THE INTERNET WIRETAP ELECTRONIC EDITION OF

                        The Pit
                   A Story of Chicago

                           By
                      Frank Norris



                          1903



     Prepared by John Hamm <John_Hamm@MindLink.bc.ca>

             This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN,
                   released December 1993

     Scanned with OmniPage Professional OCR software
               donated by Caere Corporation.





                Dedicated to My Brother

                 Charles Tolman Norris

      In memory of certain lamentable tales of the
    bound (dining-room) table heroes; of the epic of
     the pewter platoons, and the romance-cycle of
    "Gaston Le Fox," which we invented, maintained,
      and found marvellous at a time when we both
                       were boys.




The PlT



I


At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the
Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office,
Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their
aunt--Aunt Wess'--were still waiting for the rest of
the theatre-party to appear.  A great, slow-moving
press of men and women in evening dress filled the
vestibule from one wall to another.  A confused murmur
of talk and the shuffling of many feet arose on all
sides, while from time to time, when the outside and
inside doors of the entrance chanced to be open
simultaneously, a sudden draught of air gushed in,
damp, glacial, and edged with the penetrating keenness
of a Chicago evening at the end of February.

The Italian Grand Opera Company gave one of the most
popular pieces of its repertoire on that particular
night, and the Cresslers had invited the two sisters
and their aunt to share their box with them.  It had
been arranged that the party should assemble in the
Auditorium vestibule at a quarter of eight; but by now
the quarter was gone and the Cresslers still failed to
arrive.

"I don't see," murmured Laura anxiously for the last
time, "what can be keeping them.  Are you sure Page
that Mrs. Cressler meant here--inside?"

She was a tall young girl of about twenty-two or three,
holding herself erect and with fine dignity.  Even
beneath the opera cloak it was easy to infer that her
neck and shoulders were beautiful.  Her almost extreme
slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the
curves of her figure, the contour of her shoulders, the
swell of hip and breast were all low; from head to foot
one could discover no pronounced salience.  Yet there
was no trace, no suggestion of angularity.  She was
slender as a willow shoot is slender--and equally
graceful, equally erect.

Next to this charming tenuity, perhaps her paleness was
her most noticeable trait.  But it was not a paleness
of lack of colour.  Laura Dearborn's pallour was in
itself a colour.  It was a tint rather than a shade,
like ivory; a warm white, blending into an exquisite,
delicate brownness towards the throat.  Set in the
middle of this paleness of brow and cheek, her deep
brown eyes glowed lambent and intense.  They were not
large, but in some indefinable way they were important.
It was very natural to speak of her eyes, and in
speaking to her, her friends always found that they
must look squarely into their pupils.  And all this
beauty of pallid face and brown eyes was crowned by,
and sharply contrasted with, the intense blackness of
her hair, abundant, thick, extremely heavy, continually
coruscating with sombre, murky reflections, tragic, in
a sense vaguely portentous,--the coiffure of a heroine
of romance, doomed to dark crises.

On this occasion at the side of the topmost coil, a
white aigrette scintillated and trembled with her every
movement.  She was unquestionably beautiful.  Her mouth
was a little large, the lips firm set, and one would
not have expected that she would smile easily; in fact,
the general expression of her face was rather serious.

"Perhaps," continued Laura, "they would look for us
outside."  But Page shook her head.  She was five years
younger than Laura, just turned seventeen.  Her hair,
dressed high for the first time this night, was brown.
But Page's beauty was no less marked than her sister's.
The seriousness of her expression, however, was more
noticeable.  At times it amounted to undeniable
gravity.  She was straight, and her figure, all
immature as yet, exhibited hardly any softer outlines
than that of a boy.

"No, no," she said, in answer to Laura's question.
"They would come in here; they wouldn't wait outside--
not on such a cold night as this.  Don't you think so,
Aunt Wess'?"

But Mrs. Wessels, a lean, middle-aged little lady, with
a flat, pointed nose, had no suggestions to offer.  She
disengaged herself from any responsibility in the
situation and, while waiting, found a vague amusement
in counting the number of people who filtered in single
file through the wicket where the tickets were
presented.  A great, stout gentleman in evening dress,
perspiring, his cravatte limp, stood here, tearing the
checks from the tickets, and without ceasing,
maintaining a continuous outcry that dominated the
murmur of the throng:

"Have your tickets ready, please! Have your tickets
ready."

"Such a crowd," murmured Page.  "Did you ever see--
and every one you ever knew or heard of.  And such
toilettes!"

With every instant the number of people increased;
progress became impossible, except an inch at a time.
The women were, almost without exception, in light-
coloured gowns, white, pale blue, Nile green, and pink,
while over these costumes were thrown opera cloaks and
capes of astonishing complexity and elaborateness.
Nearly all were bare-headed, and nearly all wore
aigrettes; a score of these, a hundred of them, nodded
and vibrated with an incessant agitation over the heads
of the crowd and flashed like mica flakes as the
wearers moved.  Everywhere the eye was arrested by the
luxury of stuffs, the brilliance and delicacy of
fabrics, laces as white and soft as froth, crisp,
shining silks, suave satins, heavy gleaming velvets,
and brocades and plushes, nearly all of them white--
violently so--dazzling and splendid under the blaze of
the electrics.  The gentlemen, in long, black
overcoats, and satin mufflers, and opera hats; their
hands under the elbows of their women-folk, urged or
guided them forward, distressed, pre-occupied, adjuring
their parties to keep together; in their white-gloved
fingers they held their tickets ready.  For all the icy
blasts that burst occasionally through the storm doors,
the vestibule was uncomfortably warm, and into this
steam-heated atmosphere a multitude of heavy odours
exhaled--the scent of crushed flowers, of perfume, of
sachet, and even--occasionally--the strong smell of
damp seal-skin.

Outside it was bitterly cold.  All day a freezing wind
had blown from off the Lake, and since five in the
afternoon a fine powder of snow had been falling.  The
coachmen on the boxes of the carriages that succeeded
one another in an interminable line before the entrance
of the theatre, were swathed to the eyes in furs.  The
spume and froth froze on the bits of the horses, and
the carriage wheels crunching through the dry, frozen
snow gave off a shrill staccato whine.  Yet for all
this, a crowd had collected about the awning on the
sidewalk, and even upon the opposite side of the
street, peeping and peering from behind the broad
shoulders of policemen--a crowd of miserables,
shivering in rags and tattered comforters, who found,
nevertheless, an unexplainable satisfaction in watching
this prolonged defile of millionaires.

So great was the concourse of teams, that two blocks
distant from the theatre they were obliged to fall into
line, advancing only at intervals, and from door to
door of the carriages thus immobilised ran a score of
young men, their arms encumbered with pamphlets,
shouting: "Score books, score books and librettos;
score books with photographs of all the artists."

However, in the vestibule the press was thinning out.
It was understood that the overture had begun.  Other
people who were waiting like Laura and her sister had
been joined by their friends and had gone inside.
Laura, for whom this opera night had been an event, a
thing desired and anticipated with all the eagerness of
a girl who had lived for twenty-two years in a second-
class town of central Massachusetts, was in great
distress.  She had never seen Grand Opera, she would
not have missed a note, and now she was in a fair way
to lose the whole overture.

"Oh, dear," she cried.  "Isn't it too bad.  I can't
imagine why they don't come."

Page, more metropolitan, her keenness of appreciation a
little lost by two years of city life and fashionable
schooling, tried to reassure her.

"You won't lose much," she said.  "The air of the
overture is repeated in the first act--I've heard it
once before."

"If we even see the first act," mourned Laura.
She scanned the faces of the late comers anxiously.
Nobody seemed to mind being late.  Even some of the
other people who were waiting, chatted calmly among
themselves.  Directly behind them two men, their faces
close together, elaborated an interminable
conversation, of which from time to time they could
overhear a phrase or two.

"--and I guess he'll do well if he settles for thirty
cents on the dollar.  I tell you, dear boy, it was a
_smash!"_

"Never should have tried to swing a corner.  The short
interest was too small and the visible supply was too
great."

Page nudged her sister and whispered: "That's the
Helmick failure they're talking about, those men.
Landry Court told me all about it.  Mr. Helmick had a
corner in corn, and he failed to-day, or will fail
soon, or something."

But Laura, preoccupied with looking for the Cresslers,
hardly listened.  Aunt Wess', whose count was confused
by all these figures murmured just behind her, began
over again, her lips silently forming the words,
"sixty-one, sixty-two, and two is sixty-four."  Behind
them the voice continued:

"They say Porteous will peg the market at twenty-six."

"Well he ought to.  Corn is worth that."

"Never saw such a call for margins in my life.  Some of
the houses called eight cents."

Page turned to Mrs. Wessels: "By the way, Aunt Wess';
look at that man there by the box office window, the
one with his back towards us, the one with his hands in
his overcoat pockets.  Isn't that Mr. Jadwin?  The
gentleman we are going to meet to-night.  See who I mean?"

"Who?  Mr. Jadwin?  I don't know.  I don't know, child.
I never saw him, you know."

"Well I think it is he," continued Page.  "He was to be
with our party to-night.  I heard Mrs. Cressler say she
would ask him.  That's Mr. Jadwin, I'm sure.  He's
waiting for them, too."

"Oh, then ask him about it, Page," exclaimed Laura.
"We're missing everything."

But Page shook her head:

"I only met him once, ages ago; he wouldn't know me.
It was at the Cresslers, and we just said 'How do you
do.' And then maybe it isn't Mr. Jadwin."

"Oh, I wouldn't bother, girls," said Mrs. Wessels.
"It's all right.  They'll be here in a minute.  I don't
believe the curtain has gone up yet."

But the man of whom they spoke turned around at the
moment and cast a glance about the vestibule.  They saw
a gentleman of an indeterminate age--judged by his face
he might as well have been forty as thirty-five.  A
heavy mustache touched with grey covered his lips.  The
eyes were twinkling and good-tempered.  Between his
teeth he held an unlighted cigar.

"It is Mr. Jadwin," murmured Page, looking quickly
away.  "But he don't recognise me."

Laura also averted her eyes.

"Well, why not go right up to him and introduce
ourself, or recall yourself to him?" she hazarded.

"Oh, Laura, I _couldn't,_" gasped Page.  "I wouldn't
for worlds."

"Couldn't she, Aunt Wess'?" appealed Laura.  "Wouldn't
it be all right?"

But Mrs. Wessels, ignoring forms and customs, was
helpless.  Again she withdrew from any responsibility
in the matter.

"I don't know anything about it," she answered.
"But Page oughtn't to be bold."

"Oh, bother; it isn't that," protested Page.  "But it's
just because--I don't know, I don't want to--Laura,
I should just _die,_" she exclaimed with abrupt
irrelevance, "and besides, how would that help any?"
she added.

"Well, we're just going to miss it _all,_" declared
Laura decisively.  There were actual tears in her eyes.
"And I had looked forward to it so."

"Well," hazarded Aunt Wess', "you girls can do just as
you please.  Only I wouldn't be bold."

"Well, would it be bold if Page, or if--if I were to
speak to him?  We're going to meet him anyways in just a
few minutes."

"Better wait, hadn't you, Laura," said Aunt Wess', "and
see.  Maybe he'll come up and speak to us."

"Oh, as if!" contradicted Laura.  "He don't know us,--
just as Page says.  And if he did, he wouldn't.  He
wouldn't think it polite."

"Then I guess, girlie, it wouldn't be polite for you."

"I think it would," she answered.  "I think it would be
a woman's place.  If he's a gentleman, he would feel
that he just _couldn't_ speak first.  I'm going to do
it," she announced suddenly.

"Just as you think best, Laura," said her aunt.

But nevertheless Laura did not move, and another five
minutes went by.

Page took advantage of the interval to tell Laura about
Jadwin.  He was very rich, but a bachelor, and had made
his money in Chicago real estate.  Some of his holdings
in the business quarter of the city were enormous;
Landry Court had told her about him.  Jadwin, unlike
Mr. Cressler, was not opposed to speculation.  Though
not a member of the Board of Trade, he nevertheless at
very long intervals took part in a "deal" in wheat, or
corn, or provisions.  He believed that all corners were
doomed to failure, however, and had predicted Helmick's
collapse six months ago.  He had influence, was well
known to all Chicago people, what he said carried
weight, financiers consulted him, promoters sought his
friendship, his name on the board of directors of a
company was an all-sufficing endorsement; in a word, a
"strong" man.

"I can't understand," exclaimed Laura distrait,
referring to the delay on the part of the Cresslers.
"This was the night, and this was the place, and it is
long past the time.  We could telephone to the house,
you know," she said, struck with an idea, "and see if
they've started, or what has happened."

"I don't know--I don't know," murmured Mrs. Wessels
vaguely.  No one seemed ready to act upon Laura's
suggestion, and again the minutes passed.

"I'm going," declared Laura again, looking at the other
two, as if to demand what they had to say against the idea.

"I just couldn't," declared Page flatly.

"Well," continued Laura, "I'll wait just three minutes
more, and then if the Cresslers are not here I will
speak to him.  It seems to me to be perfectly natural,
and not at all bold."

She waited three minutes, and the Cresslers still
failing to appear, temporised yet further, for the
twentieth time repeating:

"I don't see--I can't understand."

Then, abruptly drawing her cape about her, she crossed
the vestibule and came up to Jadwin.

As she approached she saw him catch her eye.  Then, as
he appeared to understand that this young woman was
about to speak to him, she noticed an expression of
suspicion, almost of distrust, come into his face.  No
doubt he knew nothing of this other party who were to
join the Cresslers in the vestibule.  Why should this
girl speak to him?  Something had gone wrong, and the
instinct of the man, no longer very young, to keep out
of strange young women's troubles betrayed itself in
the uneasy glance that he shot at her from under his
heavy eyebrows.  But the look faded as quickly as it
had come.  Laura guessed that he had decided that in
such a place as this he need have no suspicions.  He
took the cigar from his mouth, and she, immensely
relieved, realised that she had to do with a man who
was a gentleman.  Full of trepidation as she had been
in crossing the vestibule, she was quite mistress of
herself when the instant came for her to speak, and it
was in a steady voice and without embarrassment that
she said:

"I beg your pardon, but I believe this is Mr. Jadwin."

He took off his hat, evidently a little nonplussed that
she should know his name, and by now she was ready even
to browbeat him a little should it be necessary.

"Yes, yes," he answered, now much more confused than
she, "my name is Jadwin."

"I believe," continued Laura steadily, "we were all to
be in the same party to-night with the Cresslers.  But
they don't seem to come, and we--my sister and my aunt
and I--don't know what to do."

She saw that he was embarrassed, convinced, and the
knowledge that she controlled the little situation,
that she could command him, restored her all her
equanimity.

"My name is Miss Dearborn," she continued.  "I believe
you know my sister Page."

By some trick of manner she managed to convey to him
the impression that if he did not know her sister Page,
that if for one instant he should deem her to be bold,
he would offer a mortal affront.  She had not yet
forgiven him that stare of suspicion when first their
eyes had met; he should pay her for that yet.

"Miss Page,--your sister,--Miss Page Dearborn?
Certainly I know her," he answered.  "And you have been
waiting, too?  What a pity!" And he permitted himself
the awkwardness of adding: "I did not know that you
were to be of our party."

"No," returned Laura upon the instant, "I did not know
you were to be one of us to-night--until Page told me."
She accented the pronouns a little, but it was enough
for him to know that he had been rebuked.  How, he
could not just say; and for what it was impossible for
him at the moment to determine; and she could see that
he began to experience a certain distress, was beating
a retreat, was ceding place to her.  Who was she, then,
this tall and pretty young woman, with the serious,
unsmiling face, who was so perfectly at ease, and who
hustled him about and made him feel as though he were
to blame for the Cresslers' non-appearance; as though
it was his fault that she must wait in the draughty
vestibule.  She had a great air with her; how had he
offended her?  If he had introduced himself to her, had
forced himself upon her, she could not be more lofty,
more reserved.

"I thought perhaps you might telephone," she observed.

"They haven't a telephone, unfortunately," he answered.

"Oh!"

This was quite the last slight, the Cresslers had not a
telephone! He was to blame for that, too, it seemed.
At his wits' end, he entertained for an instant the
notion of dashing out into the street in a search for a
messenger boy, who would take a note to Cressler and
set him right again; and his agitation was not allayed
when Laura, in frigid tones, declared:

"It seems to me that something might be done."

"I don't know," he replied helplessly.  "I guess
there's nothing to be done but just wait.  They are
sure to be along."

In the background, Page and Mrs. Wessels had watched
the interview, and had guessed that Laura was none too
gracious.  Always anxious that her sister should make a
good impression, the little girl was now in great
distress.

"Laura is putting on her 'grand manner,'" she lamented.
"I just know how she's talking.  The man will hate the
very sound of her name all the rest of his life."  Then
all at once she uttered a joyful exclamation: "At last,
at last," she cried, "and about time, too!"

The Cresslers and the rest of the party--two young men--
had appeared, and Page and her aunt came up just in
time to hear Mrs. Cressler--a fine old lady, in a
wonderful ermine-trimmed cape, whose hair was powdered--
exclaim at the top of her voice, as if the mere
declaration of fact was final, absolutely the last word
upon the subject, "The bridge was turned!"

The Cresslers lived on the North Side.  The incident
seemed to be closed with the abruptness of a slammed
door.

Page and Aunt Wess' were introduced to Jadwin, who was
particular to announce that he remembered the young
girl perfectly.  The two young men were already
acquainted with the Dearborn sisters and Mrs. Wessels.
Page and Laura knew one of them well enough to address
him familiarly by his Christian name.

This was Landry Court, a young fellow just turned
twenty-three, who was "connected with" the staff of the
great brokerage firm of Gretry, Converse and Co.  He
was astonishingly good-looking, small-made, wiry,
alert, nervous, debonair, with blond hair and dark eyes
that snapped like a terrier's.  He made friends almost
at first sight, and was one of those fortunate few who
were favoured equally of men and women.  The
healthiness of his eye and skin persuaded to a belief
in the healthiness of his mind; and, in fact, Landry
was as clean without as within.  He was frank, open-
hearted, full of fine sentiments and exaltations and
enthusiasms.  Until he was eighteen he had cherished an
ambition to become the President of the United States.

"Yes, yes," he said to Laura, "the bridge was turned.
It was an imposition.  We had to wait while they let
three tows through.  I think two at a time is as much
as is legal.  And we had to wait for three.  Yes, sir;
three, think of that! I shall look into that to-morrow.
Yes, sir; don't you be afraid of that.  I'll look into
it."  He nodded his head with profound seriousness.

"Well," announced Mr. Cressler, marshalling the party,
"shall we go in?  I'm afraid, Laura, we've missed the
overture."

Smiling, she shrugged her shoulders, while they moved
to the wicket, as if to say that it could not be helped
now.

Cressler, tall, lean, bearded, and stoop-shouldered,
belonging to the same physical type that includes
Lincoln--the type of the Middle West--was almost a
second father to the parentless Dearborn girls.  In
Massachusetts, thirty years before this time, he had
been a farmer, and the miller Dearborn used to grind
his grain regularly.  The two had been boys together,
and had always remained fast friends, almost brothers.
Then, in the years just before the War, had come the
great movement westward, and Cressler had been one of
those to leave an "abandoned" New England farm behind
him, and with his family emigrate toward the
Mississippi.  He had come to Sangamon County in
Illinois.  For a time he tried wheat-raising, until the
War, which skied the prices of all food-stuffs, had
made him--for those days--a rich man.  Giving up
farming, he came to live in Chicago, bought a seat on
the Board of Trade, and in a few years was a
millionaire.  At the time of the Turco-Russian War he
and two Milwaukee men had succeeded in cornering all
the visible supply of spring wheat.  At the end of the
thirtieth day of the corner the clique figured out its
profits at close upon a million; a week later it looked
like a million and a half.  Then the three lost their
heads; they held the corner just a fraction of a month
too long, and when the time came that the three were
forced to take profits, they found that they were
unable to close out their immense holdings without
breaking the price.  In two days wheat that they had
held at a dollar and ten cents collapsed to sixty.
The two Milwaukee men were ruined, and two-thirds of
Cressler's immense fortune vanished like a whiff of
smoke.

But he had learned his lesson.  Never since then had he
speculated.  Though keeping his seat on the Board, he
had confined himself to commission trading,
uninfluenced by fluctuations in the market.  And he was
never wearied of protesting against the evil and the
danger of trading in margins.  Speculation he abhorred
as the small-pox, believing it to be impossible to
corner grain by any means or under any circumstances.
He was accustomed to say: "It can't be done; first, for
the reason that there is a great harvest of wheat
somewhere in the world for every month in the year;
and, second, because the smart man who runs the corner
has every other smart man in the world against him.
And, besides, it's wrong; the world's food should not
be at the mercy of the Chicago wheat pit."

As the party filed in through the wicket, the other
young man who had come with Landry Court managed to
place himself next to Laura.  Meeting her eyes, he
murmured:

"Ah, you did not wear them after all.  My poor little
flowers."

But she showed him a single American Beauty, pinned to
the shoulder of her gown beneath her cape.

"Yes, Mr. Corthell," she answered, "one.  I tried to
select the prettiest, and I think I succeeded--don't
you?  It was hard to choose."

"Since you have worn it, it _is_ the prettiest,"
he answered.

He was a slightly built man of about twenty-eight or
thirty; dark, wearing a small, pointed beard, and a
mustache that he brushed away from his lips like a
Frenchman.  By profession he was an artist, devoting
himself more especially to the designing of stained
windows.  In this, his talent was indisputable.  But he
was by no means dependent upon his profession for a
living, his parents--long since dead--having left him
to the enjoyment of a very considerable fortune.  He
had a beautiful studio in the Fine Arts Building, where
he held receptions once every two months, or whenever
he had a fine piece of glass to expose.  He had
travelled, read, studied, occasionally written, and in
matters pertaining to the colouring and fusing of glass
was cited as an authority.  He was one of the directors
of the new Art Gallery that had taken the place of the
old Exposition Building on the Lake Front.

Laura had known him for some little time.  On the
occasion of her two previous visits to Page he had
found means to see her two or three times each week.
Once, even, he had asked her to marry him, but she,
deep in her studies at the time, consumed with vague
ambitions to be a great actress of Shakespearian roles,
had told him she could care for nothing but her art.
He had smiled and said that he could wait, and,
strangely enough, their relations had resumed again
upon the former footing.  Even after she had gone away
they had corresponded regularly, and he had made and
sent her a tiny window--a veritable jewel--illustrative
of a scene from "Twelfth Night."

In the foyer, as the gentlemen were checking their
coats, Laura overheard Jadwin say to Mr. Cressler:

"Well, how about Helmick?"

The other made an impatient movement of his shoulders.

"Ask me, what was the fool thinking of--a corner!
Pshaw!"

There were one or two other men about, making their
overcoats and opera hats into neat bundles preparatory
to checking them; and instantly there was a flash of a
half-dozen eyes in the direction of the two men.
Evidently the collapse of the Helmick deal was in the
air.  All the city seemed interested.

But from behind the heavy curtains that draped the
entrance to the theatre proper, came a muffled burst of
music, followed by a long salvo of applause.  Laura's
cheeks flamed with impatience, she hurried after Mrs.
Cressler; Corthell drew the curtains for her to pass,
and she entered.

Inside it was dark, and a prolonged puff of hot air,
thick with the mingled odours of flowers, perfume,
upholstery, and gas, enveloped her upon the instant.
It was the unmistakable, unforgetable, entrancing aroma
of the theatre, that she had known only too seldom, but
that in a second set her heart galloping.

Every available space seemed to be occupied.  Men, even
women, were standing up, compacted into a suffocating
pressure, and for the moment everybody was applauding
vigorously.  On all sides Laura heard:

"Bravo!"

"Good, good!"

"Very well done!"

"Encore! Encore!"

Between the peoples' heads and below the low dip of the
overhanging balcony--a brilliant glare in the
surrounding darkness--she caught a glimpse of the
stage.  It was set for a garden; at the back and in the
distance a chateau; on the left a bower, and on the
right a pavilion.  Before the footlights, a famous
contralto, dressed as a boy, was bowing to the
audience, her arms full of flowers.

"Too bad," whispered Corthell to Laura, as they
followed the others down the side-aisle to the box.
"Too bad, this is the second act already; you've missed
the whole first act--and this song.  She'll sing it
over again, though, just for you, if I have to lead the
applause myself.  I particularly wanted you to hear
that."

Once in the box, the party found itself a little
crowded, and Jadwin and Cressler were obliged to stand,
in order to see the stage.  Although they all spoke in
whispers, their arrival was the signal for certain
murmurs of "Sh! Sh!" Mrs. Cressler made Laura occupy
the front seat.  Jadwin took her cloak from her, and
she settled herself in her chair and looked about her.
She could see but little of the house or audience.
All the lights were lowered; only through the gloom the
swaying of a multitude of fans, pale coloured, like
night-moths balancing in the twilight, defined itself.

But soon she turned towards the stage.  The applause
died away, and the contralto once more sang the aria.
The melody was simple, the tempo easily followed; it
was not a very high order of music.  But to Laura it
was nothing short of a revelation.

She sat spell-bound, her hands clasped tight, her every
faculty of attention at its highest pitch.  It was
wonderful, such music as that; wonderful, such a voice;
wonderful, such orchestration; wonderful, such
exaltation inspired by mere beauty of sound.  Never,
never was this night to be forgotten, this her first
night of Grand Opera.  All this excitement, this world
of perfume, of flowers, of exquisite costumes, of
beautiful women, of fine, brave men.  She looked back
with immense pity to the narrow little life of her
native town she had just left forever, the restricted
horizon, the petty round of petty duties, the rare and
barren pleasures--the library, the festival, the few
concerts, the trivial plays.  How easy it was to be
good and noble when music such as this had become a
part of one's life; how desirable was wealth when it
could make possible such exquisite happiness as hers of
the moment.  Nobility, purity, courage, sacrifice
seemed much more worth while now than a few moments
ago.  All things not positively unworthy became heroic,
all things and all men.  Landry Court was a young
chevalier, pure as Galahad.  Corthell was a beautiful
artist-priest of the early Renaissance.  Even Jadwin
was a merchant prince, a great financial captain.  And
she herself--ah, she did not know; she dreamed of
another Laura, a better, gentler, more beautiful Laura,
whom everybody, everybody loved dearly and tenderly,
and who loved everybody, and who should die
beautifully, gently, in some garden far away--die
because of a great love--beautifully, gently in the
midst of flowers, die of a broken heart, and all the
world should be sorry for her, and would weep over her
when they found her dead and beautiful in her garden,
amid the flowers and the birds, in some far-off place,
where it was always early morning and where there was
soft music.  And she was so sorry for herself, and so
hurt with the sheer strength of her longing to be good
and true, and noble and womanly, that as she sat in the
front of the Cresslers' box on that marvellous evening,
the tears ran down her cheeks again and again, and
dropped upon her tight-shut, white-gloved fingers.

But the contralto had disappeared, and in her place the
tenor held the stage--a stout, short young man in red
plush doublet and grey silk tights.  His chin advanced,
an arm extended, one hand pressed to his breast, he
apostrophised the pavilion, that now and then swayed a
little in the draught from the wings.

The aria was received with furor; thrice he was obliged
to repeat it.  Even Corthell, who was critical to
extremes, approved, nodding his head.  Laura and Page
clapped their hands till the very last.  But Landry
Court, to create an impression, assumed a certain
disaffection.

"He's not in voice to-night.  Too bad.  You should have
heard him Friday in 'Aida.'"

The opera continued.  The great soprano, the prima
donna, appeared and delivered herself of a song for
which she was famous with astonishing eclat.  Then in a
little while the stage grew dark, the orchestration
lapsed to a murmur, and the tenor and the soprano
reentered.  He clasped her in his arms and sang a half-
dozen bars, then holding her hand, one arm still about
her waist, withdrew from her gradually, till she
occupied the front-centre of the stage.  He assumed an
attitude of adoration and wonderment, his eyes uplifted
as if entranced, and she, very softly, to the
accompaniment of the sustained, dreamy chords of the
orchestra, began her solo.

Laura shut her eyes.  Never had she felt so soothed, so
cradled and lulled and languid.  Ah, to love like that!
To love and be loved.  There was no such love as that
to-day.  She wished that she could loose her clasp upon
the sordid, material modern life that, perforce, she
must hold to, she knew not why, and drift, drift off
into the past, far away, through rose-coloured mists
and diaphanous veils, or resign herself, reclining in a
silver skiff drawn by swans, to the gentle current of
some smooth-flowing river that ran on forever and
forever.

But a discordant element developed.  Close by--the
lights were so low she could not tell where--a
conversation, kept up in low whispers, began by degrees
to intrude itself upon her attention.  Try as she
would, she could not shut it out, and now, as the music
died away fainter and fainter, till voice and orchestra
blended together in a single, barely audible murmur,
vibrating with emotion, with romance, and with
sentiment, she heard, in a hoarse, masculine whisper,
the words:

"The shortage is a million bushels at the very least.
Two hundred carloads were to arrive from Milwaukee last
night"

She made a little gesture of despair, turning her head
for an instant, searching the gloom about her.  But she
could see no one not interested in the stage.  Why
could not men leave their business outside, why must
the jar of commerce spoil all the harmony of this
moment.

However, all sounds were drowned suddenly in a long
burst of applause.  The tenor and soprano bowed and
smiled across the footlights.  The soprano vanished,
only to reappear on the balcony of the pavilion, and
while she declared that the stars and the night-bird
together sang "He loves thee," the voices close at hand
continued:

"----one hundred and six carloads----"

"----paralysed the bulls----"

"----fifty thousand dollars----"

Then all at once the lights went up.  The act was over.

Laura seemed only to come to herself some five minutes
later.  She and Corthell were out in the foyer behind
the boxes.  Everybody was promenading.  The air was
filled with the staccato chatter of a multitude of
women.  But she herself seemed far away--she and
Sheldon Corthell.  His face, dark, romantic, with the
silky beard and eloquent eyes, appeared to be all she
cared to see, while his low voice, that spoke close to
her ear, was in a way a mere continuation of the melody
of the duet just finished.

Instinctively she knew what he was about to say, for
what he was trying to prepare her.  She felt, too, that
he had not expected to talk thus to her to-night.  She
knew that he loved her, that inevitably, sooner or
later, they must return to a subject that for long had
been excluded from their conversations, but it was to
have been when they were alone, remote, secluded, not
in the midst of a crowd, brilliant electrics dazzling
their eyes, the humming of the talk of hundreds
assaulting their ears.  But it seemed as if these
important things came of themselves, independent of
time and place, like birth and death.  There was
nothing to do but to accept the situation, and it was
without surprise that at last, from out the murmur of
Corthell's talk, she was suddenly conscious of the
words:

"So that it is hardly necessary, is it, to tell you
once more that I love you?"

She drew a long breath.

"I know.  I know you love me."

They had sat down on a divan, at one end of the
promenade; and Corthell, skilful enough in the little
arts of the drawing-room, made it appear as though they
talked of commonplaces; as for Laura, exalted, all but
hypnotised with this marvellous evening, she hardly
cared; she would not even stoop to maintain
appearances.

"Yes, yes," she said; "I know you love me."

"And is that all you can say?" he urged.  "Does it mean
nothing to you that you are everything to me?"

She was coming a little to herself again.  Love was,
after all, sweeter in the actual--even in this crowded
foyer, in this atmosphere of silk and jewels, in this
show-place of a great city's society--than in a mystic
garden of some romantic dreamland.  She felt herself a
woman again, modern, vital, and no longer a maiden of a
legend of chivalry.

"Nothing to me?" she answered.  "I don't know.
I should rather have you love me than--not."

"Let me love you then for always," he went on.  "You
know what I mean.  We have understood each other from
the very first.  Plainly, and very simply, I love you
with all my heart.  You know now that I speak the
truth, you know that you can trust me.  I shall not ask
you to share your life with mine.  I ask you for the
great happiness"--he raised his head sharply, suddenly
proud--"the great honour of the opportunity of giving
you all that I have of good.  God give me humility, but
that is much since I have known you.  If I were a
better man because of myself, I would not presume to
speak of it, but if I am in anything less selfish, if I
am more loyal, if I am stronger, or braver, it is only
something of you that has become a part of me, and made
me to be born again.  So when I offer myself to you, I
am only bringing back to you the gift you gave me for a
little while.  I have tried to keep it for you, to keep
it bright and sacred and un-spotted.  It is yours again
now if you will have it."

There was a long pause; a group of men in opera hats
and white gloves came up the stairway close at hand.
The tide of promenaders set towards the entrances of
the theatre.  A little electric bell shrilled a note of
warning.

Laura looked up at length, and as their glances met, he
saw that there were tears in her eyes.  This
declaration of his love for her was the last touch to
the greatest exhilaration of happiness she had ever
known.  Ah yes, she was loved, just as that young girl
of the opera had been loved.  For this one evening, at
least, the beauty of life was unmarred, and no cruel
word of hers should spoil it.  The world was beautiful.
All people were good and noble and true.  To-morrow,
with the material round of duties and petty
responsibilities and cold, calm reason, was far, far
away.

Suddenly she turned to him, surrendering to the
impulse, forgetful of consequences.

"Oh, I am glad, glad," she cried, "glad that you love
me!"

But before Corthell could say anything more Landry
Court and Page came up.

"We've been looking for you," said the young girl
quietly.  Page was displeased.  She took herself and
her sister--in fact, the whole scheme of existence--
with extraordinary seriousness.  She had no sense of
humour.  She was not tolerant; her ideas of propriety
and the amenities were as immutable as the fixed stars.
A fine way for Laura to act, getting off into corners
with Sheldon Corthell.  It would take less than that to
make talk.  If she had no sense of her obligations to
Mrs. Cressler, at least she ought to think of the looks
of things.

"They're beginning again," she said solemnly.
"I should think you'd feel as though you had missed
about enough of this opera."

They returned to the box.  The rest of the party were
reassembling.

"Well, Laura," said Mrs. Cressler, when they had sat
down, "do you like it?"

"I don't want to leave it--ever," she answered.
"I could stay here always."

"I like the young man best," observed Aunt Wess'.  "The
one who seems to be the friend of the tall fellow with
a cloak.  But why does he seem so sorry?  Why don't he
marry the young lady?  Let's see, I don't remember his
name."

"Beastly voice," declared Landry Court.  "He almost
broke there once.  Too bad.  He's not what he used to
be.  It seems he's terribly dissipated--drinks.  Yes,
sir, like a fish.  He had delirium tremens once behind
the scenes in Philadelphia, and stabbed a scene shifter
with his stage dagger.  A bad lot, to say the least."

"Now, Landry," protested Mrs. Cressler, "you're making
it up as you go along."  And in the laugh that followed
Landry himself joined.

"After all," said Corthell, "this music seems to be
just the right medium between the naive melody of the
Italian school and the elaborate complexity of Wagner.
I can't help but be carried away with it at times--in
spite of my better judgment."

Jadwin, who had been smoking a cigar in the vestibule
during the _entr'acte,_ rubbed his chin reflectively.

"Well," he said, "it's all very fine.  I've no doubt of
that, but I give you my word I would rather hear my old
governor take his guitar and sing 'Father, oh father,
come home with me now,' than all the fiddle-faddle,
tweedle-deedle opera business in the whole world."

But the orchestra was returning, the musicians crawling
out one by one from a little door beneath the stage
hardly bigger than the entrance of a rabbit hutch.
They settled themselves in front of their racks,
adjusting their coat-tails, fingering their sheet
music.  Soon they began to tune up, and a vague bourdon
of many sounds--the subdued snarl of the cornets, the
dull mutter of the bass viols, the liquid gurgling of
the flageolets and wood-wind instruments, now and then
pierced by the strident chirps and cries of the
violins, rose into the air dominating the incessant
clamour of conversation that came from all parts of the
theatre.

Then suddenly the house lights sank and the foot-lights
rose.  From all over the theatre came energetic
whispers of "Sh! Sh!" Three strokes, as of a great
mallet, sepulchral, grave, came from behind the wings;
the leader of the orchestra raised his baton, then
brought it slowly down, and while from all the
instruments at once issued a prolonged minor chord,
emphasised by a muffled roll of the kettle-drum, the
curtain rose upon a mediaeval public square.  The
soprano was seated languidly upon a bench.  Her _grande
scene_ occurred in this act.  Her hair was un-bound;
she wore a loose robe of cream white, with flowing
sleeves, which left the arms bare to the shoulder.
At the waist it was caught in by a girdle of silk rope.

"This is the great act," whispered Mrs. Cressler,
leaning over Laura's shoulder.  "She is superb later
on.  Superb."

"I wish those _men_ would stop talking," murmured
Laura, searching the darkness distressfully, for
between the strains of the music she had heard the
words:

"----Clearing House balance of three thousand dollars."

Meanwhile the prima donna, rising to her feet,
delivered herself of a lengthy recitative, her chin
upon her breast, her eyes looking out from under her
brows, an arm stretched out over the footlights.  The
baritone entered, striding to the left of the
footlights, apostrophising the prima donna in a rage.
She clasped her hands imploringly, supplicating him to
leave her, exclaiming from time to time:


     "Ya via, va via--
     Vel chieco per pieta."


Then all at once, while the orchestra blared, they fell
into each other's arms.

"Why do they do that?" murmured Aunt Wess' perplexed.
"I thought the gentleman with the beard didn't like her
at all."

"Why, that's the duke, don't you see, Aunt Wess'?" said
Laura trying to explain.  "And he forgives her.  I
don't know exactly.  Look at your libretto."

"----a conspiracy of the Bears ...  seventy cents ...
and naturally he busted."

The mezzo-soprano, the confidante of the prima donna,
entered, and a trio developed that had but a mediocre
success.  At the end the baritone abruptly drew his
sword, and the prima donna fell to her knees, chanting:


     "Io tremo, ahime!"


"And now he's mad again," whispered Aunt Wess',
consulting her libretto, all at sea once more.  "I
can't understand.  She says--the opera book _says_ she
says, 'I tremble.' I don't see why."

"Look now," said Page, "here comes the tenor.  Now
they're going to have it out."

The tenor, hatless, debouched suddenly upon the scene,
and furious, addressed himself to the baritone, leaning
forward, his hands upon his chest.  Though the others
sang in Italian, the tenor, a Parisian, used the French
book continually, and now villified the baritone,
crying out:


     "O traitre infame
      O lache et coupable"


"I don't see why he don't marry the young lady and be
done with it," commented Aunt Wess'.

The act drew to its close.  The prima donna went
through her "great scene," wherein her voice climbed to
C in alt, holding the note so long that Aunt Wess'
became uneasy.  As she finished, the house rocked with
applause, and the soprano, who had gone out supported
by her confidante, was recalled three times.  A duel
followed between the baritone and tenor, and the
latter, mortally wounded, fell into the arms of his
friends uttering broken, vehement notes.  The chorus--
made up of the city watch and town's people--crowded in
upon the back of the stage.  The soprano and her
confidante returned.  The basso, a black-bearded, bull
necked man, sombre, mysterious, parted the chorus to
right and left, and advanced to the footlights.  The
contralto, dressed as a boy, appeared.  The soprano
took stage, and abruptly the closing scene of the act
developed.

The violins raged and wailed in unison, all the bows
moving together like parts of a well-regulated machine.
The kettle-drums, marking the cadences, rolled at exact
intervals.  The director beat time furiously, as though
dragging up the notes and chords with the end of his
baton, while the horns and cornets blared, the bass
viols growled, and the flageolets and piccolos lost
themselves in an amazing complication of liquid gurgles
and modulated roulades.

On the stage every one was singing.  The soprano in the
centre, vocalised in her highest register, bringing out
the notes with vigorous twists of her entire body, and
tossing them off into the air with sharp flirts of her
head.  On the right, the basso, scowling, could be
heard in the intervals of the music repeating


     "Il perfido, l'ingrato"


while to the left of the soprano, the baritone intoned
indistinguishable, sonorous phrases, striking his
breast and pointing to the fallen tenor with his sword.
At the extreme left of the stage the contralto, in
tights and plush doublet, turned to the audience,
extending her hands, or flinging back her arms.  She
raised her eyebrows with each high note, and sunk her
chin into her ruff when her voice descended.  At
certain intervals her notes blended with those of the
soprano's while she sang:


     "Addio, felicita del ciel!"


The tenor, raised upon one hand, his shoulders
supported by his friends, sustained the theme which the
soprano led with the words:


     "Je me meurs
      Ah malheur
      Ah je souffre
      Mon ame s'envole."


The chorus formed a semi-circle just behind him.  The
women on one side, the men on the other.  They left
much to be desired; apparently scraped hastily together
from heaven knew what sources, after the manner of a
management suddenly become economical.  The women were
fat, elderly, and painfully homely; the men lean,
osseous, and distressed, in misfitting hose.  But they
had been conscientiously drilled.  They made all their
gestures together, moved in masses simultaneously, and,
without ceasing, chanted over and over again:


     "O terror, O blasfema."


The _finale_ commenced.  Everybody on the stage took a
step forward, beginning all over again upon a higher
key.  The soprano's voice thrilled to the very
chandelier.  The orchestra redoubled its efforts, the
director beating time with hands, head, and body.


     "Il perfido, l'ingrato"


thundered the basso.


     "Ineffabil mistero,"


answered the baritone, striking his breast and pointing
with his sword; while all at once the soprano's voice,
thrilling out again, ran up an astonishing crescendo
that evoked veritable gasps from all parts of the
audience, then jumped once more to her famous C in alt,
and held it long enough for the chorus to repeat


     "O terror, O blasfema"


four times.

Then the director's baton descended with the violence
of a blow.  There was a prolonged crash of harmony, a
final enormous chord, to which every voice and every
instrument contributed.  The singers struck tableau
attitudes, the tenor fell back with a last wail:


     "Je me meurs,"


and the soprano fainted into the arms of her
confidante.  The curtain fell.

The house roared with applause.  The scene was recalled
again and again.  The tenor, scrambling to his feet,
joined hands with the baritone, soprano, and other
artists, and all bowed repeatedly.  Then the curtain
fell for the last time, the lights of the great
chandelier clicked and blazed up, and from every
quarter of the house came the cries of the programme
sellers:

"Opera books.  Books of the opera.  Words and music of
the opera."

During this, the last _entr'acte,_ Laura remained in
the box with Mrs. Cressler, Corthell, and Jadwin.  The
others went out to look down upon the foyer from a
certain balcony.

In the box the conversation turned upon stage
management, and Corthell told how, in "L'Africaine," at
the Opera, in Paris, the entire superstructure of the
stage--wings, drops, and backs--turned when Vasco da
Gama put the ship about.  Jadwin having criticised the
effect because none of the actors turned with it, was
voted a Philistine by Mrs. Cressler and Corthell.  But
as he was about to answer, Mrs. Cressler turned to the
artist, passing him her opera glasses, and asking:

"Who are those people down there in the third row of
the parquet--see, on the middle aisle--the woman is in
red.  Aren't those the Gretrys?"

This left Jadwin and Laura out of the conversation, and
the capitalist was quick to seize the chance of talking
to her.  Soon she was surprised to notice that he was
trying hard to be agreeable, and before they had
exchanged a dozen sentences, he had turned an awkward
compliment.  She guessed by his manner that paying
attention to young girls was for him a thing altogether
unusual.  Intuitively she divined that she, on this,
the very first night of their acquaintance, had
suddenly interested him.

She had had neither opportunity nor inclination to
observe him closely during their interview in the
vestibule, but now, as she sat and listened to him
talk, she could not help being a little attracted.  He
was a heavy-built man, would have made two of Corthell,
and his hands were large and broad, the hands of a man
of affairs, who knew how to grip, and, above all, how
to hang on.  Those broad, strong hands, and keen, calm
eyes would enfold and envelop a Purpose with tremendous
strength, and they would persist and persist and
persist, unswerving, unwavering, untiring, till the
Purpose was driven home.  And the two long, lean,
fibrous arms of him; what a reach they could attain,
and how wide and huge and even formidable would be
their embrace of affairs.  One of those great
manoeuvres of a fellow money-captain had that very day
been concluded, the Helmick failure, and between the
chords and bars of a famous opera men talked in excited
whispers, and one great leader lay at that very moment,
broken and spent, fighting with his last breath for
bare existence.  Jadwin had seen it all.  Uninvolved in
the crash, he had none the less been close to it,
watching it, in touch with it, foreseeing each
successive collapse by which it reeled fatally to the
final catastrophe.  The voices of the two men that had
so annoyed her in the early part of the evening were
suddenly raised again:

"----It was terrific, there on the floor of the Board
this morning.  By the Lord! they fought each other when
the Bears began throwing the grain at 'em--in carload
lots."

And abruptly, midway between two phases of that music-
drama, of passion and romance, there came to Laura the
swift and vivid impression of that other drama that
simultaneously--even at that very moment--was working
itself out close at hand, equally picturesque, equally
romantic, equally passionate; but more than that, real,
actual, modern, a thing in the very heart of the very
life in which she moved.  And here he sat, this Jadwin,
quiet, in evening dress, listening good-naturedly to
this beautiful music, for which he did not care, to
this rant and fustian, watching quietly all this posing
and attitudinising.  How small and petty it must all
seem to him!

Laura found time to be astonished.  What! She had first
met this man haughtily, in all the panoply of her
"grand manner," and had promised herself that she would
humble him, and pay him for that first mistrustful
stare at her.  And now, behold, she was studying him,
and finding the study interesting.  Out of harmony
though she knew him to be with those fine emotions of
hers of the early part of the evening, she nevertheless
found much in him to admire.  It was always just like
that.  She told herself that she was forever doing the
unexpected thing, the inconsistent thing.  Women were
queer creatures, mysterious even to themselves.

"I am so pleased that you are enjoying it all," said
Corthell's voice at her shoulder.  "I knew you would.
There is nothing like music such as this to appeal to
the emotions, the heart--and with your temperament"

Straightway he made her feel her sex.  Now she was just
a woman again, with all a woman's limitations, and her
relations with Corthell could never be--so she
realised--any other than sex-relations.  With Jadwin
somehow it had been different.  She had felt his
manhood more than her womanhood, her sex side.  And
between them it was more a give-and-take affair, more
equality, more companionship.  Corthell spoke only of
her heart and to her heart.  But Jadwin made her feel--
or rather she made herself feel when he talked to her--
that she had a head as well as a heart.

And the last act of the opera did not wholly absorb her
attention.  The artists came and went, the orchestra
wailed and boomed, the audience applauded, and in the
end the tenor, fired by a sudden sense of duty and of
stern obligation, tore himself from the arms of the
soprano, and calling out upon remorseless fate and upon
heaven, and declaiming about the vanity of glory, and
his heart that broke yet disdained tears, allowed
himself to be dragged off the scene by his friend the
basso.  For the fifth time during the piece the soprano
fainted into the arms of her long-suffering confidante.
The audience, suddenly remembering hats and wraps,
bestirred itself, and many parties were already upon
their feet and filing out at the time the curtain fell.

The Cresslers and their friends were among the last to
regain the vestibule.  But as they came out from the
foyer, where the first draughts of outside air began to
make themselves felt, there were exclamations:

"It's raining."

