, the younger boy, had not been well, and the next

morning, when he was no better, Jackson urged that it would be unwise

to take him, that he had best go back alone. But Helen would not

consent, knowing that he made the most of the child's illness to spare

her the trial which was to come.

"It is nothing," she said. "Mother thinks it will do no harm to take

him. And if he is going to be really sick, it would be better for us

to be there in the city than here."

So they drove over to Verulam and took the train. After the boys had

been put to bed for the night, Helen came back to the section where the

architect was sitting, looking dully into the blank fields.

"What do you think of this?" she exclaimed, putting a letter into his

hands. "I got it just as we were leaving. It's from Venetia,--read

it!"

He took the thick envelope from her hands, remembering suddenly the

girl as he had last seen her, when she had summed him up in one bitter,

opprobrious word. The sting of that word had gone, however, effaced by

the experience which he had suffered since, and he opened the letter

listlessly.

MY DEAR MOTHER SUPERIOR,--Do you recognize the Forest Park postmark? I

am not going abroad after all. At least not just yet. Mother's gone,

sails this week with Mrs. Ollie B. Now listen, and I'll make your hair

stand on end.

First, mother! She's had a grievous disappointment lately. Colonel

Raymond,--you know him of course,--the little gray-whiskered railroad

man, mother's pet indulgence for I can't say how long,--has at last

been freed from the legal attachment of one wife and is about to take

another at once. Whom do you think? The youngest Stewart girl!!! The

wedding is for the 3d of June. We are not going, naturally. Of

course, it was a crushing blow to poor mamma,--she put her sailing

forward a whole week to escape from her friends. She was positively

growing old under it.

I know you don't like this, so I cut it very short. Now, prepare! I

am going to embrace the serious life, at last,--I mean matrimony.

Really and truly, this time. You know the man, but you'd never guess:

he's our doctor. Dr. Coburn. Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!

Mother threw a fit when I told her, and then, of course, I knew I was

quite right. We are to be married any time, when he finishes up the

work he has on hand, so that he can give me some attention. We might

look in on you in your convent retirement, if sufficiently urged. Then

I'll tell you all about it, and make him show you all the little tricks

I have taught him. Mamma still calls him "that fellow," but he's by

way of being a very distinguished man on account of some bug he's

discovered. The medical journals are taking off their hats to him. I

read the notices,--don't you believe I am fast enough in love?

Well, I have had to send mamma abroad to recover her nerves, and I am

out here putting the place in order as it is to be rented to some awful

people, whom you never heard of. By the way, the doctor isn't going to

let me use my money,--mother ought to thank him for that!--and he won't

promise to earn much money, either. He has no idea of keeping me in

the state to which the Lord called me. He says if I want that, I can

marry Stephen Lane or any other man. He means to earn enough for a

sensible woman to live on, he says, and if I am not content with what

he chooses to do for me I can go out and learn how to earn some more

for myself! Did you ever hear of a man who had the nerve to talk that

way to the woman he wants to marry? ...

We are going to have a laboratory on the West Side,--that gave Mrs. P.

another fit,--and over it we'll have our rooms. Then when he's made

enough rabbits dotty with his bug, and has written his papers, maybe

we'll go abroad....

There are lots of other things, _your_ things, I want to talk over, but

I am afraid my pen is too blunt for them. Only, I hope, oh, so much,

dear, that you are to be happy again. Mr. Wheeler told me that Jack

was with you now. My love to the Prodigal Man. Good-by, dear...

"Isn't it good!" Helen exclaimed, with the readiness of good women to

welcome a newcomer to that state which has brought them such doubtful

happiness.

"I shouldn't think he would have been the man to satisfy her," Jackson

answered slowly.

"I think Dr. Coburn has changed a good deal since you knew him. He had

fine things in him, and Venetia could see them."

"I always thought she was ambitious, and the reason she didn't marry

was because she couldn't find any one out there to give her everything

she was after."

"Perhaps Venetia has seen enough already of that kind of thing!"

CHAPTER XXXI

There was a stir among the reporters gathered in the little room where

the coroner's inquest on the Glenmore fire was being held, when it

became known that the architect was present and was to be examined.

Graves's man, Gotz, the president of the hotel company, had finished

his testimony on the previous day, having displayed a marvellous

capacity for ignorance. Under advice from his employer's lawyer he had

refused to answer every important question put to him, on the plea that

it was irrelevant. The coroner had been scarcely more successful with

other witnesses in his endeavors to determine the exact causes for the

large loss of life in the new hotel, and his inquest was closing in

failure. The yelping pack of newspapers had already raised their cry

in another field; public interest in the Glenmore disaster had begun to

wane; and it was generally believed that nothing would come of the

inquest, not even a hearing before the Grand Jury. The whole affair

appeared to be but another instance of the impotence of our system of

government in getting at the real offenders against society, if they

are cunning and powerful.

That morning, as the Harts were preparing to go to the hearing the

doctor had called to see little Powers, for the child's feverish cold

threatened to develop into pneumonia. After the doctor had gone, the

architect went upstairs to the sickroom, where Helen was seated on the

bed playing with Powers, and trying to soothe him. As he stood there

silently watching them, he was tormented by a sudden fear, a terrible

presentiment, that the child was to die, and thus he was to pay for his

sins, and not only he, but Helen. She was to pay with him, even more

than he! He tried to rid himself of the hysterical and foolish idea,

but it persisted, prompted by that rough sense of retribution--an

acknowledgment of supreme justice--that most men retain all their lives.

"I shall have to go now," he said to her at last. "But you mustn't

think of coming. You must stay with the boy."

"Oh, no!" Helen exclaimed quickly, looking closely at the child. "The

doctor says there is nothing to fear yet. Everything has been done

that I can do, and your mother will stay with him while we are away.

It won't be long, anyway!"

"Why do you insist upon coming?" he protested almost irritably. "It

won't be exactly pleasant, and you may have to hang around there for

hours."

"Don't you want me to go with you, and be there, Francis?" she asked a

little sadly.

He made no reply, feeling ashamed to confess that it would make the

coming scene all the more painful to know that she was hearing again in

all its repulsive detail the story of his participation in the criminal

construction of the Glenmore hotel.

"I think I had better go," she said finally, "and I want to go!"

She wished to be near him at the end, after he had performed this

difficult act; to be near him when he came out from the hearing and

walked home with the knowledge of the public disgrace preparing for him

at the hands of the hungry reporters. Then, she divined, would come

upon him the full bitterness of his position.

The hearing proceeded slowly, and it was the middle of the afternoon

before the architect was called. The coroner, a grizzled little

German-American with an important manner, put on his spectacles to

examine the new witness, and the members of the coroner's jury, who

knew that the architect had left the city immediately after the fire

and were surprised at his return, evinced their curiosity by leaning

forward and staring at Hart.

The first questions put to him were directed toward gaining information

about the corporation that owned the building. As Mr. Hart was the

treasurer of the Glenmore company, presumably he held stock in the

corporation? A large amount? No, he had had some stock, but had

disposed of it. Recently? Some time ago. To whom? The witness

refused to answer. Had he paid cash for his stock? The witness

refused to answer: he had been told by his lawyer that all such

questions were not pertinent to the present inquiry. But who, then,

were the chief stockholders? who were, in fact, the Glenmore company?