"Why, it's raining right down."

It was true.  Abruptly the weather had moderated, and
the fine, dry snow that had been falling since early
evening had changed to a lugubrious drizzle.  A wave of
consternation invaded the vestibule for those who had
not come in carriages, or whose carriages had not
arrived.  Tempers were lost; women, cloaked to the
ears, their heads protected only by fichus or
mantillas, quarrelled with husbands or cousins or
brothers over the question of umbrellas.  The
vestibules were crowded to suffocation, and the
aigrettes nodded and swayed again in alternate gusts,
now of moist, chill atmosphere from without, and now of
stale, hot air that exhaled in long puffs from the
inside doors of the theatre itself.  Here and there in
the press, footmen, their top hats in rubber cases,
their hands full of umbrellas, searched anxiously for
their masters.

Outside upon the sidewalks and by the curbs, an
apparently inextricable confusion prevailed; policemen
with drawn clubs laboured and objurgated: anxious,
preoccupied young men, their opera hats and gloves
beaded with rain, hurried to and fro, searching for
their carriages.  At the edge of the awning, the
caller, a gigantic fellow in gold-faced uniform,
shouted the numbers in a roaring, sing-song that
dominated every other sound.  Coachmen, their wet
rubber coats reflecting the lamplight, called back and
forth, furious quarrels broke out between hansom
drivers and the police officers, steaming horses with
jingling bits, their backs covered with dark green
cloths, plunged and pranced, carriage doors banged,
and the roll of wheels upon the pavement was as the
reverberation of artillery caissons.

"Get your carriage, sir?" cried a ragged, half-grown
arab at Cressler's elbow.

"Hurry up, then," said Cressler.  Then, raising his
voice, for the clamour was increasing with every
second: "What's your number, Laura?  You girls first.
Ninety-three?  Get that, boy?  Ninety-three.  Quick now."

The carriage appeared.  Hastily they said good-by;
hastily Laura expressed to Mrs. Cressler her
appreciation and enjoyment.  Corthell saw them to the
carriage, and getting in after them shut the door
behind him.  They departed.

Laura sank back in the cool gloom of the carriage's
interior redolent of damp leather and upholstery.

"What an evening! What an evening!" she murmured.

On the way home both she and Page appealed to the
artist, who knew the opera well, to hum or whistle for
them the arias that had pleased them most. Each time
they were enthusiastic.  Yes, yes, that was the air.
Wasn't it pretty, wasn't it beautiful?

But Aunt Wess' was still unsatisfied.

"I don't see yet," she complained, "why the young man,
the one with the pointed beard, didn't marry that lady
and be done with it.  Just as soon as they'd seem to
have it all settled, he'd begin to take on again, and
strike his breast and go away.  I declare, I think it
was all kind of foolish."

"Why, the duke--don't you see.  The one who sang bass----"
Page laboured to explain.

"Oh, I didn't like him at all," said Aunt Wess'.
"He stamped around so."  But the audience itself had
interested her, and the decollete gowns had been
particularly impressing.

"I never saw such dressing in all my life," she
declared.  "And that woman in the box next ours.  Well!
did you notice _that!_" She raised her eye-brows and
set her lips together.  "Well, I don't want to say
anything."

The carriage rolled on through the darkened downtown
streets, towards the North Side, where the Dearborns
lived.  They could hear the horses plashing through the
layer of slush--mud, half-melted snow and rain--that
encumbered the pavement.  In the gloom the girls' wraps
glowed pallid and diaphanous.  The rain left long,
slanting parallels on the carriage windows.  They
passed on down Wabash Avenue, and crossed over to State
Street and Clarke Street, dark, deserted.

Laura, after a while, lost in thought, spoke but
little.  It had been a great evening--because of other
things than mere music.  Corthell had again asked her
to marry him, and she, carried away by the excitement
of the moment, had answered him encouragingly.  On the
heels of this she had had that little talk with the
capitalist Jadwin, and somehow since then she had been
steadied, calmed.  The cold air and the rain in her
face had cooled her flaming cheeks and hot temples.
She asked herself now if she did really, honestly love
the artist.  No, she did not; really and honestly she
did not; and now as the carriage rolled on through the
deserted streets of the business districts, she knew
very well that she did not want to marry him.  She had
done him an injustice; but in the matter of righting
herself with him, correcting his false impression, she
was willing to procrastinate.  She wanted him to love
her, to pay her all those innumerable little attentions
which he managed with such faultless delicacy.  To say:
"No, Mr. Corthell, I do not love you, I will never be
your wife," would--this time--be final.  He would go
away, and she had no intention of allowing him to do
that.

But abruptly her reflections were interrupted.  While
she thought it all over she had been looking out of the
carriage window through a little space where she had
rubbed the steam from the pane.  Now, all at once, the
strange appearance of the neighbourhood as the carriage
turned north from out Jackson Street into La Salle,
forced itself upon her attention.  She uttered an
exclamation.

The office buildings on both sides of the street were
lighted from basement to roof.  Through the windows she
could get glimpses of clerks and book-keepers in shirt-
sleeves bending over desks.  Every office was open, and
every one of them full of a feverish activity.  The
sidewalks were almost as crowded as though at noontime.
Messenger boys ran to and fro, and groups of men stood
on the corners in earnest conversation. The whole
neighbourhood was alive, and this, though it was close
upon one o'clock in the morning!

"Why, what is it all?" she murmured.

Corthell could not explain, but all at once Page cried:

"Oh, oh, I know.  See this is Jackson and La Salle
streets.  Landry was telling me.  The 'commission
district,' he called it.  And these are the brokers'
offices working overtime--that Helmick deal, you know."

Laura looked, suddenly stupefied.  Here it was, then,
that other drama, that other tragedy, working on there
furiously, fiercely through the night, while she and
all those others had sat there in that atmosphere of
flowers and perfume, listening to music.  Suddenly it
loomed portentous in the eye of her mind, terrible,
tremendous.  Ah, this drama of the "Provision Pits,"
where the rush of millions of bushels of grain, and the
clatter of millions of dollars, and the tramping and
the wild shouting of thousands of men filled all the
air with the noise of battle! Yes, here was drama in
deadly earnest--drama and tragedy and death, and the
jar of mortal fighting.  And the echoes of it invaded
the very sanctuary of art, and cut athwart the music of
Italy and the cadence of polite conversation, and the
shock of it endured when all the world should have
slept, and galvanised into vivid life all these sombre
piles of office buildings.  It was dreadful, this
labour through the night.  It had all the significance
of field hospitals after the battle--hospitals and the
tents of commanding generals.  The wounds of the day
were being bound up, the dead were being counted,
while, shut in their headquarters, the captains and the
commanders drew the plans for the grapple of armies
that was to recommence with daylight.

"Yes, yes, that's just what it is," continued Page.
"See, there's the Rookery, and there's the Constable
Building, where Mr. Helmick has his offices.  Landry
showed me it all one day.  And, look back."  She raised
the flap that covered the little window at the back of
the carriage.  "See, down there, at the end of the
street.  There's the Board of Trade Building, where the
grain speculating is done,--where the wheat pits and
corn pits are."

Laura turned and looked back.  On either side of the
vista in converging lines stretched the blazing office
buildings.  But over the end of the street the lead-
coloured sky was rifted a little.  A long, faint bar of
light stretched across the prospect, and silhouetted
against this rose a sombre mass, unbroken by any
lights, rearing a black and formidable facade against
the blur of light behind it.

And this was her last impression of the evening.  The
lighted office buildings, the murk of rain, the haze of
light in the heavens, and raised against it the pile of
the Board of Trade Building, black, grave, monolithic,
crouching on its foundations, like a monstrous sphinx
with blind eyes, silent, grave,--crouching there
without a sound, without sign of life under the night
and the drifting veil of rain.



II


Laura Dearborn's native town was Barrington, in
Worcester County, Massachusetts.  Both she and Page had
been born there, and there had lived until the death of
their father, at a time when Page was ready for the
High School.  The mother, a North Carolina girl, had
died long before.

Laura's education had been unusual.  After leaving the
High School her father had for four years allowed her a
private tutor (an impecunious graduate from the Harvard
Theological School).  She was ambitious, a devoted
student, and her instructor's task was rather to guide
than to enforce her application.  She soon acquired a
reading knowledge of French, and knew her Racine in the
original almost as well as her Shakespeare.  Literature
became for her an actual passion.  She delved into
Tennyson and the Victorian poets, and soon was on terms
of intimacy with the poets and essayists of New
England.  The novelists of the day she ignored almost
completely, and voluntarily.  Only occasionally, and
then as a concession, she permitted herself a reading
of Mr. Howells.

Moderately prosperous while he himself was conducting
his little mill, Dearborn had not been able to put by
any money to speak of, and when Laura and the local
lawyer had come to close up the business, to dispose of
the mill, and to settle the claims against what the
lawyer grandiloquently termed "the estate," there was
just enough money left to pay for Page's tickets to
Chicago and a course of tuition for her at a seminary.

The Cresslers on the event of Dearborn's death had
advised both sisters to come West, and had pledged
themselves to look after Page during the period of her
schooling.  Laura had sent the little girl on at once,
but delayed taking the step herself.

Fortunately, the two sisters were not obliged to live
upon their inheritance.  Dearborn himself had a sister--
a twin of Aunt Wess'--who had married a wealthy
woollen merchant of Boston, and this one, long since,
had provided for the two girls.  A large sum had been
set aside, which was to be made over to them when the
father died.  For years now this sum had been
accumulating interest.  So that when Laura and Page
faced the world, alone, upon the steps of the
Barrington cemetery, they had the assurance that, at
least, they were independent.

For two years, in the solidly built colonial dwelling,
with its low ceilings and ample fireplaces, where once
the minute-men had swung their kettles, Laura, alone,
thought it all over.  Mother and father were dead; even
the Boston aunt was dead.  Of all her relations, Aunt
Wess' alone remained.  Page was at her finishing school
at Geneva Lake, within two hours of Chicago.  The
Cresslers were the dearest friends of the orphan girls.
Aunt Wess', herself a widow, living also in Chicago,
added her entreaties to Mrs. Cressler's.  All things
seemed to point her westward, all things seemed to
indicate that one phase of her life was ended.

Then, too, she had her ambitions.  These hardly took
definite shape in her mind; but vaguely she chose to
see herself, at some far-distant day, an actress, a
tragedienne, playing the roles of Shakespeare's
heroines.  This idea of hers was more a desire than an
ambition, but it could not be realised in Barrington,
Massachusetts.  For a year she temporised,
procrastinated, loth to leave the old home, loth to
leave the grave in the cemetery back of the Methodist-
Episcopal chapel.  Twice during this time she visited
Page, and each time the great grey city threw the spell
of its fascination about her.  Each time she returned
to Barrington the town dwindled in her estimation.  It
was picturesque, but lamentably narrow.  The life was
barren, the "New England spirit" prevailed in all its
severity; and this spirit seemed to her a veritable
cult, a sort of religion, wherein the Old Maid was the
priestess, the Spinster the officiating devotee, the
thing worshipped the Great Unbeautiful, and the ritual
unremitting, unrelenting Housework.  She detested it.

That she was an Episcopalian, and preferred to read her
prayers rather than to listen to those written and
memorised by the Presbyterian minister, seemed to be
regarded as a relic of heathenish rites--a thing almost
cannibalistic.  When she elected to engage a woman and
a "hired man" to manage her house, she felt the
disapprobation of the entire village, as if she had
sunk into some decadent and enervating Lower-Empire
degeneracy.

The crisis came when Laura travelled alone to Boston to
hear Modjeska in "Marie Stuart" and "Macbeth," and upon
returning full of enthusiasm, allowed it to be
understood that she had a half-formed desire of
emulating such an example.  A group of lady-
deaconesses, headed by the Presbyterian minister,
called upon her, with some intention of reasoning and
labouring with her.

They got no farther than the statement of the cause of
this visit.  The spirit and temper of the South, that
she had from her mother, flamed up in Laura at last,
and the members of the "committee," before they were
well aware, came to themselves in the street outside
the front gate, dazed and bewildered, staring at each
other, all confounded and stunned by the violence of an
outbreak of long-repressed emotion and long-restrained
anger, that like an actual physical force had swept
them out of the house.

At the same moment Laura, thrown across her bed, wept
with a vehemence that shook her from head to foot.
But she had not the least compunction for what she had
said, and before the month was out had said good-by to
Barrington forever, and was on her way to Chicago,
henceforth to be her home.

A house was bought on the North Side, and it was
arranged that Aunt Wess' should live with her two
nieces.  Pending the installation Laura and Page lived
at a little family hotel in the same neighbourhood.
The Cresslers' invitation to join the theatre party at
the Auditorium had fallen inopportunely enough,
squarely in the midst of the ordeal of moving in.
Indeed the two girls had already passed one night in
the new home, and they must dress for the affair by
lamplight in their unfurnished quarters and under
inconceivable difficulties.  Only the lure of Italian
opera, heard from a box, could have tempted them to
have accepted the invitation at such a time and under
such circumstances.

The morning after the opera, Laura woke in her bed--
almost the only article of furniture that was in place
in the whole house--with the depressing consciousness
of a hard day's work at hand.  Outside it was still
raining, the room was cold, heated only by an
inadequate oil stove, and through the slats of the
inside shutters, which, pending the hanging of the
curtains they had been obliged to close, was filtering
a gloomy light of a wet Chicago morning.

It was all very mournful, and she regretted now that
she had not abided by her original decision to remain
at the hotel until the new house was ready for
occupancy.  But it had happened that their month at the
hotel was just up, and rather than engage the rooms for
another four weeks she had thought it easier as well as
cheaper to come to the house.  It was all a new
experience for her, and she had imagined that
everything could be moved in, put in place, and the
household running smoothly in a week's time.

She sat up in bed, hugging her shoulders against the
chill of the room and looking at her theatre gown,
that--in default of a clean closet--she had hung from
the gas fixture the night before.  From the direction
of the kitchen came the sounds of the newly engaged
"girl" making the fire for breakfast, while through the
register a thin wisp of blue smoke curled upward to
prove that the "hired man" was tinkering with the
unused furnace.  The room itself was in lamentable
confusion.  Crates and packing boxes encumbered the
uncarpeted floor; chairs wrapped in excelsior and jute
were piled one upon another; a roll of carpet leaned in
one corner and a pile of mattresses occupied another.

As Laura considered the prospect she realised her
blunder.

"Why, and oh, why," she murmured, "didn't we stay at
the hotel till all this was straightened out?"

But in an adjoining room she heard Aunt Wess' stirring.
She turned to Page, who upon the pillows beside her
still slept, her stocking around her neck as a
guarantee against draughts.

"Page, Page! Wake up, girlie.  It's late, and there's
worlds to do."

Page woke blinking.

"Oh, it's freezing cold, Laura.  Let's light the oil
stove and stay in bed till the room gets warm.  Oh,
dear, aren't you sleepy, and, oh, wasn't last night
lovely?  Which one of us will get up to light the stove?
We'll count for it.  Lie down, sissie, dear," she
begged, "you're letting all the cold air in."

Laura complied, and the two sisters, their noses all
but touching, the bedclothes up to their ears, put
their arms about each other to keep the warmer.

Amused at the foolishness, they "counted" to decide as
to who should get up to light the oil stove, Page
beginning:

"Eeny--meeny--myny--mo----"

But before the "count" was decided Aunt Wess' came in,
already dressed, and in a breath the two girls implored
her to light the stove.  While she did so, Aunt Wess'
remarked, with the alacrity of a woman who observes the
difficulties of a proceeding in which she has no faith:

"I don't believe that hired girl knows her business.
She says now she can't light a fire in that stove.  My
word, Laura, I do believe you'll have enough of all
this before you're done.  You know I advised you from
the very first to take a flat."

"Nonsense, Aunt Wess'," answered Laura, good-naturedly.
"We'll work it out all right.  I know what's the matter
with that range.  I'll be right down and see to it so
soon as I'm dressed."

It was nearly ten o'clock before breakfast, such as it
was, was over.  They ate it on the kitchen table, with
the kitchen knives and forks, and over the meal, Page
having remarked: "Well, what will we do first?"
discussed the plan of campaign.

"Landry Court does not have to work to-day--he told me
why, but I've forgotten--and he said he was coming up
to help," observed Laura, and at once Aunt Wess'
smiled.  Landry Court was openly and strenuously in
love with Laura, and no one of the new house-hold
ignored the fact.  Aunt Wess' chose to consider the
affair as ridiculous, and whenever the subject was
mentioned spoke of Landry as "that boy."

Page, however, bridled with seriousness as often as the
matter came up.  Yes, that was all very well, but
Landry was a decent, hard-working young fellow, with
all his way to make and no time to waste, and if Laura
didn't mean that it should come to anything it wasn't
very fair to him to keep him dangling along like that.

"I guess," Laura was accustomed to reply, looking
significantly at Aunt Wess', "that our little girlie
has a little bit of an eye on a certain hard-working
young fellow herself."  And the answer invariably roused
Page.

"Now, Laura," she would cry, her eyes snapping, her
breath coming fast.  "Now, Laura, that isn't right at
all, and you know I don't like it, and you just say it
because you know it makes me cross.  I won't have you
insinuate that I would run after any man or care in the
least whether he's in love or not.  I just guess I've
got some self-respect; and as for Landry Court, we're
no more nor less than just good friends, and I
appreciate his business talents and the way he rustles
'round, and he merely respects me as a friend, and it
don't go any farther than that.  ' An eye on him,' I do
declare! As if I hadn't yet to see the man I'd so much
as look at a second time."

And Laura, remembering her "Shakespeare," was ever
ready with the words:


     "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."


Just after breakfast, in fact, Landry did appear.

"Now," he began, with a long breath, addressing Laura,
who was unwrapping the pieces of cut glass and bureau
ornaments as Page passed them to her from the depths of
a crate.  "Now, I've done a lot already.  That's what
made me late.  I've ordered your newspaper sent here,
and I've telephoned the hotel to forward any mail that
comes for you to this address, and I sent word to the
gas company to have your gas turned on----"

"Oh, that's good," said Laura.

"Yes, I thought of that; the man will be up right away
to fix it, and I've ordered a cake of ice left here
every day, and told the telephone company that you
wanted a telephone put in.  Oh, yes, and the bottled-
milk man--I stopped in at a dairy on the way up.  Now,
what do we do first?"

He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and
plunged into the confusion of crates and boxes that
congested the rooms and hallways on the first floor of
the house.  The two sisters could hear him attacking
his task with tremendous blows of the kitchen hammer.
From time to time he called up the stairway:

"Hey, what do you want done with this jardiniere thing?
... Where does this hanging lamp go, Laura?"

Laura, having unpacked all the cut-glass ornaments,
came down-stairs, and she and Landry set about hanging
the parlour curtains.

Landry fixed the tops of the window mouldings with a
piercing eye, his arms folded.

"I see, I see," he answered to Laura's explanations.
"I see.  Now where's a screw-driver, and a step-ladder?
Yes, and I'll have to have some brass nails, and your
hired man must let me have that hammer again."

He sent the cook after the screw-driver, called the
hired man from the furnace, shouted upstairs to Page to
ask for the whereabouts of the brass nails, and
delegated Laura to steady the step-ladder.

"Now, Landry," directed Laura, "those rods want to be
about three inches from the top."

"Well," he said, climbing up, "I'll mark the place with
the screw and you tell me if it is right."

She stepped back, her head to one side.

"No; higher, Landry.  There, that's about it--or a
_little_ lower--so.  That's _just_ right.  Come down
now and help me put the hooks in."

They pulled a number of sofa cushions together and sat
down on the floor side by side, Landry snapping the
hooks in place where Laura had gathered the pleats.
Inevitably his hands touched hers, and their heads drew
close together.  Page and Mrs. Wessels were unpacking
linen in the upstairs hall.  The cook and hired man
raised a great noise of clanking stove lids and grates
as they wrestled with the range in the kitchen.

"Well," said Landry, "you are going to have a pretty
home."  He was meditating a phrase of which he purposed
delivering himself when opportunity afforded.  It had
to do with Laura's eyes, and her ability of
understanding him.  She understood him; she was to know
that he thought so, that it was of immense importance
to him.  It was thus he conceived of the manner of love
making.  The evening before that palavering artist
seemed to have managed to monopolise her about all of
the time.  Now it was his turn, and this day of
household affairs, of little domestic commotions,
appeared to him to be infinitely more desirous than the
pomp and formality of evening dress and opera boxes.
This morning the relations between himself and Laura
seemed charming, intimate, unconventional, and full of
opportunities.  Never had she appeared prettier to him.
She wore a little pink flannel dressing-sack with full
sleeves, and her hair, carelessly twisted into great
piles, was in a beautiful disarray, curling about her
cheeks and ears. "I didn't see anything of you at all
last night," he grumbled.

"Well, you didn't try."

"Oh, it was the Other Fellow's turn," he went on.
"Say," he added, "how often are you going to let me
come to see you when you get settled here?  Twice a
week--three times?"

"As if you wanted to see me as often as that.  Why,
Landry, I'm growing up to be an old maid.  You can't
want to lose your time calling on old maids."

He was voluble in protestations.  He was tired of young
girls.  They were all very well to dance with, but when
a man got too old for that sort of thing, be wanted
some one with sense to talk to.  Yes, he did.  Some one
with _sense._  Why, he would rather talk five minutes
with her----

"Honestly, Landry?" she asked, as though he were
telling a thing incredible.

He swore to her it was true.  His eyes snapped.  He
struck his palm with his fist.

"An old maid like me?" repeated Laura.

"Old maid nothing!" he vociferated.  "Ah," he cried,
"you seem to understand me.  When I look at you,
straight into your eyes----"

From the doorway the cook announced that the man with
the last load of furnace coal had come, and handed
Laura the voucher to sign.  Then needs must that Laura
go with the cook to see if the range was finally and
properly adjusted, and while she was gone the man from
the gas company called to turn on the meter, and Landry
was obliged to look after him.  It was half an hour
before he and Laura could once more settle themselves
on the cushions in the parlour.

"Such a lot of things to do," she said; "and you are
such a help, Landry.  It was so dear of you to want to
come."

"I would do anything in the world for you, Laura," he
exclaimed, encouraged by her words; "anything.  You
know I would.  It isn't so much that I want you to care
for me--and I guess I want _that_ bad enough--but it's
because I love to be with you, and be helping you, and
all that sort of thing.  Now, all this," he waved a
hand at the confusion of furniture, "all this to-day--I
just feel," he declared with tremendous earnestness,
"I just feel as though I were entering into your life.
And just sitting here beside you and putting in these
curtain hooks, I want you to know that it's inspiring
to me.  Yes, it is, inspiring; it's elevating.  You
don't know how it makes a man feel to have the
companionship of a good and lovely woman."

"Landry, as though I were all that.  Here, put another
hook in here."

She held the fold towards him.  But he took her hand as
their fingers touched and raised it to his lips and
kissed it.  She did not withdraw it, nor rebuke him,
crying out instead, as though occupied with quite
another matter:

"Landry, careful, my dear boy; you'll make me prick my
fingers.  Ah--there, you did."

He was all commiseration and self-reproach at once, and
turned her hand palm upwards, looking for the scratch.

"Um!" she breathed.  "It hurts."

"Where now," he cried, "where was it?  Ah, I was a
beast; I'm so ashamed."  She indicated a spot on her
wrist instead of her fingers, and very naturally Landry
kissed it again.

"How foolish!" she remonstrated.  "The idea! As if I
wasn't old enough to be----"

"You're not so old but what you're going to marry me
some day," he declared.

"How perfectly silly, Landry!" she retorted.  "Aren't
you done with my hand yet?"

"No, indeed," he cried, his clasp tightening over her
fingers.  "It's mine.  You can't have it till I say--or
till you say that--some day--you'll give it to me for
good--for better or for worse."

"As if you really meant that," she said, willing to
prolong the little situation.  It was very sweet to
have this clean, fine-fibred young boy so earnestly in
love with her, very sweet that the lifting of her
finger, the mere tremble of her eyelid should so
perturb him.

"Mean it! Mean it!" he vociferated.  "You don't know
how much I do mean it.  Why, Laura, why--why, I can't
think of anything else."

"You!" she mocked.  "As if I believed that.  How many
other girls have you said it to this year?"

Landry compressed his lips.

"Miss Dearborn, you insult me."

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Laura, at last withdrawing her
hand.

"And now you're mocking me.  It isn't kind.  No, it
isn't; it isn't _kind._"

"I never answered your question yet," she observed.

"What question?"

"About your coming to see me when we were settled.
I _thought_ you wanted to know."

"How about lunch?" said Page, from the doorway.  "Do
you know it's after twelve?"

"The girl has got something for us," said Laura.  "I
told her about it.  Oh, just a pick-up lunch--coffee,
chops.  I thought we wouldn't bother to-day.  We'll
have to eat in the kitchen."

"Well, let's be about it," declared Landry, "and finish
with these curtains afterward.  Inwardly I'm a ravening
wolf."

It was past one o'clock by the time that luncheon,
"picked up" though it was, was over.  By then everybody
was very tired.  Aunt Wess' exclaimed that she could
not stand another minute, and retired to her room.
Page, indefatigable, declaring they never would get
settled if they let things dawdle along, set to work
unpacking her trunk and putting her clothes away.  Her
fox terrier, whom the family, for obscure reasons,
called the Pig, arrived in the middle of the afternoon
in a crate, and shivering with the chill of the house,
was tied up behind the kitchen range, where, for all
the heat, he still trembled and shuddered at long
intervals, his head down, his eyes rolled up,
bewildered and discountenanced by so much confusion and
so many new faces.

Outside the weather continued lamentable.  The rain
beat down steadily upon the heaps of snow on the grass-
plats by the curbstones, melting it, dirtying it, and
reducing it to viscid slush.  The sky was lead grey;
the trees, bare and black as though built of iron and
wire, dripped incessantly.  The sparrows, huddling
under the house-eaves or in interstices of the
mouldings, chirped feebly from time to time, sitting
disconsolate, their feathers puffed out till their
bodies assumed globular shapes.  Delivery wagons
trundled up and down the street at intervals, the
horses and drivers housed in oil-skins.

The neighborhood was quiet.  There was no sound of
voices in the streets.  But occasionally, from far away
in the direction of the river or the Lake Front, came
the faint sounds of steamer and tug whistles.  The
sidewalks in either direction were deserted.  Only a
solitary policeman, his star pinned to he outside of
his dripping rubber coat, his helmet shedding rivulets,
stood on the corner absorbed in the contemplation of
the brown torrent of the gutter plunging into a sewer
vent.

Landry and Laura were in the library at the rear of the
house, a small room, two sides of which were occupied
with book-cases.  They were busy putting the books in
place.  Laura stood half-way up the step-ladder taking
volume after volume from Landry as he passed them to
her.

"Do you wipe them carefully, Landry?" she asked.

He held a strip of cloth torn from an old sheet in his
hand, and rubbed the dust from each book before he
handed it to her.

"Yes, yes; very carefully," he assured her.  "Say," he
added, "where are all your modern novels?  You've got
Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, of course, and Eliot--
yes, and here's Hawthorne and Poe.  But I haven't
struck anything later than Oliver Wendell Holmes."

Laura put up her chin.  "Modern novels--no indeed.
When I've yet to read 'Jane Eyre,' and have only read
'Ivanhoe' and 'The Newcomes' once."

She made a point of the fact that her taste was the
extreme of conservatism, refusing to acknowledge hardly
any fiction that was not almost classic.  Even
Stevenson aroused her suspicions.

"Well, here's 'The Wrecker,' "observed Landry, handing
it up to her.  "I read it last summer-vacation at
Waukesha.  Just about took the top of my head off."

"I tried to read it," she answered.  "Such an
outlandish story, no love story in it, and so coarse,
so brutal, and then so improbable.  I couldn't get
interested."

But abruptly Landry uttered an exclamation:

"Well, what do you call this?  'Wanda,' by Ouida.
How is this for modern?"

She blushed to her hair, snatching the book from him.

"Page brought it home.  It's hers."

But her confusion betrayed her, and Landry shouted
derisively.

"Well, I _did_ read it then," she suddenly declared
defiantly.  "No, I'm not ashamed.  Yes, I read it from
cover to cover.  It made me cry like I haven't cried
over a book since I was a little tot.  You can say what
you like, but it's beautiful--a beautiful love story--
and it does tell about noble, unselfish people.  I
suppose it has its faults, but it makes you feel better
for reading it, and that's what all your 'Wreckers' in
the world would never do."

"Well," answered Landry, "I don't know much about that
sort of thing.  Corthell does.  He can talk you blind
about literature.  I've heard him run on by the hour.
He says the novel of the future is going to be the
novel without a love story."

But Laura nodded her head incredulously.

"It will be long after I am dead--that's one
consolation," she said.

"Corthell is full of crazy ideas anyhow," Landry went
on, still continuing to pass the books up to her.
"He's a good sort, and I like him well enough, but he's
the kind of man that gets up a reputation for being
clever and artistic by running down the very one
particular thing that every one likes, and cracking up
some book or picture or play that no one has ever heard
of.  Just let anything get popular once and Sheldon
Corthell can't speak of it without shuddering.  But
he'll go over here to some Archer Avenue pawn shop, dig
up an old brass stewpan, or coffee-pot that some greasy
old Russian Jew has chucked away, and he'll stick it up
in his studio and regularly kow-tow to it, and talk
about the 'decadence of American industrial arts.' I've
heard him.  I say it's pure affectation, that's what it
is, pure affectation."

But the book-case meanwhile had been filling up, and
now Laura remarked:

"No more, Landry.  That's all that will go here."

She prepared to descend from the ladder.  In filling
the higher shelves she had mounted almost to the top-
most step.

"Careful now," said Landry, as he came forward.  "Give
me your hand."

She gave it to him, and then, as she descended, Landry
had the assurance to put his arm around her waist as if
to steady her.  He was surprised at his own audacity,
for he had premeditated nothing, and his arm was about
her before he was well aware.  He yet found time to
experience a qualm of apprehension.  Just how would
Laura take it?  Had he gone too far?

But Laura did not even seem to notice, all her
attention apparently fixed upon coming safely down to
the floor.  She descended and shook out her skirts.

"There," she said, "that's over with.  Look, I'm all
dusty."

There was a knock at the half-open door.  It was the
cook.

"What are you going to have for supper, Miss Dearborn?"
she inquired.  "There's nothing in the house."

"Oh, dear," said Laura with sudden blankness, "I never
thought of supper.  Isn't there anything?"

"Nothing but some eggs and coffee."  The cook assumed an
air of aloofness, as if the entire affair were totally
foreign to any interest or concern of hers.  Laura
dismissed her, saying that she would see to it.

"We'll have to go out and get some things," she said.
"We'll all go.  I'm tired of staying in the house."

"No, I've a better scheme," announced Landry.  "I'll
invite you all out to dine with me.  I know a place
where you can get the best steak in America.  It has
stopped raining.  See," he showed her the window.

"But, Landry, we are all so dirty and miserable."

"We'll go right now and get there early.  There will be
nobody there, and we can have a room to ourselves, Oh,
it's all right," he declared.  "You just trust me."

"We'll see what Page and Aunt Wess' say.  Of course
Aunt Wess' would have to come."

"Of course," he said.  "I wouldn't think of asking you
unless she could come."

A little later the two sisters, Mrs. Wessels, and
Landry came out of the house, but before taking their
car they crossed to the opposite side of the street,
Laura having said that she wanted to note the effect of
her parlour curtains from the outside.

"I think they are looped up just far enough," she
declared.  But Landry was observing the house itself.

"It is the best-looking place on the block," he
answered.

In fact, the house was not without a certain
attractiveness.  It occupied a corner lot at the
intersection of Huron and North State streets.
Directly opposite was St.  James' Church, and at one
time the house had served as the rectory.  For the
matter of that, it had been built for just that
purpose.  Its style of architecture was distantly
ecclesiastic, with a suggestion of Gothic to some of
the doors and windows.  The material used was solid,
massive, the walls thick, the foundation heavy.  It did
not occupy the entire lot, the original builder seeming
to have preferred garden space to mere amplitude of
construction, and in addition to the inevitable "back
yard," a lawn bordered it on three sides.  It gave the
place a certain air of distinction and exclusiveness.
Vines grew thick upon the southern walls; in the summer
time fuchsias, geraniums, and pansies would flourish in
the flower beds by the front stoop.  The grass plat by
the curb boasted a couple of trees.  The whole place
was distinctive, individual, and very homelike, and
came as a grateful relief to the endless lines of
houses built of yellow Michigan limestone that pervaded
the rest of the neighbourhood in every direction.

"I love the place," exclaimed Laura.  "I think it's as
pretty a house as I have seen in Chicago."

"Well, it isn't so spick and span," commented Page.
"It gives you the idea that we're not new-rich and
showy and all."

But Aunt Wess' was not yet satisfied.

"_You_ may see, Laura," she remarked, "how you are
going to heat all that house with that one furnace, but
I declare _I_ don't."

Their car, or rather their train of cars, coupled
together in threes, in Chicago style, came, and Landry
escorted them down town.  All the way Laura could not
refrain from looking out of the windows, absorbed in
the contemplation of the life and aspects of the
streets.

"You will give yourself away," said Page.  "Everybody
will know you're from the country."

"I am," she retorted.  "But there's a difference
between just mere 'country' and Massachusetts, and I'm
not ashamed of it."

Chicago, the great grey city, interested her at every
instant and under every condition.  As yet she was not
sure that she liked it; she could not forgive its dirty
streets, the unspeakable squalor of some of its poorer
neighbourhoods that sometimes developed, like cancerous
growths, in the very heart of fine residence districts.
The black murk that closed every vista of the business
streets oppressed her, and the soot that stained linen
and gloves each time she stirred abroad was a never-
ending distress.

But the life was tremendous.  All around, on every
side, in every direction the vast machinery of
Commonwealth clashed and thundered from dawn to dark
and from dark till dawn.  Even now, as the car carried
her farther into the business quarter, she could hear
it, see it, and feel in her every fibre the trepidation
of its motion.  The blackened waters of the river, seen
an instant between stanchions as the car trundled
across the State Street bridge, disappeared under
fleets of tugs, of lake steamers, of lumber barges from
Sheboygan and Mackinac, of grain boats from Duluth, of
coal scows that filled the air with impalpable dust, of
cumbersome schooners laden with produce, of grimy
rowboats dodging the prows and paddles of the larger
craft, while on all sides, blocking the horizon, red in
color and designated by Brobdignag letters, towered the
hump-shouldered grain elevators.

Just before crossing the bridge on the north side of
the river she had caught a glimpse of a great railway
terminus.  Down below there, rectilinear,
scientifically paralleled and squared, the Yard
disclosed itself.  A system of grey rails beyond words
complicated opened out and spread immeasurably.
Switches, semaphores, and signal towers stood here and
there.  A dozen trains, freight and passenger, puffed
and steamed, waiting the word to depart.  Detached
engines hurried in and out of sheds and roundhouses,
seeking their trains, or bunted the ponderous freight
cars into switches; trundling up and down, clanking,
shrieking, their bells filling the air with the
clangour of tocsins.  Men in visored caps shouted
hoarsely, waving their arms or red flags; drays, their
big dappled horses, feeding in their nose bags, stood
backed up to the open doors of freight cars and
received their loads.  A train departed roaring.
Before midnight it would be leagues away boring through
the Great Northwest, carrying Trade--the life blood of
nations--into communities of which Laura had never
heard.  Another train, reeking with fatigue, the air
brakes screaming, arrived and halted, debouching a
flood of passengers, business men, bringing Trade--a
galvanising elixir--from the very ends and corners of
the continent.

Or, again, it was South Water Street--a jam of delivery
wagons and market carts backed to the curbs, leaving
only a tortuous path between the endless files of
horses, suggestive of an actual barrack of cavalry.
Provisions, market produce, "garden truck " and fruits,
in an infinite welter of crates and baskets, boxes, and
sacks, crowded the sidewalks.  The gutter was choked
with an overflow of refuse cabbage leaves, soft
oranges, decaying beet tops.  The air was thick with
the heavy smell of vegetation.  Food was trodden under
foot, food crammed the stores and warehouses to
bursting.  Food mingled with the mud of the highway.
The very dray horses were gorged with an unending
nourishment of snatched mouthfuls picked from
backboard, from barrel top, and from the edge of the
sidewalk.  The entire locality reeked with the fatness
of a hundred thousand furrows.  A land of plenty, the
inordinate abundance of the earth itself emptied itself
upon the asphalt and cobbles of the quarter.  It was
the Mouth of the City, and drawn from all directions,
over a territory of immense area, this glut of crude
subsistence was sucked in, as if into a rapacious
gullet, to feed the sinews and to nourish the fibres of
an immeasurable colossus.

Suddenly the meaning and significance of it all dawned
upon Laura.  The Great Grey City, brooking no rival,
imposed its dominion upon a reach of country larger
than many a kingdom of the Old World.  For, thousands
of miles beyond its confines was its influence felt.
Out, far out, far away in the snow and shadow of
Northern Wisconsin forests, axes and saws bit the bark
of century-old trees, stimulated by this city's energy.
Just as far to the southward pick and drill leaped to
the assault of veins of anthracite, moved by her
central power.  Her force turned the wheels of
harvester and seeder a thousand miles distant in Iowa
and Kansas. Her force spun the screws and propellers of
innumerable squadrons of lake steamers crowding the
Sault Sainte Marie.  For her and because of her all the
Central States, all the Great Northwest roared with
traffic and industry; sawmills screamed; factories,
their smoke blackening the sky, clashed and flamed;
wheels turned, pistons leaped in their cylinders; cog
gripped cog; beltings clasped the drums of mammoth
wheels; and converters of forges belched into the
clouded air their tempest breath of molten steel.

It was Empire, the resistless subjugation of all this
central world of the lakes and the prairies.  Here,
mid-most in the land, beat the Heart of the Nation,
whence inevitably must come its immeasurable power, its
infinite, infinite, inexhaustible vitality.  Here, of
all her cities, throbbed the true life--the true power
and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudity
of youth, disdaining rivalry; sane and healthy and
vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new-
found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its
wealth, infinite in its desires.  In its capacity
boundless, in its courage indomitable; subduing the
wilderness in a single generation, defying calamity,
and through the flame and the debris of a commonwealth
in ashes, rising suddenly renewed, formidable, and
Titanic.

Laura, her eyes dizzied, her ears stunned, watched
tirelessly.

"There is something terrible about it," she murmured,
half to herself, "something insensate.  In a way, it
doesn't seem human.  It's like a great tidal wave.
It's all very well for the individual just so long as
he can keep afloat, but once fallen, how horribly quick
it would crush him, annihilate him, how horribly quick,
and with such horrible indifference! I suppose it's
civilisation in the making, the thing that isn't meant
to be seen, as though it were too elemental, too--
primordial; like the first verses of Genesis."

The impression remained long with her, and not even the
gaiety of their little supper could altogether disperse
it.  She was a little frightened--frightened of the
vast, cruel machinery of the city's life, and of the
men who could dare it, who conquered it.  For a moment
they seemed, in a sense, more terrible than the city
itself--men for whom all this crash of conflict and
commerce had no terrors.  Those who could subdue it to
their purposes, must they not be themselves more
terrible, more pitiless, more brutal?  She shrank a
little.  What could women ever know of the life of men,
after all?  Even Landry, extravagant as he was, so
young, so exuberant, so seemingly innocent--she knew
that he was spoken of as a good business man.  He, too,
then had his other side.  For him the Battle of the
Street was an exhilaration.  Beneath that boyish
exterior was the tough coarseness, the male hardness,
the callousness that met the brunt and withstood the
shock of onset.

Ah, these men of the city, what could women ever know
of them, of their lives, of that other existence
through which--freed from the influence of wife or
mother, or daughter or sister--they passed every day
from nine o'clock till evening?  It was a life in which
women had no part, and in which, should they enter it,
they would no longer recognise son or husband, or
father or brother.  The gentle-mannered fellow, clean-
minded, clean-handed, of the breakfast or supper table
was one man.  The other, who and what was he?  Down
there in the murk and grime of the business district
raged the Battle of the Street, and therein he was a
being transformed, case hardened, supremely selfish,
asking no quarter; no, nor giving any.  Fouled with the
clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched
with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies,
he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the
marchings of an army that surged forever forward and
back; now in merciless assault, beating the fallen
enemy under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless,
trampling down the auxiliaries of the day before, in a
panic dash for safety; always cruel, always selfish,
always pitiless.

To contrast these men with such as Corthell was
inevitable.  She remembered him, to whom the business
district was an unexplored country, who kept himself
far from the fighting, his hands unstained, his feet
unsullied.  He passed his life gently, in the calm,
still atmosphere of art, in the cult of the beautiful,
unperturbed, tranquil; painting, reading, or, piece by
piece, developing his beautiful stained glass.  Him
women could know, with him they could sympathise.  And
he could enter fully into their lives and help and
stimulate them.  Of the two existences which did she
prefer, that of the business man, or that of the
artist?

Then suddenly Laura surprised herself.  After all, she
was a daughter of the frontier, and the blood of those
who had wrestled with a new world flowed in her body.
Yes, Corthell's was a beautiful life; the charm of dim
painted windows, the attraction of darkened studios
with their harmonies of color, their orientalisms, and
their arabesques was strong.  No doubt it all had its
place.  It fascinated her at times, in spite of
herself.  To relax the mind, to indulge the senses, to
live in an environment of pervading beauty was
delightful.  But the men to whom the woman in her
turned were not those of the studio.  Terrible as the
Battle of the Street was, it was yet battle.  Only the
strong and the brave might dare it, and the figure that
held her imagination and her sympathy was not the
artist, soft of hand and of speech, elaborating graces
of sound and color and form, refined, sensitive, and
temperamental; but the fighter, unknown and un-knowable
to women as he was; hard, rigorous, panoplied in the
harness of the warrior, who strove among the trumpets,
and who, in the brunt of conflict, conspicuous,
formidable, set the battle in a rage around him, and
exulted like a champion in the shoutings of the
captains.

They were not long at table, and by the time they were
ready to depart it was about half-past five.  But when
they emerged into the street, it was discovered that
once more the weather had abruptly changed.  It was
snowing thickly.  Again a bitter wind from off the Lake
tore through the streets.  The slush and melted snow
was freezing, and the north side of every lamp post and
telegraph pole was sheeted with ice.

To add to their discomfort, the North State Street cars
were blocked.  When they gained the corner of
Washington Street they could see where the congestion
began, a few squares distant.

"There's nothing for it," declared Landry, "but to go
over and get the Clarke Street cars--and at that you
may have to stand up all the way home, at this time of
day."

They paused, irresolute, a moment on the corner.  It
was the centre of the retail quarter.  Close at hand a
vast dry goods house, built in the old "iron-front"
style, towered from the pavement, and through its
hundreds of windows presented to view a world of stuffs
and fabrics, upholsteries and textiles, kaleidoscopic,
gleaming in the fierce brilliance of a multitude of
lights.  From each street doorway was pouring an army
of "shoppers," women for the most part; and these--
since the store catered to a rich clientele--
fashionably dressed.  Many of them stood for a moment
on the threshold of the storm-doorways, turning up the
collars of their sealskins, settling their hands in
their muffs, and searching the street for their coupes
and carriages.

Among the number of those thus engaged, one, suddenly
catching sight of Laura, waved a muff in her direction,
then came quickly forward.  It was Mrs. Cressler.

"Laura, my dearest girl! Of all the people.  I _am_ so
glad to see you!" She kissed Laura on the cheek, shook
hands all around, and asked about the sisters' new
home.  Did they want anything, or was there anything
she could do to help?  Then interrupting herself, and
laying a glove on Laura's arm:

"I've got more to _tell_ you."

She compressed her lips and stood off from Laura,
fixing her with a significant glance.

"Me?  To tell me?"

"Where are you going now?"

"Home; but our cars are stopped.  We must go over to----"

"Fiddlesticks! You and Page and Mrs. Wessels--all of
you are coming home and dine with me."

"But we've had dinner already," they all cried,
speaking at once.

Page explained the situation, but Mrs. Cressler would
not be denied.

"The carriage is right here," she said.  "I don't have
to call for Charlie.  He's got a man from Cincinnati in
tow, and they are going to dine at the Calumet Club."

It ended by the two sisters and Mrs. Wessels getting
into Mrs. Cressler's carriage.  Landry excused himself.
He lived on the South Side, on Michigan Avenue, and
declaring that he knew they had had enough of him for
one day, took himself off.

But whatever Mrs. Cressler had to tell Laura, she
evidently was determined to save for her ears only.
Arrived at the Dearborns' home, she sent her footman in
to tell the "girl" that the family would not be home
that night.  The Cresslers lived hard by on the same
street, and within ten minutes' walk of the Dearborns.
The two sisters and their aunt would be back
immediately after breakfast.

When they had got home with Mrs. Cressler, this latter
suggested hot tea and sandwiches in the library, for
the ride had been cold.  But the others, worn out,
declared for bed as soon as Mrs. Cressler herself had
dined.

"Oh, bless you, Carrie," said Aunt Wess'; "I couldn't
think of tea.  My back is just about broken, and I'm
going straight to my bed."

Mrs. Cressler showed them to their rooms.  Page and
Mrs. Wessels elected to sleep together, and once the
door had closed upon them the little girl unburdened
herself.

"I suppose Laura thinks it's all right, running off
like this for the whole blessed night, and no one to
look after the house but those two servants that nobody
knows anything about.  As though there weren't heaven
knows what all to tend to there in the morning.  I just
don't see," she exclaimed decisively, "how we're going
to get settled at all.  That Landry Court! My goodness,
he's more hindrance than help.  Did you ever _see!_ He
just dashes in as though he were doing it all, and
messes everything up, and loses things, and gets things
into the wrong place, and forgets this and that, and
then he and Laura sit down and spoon.  I never saw
anything like it.  First it's Corthell and then Landry,
and next it will be somebody else.  Laura regularly
mortifies me; a great, grown-up girl like that,
flirting, and letting every man she meets think that
he's just the one particular one of the whole earth.
It's not good form.  And Landry--as if he didn't know
we've got more to do now than just to dawdle and
dawdle.  I could slap him.  I like to see a man take
life seriously and try to amount to something, and not
waste the best years of his life trailing after women
who are old enough to be his grandmother, and don't
mean that it will ever come to anything."

In her room, in the front of the house, Laura was
partly undressed when Mrs. Cressler knocked at her
door.  The latter had put on a wrapper of flowered
silk, and her hair was bound in "invisible nets."

"I brought you a dressing-gown," she said.  She hung it
over the foot of the bed, and sat down on the bed
itself, watching Laura, who stood before the glass of
the bureau, her head bent upon her breast, her hands
busy with the back of her hair.  From time to time the
hairpins clicked as she laid them down in the silver
trays close at hand.  Then putting her chin in the air,
she shook her head, and the great braids, unlooped,
fell to her waist.

"What pretty hair you have, child," murmured Mrs.
Cressler.  She was settling herself for a long talk
with her protege.  She had much to tell, but now that
they had the whole night before them, could afford to
take her time.

Between the two women the conversation began slowly,
with detached phrases and observations that did not
call necessarily for answers--mere beginnings that they
did not care to follow up.

"They tell me," said Mrs. Cressler, "that that Gretry
girl smokes ten cigarettes every night before she goes
to bed.  You know the Gretrys--they were at the opera
the other night."

Laura permitted herself an indefinite murmur of
interest.  Her head to one side, she drew the brush in
slow, deliberate movements downward underneath the
long, thick strands of her hair.  Mrs. Cressler watched
her attentively.

"Why don't you wear your hair that new way, Laura," she
remarked, "farther down on your neck?  I see every one
doing it now."

The house was very still.  Outside the double windows
they could hear the faint murmuring click of the frozen
snow.  A radiator in the hallway clanked and strangled
for a moment, then fell quiet again.

"What a pretty room this is," said Laura.  "I think
I'll have to do our guest room something like this--a
sort of white and gold effect.  My hair?  Oh, I don't
know.  Wearing it low that way makes it catch so on the
hooks of your collar, and, besides, I was afraid it
would make my head look so flat."

There was a silence.  Laura braided a long strand, with
quick, regular motions of both hands, and letting it
fall over her shoulder, shook it into place with a
twist of her head.  She stepped out of her skirt, and
Mrs. Cressler handed her her dressing-gown, and brought
out a pair of quilted slippers of red satin from the
wardrobe.

In the grate, the fire that had been lighted just
before they had come upstairs was crackling sharply.
Laura drew up an armchair and sat down in front of it,
her chin in her hand.  Mrs. Cressler stretched herself
upon the bed, an arm behind her head.

"Well, Laura," she began at length, "I have some real
news for you.  My dear, I believe you've made a
conquest."

"I!" murmured Laura, looking around.  She feigned a
surprise, though she guessed at once that Mrs. Cressler
had Corthell in mind.

"That Mr. Jadwin--the one you met at the opera."

Genuinely taken aback, Laura sat upright and stared
wide-eyed.

"Mr. Jadwin!" she exclaimed.  "Why, we didn't have five
minutes' talk.  Why, I hardly know the man.  I only met
him last night."

But Mrs. Cressler shook her head, closing her eyes and
putting her lips together.

"That don't make any difference, Laura.  Trust me to
tell when a man is taken with a girl.  My dear, you can
have him as easy as _that._" She snapped her fingers.

"Oh, I'm sure you're mistaken, Mrs. Cressler."

"Not in the least.  I've known Curtis Jadwin now for
fifteen years--nobody better.  He's as old a family
friend as Charlie and I have.  I know him like a book.
And I tell you the man is in love with you."

"Well, I hope he didn't tell you as much," cried Laura,
promising herself to be royally angry if such was the
case.  But Mrs. Cressler hastened to reassure her.

"Oh my, no.  But all the way home last night--he came
home with us, you know--he kept referring to you, and
just so soon as the conversation got on some other
subject he would lose interest.  He wanted to know all
about you--oh, you know how a man will talk," she
exclaimed.  "And he said you had more sense and more
intelligence than any girl he had ever known."

"Oh, well," answered Laura deprecatingly, as if to say
that that did not count for much with her.

"And that you were simply beautiful.  He said that he
never remembered to have seen a more beautiful woman."

Laura turned her head away, a hand shielding her cheek.
She did not answer immediately, then at length:

"Has he--this Mr. Jadwin--has he ever been married
before?"

"No, no.  He's a bachelor, and rich! He could buy and
sell us.  And don't think, Laura dear, that I'm jumping
at conclusions.  I hope I'm woman of the world enough
to know that a man who's taken with a pretty face and
smart talk isn't going to rush right into matrimony
because of that.  It wasn't so much what Curtis Jadwin
said--though, dear me _suz,_ he talked enough about
you--as what he didn't say.  I could tell.  He was
thinking hard.  He was _hit,_ Laura.  I know he was.
And Charlie said he spoke about you again this morning
at breakfast.  Charlie makes me tired sometimes," she
added irrelevantly.

"Charlie?" repeated Laura.

"Well, of course I spoke to him about Jadwin, and how
taken he seemed with you, and the man roared at me."

"_He_ didn't believe it, then."

"Yes he did--when I could get him to talk seriously
about it, and when I made him remember how Mr. Jadwin
had spoken in the carriage coming home."

Laura curled her leg under her and sat nursing her foot
and looking into the fire.  For a long time neither
spoke.  A little clock of brass and black marble began
to chime, very prettily, the half hour of nine.  Mrs.
Cressler observed:

"That Sheldon Corthell seems to be a very agreeable
kind of a young man, doesn't he?"

"Yes," replied Laura thoughtfully, "he is agreeable."

"And a talented fellow, too," continued Mrs. Cressler.
"But somehow it never impressed me that there was very
much _to_ him."

"Oh," murmured Laura indifferently, "I don't know."

"I suppose," Mrs. Cressler went on, in a tone of
resignation, "I suppose he thinks the world and all of
_you?_"

Laura raised a shoulder without answering.

"Charlie can't abide him," said Mrs. Cressler.  "Funny,
isn't it what prejudices men have?  Charlie always
speaks of him as though he were a higher order of
glazier.  Curtis Jadwin seems to like him....  What do
you think of him, Laura--of Mr. Jadwin?"

"I don't know," she answered, looking vaguely into the
fire.  "I thought he was a _strong_ man--mentally I
mean, and that he would be kindly and--and--generous.
Somehow," she said, musingly, "I didn't think he would
be the sort of man that women would take to, at first--
but then I don't know.  I saw very little of him, as I
say.  He didn't impress me as being a _woman's_ man."

"All the better," said the other.  "Who would want to
marry a woman's man?  I wouldn't.  Sheldon Corthell is
that.  I tell you one thing, Laura, and when you are as
old as I am, you'll know it's true: the kind of a man
that _men_ like--not women--is the kind of a man that
makes the best husband."

Laura nodded her head.

"Yes," she answered, listlessly, "I suppose that's true."

"You said Jadwin struck you as being a kindly man, a
generous man.  He's just that, and that charitable! You
know he has a Sunday-school over on the West Side, a
Sunday-school for mission children, and I do believe
he's more interested in that than in his business.  He
wants to make it the biggest Sunday-school in Chicago.
It's an ambition of his.  I don't want you to think
that he's good in a goody-goody way, because he's not.
Laura," she exclaimed, "he's a _fine man_.  I didn't
intend to brag him up to you, because I wanted you to
like him.  But no one knows--as I say--no one knows
Curtis Jadwin better than Charlie and I, and we just
_love_ him.  The kindliest, biggest-hearted fellow--oh,
well, you'll know him for yourself, and then you'll
see.  He passes the plate in our church."

"Dr. Wendell's church?" asked Laura.

"Yes you know--the Second Presbyterian."

"I'm Episcopalian myself," observed Laura, still
thoughtfully gazing into the fire.

"I know, I know.  But Jadwin isn't the blue-nosed sort.
And now see here, Laura, I want to tell you.  J.--
that's what Charlie and I call Jadwin--J. was talking
to us the other day about supporting a ward in the
Children's Hospital for the children of his Sunday-
school that get hurt or sick.  You see he has nearly
eight hundred boys and girls in his school, and there's
not a week passes that he don't hear of some one of
them who has been hurt or taken sick.  And he wants to
start a ward at the Children's Hospital, that can take
care of them.  He says he wants to get other people
interested, too, and so he wants to start a
contribution.  He says he'll double any amount that's
raised in the next six months--that is, if there's two
thousand raised, he'll make it four thousand;
understand?  And so Charlie and I and the Gretrys are
going to get up an amateur play--a charity affair--and
raise as much money as we can.  J. thinks it's a good
idea, and--here's the point--we were talking about it
coming home in the carriage, and J. said he wondered if
that Miss Dearborn wouldn't take part.  And we are all
wild to have you.  You know you do that sort of thing
so well.  Now don't say yes or no to-night.  You sleep
over it.  J. is crazy to have you in it."

"I'd love to do it," answered Laura.  "But I would have
to see--it takes so long to get settled, and there's so
much to do about a big house like ours, I might not
have time.  But I will let you know."

Mrs. Cressler told her in detail about the proposed
play.  Landry Court was to take part, and she enlisted
Laura's influence to get Sheldon Corthell to undertake
a role.  Page, it appeared, had already promised to
help.  Laura remembered now that she had heard her
speak of it.  However, the plan was so immature as yet,
that it hardly admitted of very much discussion, and
inevitably the conversation came back to its starting-
point .

"You know," Laura had remarked in answer to one of Mrs.
Cressler's observations upon the capabilities and
business ability of "J.,"  "you know I never heard of
him before you spoke of our theatre party.  I don't
know anything about him."

But Mrs. Cressler promptly supplied the information.
Curtis Jadwin was a man about thirty-five, who had
begun life without a sou in his pockets.  He was a
native of Michigan.  His people were farmers, nothing
more nor less than hardy, honest fellows, who ploughed
and sowed for a living.  Curtis had only a rudimentary
schooling, because he had given up the idea of
finishing his studies in the High School in Grand
Rapids, on the chance of going into business with a
livery stable keeper.  Then in time he had bought out
the business and had run it for himself.  Some one in
Chicago owed him money, and in default of payment had
offered him a couple of lots on Wabash Avenue.  That
was how he happened to come to Chicago.  Naturally
enough as the city grew the Wabash Avenue property--it
was near Monroe Street--increased in value.  He sold
the lots and bought other real estate, sold that and
bought somewhere else, and so on, till he owned some of
the best business sites in the city.  Just his ground
rent alone brought him, heaven knew how many thousands
a year.  He was one of the largest real estate owners
in Chicago.  But he no longer bought and sold.  His
property had grown so large that just the management of
it alone took up most of his time.  He had an office in
the Rookery, and perhaps being so close to the Board of
Trade Building,  had given him a taste for trying a
little deal in wheat now and then.  As a rule, he
deplored speculation.  He had no fixed principles about
it, like Charlie.  Only he was conservative;
occasionally he hazarded small operations.  Somehow he
had never married.  There had been affairs.  Oh, yes,
one or two, of course.  Nothing very serious, He just
didn't seem to have met the right girl, that was all.
He lived on Michigan Avenue, near the corner of Twenty-
first Street, in one of those discouraging eternal
yellow limestone houses with a basement dining-room.
His aunt kept house for him, and his nieces and nephews
overran the place.  There was always a raft of them
there, either coming or going; and the way they
exploited him! He supported them all; heaven knew how
many there were; such drabs and gawks, all elbows and
knees, who soaked themselves with cologne and made
companions of the servants.  They and the second girls
were always squabbling about their things that they
found in each other's rooms.

It was growing late.  At length Mrs. Cressler rose.

"My goodness, Laura, look at the time; and I've been
keeping you up when you must be killed for sleep."

She took herself away, pausing at the doorway long
enough to say:

"Do try to manage to take part in the play.  J. made me
promise that I would get you."

"Well, I think I can," Laura answered.  "Only I'll have
to see first how our new regime is going to run--the
house I mean."

When Mrs. Cressler had gone Laura lost no time in
getting to bed.  But after she turned out the gas she
remembered that she had not "covered" the fire, a
custom that she still retained from the daily round of
her life at Barrington.  She did not light the gas
again, but guided by the firelight, spread a shovelful
of ashes over the top of the grate.  Yet when she had
done this, she still knelt there a moment, looking
wide-eyed into the glow, thinking over the events of
the last twenty-four hours.  When all was said and
done, she had, after all, found more in Chicago than
the clash and trepidation of empire-making, more than
the reverberation of the thunder of battle, more than
the piping and choiring of sweet music.

First it had been Sheldon Corthell, quiet, persuasive,
eloquent.  Then Landry Court with his exuberance and
extravagance and boyishness, and now--unexpectedly--
behold, a new element had appeared--this other one,
this man of the world, of affairs, mature, experienced,
whom she hardly knew.  It was charming she told
herself, exciting.  Life never had seemed half so
delightful.  Romantic, she felt Romance, unseen,
intangible, at work all about her.  And love, which of
all things knowable was dearest to her, came to her
unsought.

Her first aversion to the Great Grey City was fast
disappearing.  She saw it now in a kindlier aspect.

"I think," she said at last, as she still knelt before
the fire, looking deep into the coals, absorbed,
abstracted, "I think that I am going to be very happy
here."



III


On a certain Monday morning, about a month later,
Curtis Jadwin descended from his office in the Rookery
Building, and turning southward, took his way toward
the brokerage and commission office of Gretry, Converse
and Co., on the ground floor of the Board of Trade
Building, only a few steps away.

It was about nine o'clock; the weather was mild, the
sun shone.  La Salle Street swarmed with the
multitudinous life that seethed about the doors of the
innumerable offices of brokers and commission men of
the neighbourhood.  To the right, in the peristyle of
the Illinois Trust Building, groups of clerks, of
messengers, of brokers, of clients, and of depositors
formed and broke incessantly.  To the left, where the
facade of the Board of Trade blocked the street, the
activity was astonishing, and in and out of the swing
doors of its entrance streamed an incessant tide of
coming and going.  All the life of the neighbourhood
seemed to centre at this point--the entrance of the
Board of Trade.  Two currents that trended swiftly
through La Salle and Jackson streets, and that fed, or
were fed by, other tributaries that poured in through
Fifth Avenue and through Clarke and Dearborn streets,
met at this point--one setting in, the other out.  The
nearer the currents the greater their speed.  Men--mere
flotsam in the flood--as they turned into La Salle
Street from Adams or from Monroe, or even from as far
as Madison, seemed to accelerate their pace as they
approached.  At the Illinois Trust the walk became a
stride, at the Rookery the stride was almost a trot.
But at the corner of Jackson Street, the Board of Trade
now merely the width of the street away, the trot
became a run, and young men and boys, under the
pretence of escaping the trucks and wagons of the
cobbles, dashed across at a veritable gallop, flung
themselves panting into the entrance of the Board, were
engulfed in the turmoil of the spot, and disappeared
with a sudden fillip into the gloom of the interior.

Often Jadwin had noted the scene, and, unimaginative
though he was, had long since conceived the notion of
some great, some resistless force within the Board of
Trade Building that held the tide of the streets within
its grip, alternately drawing it in and throwing it
forth.  Within there, a great whirlpool, a pit of
roaring waters spun and thundered, sucking in the life
tides of the city, sucking them in as into the mouth of
some tremendous cloaca, the maw of some colossal sewer;
then vomiting them forth again, spewing them up and
out, only to catch them in the return eddy and suck
them in afresh.

Thus it went, day after day.  Endlessly, ceaselessly
the Pit, enormous, thundering, sucked in and spewed
out, sending the swirl of its mighty central eddy far
out through the city's channels.  Terrible at the
centre, it was, at the circumference, gentle, insidious
and persuasive, the send of the flowing so mild, that
to embark upon it, yielding to the influence, was a
pleasure that seemed all devoid of risk.  But the
circumference was not bounded by the city.  All through
the Northwest, all through the central world of the
Wheat the set and whirl of that innermost Pit made
itself felt; and it spread and spread and spread till
grain in the elevators of Western Iowa moved and
stirred and answered to its centripetal force, and men
upon the streets of New York felt the mysterious
tugging of its undertow engage their feet, embrace
their bodies, overwhelm them, and carry them bewildered
and unresisting back and downwards to the Pit itself.

Nor was the Pit's centrifugal power any less.  Because
of some sudden eddy spinning outward from the middle of
its turmoil, a dozen bourses of continental Europe
clamoured with panic, a dozen Old-World banks, firm as
the established hills, trembled and vibrated.  Because
of an unexpected caprice in the swirling of the inner
current, some far-distant channel suddenly dried, and
the pinch of famine made itself felt among the vine
dressers of Northern Italy, the coal miners of Western
Prussia.  Or another channel filled, and the starved
moujik of the steppes, and the hunger-shrunken coolie
of the Ganges' watershed fed suddenly fat and made
thank offerings before ikon and idol.

There in the centre of the Nation, midmost of that
continent that lay between the oceans of the New World
and the Old, in the heart's heart of the affairs of
men, roared and rumbled the Pit.  It was as if the
Wheat, Nourisher of the Nations, as it rolled gigantic
and majestic in a vast flood from West to East, here,
like a Niagara, finding its flow impeded, burst
suddenly into the appalling fury of the Maelstrom, into
the chaotic spasm of a world-force, a primeval energy,
blood-brother of the earthquake and the glacier, raging
and wrathful that its power should be braved by some
pinch of human spawn that dared raise barriers across
its courses.

Small wonder that Cressler laughed at the thought of
cornering wheat, and even now as Jadwin crossed Jackson
Street, on his way to his broker's office on the lower
floor of the Board of Trade Building, he noted the ebb
and flow that issued from its doors, and remembered the
huge river of wheat that rolled through this place from
the farms of Iowa and ranches of Dakota to the mills
and bakeshops of Europe.

"There's something, perhaps, in what Charlie says," he
said to himself.  "Corner this stuff--my God!"

Gretry, Converse & Co. was the name of the brokerage
firm that always handled Jadwin's rare speculative
ventures.  Converse was dead long since, but the firm
still retained its original name.  The house was as old
and as well established as any on the Board of Trade.
It had a reputation for conservatism, and was known
more as a Bear than a Bull concern.  It was immensely
wealthy and immensely important.  It discouraged the
growth of a clientele of country customers, of small
adventurers, knowing well that these were the first to
go in a crash, unable to meet margin calls, and leaving
to their brokers the responsibility of their disastrous
trades.  The large, powerful Bears were its friends,
the Bears strong of grip, tenacious of jaw, capable of
pulling down the strongest Bull.  Thus the firm had no
consideration for the "outsiders," the "public"--the
Lambs.  The Lambs! Such a herd, timid, innocent,
feeble, as much out of place in La Salle Street as a
puppy in a cage of panthers; the Lambs, whom Bull and
Bear did not so much as condescend to notice, but who,
in their mutual struggle of horn and claw, they crushed
to death by the mere rolling of their bodies.

Jadwin did not go directly into Gretry's main office,
but instead made his way in at the entrance of the
Board of Trade Building, and going on past the stair-
ways that on either hand led up to the "Floor" on the
second story, entered the corridor beyond, and thence
gained the customers' room of Gretry, Converse & Co.
All the more important brokerage firms had offices on
the ground floor of the building, offices that had two
entrances, one giving upon the street, and one upon the
corridor of the Board.  Generally the corridor entrance
admitted directly to the firm's customers' room.  This
was the case with the Gretry-Converse house.

Once in the customers' room, Jadwin paused, looking
about him.

He could not tell why Gretry had so earnestly desired
him to come to his office that morning, but he wanted
to know how wheat was selling before talking to the
broker.  The room was large, and but for the lighted
gas, burning crudely without globes, would have been
dark.  All one wall opposite the door was taken up by a
great blackboard covered with chalked figures in
columns, and illuminated by a row of overhead gas jets
burning under a tin reflector.  Before this board files
of chairs were placed, and these were occupied by
groups of nondescripts, shabbily dressed men, young and
old, with tired eyes and unhealthy complexions, who
smoked and expectorated, or engaged in interminable
conversations.

In front of the blackboard, upon a platform, a young
man in shirt-sleeves, his cuffs caught up by metal
clamps, walked up and down.  Screwed to the black-board
itself was a telegraph instrument, and from time to
time, as this buzzed and ticked, the young man chalked
up cabalistic, and almost illegible figures under
columns headed by initials of certain stocks and bonds,
or by the words "Pork," "Oats," or, larger than all the
others, "May Wheat."  The air of the room was stale,
close, and heavy with tobacco fumes.  The only noises
were the low hum of conversations, the unsteady click
of the telegraph key, and the tapping of the chalk in
the marker's fingers.

But no one in the room seemed to pay the least
attention to the blackboard.  One quotation replaced
another, and the key and the chalk clicked and tapped
incessantly.  The occupants of the room, sunk in their
chairs, seemed to give no heed; some even turned their
backs; one, his handkerchief over his knee, adjusted
his spectacles, and opening a newspaper two days old,
began to read with peering deliberation, his lips
forming each word.  These nondescripts gathered there,
they knew not why.  Every day found them in the same
place, always with the same fetid, unlighted cigars,
always with the same frayed newspapers two days old.
There they sat, inert, stupid, their decaying senses
hypnotised and soothed by the sound of the distant
rumble of the Pit, that came through the ceiling from
the floor of the Board overhead.

One of these figures, that of a very old man, blear-
eyed, decrepit, dirty, in a battered top hat and faded
frock coat, discoloured and weather-stained at the
shoulders, seemed familiar to Jadwin.  It recalled some
ancient association, he could not say what.  But he was
unable to see the old man's face distinctly; the light
was bad, and he sat with his face turned from him,
eating a sandwich, which he held in a trembling hand.

Jadwin, having noted that wheat was selling at 94, went
away, glad to be out of the depressing atmosphere of
the room.

Gretry was in his office, and Jadwin was admitted at
once.  He sat down in a chair by the broker's desk, and
for the moment the two talked of trivialities.  Gretry
was a large, placid, smooth-faced man, stolid as an ox;
inevitably dressed in blue serge, a quill tooth-pick
behind his ear, a Grand Army button in his lapel.  He
and Jadwin were intimates.  The two had come to Chicago
almost simultaneously, and had risen together to become
the wealthy men they were at the moment.  They belonged
to the same club, lunched together every day at
Kinsley's, and took each other driving behind their
respective trotters on alternate Saturday afternoons.
In the middle of summer each stole a fortnight from his
business, and went fishing at Geneva Lake in Wisconsin.

"I say," Jadwin observed, "I saw an old fellow outside
in your customers' room just now that put me in mind of
Hargus.  You remember that deal of his, the one he
tried to swing before he died.  Oh--how long ago was
that?  Bless my soul, that must have been fifteen, yes
twenty years ago."

The deal of which Jadwin spoke was the legendary
operation of the Board of Trade--a mammoth corner in
September wheat, manipulated by this same Hargus, a
millionaire, who had tripled his fortune by the corner,
and had lost it by some chicanery on the part of his
associate before another year.  He had run wheat up to
nearly two dollars, had been in his day a king all-
powerful.  Since then all deals had been spoken of in
terms of the Hargus affair.  Speculators said, "It was
almost as bad as the Hargus deal."  "It was like the
Hargus smash."  " It was as big a thing as the Hargus
corner."  Hargus had become a sort of creature of
legends, mythical, heroic, transfigured in the glory of
his millions.

"Easily twenty years ago," continued Jadwin.  "If
Hargus could come to life now, he'd be surprised at the
difference in the way we do business these days.
Twenty years.  Yes, it's all of that.  I declare, Sam,
we're getting old, aren't we?"

"I guess that _was_ Hargus you saw out there," answered
the broker.  "He's not dead.  Old fellow in a stove-
pipe and greasy frock coat?  Yes, that's Hargus."

"What!" exclaimed Jadwin.  "_That_ Hargus?"

"Of course it was.  He comes 'round every day.  The
clerks give him a dollar every now and then."

"And he's not dead?  And that was Hargus, that wretched,
broken--whew! I don't want to think of it, Sam!" And
Jadwin, taken all aback, sat for a moment speechless.

"Yes, sir," muttered the broker grimly, "that was
Hargus."

There was a long silence.  Then at last Gretry
exclaimed briskly:

"Well, here's what I want to see you about."

He lowered his voice: " You know I've got a
correspondent or two at Paris--all the brokers have--
and we make no secret as to who they are.  But I've had
an extra man at work over there for the last six
months, very much on the quiet.  I don't mind telling
you this much--that he's not the least important member
of the United States Legation.  Well, now and then he
is supposed to send me what the reporters call
"exclusive news"--that's what I feed him for, and I
could run a private steam yacht on what it costs me.
But news I get from him is a day or so in advance of
everybody else.  He hasn't sent me anything very
important till this morning.  This here just came in."

He picked up a despatch from his desk and read:

"'Utica--headquarters--modification--organic--
concomitant--within one month,' which means," he added,
"this.  I've just deciphered it," and he handed Jadwin
a slip of paper on which was written:

"Bill providing for heavy import duties on foreign
grains certain to be introduced in French Chamber of
Deputies within one month."

"Have you got it?" he demanded of Jadwin, as he took
the slip back.  "Won't forget it?" He twisted the paper
into a roll and burned it carefully in the office
cuspidor.

"Now," he remarked, "do you come in?  It's just the two
of us, J., and I think we can make that Porteous clique
look very sick."

"Hum!" murmured Jadwin surprised.  "That _does_ give
you a twist on the situation.  But to tell the truth,
Sam, I had sort of made up my mind to keep out of
speculation since my last little deal.  A man gets into
this game, and into it, and into it, and before you
know he can't pull out--and he don't want to.  Next he
gets his nose scratched, and he hits back to make up
for it, and just hits into the air and loses his
balance--and down he goes.  I don't want to make any
more money, Sam.  I've got my little pile, and before I
get too old I want to have some fun out of it."

"But lord love you, J.," objected the other, "this
ain't speculation.  You can see for yourself how sure
it is.  I'm not a baby at this business, am I?  You'll
let me know something of this game, won't you?  And I
tell you, J., it's found money.  The man that sells
wheat short on the strength of this has as good as got
the money in his vest pocket already.  Oh, nonsense, of
course you'll come in.  I've been laying for that Bull
gang since long before the Helmick failure, and now
I've got it right where I want it.  Look here, J., you
aren't the man to throw money away.  You'd buy a
business block if you knew you could sell it over again
at a profit.  Now here's the chance to make really a
fine Bear deal.  Why, as soon as this news gets on the
floor there, the price will bust right down, and down,
and down.  Porteous and his crowd couldn't keep it up
to save 'em from the receiver's hand one single
minute."

"I know, Sam," answered Jadwin, "and the trouble is,
not that I don't want to speculate, but that I _do_--
too much.  That's why I said I'd keep out of it.  It
isn't so much the money as the fun of playing the game.
With half a show, I would get in a little more and a
little more, till by and by I'd try to throw a big
thing, and instead, the big thing would throw me.  Why,
Sam, when you told me that that wreck out there
mumbling a sandwich was Hargus, it made me turn cold."

"Yes, in your feet," retorted Gretry.  "I'm not asking
you to risk all your money, am I, or a fifth of it, or
a twentieth of it?  Don't be an ass, J.  Are we a
conservative house, or aren't we?  Do I talk like this
when I'm not sure?  Look here.  Let me sell a million
bushels for you.  Yes, I know it's a bigger order than
I've handled for you before.  But _this_ time I want to
go _right into it,_ head down and heels up, and get a
twist on those Porteous buckoes, and raise 'em right
out of their boots.  We get a crop report this morning,
and if the visible supply is as large as I think it is,
the price will go off and unsettle the whole market.
I'll sell short for you at the best figures we can get,
and you can cover on the slump any time between now and
the end of May."

Jadwin hesitated.  In spite of himself he felt a Chance
had come.  Again that strange sixth sense of his, the
inexplicable instinct, that only the born speculator
knows, warned him.  Every now and then during the
course of his business career, this intuition came to
him, this _flair,_ this intangible, vague premonition,
this presentiment that he must seize Opportunity or
else Fortune, that so long had stayed at his elbow,
would desert him.  In the air about him he seemed to
feel an influence, a sudden new element, the presence
of a new force.  It was Luck, the great power, the
great goddess, and all at once it had stooped from out
the invisible, and just over his head passed swiftly in
a rush of glittering wings.

"The thing would have to be handled like glass,"
observed the broker thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing "A
tip like this is public property in twenty-four hours,
and it don't give us any too much time.  I don't want
to break the price by unloading a million or more
bushels on 'em all of a sudden.  I'll scatter the
orders pretty evenly.  You see," he added, "here's a
big point in our favor.  We'll be able to sell on a
strong market.  The Pit traders have got some crazy war
rumour going, and they're as flighty over it as a young
ladies' seminary over a great big rat.  And even
without that, the market is top-heavy.  Porteous makes
me weary.  He and his gang have been bucking it up till
we've got an abnormal price.  Ninety-four for May
wheat! Why, it's ridiculous.  Ought to be selling way
down in the eighties.  The least little jolt would tip
her over.  Well," he said abruptly, squaring himself at
Jadwin, "do we come in?  If that same luck of yours is
still in working order, here's your chance, J., to make
a killing.  There's just that gilt-edged, full-morocco
chance that a report of big 'visible' would give us."

Jadwin laughed.  "Sam," he said, "I'll flip a coin for
it."

"Oh, get out," protested the broker; then suddenly--the
gambling instinct that a lifetime passed in that place
had cultivated in him--exclaimed:

"All right.  Flip a coin.  But give me your word you'll
stay by it.  Heads you come in; tails you don't.  Will
you give me your word?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," replied Jadwin, amused
at the foolishness of the whole proceeding.  But as he
balanced the half-dollar on his thumb-nail, he was all
at once absolutely assured that it would fall heads.
He flipped it in the air, and even as he watched it
spin, said to himself, "It will come heads.  It could
not possibly be anything else.  I _know_ it will be
heads."

And as a matter of course the coin fell heads.

"All right," he said, "I'll come in."

"For a million bushels?"

"Yes--for a million.  How much in margins will you
want?"

Gretry figured a moment on the back of an envelope.

"Fifty thousand dollars," he announced at length.

Jadwin wrote the check on a corner of the broker's
desk, and held it a moment before him.

"Good-bye," he said, apostrophising the bit of paper.
"Good-bye.  I ne'er shall look upon your like again."

Gretry did not laugh.

"Huh!" he grunted.  "You'll look upon a hatful of them
before the month is out."


That same morning Landry Court found himself in the
corridor on the ground floor of the Board of Trade
about nine o'clock.  He had just come out of the office
of Gretry, Converse & Co., where he and the other Pit
traders for the house had been receiving their orders
for the day.

As he was buying a couple of apples at the news stand
at the end of the corridor, Semple and a young Jew
named Hirsch, Pit traders for small firms in La Salle
Street, joined him.

"Hello, Court, what do you know?"

"Hello, Barry Semple! Hello, Hirsch!" Landry offered
the halves of his second apple, and the three stood
there a moment, near the foot of the stairs, talking
and eating their apples from the points of their
penknives .

"I feel sort of seedy this morning," Semple observed
between mouthfuls.  "Was up late last night at a stag.
A friend of mine just got back from Europe, and some of
the boys were giving him a little dinner.  He was all
over the shop, this friend of mine; spent most of his
time in Constantinople; had some kind of newspaper
business there.  It seems that it's a pretty crazy
proposition, Turkey and the Sultan and all that.  He
said that there was nearly a row over the 'Higgins-
Pasha' incident, and that the British agent put it
pretty straight to the Sultan's secretary.  My friend
said Constantinople put him in mind of a lot of opera
bouffe scenery that had got spilled out in the mud.
Say, Court, he said the streets were dirtier than the
Chicago streets."

"Oh, come now," said Hirsch.

"Fact! And the dogs! He told us he knows now where all
the yellow dogs go to when they die."

"But say," remarked Hirsch, "what is that about the
Higgins-Pasha business?  I thought that was over long
ago."

"Oh, it is," answered Semple easily.  He looked at his
watch.  "I guess it's about time to go up, pretty near
half-past nine."

The three mounted the stairs, mingling with the groups
of floor traders who, in steadily increasing numbers,
had begun to move in the same direction.  But on the
way Hirsch was stopped by his brother.

"Hey, I got that box of cigars for you."

Hirsch paused.  "Oh! All right," he said, then he
added: " Say, how about that Higgins-Pasha affair?  You
remember that row between England and Turkey.  They
tell me the British agent in Constantinople put it
pretty straight to the Sultan the other day."

The other was interested.  "He did, hey?" he said.
"The market hasn't felt it, though.  Guess there's
nothing to it.  But there's Kelly yonder.  He'd know.
He's pretty thick with Porteous' men.  Might ask him."

"You ask him and let me know.  I got to go on the
floor.  It's nearly time for the gong."

Hirsch's brother found Kelly in the centre of a group
of settlement clerks.

"Say, boy," he began, "you ought to know.  They tell me
there may be trouble between England and Turkey over
the Higgins-Pasha incident, and that the British
Foreign Office has threatened the Sultan with an
ultimatum.  I can see the market if that's so."

"Nothing in it," retorted Kelly.  "But I'll find out--
to make sure, by jingo."

Meanwhile Landry had gained the top of the stairs, and
turning to the right, passed through a great doorway,
and came out upon the floor of the Board of Trade.

It was a vast enclosure, lighted on either side by
great windows of coloured glass, the roof supported by
thin iron pillars elaborately decorated.  To the left
were the bulletin blackboards, and beyond these, in the
northwest angle of the floor, a great railed-in space
where the Western Union Telegraph was installed.  To
the right, on the other side of the room, a row of
tables, laden with neatly arranged paper bags half full
of samples of grains, stretched along the east wall
from the doorway of the public room at one end to the
telephone room at the other.

The centre of the floor was occupied by the pits.  To
the left and to the front of Landry the provision pit,
to the right the corn pit, while further on at the
north extremity of the floor, and nearly under the
visitors' gallery, much larger than the other two, and
flanked by the wicket of the official recorder, was the
wheat pit itself.

Directly opposite the visitors' gallery, high upon the
south wall a great dial was affixed, and on the dial a
marking hand that indicated the current price of wheat,
fluctuating with the changes made in the Pit.  Just now
it stood at ninety-three and three-eighths, the closing
quotation of the preceding day.

As yet all the pits were empty.  It was some fifteen
minutes after nine.  Landry checked his hat and coat at
the coat room near the north entrance, and slipped into
an old tennis jacket of striped blue flannel.  Then,
hatless, his hands in his pockets, he leisurely crossed
the floor, and sat down in one of the chairs that were
ranged in files upon the floor in front of the
telegraph enclosure.  He scrutinised again the
despatches and orders that he held in his hands; then,
having fixed them in his memory, tore them into very
small bits, looking vaguely about the room, developing
his plan of campaign for the morning.

In a sense Landry Court had a double personality.  Away
from the neighbourhood and influence of La Salle
Street, he was "rattle-brained," absent-minded,
impractical, and easily excited, the last fellow in the
world to be trusted with any business responsibility.
But the thunder of the streets around the Board of
Trade, and, above all, the movement and atmosphere of
the floor itself awoke within him a very different
Landry Court; a whole new set of nerves came into being
with the tap of the nine-thirty gong, a whole new
system of brain machinery began to move with the first
figure called in the Pit.  And from that instant until
the close of the session, no floor trader, no broker's
clerk nor scalper was more alert, more shrewd, or kept
his head more surely than the same young fellow who
confused his social engagements for the evening of the
same day.  The Landry Court the Dearborn girls knew was
a far different young man from him who now leaned his
elbows on the arms of the chair upon the floor of the
Board, and, his eyes narrowing, his lips tightening,
began to speculate upon what was to be the temper of
the Pit that morning.

Meanwhile the floor was beginning to fill up.  Over in
the railed-in space, where the hundreds of telegraph
instruments were in place, the operators were arriving
in twos and threes.  They hung their hats and ulsters
upon the pegs in the wall back of them, and in linen
coats, or in their shirt-sleeves, went to their seats,
or, sitting upon their tables, called back and forth to
each other, joshing, cracking jokes.  Some few
addressed themselves directly to work, and here and
there the intermittent clicking of a key began, like a
diligent cricket busking himself in advance of its
mates.

From the corridors on the ground floor up through the
south doors came the pit traders in increasing groups.
The noise of footsteps began to echo from the high
vaulting of the roof.  A messenger boy crossed the
floor chanting an unintelligible name.

The groups of traders gradually converged upon the corn
and wheat pits, and on the steps of the latter, their
arms crossed upon their knees, two men, one wearing a
silk skull cap all awry, conversed earnestly in low
tones.

Winston, a great, broad-shouldered bass-voiced fellow
of some thirty-five years, who was associated with
Landry in executing the orders of the Gretry-Converse
house, came up to him, and, omitting any salutation,
remarked, deliberately, slowly:

"What's all this about this trouble between Turkey and
England?"

But before Landry could reply a third trader for the
Gretry Company joined the two.  This was a young fellow
named Rusbridge, lean, black-haired, a constant
excitement glinting in his deep-set eyes.

"Say," he exclaimed, "there's something in that,
there's something in that!"

"Where did you hear it?" demanded Landry.

"Oh--everywhere."  Rusbridge made a vague gesture with
one arm.  "Hirsch seemed to know all about it.  It
appears that there's talk of mobilising the
Mediterranean squadron.  Darned if I know."

"Might ask that 'Inter-Ocean' reporter.  He'd be likely
to know.  I've seen him 'round here this morning, or
you might telephone the Associated Press," suggested
Landry.  "The office never said a word to _me._"

"Oh, the 'Associated.' They know a lot always, don't
they?" jeered Winston.  "Yes, I rung 'em up.  They
'couldn't confirm the rumour.' That's always the way.
You can spend half a million a year in leased wires and
special service and subscriptions to news agencies, and
you get the first smell of news like this right here on
the floor.  Remember that time when the Northwestern
millers sold a hundred and fifty thousand barrels at
one lick?  The floor was talking of it three hours
before the news slips were sent 'round, or a single
wire was in.  Suppose we had waited for the Associated
people or the Commercial people then?"

"It's that Higgins-pasha incident, I'll bet," observed
Rusbridge, his eyes snapping.

"I heard something about that this morning," returned
Landry.  "But only that it was----"

"There! What did I tell you?" interrupted Rusbridge.
"I said it was everywhere.  There's no smoke without
some fire.  And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we get
cables before noon that the British War Office had sent
an ultimatum."

And very naturally a few minutes later Winston, at that
time standing on the steps of the corn pit, heard from
a certain broker, who had it from a friend who had just
received a despatch from some one "in the know," that
the British Secretary of State for War had forwarded an
ultimatum to the Porte, and that diplomatic relations
between Turkey and England were about to be suspended.

All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talking
of nothing else, and on the outskirts of every group
one could overhear the words: "Seizure of custom
house," "ultimatum," "Eastern question," " Higgins-
pasha incident."  It was the rumour of the day, and
before very long the pit traders began to receive a
multitude of despatches countermanding selling orders,
and directing them not to close out trades under
certain very advanced quotations.  The brokers began
wiring their principals that the market promised to
open strong and bullish.

But by now it was near to half-past nine.  From the
Western Union desks the clicking of the throng of
instruments rose into the air in an incessant staccato
stridulation.  The messenger boys ran back and forth at
top speed, dodging in and out among the knots of clerks
and traders, colliding with one another, and without
interruption intoning the names of those for whom they
had despatches.  The throng of traders concentrated
upon the pits, and at every moment the deep-toned hum
of the murmur of many voices swelled like the rising of
a tide.

And at this moment, as Landry stood on the rim of the
wheat pit, looking towards the telephone booth under
the visitors' gallery, he saw the osseous, stoop-
shouldered figure of Mr. Cressler--who, though he never
speculated, appeared regularly upon the Board every
morning--making his way towards one of the windows in
the front of the building.  His pocket was full of
wheat, taken from a bag on one of the sample tables.
Opening the window, he scattered the grain upon the
sill, and stood for a long moment absorbed and
interested in the dazzling flutter of the wings of
innumerable pigeons who came to settle upon the ledge,
pecking the grain with little, nervous, fastidious taps
of their yellow beaks.

Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial on
the wall behind him.  It was twenty-five minutes after
nine.  He stood in his accustomed place on the north
side of the Wheat Pit, upon the topmost stair.  The Pit
was full.  Below him and on either side of him were the
brokers, scalpers, and traders--Hirsch, Semple, Kelly,
Winston, and Rusbridge.  The redoubtable Leaycraft,
who, bidding for himself, was supposed to hold the
longest line of May wheat of any one man in the Pit,
the insignificant Grossmann, a Jew who wore a flannel
shirt, and to whose outcries no one ever paid the least
attention.  Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, the
inseparable trio who represented the Porteous gang,
silent men, middle-aged, who had but to speak in order
to buy or sell a million bushels on the spot.  And
others, and still others, veterans of sixty-five,
recruits just out of their teens, men who--some of
them--in the past had for a moment dominated the entire
Pit, but who now were content to play the part of
"eighth-chasers," buying and selling on the same day,
content with a profit of ten dollars.  Others who might
at that very moment be nursing plans which in a week's
time would make them millionaires; still others who,
under a mask of nonchalance, strove to hide the chagrin
of yesterday's defeat.  And they were there, ready,
inordinately alert, ears turned to the faintest sound,
eyes searching for the vaguest trace of meaning in
those of their rivals, nervous, keyed to the highest
tension, ready to thrust deep into the slightest
opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon the smallest
undefended spot.  Grossmann, the little Jew of the
grimy flannel shirt, perspired in the stress of the
suspense, all but powerless to maintain silence till
the signal should be given, drawing trembling fingers
across his mouth.  Winston, brawny, solid, unperturbed,
his hands behind his back, waited immovably planted on
his feet with all the gravity of a statue, his eyes
preternaturally watchful, keeping Kelly--whom he had
divined had some "funny business" on hand--perpetually
in sight.  The Porteous trio--Fairchild, Paterson, and
Goodlock--as if unalarmed, unassailable, all but turned
their backs to the Pit, laughing among themselves.

The official reporter climbed to his perch in the
little cage on the edge of the Pit, shutting the door
after him.  By now the chanting of the messenger boys
was an uninterrupted chorus.  From all sides of the
building, and in every direction they crossed and
recrossed each other, always running, their hands full
of yellow envelopes.  From the telephone alcoves came
the prolonged, musical rasp of the call bells.  In the
Western Union booths the keys of the multitude of
instruments raged incessantly.  Bare-headed young men
hurried up to one another, conferred an instant
comparing despatches, then separated, darting away at
top speed.  Men called to each other half-way across
the building.  Over by the bulletin boards clerks and
agents made careful memoranda of primary receipts, and
noted down the amount of wheat on passage, the exports
and the imports .

And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph, the
intoning of the messenger boys, the shouts and cries of
clerks and traders, the shuffle and trampling of
hundreds of feet, the whirring of telephone signals
rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to
form a vast note, prolonged, sustained, that
reverberated from vault to vault of the airy roof, and
issued from every doorway, every opened window in one
long roll of uninterrupted thunder.  In the Wheat Pit
the bids, no longer obedient of restraint, began one by
one to burst out, like the first isolated shots of a
skirmish line.  Grossmann had flung out an arm crying:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth,"
while Kelly and Semple had almost simultaneously
shouted, "'Give seven-eighths for May!"

The official reporter had been leaning far over to
catch the first quotations, one eye upon the clock at
the end of the room.  The hour and minute hands were at
right angles.

Then suddenly, cutting squarely athwart the vague
crescendo of the floor came the single incisive stroke
of a great gong.  Instantly a tumult was unchained.
Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures, and from
above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude
of hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the
air.  All articulate expression was lost in the single
explosion of sound as the traders surged downwards to
the centre of the Pit, grabbing each other, struggling
towards each other, tramping, stamping, charging
through with might and main.  Promptly the hand on the
great dial above the clock stirred and trembled, and as
though driven by the tempest breath of the Pit moved
upward through the degrees of its circle.  It paused,
wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant the
hundreds of telegraph keys scattered throughout the
building began clicking off the news to the whole
country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from
Mackinac to Mexico, that the Chicago market had made a
slight advance and that May wheat, which had closed the
day before at ninety-three and three-eighths, had
opened that morning at ninety-four and a half.

But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales.
The redoubtable Leaycraft and the Porteous trio,
Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, shook their heads
when the Pit offered ninety-four for parts of their
holdings.  The price held firm.  Goodlock even began to
offer ninety-four.  At every suspicion of a flurry
Grossmann, always with the same gesture as though
hurling a javelin, always with the same lamentable wail
of distress, cried out:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth."

He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number
of "contracts," or lots of five thousand bushels, which
he wished to sell, each finger representing one
"contract."

And it was at this moment that selling orders began
suddenly to pour in upon the Gretry-Converse traders.
Even other houses--Teller and West, Burbank & Co.,
Mattieson and Knight--received their share.  The
movement was inexplicable, puzzling.  With a powerful
Bull clique dominating the trading and every prospect
of a strong market, who was it who ventured to sell
short?

Landry among others found himself commissioned to sell.
His orders were to unload three hundred thousand
bushels on any advance over and above ninety-four.  He
kept his eye on Leaycraft, certain that he would force
up the figure.  But, as it happened, it was not
Leaycraft but the Porteous trio who made the advance.
Standing in the centre of the Pit, Patterson suddenly
flung up his hand and drew it towards him, clutching
the air--the conventional gesture of the buyer.

"'Give an eighth for May."

Landry was at him in a second.  Twenty voices shouted
"sold," and as many traders sprang towards him with
outstretched arms.  Landry, however, was before them,
and his rush carried Paterson half way across the
middle space of the Pit.

"Sold, sold."

Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the
transaction the hand on the dial advanced again, and
again held firm.

But after this the activity of the Pit fell away.  The
trading languished.  By degrees the tension of the
opening was relaxed.  Landry, however, had refrained
from selling more than ten "contracts" to Paterson.  He
had a feeling that another advance would come later on.
Rapidly he made his plans.  He would sell another fifty
thousand bushels if the price went to ninety-four and a
half, and would then "feel" the market, letting go
small lots here and there, to test its strength, then,
the instant he felt the market strong enough, throw a
full hundred thousand upon it with a rush before it had
time to break.  He could feel--almost at his very
finger tips--how this market moved, how it
strengthened, how it weakened.  He knew just when to
nurse it, to humor it, to let it settle, and when to
crowd it, when to hustle it, when it would stand rough
handling.

Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time,
but no one so much as pretended to listen.  The
Porteous trio and Leaycraft kept the price steady at
ninety-four and an eighth, but showed no inclination to
force it higher.  For a full five minutes not a trade
was recorded.  The Pit waited for the Report on the
Visible Supply.

And it was during this lull in the morning's business
that the idiocy of the English ultimatum to the Porte
melted away.  As inexplicably and as suddenly as the
rumour had started, it now disappeared.  Everyone,
simultaneously, seemed to ridicule it.  England declare
war on Turkey! Where was the joke?  Who was the damn
fool to have started that old, worn-out war scare?  But,
for all that, there was no reaction from the advance.
It seemed to be understood that either Leaycraft or the
Porteous crowd stood ready to support the market; and
in place of the ultimatum story a feeling began to gain
ground that the expected report would indicate a
falling off in the "visible," and that it was quite on
the cards that the market might even advance another
point.

As the interest in the immediate situation declined,
the crowd in the Pit grew less dense.  Portions of it
were deserted; even Grossmann, discouraged, retired to
a bench under the visitors' gallery.  And a spirit of
horse-play, sheer foolishness, strangely inconsistent
with the hot-eyed excitement of the few moments after
the opening invaded the remaining groups.  Leaycraft,
the formidable, as well as Paterson of the Porteous
gang, and even the solemn Winston, found an apparently
inexhaustible diversion in folding their telegrams into
pointed javelins and sending them sailing across the
room, watching the course of the missiles with profound
gravity.  A visitor in the gallery--no doubt a Western
farmer on a holiday--having put his feet upon the rail,
the entire Pit began to groan "boots, boots, boots."