Again the architect refused to answer; indeed, he was not sure that he

knew. The coroner, baffled on this line, and knowing well enough in a

general way at least from previous witnesses that nothing was to be

unearthed here, turned to more vital matters.

"Mr. Hart," he said, clearing his throat and looking gravely at the

witness, "I understand that you were the architect for this hotel?"

"Yes."

"You drew the plans and specifications for the Glenmore?"

"Yes, they were prepared in my office."

"Were they the same that you see here?"

The coroner motioned toward the roll of plans that had been taken from

the files of the Building Department.

"Yes," the architect answered readily, merely glancing at the plans,

"those were the plans for the hotel as originally prepared by me."

"Now I want to ask if the Glenmore hotel was built according to these

plans?"

The architect hesitated. Every one in the room knew well enough by

this time that the building destroyed by fire had not been erected

according to these plans, but, nevertheless, they waited eagerly for

the reply.

"Few buildings," Hart began explanatorily, "are completed in all

respects according to the original plans and specifications."

"Ah, is that so?"

"But these plans were very considerably altered," the witness continued

voluntarily.

"By whom? By you? With your consent, your approval?"

The architect hesitated again for a few moments, and then answered

rapidly:--

"With my knowledge, certainly; yes, you may say with my consent!"

There was a little delay in the inquiry at this point, while the

coroner consulted with his counsel as to the next questions that should

be addressed to the witness. The architect gazed doggedly before him,

keeping his eyes on the dirty window above the heads of the jury. In

the dingy light of the little room, his face appeared yellow and old.

His mouth twitched occasionally beneath his mustache, but otherwise he

stood with composure waiting for the next question, which he knew would

pierce to the heart of the matter.

"Mr. Hart," the coroner resumed, "will you describe to us what those

alterations in the plans for the Glenmore were, what was the nature of

them?"

The witness considered how he was to answer the question, and then he

proceeded to explain the most important discrepancies between the

building as it had been erected by Graves and the plans that had been

filed with the Building Department. He described the use of the old

walls and foundations, the reduction in the thickness of the

bearing-walls and partitions, the chief substitutions of wood for steel

in the upper stories, the omitting of fireproof partitions and

fire-escapes, etc.,--in short, all the methods of "skinning" the

construction, in which the contractor was such an adept. He referred

from time to time to the plans, and used technical terms, which he was

asked to explain. But the jury listened with absorbed interest, and he

kept on until he had answered the question thoroughly.

"As an architect," the coroner asked, when Hart had completed his

explanation, "will you state whether, in your judgment, these changes

that you have described, especially the substitution of inflammable

material for fireproofing and the weakening of the main walls, were

sufficient to account for the great loss of life in the fire?"

The answer to such a question could be only speculative,--an individual

opinion,--and the witness might properly refuse to commit himself. The

architect hesitated, and then with a quick motion of the head, as if he

were sick of evasions, said:--

"There are a good many buildings here in Chicago and in other large

cities that are no safer than the Glenmore was. But if you want my

opinion, I will say that such alterations as I have indicated tended to

weaken the walls, and in other ways to bring the building below the

danger limit."

"It was what might be called a fire-trap, then?"

"I did not say that!"

Feeling that at last he had found an easy witness, the coroner began to

bully, and there ensued a wrangle between him and the architect, in

which both men became heated.

"Well, Mr. Hart," a member of the jury finally interposed with a

question, "can you say that the Glenmore as it was built conformed to

the building ordinances of the city of Chicago?"

"It would take a number of experts and a good lawyer to interpret those

ordinances!" the architect answered testily. "I should say that they

were drawn for the express purpose of being violated."

There was a laugh along the reporters' bench at this retort. But the

witness quickly added in his former contained manner:--

"No, the Glenmore violated the ordinances in a number of important

particulars."

There was a sudden hush in the room. This point had been established

before by different persons who had been examined. Nevertheless, the

admission coming from the architect of the ill-fated building was an

important point. It might lead to other interesting admissions.

"You were aware, then, when the Glenmore was being erected that it

violated the ordinances?"

"Yes."

"Did you make any protest?"

"No."

"Did you know when you undertook the plans that the hotel was to be

built in this manner?"

"I knew that it was to be put up for a certain sum, and that a

first-class fire-proof building conforming to the ordinances could not

be built for that money."

A number of questions followed in regard to the actual cost of the

hotel and the connection of the Graves Construction Company with the

owners of the building, many of which the architect refused to answer.

At last the coroner returned to the one point on which he had been

successful in eliciting vital information,--the character of the burned

building, and the circumstances of its construction.

"I suppose the building was inspected during the construction?"

"Certainly."

"By whom?"

"As usual, by different inspectors from the building department. Mr.

Murphy was there several times, I remember, and Mr. Lagrange, among

others. But I think chiefly Mr. Murphy."

"Were you present during their inspection?"

"Not always."

"Did either of these gentlemen find anything to object to in the method

of construction?"

"I never heard of any objection. Nothing was ever said to me. The

inspectors might have talked to the contractors. But I don't think any

one of them did."

"Have you reason to believe that there was any collusion between the

inspectors and the Graves Company?"

Every one in the room knew that there must have been collusion.

Nevertheless, the architect, after hesitation, said:--

"I shan't answer that, sir."

"You refuse to reply?"

"See here, Mr. Coroner! I am here to tell you what I know about the

Glenmore,--at least so far as it concerns my own responsibility, my own

work. But I am not here to testify against the Graves Construction

Company. Understand that!"

"Well, I should say that you and the Graves Company were pretty well

mixed in this matter. You were an officer of the corporation which

employed the Graves Company to build a hotel on your plans. Could

there be any closer connection than that, do you think?"

To this observation Hart made no reply, and finally the member of the

jury who had interposed before put another question to the witness:--

"You have told us that the Glenmore was not properly built, was not

what it pretended to be, a fire-proof building, and generally violated

the ordinance for that class of building. Do you consider yourself in

any way responsible for those violations?"

"Yes," the architect replied slowly, "I suppose so. At least I knew

all about it!"

"You considered it a dangerous building?"

"I can't say that I did. I should consider it so now. I didn't think

much about it then."

The witness's admission came with evident effort; the juryman continued

insinuatingly:--

"Mr. Hart, I believe that you were present at the fire?"

"Yes."

"Did you then believe that if the hotel had been built according to

these plans"--he pointed to the roll of blue prints on the table--"the

large loss of life would not have occurred?"

"I felt so,--yes, I believe so now!"

"May I ask one more question? Was it for your interest to make these

changes? Did you make any money out of the job beyond your customary

commission?"

It was a question that the witness might properly refuse to answer as

having no direct bearing on the object of the inquest. But the

architect was weary of quibbles,--indeed, eager to make his testimony

as thorough as might be, and to have it over.

"Not directly, but I was an officer of the company, and beside--"

"Indirectly, then, you benefited?"

"Yes, indirectly."

"That is all, Mr. Hart."

A few more questions were asked by the coroner about the inspection of

the building by Murphy and Lagrange, and also in regard to the

architect's previous relations with the Graves Company. Then the

witness was excused.

When the architect stepped back into the room, he saw Wheeler sitting

beside Helen in the rear. They waited for him at the door, and

together the three went out to the street. The lawyer, who had reached

the hearing in time for most of the testimony, smiled rather grimly as

he remarked to his cousin:--

"Well, Jack, you gave them about everything they were after! You

needn't have turned yourself quite inside out."

"It was perfect!" Helen exclaimed, taking her husband's arm.

"Everything you said was right. I wouldn't have had you change a word."

Wheeler buttoned his coat against the east wind and smiled tolerantly

at the woman's fervor.

"Will that be all, Everett?" she asked a little defiantly.

"For the present," he replied after a pause, and then he nodded good-by.

"What did he mean?" she asked her husband, as they threaded the crowded

street leading to the North Side bridge.

"That they will hold me to the Grand Jury, I suppose."

Her hand which clasped his arm tightened involuntarily at the words,

and they continued their way silently to the old Ohio Street house.

CHAPTER XXXII

When they entered the house, Helen hurried upstairs to the child, who

had been calling for her, Mrs. Hart said. Presently the doctor came

for his evening visit, and when, after a long time, he left the

sickroom, Jackson met him in the hall, but lacked the courage to ask

any question. The doctor spoke bruskly about the bad weather, and

hurried off. Then Hart walked to and fro in the gloomy dining-room

until his mother came down for dinner, which they ate in silence.

Before they had finished their meal the bell rang, and in reply to the

maid's excuses at the door there sounded in the hall a strong woman's

voice.

"But I must see them!"

Jackson, recognizing Venetia Phillips's voice, stepped into the hall.

"Oh, Jack! I have just heard that you were all here. We met Everett

at the station, and he told me all about it. Jack, it was fine! I

didn't think you had it in you, Jackie, dear. To stand up there and

give everything away,--it took real stuff. I know it!" She held out

her hand in enthusiastic heartiness, repeating, "It was fine, fine!"

Suddenly she turned back to the door, where Coburn stood.

"You know Dr. Coburn, Jack! I brought him along, too--I was in such a

hurry to see you all. Where's Helen?"

"Yes, I just butted in," Coburn said, laughing. "I wouldn't let her

come without me. I wanted to shake on it, too!"

"But where's that sainted wife of yours?" Venetia persisted.

When Jackson told her of the boy's illness, she hurried upstairs

without another word, leaving the two men standing in the library. At

first, when they were alone, with the common memory of that last

meeting in the doctor's rooms barely a week before, there was an

awkward silence. Coburn had now an explanation for the architect's

erratic behavior on that occasion, and he refrained from his usual

blunt speech. And the architect, seeing through the mist of

accumulated impressions, as in a long vista, that night after the fire

when Coburn had found him half-crazed, a prey to horrible visions,

could not speak. Yet that experience seemed removed from the present,

as if it rose from distant years, and somehow belonged to another

person. Although he had never liked Coburn in the old days, he felt a

kind of sympathy in the doctor's bearing, and was grateful for it.

"You must have thought I was crazy the other night," the architect

remarked apologetically at last. "I didn't know much what I was up to!"

"That's all right, man," Coburn interrupted warmly. "Don't think about

it again. It was damn good luck my running across you, that's all. If

I'd known, of course-- Say! that took sand, what you did to-day.

Wheeler told Venetia all about it, and she told me. It makes a man

feel good to see some one who has got the nerve to stand up and take

medicine, and not try everlastingly to sneak out of things! If more

folks nowadays would do that, it would be better for us all. Don't you

mind what the papers say. They have to fling mud,--that's their game!"

"Well, it doesn't make much difference now what they say

except,--except for my wife," Jackson answered dully. "And that can't

be helped."

"Oh, I guess it won't last long. And somehow women don't mind those

things half as much as you'd think, at least the best ones don't. And

from what Venetia says, yours is one of the best!"

"Yes! That doesn't make it any easier. But I haven't congratulated

you!" he exclaimed, repressing the confession of his own pain. "She is

a splendid woman, lots of spirit," he remarked awkwardly.

"I rather think so!" A pleased smile illuminated the doctor's grave

face. "She's just about the best ever!"

"I hope you will be happy," Jackson continued conventionally.

"Well, we expect to--don't see why we shouldn't. I guess we know

pretty much what's to be found on both sides, and won't make ourselves

uncomfortable looking for what ain't there."

Venetia came down the stairs very quietly, her exuberance all gone, and

as she entered the room she was still wiping away the traces of tears.

"Poor little Powers!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Jack! I am terribly sorry."

"What's the matter?" Coburn demanded.

"It's pneumonia, poor little man!"

Jackson's lip trembled beneath his mustache, as he murmured to

himself:--

"Yes, I supposed it would be. It's as tough as it well could be, for

her!"

"I know he'll come through,--he must!" Venetia exclaimed helplessly,

and added in a burst of admiration, "That trouble couldn't happen to

Helen--it just couldn't! She's so splendid, Jack! It's a big thing to

know there are such women about. She's holding him up there now, with

a smile on her face!"

Jackson turned away from her eager eyes.

Again and again during the days that followed, while they worked for

the child's life, and when all was done watched and waited together for

what might come, that miserable foreboding of the first day came back

to the man. An evil fate seemed close on his heels, ready to lay hand

on him here or there. The illness of the child related itself in some

unseen manner with the great catastrophe of his life. The old idea of

retribution, that barbaric conception of blood sacrifice, tormented

him, as it torments the most sceptical in the hour of crisis. It

appeared to him that for his cowardice of nature, for all his weak and

evil deeds, for the unknown dead in whose death he had connived, he was

about to be called to pay with the life of his own child. And the

mother, guiltless, in the inscrutable cruelty of fate, must pay with

him and pay the larger share of the price of his evil, of his nature!

But during these days of dread the woman went her way calmly, serenely,

prepared, outwardly at least, for any event. What the child's death

would mean to her was known only to herself, for she consumed her grief

patiently in the silence of the watch. The house grew more sombre, as

day by day the struggle for life moved on to its crisis. Little

Powers, like his mother, made his fight with unchildish patience. He

had always been the quieter, less demonstrative one of the two boys,

possessing a singular power of silence and abstraction, which had been

attributed to physical weakness. Yet under the stress of disease he

showed an unexpected resistance and vitality. The father, when he saw

him lying in the great bed, with pathetic moments of playfulness even

in the height of his fever, could not stay by his side....

The suspense of the child's illness mercifully threw all outer

happenings into shade. Jackson was able to keep the newspapers away

from Helen, and she asked no questions. His testimony at the inquest

had revived to some extent the waning public interest in the Glenmore

fire. Especially the _Buzzard_, which had assumed to itself all the

credit for airing the conditions in the building department, made merry

over Hart's replies to the coroner. It printed full-page cuts of

scenes at the inquest that last day, when the architect was on the

stand,--dramatic sketches of "tilts between the coroner and Hart,"

"Hart's insolent retorts," etc.; and it denounced editorially, with its

peculiar unction of self-esteem, the "systematic corruption of the

nation by such men as Graves, Hart, and their allies." But the

_Thunderer_ and the more respectable papers refrained from all such

bitter insinuations. For some reason they forbore to pillory the only

man who had voluntarily come forward and told all that he knew.

Perhaps they respected the courage of the act; perhaps they were aware

that their patrons had tired of "the Glenmore tragedy"; perhaps they

felt that the real guilt lay too deep to be reached by their editorial

darts. However that might be, the matter rested now with the district

attorney and the Grand Jury.