A little later a certain broker came scurrying across
the floor from the direction of the telephone room.
Panting, he flung himself up the steps of the Pit,
forced his way among the traders with vigorous workings
of his elbows, and shouted a bid.

"He's sick," shouted Hirsch.  "Look out, he's sick.
He's going to have a fit."  He grabbed the broker by
both arms and hustled him into the centre of the Pit.
The others caught up the cry, a score of hands pushed
the newcomer from man to man.  The Pit traders clutched
him, pulled his necktie loose, knocked off his hat,
vociferating all the while at top voice, "He's sick!
He's sick!"

Other brokers and traders came up, and Grossmann,
mistaking the commotion for a flurry, ran into the Pit,
his eyes wide, waving his arm and wailing:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a quarter."

But the victim, good-natured, readjusted his battered
hat, and again repeated his bid.

"Ah, go to bed," protested Hirsch.

"He's the man who struck Billy Paterson."

"Say, a horse bit him.  Look out for him, he's going to
have a duck-fit."

The incident appeared to be the inspiration for a new
"josh" that had a great success, and a group of traders
organized themselves into an "anti-cravat committee,"
and made the rounds of the Pit, twitching the carefully
tied scarfs of the unwary out of place.  Grossman,
indignant at "t'ose monkey-doodle pizeness," withdrew
from the centre of the Pit.  But while he stood in
front of Leaycraft, his back turned, muttering his
disgust, the latter, while carrying on a grave
conversation with his neighbour, carefully stuck a file
of paper javelins all around the Jew's hat band, and
then--still without mirth and still continuing to talk--
set them on fire.

Landry imagined by now that ninety-four and an eighth
was as high a figure as he could reasonably expect that
morning, and so began to "work off" his selling orders.
Little by little he sold the wheat "short," till all
but one large lot was gone.

Then all at once, and for no discoverable immediate
reason, wheat, amid an explosion of shouts and
vociferations, jumped to ninety-four and a quarter, and
before the Pit could take breath, had advanced another
eighth, broken to one-quarter, then jumped to the five-
eighths mark.

It was the Report on the Visible Supply beyond
question, and though it had not yet been posted, this
sudden flurry was a sign that it was not only near at
hand, but would be bullish.

A few moments later it was bulletined in the gallery
beneath the dial, and proved a tremendous surprise to
nearly every man upon the floor.  No one had imagined
the supply was so ample, so all-sufficient to meet the
demand.  Promptly the Pit responded.  Wheat began to
pour in heavily.  Hirsch, Kelly, Grossmann, Leaycraft,
the stolid Winston, and the excitable Rusbridge were
hard at it.  The price began to give.  Suddenly it
broke sharply.  The hand on the great dial dropped to
ninety-three and seven-eighths."

Landry was beside himself.  He had not foreseen this
break.  There was no reckoning on that cursed
"visible," and he still had 50,000 bushels to dispose
of.  There was no telling now how low the price might
sink.  He must act quickly, radically.  He fought his
way towards the Porteous crowd, reached over the
shoulder of the little Jew Grossmann, who stood in his
way, and thrust his hand almost into Paterson's face,
shouting:

"'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths."

It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders
of the early morning.

The other shook his head.

"'Sell fifty May at three-quarters."

Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another break
was coming.  It was in the very air around him.  He
could almost physically feel the pressure of renewed
avalanches of wheat crowding down the price.
Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.

"'Sell fifty May at five-eighths."

"Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering a
challenge.

And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward
rush of the price, Luck, the golden goddess, passed
with the flirt and flash of glittering wings, and
hardly before the ticker in Gretry's office had
signalled the decline, the memorandum of the trade was
down upon Landry's card and Curtis Jadwin stood pledged
to deliver, before noon on the last day of May, one
million bushels of wheat into the hands of the
representatives of the great Bulls of the Board of
Trade.

But by now the real business of the morning was over.
The Pit knew it.  Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as
it were by one idea, still stood in his accustomed
place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to
time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his
doleful outcry of "'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five
and three-quarters."

Nobody listened.  The traders stood around in expectant
attitudes, looking into one another's faces, waiting
for what they could not exactly say; loath to leave the
Pit lest something should "turn up" the moment their
backs were turned.

By degrees the clamour died away, ceased, began again
irregularly, then abruptly stilled.  Here and there a
bid was called, an offer made, like the intermittent
crack of small arms after the stopping of the
cannonade.

"'Sell five May at one-eighth."

"'Sell twenty at one-quarter."

"'Give one-eighth for May."

For an instant the shoutings were renewed.  Then
suddenly the gong struck.  The traders began slowly to
leave the Pit.  One of the floor officers, an old
fellow in uniform and vizored cap, appeared, gently
shouldering towards the door the groups wherein the
bidding and offering were still languidly going on.
His voice full of remonstration, he repeated
continually:

"Time's up, gentlemen.  Go on now and get your lunch.
Lunch time now.  Go on now, or I'll have to report you.
Time's up."

The tide set toward the doorways.  In the gallery the
few visitors rose, putting on coats and wraps.  Over by
the check counter, to the right of the south entrance
to the floor, a throng of brokers and traders jostled
each other, reaching over one another's shoulders for
hats and ulsters.  In steadily increasing numbers they
poured out of the north and south entrances, on their
way to turn in their trading cards to the offices.

Little by little the floor emptied.  The provision and
grain pits were deserted, and as the clamour of the
place lapsed away the telegraph instruments began to
make themselves heard once more, together with the
chanting of the messenger boys.

Swept clean in the morning, the floor itself, seen now
through the thinning groups, was littered from end to
end with scattered grain--oats, wheat, corn, and
barley, with wisps of hay, peanut shells, apple
parings, and orange peel, with torn newspapers, odds
and ends of memoranda, crushed paper darts, and above
all with a countless multitude of yellow telegraph
forms, thousands upon thousands, crumpled and muddied
under the trampling of innumerable feet.  It was the
debris of the battle-field, the abandoned impedimenta
and broken weapons of contending armies, the detritus
of conflict, torn, broken, and rent, that at the end of
each day's combat encumbered the field.

At last even the click of the last of telegraph keys
died down.  Shouldering themselves into their
overcoats, the operators departed, calling back and
forth to one another, making "dates," and cracking
jokes.  Washerwomen appeared with steaming pails,
porters pushing great brooms before them began
gathering the refuse of the floor into heaps.

Between the wheat and corn pits a band of young
fellows, some of them absolute boys, appeared.  These
were the settlement clerks.  They carried long account
books.  It was their duty to get the trades of the day
into a "ring"--to trace the course of a lot of wheat
which had changed hands perhaps a score of times during
the trading--and their calls of "Wheat sold to Teller
and West," "May wheat sold to Burbank & Co.," "May oats
sold to Matthewson and Knight," "Wheat sold to Gretry,
Converse & Co.," began to echo from wall to wall of the
almost deserted room.

A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of
nickel and red leather, issued from the coat-room and
picked her way across the floor.  Evidently she was in
a mood of the most ingratiating friendliness, and as
one after another of the departing traders spoke to
her, raised her tail in the air and arched her back
against the legs of the empty chairs.  The janitor put
in an appearance, lowering the tall colored windows
with a long rod.  A noise of hammering and the scrape
of saws began to issue from a corner where a couple of
carpenters tinkered about one of the sample tables.

Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves
off.  At once there was a great silence, broken only by
the harsh rasp of the carpenters' saws and the voice of
the janitor exchanging jokes with the washer-women.
The sound of footsteps in distant quarters re-echoed as
if in a church.

The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and
steaming water before them.  Over by the sample tables
a negro porter in shirt-sleeves swept entire bushels of
spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden, into his
dust pans.

The day's campaign was over.  It was past two o'clock.
On the great dial against the eastern wall the
indicator stood--sentinel fashion--at ninety-three.
Not till the following morning would the whirlpool, the
great central force that spun the Niagara of wheat in
its grip, thunder and bellow again.

Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and
janitor, departed.  An unbroken silence, the
peacefulness of an untroubled calm, settled over the
place.  The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through
the west windows in long parallel shafts full of
floating golden motes.  There was no sound; nothing
stirred.  The floor of the Board of Trade was deserted.
Alone, on the edge of the abandoned Wheat Pit, in a
spot where the sunlight fell warmest--an atom of life,
lost in the immensity of the empty floor--the grey cat
made her toilet, diligently licking the fur on the
inside of her thigh, one leg, as if dislocated, thrust
into the air above her head.



IV


In the front parlor of the Cresslers' house a little
company was gathered--Laura Dearborn and Page, Mrs.
Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and young Miss Gretry, an
awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen, dressed
extravagantly in a decollete gown of blue silk.  Curtis
Jadwin and Cressler himself stood by the open fireplace
smoking.  Landry Court fidgeted on the sofa, pretending
to listen to the Gretry girl, who told an interminable
story of a visit to some wealthy relative who had a
country seat in Wisconsin and who raised fancy poultry.
She possessed, it appeared, three thousand hens,
Brahma, Faverolles, Houdans, Dorkings, even peacocks
and tame quails.

Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat, an unlighted
cigarette between his fingers, discussed the spring
exhibit of water-colors with Laura and Mrs. Cressler,
Page listening with languid interest.  Aunt Wess'
turned the leaves of a family album, counting the
number of photographs of Mrs. Cressler which it
contained.

Black coffee had just been served.  It was the occasion
of the third rehearsal for the play which was to be
given for the benefit of the hospital ward for Jadwin's
mission children, and Mrs. Cressler had invited the
members of the company for dinner.  Just now everyone
awaited the arrival of the "coach," Monsieur Gerardy,
who was always late.

"To my notion," observed Corthell, "the water-color
that pretends to be anything more than a sketch over-
steps its intended limits.  The elaborated water-color,
I contend, must be judged by the same standards as an
oil painting.  And if that is so, why not have the oil
painting at once?"

"And with all that, if you please, not an egg on the
place for breakfast," declared the Gretry girl in her
thin voice.  She was constrained, embarrassed.  Of all
those present she was the only one to mistake the
character of the gathering and appear in formal
costume.  But one forgave Isabel Gretry such lapses as
these.  Invariably she did the wrong thing; invariably
she was out of place in the matter of inadvertent
speech, an awkward accident, the wrong toilet.  For all
her nineteen years, she yet remained the hoyden, young,
undeveloped, and clumsy.

"Never an egg, and three thousand hens in the runs,"
she continued.  "Think of that! The Plymouth Rocks had
the pip.  And the others, my lands! I don't know.  They
just didn't lay."

"Ought to tickle the soles of their feet," declared
Landry with profound gravity.

"Tickle their feet!"

"Best thing in the world for hens that don't lay.  It
sort of stirs them up.  Oh, every one knows that."

"Fancy now! I'll write to Aunt Alice to-morrow."

Cressler clipped the tip of a fresh cigar, and, turning
to Curtis Jadwin, remarked:

"I understand that Leaycraft alone lost nearly fifteen
thousand."

He referred to Jadwin's deal in May wheat, the
consummation of which had been effected the previous
week.  Squarely in the midst of the morning session, on
the day following the "short" sale of Jadwin's million
of bushels, had exploded the news of the intended
action of the French chamber.  Amid a tremendous
clamour the price fell.  The Bulls were panicstricken.
Leaycraft the redoubtable was overwhelmed at the very
start.  The Porteous trio heroically attempted to
shoulder the wheat, but the load was too much.  They as
well gave ground, and, bereft of their support, May
wheat, which had opened at ninety-three and five-
eighths to ninety-two and a half, broke with the very
first attack to ninety-two, hung there a moment, then
dropped again to ninety-one and a half, then to ninety-
one.  Then, in a prolonged shudder of weakness, sank
steadily down by quarters to ninety, to eighty-nine,
and at last--a final collapse--touched eighty-eight
cents.  At that figure Jadwin began to cover.  There
was danger that the buying of so large a lot might
bring about a rally in the price.  But Gretry, a
consummate master of Pit tactics, kept his orders
scattered and bought gradually, taking some two or
three days to accumulate the grain.  Jadwin's luck--the
never-failing guardian of the golden wings--seemed to
have the affair under immediate supervision, and
reports of timely rains in the wheat belt kept the
price inert while the trade was being closed.  In the
end the "deal" was brilliantly successful, and Gretry
was still chuckling over the set-back to the Porteous
gang.  Exactly the amount of his friend's profits
Jadwin did not know.  As for himself, he had received
from Gretry a check for fifty thousand dollars, every
cent of which was net profit.

"I'm not going to congratulate you," continued
Cressler.  "As far as that's concerned, I would rather
you had lost than won--if it would have kept you out of
the Pit for good.  You're cocky now.  I know--good
Lord, don't I know.  I had my share of it.  I know how
a man gets drawn into this speculating game"

"Charlie, this wasn't speculating," interrupted Jadwin.
"It was a certainty.  It was found money.  If I had
known a certain piece of real estate was going to
appreciate in value I would have bought it, wouldn't
I?"

"All the worse, if it made it seem easy and sure to
you.  Do you know," he added suddenly.  "Do you know
that Leaycraft has gone to keep books for a
manufacturing concern out in Dubuque?"

Jadwin pulled his mustache.  He was looking at Laura
Dearborn over the heads of Landry and the Gretry girl.

"I didn't suppose he'd be getting measured for a
private yacht," he murmured.  Then he continued,
pulling his mustache vigorously:

"Charlie, upon my word, what a beautiful--what
beautiful _hair_ that girl has!"

Laura was wearing it very high that evening, the
shining black coils transfixed by a strange hand-cut
ivory comb that had been her grandmother's.  She was
dressed in black taffeta, with a single great cabbage-
rose pinned to her shoulder.  She sat very straight in
her chair, one hand upon her slender hip, her head a
little to one side, listening attentively to Corthell.

By this time the household of the former rectory was
running smoothly; everything was in place, the
Dearborns were "settled," and a routine had begun.  Her
first month in her new surroundings had been to Laura
an unbroken series of little delights.  For formal
social distractions she had but little taste.  She left
those to Page, who, as soon as Lent was over, promptly
became involved in a bewildering round of teas,
"dancing clubs," dinners, and theatre parties.  Mrs.
Wessels was her chaperone, and the little middle-aged
lady found the satisfaction of a belated youth in
conveying her pretty niece to the various functions
that occupied her time.  Each Friday night saw her in
the gallery of a certain smart dancing school of the
south side, where she watched Page dance her way from
the "first waltz" to the last figure of the german.
She counted the couples carefully, and on the way home
was always able to say how the attendance of that
particular evening compared with that of the former
occasion, and also to inform Laura how many times Page
had danced with the same young man.

Laura herself was more serious.  She had begun a course
of reading; no novels, but solemn works full of
allusions to "Man" and "Destiny," which she underlined
and annotated.  Twice a week--on Mondays and Thursdays--
she took a French lesson.  Corthell managed to enlist
the good services of Mrs. Wessels and escorted her to
numerous piano and 'cello recitals, to lectures, to
concerts.  He even succeeded in achieving the
consecration of a specified afternoon once a week,
spent in his studio in the Fine Arts' Building on the
Lake Front, where he read to them "Saint Agnes Eve,"
"Sordello," " The Light of Asia"--poems which, with
their inversions, obscurities, and astonishing
arabesques of rhetoric, left Aunt Wess' bewildered,
breathless, all but stupefied.

Laura found these readings charming.  The studio was
beautiful, lofty, the light dim; the sound of
Corthell's voice returned from the thick hangings of
velvet and tapestry in a subdued murmur.  The air was
full of the odor of pastilles.

Laura could not fail to be impressed with the artist's
tact, his delicacy.  In words he never referred to
their conversation in the foyer of the Auditorium; only
by some unexplained subtlety of attitude he managed to
convey to her the distinct impression that he loved her
always.  That he was patient, waiting for some
indefinite, unexpressed development.

Landry Court called upon her as often as she would
allow.  Once he had prevailed upon her and Page to
accompany him to the matinee to see a comic opera.  He
had pronounced it "bully," unable to see that Laura
evinced only a mild interest in the performance.  On
each propitious occasion he had made love to her
extravagantly.  He continually protested his profound
respect with a volubility and earnestness that was
quite uncalled for.

But, meanwhile, the situation had speedily become more
complicated by the entrance upon the scene of an
unexpected personage.  This was Curtis Jadwin.  It was
impossible to deny the fact that "J." was in love with
Mrs. Cressler's _protegee._  The business man had none
of Corthell's talent for significant reticence, none of
his tact, and older than she, a man-of-the-world,
accustomed to deal with situations with unswerving
directness, he, unlike Landry Court, was not in the
least afraid of her.  From the very first she found
herself upon the defensive.  Jadwin was aggressive,
assertive, and his addresses had all the persistence
and vehemence of veritable attack.  Landry she could
manage with the lifting of a finger, Corthell disturbed
her only upon those rare occasions when he made love to
her.  But Jadwin gave her no time to so much as think
of _finesse._  She was not even allowed to choose her
own time and place for fencing, and to parry his
invasion upon those intimate personal grounds which she
pleased herself to keep secluded called upon her every
feminine art of procrastination and strategy.

He contrived to meet her everywhere.  He impressed Mrs.
Cressler as auxiliary into his campaign, and a series
of _rencontres_ followed one another with astonishing
rapidity.  Now it was another opera party, now a box at
McVicker's, now a dinner, or more often a drive through
Lincoln Park behind Jadwin's trotters.  He even had the
Cresslers and Laura over to his mission Sunday-school
for the Easter festival, an occasion of which Laura
carried away a confused recollection of enormous canvas
mottoes, that looked more like campaign banners than
texts from the Scriptures, sheaves of calla lilies,
imitation bells of tin-foil, revival hymns vociferated
with deafening vehemence from seven hundred distended
mouths, and through it all the disagreeable smell of
poverty, the odor of uncleanliness that mingled
strangely with the perfume of the lilies and the
aromatic whiffs from the festoons of evergreen.

Thus the first month of her new life had passed Laura
did not trouble herself to look very far into the
future.  She was too much amused with her emancipation
from the narrow horizon of her New England environment.
She did not concern herself about consequences.  Things
would go on for themselves, and consequences develop
without effort on her part.  She never asked herself
whether or not she was in love with any of the three
men who strove for her favor.  She was quite sure she
was not ready--yet--to be married.  There was even
something distasteful in the idea of marriage.  She
liked Landry Court immensely; she found the afternoons
in Corthell's studio delightful; she loved the rides in
the park behind Jadwin's horses.  She had no desire
that any one of these affairs should exclude the other
two.  She wished nothing to be consummated.  As for
love, she never let slip an occasion to shock Aunt
Wess' by declaring:

"I love--nobody.  I shall never marry."

Page, prim, with great parades of her ideas of "good
form," declared between her pursed lips that her sister
was a flirt.  But this was not so.  Laura never
manoeuvered with her lovers, nor intrigued to keep from
any one of them knowledge of her companionship with the
other two.  So upon such occasions as this, when all
three found themselves face to face, she remained
unperturbed.

At last, towards half-past eight, Monsieur Gerardy
arrived.  All through the winter amateur plays had been
in great favor, and Gerardy had become, in a sense, a
fad.  He was in great demand.  Consequently, he gave
himself airs.  His method was that of severity; he
posed as a task-master, relentless, never pleased,
hustling the amateur actors about without ceremony,
scolding and brow-beating.  He was a small, excitable
man who wore a frock-coat much too small for him, a
flowing purple cravatte drawn through a finger ring,
and enormous cuffs set off with huge buttons of Mexican
onyx.  In his lapel was an inevitable carnation, dried,
shrunken, and lamentable.  He was redolent of perfume
and spoke of himself as an artist.  He caused it to be
understood that in the intervals of "coaching society
plays" he gave his attention to the painting of
landscapes.  Corthell feigned to ignore his very
existence.

The play-book in his hand, Monsieur Gerardy clicked his
heels in the middle of the floor and punctiliously
saluted everyone present, bowing only from his
shoulders, his head dropping forward as if propelled by
successive dislocations of the vertebrae of his neck.

He explained the cause of his delay.  His English was
without accent, but at times suddenly entangled itself
in curious Gallic constructions.

"Then I propose we begin at once," he announced.  "The
second act to-night, then, if we have time, the third
act--from the book.  And I expect the second act to be
letter-perfect--let-ter-per-fect.  There is nothing
there but that."  He held up his hand, as if to refuse
to consider the least dissention.  "There is nothing
but that--no other thing."

All but Corthell listened attentively.  The artist,
however, turning his back, had continued to talk to
Laura without lowering his tone, and all through
Monsieur Gerardy's exhortation his voice had made
itself heard.  "Management of light and shade" ...
"color scheme" ... "effects of composition."

Monsieur Gerardy's eye glinted in his direction.  He
struck his play-book sharply into the palm of his hand.

"Come, come!" he cried.  "No more nonsense.  Now we
leave the girls alone and get to work.  Here is the
scene.  Mademoiselle Gretry, if I derange you!" He
cleared a space at the end of the parlor, pulling the
chairs about.  "Be attentive now.  Here"--he placed a
chair at his right with a flourish, as though planting
a banner--"is the porch of Lord Glendale's country
house."

"Ah," murmured Landry, winking solemnly at Page, "the
chair is the porch of the house."

"And here," shouted Monsieur Gerardy, glaring at him
and slamming down another chair, "is a rustic bench and
practicable table set for breakfast."

Page began to giggle behind her play-book.  Gerardy,
his nostrils expanded, gave her his back.  The older
people, who were not to take part--Jadwin, the
Cresslers, and Aunt Wess'--retired to a far corner,
Mrs. Cressler declaring that they would constitute the
audience.

"On stage," vociferated Monsieur Gerardy, perspiring
from his exertions with the furniture.  "'Marion
enters, timid and hesitating, L. C.' Come, who's
Marion?  Mademoiselle Gretry, if you please, and for the
love of God remember your crossings.  Sh! sh!" he
cried, waving his arms at the others.  "A little
silence if you please.  Now, Marion."

Isabel Gretry, holding her play-book at her side, one
finger marking the place, essayed an entrance with the
words:

"'Ah, the old home once more.  See the clambering roses
have----'"

But Monsieur Gerardy, suddenly compressing his lips as
if in a heroic effort to repress his emotion, flung
himself into a chair, turning his back and crossing his
legs violently.  Miss Gretry stopped, very much
disturbed, gazing perplexedly at the coach's heaving
shoulders.

There was a strained silence, then:

"Isn't--isn't that right?"

As if with the words she had touched a spring, Monsieur
Gerardy bounded to his feet.

"Grand God!  Is that left-centre where you have made
the entrance?  In fine, I ask you a little--_is_ that
left-centre?  You have come in by the rustic bench and
practicable table set for breakfast.  A fine sight on
the night of the performance that.  Marion climbs over
the rustic breakfast and practicable--over the rustic
bench and practicable table, ha, ha, to make the
entrance."  Still holding the play-book, he clapped
hands with elaborate sarcasm.  "Ah, yes, good business
that.  That will bring down the house."

Meanwhile the Gretry girl turned again from left-
centre.

"'Ah, the old home again.  See----'"

"Stop!" thundered Monsieur Gerardy.  "Is that what you
call timid and hesitating?  Once more, those lines....
No, no.  It is not it at all.  More of slowness, more
of--Here, watch me."

He made the entrance with laborious exaggeration of
effect, dragging one foot after another, clutching at
the palings of an imaginary fence, while pitching his
voice at a feeble falsetto, he quavered:

"'Ah! The old home--ah ... once more.  See--' like
that," he cried, straightening up.  "Now then.  We try
that entrance again.  Don't come on too quick after the
curtain.  Attention.  I clap my hands for the curtain,
and count three."  He backed away and, tucking the play-
book under his arm, struck his palms together.  "Now,
one--two--_three._"

But this time Isabel Gretry, in remembering her
"business," confused her stage directions once more

"'Ah, the old home----'"

"Left-centre," interrupted the coach, in a tone of
long-suffering patience.

She paused bewildered, and believing that she had
spoken her lines too abruptly, began again:

"'See, the clambering----'"

"_Left_-centre."

"'Ah, the old home----'"

Monsieur Gerardy settled himself deliberately in his
chair and resting his head upon one hand closed his
eyes.  His manner was that of Galileo under torture
declaring "still it moves."

"_Left_-centre."

"Oh--oh, yes.  I forgot."

Monsieur Gerardy apostrophized the chandelier with
mirthless humour.

"Oh, ha, ha! She forgot."

Still another time Marion tried the entrance, and, as
she came on, Monsieur Gerardy made vigorous signals to
Page, exclaiming in a hoarse whisper:

"Lady Mary, ready.  In a minute you come on.  Remember
the cue."

Meanwhile Marion had continued:

"'See the clambering vines----'"

"Roses."

"'The clambering rose vines----'"

"Roses, pure and simple."

"'See! The clambering roses, pure and----'"

"Mademoiselle Gretry, will you do me the extreme
obligation to bound yourself by the lines of the book?"

"I thought you said----"

"Go on, go on, go on! Is it God-possible to be thus
stupid?  Lady Mary, ready."

"'See, the clambering roses have wrapped the old stones
in a loving embrace.  The birds build in the same old
nests----'"

"Well, well, Lady Mary, where are you?  You enter from
the porch."

"I'm waiting for my cue," protested Page.  "My cue is:
'Are there none that will remember me.'"

"Say," whispered Landry, coming up behind Page, "it
would look bully if you could come out leading a
greyhound."

"Ah, so, Mademoiselle Gretry," cried Monsieur Gerardy,
"you left out the cue."  He became painfully polite.
"Give the speech once more, if you please."

"A dog would look bully on the stage," whispered
Landry.  "And I know where I could get one."

"Where?"

"A friend of mine.  He's got a beauty, blue grey----"

They become suddenly aware of a portentous silence The
coach, his arms folded, was gazing at Page with
tightened lips.

"'None who will remember me,'" he burst out at last.
"Three times she gave it."

Page hurried upon the scene with the words:

"'Ah, another glorious morning.  The vines are drenched
in dew.'" Then, raising her voice and turning toward
the "house," "'Arthur.'"

"'Arthur,'" warned the coach.  "That's you.  Mr.
Corthell.  Ready.  Well then, Mademoiselle Gretry, you
have something to say there."

"I can't say it," murmured the Gretry girl, her
handkerchief to her face.

"What now?  Continue.  Your lines are 'I must not be
seen here.  It would betray all,' then conceal yourself
in the arbor.  Continue.  Speak the line.  It is the
cue of Arthur."

"I can't," mumbled the girl behind her handkerchief.

"Can't?  Why, then?"

"I--I have the nose-bleed."

Upon the instant Monsieur Gerardy quite lost his
temper.  He turned away, one hand to his head, rolling
his eyes as if in mute appeal to heaven, then, whirling
about, shook his play-book at the unfortunate Marion,
crying out furiously:

"Ah, it lacked but that.  You ought to understand at
last, that when one rehearses for a play one does not
have the nose-bleed.  It is not decent."

Miss Gretry retired precipitately, and Laura came
forward to say that she would read Marion's lines.

"No, no!" cried Monsieur Gerardy.  "You--ah, if they
were all like you! You are obliging, but it does not
suffice.  I am insulted."

The others, astonished, gathered about the "coach."
They laboured to explain.  Miss Gretry had intended no
slight.  In fact she was often taken that way; she was
excited, nervous.  But Monsieur Gerardy was not to be
placated.  Ah, no! He knew what was due a gentleman.
He closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows to his very
hair, murmuring superbly that he was offended.  He had
but one phrase in answer to all their explanations:

"One does not permit one's self to bleed at the nose
during rehearsal."

Laura began to feel a certain resentment.  The
unfortunate Gretry girl had gone away in tears.  What
with the embarrassment of the wrong gown, the brow-
beating, and the nose-bleed, she was not far from
hysterics.  She had retired to the dining-room with
Mrs. Cressler and from time to time the sounds of her
distress made themselves heard.  Laura believed it
quite time to interfere.  After all, who was this
Gerardy person, to give himself such airs?  Poor Miss
Gretry was to blame for nothing.  She fixed the little
Frenchman with a direct glance, and Page, who caught a
glimpse of her face, recognised "the grand manner," and
whispered to Landry:

"He'd better look out; he's gone just about as far as
Laura will allow."

"It is not convenient," vociferated the "coach."  "It is
not permissible.  I am offended."

"Monsieur Gerardy," said Laura, "we will say nothing
more about it, if you please."

There was a silence.  Monsieur Gerardy had pretended
not to hear.  He breathed loud through his nose, and
Page hastened to observe that anyhow Marion was not on
in the next scenes.  Then abruptly, and resuming his
normal expression, Monsieur Gerardy said:

"Let us proceed.  It advances nothing to lose time.
Come.  Lady Mary and Arthur, ready."

The rehearsal continued.  Laura, who did not come on
during the act, went back to her chair in the corner of
the room.

But the original group had been broken up.  Mrs.
Cressler was in the dining-room with the Gretry girl,
while Jadwin, Aunt Wess', and Cressler himself were
deep in a discussion of mind-reading and spiritualism.

As Laura came up, Jadwin detached himself from the
others and met her.

"Poor Miss Gretry!" he observed.  "Always the square
peg in the round hole.  I've sent out for some smelling
salts."

It seemed to Laura that the capitalist was especially
well-looking on this particular evening.  He never
dressed with the "smartness" of Sheldon Corthell or
Landry Court, but in some way she did not expect that
he should.  His clothes were not what she was aware
were called "stylish," but she had had enough
experience with her own tailor-made gowns to know that
the material was the very best that money could buy.
The apparent absence of any padding in the broad
shoulders of the frock coat he wore, to her mind, more
than compensated for the "ready-made" scarf, and if the
white waistcoat was not fashionably cut, she knew that
_she_ had never been able to afford a pique skirt of
just that particular grade.

"Suppose we go into the reception-room," he observed
abruptly.  "Charlie bought a new clock last week that's
a marvel.  You ought to see it."

"No," she answered.  "I am quite comfortable here, and
I want to see how Page does in this act."

"I am afraid, Miss Dearborn," he continued, as they
found their places, "that you did not have a very good
time Sunday afternoon."

He referred to the Easter festival at his mission
school.  Laura had left rather early, alleging
neuralgia and a dinner engagement.

"Why, yes I did," she replied.  "Only, to tell the
truth, my head ached a little."  She was ashamed that
she did not altogether delight in her remembrance of
Jadwin on that afternoon.  He had "addressed" the
school, with earnestness it was true, but in a strain
decidedly conventional.  And the picture he made
leading the singing, beating time with the hymn-book,
and between the verses declaring that "he wanted to
hear everyone's voice in the next verse," did not
appeal very forcibly to her imagination.  She fancied
Sheldon Corthell doing these things, and could not
forbear to smile.  She had to admit, despite the
protests of conscience, that she did prefer the studio
to the Sunday-school.

"Oh," remarked Jadwin, "I'm sorry to hear you had a
headache.  I suppose my little micks" (he invariably
spoke of his mission children thus)" do make more noise
than music."

"I found them very interesting."

"No, excuse me, but I'm afraid you didn't.  My little
micks are not interesting--to look at nor to listen to.
But I, kind of--well, I don't know," he began pulling
his mustache.  "It seems to _suit_ me to get down there
and get hold of these people.  You know Moody put me up
to it.  He was here about five years ago, and I went to
one of his big meetings, and then to all of them.  And
I met the fellow, too, and I tell you, Miss Dearborn,
he stirred me all up.  I didn't "get religion."  No,
nothing like that.  But I got a notion it was time to
be up and doing, and I figured it out that business
principles were as good in religion as they are--well,
in La Salle Street, and that if the church people--the
men I mean--put as much energy, and shrewdness, and
competitive spirit into the saving of souls as they did
into the saving of dollars that we might get somewhere.
And so I took hold of a half dozen broken-down,
bankrupt Sunday-school concerns over here on Archer
Avenue that were fighting each other all the time, and
amalgamated them all--a regular trust, just as if they
were iron foundries--and turned the incompetents out
and put my subordinates in, and put the thing on a
business basis, and by now, I'll venture to say,
there's not a better _organised_ Sunday-school in all
Chicago, and I'll bet if D. L. Moody were here to-day
he'd say, 'Jadwin, well done, thou good and faithful
servant.'"

"I haven't a doubt of it, Mr. Jadwin," Laura hastened
to exclaim.  "And you must not think that I don't
believe you are doing a splendid work."

"Well, it _suits_ me," he repeated.  "I like my little
micks, and now and then I have a chance to get hold of
the kind that it pays to push along.  About four months
ago I came across a boy in the Bible class; I guess
he's about sixteen; name is Bradley--Billy Bradley,
father a confirmed drunk, mother takes in washing,
sister--we won't speak about; and he seemed to be
bright and willing to work, and I gave him a job in my
agent's office, just directing envelopes.  Well, Miss
Dearborn, that boy has a desk of his own now, and the
agent tells me he's one of the very best men he's got.
He does his work so well that I've been able to
discharge two other fellows who sat around and watched
the clock for lunch hour, and Bradley does their work
now better and quicker than they did, and saves me
twenty dollars a week; that's a thousand a year.  So
much for a business like Sunday-school; so much for
taking a good aim when you cast your bread upon the
waters.  The last time I saw Moody I said, 'Moody, my
motto is "not slothful in business, fervent in spirit,
praising the Lord."' I remember we were out driving at
the time, I took him out behind Lizella--she's almost
straight Wilkes' blood and can trot in two-ten, but you
can believe _he_ didn't know that--and, as I say, I
told him what my motto was, and he said, 'J., good for
you; you keep to that.  There's no better motto in the
world for the American man of business.' He shook my
hand when he said it, and I haven't ever forgotten it."

Not a little embarrassed, Laura was at a loss just what
to say, and in the end remarked lamely enough:

"I am sure it is the right spirit--the best motto."

"Miss Dearborn," Jadwin began again suddenly, "why
don't you take a class down there.  The little micks
aren't so dreadful when you get to know them."

"I!" exclaimed Laura, rather blankly.  She shook her
head.  "Oh, no, Mr. Jadwin.  I should be only an
encumbrance.  Don't misunderstand me.  I approve of the
work with all my heart, but I am not fitted--I feel no
call.  I should be so inapt that I know I should do no
good.  My training has been so different, you know,"
she said, smiling.  "I am an Episcopalian--'of the
straightest sect of the Pharisees.' I should be
teaching your little micks all about the meaning of
candles, and 'Eastings,' and the absolution and
remission of sins."

"I wouldn't care if you did," he answered.  "It's the
indirect influence I'm thinking of--the indirect
influence that a beautiful, pure-hearted, noble-minded
woman spreads around her wherever she goes.  I know
what it has done for me.  And I know that not only my
little micks, but every teacher and every
superintendent in that school would be inspired, and
stimulated, and born again so soon as ever you set foot
in the building.  Men need good women, Miss Dearborn.
Men who are doing the work of the world.  I believe in
women as I believe in Christ.  But I don't believe they
were made--any more than Christ was--to cultivate--
beyond a certain point--their own souls, and refine
their own minds, and live in a sort of warmed-over,
dilettante, stained-glass world of seclusion and
exclusion.  No, sir, that won't do for the United
States and the men who are making them the greatest
nation of the world.  The men have got all the get-up-
and-get they want, but they need the women to point
them straight, and to show them how to lead that other
kind of life that isn't all grind.  Since I've known
you, Miss Dearborn, I've just begun to wake up to the
fact that there _is_ that other kind, but I can't lead
that life without you.  There's _no_ kind of life
that's worth anything to me now that don't include you.
I don't need to tell you that I want you to marry me.
You know that by now, I guess, without any words from
me.  I love you, and I love you as a man, not as a boy,
seriously and earnestly.  I can give you no idea _how_
seriously, _how_ earnestly.  I want you to be my wife.
Laura, my dear girl, I _know_ I could make you happy."

"It isn't," answered Laura slowly, perceiving as he
paused that he expected her to say something," much a
question of that."

"What is it, then?  I won't make a scene.  Don't you
love me?  Don't you think, my girl, you could ever love
me?"

Laura hesitated a long moment.  She had taken the rose
from her shoulder, and plucking the petals one by one,
put them delicately between her teeth.  From the other
end of the room came the clamorous exhortations of
Monsieur Gerardy.  Mrs. Cressler and the Gretry girl
watched the progress of the rehearsal attentively from
the doorway of the dining-room.  Aunt Wess' and Mr.
Cressler were discussing psychic research and seances,
on the sofa on the other side of the room.  After a
while Laura spoke.

"It isn't that either," she said, choosing her words
carefully.

"What is it, then?"

"I don't know--exactly.  For one thing, I don't think I
_want_ to be married, Mr. Jadwin--to anybody."

"I would wait for you."

"Or to be engaged."

"But the day must come, sooner or later, when you must
be both engaged and married.  You _must_ ask yourself
_some time_ if you love the man who wishes to be your
husband.  Why not ask yourself now?"

"I do," she answered.  "I do ask myself.  I have asked
myself."

"Well, what do you decide?"

"That I don't know."

"Don't you think you would love me in time?  Laura, I am
sure you would.  I would _make_ you."

"I don't know.  I suppose that is a stupid answer.  But
it is, if I am to be honest, and I am trying very hard
to be honest--with you and with myself--the only one I
have.  I am happy just as I am.  I like you and Mr.
Cressler and Mr. Corthell--everybody.  But, Mr.
Jadwin"--she looked him full in the face, her dark eyes
full of gravity--"with a woman it is so serious--to be
married.  More so than any man ever understood.  And,
oh, one must be so sure, so sure.  And I am not sure
now.  I am not sure now.  Even if I were sure of you, I
could not say I was sure of myself.  Now and then I
tell myself, and even poor, dear Aunt Wess', that I
shall never love anybody, that I shall never marry.
But I should be bitterly sorry if I thought that was
true.  It is one of the greatest happinesses to which I
look forward, that some day I shall love some one with
all my heart and soul, and shall be a true wife, and
find my husband's love for me the sweetest thing in my
life.  But I am sure that that day has not come yet."

"And when it does come," he urged, "may I be the first
to know?"

She smiled a little gravely.

"Ah," she answered, "I would not know myself that that
day had come until I woke to the fact that I loved the
man who had asked me to be his wife, and then it might
be too late--for you."

"But now, at least," he persisted, "you love no one."

"Now," she repeated, "I love--no one."

"And I may take such encouragement in that as I can?"

And then, suddenly, capriciously even, Laura, an
inexplicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was
a very different woman from the one who an instant
before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of
marriage.  She hesitated a moment before answering
Jadwin, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf
between her fingers.  In a low voice she said at last:

"If you like."

But before Jadwin could reply, Cressler and Aunt Wess'
who had been telling each other of their "experiences,"
of their "premonitions," of the unaccountable things
that had happened to them, at length included the
others in their conversation.

"J.," remarked Cressler, "did anything funny ever
happen to _you_--warnings, presentiments, that sort of
thing?  Mrs. Wessels and I have been talking
spiritualism.  Laura, have _you_ ever had any
'experiences'?"

She shook her head.

"No, no.  I am too material, I am afraid."

"How about you, 'J.'?"

"Nothing much, except that I believe in 'luck'--a
little.  The other day I flipped a coin in Gretry's
office.  If it fell heads I was to sell wheat short,
and somehow I knew all the time that the coin would
fall heads--and so it did."

"And you made a great deal of money," said Laura.  "I
know.  Mr. Court was telling me.  That was splendid."

"That was deplorable, Laura," said Cressler, gravely.
"I hope some day," he continued, "we can all of us get
hold of this man and make him solemnly promise never to
gamble in wheat again."

Laura stared.  To her mind the word "gambling" had
always been suspect.  It had a bad sound; it seemed to
be associated with depravity of the baser sort.

"Gambling!" she murmured.

"They call it buying and selling," he went on, "down
there in La Salle Street.  But it is simply betting.
Betting on the condition of the market weeks, even
months, in advance.  You bet wheat goes up.  I bet it
goes down.  Those fellows in the Pit don't own the
wheat; never even see it.  Wou'dn't know what to do
with it if they had it.  They don't care in the least
about the grain.  But there are thousands upon
thousands of farmers out here in Iowa and Kansas or
Dakota who do, and hundreds of thousand of poor devils
in Europe who care even more than the farmer.  I mean
the fellows who raise the grain, and the other fellows
who eat it.  It's life or death for either of them.
And right between these two comes the Chicago
speculator, who raises or lowers the price out of all
reason, for the benefit of his pocket.  You see Laura,
here is what I mean."  Cressler had suddenly become very
earnest.  Absorbed, interested, Laura listened
intently.  "Here is what I mean," pursued Cressler.
"It's like this: If we send the price of wheat down too
far, the farmer suffers, the fellow who raises it if we
send it up too far, the poor man in Europe suffers, the
fellow who eats it.  And food to the peasant on the
continent is bread--not meat or potatoes, as it is with
us.  The only way to do so that neither the American
farmer nor the European peasant suffers, is to keep
wheat at an average, legitimate value.  The moment you
inflate or depress that, somebody suffers right away.
And that is just what these gamblers are doing all the
time, booming it up or booming it down.  Think of it,
the food of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
people just at the mercy of a few men down there on the
Board of Trade.  They make the price.  They say just
how much the peasant shall pay for his loaf of bread.
If he can't pay the price he simply starves.  And as
for the farmer, why it's ludicrous.  If I build a house
and offer it for sale, I put my own price on it, and if
the price offered don't suit me I don't sell.  But if I
go out here in Iowa and raise a crop of wheat, I've got
to sell it, whether I want to or not at the figure
named by some fellows in Chicago.  And to make
themselves rich, they may make me sell it at a price
that bankrupts me."

Laura nodded.  She was intensely interested.  A whole
new order of things was being disclosed, and for the
first time in her life she looked into the workings of
political economy.

"Oh, that's only one side of it," Cressler went on,
heedless of Jadwin's good-humoured protests.  "Yes, I
know I am a crank on speculating.  I'm going to preach
a little if you'll let me.  I've been a speculator
myself, and a ruined one at that, and I know what I am
talking about.  Here is what I was going to say.  These
fellows themselves, the gamblers--well, call them
speculators, if you like.  Oh, the fine, promising
manly young men I've seen wrecked--absolutely and
hopelessly wrecked and ruined by speculation! It's as
easy to get into as going across the street.  They make
three hundred, five hundred, yes, even a thousand
dollars sometimes in a couple of hours, without so much
as raising a finger.  Think what that means to a boy of
twenty-five who's doing clerk work at seventy-five a
month.  Why, it would take him maybe ten years to save
a thousand, and here he's made it in a single morning.
Think you can keep him out of speculation then?  First
thing you know he's thrown up his honest, humdrum
position--oh, I've seen it hundreds of times--and takes
to hanging round the customers' rooms down there on La
Salle Street, and he makes a little, and makes a little
more, and finally he is so far in that he can't pull
out, and then some billionaire fellow, who has the
market in the palm of his hand, tightens one finger,
and our young man is ruined, body and mind.  He's lost
the taste, the very capacity for legitimate business,
and he stays on hanging round the Board till he gets to
be--all of a sudden--an old man.  And then some day
some one says, 'Why, where's So-and-so?' and you wake
up to the fact that the young fellow has simply
disappeared--lost.  I tell you the fascination of this
Pit gambling is something no one who hasn't experienced
it can have the faintest conception of.  I believe it's
worse than liquor, worse than morphine.  Once you get
into it, it grips you and draws you and draws you, and
the nearer you get to the end the easier it seems to
win, till all of a sudden, ah! there's the
whirlpool.... 'J.,' keep away from it, my boy."

Jadwin laughed, and leaning over, put his fingers upon
Cressler's breast, as though turning off a switch.

"Now, Miss Dearborn," he announced, "we've shut him
off.  Charlie means all right, but now and then some
one brushes against him and opens that switch."

Cressler, good-humouredly laughed with the others, but
Laura's smile was perfunctory and her eyes were grave.
But there was a diversion.  While the others had been
talking the rehearsal had proceeded, and now Page
beckoned to Laura from the far end of the parlor,
calling out:

"Laura--'Beatrice,' it's the third act.  You are
wanted."

"Oh, I must run," exclaimed Laura, catching up her
play-book.  "Poor Monsieur Gerardy--we must be a trial
to him."

She hurried across the room, where the coach was
disposing the furniture for the scene, consulting the
stage directions in his book:

"Here the kitchen table, here the old-fashioned
writing-desk, here the _armoire_ with practicable
doors, here the window.  Soh! Who is on?  Ah, the young
lady of the sick nose, 'Marion.' She is discovered--
knitting.  And then the duchess--later.  That's you
Mademoiselle Dearborn.  You interrupt--you remember.
But then you, ah, you always are right.  If they were
all like you.  Very well, we begin."

Creditably enough the Gretry girl read her part,
Monsieur Gerardy interrupting to indicate the crossings
and business.  Then at her cue, Laura, who was to play
the role of the duchess, entered with the words:

"I beg your pardon, but the door stood open.  May I
come in?"

Monsieur Gerardy murmured:

"_Elle est vraiment superbe._"

Laura to the very life, to every little trick of
carriage and manner was the high-born gentlewoman
visiting the home of a dependent.  Nothing could have
been more dignified, more gracious, more gracefully
condescending than her poise.  She dramatised not only
her role, but the whole of her surroundings.  The
interior of the little cottage seemed to define itself
with almost visible distinctness the moment she set
foot upon the scene.

Gerardy tiptoed from group to group, whispering:

"Eh?  Very fine, our duchess.  She would do well
professionally."

But Mrs. Wessels was not altogether convinced.  Her
eyes following her niece, she said to Corthell:

"It's Laura's 'grand manner.' My word, I know her in
_that_ part.  That's the way she is when she comes down
to the parlor of an evening, and Page introduces her to
one of her young men."

"I nearly die," protested Page, beginning to laugh.
"Of course it's very natural I should want my friends
to like my sister.  And Laura comes in as though she
were walking on eggs, and gets their names wrong, as
though it didn't much matter, and calls them Pinky when
their name is Pinckney, and don't listen to what they
say, till I want to sink right through the floor with
mortification."

In haphazard fashion the rehearsal wore to a close.
Monsieur Gerardy stormed and fretted and insisted upon
repeating certain scenes over and over again.  By ten
o'clock the actors were quite worn out.  A little
supper was served, and very soon afterward Laura made a
move toward departing.  She was wondering who would see
her home, Landry, Jadwin, or Sheldon Corthell.

The day had been sunshiny, warm even, but since nine
o'clock the weather had changed for the worse, and by
now a heavy rain was falling.  Mrs. Cressler begged the
two sisters and Mrs. Wessels to stay at her house over
night, but Laura refused.  Jadwin was suggesting to
Cressler the appropriateness of having the coupe
brought around to take the sisters home, when Corthell
came up to Laura.

"I sent for a couple of hansoms long since," he said.
"They are waiting outside now."  And that seemed to
settle the question.

For all Jadwin's perseverance, the artist seemed--for
this time at least--to have the better of the
situation.

As the good-bys were being said at the front door Page
remarked to Landry:

"You had better go with us as far as the house, so that
you can take one of our umbrellas.  You can get in with
Aunt Wess' and me.  There's plenty of room.  You can't
go home in this storm without an umbrella."

Landry at first refused, haughtily.  He might be too
poor to parade a lot of hansom cabs around, but he was
too proud, to say the least, to ride in 'em when some
one else paid.

Page scolded him roundly.  What next?  The idea.  He
was not to be so completely silly.  She didn't propose
to have the responsibility of his catching pneumonia
just for the sake of a quibble.

"Some people," she declared, "never seemed to be able
to find out that they are grown up."

"Very well," he announced, "I'll go if I can tip the
driver a dollar."

Page compressed her lips.

"The man that can afford dollar tips," she said, "can
afford to hire the cab in the first place."

"Seventy-five cents, then," he declared resolutely.
"Not a cent less.  I should feel humiliated with any
less."

"Will you please take me down to the cab, Landry
Court?" she cried.  And without further comment Landry
obeyed.

"Now, Miss Dearborn, if you are ready," exclaimed
Corthell, as he came up.  He held the umbrella over her
head, allowing his shoulders to get the drippings.

They cried good-by again all around, and the artist
guided her down the slippery steps.  He handed her
carefully into the hansom, and following, drew down the
glasses.

Laura settled herself comfortably far back in her
corner, adjusting her skirts and murmuring:

"Such a wet night.  Who would have thought it was going
to rain?  I was afraid you were not coming at first,"
she added.  "At dinner Mrs. Cressler said you had an
important committee meeting--something to do with the
Art Institute, the award of prizes; was that it?"

"Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently, "something of
the sort was on.  I suppose it was important--for the
Institute.  But for me there is only one thing of
importance nowadays," he spoke with a studied
carelessness, as though announcing a fact that Laura
must know already, "and that is, to be near you.  It is
astonishing.  You have no idea of it, how I have
ordered my whole life according to that idea."

"As though you expected me to believe that," she
answered.

In her other lovers she knew her words would have
provoked vehement protestation.  But for her it was
part of the charm of Corthell's attitude that he never
did or said the expected, the ordinary.  Just now he
seemed more interested in the effect of his love for
Laura upon himself than in the manner of her reception
of it.

"It is curious," he continued.  "I am no longer a boy.
I have no enthusiasms.  I have known many women, and I
have seen enough of what the crowd calls love to know
how futile it is, how empty, a vanity of vanities.  I
had imagined that the poets were wrong, were idealists,
seeing the things that should be rather than the things
that were.  And then," suddenly he drew a deep breath:
"_this_ happiness; and to _me._  And the miracle, the
wonderful is there--all at once--in my heart, in my
very hand, like a mysterious, beautiful exotic.  The
poets _are_ wrong," he added.  "They have not been
idealists enough.  I wish--ah, well, never mind."

"What is it that you wish?" she asked, as he broke off
suddenly.  Laura knew even before she spoke that it
would have been better not to have prompted him to
continue.  Intuitively she had something more than a
suspicion that he had led her on to say these very
words.  And in admitting that she cared to have the
conversation proceed upon this footing, she realised
that she was sheering towards unequivocal coquetry.
She saw the false move now, knew that she had lowered
her guard.  On all accounts it would have been more
dignified to have shown only a mild interest in what
Corthell wished.  She realised that once more she had
acted upon impulse, and she even found time to wonder
again how it was that when with this man her impulses,
and not her reason prevailed so often.  With Landry or
with Curtis Jadwin she was always calm, tranquilly
self-possessed.  But Corthell seemed able to reach all
that was impetuous, all that was unreasoned in her
nature.  To Landry she was more than anything else, an
older sister, indulgent, kind-hearted.  With Jadwin she
found that all the serious, all the sincere, earnest
side of her character was apt to come to the front.
But Corthell stirred troublous, unknown deeps in her,
certain undefined trends of recklessness; and for so
long as he held her within his influence, she could not
forget her sex a single instant.

It dismayed her to have this strange personality of
hers, this other headstrong, impetuous self, discovered
to her.  She hardly recognised it.  It made her a
little afraid; and yet, wonder of wonders, she could
not altogether dislike it.  There was a certain
fascination in resigning herself for little instants to
the dominion of this daring stranger that was yet
herself.

Meanwhile Corthell had answered her:

"I wish," he said, "I _wish_ you could say something--I
hardly know what--something to me.  So little would be
so much."

"But what _can_ I say?" she protested.  "I don't know--
I--what _can_ I say?"

"It must be yes or no for me," he broke out.  "I can't
go on this way."

"But why not?  Why not?" exclaimed Laura.  "Why must we--
terminate anything?  Why not let things go on just as
they are?  We are quite happy as we are.  There's never
been a time of my life when I've been happier than this
last three or four months.  I don't want to change
anything.  Ah, here we are."

The hansom drew up in front of the house.  Aunt Wess'
and Page were already inside.  The maid stood in the
vestibule in the light that streamed from the half-open
front door, an umbrella in her hand.  And as Laura
alighted, she heard Page's voice calling from the front
hall that the others had umbrellas, that the maid was
not to wait.

The hansom splashed away, and Corthell and Laura
mounted the steps of the house.

"Won't you come in?" she said.  "There is a fire in the
library."

But he said no, and for a few seconds they stood under
the vestibule light, talking.  Then Corthell, drawing
off his right-hand glove, said:

"I suppose that I have my answer.  You do not wish for
a change.  I understand.  You wish to say by that, that
you do not love me.  If you did love me as I love you,
you would wish for just that--a change.  You would be
as eager as I for that wonderful, wonderful change that
makes a new heaven and a new earth."

This time Laura did not answer.  There was a moment's
silence.  Then Corthell said:

"Do you know, I think I shall go away."

"Go away?"

"Yes, to New York.  Possibly to Paris.  There is a new
method of fusing glass that I've promised myself long
ago I would look into.  I don't know that it interests
me much--now.  But I think I had better go.  At once,
within the week.  I've not much heart in it; but it
seems--under the circumstances--to be appropriate."  He
held out his bared hand.  Laura saw that he was
smiling.

"Well, Miss Dearborn--good-by."

"But _why_ should you go?" she cried, distressfully.
"How perfectly--ah, don't go," she exclaimed, then in
desperate haste added: "It would be absolutely
foolish."

"_Shall_ I stay?" he urged.  "Do you tell me to stay?"

"Of course I do," she answered.  "It would break up the
play--your going.  It would spoil my part.  You play
opposite me, you know.  Please stay."

"Shall I stay," he asked, "for the sake of your part?
There is no one else you would rather have?" He was
smiling straight into her eyes, and she guessed what he
meant.

She smiled back at him, and the spirit of daring never
more awake in her, replied, as she caught his eye:

"There is no one else I would rather have."

Corthell caught her hand of a sudden.

"Laura," he cried, "let us end this fencing and
quibbling once and for all.  Dear, dear girl, I _love_
you with all the strength of all the good in me.  Let
me be the best a man can be to the woman he loves."

Laura flashed a smile at him.

"If you can make me love you enough," she answered.

"And you think I can?" he exclaimed,

"You have my permission to try," she said.

She hoped fervently that now, without further words, he
would leave her.  It seemed to her that it would be the
most delicate chivalry on his part--having won this
much--to push his advantage no further.  She waited
anxiously for his next words.  She began to fear that
she had trusted too much upon her assurance of his
tact.

Corthell held out his hand again.

"It is good-night, then, not good-by."

"It is good-night," said Laura.

With the words he was gone, and Laura, entering the
house, shut the door behind her with a long breath of
satisfaction.

Page and Landry were still in the library.  Laura
joined them, and for a few moments the three stood
before the fireplace talking about the play.  Page at
length, at the first opportunity, excused herself and
went to bed.  She made a great show of leaving Landry
and Laura alone, and managed to convey the impression
that she understood they were anxious to be rid of her.

"Only remember," she remarked to Laura severely, "to
lock up and turn out the hall gas.  Annie has gone to
bed _long_ ago."

"I must dash along, too," declared Landry when Page was
gone.

He buttoned his coat about his neck, and Laura followed
him out into the hall and found an umbrella for him.

"You were beautiful to-night," he said, as he stood
with his hand on the door knob.  "Beautiful.  I could
not keep my eyes off of you, and I could not listen to
anybody but you.  And now," he declared, solemnly, "I
will see your eyes and hear your voice all the rest of
the night.  I want to explain," he added, "about those
hansoms--about coming home with Miss Page and Mrs.
Wessels.  Mr. Corthell--those were _his_ hansoms, of
course.  But I wanted an umbrella, and I gave the
driver seventy-five cents."

"Why of course, of course," said Laura, not quite
divining what he was driving at.

"I don't want you to think that I would be willing to
put myself under obligations to anybody."

"Of course, Landry; I understand."

He thrilled at once.

"Ah," he cried, "you don't know what it _means_ to me
to look into the eyes of a woman who really
understands."

Laura stared, wondering just what she had said.

"Will you turn this hall light out for me, Landry?" she
asked.  "I never can reach."

He left the front door open and extinguished the jet in
its dull red globe.  Promptly they were involved in
darkness.

"Good-night," she said.  "Isn't it dark?"

He stretched out his hand to take hers, but instead his
groping fingers touched her waist.  Suddenly Laura felt
his arm clasp her.  Then all at once, before she had
time to so much as think of resistance, he had put both
arms about her and kissed her squarely on her cheek.

Then the front door closed, and she was left abruptly
alone, breathless, stunned, staring wide-eyed into the
darkness.

Her first sensation was one merely of amazement.  She
put her hand quickly to her cheek, first the palm and
then the back, murmuring confusedly:

"What?  Why?--why?"

Then she whirled about and ran up the stairs, her silks
clashing and fluttering about her as she fled, gained
her own room, and swung the door violently shut behind
her.  She turned up the lowered gas and, without
knowing why, faced her mirror at once, studying her
reflection and watching her hand as it all but scoured
the offended cheek.

Then, suddenly, with an upward, uplifting rush, her
anger surged within her.  She, Laura, Miss Dearborn,
who loved no man, who never conceded, never
capitulated, whose "grand manner" was a thing
proverbial, in all her pitch of pride, in her own home,
her own fortress, had been kissed, like a school-girl,
like a chambermaid, in the dark, in a corner.

And by--great heavens!--_Landry Court._  The boy whom
she fancied she held in such subjection, such profound
respect.  Landry Court had dared, had dared to kiss
her, to offer her this wretchedly commonplace and petty
affront, degrading her to the level of a pretty
waitress, making her ridiculous.

She stood rigid, drawn to her full height, in the
centre of her bedroom, her fists tense at her sides,
her breath short, her eyes flashing, her face aflame.
From time to time her words, half smothered, burst from
her.

"What does he _think_ I _am?_ How dared he?  How dared
he?"

All that she could say, any condemnation she could
formulate only made her position the more absurd, the
more humiliating.  It had all been said before by
generations of shop-girls, school-girls, and servants,
in whose company the affront had ranged her.  Landry
was to be told in effect that he was never to presume
to seek her acquaintance again.  Just as the enraged
hussy of the street corners and Sunday picnics shouted
that the offender should "never dare speak to her again
as long as he lived."  Never before had she been
subjected to this kind of indignity.  And
simultaneously with the assurance she could hear the
shrill voice of the drab of the public balls
proclaiming that she had "never been kissed in all her
life before."

Of all slights, of all insults, it was the one that
robbed her of the very dignity she should assume to
rebuke it.  The more vehemently she resented it, the
more laughable became the whole affair.

But she would resent it, she would resent it, and
Landry Court should be driven to acknowledge that the
sorriest day of his life was the one on which he had
forgotten the respect in which he had pretended to hold
her.  He had deceived her, then, all along.  Because
she had--foolishly--relaxed a little towards him,
permitted a certain intimacy, this was how he abused
it.  Ah, well, it would teach her a lesson.  Men were
like that.  She might have known it would come to this.
Wilfully they chose to misunderstand, to take advantage
of her frankness, her good nature, her good
comradeship.

She had been foolish all along, flirting--yes, that was
the word for it flirting with Landry and Corthell and
Jadwin.  No doubt they all compared notes about her.
Perhaps they had bet who first should kiss her.  Or, at
least, there was not one of them who would not kiss her
if she gave him a chance.

But if she, in any way, had been to blame for what
Landry had done, she would atone for it.  She had made
herself too cheap, she had found amusement in
encouraging these men, in equivocating, in coquetting
with them.  Now it was time to end the whole business,
to send each one of them to the right-about with an
unequivocal definite word.  She was a good girl, she
told herself.  She was, in her heart, sincere; she was
above the inexpensive diversion of flirting.  She had
started wrong in her new life, and it was time, high
time, to begin over again--with a clean page--to show
these men that they dared not presume to take liberties
with so much as the tip of her little finger.

So great was her agitation, so eager her desire to act
upon her resolve, that she could not wait till morning.
It was a physical impossibility for her to remain under
what she chose to believe suspicion another hour.  If
there was any remotest chance that her three lovers had
permitted themselves to misunderstand her, they were to
be corrected at once, were to be shown their place, and
that without mercy.

She called for the maid, Annie, whose husband was the
janitor of the house, and who slept in the top story.

"If Henry hasn't gone to bed," said Laura, "tell him to
wait up till I call him, or to sleep with his clothes
on.  There is something I want him to do for me--
something important."

It was close upon midnight.  Laura turned back into her
room, removed her hat and veil, and tossed them, with
her coat, upon the bed.  She lit another burner of the
chandelier, and drew a chair to her writing-desk
between the windows.

Her first note was to Landry Court.  She wrote it
almost with a single spurt of the pen, and dated it
carefully, so that he might know it had been written
immediately after he had left.  Thus it ran:


"Please do not try to see me again at any time or under
any circumstances.  I want you to understand, very
clearly, that I do not wish to continue our
acquaintance."


Her letter to Corthell was more difficult, and it was
not until she had rewritten it two or three times that
it read to her satisfaction.


"My dear Mr. Corthell," so it was worded, "you asked me
to-night that our fencing and quibbling be brought to
an end.  I quite agree with you that it is desirable.
I spoke as I did before you left upon an impulse that I
shall never cease to regret.  I do not wish you to
misunderstand me, nor to misinterpret my attitude in
any way.  You asked me to be your wife, and, very
foolishly and wrongly, I gave you--intentionally--an
answer which might easily be construed into an
encouragement.  Understand now that I do not wish you
to try to make me love you.  I would find it extremely
distasteful.  And, believe me, it would be quite
hopeless.  I do not now, and never shall care for you
as I should care if I were to be your wife.  I beseech
you that you will not, in any manner, refer again to
this subject.  It would only distress and pain me.

"Cordially yours,

"LAURA DEARBORN."


The letter to Curtis Jadwin was almost to the same
effect.  But she found the writing of it easier than
the others.  In addressing him she felt herself grow a
little more serious, a little more dignified and calm.
It ran as follows:


MY DEAR MR. JADWIN:

"When you asked me to become your wife this evening,
you deserved a straightforward answer, and instead I
replied in a spirit of capriciousness and
disingenuousness, which I now earnestly regret, and
which ask you to pardon and to ignore.

"I allowed myself to tell you that you might find
encouragement in my foolishly spoken words.  I am
deeply sorry that I should have so forgotten what was
due to my own self-respect and to your sincerity.

"If I have permitted myself to convey to you the
impression that I would ever be willing to be your
wife, let me hasten to correct it.  Whatever I said to
you this evening, I must answer now--as I should have
answered then--truthfully and unhesitatingly, no.

"This, I insist, must be the last word between us upon
this unfortunate subject, if we are to continue, as I
hope, very good friends.

"Cordially yours,

"LAURA DEARBORN.


She sealed, stamped, and directed the three envelopes,
and glanced at the little leather-cased travelling
clock that stood on the top of her desk.  It was nearly
two.

"I could not sleep, I could not sleep," she murmured,
"if I did not know they were on the way."

In answer to the bell Henry appeared, and Laura gave
him the letters, with orders to mail them at once in
the nearest box.

When it was all over she sat down again at her desk,
and leaning an elbow upon it, covered her eyes with her
hand for a long moment.  She felt suddenly very tired,
and when at last she lowered her hand, her fingers were
wet.  But in the end she grew calmer.  She felt that,
at all events, she had vindicated herself, that her
life would begin again to-morrow with a clean page; and
when at length she fell asleep, it was to the dreamless
unconsciousness of an almost tranquil mind.

She slept late the next morning and breakfasted in bed
between ten and eleven.  Then, as the last vibrations
of last night's commotion died away, a very natural
curiosity began to assert itself.  She wondered how
each of the three men "would take it."  In spite of
herself she could not keep from wishing that she could
be by when they read their dismissals.

Towards the early part of the afternoon, while Laura
was in the library reading "Queen's Gardens," the
special delivery brought Landry Court's reply.  It was
one _roulade_ of incoherence, even in places blistered
with tears.  Landry protested, implored, debased
himself to the very dust.  His letter bristled with
exclamation points, and ended with a prolonged wail of
distress and despair.

Quietly, and with a certain merciless sense of
pacification, Laura deliberately reduced the letter to
strips, burned it upon the hearth, and went back to her
Ruskin.

A little later, the afternoon being fine, she
determined to ride out to Lincoln Park, not fifteen
minutes from her home, to take a little walk there, and
to see how many new buds were out.

As she was leaving, Annie gave into her hands a
pasteboard box, just brought to the house by a
messenger boy.

The box was full of Jacqueminot roses, to the stems of
which a note from Corthell was tied.  He wrote but a
single line:


"So it should have been 'good-by ' after all."


Laura had Annie put the roses in Page's room.

"Tell Page she can have them; I don't want them.  She
can wear them to her dance to-night," she said.

While to herself she added:

"The little buds in the park will be prettier."

She was gone from the house over two hours, for she had
elected to walk all the way home.  She came back
flushed and buoyant from her exercise, her cheeks cool
with the Lake breeze, a young maple leaf in one of the
revers of her coat.  Annie let her in, murmuring:

"A gentleman called just after you went out.  I told
him you were not at home, but he said he would wait.
He is in the library now."

"Who is he?  Did he give his name?" demanded Laura.

The maid handed her Curtis Jadwin's card.



V


That year the spring burst over Chicago in a prolonged
scintillation of pallid green.  For weeks continually
the sun shone.  The Lake, after persistently cherishing
the greys and bitter greens of the winter months, and
the rugged white-caps of the northeast gales, mellowed
at length, turned to a softened azure blue, and lapsed
by degrees to an unrumed calmness, incrusted with
innumerable coruscations.

In the parks, first of all, the buds and earliest
shoots asserted themselves.  The horse-chestnut
bourgeons burst their sheaths to spread into trefoils
and flame-shaped leaves.  The elms, maples, and
cottonwoods followed.  The sooty, blackened snow upon
the grass plats, in the residence quarters, had long
since subsided, softening the turf, filling the gutters
with rivulets.  On all sides one saw men at work laying
down the new sod in rectangular patches.

There was a delicious smell of ripening in the air, a
smell of sap once more on the move, of humid earths
disintegrating from the winter rigidity, of twigs and
slender branches stretching themselves under the
returning warmth, elastic once more, straining in their
bark.

On the North Side, in Washington Square, along the
Lake-shore Drive, all up and down the Lincoln Park
Boulevard, and all through Erie, Huron, and Superior
streets, through North State Street, North Clarke
Street, and La Salle Avenue, the minute sparkling of
green flashed from tree top to tree top, like the first
kindling of dry twigs.  One could almost fancy that the
click of igniting branch tips was audible as whole beds
of yellow-green sparks defined themselves within
certain elms and cottonwoods.

Every morning the sun invaded earlier the east windows
of Laura Dearborn's bedroom.  Every day at noon it
stood more nearly overhead above her home.  Every
afternoon the checkered shadows of the leaves thickened
upon the drawn curtains of the library.  Within doors
the bottle-green flies came out of their lethargy and
droned and bumped on the panes.  The double windows
were removed, screens and awnings took their places;
the summer pieces were put into the fireplaces.

All of a sudden vans invaded the streets, piled high
with mattresses, rocking-chairs, and bird cages; the
inevitable "spring moving" took place.  And these
furniture vans alternated with great trucks laden with
huge elm trees on their way from nursery to lawn.
Families and trees alike submitted to the impulse of
transplanting, abandoning the winter quarters,
migrating with the spring to newer environments, taking
root in other soils.  Sparrows wrangled on the
sidewalks and built ragged nests in the interstices of
cornice and coping.  In the parks one heard the liquid
modulations of robins.  The florists' wagons appeared,
and from house to house, from lawn to lawn, iron urns
and window boxes filled up with pansies, geraniums,
fuchsias, and trailing vines.  The flower beds,
stripped of straw and manure, bloomed again, and at
length the great cottonwoods shed their berries, like
clusters of tiny grapes, over street and sidewalk.

At length came three days of steady rain, followed by
cloudless sunshine and full-bodied, vigorous winds
straight from out the south.

Instantly the living embers in tree top and grass plat
were fanned to flame.  Like veritable fire, the leaves
blazed up.  Branch after branch caught and crackled;
even the dryest, the deadest, were enfolded in the
resistless swirl of green.  Tree top ignited tree top;
the parks and boulevards were one smother of radiance.
From end to end and from side to side of the city, fed
by the rains, urged by the south winds, spread
billowing and surging the superb conflagration of the
coming summer.

Then, abruptly, everything hung poised; the leaves, the
flowers, the grass, all at fullest stretch, stood
motionless, arrested, while the heat, distilled, as it
were, from all this seething green, rose like a vast
pillar over the city, and stood balanced there in the
iridescence of the sky, moveless and immeasurable.

From time to time it appeared as if this pillar broke
in the guise of summer storms, and came toppling down
upon the city in tremendous detonations of thunder and
weltering avalanches of rain.  But it broke only to
reform, and no sooner had the thunder ceased, the rain
intermitted, and the sun again come forth, than one
received the vague impression of the swift rebuilding
of the vast, invisible column that smothered the city
under its bases, towering higher and higher into the
rain-washed, crystal-clear atmosphere.

Then the aroma of wet dust, of drenched pavements,
musty, acute--the unforgettable exhalation of the
city's streets after a shower--pervaded all the air,
and the little out-door activities resumed again under
the dripping elms and upon the steaming sidewalks.

The evenings were delicious.  It was yet too early for
the exodus northward to the Wisconsin lakes, but to
stay indoors after nightfall was not to be thought of.
After six o'clock, all through the streets in the
neighbourhood of the Dearborns' home, one could see the
family groups "sitting out" upon the front "stoop."
Chairs were brought forth, carpets and rugs unrolled
upon the steps.  From within, through the opened
windows of drawing-room and parlour, came the brisk
gaiety of pianos.  The sidewalks were filled with
children clamouring at "tag," "I-spy," or "run-sheep-
run."  Girls in shirt-waists and young men in flannel
suits promenaded to and fro.  Visits were exchanged
from "stoop" to "stoop," lemonade was served, and
claret punch.  In their armchairs on the top step,
elderly men, householders, capitalists, well-to-do,
their large stomachs covered with white waistcoats,
their straw hats upon their knees, smoked very fragrant
cigars in silent enjoyment, digesting their dinners,
taking the air after the grime and hurry of the
business districts.

It was on such an evening as this, well on towards the
last days of the spring, that Laura Dearborn and Page
joined the Cresslers and their party, sitting out like
other residents of the neighbourhood on the front steps
of their house.  Almost every evening nowadays the
Dearborn girls came thus to visit with the Cresslers.
Sometimes Page brought her mandolin.

Every day of the warm weather seemed only to increase
the beauty of the two sisters.  Page's brown hair was
never more luxuriant, the exquisite colouring of her
cheeks never more charming, the boyish outlines of her
small, straight figure--immature and a little angular
as yet--never more delightful.  The seriousness of her
straight-browed, grave, grey-blue eyes was still
present, but the eyes themselves were, in some
indefinable way, deepening, and all the maturity that
as yet was withheld from her undeveloped little form
looked out from beneath her long lashes.

But Laura was veritably regal.  Very slender as yet, no
trace of fulness to be seen over hip or breast, the
curves all low and flat, she yet carried her extreme
height with tranquil confidence, the unperturbed
assurance of a _chatelaine_ of the days of feudalism.

Her coal-black hair, high-piled, she wore as if it were
a coronet.  The warmth of the exuberant spring days had
just perceptibly mellowed the even paleness of her
face, but to compensate for this all the splendour of
coming midsummer nights flashed from her deep-brown
eyes.

On this occasion she had put on her coat over her
shirt-waist, and a great bunch of violets was tucked
into her belt.  But no sooner had she exchanged
greetings with the others and settled herself in her
place than she slipped her coat from her shoulders.

It was while she was doing this that she noted, for the
first time, Landry Court standing half in and half out
of the shadow of the vestibule behind Mr. Cressler's
chair.

"This is the first time he has been here since--since
that night," Mrs. Cressler hastened to whisper in
Laura's ear.  "He told me about--well, he told me what
occurred, you know.  He came to dinner to-night, and
afterwards the poor boy nearly wept in my arms.  You
never saw such penitence."

Laura put her chin in the air with a little movement of
incredulity.  But her anger had long since been a thing
of the past.  Good-tempered, she could not cherish
resentment very long.  But as yet she had greeted
Landry only by the briefest of nods.

"Such a warm night!" she murmured, fanning herself with
part of Mr. Cressler's evening paper.  "And I never was
so thirsty."

"Why, of course," exclaimed Mrs. Cressler.  "Isabel,"
she called, addressing Miss Gretry, who sat on the
opposite side of the steps, "isn't the lemonade near
you?  Fill a couple of glasses for Laura and Page."

Page murmured her thanks, but Laura declined.

"No; just plain water for me," she said.  "Isn't there
some inside?  Mr. Court can get it for me, can't he?"
Landry brought the pitcher back, running at top speed
and spilling half of it in his eagerness.  Laura
thanked him with a smile, addressing him, however, by
his last name.  She somehow managed to convey to him in
her manner the information that though his offence was
forgotten, their old-time relations were not, for one
instant, to be resumed.

Later on, while Page was thrumming her mandolin, Landry
whistling a "second," Mrs. Cressler took occasion to
remark to Laura:

"I was reading the Paris letter in the 'Inter-Ocean'
to-day, and I saw Mr. Corthell's name on the list of
American arrivals at the Continental.  I guess," she
added, "he's going to be gone a long time.  I wonder
sometimes if he will _ever_ come back.  A fellow with
his talent, I should imagine would find Chicago--well,
less congenial, anyhow, than Paris.  But, just the
same, I do think it was mean of him to break up our
play by going.  I'll bet a cookie that he wouldn't take
part any more just because you wouldn't.  He was just
crazy to do that love scene in the fourth act with you.
And when _you_ wouldn't play, of course _he_ wouldn't;
and then every-body seemed to lose interest with you
two out.  'J.' took it all very decently though, don't
you think?"

Laura made a murmur of mild assent.

"He was disappointed, too," continued Mrs. Cressler.
"I could see that.  He thought the play was going to
interest a lot of our church people in his Sunday-
school.  But he never said a word when it fizzled out.
Is he coming to-night?"

"Well I declare," said Laura.  "How should I know, if
you don't?"

Jadwin was an almost regular visitor at the Cresslers'
during the first warm evenings.  He lived on the South
Side, and the distance between his home and that of the
Cresslers was very considerable.  It was seldom,
however, that Jadwin did not drive over.  He came in
his double-seated buggy, his negro coachman beside him
the two coach dogs, "Rex" and "Rox," trotting under the
rear axle.  His horses were not showy, nor were they
made conspicuous by elaborate boots, bandages, and all
the other solemn paraphernalia of the stable, yet men
upon the sidewalks, amateurs, breeders, and the like--
men who understood good stock--never failed to stop to
watch the team go by, heads up, the check rein swinging
loose, ears all alert, eyes all alight, the breath
deep, strong, and slow, and the stride, machine-like,
even as the swing of a metronome, thrown out from the
shoulder to knee, snapped on from knee to fetlock, from
fetlock to pastern, finishing squarely, beautifully,
with the thrust of the hoof, planted an instant, then,
as it were, flinging the roadway behind it, snatched up
again, and again cast forward.

On these occasions Jadwin himself inevitably wore a
black "slouch" hat, suggestive of the general of the
Civil War, a grey "dust overcoat" with a black velvet
collar, and tan gloves, discoloured with the moisture
of his palms and all twisted and crumpled with the
strain of holding the thoroughbreds to their work.

He always called the time of the trip from the buggy at
the Cresslers' horse block, his stop watch in his hand,
and, as he joined the groups upon the steps, he was
almost sure to remark: "Tugs were loose all the way
from the river.  They pulled the whole rig by the
reins.  My hands are about dislocated."

"Page plays very well," murmured Mrs. Cressler as the
young girl laid down her mandolin.  "I hope J. does
come to-night," she added.  "I love to have him 'round.
He's so hearty and whole-souled."

I aura did not reply.  She seemed a little preoccupied
this evening, and conversation in the group died away.
The night was very beautiful, serene, quiet; and, at
this particular hour of the end of the twilight, no one
cared to talk much.  Cressler lit another cigar, and
the filaments of delicate blue smoke hung suspended
about his head in the moveless air.  Far off, from the
direction of the mouth of the river, a lake steamer
whistled a prolonged tenor note.  Somewhere from an
open window in one of the neighbouring houses a violin,
accompanied by a piano, began to elaborate the
sustained phrases of "Schubert's Serenade."  Theatrical
as was the theme, the twilight and the muffled hum of
the city, lapsing to quiet after the febrile activities
of the day, combined to lend it a dignity, a
persuasiveness.  The children were still playing along
the sidewalks, and their staccato gaiety was part of
the quiet note to which all sounds of the moment seemed
chorded.

After a while Mrs. Cressler began to talk to Laura in a
low voice.  She and Charlie were going to spend a part
of June at Oconomowoc, in Wisconsin.  Why could not
Laura make up her mind to come with them?  She had asked
Laura a dozen times already, but couldn't get a yes or
no answer from her.  What was the reason she could not
decide?  Didn't she think she would have a good time?

"Page can go," said Laura.  "I would like to have you
take her.  But as for me, I don't know.  My plans are
so unsettled this summer."  She broke off suddenly.
"Oh, now, that I think of it, I want to borrow your
'Idylls of the King.' May I take it for a day or two?
I'll run in and get it now," she added as she rose.  "I
know just where to find it.  No, please sit still, Mr.
Cressler.  I'll go."

And with the words she disappeared in doors, leaving
Mrs. Cressler to murmur to her husband:

"Strange girl.  Sometimes I think I don't know Laura at
all.  She's so inconsistent.  How funny she acts about
going to Oconomowoc with us!"

Mr. Cressler permitted himself an amiable grunt of
protest.

"Pshaw! Laura's all right.  The handsomest girl in Cook
County."

"Well, that's not much to do with it, Charlie," sighed
Mrs. Cressler.  "Oh, dear," she added vaguely.  "I
don't know."

"Don't know what?"

"I hope Laura's life will be happy."

"Oh, for God's sake, Carrie!"

"There's something about that girl," continued Mrs.
Cressler, "that makes my heart bleed for her."

Cressler frowned, puzzled and astonished.

"Hey--what!" he exclaimed.  "You're crazy, Carrie!"

"Just the same," persisted Mrs. Cressler, "I just yearn
towards her sometimes like a mother.  Some people are
born to trouble, Charlie; born to trouble, as the
sparks fly upward.  And you mark my words, Charlie
Cressler, Laura is that sort.  There's all the pathos
in the world in just the way she looks at you from
under all that black, black hair, and out of her eyes
the saddest eyes sometimes, great, sad, mournful eyes."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Mr. Cressler, resuming his paper.

"I'm positive that Sheldon Corthell asked her to marry
him," mused Mrs. Cressler after a moment's silence.
"I'm sure that's why he left so suddenly."

Her husband grunted grimly as he turned his paper so as
to catch the reflection of the vestibule light.

"Don't you think so, Charlie?"

"Uh! _I_ don't know.  I never had much use for that
fellow, anyhow."

"He's wonderfully talented," she commented, "and so
refined.  He always had the most beautiful manners.
Did you ever notice his hands?"

"I thought they were like a barber's.  Put him in
'J.'s' rig there, behind those horses of his, and how
long do you suppose he'd hold those trotters with that
pair of hands?  Why," he blustered, suddenly, "they'd
pull him right over the dashboard."

"Poor little Landry Court!" murmured his wife, lowering
her voice.  "He's just about heart-broken.  He wanted
to marry her too.  My goodness, she must have brought
him up with a round turn.  I can see Laura when she is
really angry.  Poor fellow!"

"If you _women_ would let that boy alone, he might
amount to something."

"He told me his life was ruined."

Cressler threw his cigar from him with vast impatience.

"Oh, rot!" he muttered.

"He took it terribly, seriously, Charlie, just the
same."

"I'd like to take that young boy in hand and shake some
of the nonsense out of him that you women have filled
him with.  He's got a level head.  On the floor every
day, and never yet bought a hatful of wheat on his own
account.  Don't know the meaning of speculation and
don't want to.  There's a boy with some sense."

"It's just as well," persisted Mrs. Cressler
reflectively, "that Laura wouldn't have him.  Of course
they're not made for each other.  But I thought that
Corthell would have made her happy.  But she won't ever
marry 'J.' He asked her to; she didn't tell me, but I
know he did.  And she's refused him flatly.  She won't
marry anybody, she says.  Said she didn't love anybody,
and never would.  I'd have loved to have seen her
married to 'J.,' but I can see now that they wouldn't
have been congenial; and if Laura wouldn't have Sheldon
Corthell, who was just made for her, I guess it was no
use to expect she'd have 'J.' Laura's got a
temperament, and she's artistic, and loves paintings,
and poetry, and Shakespeare, and all that, and Curtis
don't care for those things at all.  They wouldn't have
had anything in common.  But Corthell--that was
different.  And Laura did care for him, in a way.  He
interested her immensely.  When he'd get started on art
subjects Laura would just hang on every word.  My
lands, I wouldn't have gone away if I'd been in his
boots.  You mark my words, Charlie, there was the man
for Laura Dearborn, and she'll marry him yet, or I'll
miss my guess."

"That's just like you, Carrie--you and the rest of the
women," exclaimed Cressler, "always scheming to marry
each other off.  Why don't you let the girl alone?
Laura's all right.  She mind's her own business, and
she's perfectly happy.  But you'd go to work and get up
a sensation about her, and say that your 'heart bleeds
for her,' and that she's born to trouble, and has sad
eyes.  If she gets into trouble it'll be because some
one else makes it for her.  You take my advice, and let
her paddle her own canoe.  She's got the head to do it;
don't you worry about that.  By the way--" Cressler
interrupted himself, seizing the opportunity to change
the subject.  "By the way, Carrie, Curtis has been
speculating again.  I'm sure of it."

"Too bad," she murmured.

"So it is," Cressler went on.  "He and Gretry are thick
as thieves these days.  Gretry, I understand, has been
selling September wheat for him all last week, and only
this morning they closed out another scheme--some corn
game.  It was all over the Floor just about closing
time.  They tell me that Curtis landed between eight
and ten thousand.  Always seems to win.  I'd give a lot
to keep him out of it; but since his deal in May wheat
he's been getting into it more and more."

"Did he sell that property on Washington Street?" she
inquired.

"Oh," exclaimed her husband, "I'd forgot.  I meant to
tell you.  No, he didn't sell it.  But he did better.
He wouldn't sell, and those department store people
took a lease.  Guess what they pay him.  Three hundred
thousand a year.  'J.' is getting richer all the time,
and why he can't be satisfied with his own business
instead of monkeying 'round La Salle Street is a
mystery to me."

But, as Mrs. Cressler was about to reply, Laura came to
the open window of the parlour.

"Oh, Mrs. Cressler," she called, "I don't seem to find
your 'Idylls' after all.  I thought they were in the
little book-case."

"Wait.  I'll find them for you," exclaimed Mrs.
Cressler.

"Would you mind?" answered Laura, as Mrs. Cressler
rose.

Inside, the gas had not been lighted.  The library was
dark and cool, and when Mrs. Cressler had found the
book for Laura the girl pleaded a headache as an excuse
for remaining within.  The two sat down by the raised
sash of a window at the side of the house, that
overlooked the "side yard," where the morning-glories
and nasturtiums were in full bloom.

"The house _is_ cooler, isn't it?" observed Mrs.
Cressler.

Laura settled herself in her wicker chair, and with a
gesture that of late had become habitual with her
pushed her heavy coils of hair to one side and patted
them softly to place.

"It is getting warmer, I do believe," she said, rather
listlessly.  "I understand it is to be a very hot
summer."  Then she added, "I'm to be married in July,
Mrs. Cressler."

Mrs. Cressler gasped, and sitting bolt upright stared
for one breathless instant at Laura's face, dimly
visible in the darkness.  Then, stupefied, she managed
to vociferate:

"What! Laura! Married?  My darling girl!"

"Yes," answered Laura calmly.  "In July--or maybe
sooner."

"Why, I thought you had rejected Mr. Corthell.  I
thought that's why he went away."

"Went away?  He never went away.  I mean it's not Mr.
Corthell.  It's Mr. Jadwin."

"Thank God!" declared Mrs. Cressler fervently, and with
the words kissed Laura on both cheeks.  "My dear, dear
child, you can't tell how glad I am.  From the very
first I've said you were made for one another.  And I
thought all the time that you'd told him you wouldn't
have him."

"I did," said Laura.  Her manner was quiet.  She seemed
a little grave.  "I told him I did not love him.  Only
last week I told him so."

"Well, then, why did you promise?"

"My goodness!" exclaimed Laura, with a show of
animation.  "You don't realize what it's been.  Do you
suppose you can say 'no' to that man?"

"Of course not, of course not," declared Mrs. Cressler
joyfully.  "That's 'J.' all over.  I might have known
he'd have you if he set out to do it."

"Morning, noon, and night," Laura continued.  "He
seemed willing to wait as long as I wasn't definite;
but one day I wrote to him and gave him a square 'No,'
so as he couldn't mistake, and just as soon as I'd said
that he--he--began.  I didn't have any peace until I'd
promised him, and the moment I had promised he had a
ring on my finger.  He'd had it ready in his pocket for
weeks it seems.  No," she explained, as Mrs. Cressler
laid her fingers upon her left hand, "That I would not
have--yet."

"Oh, it was like 'J.' to be persistent," repeated Mrs.
Cressler.

"Persistent!" murmured Laura.  "He simply wouldn't talk
of anything else.  It was making him sick, he said.
And he did have a fever--often.  But he would come out
to see me just the same.  One night, when it was
pouring rain--Well, I'll tell you.  He had been to
dinner with us, and afterwards, in the drawing-room, I
told him 'no' for the hundredth time just as plainly as
I could, and he went away early--it wasn't eight.  I
thought that now at last he had given up.  But he was
back again before ten the same evening.  He said he had
come back to return a copy of a book I had loaned him--
'Jane Eyre' it was.  Raining! I never saw it rain as it
did that night.  He was drenched, and even at dinner he
had had a low fever.  And then I was sorry for him.  I
told him he could come to see me again.  I didn't
propose to have him come down with pneumonia, or
typhoid, or something.  And so it all began over
again."

"But you loved him, Laura?" demanded Mrs. Cressler.
"You love him now?"

Laura was silent.  Then at length:

"I don't know," she answered.

"Why, of course you love him, Laura," insisted Mrs.
Cressler.  "You wouldn't have promised him if you
hadn't.  Of course you love him, don't you?"

"Yes, I--I suppose I must love him, or--as you say--I
wouldn't have promised to marry him.  He does
everything, every little thing I say.  He just seems to
think of nothing else but to please me from morning
until night.  And when I finally said I would marry
him, why, Mrs. Cressler, he choked all up, and the
tears ran down his face, and all he could say was, 'May
God bless you! May God bless you!' over and over again,
and his hand shook so that--Oh, well," she broke off
abruptly.  Then added, "Somehow it makes tears come to
my eyes to think of it."

"But, Laura," urged Mrs. Cressler, "you love Curtis,
don't you?  You--you're such a strange girl sometimes.
Dear child, talk to me as though I were your mother.
There's no one in the world loves you more than I do.
You love Curtis, don't you?"

Laura hesitated a long moment.

"Yes," she said, slowly at length.  "I think I love him
very much--sometimes.  And then sometimes I think I
don't.  I can't tell.  There are days when I'm sure of
it, and there are others when I wonder if I want to be
married, after all.  I thought when love came it was to
be--oh, uplifting, something glorious like Juliet's
love or Marguerite's.  Something that would--" Suddenly
she struck her hand to her breast, her fingers shut
tight, closing to a fist.  "Oh, something that would
shake me all to pieces.  I thought that was the only
kind of love there was."

"Oh, that's what you read about in trashy novels," Mrs.
Cressler assured her, "or the kind you see at the
matinees.  I wouldn't let that bother me, Laura.
There's no doubt that '_J._' loves _you._"

Laura brightened a little.  "Oh, no," she answered,
"there's no doubt about that.  It's splendid, that part
of it.  He seems to think there's nothing in the world
too good for me.  Just imagine, only yesterday I was
saying something about my gloves, I really forget what--
something about how hard it was for me to get the kind
of gloves I liked.  Would you believe it, he got me to
give him my measure, and when I saw him in the evening
he told me he had cabled to Brussels to some famous
glovemaker and had ordered I don't know how many
pairs."

"Just like him, just like him!" cried Mrs. Cressler.
"I know you will be happy, Laura, dear.  You can't help
but be with a man who loves you as 'J.' does."

"I think I shall be happy," answered Laura, suddenly
grave.  "Oh, Mrs. Cressler, I want to be.  I hope that
I won't come to myself some day, after it is too late,
and find that it was all a mistake."  Her voice shook a
little.  "You don't know how nervous I am these days.
One minute I am one kind of girl, and the next another
kind.  I'm so nervous and--oh, I don't know.  Oh, I
guess it will be all right."  She wiped her eyes, and
laughed a note.  "I don't see why I should cry about
it," she murmured.

"Well, Laura," answered Mrs. Cressler, "if you don't
love Curtis, don't marry him.  That's very simple."

"It's like this, Mrs. Cressler," Laura explained.  "I
suppose I am very uncharitable and unchristian, but I
like the people that like me, and I hate those that
don't like me.  I can't help it.  I know it's wrong,
but that's the way I am.  And I love to be loved.  The
man that would love me the most would make me love him.
And when Mr. Jadwin seems to care so much, and do so
much, and--you know how I mean; it does make a
difference of course.  I suppose I care as much for Mr.
Jadwin as I ever will care for any man.  I suppose I
must be cold and unemotional."

Mrs.  Cressler could not restrain a movement of
surprise.

"You unemotional?  Why, I thought you just said, Laura,
that you had imagined love would be like Juliet and
like that girl in 'Faust'--that it was going to shake
you all to pieces."

"Did I say that?  Well, I told you I was one girl one
minute and another another.  I don't know myself these
days.  Oh, hark," she said, abruptly, as the cadence of
hoofs began to make itself audible from the end of the
side street.  "That's the team now.  I could recognise
those horses' trot as far as I could hear it.  Let's go
out.  I know he would like to have me there when he
drives up.  And you know"--she put her hand on Mrs.
Cressler's arm as the two moved towards the front door--
"this is all absolutely a secret as yet."

"Why, of course, Laura dear.  But tell me just one
thing more," Mrs. Cressler asked, in a whisper, "are
you going to have a church wedding?"

"Hey, Carrie," called Mr. Cressler from the stoop,
"here's J."

Laura shook her head.

"No, I want it to be very quiet--at our house.  We'll
go to Geneva Lake for the summer.  That's why, you see,
I couldn't promise to go to Oconomowoc with you."

They came out upon the front steps, Mrs. Cressler's arm
around Laura's waist.  It was dark by now, and the air
was perceptibly warmer.

The team was swinging down the street close at hand,
the hoof beats exactly timed, as if there were but one
instead of two horses.

"Well, what's the record to-night J.?" cried Cressler,
as Jadwin brought the bays to a stand at the horse
block.  Jadwin did not respond until he had passed the
reins to the coachman, and taking the stop watch from
the latter's hand, he drew on his cigar, and held the
glowing tip to the dial.

"Eleven minutes and a quarter," he announced, "and we
had to wait for the bridge at that."

He came up the steps, fanning himself with his slouch
hat, and dropped into the chair that Landry had brought
for him.

"Upon my word," he exclaimed, gingerly drawing off his
driving gloves, "I've no feeling in my fingers at all.
Those fellows will pull my hands clean off some day."

But he was hardly settled in his place before he
proposed to send the coachman home, and to take Laura
for a drive towards Lincoln Park, and even a little way
into the park itself.  He promised to have her back
within an hour.

"I haven't any hat," objected Laura.  "I should love to
go, but I ran over here to-night without any hat."

"Well, I wouldn't let that stand in my way, Laura,"
protested Mrs. Cressler.  "It will be simply heavenly
in the Park on such a night as this."

In the end Laura borrowed Page's hat, and Jadwin took
her away.  In the light of the street lamps Mrs.
Cressler and the others watched them drive off, sitting
side by side behind the fine horses.  Jadwin, broad-
shouldered, a fresh cigar in his teeth, each rein in a
double turn about his large, hard hands; Laura, slim,
erect, pale, her black, thick hair throwing a tragic
shadow low upon her forehead.

"A fine-looking couple," commented Mr. Cressler as they
disappeared.

The hoof beats died away, the team vanished.  Landry
Court, who stood behind the others, watching, turned to
Mrs. Cressler.  She thought she detected a little
unsteadiness in his voice, but he repeated bravely:

"Yes, yes, that's right.  They are a fine, a--a fine-
looking couple together, aren't they?  A fine-looking
couple, to say the least"

A week went by, then two, soon May had passed.  On the
fifteenth of that month Laura's engagement to Curtis
Jadwin was formally announced.  The day of the wedding
was set for the first week in June.

During this time Laura was never more changeable, more
puzzling.  Her vivacity seemed suddenly to have been
trebled, but it was invaded frequently by strange
reactions and perversities that drove her friends and
family to distraction.

About a week after her talk with Mrs. Cressler, Laura
broke the news to Page.  It was a Monday morning.  She
had spent the time since breakfast in putting her
bureau drawers to rights, scattering sachet powder's in
them, then leaving them open so as to perfume the room.
At last she came into the front "upstairs sitting-
room," a heap of gloves, stockings, collarettes--the
odds and ends of a wildly disordered wardrobe--in her
lap.  She tumbled all these upon the hearth rug, and
sat down upon the floor to sort them carefully.  At her
little desk near by, Page, in a blue and white shirt
waist and golf skirt, her slim little ankles demurely
crossed, a cone of foolscap over her forearm to guard
against ink spots, was writing in her journal.  This
was an interminable affair, voluminous, complex, that
the young girl had kept ever since she was fifteen.
She wrote in it--she hardly knew what--the small doings
of the previous day, her comings and goings, accounts
of dances, estimates of new acquaintances.  But besides
this she filled page after page with "impressions,"
"outpourings," queer little speculations about her
soul, quotations from poets, solemn criticisms of new
novels, or as often as not mere purposeless meanderings
of words, exclamatory, rhapsodic--involved lucubrations
quite meaningless and futile, but which at times she
re-read with vague thrills of emotion and mystery.

On this occasion Page wrote rapidly and steadily for a
few moments after Laura's entrance into the room.  Then
she paused, her eyes growing wide and thoughtful.  She
wrote another line and paused again.  Seated on the
floor, her hands full of gloves, Laura was murmuring to
herself.