For the inquest had been concluded and the coroner's report was

published. It covered lengthily all the points touched upon by the

many witnesses, and it contained much "scoring" of the city

authorities. The contractor, Graves, the inspectors, Murphy and

Lagrange, Gotz, the president of the defunct corporation, and Hart,

were held to the Grand Jury for complicity in the death of the

seventeen persons who had perished in the Glenmore fire....

Meanwhile the worst hour of anxiety for the child's life came, and

Helen knelt by the bed holding the little body in her arms, devouring

his face with her shining eyes. The hour passed, the child lived,

there was hope of his recovery. Yet for a period they went to and fro

softly, with that peculiar hush of fear scarcely relieved, lest their

hopes might be too strong.

At last, however, Jackson was obliged to tell Helen what had happened

at the inquest. She listened as to a message from a far land, her face

blanched and set from the hours of fear through which she had passed.

When he said that he, with the others, had been held to the Grand Jury,

she merely asked:--

"When will that be?"

"Very soon, less than a fortnight, Everett says. He called here

yesterday. He advised me to leave the city,--he came to see about

that."

"What will they do?" she asked, not heeding the last remark.

"If they find a true bill, it will go to the trial jury. And," he

added slowly, "the charge will be manslaughter."

She started as he pronounced the word. In her ears it was the legal

synonym for murder, and before the awfulness of that conception her

heart recoiled.

"Manslaughter!" she repeated involuntarily.

"Yes, but Everett thinks it is very doubtful whether the Grand Jury

will find a true bill against any one. It would be almost an

unheard-of thing to do. Of course, Graves will stay away until he sees

how it will turn out, and probably the others will keep out of reach.

Everett wants me to go--"

"No, no!" she cried, "never! You have come all this way on the hard

road, and we must go on to the very end, no matter what that is."

"So I thought you would feel," he answered gently. "I said the same

thing to Everett. Of course, the justice of it isn't very clear. It's

mixed up with politics, anyway. I don't know that it would do much

good to any one to stay and be tried. But if you feel that way--"

She laid her hand on his arm, imploring him mutely not to give her all

the responsibility for the decision.

"Think what it might mean, if--if they found me guilty!" he muttered

gloomily.

"I know," she shuddered. "But Francis, we must pay somehow, you and I.

We must pay!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

But if in her heroic soul she was ready to pay, and to make him pay, at

the price of public shame for her and her children, the full penalty of

his misdeeds, it was not to be so. He was to escape the full measure

of retribution, shielded by the accident of his class. Unknown to him,

the tangled threads of his fate were being sorted in the great city,

and the vengeance of society was being averted, so far, at least, as

legal punishment was concerned. Everett Wheeler, once recovered from

his disgust at the sentimental folly of the architect's confession at

the inquest, had no mind to see his cousin on trial for manslaughter.

His mood was invariably to settle things, to cover them up, to bury

them! As has been said, he had political influence, enough to reach

even to the district attorney's office, enough to close the mouth of

the Chicago _Buzzard_, to quiet the snarls of the _Thunderer_. So the

case against the men held to the Grand Jury for the hotel disaster was

quietly dropped. The mayor put another man in Bloom's place as chief

building inspector, and very soon things went merrily on in their old

way. And that was the end of it all! The seventeen human beings who

had lost their lives in the fire had not even pointed a moral by their

agonizing death. For a few summer months the gaunt, smoke-blackened

pit of ruins on the boulevard served to remind the passers-by of a

grewsome tale. Then, by the beginning of the new year, in its place

rose a splendid apartment building, faced with cut stone and trimmed

with marble.

Wheeler notified the architect in a curt note that the case had been

dismissed, and Jackson showed the letter to his wife.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently, "that is the end. I shan't drag

you into the mud any farther."

Helen looked up from the lawyer's letter with a troubled face. She had

hardened herself to the coming trial, which she had fully expected.

Now that it had been spared, all was not yet right to her scrupulous

perception. A terrible wrong had been committed, a wrong to the poor

souls who had lost their lives, a wrong, too, to the city and to

society, making an evil pool of corruption. And in some mysterious way

this had been covered up, hidden, and all was to go on as before! She

had a primitive idea that all evil necessitated exact payment, and as

long as this payment was deferred, so long was the day of light, of

health, put off.

But the man, realizing more clearly than she the indirect penalties

which his situation inevitably imposed, gave no further thought to the

abstract question of justice. The outlook was bad enough as it was.

He saw nothing before him in this city where he naturally belonged.

"What would you think of our moving to St. Louis?" he asked, a few days

after he had received the lawyer's letter. "There is some sort of an

opening there for me. Of course I had rather be in New York, but it is

out of the question. It would take too long to get started. Or we

might try Denver. I have done some work there, and it's a growing

place."

"Do you think that we must leave Chicago?" she asked.

"Why!" he exclaimed, surprised that she should consider for a moment

the possibility of their remaining where he had made such a failure of

his life. "Do you want to stay here and be dropped by every soul you

have known?"

"I don't care very much for that!"

"Well, there's nothing here for me. Stewart will take the office. He

let me know mighty quick that we had better part! I am a dead dog in

Chicago. Only yesterday I got a letter from the Kicker Brothers

turning me down after telling me last month to go ahead. They pay for

the work done so far, and that is all. You see it is out of the

question to stay here!"

He spoke gloomily, as if in spite of all that had happened he had some

grounds for feeling a little sore.

"But I don't mean to let this down me, not yet," he continued more

buoyantly. "I owe it to you, at least, to make good. And I can do it

somewhere else, where the sight of this mess isn't always in my eyes!

It'll only be a matter of a few years, Nell."

Already the bitterness of the crisis was passing away, and he was

beginning to plan for the future, for a career, for success,--built on

a surer foundation, but nevertheless success and repute in the world.

His wife realized it and understood. She was standing by his side, as

he sat with his elbows resting on his knees, studying the faded figure

in the carpet. She put her hands on his head and drew it toward her,

protectingly, pityingly, as she would the bruised head of a child.

"So you think you must begin somewhere else?" she said gently, sitting

down by his side.

"It's the only thing to do. The question is where!"

She made no reply and seemed buried in her thoughts.

"By the way," he remarked, "whom do you think I saw on the street

to-day? Wright. He was staring at Letterson's new store,--you know

Frank Peyton did it. The old man stopped me and seemed really glad to

see me. I suppose he knows everything, too," he added musingly.

The incident comforted him greatly. He had seen Wright in the crowded

street, and had looked away from him, meaning to hurry past, but the

older man had stretched out his long arm and good-naturedly drawn Hart

to one side out of the press of the street.

"How are you, Hart?" he had said cordially, with his boyish smile.

"What do you think of this thing? Bold, isn't it? That Peyton's got

nerve to put up this spiderweb right here in State Street. Now, I

couldn't do that! But I guess he's on the right track. That's what we

are coming to. What do you think?"

They had walked down the street together, and Wright had continued to

talk of Peyton and the other young architects in the city, and of their

work.

"I tell you, those youngsters have got the future. They have the

courage to try experiments. That won't do for an old fellow like me.

My clients would kick, too, if I took to anything new. But I like to

see the young ones try it.... What are you doing?" he had asked

abruptly. "Come in to see me, won't you? I shall be here two or three

weeks. Be sure to come in, now!"