"Those are good ... and those, and the black suedes
make eight.... And if I could only find the mate to
this white one.... Ah, here it is.  That makes nine,
nine pair."

She put the gloves aside, and turning to the stockings
drew one of the silk ones over her arm, and spread out
her fingers in the foot.

"Oh, dear," she whispered, "there's a thread started,
and now it will simply run the whole length...."

Page's scratching paused again.

"Laura," she asked dreamily, "Laura, how do you spell
'abysmal'?"

"With a y, honey," answered Laura, careful not to
smile.

"Oh, Laura," asked Page, "do you ever get very, very
sad without knowing why?"

"No, indeed," answered her sister, as she peeled the
stocking from her arm.  "When I'm sad I know just the
reason, you may be sure."

Page sighed again.

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured indefinitely.  "I lie
awake at night sometimes and wish I were dead."

"You mustn't get morbid, honey," answered her older
sister calmly.  "It isn't natural for a young healthy
little body like you to have such gloomy notions."

"Last night," continued Page, "I got up out of bed and
sat by the window a long time.  And everything was so
still and beautiful, and the moonlight and all--and I
said right out loud to myself,


     "My breath to Heaven in vapour goes----


You know those lines from Tennyson:


     "My breath to Heaven in vapour goes,
      May my soul follow soon."


I said it right out loud just like that, and it was
just as though something in me had spoken.  I got my
journal and wrote down, 'Yet in a few days, and thee,
the all-beholding sun shall see no more.' It's from
Thanatopsis, you know, and I thought how beautiful it
would be to leave all this world, and soar and soar,
right up to higher planes and be at peace.  Laura,
dearest, do you think I ever ought to marry?"

"Why not, girlie?  Why shouldn't you marry.  Of course
you'll marry some day, if you find----"

"I should like to be a nun," Page interrupted, shaking
her head, mournfully.

"----if you find the man who loves you," continued
Laura, "and whom you--you admire and respect--whom you
love.  What would you say, honey, if--if your sister,
if I should be married some of these days?"

Page wheeled about in her chair.

"Oh, Laura, tell me," she cried, "are you joking?  Are
you going to be married?  Who to?  I hadn't an idea, but
I thought--I suspected"

"Well," observed Laura, slowly, "I might as well tell
you--some one will if I don't--Mr. Jadwin _wants_ me to
marry him."

"And what did you say?  What did you say?  Oh, I'll never
tell.  Oh, Laura, tell me all about it."

"Well, why shouldn't I marry him?  Yes--I promised.  I
said yes.  Why shouldn't I?  He loves me, and he is
rich.  Isn't that enough?"

"Oh, no.  It isn't.  You must love--you do love him?"

"I?  Love?  Pooh!" cried Laura.  "Indeed not.  I love
nobody."

"Oh, Laura," protested Page earnestly.  "Don't, don't
talk that way.  You mustn't.  It's wicked."

Laura put her head in the air.

"I wouldn't give any man that much satisfaction.  I
think that is the way it ought to be.  A man ought to
love a woman more than she loves him.  It ought to be
enough for him if she lets him give her everything she
wants in the world.  He ought to serve her like the old
knights--give up his whole life to satisfy some whim of
hers; and it's her part, if she likes, to be cold and
distant.  That's my idea of love."

"Yes, but they weren't cold and proud to their knights
after they'd promised to marry them," urged Page.
"They loved them in the end, and married them for
love."

"Oh, 'love'!" mocked Laura.  "I don't believe in love.
You only get your ideas of it from trashy novels and
matinees.  Girlie," cried Laura, "I am going to have
the most beautiful gowns.  They're the last things that
Miss Dearborn shall buy for herself, and"--she fetched
a long breath--"I tell you they are going to be
creations."

When at length the lunch bell rang Laura jumped to her
feet, adjusting her coiffure with thrusts of her long,
white hands, the fingers extended, and ran from the
room exclaiming that the whole morning had gone and
that half her bureau drawers were still in disarray.

Page, left alone, sat for a long time lost in thought,
sighing deeply at intervals, then at last she wrote in
her journal:

"A world without Love--oh, what an awful thing that
would be.  Oh, love is so beautiful--so beautiful, that
it makes me sad.  When I think of love in all its
beauty I am sad, sad like Romola in George Eliot's
well-known novel of the same name."

She locked up her journal in the desk drawer, and wiped
her pen point until it shone, upon a little square of
chamois skin.  Her writing-desk was a miracle of
neatness, everything in its precise place, the writing-
paper in geometrical parallelograms, the pen tray
neatly polished.

On the hearth rug, where Laura had sat, Page's
searching eye discovered traces of her occupancy--a
glove button, a white thread, a hairpin.  Page was at
great pains to gather them up carefully and drop them
into the waste basket.

"Laura is so fly-away," she observed, soberly.

When Laura told the news to Aunt Wess' the little old
lady showed no surprise.

"I've been expecting it of late," she remarked.  "Well,
Laura, Mr. Jadwin is a man of parts.  Though, to tell
the truth, I thought at first it was to be that Mr.
Corthell.  He always seemed so distinguished-looking
and elegant.  I suppose now that that young Mr. Court
will have a regular conniption fit."

"Oh, Landry," murmured Laura.

"Where are you going to live, Laura?  Here?  My word,
child, don't be afraid to tell me I must pack.  Why,
bless you"

"No, no," exclaimed Laura, energetically, "you are to
stay right here.  We'll talk it all over just as soon
as I know more decidedly what our plans are to be.  No,
we won't live here.  Mr. Jadwin is going to buy a new
house--on the corner of North Avenue and State Street.
It faces Lincoln Park--you know it, the Farnsworth
place."

"Why, my word, Laura," cried Aunt Wess' amazed, "why,
it's a palace! Of course I know it.  Why, it takes in
the whole block, child, and there's a conservatory
pretty near as big as this house.  _Well!_"

"Yes, I know," answered Laura, shaking her head.  "It
takes my breath away sometimes.  Mr. Jadwin tells me
there's an art gallery, too, with an organ in it--a
full-sized church organ.  Think of it.  Isn't it
beautiful, beautiful?  Isn't it a happiness?  And I'll
have my own carriage and coupe, and oh, Aunt Wess', a
saddle horse if I want to, and a box at the opera, and
a country place--that is to be bought day after to-
morrow.  It's at Geneva Lake.  We're to go there after
we are married, and Mr. Jadwin has bought the dearest,
loveliest, daintiest little steam yacht.  He showed the
photograph of her yesterday.  Oh, honey, honey! It all
comes over me sometimes.  Think, only a year ago, less
than that, I was vegetating there at Barrington, among
those wretched old blue-noses, helping Martha with the
preserves and all and all; and now"--she threw her arms
wide--"I'm just going to live.  Think of it, that
beautiful house, and servants, and carriages, and
paintings, and, oh, honey, how I will dress the part!"

"But I wouldn't think of those things so much, Laura,"
answered Aunt Wess', rather seriously.  "Child, you are
not marrying him for carriages and organs and saddle
horses and such.  You're marrying this Mr. Jadwin
because you love him.  Aren't you?"

"Oh," cried Laura, "I would marry a ragamuffin if he
gave me all these things--gave them to me because he
loved me."

Aunt Wess' stared.  "I wouldn't talk that way, Laura,"
she remarked.  "Even in fun.  At least not before
Page."

That same evening Jadwin came to dinner with the two
sisters and their aunt.  The usual evening drive with
Laura was foregone for this occasion.  Jadwin had
stayed very late at his office, and from there was to
come direct to the Dearborns.  Besides that, Nip--the
trotters were named Nip and Tuck--was lame.

As early as four o'clock in the afternoon Laura,
suddenly moved by an unreasoning caprice, began to
prepare an elaborate toilet.  Not since the opera night
had she given so much attention to her appearance.  She
sent out for an extraordinary quantity of flowers;
flowers for the table, flowers for Page and Aunt Wess',
great "American beauties" for her corsage, and a huge
bunch of violets for the bowl in the library.  She
insisted that Page should wear her smartest frock, and
Mrs. Wessels her grenadine of great occasions.  As for
herself, she decided upon a dinner gown of black,
decollete, with sleeves of lace.  Her hair she dressed
higher than ever.  She resolved upon wearing all her
jewelry, and to that end put on all her rings, secured
the roses in place with an amethyst brooch, caught up
the little locks at the back of her head with a heart-
shaped pin of tiny diamonds, and even fastened the
ribbon of satin that girdled her waist, with a clasp of
flawed turquoises.

Until five in the afternoon she was in the gayest
spirits, and went down to the dining-room to supervise
the setting of the table, singing to herself.

Then, almost at the very last, when Jadwin might be
expected at any moment, her humour changed again, and
again, for no discoverable reason.

Page, who came into her sister's room after dressing,
to ask how she looked, found her harassed and out of
sorts.  She was moody, spoke in monosyllables, and
suddenly declared that the wearing anxiety of house-
keeping was driving her to distraction.  Of all days in
the week, why had Jadwin chosen this particular one to
come to dinner.  Men had no sense, could not appreciate
a woman's difficulties.  Oh, she would be glad when the
evening was over.

Then, as an ultimate disaster, she declared that she
herself looked "Dutchy."  There was no style, no
smartness to her dress; her hair was arranged
unbecomingly; she was growing thin, peaked.  In a word,
she looked "Dutchy."

All at once she flung off her roses and dropped into a
chair.

"I will not go down to-night," she cried.  "You and
Aunt Wess' must make out to receive Mr. Jadwin.  I
simply will not see any one to-night, Mr. Jadwin least
of all.  Tell him I'm gone to bed sick--which is the
truth, I am going to bed, my head is splitting."

All persuasion, entreaty, or cajolery availed nothing.
Neither Page nor Aunt Wess' could shake her decision.
At last Page hazarded a remonstrance to the effect that
if she had known that Laura was not going to be at
dinner she would not have taken such pains with her own
toilet.

Promptly thereat Laura lost her temper.

"I do declare, Page," she exclaimed, "it seems to me
that I get very little thanks for ever taking any
interest in your personal appearance.  There is not a
girl in Chicago--no millionaire's daughter--has any
prettier gowns than you.  I plan and plan, and go to
the most expensive dressmakers so that you will be well
dressed, and just as soon as I dare to express the
desire to see you appear like a gentlewoman, I get it
thrown in my face.  And why do I do it?  I'm sure I
don't know.  It's because I'm a poor weak, foolish,
indulgent sister.  I've given up the idea of ever being
loved by you; but I do insist on being respected."
Laura rose, stately, severe.  It was the "grand manner"
now, unequivocally, unmistakably.  "I do insist upon
being respected," she repeated.  "It would be wrong and
wicked of me to allow you to ignore and neglect my
every wish.  I'll not have it, I'll not tolerate it."

Page, aroused, indignant, disdained an answer, but drew
in her breath and held it hard, her lips tight pressed.

"It's all very well for you to pose, miss," Laura went
on; "to pose as injured innocence.  But you understand
very well what I mean.  If you don't lave me, at least
I shall not allow you to flout me--deliberately,
defiantly.  And it does seem strange," she added, her
voice beginning to break, "that when we two are all
alone in the world, when there's no father or mother--
and you are all I have, and when I love you as I do,
that there might be on your part--a little
consideration--when I only want to be loved for my own
sake, and not--and not----when I want to be, oh, loved--
loved--loved----"

The two sisters were in each other's arms by now, and
Page was crying no less than Laura.

"Oh, little sister," exclaimed Laura, "I know you love
me.  I know you do.  I didn't mean to say that.  You
must forgive me and be very kind to me these days.  I
know I'm cross, but sometimes these days I'm so excited
and nervous I can't help it, and you must try to bear
with me.  Hark, there's the bell."

Listening, they heard the servant open the door, and
then the sound of Jadwin's voice and the clank of his
cane in the porcelain cane rack.  But still Laura could
not be persuaded to go down.  No, she was going to bed;
she had neuralgia; she was too nervous to so much as
think.  Her gown was "Dutchy."  And in the end, so
unshakable was her resolve, that Page and her aunt had
to sit through the dinner with Jadwin and entertain him
as best they could.

But as the coffee was being served the three received a
genuine surprise.  Laura appeared.  All her finery was
laid off.  She wore the simplest, the most veritably
monastic, of her dresses, plain to the point of
severity.  Her hands were bare of rings.  Not a single
jewel, not even the most modest ornament relieved her
sober appearance.  She was very quiet, spoke in a low
voice and declared she had come down only to drink a
glass of mineral water and then to return at once to
her room.

As a matter of fact, she did nothing of the kind.  The
others prevailed upon her to take a cup of coffee.
Then the dessert was recalled, and, forgetting herself
in an animated discussion with Jadwin as to the name of
their steam yacht, she ate two plates of wine jelly
before she was aware.  She expressed a doubt as to
whether a little salad would do her good, and after a
vehement exhortation from Jadwin, allowed herself to be
persuaded into accepting a sufficiently generous
amount.

"I think a classical name would be best for the boat,"
she declared.  "Something like 'Arethusa' or 'The
Nereid.'"

They rose from the table and passed into the library.
The evening was sultry, threatening a rain-storm, and
they preferred not to sit on the "stoop."  Jadwin lit a
cigar; he still wore his business clothes--the
inevitable "cutaway," white waistcoat, and grey
trousers of the middle-aged man of affairs.

"Oh, call her the 'Artemis,'" suggested Page.

"Well now, to tell the truth," observed Jadwin "those
names look pretty in print; but somehow I don't fancy
them.  They're hard to read, and they sound somehow
frilled up and fancy.  But if you're satisfied, Laura----"

"I knew a young man once," began Aunt Wess', "who had a
boat--that was when we lived at Kenwood and Mr. Wessels
belonged to the 'Farragut'--and this young man had a
boat he called 'Fanchon.' He got tipped over in her one
day, he and the three daughters of a lady I knew well,
and two days afterward they found them at the bottom of
the lake, all holding on to each other; and they
fetched them up just like that in one piece.  The
mother of those girls never smiled once since that day,
and her hair turned snow white.  That was in 'seventy-
nine.  I remember it perfectly.  The boat's name was
'Fanchon.'"

"But that was a sail boat, Aunt Wess'," objected Laura.
"Ours is a steam yacht.  There's all the difference in
the world."

"I guess they're all pretty risky, those pleasure
boats," answered Aunt Wess'.  "My word, you couldn't
get me to set foot on one."

Jadwin nodded his head at Laura, his eyes twinkling.

"Well, we'll leave 'em all at home, Laura, when we go,"
he said.

A little later one of Page's "young men" called to see
her, and Page took him off into the drawing-room across
the hall.  Mrs. Wessels seized upon the occasion to
slip away unobserved, and Laura and Jadwin were left
alone.

"Well, my girl," began Jadwin, "how's the day gone with
you?"

She had been seated at the centre table, by the drop
light--the only light in the room--turning over the
leaves of "The Age of Fable," looking for graceful and
appropriate names for the yacht.  Jadwin leaned over
her and put his hand upon her shoulder.

"Oh, about the same as usual," she answered.  "I told
Page and Aunt Wess' this morning."

"What did they have to say?" Jadwin laid a soft but
clumsy hand upon Laura's head, adding, "Laura, you have
the most wonderful hair I ever saw."

"Oh, they were not surprised.  Curtis, don't, you are
mussing me."  She moved her head impatiently; but then
smiling, as if to mitigate her abruptness, said, "It
always makes me nervous to have my hair touched.  No,
they were not surprised; unless it was that we were to
be married so soon.  They were surprised at that.  You
know I always said it was too soon.  Why not put it
off, Curtis--until the winter?"

But he scouted this, and then, as she returned to the
subject again, interrupted her, drawing some papers
from his pocket.

"Oh, by the way," he said, "here are the sketch plans
for the alterations of the house at Geneva.  The
contractor brought them to the office to-day.  He's
made that change about the dining-room."

"Oh," exclaimed Laura, interested at once, "you mean
about building on the conservatory?"

"Hum--no," answered Jadwin a little slowly.  "You see,
Laura, the difficulty is in getting the thing done this
summer.  When we go up there we want everything
finished, don't we?  We don't want a lot of workmen
clattering around.  I thought maybe we could wait about
that conservatory till next year, if you didn't mind."

Laura acquiesced readily enough, but Jadwin could see
that she was a little disappointed.  Thoughtful, he
tugged his mustache in silence for a moment.  Perhaps,
after all, it could be arranged.  Then an idea
presented itself to him.  Smiling a little awkwardly,
he said:

"Laura, I tell you what.  I'll make a bargain with
you."

She looked up as he hesitated.  Jadwin sat down at the
table opposite her and leaned forward upon his folded
arms.

"Do you know," he began, "I happened to think---- Well,
here's what I mean," he suddenly declared decisively.
"Do you know, Laura, that ever since we've been engaged
you've never---- Well, you've never--never kissed me of
your own accord.  It's foolish to talk that way now,
isn't it?  But, by George!  That would be--would be
such a wonderful thing for me.  I know," he hastened to
add, "I know, Laura, you aren't demonstrative.  I ought
not to expect, maybe, that you---- Well, maybe it isn't
much.  But I was thinking a while ago that there
wouldn't be a sweeter thing imaginable for me than if
my own girl would come up to me some time--when I
wasn't thinking--and of her own accord put her two arms
around me and kiss me.  And--well, I was thinking about
it, and--" He hesitated again, then finished abruptly
with, "And it occurred to me that you never had."

Laura made no answer, but smiled rather indefinitely,
as she continued to search the pages of the book, her
head to one side.

Jadwin continued:

"We'll call it a bargain.  Some day--before very long,
mind you--you are going to kiss me--that way,
understand, of your own accord, when I'm not thinking
of it; and I'll get that conservatory in for you.  I'll
manage it somehow.  I'll start those fellows at it to-
morrow--twenty of 'em if it's necessary.  How about it?
Is it a bargain?  Some day before long.  What do you
say?"

Laura hesitated, singularly embarrassed, unable to find
the right words.

"Is it a bargain?" persisted Jadwin.

"Oh, if you put it that way," she murmured, "I suppose
so--yes."

"You won't forget, because I shan't speak about it
again.  Promise you won't forget."

"No, I won't forget.  Why not call her the 'Thetis'?"

"I was going to suggest the 'Dart,' or the 'Swallow,'
or the 'Arrow.' Something like that--to give a notion
of speed."

"No.  I like the 'Thetis' best."

"That settles it then.  She's your steam yacht, Laura."

Later on, when Jadwin was preparing to depart, they
stood for a moment in the hallway, while he drew on his
gloves and took a fresh cigar from his case.

"I'll call for you here at about ten," he said.  "Will
that do?"

He spoke of the following morning.  He had planned to
take Page, Mrs. Wessels, and Laura on a day's excursion
to Geneva Lake to see how work was progressing on the
country house.  Jadwin had set his mind upon passing
the summer months after the marriage at the lake, and
as the early date of the ceremony made it impossible to
erect a new building, he had bought, and was now
causing to be remodelled, an old but very well
constructed house just outside of the town and once
occupied by a local magistrate.  The grounds were
ample, filled with shade and fruit trees, and fronted
upon the lake.  Laura had never seen her future country
home.  But for the past month Jadwin had had a small
army of workmen and mechanics busy about the place, and
had managed to galvanise the contractors with some of
his own energy and persistence.  There was every
probability that the house and grounds would be
finished in time.

"Very well," said Laura," in answer to his question,
"at ten we'll be ready.  Good-night."  She held out her
hand.  But Jadwin put it quickly aside, and took her
swiftly and strongly into his arms, and turning her
face to his, kissed her cheek again and again.

Laura submitted, protesting:

"Curtis! Such foolishness.  Oh, dear; can't you love me
without crumpling me so?  Curtis! Please.  You are so
rough with me, dear."

She pulled away from him, and looked up into his face,
surprised to find it suddenly flushed; his eyes were
flashing.

"My God," he murmured, with a quick intake of breath,
"my God, how I love you, my girl! Just the touch of
your hand, the smell of your hair.  Oh, sweetheart.  It
is wonderful! Wonderful!" Then abruptly he was master
of himself again.

"Good-night," he said.  "Good-night.  God bless you,"
and with the words was gone.

They were married on the last day of June of that
summer at eleven o'clock in the morning in the church
opposite Laura's house--the Episcopalian church of
which she was a member.  The wedding was very quiet.
Only the Cresslers, Miss Gretry, Page, and Aunt Wess'
were present.  Immediately afterward the couple were to
take the train for Geneva Lake--Jadwin having chartered
a car for the occasion.

But the weather on the wedding day was abominable.  A
warm drizzle, which had set in early in the morning,
developed by eleven o'clock into a steady downpour,
accompanied by sullen grumblings of very distant
thunder.

About an hour before the appointed time Laura insisted
that her aunt and sister should leave her.  She would
allow only Mrs. Cressler to help her.  The time passed.
The rain continued to fall.  At last it wanted but
fifteen minutes to eleven.

Page and Aunt Wess', who presented themselves at the
church in advance of the others, found the interior
cool, dark, and damp.  They sat down in a front pew,
talking in whispers, looking about them.  Druggeting
shrouded the reader's stand, the baptismal font, and
bishop's chair.  Every footfall and every minute sound
echoed noisily from the dark vaulting of the nave and
chancel.  The janitor or sexton, a severe old fellow,
who wore a skull cap and loose slippers, was making a
great to-do with a pile of pew cushions in a remote
corner.  The rain drummed with incessant monotony upon
the slates overhead, and upon the stained windows on
either hand.  Page, who attended the church regularly
every Sunday morning, now found it all strangely
unfamiliar.  The saints in the windows looked odd and
unecclesiastical; the whole suggestion of the place was
uncanonical.  In the organ loft a tuner was at work
upon the organ, and from time to time the distant
mumbling of the thunder was mingled with a sonorous,
prolonged note from the pipes.

"My word, how it is raining," whispered Aunt Wess', as
the pour upon the roof suddenly swelled in volume.

But Page had taken a prayer book from the rack, and
kneeling upon a hassock was repeating the Litany to
herself.

It annoyed Aunt Wess'.  Excited, aroused, the little
old lady was never more in need of a listener.  Would
Page never be through?

"And Laura's new frock," she whispered, vaguely.  "It's
going to be ruined."

Page, her lips forming the words, "Good Lord deliver
us," fixed her aunt with a reproving glance.  To pass
the time Aunt Wess' began counting the pews, missing a
number here and there, confusing herself, always
obliged to begin over again.  From the direction of the
vestry room came the sound of a closing door.  Then all
fell silent again.  Even the shuffling of the janitor
ceased for an instant.

"Isn't it still?" murmured Aunt Wess', her head in the
air.  "I wonder if that was them.  I heard a door slam.
They tell me that the rector has been married three
times."  Page, unheeding and demure, turned a leaf, and
began with "All those who travel by land or water."  Mr.
Cressler and young Miss Gretry appeared.  They took
their seats behind Page and Aunt Wess', and the party
exchanged greetings in low voices.  Page reluctantly
laid down her prayer book.

"Laura will be over soon," whispered Mr. Cressler.
"Carrie is with her.  I'm going into the vestry room.
J. has just come."  He took himself off, walking upon
his tiptoes.

Aunt Wess' turned to Page, repeating:

"Do you know they say this rector has been married
three times?"

But Page was once more deep in her prayer book, so the
little old lady addressed her remark to the Gretry
girl.

This other, however, her lips tightly compressed, made
a despairing gesture with her hand, and at length
managed to say:

"Can't talk."

"Why, heavens, child, whatever is the matter?"

"Makes them worse--when I open my mouth--I've got the
hiccoughs."

Aunt Wess' flounced back in her seat, exasperated, out
of sorts.

"Well, my word," she murmured to herself, "I never saw
such girls."

"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth,"
continued Page.

Isabel Gretry's hiccoughs drove Aunt Wess' into "the
fidgets."  They "got on her nerves."  What with them and
Page's uninterrupted murmur, she was at length obliged
to sit in the far end of the pew, and just as she had
settled herself a second time the door of the vestry
room opened and the wedding party came out; first Mrs.
Cressler, then Laura, then Jadwin and Cressler, and
then, robed in billowing white, venerable, his prayer
book in his hand, the bishop of the diocese himself.
Last of all came the clerk, osseous, perfumed, a
gardenia in the lapel of his frock coat, terribly
excited, and hurrying about on tiptoe, saying "Sh! Sh!"
as a matter of principle.

Jadwin wore a new frock coat and a resplendent Ascot
scarf, which Mr. Cressler had bought for him and Page
knew at a glance that he was agitated beyond all
measure, and was keeping himself in hand only by a
tremendous effort.  She could guess that his teeth were
clenched.  He stood by Cressler's side, his head bent
forward, his hands--the fingers incessantly twisting
and untwisting--clasped behind his back.  Never for
once did his eyes leave Laura's face.

She herself was absolutely calm, only a little paler
perhaps than usual; but never more beautiful, never
more charming.  Abandoning for this once her accustomed
black, she wore a tan travelling dress, tailor made,
very smart, a picture hat with heavy plumes set off
with a clasp of rhinestones, while into her belt was
thrust a great bunch of violets.  She drew off her
gloves and handed them to Mrs. Cressler.  At the same
moment Page began to cry softly to herself.

"There's the last of Laura," she whimpered.  "There's
the last of my dear sister for me."

Aunt Wess' fixed her with a distressful gaze.  She
sniffed once or twice, and then began fumbling in her
reticule for her handkerchief.

"If only her dear father were here," she whispered
huskily.  "And to think that's the same little girl I
used to rap on the head with my thimble for annoying
the cat! Oh, if Jonas could be here this day."

"She'll never be the same to me after now," sobbed
Page, and as she spoke the Gretry girl, hypnotised with
emotion and taken all unawares, gave vent to a shrill
hiccough, a veritable yelp, that woke an explosive echo
in every corner of the building.

Page could not restrain a giggle, and the giggle
strangled with the sobs in her throat, so that the
little girl was not far from hysterics.

And just then a sonorous voice, magnificent, orotund,
began suddenly from the chancel with the words:

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the
sight of God, and in the face of this company to join
together this Man and this Woman in holy matrimony."

Promptly a spirit of reverence, not to say solemnity,
pervaded the entire surroundings.  The building no
longer appeared secular, unecclesiastical.  Not in the
midst of all the pomp and ceremonial of the Easter
service had the chancel and high altar disengaged a
more compelling influence.  All other intrusive noises
died away; the organ was hushed; the fussy janitor was
nowhere in sight; the outside clamour of the city
seemed dwindling to the faintest, most distant
vibration; the whole world was suddenly removed, while
the great moment in the lives of the Man and the Woman
began.

Page held her breath; the intensity of the situation
seemed to her, almost physically, straining tighter and
tighter with every passing instant.  She was awed,
stricken; and Laura appeared to her to be all at once a
woman transfigured, semi-angelic, unknowable, exalted.
The solemnity of those prolonged, canorous syllables:
"I require and charge you both, as ye shall answer at
the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all
hearts shall be disclosed," weighed down upon her
spirits with an almost intolerable majesty.  Oh, it was
all very well to speak lightly of marriage, to consider
it in a vein of mirth.  It was a pretty solemn affair,
after all; and she herself, Page Dearborn, was a
wicked, wicked girl, full of sins, full of deceits and
frivolities, meriting of punishment--on "that dreadful
day of judgment."  Only last week she had deceived Aunt
Wess' in the matter of one of her "young men."  It was
time she stopped.  To-day would mark a change.
Henceforward, she resolved, she would lead a new life.

"God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost
..."

To Page's mind the venerable bishop's voice was filling
all the church, as on the day of Pentecost, when the
apostles received the Holy Ghost, the building was
filled with a "mighty rushing wind."

She knelt down again, but could not bring herself to
close her eyes completely.  From under her lids she
still watched her sister and Jadwin.  How Laura must be
feeling now! She was, in fact, very pale.  There was
emotion in Jadwin's eyes.  Page could see them plainly.
It seemed beautiful that even he, the strong, modern
man-of-affairs, should be so moved.  How he must love
Laura.  He was fine, he was noble; and all at once this
fineness and nobility of his so affected her that she
began to cry again.  Then suddenly came the words:

"... That in the world to come ye may have life
everlasting.  Amen."

There was a moment's silence, then the group about the
altar rail broke up.

"Come," said Aunt Wess', getting to her feet, "it's all
over, Page.  Come, and kiss your sister--Mrs. Jadwin."

In the vestry room Laura stood for a moment, while one
after another of the wedding party--even Mr. Cressler--
kissed her.  When Page's turn came, the two sisters
held each other in a close embrace a long moment, but
Laura's eyes were always dry.  Of all present she was
the least excited.

"Here's something," vociferated the ubiquitous clerk,
pushing his way forward.  "It was on the table when we
came out just now.  The sexton says a messenger boy
brought it.  It's for Mrs. Jadwin."

He handed her a large box.  Laura opened it.  Inside
was a great sheaf of Jacqueminot roses and a card, on
which was written:


"May that same happiness which you have always inspired
in the lives and memories of all who know you be with
you always.

"Yrs.      S. C."


The party, emerging from the church, hurried across the
street to the Dearborns' home, where Laura and Jadwin
were to get their valises and hand bags.  Jadwin's
carriage was already at the door.

They all assembled in the parlor, every one talking at
once, while the servants, bare-headed, carried the
baggage down to the carriage.

"Oh, wait--wait a minute, I'd forgotten something,"
cried Laura.

"What is it?  Here, I'll get it for you," cried Jadwin
and Cressler as she started toward the door.  But she
waved them off, crying:

"No, no.  It's nothing.  You wouldn't know where to
look."

Alone she ran up the stairs, and gained the second
story; then paused a moment on the landing to get her
breath and to listen.  The rooms near by were quiet,
deserted.  From below she could hear the voices of the
others--their laughter and gaiety.  She turned about,
and went from room to room, looking long into each;
first Aunt Wess's bedroom, then Page's, then the "front
sitting-room," then, lastly, her own room.  It was
still in the disorder caused by that eventful morning;
many of the ornaments--her own cherished knick-knacks--
were gone, packed and shipped to her new home the day
before.  Her writing-desk and bureau were bare.  On the
backs of chairs, and across the footboard of the bed,
were the odds and ends of dress she was never to wear
again.

For a long time Laura stood looking silently at the
empty room.  Here she had lived the happiest period of
her life; not an object there, however small, that was
not hallowed by association.  Now she was leaving it
forever.  Now the new life, the Untried, was to begin.
Forever the old days, the old life were gone.  Girlhood
was gone; the Laura Dearborn that only last night had
pressed the pillows of that bed, where was she now?
Where was the little black-haired girl of Barrington?

And what was this new life to which she was going
forth, under these leaden skies, under this warm mist
of rain?  The tears--at last--were in her eyes, and the
sob in her throat, and she found herself, as she leaned
an arm upon the lintel of the door, whispering:

"Good-by.  Good-by.  Good-by."

Then suddenly Laura, reckless of her wedding finery,
forgetful of trivialities, crossed the room and knelt
down at the side of the bed.  Her head in her folded
arms, she prayed--prayed in the little unstudied words
of her childhood, prayed that God would take care of
her and make her a good girl; prayed that she might be
happy; prayed to God to help her in the new life, and
that she should be a good and loyal wife.

And then as she knelt there, all at once she felt an
arm, strong, heavy even, laid upon her.  She raised her
head and looked--for the first time--direct into her
husband's eyes.

"I knew--" began Jadwin.  "I thought--Dear, I
understand, I understand."

He said no more than that.  But suddenly Laura knew
that he, Jadwin, her husband, did "understand," and she
discovered, too, in that moment just what it meant to
be completely, thoroughly understood--understood
without chance of misapprehension, without shadow of
doubt; understood to her heart's heart.  And with the
knowledge a new feeling was born within her.  No woman,
not her dearest friend; not even Page had ever seemed
so close to her as did her husband now.  How could she
be unhappy henceforward?  The future was already
brightening.

Suddenly she threw both arms around his neck, and
drawing his face down to her, kissed him again and
again, and pressed her wet cheek to his--tear-stained
like her own.

"It's going to be all right, dear," he said, as she
stood from him, though still holding his hand.  "It's
going to be all right."

"Yes, yes, all right, all right," she assented.  "I
never seemed to realise it till this minute.  From the
first I must have loved you without knowing it.  And
I've been cold and hard to you, and now I'm sorry,
sorry.  You were wrong, remember that time in the
library, when you said I was undemonstrative.  I'm not.
I love you dearly, dearly, and never for once, for one
little moment, am I ever going to allow you to forget
it.

Suddenly, as Jadwin recalled the incident of which she
spoke, an idea occurred to him.

"Oh, our bargain--remember?  You didn't forget after
all."

"I did.  I did," she cried.  "I did forget it.  That's
the very sweetest thing about it."



VI


The months passed.  Soon three years had gone by, and
the third winter since the ceremony in St. James'
Church drew to its close.

Since that day when--acting upon the foreknowledge of
the French import duty--Jadwin had sold his million of
bushels short, the price of wheat had been steadily
going down.  From ninety-three and ninety-four it had
dropped to the eighties.  Heavy crops the world over
had helped the decline.  No one was willing to buy
wheat.  The Bear leaders were strong, unassailable.
Lower and lower sagged the price; now it was seventy-
five, now seventy-two.  From all parts of the country
in solid, waveless tides wheat--the mass of it
incessantly crushing down the price--came rolling in
upon Chicago and the Board of Trade Pit.  All over the
world the farmers saw season after season of good
crops.  They were good in the Argentine Republic, and
on the Russian steppes.  In India, on the little farms
of Burmah, of Mysore, and of Sind the grain, year after
year, headed out fat, heavy, and well-favoured.  In the
great San Joaquin valley of California the ranches were
one welter of fertility.  All over the United States,
from the Dakotas, from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and
Illinois, from all the wheat belt came steadily the
reports of good crops.

But at the same time the low price of grain kept the
farmers poor.  New mortgages were added to farms
already heavily "papered"; even the crops were
mortgaged in advance.  No new farm implements were
bought.  Throughout the farming communities of the
"Middle West  there were no longer purchases of buggies
and parlour organs.  Somewhere in other remoter corners
of the world the cheap wheat, that meant cheap bread,
made living easy and induced prosperity, but in the
United States the poverty of the farmer worked upward
through the cogs and wheels of the whole great machine
of business.  It was as though a lubricant had dried
up.  The cogs and wheels worked slowly and with
dislocations.  Things were a little out of joint.  Wall
Street stocks were down.  In a word, "times were bad."
Thus for three years.  It became a proverb on the
Chicago Board of Trade that the quickest way to make
money was to sell wheat short.  One could with almost
absolute certainty be sure of buying cheaper than one
had sold.  And that peculiar, indefinite thing known--
among the most unsentimental men in the world--as
"sentiment," prevailed more and more strongly in favour
of low prices.  "The 'sentiment,'" said the market
reports, "was bearish"; and the traders, speculators,
eighth-chasers, scalpers, brokers, bucket-shop men, and
the like--all the world of La Salle Street--had become
so accustomed to these "Bear conditions," that it was
hard to believe that they would not continue
indefinitely.

Jadwin, inevitably, had been again drawn into the
troubled waters of the Pit.  Always, as from the very
first, a Bear, he had once more raided the market, and
had once more been succesful.  Two months after this
raid he and Gretry planned still another coup, a deal
of greater magnitude than any they had previously
hazarded.  Laura, who knew very little of her husband's
affairs--to which he seldom alluded--saw by the daily
papers that at one stage of the affair the "deal"
trembled to its base.

But Jadwin was by now "blooded to the game."  He no
longer needed Gretry's urging to spur him.  He had
developed into a strategist, bold, of inconceivable
effrontery, delighting in the shock of battle, never
more jovial, more daring than when under stress of the
most merciless attack.  On this occasion, when the
"other side" resorted to the usual tactics to drive him
from the Pit, he led on his enemies to make one single
false step.  Instantly--disregarding Gretry's
entreaties as to caution--Jadwin had brought the vast
bulk of his entire fortune to bear, in the manner of a
general concentrating his heavy artillery, and crushed
the opposition with appalling swiftness.

He issued from the grapple triumphantly, and it was not
till long afterward that Laura knew how near, for a few
hours, he had been to defeat.

And again the price of wheat declined.  In the first
week in April, at the end of the third winter of
Jadwin's married life, May wheat was selling on the
floor of the Chicago Board of Trade at sixty-four, the
July option at sixty-five, the September at sixty-six
and an eighth.  During February of the same year Jadwin
had sold short five hundred thousand bushels of May.
He believed with Gretry and with the majority of the
professional traders that the price would go to sixty.

March passed without any further decline.  All through
this month and through the first days of April Jadwin
was unusually thoughtful.  His short wheat gave him no
concern.  He was now so rich that a mere half-million
bushels was not a matter for anxiety.  It was the
"situation" that arrested his attention.

In some indefinable way, warned by that blessed sixth
sense that had made him the successful speculator he
was, he felt that somewhere, at some time during the
course of the winter, a change had quietly, gradually
come about, that it was even then operating.  The
conditions that had prevailed so consistently for three
years, were they now to be shifted a little?  He did not
know, he could not say.  But in the plexus of financial
affairs in which he moved and lived he felt--a
difference.

For one thing "times" were better, business was better.
He could not fail to see that trade was picking up.  In
dry goods, in hardware, in manufactures there seemed to
be a different spirit, and he could imagine that it was
a spirit of optimism.  There, in that great city where
the Heart of the Nation beat, where the diseases of the
times, or the times' healthful activities were
instantly reflected, Jadwin sensed a more rapid, an
easier, more untroubled run of life blood.  All through
the Body of Things, money, the vital fluid, seemed to
be flowing more easily.  People seemed richer, the
banks were lending more, securities seemed stable,
solid.  In New York, stocks were booming.  Men were
making money--were making it, spending it, lending it,
exchanging it.  Instead of being congested in vaults,
safes, and cash boxes, tight, hard, congealed, it was
loosening, and, as it were, liquefying, so that it
spread and spread and permeated the entire community.
The People had money.  They were willing to take
chances.

So much for the financial conditions.

The spring had been backward, cold, bitter,
inhospitable, and Jadwin began to suspect that the
wheat crop of his native country, that for so long had
been generous, and of excellent quality, was now to
prove--it seemed quite possible--scant and of poor
condition.  He began to watch the weather, and to keep
an eye upon the reports from the little county seats
and "centres" in the winter wheat States.  These, in
part, seemed to confirm his suspicions.

From Keokuk, in Iowa, came the news that winter wheat
was suffering from want of moisture.  Benedict, Yates'
Centre, and Douglass, in southeastern Kansas, sent in
reports of dry, windy weather that was killing the
young grain in every direction, and the same conditions
seemed to prevail in the central counties.  In
Illinois, from Quincy and Waterloo in the west, and
from Ridgway in the south, reports came steadily to
hand of freezing weather and bitter winds.  All through
the lower portions of the State the snowfall during the
winter had not been heavy enough to protect the seeded
grain.  But the Ohio crop, it would appear, was
promising enough, as was also that of Missouri.  In
Indiana, however, Jadwin could guess that the hopes of
even a moderate yield were fated to be disappointed;
persistent cold weather, winter continuing almost up to
the first of April, seemed to have definitely settled
the question.

But more especially Jadwin watched Nebraska, that State
which is one single vast wheat field.  How would
Nebraska do, Nebraska which alone might feed an entire
nation?  County seat after county seat began to send in
its reports.  All over the State the grip of winter
held firm even yet.  The wheat had been battered by
incessant gales, had been nipped and harried by frost;
everywhere the young half-grown grain seemed to be
perishing.  It was a massacre, a veritable slaughter.

But, for all this, nothing could be decided as yet.
Other winter wheat States, from which returns were as
yet only partial, might easily compensate for the
failures elsewhere, and besides all that, the Bears of
the Board of Trade might keep the price inert even in
face of the news of short yields.  As a matter of fact,
the more important and stronger Bear traders were
already piping their usual strain.  Prices were bound
to decline, the three years, sagging was not over yet.
They, the Bears, were too strong; no Bull news could
frighten them.  Somehow there was bound to be plenty of
wheat.  In face of the rumours of a short crop they
kept the price inert, weak.

On the tenth of April came the Government report on the
condition of winter wheat.  It announced an average far
below any known for ten years past.  On March tenth the
same bulletin had shown a moderate supply in farmers'
hands, less than one hundred million bushels in fact,
and a visible supply of less than forty millions.

The Bear leaders promptly set to work to discount this
news.  They showed how certain foreign conditions would
more than offset the effect of a poor American harvest.
They pointed out the fact that the Government report on
condition was brought up only to the first of April,
and that since that time the weather in the wheat belt
had been favorable beyond the wildest hopes.

The April report was made public on the afternoon of
the tenth of the month.  That same evening Jadwin
invited Gretry and his wife to dine at the new house on
North Avenue; and after dinner, leaving Mrs. Gretry and
Laura in the drawing-room, he brought the broker up to
the billiard-room for a game of pool.

But when Gretry had put the balls in the triangle, the
two men did not begin to play at once.  Jadwin had
asked the question that had been uppermost in the minds
of each during dinner.

"Well, Sam," he had said, by way of a beginning, "what
do you think of this Government report?"

The broker chalked his cue placidly.

"I expect there'll be a bit of reaction on the strength
of it, but the market will go off again.  I said wheat
would go to sixty, and I still say it.  It's a long
time between now and May."

"I wasn't thinking of crop conditions only," observed
Jadwin.  "Sam, we're going to have better times and
higher prices this summer."

Gretry shook his head and entered into a long argument
to show that Jadwin was wrong.

But Jadwin refused to be convinced.  All at once he
laid the flat of his hand upon the table.

"Sam, we've touched bottom," he declared, "touched
bottom all along the line.  It's a paper dime to the
Sub-Treasury."

"I don't care about the rest of the line," said the
broker doggedly, sitting on the edge of the table,
"wheat will go to sixty."  He indicated the nest of
balls with a movement of his chin.  "Will you break?"

Jadwin broke and scored, leaving one ball three inches
in front of a corner pocket.  He called the shot, and
as he drew back his cue he said, deliberately:

"Just as sure as I make this pocket wheat will--not go--
off--another--_cent._"

With the last word he drove the ball home and
straightened up.  Gretry laid down his cue and looked
at him quickly.  But he did not speak.  Jadwin sat down
on one of the straight-backed chairs upon the raised
platform against the wall and rested his elbows upon
his knees.

"Sam," he said, "the time is come for a great big
change."  He emphasised the word with a tap of his cue
upon the floor.  "We can't play our game the way we've
been playing it the last three years.  We've been
hammering wheat down and down and down, till we've got
it below the cost of production; and now she won't go
any further with all the hammering in the world.  The
other fellows, the rest of this Bear crowd, don't seem
to see it, but I see it.  Before fall we're going to
have higher prices.  Wheat is going up, and when it
does I mean to be right there."

"We're going to have a dull market right up to the
beginning of winter," persisted the other.

"Come and say that to me at the beginning of winter,
then," Jadwin retorted.  "Look here, Sam, I'm short of
May five hundred thousand bushels, and to-morrow
morning you are going to send your boys on the floor
for me and close that trade."

"You're crazy, J.," protested the broker.  "Hold on
another month, and I promise you, you'll thank me."

"Not another day, not another hour.  This Bear campaign
of ours has come to an end.  That's said and signed."

"Why, it's just in its prime," protested the broker.
"Great heavens, you mustn't get out of the game now,
after hanging on for three years."

"I'm not going to get out of it."

"Why, good Lord!" said Gretry, "you don't mean to say
that----"

"That I'm going over.  That's exactly what I do mean.
I'm going to change over so quick to the other side
that I'll be there before you can take off your hat.
I'm done with a Bear game.  It was good while it
lasted, but we've worked it for all there was in it.
I'm not only going to cover my May shorts and get out
of that trade, but"--Jadwin leaned forward and struck
his hand upon his knee--"but I'm going to _buy._ I'm
going to buy September wheat, and I'm going to buy it
to-morrow, five hundred thousand bushels of it, and if
the market goes as I think it will later on, I'm going
to buy more.  I'm no Bear any longer.  I'm going to
boost this market right through till the last bell
rings; and from now on Curtis Jadwin spells B-u- double
l--Bull."

"They'll slaughter you," said Gretry, "slaughter you in
cold blood.  You're just one man against a gang--a gang
of cutthroats.  Those Bears have got millions and
millions back of them.  You don't suppose, do you, that
old man Crookes, or Kenniston, or little Sweeny, or all
that lot would give you one little bit of a chance for
your life if they got a grip on you.  Cover your shorts
if you want to, but, for God's sake, don't begin to buy
in the same breath.  You wait a while.  If this market
has touched bottom, we'll be able to tell in a few
days.  I'll admit, for the sake of argument, that just
now there's a pause.  But nobody can tell whether it
will turn up or down yet.  Now's the time to be
conservative, to play it cautious."

"If I was conservative and cautious," answered Jadwin,
"I wouldn't be in this game at all.  I'd be buying U.S.
four percents.  That's the big mistake so many of these
fellows down here make.  They go into a game where the
only ones who can possibly win are the ones who take
big chances, and then they try to play the thing
cautiously.  If I wait a while till the market turns up
and everybody is buying, how am I any the better off?
No, sir, you buy the September option for me to-morrow--
five hundred thousand bushels.  I deposited the margin
to your credit in the Illinois Trust this afternoon."

There was a long silence.  Gretry spun a ball between
his fingers, top-fashion.

"Well," he said at last, hesitatingly, "well--I don't
know, J.--you are either Napoleonic--or--or a colossal
idiot."

"Neither one nor the other, Samuel.  I'm just using a
little common sense....  Is it your shot?,"

"I'm blessed if I know."

"Well, we'll start a new game.  Sam, I'll give you six
balls and beat you in"--he looked at his watch--"beat
you before half-past nine."

"For a dollar?"

"I never bet, Sam, and you know it."

Half an hour later Jadwin said:

"Shall we go down and join the ladies?  Don't put out
your cigar.  That's one bargain I made with Laura
before we moved in here--that smoking was allowable
everywhere."

"Room enough, I guess," observed the broker, as the two
stepped into the elevator.  "How many rooms have you
got here, by the way?"

"Upon my word, I don't know," answered Jadwin.  "I
discovered a new one yesterday.  Fact.  I was having a
look around, and I came out into a little kind of
smoking-room or other that, I swear, I'd never seen
before.  I had to get Laura to tell me about it."

The elevator sank to the lower floor, and Jadwin and
the broker stepped out into the main hallway.  From the
drawing-room near by came the sound of women s voices.

"Before we go in," said Jadwin, "I want you to see our
art gallery and the organ.  Last time you were up,
remember, the men were still at work in here."

They passed down a broad corridor, and at the end, just
before parting the heavy, sombre curtains, Jadwin
pressed a couple of electric buttons, and in the open
space above the curtain sprang up a lambent, steady
glow.

The broker, as he entered, gave a long whistle.  The
art gallery took in the height of two of the stories of
the house.  It was shaped like a rotunda, and topped
with a vast airy dome of coloured glass.  Here and
there about the room were glass cabinets full of
bibelots, ivory statuettes, old snuff boxes, fans of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The walls
themselves were covered with a multitude of pictures,
oils, water-colours, with one or two pastels.