They had shaken hands, and the older architect had looked searchingly

into Hart's face, his boyish smile changing subtly into an expression

of concern and sweetness, as if there was something on the tip of his

tongue which he refrained from saying there in the crowded street. The

memory of the little meeting came back to the man now, and he felt more

grateful for Wright's cordiality than he had at the time.

"Wright asked me to come in and see him. I think I will do it some

day," he remarked presently.

"Why not give up the idea of starting your own office?" Helen asked

suddenly, her thoughts having come to a definite point.

"What do you mean? Try something else? It would be pretty risky," he

answered doubtfully, surprised that she should want him to abandon his

profession, to admit defeat.

"I didn't mean that, exactly. It wouldn't do at all for you to give up

architecture. That never entered my mind. Only--listen!"

She slipped from the lounge where she had been sitting and knelt beside

him, taking the lapels of his coat in her hands, her face aglow with a

sudden enthusiasm.

"I've been thinking of so many things these last months, and lately,

while Powers has been so sick, I've thought of everything since we were

in Italy together, since I loved you,--all those talks we had, and the

plans we made, the work you did, the sketches--those first ones." She

paused, trying to put her tumultuous thoughts in order.

"I grow so slowly! I was so ignorant of everything, of myself and you

in those days. It has taken me a long time, dear, to understand, to

grow up!" she exclaimed, her lips trembling in a little smile.

"We stumbled almost at the start, you and I. You started your office

and worked hard, always striving to get ahead, to get us comforts and

position, and not because you liked the things you were doing. You

took anything that promised to bring in money. And it got worse and

worse, the more we had. It used to trouble me then, 'way back, but I

didn't know what was the matter with it all. We lived out there with

all those rich people around us. And those we knew that weren't very

rich were all trying to get richer, to have the same things the others

had. We did what they did, and thought what they thought, and tried to

live as they did. It wasn't honest!"

"What do you mean by that?" he asked blankly.

"I'll say it clearly; just give me time, dear! It is true, but it is

made up of so many little, unimportant trifles. You worked just to get

money, and we spent it all on ourselves, or pretty nearly all. And the

more we had, the more we seemed to need. No man ought to work that

way! It ruins him in the end. That's why there are so many common,

brutal men and women everywhere. They work for the pay, and for

nothing else."

"Oh, not always."

"Most of those we knew did," she replied confidently.

"Well, it's the law of life," he protested with a touch of his old

superiority in his tone.

"No, it isn't, it isn't!" she exclaimed vehemently. "Never! There are

other laws. Work is good in itself, not just for the pay, and we must

live so that the pay makes less difference, so that we haven't to think

of the pay!"

"I don't see what this has to do with our going to St. Louis!" he

interjected impatiently, disinclined for a theoretic discussion of the

aims of life, when the question of bread and butter was immediately

pressing.

"But it has, Francis, dear. It has! If you go there, you will try to

live the old way. You will try to get ahead, to struggle up in the

world, as it is called, and that is the root of all the trouble! That

is what I have come to see all these months. We are all trying to get

out of the ranks, to leave the common work to be done by others, to be

leaders. We think it a disgrace to stay in the ranks, to work for the

work's sake, to bear the common lot, which is to live humbly and labor!

Don't let us struggle that way any longer, dear. It is wrong,--it is a

curse. It will never give us happiness--never!"

He began to see the drift of her purpose, and resented it with all the

prejudice of his training,--resented, at least, the application of it

to him.

"The ranks are crowded enough as it is! I don't see the call for a man

to put himself into them if he has the ability to do any better, I must

say!"

"Not if--not after all that has happened?" she asked mournfully.

"Oh! that's it. You think that it's only _I_ who should go down,

meekly give up all ambition, because I can't be trusted? You are

afraid that I will go wrong?" he retorted bitterly.

"No, not that quite! Yet--" she hesitated, aware that the new love

between them hung in the balance. Then she went on courageously: "No,

I have no fear of that. You couldn't! But the temptation to make

money will be before you every moment, and to-day few men can resist

that. It is better to be in the ranks than to struggle to lead, and

then lead falsely, trying for false things,--false things!"

"That is what you think of me!" he repeated mournfully.

In spite of all the experience which had come to him the last weeks,

all that he had confessed to himself and to his wife, it was bitter to

realize that she refused him now that absolute faith and blind

confidence in his guidance which had made courtship and the first years

of marriage such a pleasant tribute to his egotism. He had come back

to her repentant; he had said, "I have erred. I repent. Will you

forgive me and love me?" And she had taken him to herself again with a

deeper acceptance than at first. Yet when it came to the point of

action, she seemed to be withdrawing her forgiveness, to be judging and

condemning him.

In this he wronged her. What she was trying hesitantly and imperfectly

to say to him was not merely the lesson of his catastrophe, but the

fruited thought of her life,--what had come to her through her

imperfect, groping education, through the division of their marriage,

through her children, through the empty dinner parties in the society

he had sought, through the vacancy in her heart,--yes! through the love

that she had for him. While she was silent, clinging to him, baffled,

he spoke again:--

"Don't you see that I want to retrieve myself, and make some amends to

you for all that I have made you suffer? You would kill every ambition

in me, even the one to work for you and the boys!"

"That would not make me happy, not if you made as great a fortune as

uncle Powers! Not that way!"

"What would, then?"

"Do you remember some of those first things you did? The little

country club at Oak Hills? I was awfully happy when you showed me

that," she said softly, irrelevantly. "Somehow I know you could do

that again and better things, too, if--if you could forget the money

and all that. Real, honest work! You could be the artist I know you

are, the maker of honest, fine buildings!"

In the enthusiasm of her face he read dimly once more the long-past

dream of his youth, the talk of young men in the studios, the hours by

her side on the steamer, when they had come together in the imperfect

attraction of sex. It was but the flicker of a distant light, however;

he had learned the lesson of the city too well.

"That sounds very well. But it isn't practical. If you want to do big

work, you have to be your own master, and not work for some one else!

And art, especially architecture, lives on the luxury of the rich, whom

you seem to despise!"

"What does it matter whose name goes on the plans? It's the work that

makes it that counts, and no one can have that but the one who does it."

"Now, you're talking poetry, Nell, not sense!" he exclaimed

good-naturedly, getting up from the lounge and walking to and fro.

"This world doesn't run on those lines, and you and I aren't going to

make it over, either. You're talking like a romantic girl!"

"There isn't much else of the girl left in me!" she smiled wistfully

back to him.

"Just look at it practically. If I go out of business for myself, I

couldn't earn more than two hundred a month working for some firm.

That's as much as Wright ever pays his best men. What would that be to

live on? For you and me and the boys?"

"We could make it do. There are many others who have less."

"Next you will want to take in washing."

"I had rather do the cooking, when it comes to that," she flashed back.

"I can see us in a four-room flat somewhere south on one of those

God-forsaken prairie streets. One slovenly maid, and the food! A

cigar on Sundays and holidays! You would buy your clothes over the

counter at Letterson's and go bargain-hunting for your weekly

amusement. No, thank you! I am not quite so far gone yet as that, my

dear. You don't realize the facts."

His mind was not open to her conception, even in its simplest

application. To him a small income with its manner of life meant

merely degradation. She saw, as never before, how Chicago had moulded

him and had left his nature set in a hard crust of prejudice. The

great industrial city where he had learned the lesson of life throttled

the finer aspirations of men like a remorseless giant, converting its

youth into iron-clawed beasts of prey, answering to the one hoarse cry,

"Success, Success, Success!"

"And how should we educate the boys? Think of it! How could we give

them as good a start in life as we had? Why, it would be criminal to

them. It's nonsense!"

"I have thought of them," she replied calmly. "And I am willing to

take the risks for them, too. I am willing to see them start in life

poor, with just what we could do for them. Perhaps in the world to

which they will grow up, things will be different, anyway."

He had tested her in the tenderest point, and she was stanch. He began

to see how far this theory of living and working in the world went with

her. She was ready to put herself outside her own class, and her

children also, for the sake of an idea, a feeling that she had about

man's true purpose in life.

"I must go to Powers, now," she said at last, a little sadly. Before

she left the room she went up to him impulsively and leaned her head

against his breast for a moment. "Perhaps in time you will come to

feel more as I do. And, Francis, there's another reason why I should

hate to have us leave this place. I don't want to think that you are

running away from the disgrace, from the trouble which has happened

here!" She raised her head proudly. "That is what all cheap people

do, go to some place where they aren't known; as if it mattered to us

now what people think or say! I want you to stay right here, where it

happened, and make a new life here."

After she had left him, he continued to walk to and fro in his uncle's

old library, between the heavy black-walnut bookcases, where it was

permitted to him now to smoke as many cigarettes as he liked. The

house had been left very much as it was during the old man's life. Now

that Mrs. Amelia Hart was free to make those domestic changes which had

been denied to her while the owner lived, she had never come to the

necessary resolution. Powers Jackson's will was still effective with

her, even in death.

The architect thought of the old man, wondering vaguely what he would

have said to Helen's argument. He was not so sure as formerly that he

understood the rough old fellow, who apparently had grasped the main

chance and wrung it dry. His uncle's purpose in endowing that school

struck him suddenly as complex, and also his treatment of himself.

Possibly he, too,--the successful man of his day,--having exploited the

world for forty years, had come to the belief that ambition in the

ordinary sense of the word was futile....

The architect had not thought to sneak away from the place where he had

gone to failure when he suggested to his wife starting life once more

in a new city. It had seemed merely ordinary good judgment to go where

he should not be hampered by a clouded past. And he resented his

wife's feeling that he should remain and do a kind of penance for the

sins that he had confessed, repented, and repaired so far as he was

able. She asked too much of him! He had given up all the money he

had, and was ready to begin the struggle for bread with a fairer view

of his duties. But it seemed that that was not enough for her: she

demanded now that he sacrifice his ambition, that he return to the

ranks, as a draughtsman, a clerk, a hireling!

Nevertheless, her words worked unconsciously in him, for hers was the

stronger nature. He had lived his own way and had failed, rather

miserably. What she wanted must, perforce, guide him increasingly and

determine his life. Presently he went upstairs to the child's room.

There in the darkened chamber Helen was kneeling beside the bed holding

little Powers in her strong arms. The child was asleep, his thin arms

stretched above his head along the pillow. In the large bed the little

figure, white and wasted with the lingering fever of his disease, lay

peacefully. Helen turned her face to her husband as he entered, and he

could see the smile that belied the tears in her eyes. And as he stood

there in the silent room watching the two, the calm of elemental

feeling stole over him. The woman and the child! These were the

ancient, unalterable factors of human life; outside of them the

multitudinous desires of men were shifting, trivial, little. For the

first time in his life an indifference to all else in the world swept

over him in gratitude for these two gifts....

CHAPTER XXXIV

Dr. Coburn had at last found time for the episode of matrimony, so

Venetia announced to Helen one afternoon. She had run in on her way to

the city, and her eyes sparkled mischievously as she added:--

"It's just as well to have it over before Mrs. P. returns--it will save

her so much embarrassment, you know. She won't have to strike an

attitude. And it's lots easier this way, no fuss, no bother, and you

have it all to yourself. Can you and Jack come 'round to-morrow

afternoon about four? Dr. Knowles's Church--you know where it is.

Don't be late." As she started for the door, she turned swiftly, threw

her arms about the older woman, and kissed her vehemently.

"Do you know, puss, I think we are going to be awfully happy!" And

then she darted out of the door.

They met Venetia and the doctor at the door of the church. Coburn, who

had on a new brown business suit that betrayed its origin by its

numerous creases, grinned very broadly as he raised his hat to Helen.

"Come here, Pete," Venetia called busily to the old terrier, who

hobbled after her. "Pete had to come to see us married," she

explained, as she tied him to the iron fence near the entrance. "But I

don't suppose Dr. Knowles would like to have him come in and sit in the

corner of a pew. I'm sure he'd behave very well, though! Uncle Harry

couldn't come, poor dear; he's over in Carlsbad taking the cure,--but

he wrote such a nice letter to my man. We didn't ask anybody else.

Well, are we all ready?"

"Just about!" the doctor answered briskly. "Fine day for a wedding,

isn't it?"

"Don't whimper, Pete," Venetia said for a last warning, turning to the

dog, and patting him once more. "Your missy won't be gone long, and

when she comes back, you'll have cream for your supper and fruit-cake,

too."

Then the four walked up the long aisle of the great bare church, and

presently Dr. Knowles came from the vestry and performed the ceremony.

Venetia stood very still and straight, drawing in her breath in little

gasps, looking very hard at the broad face of the minister. Coburn,

too, stood very straight, but Helen, who watched the two lovingly while

the words of the contract rolled forth in the empty church, saw the

look of tenderness in the man's face as his glance rested steadfastly

on the woman by his side.

In a few minutes they were out again in the sunlight. Pete was

surrounded by a group of small boys, who were debating whether he would

bite if they got near enough to him.

"Here, boys," Venetia called, as she untied Pete's leash. "This is the

day you must celebrate! Give me some money, Sayre."

And she distributed to the delighted urchins all the silver that the

doctor had in his pockets. Then the four went to a restaurant in the

city, where they had dinner together, Jackson ordering the champagne,

and they talked until Helen rose and declared it was time to leave the

bride and bridegroom. The doctor and Venetia walked off westward to

their new home, arm in arm, Pete dangling in the rear from his leash,

which his mistress held.

"What good times they will have!" Helen exclaimed, watching them bob

across the gayly lighted thoroughfare, dragging the terrier after them.

"I suppose it's because they're both what Venetia would call 'real

clear sports.'"

After the newly married couple had disappeared, the Harts walked

leisurely northwards, and as the night was calm and warm, they kept on

beyond Ohio Street, strolling along the shore of the lake towards the

Park. The great houses across the boulevard were already deserted by

their occupants, who had begun the annual migration. The architect's

eye roved over the gloomy façades of these monstrous piles of brick and

stone, to which the toilsome steps of some successful ones in the city

had led; and he began to wonder, as he had when a boy, why in this

world, which seemed to hold so many pleasant things, the owners of

these ugly houses could be content to live in them. To the boy's mind

the ambition to encase one's self in a great dwelling had seemed so

inadequate! Again, to-night, he looked at their burly shadows, and

speculated over them without envy.

They loitered arm in arm beside the sea-wall, listening to the heaving

lake, the cool splash of water on the concrete embankment below the

walk.

"Nell, I saw Wright to-day," he remarked thoughtfully, "and had a long

talk with him."

She turned her head and waited.