But to the left of the entrance, let into the frame of
the building, stood a great organ, large enough for a
cathedral, and giving to view, in the dulled
incandescence of the electrics, its sheaves of mighty
pipes.

"Well, this is something like," exclaimed the broker.

"I don't know much about 'em myself," hazarded Jadwin,
looking at the pictures, "but Laura can tell you.  We
bought most of 'em while we were abroad, year before
last.  Laura says this is the best."  He indicated a
large "Bougereau" that represented a group of nymphs
bathing in a woodland pool.

"H'm!" said the broker, "you wouldn't want some of your
Sunday-school superintendents to see this now.  This is
what the boys down on the Board would call a bar-room
picture."

But Jadwin did not laugh.

"It never struck me in just that way," he said,
gravely.

"It's a fine piece of work, though," Gretry hastened to
add.  "Fine, great colouring."

"I like this one pretty well," continued Jadwin, moving
to a canvas by Detaille.  It was one of the inevitable
studies of a cuirassier; in this case a trumpeter, one
arm high in the air, the hand clutching the trumpet,
the horse, foam-flecked, at a furious gallop.  In the
rear, through clouds of dust, the rest of the squadron
was indicated by a few points of colour.

"Yes, that's pretty neat," concurred Gretry.  "He's
sure got a gait on.  Lord, what a lot of accoutrements
those French fellows stick on.  Now our boys would
chuck about three-fourths of that truck before going
into action....  Queer way these artists work," he went
on, peering close to the canvas.  "Look at it close up
and it's just a lot of little daubs, but you get off a
distance"--he drew back, cocking his head to one side--
"and you see now.  Hey--see how the thing bunches up.
Pretty neat, isn't it?" He turned from the picture and
rolled his eyes about the room.

"Well, well," he murmured.  "This certainly is the real
thing, J. I suppose, now, it all represents a pretty
big pot of money."

"I'm not quite used to it yet myself," said Jadwin.  "I
was in here last Sunday, thinking it all over, the new
house, and the money and all.  And it struck me as kind
of queer the way things have turned out for me....
Sam, do you know, I can remember the time, up there in
Ottawa County, Michigan, on my old dad's farm, when I
used to have to get up before day-break to tend the
stock, and my sister and I used to run out quick into
the stable and stand in the warm cow fodder in the
stalls to warm our bare feet.

She up and died when she was about eighteen--galloping
consumption.  Yes, sir.  By George, how I loved that
little sister of mine! _You_ remember her, Sam.
Remember how you used to come out from Grand Rapids
every now and then to go squirrel shooting with me?"

"Sure, sure.  Oh, I haven't forgot."

"Well, I was wishing the other day that I could bring
Sadie down here, and--oh, I don't know--give her a good
time.  She never had a good time when she was alive.
Work, work, work; morning, noon, and night.  I'd like
to have made it up to her.  I believe in making people
happy, Sam.  That's the way I take my fun.  But it's
too late to do it now for my little sister."

"Well," hazarded Gretry, "you got a good wife in yonder
to----"

Jadwin interrupted him.  He half turned away, thrusting
his hands suddenly into his pockets.  Partly to
himself, partly to his friend he murmured:

"You bet I have, you bet I have.  Sam," he exclaimed,
then turned away again.  "...  Oh, well, never mind,"
he murmured.

Gretry, embarrassed, constrained, put his chin in the
air, shutting his eyes in a knowing fashion.

"I understand," he answered.  "I understand, J."

"Say, look at this organ here," said Jadwin briskly.
"Here's the thing I like to play with."

They crossed to the other side of the room.

"Oh, you've got one of those attachment things,"
observed the broker.

"Listen now," said Jadwin.  He took a perforated roll
from the case near at hand and adjusted it, Gretry
looking on with the solemn interest that all American
business men have in mechanical inventions.  Jadwin sat
down before it, pulled out a stop or two, and placed
his feet on the pedals.  A vast preliminary roaring
breath soughed through the pipes, with a vibratory rush
of power.  Then there came a canorous snarl of bass,
and then, abruptly, with resistless charm, and with
full-bodied, satisfying amplitude of volume the opening
movement of the overture of "Carmen."

"Great, great!" shouted Gretry, his voice raised to
make himself heard.  "That's immense."

The great-lunged harmony was filling the entire
gallery, clear cut, each note clearly, sharply treated
with a precision that, if mechanical, was yet
effective.  Jadwin, his eyes now on the stops, now on
the sliding strip of paper, played on.  Through the
sonorous clamour of the pipes Gretry could hear him
speaking, but he caught only a word or two.

"Toreador ...  horse power ...  Madame Calve ...
electric motor ...  fine song ...  storage battery."

The "movement  thinned out, and dwindled to a strain of
delicate lightness, sustained by the smallest pipes and
developing a new motive; this was twice repeated, and
then ran down to a series of chords and bars that
prepared for and prefigured some great effect close at
hand.  There was a short pause, then with the sudden
releasing of a tremendous rush of sound, back surged
the melody, with redoubled volume and power, to the
original movement.

"That's bully, bully!" shouted Gretry, clapping his
hands, and his eye, caught by a movement on the other
side of the room, he turned about to see Laura Jadwin
standing between the opened curtains at the entrance.

Seen thus unexpectedly, the broker was again
overwhelmed with a sense of the beauty of Jadwin's
wife.  Laura was in evening dress of black lace; her
arms and neck were bare.  Her black hair was piled high
upon her head, a single American Beauty rose nodded
against her bare shoulder.  She was even yet slim and
very tall, her face pale with that unusual paleness of
hers that was yet a colour.  Around her slender neck
was a marvellous collar of pearls many strands deep,
set off and held in place by diamond clasps.

With Laura came Mrs. Gretry and Page.  The broker's
wife was a vivacious, small, rather pretty blonde
woman, a little angular, a little faded.  She was
garrulous, witty, slangy.  She wore turquoises in her
ears morning, noon, and night.

But three years had made a vast difference in Page
Dearborn.  All at once she was a young woman.  Her
straight, hard, little figure had developed, her arms
were rounded, her eyes were calmer.  She had grown
taller, broader.  Her former exquisite beauty was
perhaps not quite so delicate, so fine, so virginal, so
charmingly angular and boyish.  There was infinitely
more of the woman in it; and perhaps because of this
she looked more like Laura than at any time of her life
before.  But even yet her expression was one of
gravity, of seriousness.  There was always a certain
aloofness about Page.  She looked out at the world
solemnly, and as if separated from its lighter side.
Things humorous interested her only as inexplicable
vagaries of the human animal.

"We heard the organ," said Laura, "so we came in.  I
wanted Mrs. Gretry to listen to it."



The three years that had just passed had been the most
important years of Laura Jadwin's life.  Since her
marriage she had grown intellectually and morally with
amazing rapidity.  Indeed, so swift had been the
change, that it was not so much a growth as a
transformation.  She was no longer the same half-
formed, impulsive girl who had found a delight in the
addresses of her three lovers, and who had sat on the
floor in the old home on State Street and allowed
Landry Court to hold her hand.  She looked back upon
the Miss Dearborn of those days as though she were
another person.  How she had grown since then! How she
had changed! How different, how infinitely more serious
and sweet her life since then had become!

A great fact had entered her world, a great new
element, that dwarfed all other thoughts, all other
considerations.  This was her love for her husband.  It
was as though until the time of her marriage she had
walked in darkness, a darkness that she fancied was
day; walked perversely, carelessly, and with a
frivolity that was almost wicked.  Then, suddenly, she
had seen a great light.  Love had entered her world.
In her new heaven a new light was fixed, and all other
things were seen only because of this light; all other
things were touched by it, tempered by it, warmed and
vivified by it.

It had seemed to date from a certain evening at their
country house at Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, where she
had spent her honeymoon with her husband.  They had
been married about ten days.  It was a July evening,
and they were quite alone on board the little steam
yacht the "Thetis."  She remembered it all very plainly.
It had been so warm that she had not changed her dress
after dinner--she recalled that it was of Honiton lace
over old-rose silk, and that Curtis had said it was the
prettiest he had ever seen.  It was an hour before
midnight, and the lake was so still as to appear
veritably solid.  The moon was reflected upon the
surface with never a ripple to blur its image.  The sky
was grey with starlight, and only a vague bar of black
between the star shimmer and the pale shield of the
water marked the shore line.  Never since that night
could she hear the call of whip-poor-wills or the
piping of night frogs that the scene did not come back
to her.  The little "Thetis" had throbbed and panted
steadily.  At the door of the engine room, the
engineer--the grey MacKenny, his back discreetly
turned--sat smoking a pipe and taking the air.  From
time to time he would swing himself into the engine
room, and the clink and scrape of his shovel made
itself heard as he stoked the fire vigorously.

Stretched out in a long wicker deck chair, hatless, a
drab coat thrown around her shoulders, Laura had sat
near her husband, who had placed himself upon a camp
stool, where he could reach the wheel with one hand.

"Well," he had said at last, "are you glad you married
me, Miss Dearborn?" And she had caught him about the
neck and drawn his face down to hers, and her head
thrown back, their lips all but touching, had whispered
over and over again:

"I love you--love you--love you!"

That night was final.  The marriage ceremony, even that
moment in her room, when her husband had taken her in
his arms and she had felt the first stirring of love in
her heart, all the first week of their married life had
been for Laura a whirl, a blur.  She had not been able
to find herself.  Her affection for her husband came
and went capriciously.  There were moments when she
believed herself to be really unhappy.  Then, all at
once, she seemed to awake.  Not the ceremony at St.
James, Church, but that awakening had been her
marriage.  Now it was irrevocable; she was her
husband's; she belonged to him indissolubly, forever
and forever, and the surrender was a glory.  Laura in
that moment knew that love, the supreme triumph of a
woman's life, was less a victory than a capitulation.

Since then her happiness had been perfect.  Literally
and truly there was not a cloud, not a mote in her
sunshine.  She had everything--the love of her husband,
great wealth, extraordinary beauty, perfect health, an
untroubled mind, friends, position--everything.  God
had been good to her, beyond all dreams and all
deserving.  For her had been reserved all the prizes,
all the guerdons; for her who had done nothing to merit
them.

Her husband she knew was no less happy.  In those first
three years after their marriage, life was one unending
pageant; and their happiness became for them some
marvellous, bewildering thing, dazzling, resplendent, a
strange, glittering, jewelled Wonder-worker that
suddenly had been put into their hands.

As one of the first results of this awakening, Laura
reproached herself with having done but little for
Page.  She told herself that she had not been a good
sister, that often she had been unjust, quick tempered,
and had made the little girl to suffer because of her
caprices.  She had not sympathised sufficiently with
her small troubles--so she made herself believe--and
had found too many occasions to ridicule Page's
intenseness and queer little solemnities.  True she had
given her a good home, good clothes, and a good
education, but she should have given more--more than
mere duty-gifts.  She should have been more of a
companion to the little girl, more of a help; in fine,
more of a mother.  Laura felt all at once the
responsibilities of the elder sister in a family bereft
of parents.  Page was growing fast, and growing
astonishingly beautiful; in a little while she would be
a young woman, and over the near horizon, very soon
now, must inevitably loom the grave question of her
marriage.

But it was only this realisation of certain
responsibilities that during the first years of her
married life at any time drew away Laura's
consideration of her husband.  She began to get
acquainted with the real man-within-the-man that she
knew now revealed himself only after marriage.  Jadwin
her husband was so different from, so infinitely better
than, Jadwin her lover, that Laura sometimes found
herself looking back with a kind of retrospective
apprehension on the old days and the time when she was
simply Miss Dearborn.  How little she had known him
after all!  And how, in the face of this ignorance,
this innocence, this absence of any insight into his
real character, had she dared to take the irretrievable
step that bound her to him for life?  The Curtis Jadwin
of those early days was so much another man.  He might
have been a rascal; she could not have known it.  As it
was, her husband had promptly come to be, for her, the
best, the finest man she had ever known.  But it might
easily have been different.

His attitude towards her was thoughtfulness itself.
Hardly ever was he absent from her, even for a day,
that he did not bring her some little present, some
little keep-sake--or even a bunch of flowers--when he
returned in the evening.  The anniversaries--Christmas,
their wedding day, her birthday--he always observed
with great eclat.  He took a holiday from his business,
surprised her with presents under her pillow, or her
dinner-plate, and never failed to take her to the
theatre in the evening.

However, it was not only Jadwin's virtues that endeared
him to his wife.  He was no impeccable hero in her
eyes.  He was tremendously human.  He had his faults,
his certain lovable weaknesses, and it was precisely
these traits that Laura found so adorable.

For one thing, Jadwin could be magnificently
inconsistent.  Let him set his mind and heart upon a
given pursuit, pleasure, or line of conduct not
altogether advisable at the moment, and the ingenuity
of the excuses by which he justified himself were
monuments of elaborate sophistry.  Yet, if later he
lost interest, he reversed his arguments with supreme
disregard for his former words.

Then, too, he developed a boyish pleasure in certain
unessential though cherished objects and occupations,
that he indulged extravagantly and to the neglect of
things, not to say duties, incontestably of more
importance.

One of these objects was the "Thetis."  In every
conceivable particular the little steam yacht was
complete down to the last bolt, the last coat of
varnish; but at times during their summer vacations,
when Jadwin, in all reason, should have been
supervising the laying out of certain unfinished
portions of the "grounds"--supervision which could be
trusted to no subordinate--he would be found aboard the
"Thetis," hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, in solemn
debate with the grey MacKenny and--a cleaning rag, or
monkey-wrench, or paint brush in his hand--tinkering
and pottering about the boat, over and over again.
Wealthy as he was, he could have maintained an entire
crew on board whose whole duty should have been to
screw, and scrub, and scour.  But Jadwin would have
none of it.  "Costs too much," he would declare, with
profound gravity.  He had the self-made American's
handiness with implements and paint brushes, and he
would, at high noon and under a murderous sun, make the
trip from the house to the dock where the "Thetis" was
moored, for the trivial pleasure of tightening a bolt--
which did not need tightening; or wake up in the night
to tell Laura of some wonderful new idea he had
conceived as to the equipment or decoration of the
yacht.  He had blustered about the extravagance of a
"crew," but the sums of money that went to the
brightening, refitting, overhauling, repainting, and
reballasting of the boat--all absolutely uncalled-for--
made even Laura gasp, and would have maintained a dozen
sailors an entire year.

This same inconsistency prevailed also in other
directions.  In the matter of business Jadwin's economy
was unimpeachable.  He would cavil on a half-dollar's
overcharge; he would put himself to downright
inconvenience to save the useless expenditure of a
dime--and boast of it.  But no extravagance was ever
too great, no time ever too valuable, when bass were to
be caught.

For Jadwin was a fisherman unregenerate.  Laura, though
an early riser when in the city, was apt to sleep late
in the country, and never omitted a two-hours' nap in
the heat of the afternoon.  Her husband improved these
occasions when he was deprived of her society, to
indulge in his pastime.  Never a morning so forbidding
that his lines were not in the water by five o'clock;
never a sun so scorching that he was not coaxing a
"strike" in the stumps and reeds in the shade under the
shores.

It was the one pleasure he could not share with his
wife.  Laura was unable to bear the monotony of the
slow-moving boat, the hours spent without results, the
enforced idleness, the cramped positions.  Only
occasionally could Jadwin prevail upon her to accompany
him.  And then what preparations!  Queen Elizabeth
approaching her barge was attended with no less
solicitude.  MacKenny (who sometimes acted as guide and
oarsman) and her husband exhausted their ingenuity to
make her comfortable.  They held anxious debates: "Do
you think she'll like that?" "Wouldn't this make it
easier for her?" "Is that the way she liked it last
time?" Jadwin himself arranged the cushions, spread the
carpet over the bottom of the boat, handed her in,
found her old gloves for her, baited her hook,
disentangled her line, saw to it that the mineral water
in the ice-box was sufficiently cold, and performed an
endless series of little attentions looking to her
comfort and enjoyment.  It was all to no purpose, and
at length Laura declared:

"Curtis, dear, it is no use.  You just sacrifice every
bit of your pleasure to make me comfortable--to make me
enjoy it; and I just don't.  I'm sorry, I want to share
every pleasure with you, but I don't like to fish, and
never will.  You go alone.  I'm just a hindrance to
you."  And though he blustered at first, Laura had her
way.

Once in the period of these three years Laura and her
husband had gone abroad.  But her experience in
England--they did not get to the Continent--had been a
disappointment to her.  The museums, art galleries, and
cathedrals were not of the least interest to Jadwin,
and though he followed her from one to another with
uncomplaining stoicism, she felt his distress, and had
contrived to return home three months ahead of time.

It was during this trip that they had bought so many of
the pictures and appointments for the North Avenue
house, and Laura's disappointment over her curtailed
European travels was mitigated by the anticipation of
her pleasure in settling in the new home.  This had not
been possible immediately after their marriage.  For
nearly two years the great place had been given over to
contractors, architects, decorators, and gardeners, and
Laura and her husband had lived, while in Chicago, at a
hotel, giving up the one-time rectory on Cass Street to
Page and to Aunt Wess'.

But when at last Laura entered upon possession of the
North Avenue house, she was not--after the first
enthusiasm and excitement over its magnificence had
died down--altogether pleased with it, though she told
herself the contrary.  Outwardly it was all that she
could desire.  It fronted Lincoln Park, and from all
the windows upon that side the most delightful outlooks
were obtainable--green woods, open lawns, the parade
ground, the Lincoln monument, dells, bushes, smooth
drives, flower beds, and fountains.  From the great bay
window of Laura's own sitting-room she could see far
out over Lake Michigan, and watch the procession of
great lake steamers, from Milwaukee, far-distant
Duluth, and the Sault Sainte Marie--the famous "Soo"--
defiling majestically past, making for the mouth of the
river, laden to the water's edge with whole harvests of
wheat.  At night, when the windows were open in the
warm weather, she could hear the mournful wash and
lapping of the water on the embankments.

The grounds about her home were beautiful.  The stable
itself was half again as large as her old home opposite
St. James's, and the conservatory, in which she took
the keenest delight, was a wonderful affair--a vast
bubble-like structure of green panes, whence, winter
and summer, came a multitude of flowers for the house--
violets, lilies of the valley, jonquils, hyacinths,
tulips, and her own loved roses.

But the interior of the house was, in parts, less
satisfactory.  Jadwin, so soon as his marriage was a
certainty, had bought the house, and had given over its
internal furnishings to, a firm of decorators.
Innocently enough he had intended to surprise his wife,
had told himself that she should not be burdened with
the responsibility of selection and planning.
Fortunately, however, the decorators were men of taste.
There was nothing to offend, and much to delight in the
results they obtained in the dining-room, breakfast-
room, parlors, drawing-rooms, and suites of bedrooms.
But Laura, though the beauty of it all enchanted her,
could never rid herself of a feeling that it was not
hers.  It impressed her with its splendour of natural
woods and dull "colour effects," its cunning electrical
devices, its mechanical contrivances for comfort, like
the ready-made luxury and "convenience" of a Pullman.

However, she had intervened in time to reserve certain
of the rooms to herself, and these--the library, her
bedroom, and more especially that apartment from whose
bay windows she looked out upon the Lake, and which, as
if she were still in her old home, she called the
"upstairs sitting-room"--she furnished to suit herself.

For very long she found it difficult, even with all her
resolution, with all her pleasure in her new-gained
wealth, to adapt herself to a manner of living upon so
vast a scale.  She found herself continually planning
the marketing for the next day, forgetting that this
now was part of the housekeeper's duties.  For months
she persisted in "doing her room" after breakfast, just
as she had been taught to do in the old days when she
was a little girl at Barrington.  She was afraid of the
elevator, and never really learned how to use the neat
little system of telephones that connected the various
parts of the house with the servants' quarters.  For
months her chiefest concern in her wonderful
surroundings took the form of a dread of burglars.

Her keenest delights were her stable and the great
organ in the art gallery; and these alone more than
compensated for her uneasiness in other particulars.

Horses Laura adored--black ones with flowing tails and
manes, like certain pictures she had seen.  Nowadays,
except on the rarest occasions, she never set foot out
of doors, except to take her carriage, her coupe, her
phaeton, or her dog-cart.  Best of all she loved her
saddle horses.  She had learned to ride, and the
morning was inclement indeed that she did not take a
long and solitary excursion through the Park, followed
by the groom and Jadwin's two spotted coach dogs.

The great organ terrified her at first.  But on closer
acquaintance she came to regard it as a vast-hearted,
sympathetic friend.  She already played the piano very
well, and she scorned Jadwin's self-playing
"attachment."  A teacher was engaged to instruct her in
the intricacies of stops and of pedals, and in the
difficulties of the "echo" organ, "great" organ,
"choir," and "swell."  So soon as she had mastered
these, Laura entered upon a new world of delight.  Her
taste in music was as yet a little immature--Gounod and
even Verdi were its limitations.  But to hear,
responsive to the lightest pressures of her finger-
tips, the mighty instrument go thundering through the
cadences of the "Anvil Chorus" gave her a thrilling
sense of power that was superb.

The untrained, unguided instinct of the actress in
Laura had fostered in her a curious penchant toward
melodrama.  She had a taste for the magnificent.  She
revelled in these great musical "effects" upon her
organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as
for herself, the role of the "_grande dame,_" with this
wonderful house for background and environment, came to
be for her, quite unconsciously, a sort of game in
which she delighted.

It was by this means that, in the end, she succeeded in
fitting herself to her new surroundings.  Innocently
enough, and with a harmless, almost childlike,
affectation, she posed a little, and by so doing found
the solution of the incongruity between herself--the
Laura of moderate means and quiet life--and the massive
luxury with which she was now surrounded.  Without
knowing it, she began to act the part of a great lady--
and she acted it well.  She assumed the existence of
her numerous servants as she assumed the fact of the
trees in the park; she gave herself into the hands of
her maid, not as Laura Jadwin of herself would have
done it, clumsily and with the constraint of
inexperience, but as she would have done it if she had
been acting the part on the stage, with an air, with
all the nonchalance of a marquise, with--in fine--all
the superb condescension of her "grand manner."

She knew very well that if she relaxed this hauteur,
that her servants would impose on her, would run over
her, and in this matter she found new cause for wonder
in her husband.

The servants, from the frigid butler to the under
groom, adored Jadwin.  A half-expressed wish upon his
part produced a more immediate effect than Laura's most
explicit orders.  He never descended to familiarity
with them, and, as a matter of fact, ignored them to
such an extent that he forgot or confused their names.
But where Laura was obeyed with precise formality and
chilly deference, Jadwin was served with obsequious
alacrity, and with a good humour that even livery and
"correct form" could not altogether conceal.

Laura's eyes were first opened to this genuine
affection which Jadwin inspired in his servants by an
incident which occurred in the first months of their
occupancy of the new establishment.  One of the
gardeners discovered the fact that Jadwin affected
gardenias in the lapel of his coat, and thereat was at
immense pains to supply him with a fresh bloom from the
conservatory each morning.  The flower was to be placed
at Jadwin's plate, and it was quite the event of the
day for the old fellow when the master appeared on the
front steps with the flower in his coat.  But a feud
promptly developed over this matter between the
gardener and the maid who took the butler's place at
breakfast every morning.  Sometimes Jadwin did not get
the flower, and the gardener charged the maid with
remissness in forgetting to place it at his plate after
he had given it into her hands.  In the end the affair
became so clamourous that Jadwin himself had to
intervene.  The gardener was summoned and found to have
been in fault only in his eagerness to please.

"Billy," said Jadwin, to the old man at the conclusion
of the whole matter, "you're an old fool."

And the gardener thereupon had bridled and stammered as
though Jadwin had conferred a gift.

"Now if I had called him 'an old fool,'" observed
Laura, "he would have sulked the rest of the week."

The happiest time of the day for Laura was the evening.
In the daytime she was variously occupied, but her
thoughts continually ran forward to the end of the day,
when her husband would be with her.  Jadwin breakfasted
early, and Laura bore him company no matter how late
she had stayed up the night before.  By half-past eight
he was out of the house, driving down to his office in
his buggy behind Nip and Tuck.  By nine Laura's own
saddle horse was brought to the carriage porch, and
until eleven she rode in the park.  At twelve she
lunched with Page, and in the afternoon--in the
"upstairs sitting-room" read her Browning or her
Meredith, the latter one of her newest discoveries,
till three or four.  Sometimes after that she went out
in her carriage.  If it was to "shop" she drove to the
"Rookery," in La Salle Street, after her purchases were
made, and sent the footman up to her husband's office
to say that she would take him home.  Or as often as
not she called for Mrs. Cressler or Aunt Wess' or Mrs.
Gretry, and carried them off to some exhibit of
painting, or flowers, or more rarely--for she had not
the least interest in social affairs--to teas or
receptions.

But in the evenings, after dinner, she had her husband
to herself.  Page was almost invariably occupied by one
or more of her young men in the drawing-room, but Laura
and Jadwin shut themselves in the library, a lofty
panelled room--a place of deep leather chairs, tall
bookcases, etchings, and sombre brasses--and there,
while Jadwin lay stretched out upon the broad sofa,
smoking cigars, one hand behind his head, Laura read
aloud to him.

His tastes in fiction were very positive.  Laura at
first had tried to introduce him to her beloved
Meredith.  But after three chapters, when he had
exclaimed, "What's the fool talking about?" she had
given over and begun again from another starting-point.
Left to himself, his wife sorrowfully admitted that he
would have gravitated to the "Mysterious Island" and
"Michael Strogoff," or even to "Mr. Potter of Texas"
and "Mr. Barnes of New York."  But she had set herself
to accomplish his literary education, so, Meredith
failing, she took up "Treasure Island" and "The
Wrecker."  Much of these he made her skip.

"Oh, let's get on with the 'story,'" he urged.  But
Pinkerton for long remained for him an ideal, because
he was "smart" and "alive."

"I'm not long very many of art," he announced.  "But I
believe that any art that don't make the world better
and happier is no art at all, and is only fit for the
dump heap."

But at last Laura found his abiding affinity in
Howells.

"Nothing much happens," he said.  "But I _know_ all
those people."  He never could rid himself of a
surreptitious admiration for Bartley Hubbard.  He, too,
was "smart" and "alive."  He had the "get there" to him.
"Why," he would say, "I know fifty boys just like him
down there in La Salle Street."  Lapham he loved as a
brother.  Never a point in the development of his
character that he missed or failed to chuckle over.
Bromfield Cory was poohed and boshed quite out of
consideration as a "loafer," a "dilletanty," but Lapham
had all his sympathy.

"Yes, sir," he would exclaim, interrupting the
narrative, "that's just it.  That's just what I would
have done if I had been in his place.  Come, this chap
knows what he's writing about--not like that Middleton
ass, with his 'Dianas' and 'Amazing Marriages.'"

Occasionally the Jadwins entertained.  Laura's husband
was proud of his house, and never tired of showing his
friends about it.  Laura gave Page a "coming-out"
dance, and nearly every Sunday the Cresslers came to
dinner.  But Aunt Wess' could, at first, rarely be
induced to pay the household a visit.  So much grandeur
made the little widow uneasy, even a little suspicious.
She would shake her head at Laura, murmuring:

"My word, it's all very fine, but, dear me, Laura, I
hope you do pay for everything on the nail, and don't
run up any bills.  I don't know what your dear father
would say to it all, no, I don't."  And she would spend
hours in counting the electric bulbs, which she
insisted were only devices for some new-fangled gas.

"Thirty-three in this one room alone," she would say.
"I'd like to see your dear husband's face when he gets
his gas bill.  And a dressmaker that _lives_ in the
house....  Well,--I don't want to say anything."

Thus three years had gone by.  The new household
settled to a regime.  Continually Jadwin grew richer.
His real estate appreciated in value; rents went up.
Every time he speculated in wheat, it was upon a larger
scale, and every time he won.  He was a Bear always,
and on those rare occasions when he referred to his
ventures in Laura's hearing, it was invariably to say
that prices were going down.  Till at last had come
that spring when he believed that the bottom had been
touched, had had the talk with Gretry, and had, in
secret, "turned Bull," with the suddenness of a
strategist.

The matter was yet in Gretry's mind while the party
remained in the art gallery; and as they were returning
to the drawing-room he detained Jadwin an instant.

"If you are set upon breaking your neck," he said, "you
might tell me at what figure you want me to buy for you
to-morrow."

"At the market," returned Jadwin.  "I want to get into
the thing quick."

A little later, when they had all reassembled in the
drawing-room, and while Mrs. Gretry was telling an
interminable story of how Isabel had all but
asphyxiated herself the night before, a servant
announced Landry Court, and the young man entered,
spruce and debonair, a bouquet in one hand and a box of
candy in the other.

Some days before this Page had lectured him solemnly on
the fact that he was over-absorbed in business, and was
starving his soul.  He should read more, she told him,
and she had said that if he would call upon her on this
particular night, she would indicate a course of
reading for him.

So it came about that, after a few moments,
conversation with the older people in the drawing-room,
the two adjourned to the library.

There, by way of a beginning, Page asked him what was
his favourite character in fiction.  She spoke of the
beauty of Ruskin's thoughts, of the gracefulness of
Charles Lamb's style.  The conversation lagged a
little.  Landry, not to be behind her, declared for the
modern novel, and spoke of the "newest book."  But Page
never read new books; she was not interested, and their
talk, unable to establish itself upon a common ground,
halted, and was in a fair way to end, until at last,
and by insensible degrees, they began to speak of
themselves and of each other.  Promptly they were all
aroused.  They listened to one another's words with
studious attention, answered with ever-ready
promptness, discussed, argued, agreed, and disagreed
over and over again.

Landry had said:

"When I was a boy, I always had an ambition to excel
all the other boys.  I wanted to be the best baseball
player on the block--and I was, too.  I could pitch
three curves when I was fifteen, and I find I am the
same now that I am a man grown.  When I do a thing, I
want to do it better than any one else.  From the very
first I have always been ambitious.  It is my strongest
trait.  Now," he went on, turning to Page, "your
strongest trait is your thoughtfulness.  You are what
they call introspective."

"Yes, yes," she answered.  "Yes, I think so, too."

"You don't need the stimulation of competition.  You
are at your best when you are with just one person.  A
crowd doesn't interest you."

"I hate it," she exclaimed.

"Now with me, with a man of my temperament, a crowd is
a real inspiration.  When every one is talking and
shouting around me, or to me, even, my mind works at
its best.  But," he added, solemnly, "it must be a
crowd of men.  I can't abide a crowd of women."

"They chatter so," she assented.  "I can't either."

"But I find that the companionship of one intelligent,
sympathetic woman is as much of a stimulus as a lot of
men.  It's funny, isn't it, that I should be like
that?"

"Yes," she said, "it is funny--strange.  But I believe
in companionship.  I believe that between man and woman
that is the great thing--companionship.  Love," she
added, abruptly, and then broke off with a deep sigh.
"Oh, I don't know," she murmured.  "Do you remember
those lines:


     "Man's love is of his life a thing apart,
     'Tis woman's whole existence.


Do you believe that?"

"Well," he asserted, gravely, choosing his words with
deliberation, "it might be so, but all depends upon the
man and woman.  Love," he added, with tremendous
gravity, "is the greatest power in the universe."

"I have never been in love," said Page.  "Yes, love is
a wonderful power."

"I've never been in love, either."

"Never, never been in love?"

"Oh, I've thought I was in love," he said, with a wave
of his hand.

"I've never even thought I was," she answered, musing.

"Do you believe in early marriages?" demanded Landry.

"A man should never marry," she said, deliberately,
"till he can give his wife a good home, and good
clothes and--and that sort of thing.  I do not think I
shall ever marry."

"You!  Why, of course you will.  Why not?"

"No, no.  It is my disposition.  I am morose and
taciturn.  Laura says so."

Landry protested with vehemence.

"And," she went on, "I have long, brooding fits of
melancholy."

"Well, so have I," he threw out recklessly.  "At night,
sometimes--when I wake up.  Then I'm all down in the
mouth, and I say, 'What's the use, by jingo?'"

"Do you believe in pessimism?  I do.  They say Carlyle
was a terrible pessimist."

"Well--talking about love.  I understand that you can't
believe in pessimism and love at the same time.
Wouldn't you feel unhappy if you lost your faith in
love?"

"Oh, yes, terribly."

There was a moment's silence, and then Landry remarked:

"Now you are the kind of woman that would only love
once, but love for that once mighty deep and strong."

Page's eyes grew wide.  She murmured:

"'Tis a woman's whole existence--whole existence.' Yes,
I think I am like that."

"Do you think Enoch Arden did right in going away after
he found them married?"

"Oh, have you read that?  Oh, isn't that a beautiful
poem?  Wasn't he noble?  Wasn't he grand?  Oh, yes,
yes, he did right."

"By George, I wouldn't have gone away.  I'd have gone
right into that house, and I would have made things
hum.  I'd have thrown the other fellow out, lock,
stock, and barrel."

"That's just like a man, so selfish, only thinking of
himself.  You don't know the meaning of love--great,
true, unselfish love."

"I know the meaning of what's mine.  Think I'd give up
the woman I loved to another man?"

"Even if she loved the other man best?"

"I'd have my girl first, and find out how she felt
about the other man afterwards."

"Oh, but think if you gave her up, how noble it would
be.  You would have sacrificed all that you held the
dearest to an ideal.  Oh, if I were in Enoch Arden's
place, and my husband thought I was dead, and I knew he
was happy with another woman, it would just be a joy to
deny myself, sacrifice myself to spare him unhappiness.
That would be my idea of love.  Then I'd go into a
convent."

"Not much.  I'd let the other fellow go to the convent.
If I loved a woman, I wouldn't let anything in the
world stop me from winning her."

"You have so much determination, haven't you?" she
said, looking at him.

Landry enlarged his shoulders a little and wagged his
head.

"Well," he said, "I don't know, but I'd try pretty hard
to get what I wanted, I guess."

"I love to see that characteristic in men," she
observed.  "Strength, determination."

"Just as a man loves to see a woman womanly," he
answered.  "Don't you hate strong-minded women?"

"Utterly."

"Now, you are what I would call womanly--the womanliest
woman I've ever known."

"Oh, I don't know," she protested, a little confused.

"Yes, you are.  You are beautifully womanly--and so
high-minded and well read.  It's been inspiring to me.
I want you should know that.  Yes, sir, a real
inspiration.  It's been inspiring, elevating, to say
the least."

"I like to read, if that's what you mean," she hastened
to say.

"By Jove, I've got to do some reading, too.  It's so
hard to find time.  But I'll make time.  I'll get that
'Stones of Venice' I've heard you speak of, and I'll
sit up nights--and keep awake with black coffee--but
I'll read that book from cover to cover."

"That's your determination again," Page exclaimed.
"Your eyes just flashed when you said it.  I believe if
you once made up your mind to do a thing, you would do
it, no matter how hard it was, wouldn't you?"

"Well, I'd--I'd make things hum, I guess," he admitted.

The next day was Easter Sunday, and Page came down to
nine o'clock breakfast a little late, to find Jadwin
already finished and deep in the pages of the morning
paper.  Laura, still at table, was pouring her last cup
of coffee.

They were in the breakfast-room, a small, charming
apartment, light and airy, and with many windows, one
end opening upon the house conservatory.  Jadwin was in
his frock coat, which later he would wear to church.
The famous gardenia was in his lapel.  He was freshly
shaven, and his fine cigar made a blue haze over his
head.  Laura was radiant in a white morning gown.  A
newly cut bunch of violets, large as a cabbage, lay on
the table before her.

The whole scene impressed itself sharply upon Page's
mind--the fine sunlit room, with its gay open spaces
and the glimpse of green leaves from the conservatory,
the view of the smooth, trim lawn through the many
windows, where an early robin, strayed from the park,
was chirruping and feeding; her beautiful sister Laura,
with her splendid, overshadowing coiffure, her pale,
clear skin, her slender figure; Jadwin, the large,
solid man of affairs, with his fine cigar, his
gardenia, his well-groomed air.  And then the little
accessories that meant so much--the smell of violets,
of good tobacco, of fragrant coffee; the gleaming
damasks, china and silver of the breakfast table; the
trim, fresh-looking maid, with her white cap, apron,
and cuffs, who came and went; the thoroughbred setter
dozing in the sun, and the parrot dozing and chuckling
to himself on his perch upon the terrace outside the
window.

At the bottom of the lawn was the stable, and upon the
concrete in front of its wide-open door the groom was
currying one of the carriage horses.  While Page
addressed herself to her fruit and coffee, Jadwin put
down his paper, and, his elbows on the arms of his
rattan chair, sat for a long time looking out at the
horse.  By and by he got up and said:

"That new feed has filled 'em out in good shape.  Think
I'll go out and tell Jarvis to try it on the buggy
team."  He pushed open the French windows and went out,
the setter sedately following.

Page dug her spoon into her grape-fruit, then suddenly
laid it down and turned to Laura, her chin upon her
palm.

"Laura," she said, "do you think I ought to marry--a
girl of my temperament?"

"Marry?" echoed Laura.

"Sh-h!" whispered Page.  "Laura--don't talk so loud.
Yes, do you?"

"Well, why not marry, dearie?  Why shouldn't you marry
when the time comes?  Girls as young as you are not
supposed to have temperaments."

But instead of answering Page put another question:

"Laura, do you think I am womanly?"

"I think sometimes, Page, that you take your books and
your reading too seriously.  You've not been out of the
house for three days, and I never see you without your
note-books and text-books in your hand.  You are at it,
dear, from morning till night.  Studies are all very
well--"

"Oh, studies!" exclaimed Page.  "I hate them.  Laura,
what is it to be womanly?"

"To be womanly?" repeated Laura.  "Why, I don't know,
honey.  It's to be kind and well-bred and gentle
mostly, and never to be bold or conspicuous--and to
love one's home and to take care of it, and to love and
believe in one's husband, or parents, or children--or
even one's sister--above any one else in the world."

"I think that being womanly is better than being well
read," hazarded Page.

"We can be both, Page," Laura told her.  "But, honey, I
think you had better hurry through your breakfast.  If
we are going to church this Easter, we want to get an
early start.  Curtis ordered the carriage half an hour
earlier."

"Breakfast!" echoed Page.  "I don't want a thing."  She
drew a deep breath and her eyes grew large.  "Laura,"
she began again presently, "Laura ... Landry Court was
here last night, and--oh, I don't know, he's so silly.
But he said--well, he said this--well, I said that I
understood how he felt about certain things, about
'getting on,' and being clean and fine and all that
sort of thing you know; and then he said, 'Oh, you
don't know what it means to me to look into the eyes of
a woman who really understands.'"

"_Did_ he?" said Laura, lifting her eyebrows.

"Yes, and he seemed so fine and earnest.  Laura, wh--"
Page adjusted a hairpin at the back of her head, and
moved closer to Laura, her eyes on the floor.  "Laura--
what do you suppose it did mean to him--don't you think
it was foolish of him to talk like that?"

"Not at all," Laura said, decisively.  "If he said that
he meant it--meant that he cared a great deal for you."

"Oh, I didn't mean that!" shrieked Page.  "But there's
a great deal more to Landry than I think we've
suspected.  He wants to be more than a mere money-
getting machine, he says, and he wants to cultivate his
mind and understand art and literature and that.  And
he wants me to help him, and I said I would.  So if you
don't mind, he's coming up here certain nights every
week, and we're going to--I'm going to read to him.
We're going to begin with the 'Ring and the Book.'"

In the later part of May, the weather being unusually
hot, the Jadwins, taking Page with them, went up to
Geneva Lake for the summer, and the great house
fronting Lincoln Park was deserted.

Laura had hoped that now her husband would be able to
spend his entire time with her, but in this she was
disappointed.  At first Jadwin went down to the city
but two days a week, but soon this was increased to
alternate days.  Gretry was a frequent visitor at the
country house, and often he and Jadwin, their rocking-
chairs side by side in a remote corner of the porch,
talked "business" in low tones till far into the night.

"Dear," said Laura, finally, "I'm seeing less and less
of you every day, and I had so looked forward to this
summer, when we were to be together all the time."

"I hate it as much as you do, Laura," said her husband.
"But I do feel as though I ought to be on the spot just
for now.  I can't get it out of my head that we're
going to have livelier times in a few months."

"But even Mr. Gretry says that you don't need to be
right in your office every minute of the time.  He says
you can manage your Board of Trade business from out
here just as well, and that you only go into town
because you can't keep away from La Salle Street and
the sound of the Wheat Pit."

Was this true?  Jadwin himself had found it difficult to
answer.  There had been a time when Gretry had been
obliged to urge and coax to get his friend to so much
as notice the swirl of the great maelstrom in the Board
of Trade Building.  But of late Jadwin's eye and ear
were forever turned thitherward, and it was he, and no
longer Gretry, who took initiatives.

Meanwhile he was making money.  As he had predicted,
the price of wheat had advanced.  May had been a fair-
weather month with easy prices, the monthly Government
report showing no loss in the condition of the crop.
Wheat had gone up from sixty to sixty-six cents, and at
a small profit Jadwin had sold some two hundred and
fifty thousand bushels.  Then had come the hot weather
at the end of May.  On the floor of the Board of Trade
the Pit traders had begun to peel off their coats.  It
began to look like a hot June, and when cash wheat
touched sixty-eight, Jadwin, now more than ever
convinced of a coming Bull market, bought another five
hundred thousand bushels.

This line he added to in June.  Unfavorable weather--
excessive heat, followed by flooding rains--had hurt
the spring wheat, and in every direction there were
complaints of weevils and chinch bugs.  Later on other
deluges had discoloured and damaged the winter crop.
Jadwin was now, by virtue of his recent purchases,
"long" one million bushels, and the market held firm at
seventy-two cents--a twelve-cent advance in two months.

"She'll react," warned Gretry, "sure.  Crookes and
Sweeny haven't taken a hand yet.  Look out for a heavy
French crop.  We'll get reports on it soon now.  You're
playing with a gun, J., that kicks further than it
shoots."

"We've not shot her yet," Jadwin said.  "We're only
just loading her--for Bears," he added, with a wink.

In July came the harvesting returns from all over the
country, proving conclusively that for the first time
in six years, the United States crop was to be small
and poor.  The yield was moderate.  Only part of it
could be graded as "contract."  Good wheat would be
valuable from now on.  Jadwin bought again, and again
it was a "lot" of half a million bushels.

Then came the first manifestation of that marvellous
golden luck that was to follow Curtis Jadwin through
all the coming months.  The French wheat crop was
announced as poor.  In Germany the yield was to be far
below the normal.  All through Hungary the potato and
rye crops were light.

About the middle of the month Jadwin again called the
broker to his country house, and took him for a long
evening's trip around the lake, aboard the "Thetis."
They were alone.  MacKenny was at the wheel, and,
seated on camp stools in the stern of the little boat,
Jadwin outlined his plans for the next few months.

"Sam," he said, "I thought back in April there that we
were to touch top prices about the first of this month,
but this French and German news has coloured the cat
different.  I've been figuring that I would get out of
this market around the seventies, but she's going
higher.  I'm going to hold on yet awhile."

"You do it on your own responsibility, then," said the
broker.  "I warn you the price is top heavy."

"Not much.  Seventy-two cents is too cheap.  Now I'm
going into this hard; and I want to have my own lines
out--to be independent of the trade papers that Crookes
could buy up any time he wants to.  I want you to get
me some good, reliable correspondents in Europe; smart,
bright fellows that we can depend on.  I want one in
Liverpool, one in Paris, and one in Odessa, and I want
them to cable us about the situation every day."

Gretry thought a while.

"Well," he said, at length, "... yes.  I guess I can
arrange it.  I can get you a good man in Liverpool--
Traynard is his name--and there's two or three in Paris
we could pick up.  Odessa--I don't know.  I couldn't
say just this minute.  But I'll fix it."

These correspondents began to report at the end of
July.  All over Europe the demand for wheat was active.
Grain handlers were not only buying freely, but were
contracting for future delivery.  In August came the
first demands for American wheat, scattered and
sporadic at first, then later, a little, a very little
more insistent.

Thus the summer wore to its end.  The fall "situation"
began slowly to define itself, with eastern Europe--
densely populated, overcrowded--commencing to show
uneasiness as to its supply of food for the winter; and
with but a moderate crop in America to meet foreign
demands.  Russia, the United States, and Argentine
would have to feed the world during the next twelve
months.

Over the Chicago Wheat Pit the hand of the great
indicator stood at seventy-five cents.  Jadwin sold out
his September wheat at this figure, and then in a
single vast clutch bought three million bushels of the
December option.

Never before had he ventured so deeply into the Pit.
Never before had he committed himself so irrevocably to
the send of the current.  But something was preparing.
Something indefinite and huge.  He guessed it, felt it,
knew it.  On all sides of him he felt a quickening
movement.  Lethargy, inertia were breaking up.  There
was buoyancy to the current.  In its ever-increasing
swiftness there was exhilaration and exuberance.

And he was upon the crest of the wave.  Now the
forethought, the shrewdness, and the prompt action of
those early spring days were beginning to tell.
Confident, secure, unassailable, Jadwin plunged in.
Every week the swirl of the Pit increased in speed,
every week the demands of Europe for American wheat
grew more frequent; and at the end of the month the
price--which had fluctuated between seventy-five and
seventy-eight--in a sudden flurry rushed to seventy-
nine, to seventy-nine and a half, and closed, strong,
at the even eighty cents.

On the day when the latter figure was reached Jadwin
bought a seat upon the Board of Trade.

He was now no longer an "outsider."



VII


One morning in November of the same year Laura joined
her husband at breakfast, preoccupied and a little
grave, her mind full of a subject about which, she told
herself, she could no longer keep from speaking.  So
soon as an opportunity presented itself, which was when
Jadwin laid down his paper and drew his coffee-cup
towards him, Laura exclaimed:

"Curtis."

"Well, old girl?"

"Curtis, dear, ... when is it all going to end--your
speculating?  You never used to be this way.  It seems
as though, nowadays, I never had you to myself.  Even
when you are not going over papers and reports and
that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the
library--even when you are not doing all that, your
mind seems to be away from me--down there in La Salle
Street or the Board of Trade Building.  Dearest, you
don't know.  I don't mean to complain, and I don't want
to be exacting or selfish, but--sometimes I--I am
lonesome.  Don't interrupt," she said, hastily.  "I
want to say it all at once, and then never speak of it
again.  Last night, when Mr. Gretry was here, you said,
just after dinner, that you would be all through your
talk in an hour.  And I waited.... I waited till
eleven, and then I went to bed.  Dear I--I--I was
lonesome.  The evening was so long.  I had put on my
very prettiest gown, the one you said you liked so
much, and you never seemed to notice.  You told me Mr.
Gretry was going by nine, and I had it all planned how
we would spend the evening together."

But she got no further.  Her husband had taken her in
his arms, and had interrupted her words with blustering
exclamations of self-reproach and self-condemnation.
He was a brute, he cried, a senseless, selfish ass, who
had no right to such a wife, who was not worth a single
one of the tears that by now were trembling on Laura's
lashes.