"He's a good deal more of a man than I used to think him!" he went on

slowly. "There were a lot of people waiting to see him, and he had to

go somewhere, but he didn't seem to mind that I was there with him a

long time. I guess he knows pretty nearly all that has happened to me."

Wright had said nothing about the Glenmore or Graves, however, and

Jackson had not gone into his story very far. But the older man had

heard, it is true, something here and there, from this man and that,

over the lunch table at his club, from one or two men in his office.

And he had imagination enough to picture the whole story.

"I told him I was thinking of going somewhere else," Jackson continued

slowly.

"What did he say?"

"Oh, a good many things,--he's a pretty human fellow,--looks at many

sides of a matter. Well, in the end he offered me a place with him!

Not the old thing,--he's got some new men in, and can't put any one

ahead of them. I guess he would have to make a place!"

She leaned forward, repressing the question that rose swiftly to her

lips. But after a few moments, Jackson answered it slowly.

"I told him that I would like to think it over for a day or two."

She refrained still from questioning him, and they strolled on slowly

into the park. There on the benches facing the lake sat many couples,

crowded close together, resting after the warm day's work. Along the

stone embankment outside the glare of the arc lights the lake heaved in

an oily calm without a ripple, and from the dark surface of the water

rose a current of cold air. The architect and his wife turned back

instinctively into the empty darkness of the boulevard.

"It's pretty good of the old boy to be willing to take back a man who's

been on his knees," Jackson mused, breaking the long silence in which

they had walked.

"Don't!" she murmured. "That hurts--don't think that!"

"Suppose we try it, Nell," he said quickly. "I know you would like to

have me--and perhaps it is best."

"But you mustn't do it just for my sake!"

"I think you are rather fussy!" he retorted. "Why else should I do it,

my dear, dear wife?"

"But you might regret it, then! You must be sure,--not do it just to

please me, but because you see things as I do, and know that it's the

only way for us to live and have peace."

Doubtless she asked too much of the man she loved, for most

beings--instinctive creatures--act from a philosophy of purely personal

influences. Jackson Hart, certainly, would never have considered

relinquishing his ambition to thrust himself forward, to have a career

in this world, out of any intellectual convictions. Nor could it be

said that his wife's half-formulated arguments had persuaded him. But

she herself had convinced him, the strong, self-contained womanhood in

her, her undaunted spirit, with which he lived daily, and which

perforce colored his soul. Especially, these latter weeks of suspense

and despair, while their child's life was in the balance, she had made

him hers. If it were a victory for the woman, it was an emotional

victory, which she had won over her husband,--and such victories are

the only ones that endure in these matters. He felt her spirit as he

had never felt anything else, and realized at last dimly that in all

the big questions of life she was right. Beautiful, loving, strong,

and fearless, she was his! And what was his "career" against her heart

and soul?

"Perhaps you will regret it," he remarked half playfully, "and will

want me to change later and do better by you and the children."

"Never, never!" She drew his arm closer to her breast, as if

symbolically to show him her absolute content with what she had.

"Well, those fellows will grin when I walk into that office after my

little splurge!" He swept his left arm through the air in an arc to

describe the upward and downward course of a rocket "Into the ranks, at

last!"

"To work, and live, and love, a little while," she added softly.

"It isn't exactly the way uncle Powers solved the problem!" he remarked

teasingly. "I suppose you would have had him stay milking cows on that

Vermont farm?"

"I didn't marry him!" she retorted swiftly. "And perhaps if he had it

to do again, he would stay to milk the cows."

"You think so!" he exclaimed sceptically.

For her, at least, there was neither doubt nor hesitation. She

answered surely the inarticulate call of the larger world, the call of

the multitudes that labor and die without privilege, to share with them

the common lot of life.

CHAPTER XXXV

That small fragment of Chicago society which had known the Jackson

Harts, and interested itself in their doings, was mildly stirred over

the news that the brilliant and promising young architect had been

obliged to close his office, and had gone to work for his old employer.

Indeed, for some weeks the Harts furnished the Forest Park

dinner-tables with a fresh topic of conversation that took the place of

the strikes and poor Anthony Crawford's scattered fortune. It

contained quite as much food for marvel and moral reflection as either

of the others.

More information about the architect's troubles than that provided by

the press had got abroad in Forest Park and the Shoreham Club. It was

well known, for instance, that Hart had been obliged to dissolve his

partnership with Freddie Stewart, owing to grave business

irregularities, which extended beyond his connection with the recent

disaster. It was generally agreed that his offences must have been

very grave indeed to necessitate, at his age, with his influential

connection, such a radical change of caste as had happened. Men

commonly expressed their contempt because at a crisis he had shown such

a deplorable "lack of nerve." They said, and among them were some of

the architect's more intimate friends, that nothing he had done could

justify this tame submission. "Why!" Mrs. Phillips exclaimed when she

heard of it, "we've seen men live down things ten times worse. There

was Peter Sewall, and old Preston, and the banker Potts, and a dozen

more. They are as good as any of us to-day! And he needn't have told

everything he knew, anyhow, to that old coroner." The measure of a

man's guilt, in her eyes and those of many others, was what he was

willing to admit to the world. "But it's that wife of his!" the widow

continued bitterly. "She never had any spirit; she was cut out for a

clerk's wife. I have always felt that she was responsible for

Venetia's trouble. Well, she's got to her level at last!"

Finally, this portion of the great public held that under the

circumstances the architect had shown singularly little judgment in

staying on in the city: there was no "future" for him, under the

circumstances, in Chicago. If he felt himself unable to hold his own

against scandal, they argued, he should have the wit to leave the city

where he had gone wrong and seek his fortune under new skies, where the

faces of his successful friends would not remind him constantly of

ignoble defeat.

Not that Jackson Hart had many opportunities of encountering his

successful friends in the great city of Chicago. He had resigned from

his club, and the Harts had moved very far away from the pleasant

suburbs along the lake which were filled with their old acquaintances.

They had gone to live in one of those flimsy flat-buildings in the

southern part of the city, concerning which the architect had

speculated the night the Glenmore was burned. It was near the

street-car line, for the matter of a nickel fare was now of importance

in their domestic economy. Occasionally, some one of the Forest Park

ladies would report on her return from the city that she had run across

Mrs. Hart at Steele's, "looking old and queerer than ever, dressed in

the old things she wore out here, as if she didn't care whether school

kept or not, poor thing!" But in the murky light of Steele's great

shop, they could not have seen the serene, almost radiant beauty of the

woman's face, the beauty of a soul content with its vision of the

world, in harmony with itself.

And Jackson, "reduced to the ranks" by a few grades, in that career of

his, which he dubbed good-humoredly "From shirt-sleeves to

shirt-sleeves, in three acts," was developing certain patient virtues

of inestimable charm in the domestic circles of plain life, though not

essential for brilliant success. In his box of an office next Wright's

large draughting-room, he worked almost side by side with his former

draughtsman Cook, who had also come back to the old firm. For some

months they hardly spoke to each other; indeed, the men in Wright's

generally held aloof from Hart. But they have accepted him at last.

Cook has begun, even, to regain some of his old admiration for his

chief, comprehending, perhaps, that in the office by his side there is

slowly working out a career of real spiritual significance, if of

little outward display.

As to Wright, who knows more of the man's real story than the others,

he treats his old employee with a fine consideration and respect,

realizing that this man is doing handsomely a thing that few men have

the character to do at all. His admiration for Hart's work has grown,

also, and he frankly admits that the younger man has a better talent

for architecture than he himself ever possessed, as well as great

cleverness and ingenuity, so necessary in an art which is intimately

allied with mechanics. For it is true that after sluggish years there

has revived within Hart the creative impulse, that spirit of the

artist, inherent to some extent in all men, which makes the work of

their hands an engrossing joy. The plans of a group of buildings,

which the firm have undertaken for a university in a far Western state,

have been entrusted very largely to Hart. As they grow from month to

month in the voluminous sheets of drawings, they are becoming the pride

of the office. And Wright generously allots the praise for their

beauty where it largely belongs.

Thus the social waters of the fast-living city are rapidly rolling over

the Jackson Harts. In all probability they will never again in this

life come to the surface, and call for comment; for the architect and

his wife have already sunk into the insignificance of the common lot,

so much praised by the poets, so much despised by our good Americans of

the "strenuous" school. They have had their opportunities to better

themselves in the worldly scale, but there has never been any question

between husband and wife of a change in their social or material

condition. They even contemplate with equanimity leaving their

children in the universal struggle no better equipped than with the

possession of health and a modest education,--there to meet their fate

as their parents have done before them.

Almost the last public appearance of the Jackson Harts in that portion

of the Chicago world which had formerly known them occurred at the

elaborate dedicatory exercises of the JACKSON INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE.

When the handsomely engraved invitation came to them, the architect was

disinclined to attend; but Helen, who thought only of the old man's

probable wish in the matter, induced her husband to take her. The

exercises were held in the pretty little auditorium which occupied one

wing of the large school building. There was much ceremony, and

numerous speeches, besides the oration delivered by the director, Dr.

Everest, on "Modern Industrialism," which was considered a masterpiece

of its kind and was afterwards printed and circulated by the trustees.

A bust of the founder, which fronted the stage, was first unveiled amid

great applause. Dr. Everest in the introduction of his oration turned

from time to time to apostrophize its rugged marble features, while he

paid his tribute to the founder of the institution. What the old

man--who had always avoided voluble people like the pest--would have

thought of the liberal eulogy scattered on his head, and of the

eloquent discourse that followed, on the future of education and the

working-man, no one will ever know. The rough old face looking

inscrutably down on the little, bald-headed figure of the director gave

no sign.

During the lengthy oration the architect's thoughts went wandering far

astray back into his past, so closely involved with this handsome

building. But Helen listened attentively to the director's flowing

periods, searching his phrases for an interpretation of his purposes in

regard to the school. Dr. Everest, however, was far too wary an

educator to commit himself to positive ideas. Yet in the maze of his

discourse there might be gathered hints of his attitude toward the

problem of industrial education. After the opening tribute to the

founder, "whom we may call a typical leader of our triumphant

industrial democracy," the speaker dwelt glowingly on the advanced

position of our country among the nations of the earth, attributing its

phenomenal progress to the nature of its political and educational

institutions, which had developed and encouraged the energies of such

men as Powers Jackson:--

"We lead the nations of the world in the arts of peace, owing to the

energy and genius of men like our noble benefactor, owing, I may say,

still more to the character of our institutions, political and

educational, which produce such men as he was!" Then followed a

flattering contrast between the "aristocratic and mediæval education"

of the English universities and the older American colleges, and the

broad, liberal spirit of newer institutions, especially technical

schools. The intention of the founder of the Jackson Industrial

Institute, he said, was to broaden the democratic ideal, "to bring

within the reach of every child in this greatest of industrial

metropoli, not only the rudiments of an education, but the most

advanced technical training, by means of which he may raise himself

among his fellows and advance the illimitable creative ingenuity of our

race. Here will come the boy whose father labors at the bottom of the

industrial ladder, and if he be worthy, if he have the necessary talent

and the industry, here in our workshops and laboratories he may fit

himself to mount to the very top of that ladder, and become in turn a

master and leader of men, like our great benefactor! And we may well

believe that the sight of those benignant features will be an

inspiration to the youth to strive even as he strove. That face will

kindle the noble ambitions of the learner, who will remember that our

good founder once labored with his own hands at the forge not far from

this monument to his greatness, and that he rose by his own unaided

industry and ability to command thousands of operatives, to control

millions of capital, yes, to influence the wide industrial world!

"In America, thank God, the poor man may yet rise to a position of

leadership, if he be worthy. And what the world needs to-day more than

all else is leaders, leaders of men. May we not prophesy that the

Jackson Industrial Institute will be a large factor, yes, the largest

factor of this great city, in educating leaders, and thus assisting to

put an end to that wasteful and distressing antagonism between capital

and labor? By the means of the education here provided, young men may

raise themselves from the ranks of common labor to the position and

responsibilities of capital! Let us hope that this will be the happy

result of an educational foundation provided by a great captain of

industry, and placed here in the heart of the workshops of Chicago.

Thus may we assist in preserving and fostering the spirit of our noble

institutions by means of which man is given freedom to reap the fruits

of his own labor and intelligence!" ...

And Dr. Everest continued on this plane of eloquence for another

half-hour, until even Judge Phillips, who had listened with rapt

attention, began to nod in his chair. At last, when the doctor sat

down, stroking his thick black beard and wiping his shining brow, loud

applause broke forth from all parts of the auditorium. The applause

sounded much like the ironic laughter of the gods over the travesty of

the old man's purpose, to which they had just listened.

To Helen, especially, it seemed that no more complete twisting of his

idea in thus bestowing his wealth were possible! However, the great

school stands there, in the neighborhood where his old operatives

live,--stands there and will stand there for many years, mistaken or

not in its aims as one looks at this world of ours; and some day,

maybe, when Dr. Everest has grasped some new form of the educational

main chance, it may fall into other hands and become more nearly what

its founder meant it to be,--a source of help and inspiration to the

common man, who must labor all his days at common tasks, and can look

to no material advancement in this life.

After the exercises the rooms of the building were thrown open for

inspection, and the guests strolled through the laboratories and

workshops in little parties, discussing the oration and exclaiming over

the magnificence of the appointments. The Harts wandered over the

school with the rest, and the architect looked about him with a certain

curiosity. As they returned to the main hall under the rotunda, he

exclaimed, peering up into the dome, "Nell, I can't seem to remember

this place: it looks queer and strange to me, as if somebody else had

done the plans, and I had just looked over them!"

"Somebody else did do them," she answered, drawing him away from a

group of people who had come out of one of the adjoining rooms.

In a little while they got their wraps and prepared to leave the

institution, having a long journey before them to reach their home. As

they crossed the entrance hall, they ran into Pemberton, who was alone.

He bowed to Helen as though he meant to speak to her, and then catching

sight of Jackson, who was behind her, he merely bent his head the

fraction of an inch, and, stepping to one side, passed on. He could

not, evidently, forgive a stain upon a man's honor, arrogating to

himself, as so many of us do, the privileges of deity. The architect's

face flushed at the slight, and he hurried his steps toward the

vestibule. As they passed through the broad doorway, he said to his

wife:--

"Well, Nell, I suppose I deserved it,--the old Turk!"

"No, you did not deserve it!" she replied swiftly. "But it makes no

difference, dear!"

And, fortunately, there are few things that do make any great

difference to real men and women,--and one of the least is the casual

judgment of their fellow-men.