"Now we won't speak of it again," she began.  "I
suppose I am selfish----"

"Selfish, nothing!" he exclaimed.  "Don't talk that
way.  I'm the one----"

"But," Laura persisted, "some time you will--get out of
this speculating for good?  Oh, I do look forward to it
so!  And, Curtis, what is the use?  We're so rich now
we can't spend our money.  What do you want to make
more for?

"Oh, it's not the money," he answered.  "It's the fun
of the thing; the excitement----"

"That's just it, the 'excitement.' You don't know,
Curtis.  It is changing you.  You are so nervous
sometimes, and sometimes you don't listen to me when I
talk to you.  I can just see what's in your mind.  It's
wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat, all the time.
Oh, if you knew how I hated and feared it!"

"Well, old girl, that settles it.  I wouldn't make you
unhappy a single minute for all the wheat in the
world."

"And you will stop speculating?"

"Well, I can't pull out all in a moment, but just as
soon as a chance comes I'll get out of the market.  At
any rate, I won't have any business of mine come
between us.  I don't like it any more than you do.
Why, how long is it since we've read any book together,
like we used to when you read aloud to me?"

"Not since we came back from the country."

"By George, that's so, that's so."  He shook his head.
"I've got to taper off.  You're right, Laura.  But you
don't know, you haven't a guess how this trading in
wheat gets a hold of you.  And, then, what am I to do?
What are we fellows, who have made our money, to do?
I've got to be busy.  I can't sit down and twiddle my
thumbs.  And I don't believe in lounging around clubs,
or playing with race horses, or murdering game birds,
or running some poor, helpless fox to death.
Speculating seems to be about the only game, or the
only business that's left open to me--that appears to
be legitimate.  I know I've gone too far into it, and I
promise you I'll quit.  But it's fine fun.  When you
know how to swing a deal, and can look ahead, a little
further than the other fellows, and can take chances
they daren't, and plan and manoeuvre, and then see it
all come out just as you had known it would all along--
I tell you it's absorbing."

"But you never do tell me," she objected.  "I never
know what you are doing.  I hear through Mr. Court or
Mr. Gretry, but never through you.  Don't you think you
could trust me?  I want to enter into your life on its
every side, Curtis.  Tell me," she suddenly demanded,
"what are you doing now?"

"Very well, then," he said, "I'll tell you.  Of course
you mustn't speak about it.  It's nothing very secret,
but it's always as well to keep quiet about these
things."

She gave her word, and leaned her elbows on the table,
prepared to listen intently.  Jadwin crushed a lump of
sugar against the inside of his coffee cup.

"Well," he began, "I've not been doing anything very
exciting, except to buy wheat."

"What for?"

"To sell again.  You see, I'm one of those who believe
that wheat is going up.  I was the very first to see
it, I guess, way back last April.  Now in August this
year, while we were up at the lake, I bought three
million bushels."

"Three--million--bushels!" she murmured.  "Why, what do
you do with it?  Where do you put it?"

He tried to explain that he had merely bought the right
to call for the grain on a certain date, but she could
not understand this very clearly.

"Never mind," she told him, "go on."

"Well, then, at the end of August we found out that the
wet weather in England would make a short crop there,
and along in September came the news that Siberia would
not raise enough to supply the southern provinces of
Russia.  That left only the United States and the
Argentine Republic to feed pretty much the whole world.
Of course that would make wheat valuable.  Seems to be
a short-crop year everywhere.  I saw that wheat would
go higher and higher, so I bought another million
bushels in October, and another early in this month.
That's all.  You see, I figure that pretty soon those
people over in England and Italy and Germany--the
people that eat wheat--will be willing to pay us in
America big prices for it, because it's so hard to get.
They've got to have the wheat--it's bread 'n' butter to
them."

"Oh, then why not give it to them?" she cried.  "Give
it to those poor people--your five million bushels.
Why, that would be a godsend to them."

Jadwin stared a moment.

"Oh, that isn't exactly how it works out," he said.

Before he could say more, however, the maid came in and
handed to Jadwin three despatches.

"Now those," said Laura, when the servant had gone out,
"you get those every morning.  Are those part of your
business?  What do they say?"

"I'll read them to you," he told her as he slit the
first envelopes.  "They are cablegrams from agents of
mine in Europe.  Gretry arranged to have them sent to
me.  Here now, this is from Odessa.  It's in cipher,
but"--he drew a narrow memorandum-book from his breast
pocket--"I'll translate it for you."

He turned the pages of the key book a few moments,
jotting down the translation on the back of an envelope
with the gold pencil at the end of his watch chain.

"Here's how it reads," he said at last.  "'Cash wheat
advanced one cent bushel on Liverpool buying, stock
light.  Shipping to interior.  European price not
attractive to sellers."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Well, that Russia will not export wheat, that she has
no more than enough for herself, so that Western Europe
will have to look to us for her wheat."

"And the others?  Read those to me."

Again Jadwin translated.

"This is from Paris:

"'Answer on one million bushels wheat in your market--
stocks lighter than expected, and being cleared up.'"

"Which is to say?" she queried.

"They want to know how much I would ask for a million
bushels.  They find it hard to get the stuff over
there--just as I said they would."

"Will you sell it to them?"

"Maybe.  I'll talk to Sam about it."

"And now the last one."

"It's from Liverpool, and Liverpool, you must
understand, is the great buyer of wheat.  It's a
tremendously influential place."

He began once more to consult the key book, one finger
following the successive code words of the despatch.

Laura, watching him, saw his eyes suddenly contract.
"By George," he muttered, all at once, "by George,
what's this?"

"What is it?" she demanded.  "Is it important?"

But all-absorbed, Jadwin neither heard nor responded.
Three times he verified the same word.

"Oh, please tell me," she begged.

Jadwin shook his head impatiently and held up a warning
hand.

"Wait, wait," he said.  "Wait a minute."

Word for word he wrote out the translation of the
cablegram, and then studied it intently.

"That's it," he said, at last.  Then he got to his
feet.  "I guess I've had enough breakfast," he
declared.  He looked at his watch, touched the call
bell, and when the maid appeared said:

"Tell Jarvis to bring the buggy around right away."

"But, dear, what is it?" repeated Laura.  "You said you
would tell me.  You see," she cried, "it's just as I
said.  You've forgotten my very existence.  When it's a
question of wheat I count for nothing.  And just now,
when you read the despatch to yourself, you were all
different; such a look came into your face, so cruelly
eager, and triumphant and keen"

"You'd be eager, too," he exclaimed, "if you
understood.  Look; read it for yourself."

He thrust the cable into her hands.  Over each code
word he had written its translation, and his wife read:

"Large firms here short and in embarrassing position,
owing to curtailment in Argentine shipments.  Can
negotiate for five million wheat if price
satisfactory."

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, don't you see what that means?  It's the
'European demand' at last.  They must have wheat, and
I've got it to give 'em--wheat that I bought.  oh! at
seventy cents, some of it, and they'll pay the market
that is, eighty cents, for it.  Oh, they'll pay more.
They'll pay eighty-two if I want 'em to.  France is
after the stuff, too.  Remember that cable from Paris I
just read.  They'd bid against each other.  Why, if I
pull this off, if this goes through--and, by George,"
he went on, speaking as much to himself as to her, new
phases of the affair presenting themselves to him at
every moment, "by George, I don't have to throw this
wheat into the Pit and break down the price--and Gretry
has understandings with the railroads, through the
elevator gang, so we get big rebates.  Why, this wheat
is worth eighty-two cents to them--and then there's
this 'curtailment in Argentine shipments.' That's the
first word we've had about small crops there.  Holy
Moses, if the Argentine crop is off, wheat will knock
the roof clean off the Board of Trade!"  The maid
reappeared in the doorway.  "The buggy?" queried
Jadwin.  "All right.  I'm off, Laura, and--until it's
over keep quiet about all this, you know.  Ask me to
read you some more cables some day.  It brings good
luck."

He gathered up his despatches and the mail and was
gone.  Laura, left alone, sat looking out of the window
a long moment.  She heard the front door close, and
then the sound of the horses' hoofs on the asphalt by
the carriage porch.  They died down, ceased, and all at
once a great silence seemed to settle over the house.

Laura sat thinking.  At last she rose.

"It is the first time," she said to herself, "that
Curtis ever forgot to kiss me good-by."

The day, for all that the month was December, was fine.
The sun shone; under foot the ground was dry and hard.
The snow which had fallen ten days before was
practically gone.  In fine, it was a perfect day for
riding.  Laura called her maid and got into her habit.
The groom with his own horse and "Crusader" were
waiting for her when she descended.

That forenoon Laura rode further and longer than usual.
Preoccupied at first, her mind burdened with vague
anxieties, she nevertheless could not fail to be
aroused and stimulated by the sparkle and effervescence
of the perfect morning, and the cold, pure glitter of
Lake Michigan, green with an intense mineral hue,
dotted with whitecaps, and flashing under the morning
sky.  Lincoln Park was deserted and still; a blue haze
shrouded the distant masses of leafless trees, where
the gardeners were burning the heaps of leaves.  Under
her the thoroughbred moved with an ease and a freedom
that were superb, throwing back one sharp ear at her
lightest word; his rippling mane caressed her hand and
forearm, and as she looked down upon his shoulder she
could see the long, slender muscles, working smoothly,
beneath the satin sheen of the skin.  At the water
works she turned into the long, straight road that
leads to North Lake, and touched Crusader with the
crop, checking him slightly at the same time.  With a
little toss of his head he broke from a trot into a
canter, and then, as she leaned forward in the saddle,
into his long, even gallop.  There was no one to see;
she would not be conspicuous, so Laura gave the horse
his head, and in another moment he was carrying her
with a swiftness that brought the water to her eyes,
and that sent her hair flying from her face.  She had
him completely under control.  A touch upon the bit,
she knew, would suffice to bring him to a stand-still.
She knew him to be without fear and without nerves,
knew that his every instinct made for her safety, and
that this morning's gallop was as much a pleasure to
him as to his rider.  Beneath her and around her the
roadway and landscape flew; the cold air sang in her
ears and whipped a faint colour to her pale cheeks; in
her deep brown eyes a frosty sparkle came and went, and
throughout all her slender figure the blood raced
spanking and careering in a full, strong tide of health
and gaiety.

She made a circle around North Lake, and came back by
way of the Linne monument and the Palm House, Crusader
ambling quietly by now, the groom trotting stolidly in
the rear.  Throughout all her ride she had seen no one
but the park gardeners and the single grey-coated,
mounted policeman whom she met each time she rode, and
who always touched his helmet to her as she cantered
past.  Possibly she had grown a little careless in
looking out for pedestrians at the crossings, for as
she turned eastward at the La Salle statue, she all but
collided with a gentleman who was traversing the road
at the same time.

She brought her horse to a standstill with a little
start of apprehension, and started again as she saw
that the gentleman was Sheldon Corthell.

"Well," she cried, taken all aback, unable to think of
formalities, and relapsing all at once into the young
girl of Barrington, Massachusetts, "well, I never--of
all the people."

But, no doubt, she had been more in his mind than he in
hers, and a meeting with her was for him an eventuality
not at all remote.  There was more of pleasure than of
embarrassment in that first look in which he recognised
the wife of Curtis Jadwin.

The artist had changed no whit in the four years since
last she had seen him.  He seemed as young as ever;
there was the same "elegance" to his figure; his hands
were just as long and slim as ever; his black beard was
no less finely pointed, and the mustaches were brushed
away from his lips in the same French style that she
remembered he used to affect.  He was, as always,
carefully dressed.  He wore a suit of tweeds of a
foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth cap of greenish
plaid was upon his head, his hands were gloved in
dogskin, and under his arm he carried a slender cane of
varnished brown bamboo.  The only unconventionality in
his dress was the cravat, a great bow of black silk
that overflowed the lapels of his coat.

But she had no more than time to register a swift
impression of the details, when he came quickly
forward, one hand extended, the other holding his cap.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed.

It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial.  Not
a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently
modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal
mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of
the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the
eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the
eyes themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his
whole body.  Even his handkerchief, as always, since
first she had known him, was tucked into his sleeve at
the wrist.

"And so you are back again," she cried.  "And when, and
how?"

"And so--yes--so I am back again," he repeated, as they
shook hands.  "Only day before yesterday, and quite
surreptitiously.  No one knows yet that I am here.  I
crept in--or my train did--under the cover of night.  I
have come straight from Tuscany."

"From Tuscany?"

"----and gardens and marble pergolas."

"Now why any one should leave Tuscan gardens and--and
all that kind of thing for a winter in Chicago, I
cannot see," she said.

"It is a little puzzling," he answered.  "But I fancy
that my gardens and pergolas and all the rest had come
to seem to me a little--as the French would put it--
_malle._  I began to long for a touch of our hard,
harsh city again.  Harshness has its place, I think, if
it is only to cut one's teeth on."

Laura looked down at him, smiling.

"I should have thought you had cut yours long ago," she
said.

"Not my wisdom teeth," he urged.  "I feel now that I
have come to that time of life when it is expedient to
have wisdom."

"I have never known that feeling," she confessed, "and
I live in the 'hard, harsh' city."

"Oh, that is because you have never known what it meant
not to have wisdom," he retorted.  "Tell me about
everybody," he went on.  "Your husband, he is well, of
course, and distressfully rich.  I heard of him in New
York.  And Page, our little, solemn Minerva of Dresden
china?"

"Oh, yes, Page is well, but you will hardly recognise
her; such a young lady nowadays."

"And Mr. Court, 'Landry'?  I remember he always
impressed me as though he had just had his hair cut;
and the Cresslers, and Mrs. Wessels, and----"

"All well.  Mrs. Cressler will be delighted to hear you
are back.  Yes, everybody is well."

"And, last of all, Mrs. Jadwin?  But I needn't ask; I
can see how well and happy you are."

"And Mr. Corthell," she queried, "is also well and
happy?"

"Mr. Corthell," he responded, "is very well, and--
tolerably--happy, thank you.  One has lost a few
illusions, but has managed to keep enough to grow old
on.  One's latter days are provided for."

"I shouldn't imagine," she told him, "that one lost
illusions in Tuscan gardens."

"Quite right," he hastened to reply, smiling
cheerfully.  "One lost no illusions in Tuscany.  One
went there to cherish the few that yet remained.  But,"
he added, without change of manner, "one begins to
believe that even a lost illusion can be very beautiful
sometimes--even in Chicago."

"I want you to dine with us," said Laura.  "You've
hardly met my husband, and I think you will like some
of our pictures.  I will have all your old friends
there, the Cresslers and Aunt Wess, and all.  When can
you come?"

"Oh, didn't you get my note?" he asked.  "I wrote you
yesterday, asking if I might call to-night.  You see, I
am only in Chicago for a couple of days.  I must go on
to St. Louis to-morrow, and shall not be back for a
week."

"Note?  No, I've had no note from you.  Oh, I know what
happened.  Curtis left in a hurry this morning, and he
swooped all the mail into his pocket the last moment.
I knew some of my letters were with his.  There's where
your note went.  But, never mind, it makes no
difference now that we've met.  Yes, by all means, come
to-night--to dinner.  We're not a bit formal.  Curtis
won't have it.  We dine at six; and I'll try to get the
others.  Oh, but Page won't be there, I forgot.  She
and Landry Court are going to have dinner with Aunt
Wess', and they are all going to a lecture afterwards."

The artist expressed his appreciation and accepted her
invitation.

"Do you know where we live?" she demanded.  "You know
we've moved since."

"Yes, I know," he told her.  "I made up my mind to take
a long walk here in the Park this morning, and I passed
your house on my way out.  You see, I had to look up
your address in the directory before writing.  Your
house awed me, I confess, and the style is surprisingly
good."

"But tell me," asked Laura, "you never speak of
yourself, what have you been doing since you went
away?"

"Nothing.  Merely idling, and painting a little, and
studying some thirteenth century glass in Avignon and
Sienna."

"And shall you go back?"

"Yes, I think so, in about a month.  So soon as I have
straightened out some little businesses of mine--which
puts me in mind," he said, glancing at his watch, "that
I have an appointment at eleven, and should be about
it."

He said good-by and left her, and Laura cantered
homeward in high spirits.  She was very glad that
Corthell had come back.  She had always liked him.  He
not only talked well himself, but seemed to have the
faculty of making her do the same.  She remembered that
in the old days, before she had met Jadwin, her mind
and conversation, for undiscoverable reasons, had never
been nimbler, quicker, nor more effective than when in
the company of the artist.

Arrived at home, Laura (as soon as she had looked up
the definition of "pergola" in the dictionary) lost no
time in telephoning to Mrs. Cressler.

"What," this latter cried when she told her the news,
"that Sheldon Corthell back again!  Well, dear me, if
he wasn't the last person in my mind.  I do remember
the lovely windows he used to paint, and how refined
and elegant he always was--and the loveliest hands and
voice."

"He's to dine with us to-night, and I want you and Mr.
Cressler to come."

"Oh, Laura, child, I just simply can't.  Charlie's got
a man from Milwaukee coming here to-night, and I've got
to feed him.  Isn't it too provoking?  I've got to sit
and listen to those two, clattering commissions and
percentages and all, when I might be hearing Sheldon
Corthell talk art and poetry and stained glass.  I
declare, I never have any luck."

At quarter to six that evening Laura sat in the
library, before the fireplace, in her black velvet
dinner gown, cutting the pages of a new novel, the
ivory cutter as it turned and glanced in her hand,
appearing to be a mere prolongation of her slender
fingers.  But she was not interested in the book, and
from time to time glanced nervously at the clock upon
the mantel-shelf over her head.  Jadwin was not home
yet, and she was distressed at the thought of keeping
dinner waiting.  He usually came back from down town at
five o'clock, and even earlier.  To-day she had
expected that quite possibly the business implied in
the Liverpool cable of the morning might detain him,
but surely he should be home by now; and as the minutes
passed she listened more and more anxiously for the
sound of hoofs on the driveway at the side of the
house.

At five minutes of the hour, when Corthell was
announced, there was still no sign of her husband.  But
as she was crossing the hall on her way to the drawing-
room, one of the servants informed her that Mr. Jadwin
had just telephoned that he would be home in half an
hour.

"Is he on the telephone now?" she asked, quickly.
"Where did he telephone from?"

But it appeared that Jadwin had "hung up" without
mentioning his whereabouts.

"The buggy came home," said the servant.  "Mr. Jadwin
told Jarvis not to wait.  He said he would come in the
street cars."

Laura reflected that she could delay dinner a half
hour, and gave orders to that effect.

"We shall have to wait a little," she explained to
Corthell as they exchanged greetings in the drawing-
room.  "Curtis has some special business on hand to-
day, and is half an hour late."

They sat down on either side of the fireplace in the
lofty apartment, with its sombre hangings of wine-
coloured brocade and thick, muffling rugs, and for
upwards of three-quarters of an hour Corthell
interested her with his description of his life in the
cathedral towns of northern Italy.  But at the end of
that time dinner was announced.

"Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" Laura asked of the
servant.

"No, madam."

She bit her lip in vexation.

"I can't imagine what can keep Curtis so late," she
murmured.  "Well," she added, at the end of her
resources, "we must make the best of it.  I think we
will go in, Mr. Corthell, without waiting.  Curtis must
be here soon now."

But, as a matter of fact, he was not.  In the great
dining-room, filled with a dull crimson light, the air
just touched with the scent of lilies of the valley,
Corthell and Mrs. Jadwin dined alone.

"I suppose," observed the artist, "that Mr. Jadwin is a
very busy man."

"Oh, no," Laura answered.  "His real estate, he says,
runs itself, and, as a rule, Mr. Gretry manages most of
his Board of Trade business.  It is only occasionally
that anything keeps him down town late.  I scolded him
this morning, however, about his speculating, and made
him promise not to do so much of it.  I hate
speculation.  It seems to absorb some men so; and I
don't believe it's right for a man to allow himself to
become absorbed altogether in business."

"Oh, why limit one's absorption to business?" replied
Corthell, sipping his wine.  "Is it right for one to be
absorbed 'altogether' in anything--even in art, even in
religion?"

"Oh, religion, I don't know," she protested.

"Isn't that certain contribution," he hazarded, "which
we make to the general welfare, over and above our own
individual work, isn't that the essential?  I suppose,
of course, that we must hoe, each of us, his own little
row, but it's the stroke or two we give to our
neighbour's row--don't you think?--that helps most to
cultivate the field."

"But doesn't religion mean more than a stroke or two?"
she ventured to reply.

"I'm not so sure," he answered, thoughtfully.  "If the
stroke or two is taken from one's own work instead of
being given in excess of it.  One must do one's own
hoeing first.  That's the foundation of things.  A
religion that would mean to be 'altogether absorbed' in
my neighbour's hoeing would be genuinely pernicious,
surely.  My row, meanwhile, would lie open to weeds."

"But if your neighbour's row grew flowers?"

"Unfortunately weeds grow faster than the flowers, and
the weeds of my row would spread until they choked and
killed my neighbour's flowers, I am sure."

"That seems selfish though," she persisted.  "Suppose
my neighbour were maimed or halt or blind?  His poor
little row would never be finished.  My stroke or two
would not help very much."

"Yes, but every row lies between two others, you know.
The hoer on the far side of the cripple's row would
contribute a stroke or two as well as you.  No," he
went on, "I am sure one's first duty is to do one's own
work.  It seems to me that a work accomplished benefits
the whole world--the people--pro rata.  If we help
another at the expense of our work instead of in excess
of it, we benefit only the individual, and, pro rata
again, rob the people.  A little good contributed by
everybody to the race is of more, infinitely more,
importance than a great deal of good contributed by one
individual to another."

"Yes," she admitted, beginning at last to be convinced,
"I see what you mean.  But one must think very large to
see that.  It never occurred to me before.  The
individual--I, Laura Jadwin--counts for nothing.  It is
the type to which I belong that's important, the mould,
the form, the sort of composite photograph of hundreds
of thousands of Laura Jadwins.  Yes," she continued,
her brows bent, her mind hard at work, "what I am, the
little things that distinguish me from everybody else,
those pass away very quickly, are very ephemeral.  But
the type Laura Jadwin, that always remains, doesn't it?
One must help building up only the permanent things.
Then, let's see, the individual may deteriorate, but
the type always grows better.... Yes, I think one can
say that."

"At least the type never recedes," he prompted.

"Oh, it began good," she cried, as though at a
discovery, "and can never go back of that original
good.  Something keeps it from going below a certain
point, and it is left to us to lift it higher and
higher.  No, the type can't be bad.  Of course the type
is more important than the individual.  And that
something that keeps it from going below a certain
point is God."

"Or nature."

"So that God and nature," she cried again, "work
together?  No, no, they are one and the same thing."

"There, don't you see," he remarked, smiling back at
her, "how simple it is?"

"Oh-h," exclaimed Laura, with a deep breath, "isn't it
beautiful?" She put her hand to her forehead with a
little laugh of deprecation.  "My," she said, "but
those things make you think."

Dinner was over before she was aware of it, and they
were still talking animatedly as they rose from the
table.

"We will have our coffee in the art gallery," Laura
said, "and please smoke."

He lit a cigarette, and the two passed into the great
glass-roofed rotunda.

"Here is the one I like best," said Laura, standing
before the Bougereau.

"Yes?" he queried, observing the picture thoughtfully.
"I suppose," he remarked, "it is because it demands
less of you than some others.  I see what you mean.  It
pleases you because it satisfies you so easily.  You
can grasp it without any effort."

"Oh, I don't know," she ventured.

"Bougereau 'fills a place.' I know it," he answered.
"But I cannot persuade myself to admire his art."

"But," she faltered, "I thought that Bougereau was
considered the greatest--one of the greatest--his
wonderful flesh tints, the drawing, and colouring"

"But I think you will see," he told her, "if you think
about it, that for all there is _in_ his picture--back
of it--a fine hanging, a beautiful vase would have
exactly the same value upon your wall.  Now, on the
other hand, take this picture."  He indicated a small
canvas to the right of the bathing nymphs, representing
a twilight landscape.

"Oh, that one," said Laura.  "We bought that here in
America, in New York.  It's by a Western artist.  I
never noticed it much, I'm afraid."

"But now look at it," said Corthell.  "Don't you know
that the artist saw something more than trees and a
pool and afterglow?  He had that feeling of night coming
on, as he sat there before his sketching easel on the
edge of that little pool.  He heard the frogs beginning
to pipe, I'm sure, and the touch of the night mist was
on his hands.  And he was very lonely and even a little
sad.  In those deep shadows under the trees he put
something of himself, the gloom and the sadness that he
felt at the moment.  And that little pool, still and
black and sombre--why, the whole thing is the tragedy
of a life full of dark, hidden secrets.  And the little
pool is a heart.  No one can say how deep it is, or
what dreadful thing one would find at the bottom, or
what drowned hopes or what sunken ambitions.  That
little pool says one word as plain as if it were
whispered in the ear--despair.  Oh, yes, I prefer it to
the nymphs."

"I am very much ashamed," returned Laura, "that I could
not see it all before for myself.  But I see it now.
It is better, of course.  I shall come in here often
now and study it.  Of all the rooms in our house this
is the one I like best.  But, I am afraid, it has been
more because of the organ than of the pictures."

Corthell turned about.

"Oh, the grand, noble organ," he murmured.  "I envy you
this of all your treasures.  May I play for you?
Something to compensate for the dreadful, despairing
little tarn of the picture."

"I should love to have you," she told him.

He asked permission to lower the lights, and stepping
outside the door an instant, pressed the buttons that
extinguished all but a very few of them.  After he had
done this he came back to the organ and detached the
self-playing "arrangement" without comment, and seated
himself at the console.

Laura lay back in a long chair close at hand.  The
moment was propitious.  The artist's profile
silhouetted itself against the shade of a light that
burned at the side of the organ, and that gave light to
the keyboard.  And on this keyboard, full in the
reflection, lay his long, slim hands.  They were the
only things that moved in the room, and the chords and
bars of Mendelssohn's "Consolation" seemed, as he
played, to flow, not from the instrument, but, like
some invisible ether, from his finger-tips themselves.

"You hear," he said to Laura, "the effect of questions
and answer in this.  The questions are passionate and
tumultuous and varied, but the answer is always the
same, always calm and soothing and dignified."

She answered with a long breath, speaking just above a
whisper:

"Oh, yes, yes, I understand."

He finished and turned towards her a moment.  "Possibly
not a very high order of art," he said; "a little too
'easy,' perhaps, like the Bougereau, but 'Consolation'
should appeal very simply and directly, after all.  Do
you care for Beethoven?"

"I--I am afraid--" began Laura, but he had continued
without waiting for her reply.

"You remember this?  The 'Appassionata,' the F minor
sonata just the second movement."

But when he had finished Laura begged him to continue.

"Please go on," she said.  "Play anything.  You can't
tell how I love it."

"Here is something I've always liked," he answered,
turning back to the keyboard.  "It is the 'Mephisto
Walzer' of Liszt.  He has adapted it himself from his
own orchestral score, very ingeniously.  It is
difficult to render on the organ, but I think you can
get the idea of it."  As he spoke he began playing, his
head very slightly moving to the rhythm of the piece.
At the beginning of each new theme, and without
interrupting his playing, he offered a word, of
explanation:

"Very vivid and arabesque this, don't you think? ...
And now this movement; isn't it reckless and
capricious, like a woman who hesitates and then takes
the leap?  Yet there's a certain nobility there, a
feeling for ideals.  You see it, of course.... And all
the while this undercurrent of the sensual, and that
feline, eager sentiment ... and here, I think, is the
best part of it, the very essence of passion, the
voluptuousness that is a veritable anguish....  These
long, slow rhythms, tortured, languishing, really
dying.  It reminds one of 'Phedre '--'Venus toute
entiere,' and the rest of it; and Wagner has the same.
You find it again in Isolde's motif continually."

Laura was transfixed, all but transported.  Here was
something better than Gounod and Verdi, something above
and beyond the obvious one, two, three, one, two, three
of the opera scores as she knew them and played them.
Music she understood with an intuitive quickness; and
those prolonged chords of Liszt's, heavy and clogged
and cloyed with passion, reached some hitherto
untouched string within her heart, and with resistless
power twanged it so that the vibration of it shook her
entire being, and left her quivering and breathless,
the tears in her eyes, her hands clasped till the
knuckles whitened.

She felt all at once as though a whole new world were
opened to her.  She stood on Pisgah.  And she was
ashamed and confused at her ignorance of those things
which Corthell tactfully assumed that she knew as a
matter of course.  What wonderful pleasures she had
ignored! How infinitely removed from her had been the
real world of art and artists of which Corthell was a
part! Ah, but she would make amends now.  No more Verdi
and Bougereau.  She would get rid of the "Bathing
Nymphs."  Never, never again would she play the "Anvil
Chorus."  Corthell should select her pictures, and
should play to her from Liszt and Beethoven that music
which evoked all the turbulent emotion, all the
impetuosity and fire and exaltation that she felt was
hers.

She wondered at herself.  Surely, surely there were two
Laura Jadwins.  One calm and even and steady, loving
the quiet life, loving her home, finding a pleasure in
the duties of the housewife.  This was the Laura who
liked plain, homely, matter-of-fact Mrs. Cressler, who
adored her husband, who delighted in Mr. Howells's
novels, who abjured society and the formal conventions,
who went to church every Sunday, and who was afraid of
her own elevator.

But at moments such as this she knew that there was
another Laura Jadwin--the Laura Jadwin who might have
been a great actress, who had a "temperament," who was
impulsive.  This was the Laura of the "grand manner,"
who played the role of the great lady from room to room
of her vast house, who read Meredith, who revelled in
swift gallops through the park on jet-black, long-
tailed horses, who affected black velvet, black jet,
and black lace in her gowns, who was conscious and
proud of her pale, stately beauty--the Laura Jadwin, in
fine, who delighted to recline in a long chair in the
dim, beautiful picture gallery and listen with half-
shut eyes to the great golden organ thrilling to the
passion of Beethoven and Liszt.

The last notes of the organ sank and faded into
silence--a silence that left a sense of darkness like
that which follows upon the flight of a falling star,
and after a long moment Laura sat upright, adjusting
the heavy masses of her black hair with thrusts of her
long, white fingers.  She drew a deep breath.

"Oh," she said, "that was wonderful, wonderful.  It is
like a new language--no, it is like new thoughts, too
fine for language."

"I have always believed so," he answered.  "Of all the
arts, music, to my notion, is the most intimate.  At
the other end of the scale you have architecture, which
is an expression of and an appeal to the common
multitude, a whole people, the mass.  Fiction and
painting, and even poetry, are affairs of the classes,
reaching the groups of the educated.  But music--ah,
that is different, it is one soul speaking to another
soul.  The composer meant it for you and himself.  No
one else has anything to do with it.  Because his soul
was heavy and broken with grief, or bursting with
passion, or tortured with doubt, or searching for some
unnamed ideal, he has come to you--you of all the
people in the world--with his message, and he tells you
of his yearnings and his sadness, knowing that you will
sympathise, knowing that your soul has, like his, been
acquainted with grief, or with gladness; and in the
music his soul speaks to yours, beats with it, blends
with it, yes, is even, spiritually, married to it."

And as he spoke the electrics all over the gallery
flashed out in a sudden blaze, and Curtis Jadwin
entered the room, crying out:

"Are you here, Laura?  By George, my girl, we pulled it
off, and I've cleaned up five--hundred--thousand--
dollars."

Laura and the artist faced quickly about, blinking at
the sudden glare, and Laura put her hand over her eyes.

"Oh, I didn't mean to blind you," said her husband, as
he came forward.  "But I thought it wouldn't be
appropriate to tell you the good news in the dark."

Corthell rose, and for the first time Jadwin caught
sight of him.

"This is Mr. Corthell, Curtis," Laura said.  "You
remember him, of course?"

"Why, certainly, certainly," declared Jadwin, shaking
Corthell's hand.  "Glad to see you again.  I hadn't an
idea you were here."  He was excited, elated, very
talkative.  "I guess I came in on you abruptly," he
observed.  "They told me Mrs. Jadwin was in here, and I
was full of my good news.  By the way, I do remember
now.  When I came to look over my mail on the way down
town this morning, I found a note from you to my wife,
saying you would call to-night.  Thought it was for me,
and opened it before I found the mistake."

"I knew you had gone off with it," said Laura.

"Guess I must have mixed it up with my own mail this
morning.  I'd have telephoned you about it, Laura, but
upon my word I've been so busy all day I clean forgot
it.  I've let the cat out of the bag already, Mr.
Corthell, and I might as well tell the whole thing now.
I've been putting through a little deal with some
Liverpool fellows to-day, and I had to wait down town
to get their cables to-night.  You got my telephone,
did you, Laura?"

"Yes, but you said then you'd be up in half an hour."

"I know--I know.  But those Liverpool cables didn't
come till all hours.  Well, as I was saying, Mr.
Corthell, I had this deal on hand--it was that wheat,
Laura, I was telling you about this morning--five
million bushels of it, and I found out from my English
agent that I could slam it right into a couple of
fellows over there, if we could come to terms.  We came
to terms right enough.

Some of that wheat I sold at a profit of fifteen cents
on every bushel.  My broker and I figured it out just
now before I started home, and, as I say, I'm a clean
half million to the good.  So much for looking ahead a
little further than the next man."  He dropped into a
chair and stretched his arms wide.  "Whoo! I'm tired
Laura.  Seems as though I'd been on my feet all day.
Do you suppose Mary, or Martha, or Maggie, or whatever
her name is, could rustle me a good strong cup of tea.

"Haven't you dined, Curtis?" cried Laura

"Oh, I had a stand-up lunch somewhere with Sam.  But we
were both so excited we might as well have eaten
sawdust.  Heigho, I sure am tired.  It takes it out of
you, Mr. Corthell, to make five hundred thousand in
about ten hours."

"Indeed I imagine so," assented the artist.  Jadwin
turned to his wife, and held her glance in his a
moment.  He was full of triumph, full of the grim
humour of the suddenly successful American.

"Hey?" he said.  "What do you think of that Laura," he
clapped down his big hand upon his chair arm, "a whole
half million--at one grab?  Maybe they'll say down there
in La Salle Street now that I don't know wheat.  Why,
Sam--that's Gretry my broker, Mr. Corthell, of Gretry,
Converse & Co.--Sam said to me Laura, to-night, he
said, 'J.,'--they call me 'J.' down there, Mr.
Corthell--'J., I take off my hat to you.  I thought you
were wrong from the very first, but I guess you know
this game better than I do.' Yes, sir, that's what he
said, and Sam Gretry has been trading in wheat for
pretty nearly thirty years.  Oh, I knew it," he cried,
with a quick gesture; "I knew wheat was going to go up.
I knew it from the first, when all the rest of em
laughed at me.  I knew this European demand would hit
us hard about this time.  I knew it was a good thing to
buy wheat; I knew it was a good thing to have special
agents over in Europe.  Oh, they'll all buy now--when
I've showed 'em the way.  Upon my word, I haven't
talked so much in a month of Sundays.  You must pardon
me, Mr. Corthell.  I don't make five hundred thousand
every day."

"But this is the last--isn't it?" said Laura.

"Yes," admitted Jadwin, with a quick, deep breath.
"I'm done now.  No more speculating.  Let some one else
have a try now.  See if they can hold five million
bushels till it's wanted.  My, my, I am tired--as I've
said before.  D'that tea come, Laura?"

"What's that in your hand?" she answered, smiling.

Jadwin stared at the cup and saucer he held,
whimsically.  "Well, well," he exclaimed, "I must be
flustered.  Corthell," he declared between swallows,
"take my advice.  Buy May wheat.  It'll beat art all
hollow."

"Oh, dear, no," returned the artist.  "I should lose my
senses if I won, and my money if I didn't.

"That's so.  Keep out of it.  It's a rich man's game.
And at that, there's no fun in it unless you risk more
than you can afford to lose.  Well, let's not talk
shop.  You're an artist, Mr. Corthell.  What do you
think of our house?"

Later on when they had said good-by to Corthell, and
when Jadwin was making the rounds of the library, art
gallery, and drawing-rooms--a nightly task which he
never would intrust to the servants--turning down the
lights and testing the window fastenings, his wife
said:

"And now you are out of it--for good."

"I don't own a grain of wheat," he assured her.  "I've
got to be out of it."

The next day he went down town for only two or three
hours in the afternoon.  But he did not go near the
Board of Trade building.  He talked over a few business
matters with the manager of his real estate office,
wrote an unimportant letter or two, signed a few
orders, was back at home by five o'clock, and in the
evening took Laura, Page, and Landry Court to the
theatre .

After breakfast the next morning, when he had read his
paper, he got up, and, thrusting his hands in his
pockets, looked across the table at his wife.

"Well," he said.  "Now what'll we do?"

She put down at once the letter she was reading.

"Would you like to drive in the park?" she suggested.
"It is a beautiful morning."

"M--m--yes," he answered slowly.  "All right.  Let's
drive in the park."

But she could see that the prospect was not alluring to
him.

"No," she said, "no.  I don't think you want to do
that."

"I don't think I do, either," he admitted.  "The fact
is, Laura, I just about know that park by heart.  Is
there anything good in the magazines this month?"

She got them for him, and he installed himself
comfortably in the library, with a box of cigars near
at hand.

"Ah," he said, fetching a long breath as he settled
back in the deep-seated leather chair.  "Now this is
what I call solid comfort.  Better than stewing and
fussing about La Salle Street with your mind loaded
down with responsibilities and all.  This is my idea of
life."

But an hour later, when Laura--who had omitted her ride
that morning--looked into the room, he was not there.
The magazines were helter-skeltered upon the floor and
table, where he had tossed each one after turning the
leaves.  A servant told her that Mr. Jadwin was out in
the stables.

She saw him through the window, in a cap and great-
coat, talking with the coachman and looking over one of
the horses.  But he came back to the house in a little
while, and she found him in his smoking-room with a
novel in his hand.

"Oh, I read that last week," she said, as she caught a
glimpse of the title.  "Isn't it interesting?  Don't you
think it is good?"

"Oh--yes--pretty good," he admitted.  "Isn't it about
time for lunch?  Let's go to the matinee this afternoon,
Laura.  Oh, that's so, it's Thursday; I forgot."

"Let me read that aloud to you," she said, reaching for
the book.  "I know you'll be interested when you get
farther along."

"Honestly, I don't think I would be," he declared.
"I've looked ahead in it.  It seems terribly dry.  Do
you know," he said, abruptly, "if the law was off I'd
go up to Geneva Lake and fish through the ice.  Laura,
how would you like to go to Florida?"

"Oh, I tell you," she exclaimed.  "Let's go up to
Geneva Lake over Christmas.  We'll open up the house
and take some of the servants along and have a house
party."

Eventually this was done.  The Cresslers and the
Gretrys were invited, together with Sheldon Corthell
and Landry Court.  Page and Aunt Wess' came as a matter
of course.  Jadwin brought up some of the horses and a
couple of sleighs.  On Christmas night they had a great
tree, and Corthell composed the words and music for a
carol which had a great success.

About a week later, two days after New Year's day, when
Landry came down from Chicago on the afternoon train,
he was full of the tales of a great day on the Board of
Trade.  Laura, descending to the sitting-room, just
before dinner, found a group in front of the fireplace,
where the huge logs were hissing and crackling.  Her
husband and Cressler were there, and Gretry, who had
come down on an earlier train.  Page sat near at hand,
her chin on her palm, listening intently to Landry, who
held the centre of the stage for the moment.  In a far
corner of the room Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat
and patent-leather pumps, a cigarette between his
fingers, read a volume of Italian verse.

"It was the confirmation of the failure of the
Argentine crop that did it," Landry was saying; "that
and the tremendous foreign demand.  She opened steady
enough at eighty-three, but just as soon as the gong
tapped we began to get it.  Buy, buy, buy.  Everybody
is in it now.  The public are speculating.  For one
fellow who wants to sell there are a dozen buyers.  We
had one of the hottest times I ever remember in the Pit
this morning"

Laura saw Jadwin's eyes snap.

"I told you we'd get this, Sam," he said, nodding to
the broker.

"Oh, there's plenty of wheat," answered Gretry, easily.
"Wait till we get dollar wheat--if we do--and see it
come out.  The farmers haven't sold it all yet.
There's always an army of ancient hayseeds who have the
stuff tucked away--in old stockings, I guess--and
who'll dump it on you all right if you pay enough.
There's plenty of wheat.  I've seen it happen before.
Work the price high enough, and, Lord, how they'll
scrape the bins to throw it at you! You'd never guess
from what out-of-the-way places it would come."

"I tell you, Sam," retorted Jadwin, "the surplus of
wheat is going out of the country--and it's going fast.
And some of these shorts will have to hustle lively for
it pretty soon."

"The Crookes gang, though," observed Landry, "seem
pretty confident the market will break.  I'm sure they
were selling short this morning."

"The idea," exclaimed Jadwin, incredulously, "the idea
of selling short in face of this Argentine collapse,
and all this Bull news from Europe!"

"Oh, there are plenty of shorts," urged Gretry.
"Plenty of them."

Try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit
reached Jadwin at every hour of the day and night.  The
maelstrom there at the foot of La Salle Street was
swirling now with a mightier rush than for years past.
Thundering, its vortex smoking, it sent its whirling
far out over the country, from ocean to ocean, sweeping
the wheat into its currents, sucking it in, and spewing
it out again in the gigantic pulses of its ebb and
flow.

And he, Jadwin, who knew its every eddy, who could
foretell its every ripple, was out of it, out of it.
Inactive, he sat there idle while the clamour of the
Pit swelled daily louder, and while other men, men of
little minds, of narrow imaginations, perversely,
blindly shut their eyes to the swelling of its waters,
neglecting the chances which he would have known how to
use with such large, such vast results.  That
mysterious event which long ago he felt was preparing,
was not yet consummated.  The great Fact, the great
Result which was at last to issue forth from all this
turmoil was not yet achieved.  Would it refuse to come
until a master hand, all powerful, all daring, gripped
the levers of the sluice gates that controlled the
crashing waters of the Pit?  He did not know.  Was it
the moment for a chief?

Was this upheaval a revolution that called aloud for
its Napoleon?  Would another, not himself, at last,
seeing where so many shut their eyes, step into the
place of high command?

Jadwin chafed and fretted in his inaction.  As the time
when the house party should break up drew to its close,
his impatience harried him like a gadfly.  He took long
drives over the lonely country roads, or tramped the
hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful, preoccupied.  He
still held his seat upon the Board of Trade.  He still
retained his agents in Europe.  Each morning brought
him fresh despatches, each evening's paper confirmed
his forecasts.

"Oh, I'm out of it for good and all," he assured his
wife.  "But I know the man who could take up the whole
jing-bang of that Crookes crowd in one hand and"--his
large fist swiftly knotted as he spoke the words--
"scrunch it up like an eggshell, by George."

Landry Court often entertained Page with accounts of
the doings on the Board of Trade, and about a fortnight
after the Jadwins had returned to their city home he
called on her one evening and brought two or three of
the morning's papers.

"Have you seen this?" he asked.  She shook her head.

"Well," he said, compressing his lips, and narrowing
his eyes, "let me tell you, we are having pretty--
lively--times--down there on the Board these days.  The
whole country is talking about it."

He read her certain extracts from the newspapers he had
brought.  The first article stated that recently a new
factor had appeared in the Chicago wheat market.  A
"Bull" clique had evidently been formed, presumably of
New York capitalists, who were ousting the Crookes
crowd and were rapidly coming into control of the
market.  In consequence of this the price of wheat was
again mounting.

Another paper spoke of a combine of St.  Louis firms
who were advancing prices, bulling the market.  Still a
third said, at the beginning of a half-column article:

"It is now universally conceded that an Unknown Bull
has invaded the Chicago wheat market since the
beginning of the month, and is now dominating the
entire situation.  The Bears profess to have no fear of
this mysterious enemy, but it is a matter of fact that
a multitude of shorts were driven ignominiously to
cover on Tuesday last, when the Great Bull gathered in
a long line of two million bushels in a single half
hour.  Scalping and eighth-chasing are almost entirely
at an end, the smaller traders dreading to be caught on
the horns of the Unknown.  The new operator's identity
has been carefully concealed, but whoever he is, he is
a wonderful trader and is possessed of consummate
nerve.  It has been rumoured that he hails from New
York, and is but one of a large clique who are
inaugurating a Bull campaign.  But our New York advices
are emphatic in denying this report, and we can safely
state that the Unknown Bull is a native, and a present
inhabitant of the Windy City."

Page looked up at Landry quickly, and he returned her
glance without speaking.  There was a moment's silence.

"I guess," Landry hazarded, lowering his voice, "I
guess we're both thinking of the same thing."

"But I know he told my sister that he was going to stop
all that kind of thing.  What do you think?"

"I hadn't ought to think anything."

"Say 'shouldn't think,' Landry."

"Shouldn't think, then, anything about it.  My business
is to execute Mr. Gretry's orders."

"Well, I know this," said Page, "that Mr. Jadwin is
down town all day again.  You know he stayed away for a
while."

"Oh, that may be his real estate business that keeps
him down town so much," replied Landry.

"Laura is terribly distressed," Page went on.  "I can
see that.  They used to spend all their evenings
together in the library, and Laura would read aloud to
him.  But now he comes home so tired that sometimes he
goes to bed at nine o'clock, and Laura sits there alone
reading till eleven and twelve.  But she's afraid, too,
of the effect upon him.  He's getting so absorbed.  He
don't care for literature now as he did once, or was
beginning to when Laura used to read to him; and he
never thinks of his Sunday-school.  And then, too, if
you're to believe Mr. Cressler, there's a chance that
he may lose if he is speculating again."

But Landry stoutly protested:

"Well, don't think for one moment that Mr. Curtis
Jadwin is going to let any one get the better of him.
There's no man--no, nor gang of men--could down him.
He's head and shoulders above the biggest of them down
there.  I tell you he's Napoleonic.  Yes, sir, that's
what he is, Napoleonic, to say the least.  Page," he
declared, solemnly, "he's the greatest man I've ever
known."

Very soon after this it was no longer a secret to Laura
Jadwin that her husband had gone back to the wheat
market, and that, too, with such impetuosity, such
eagerness, that his rush had carried him to the very
heart's heart of the turmoil.

He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be
felt.  Not an important move on the part of the
"Unknown Bull," the nameless mysterious stranger that
was not duly noted and discussed by the entire world of
La Salle Street.

Almost his very first move, carefully guarded, executed
with profoundest secrecy, had been to replace the five
million bushels sold to Liverpool by five million more
of the May option.  This was in January, and all
through February and all through the first days of
March, while the cry for American wheat rose, insistent
and vehement, from fifty cities and centres of eastern
Europe; while the jam of men in the Wheat Pit grew ever
more frantic, ever more furious, and while the
impassive hand on the great dial over the floor of the
Board rose, resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven,
he bought steadily, gathering in the wheat, calling for
it, welcoming it, receiving full in the face and with
opened arms the cataract that poured in upon the Pit
from Iowa and Nebraska, Minnesota and Dakota, from the
dwindling bins of Illinois and the fast-emptying
elevators of Kansas and Missouri.

Then, squarely in the midst of the commotion, at a time
when Curtis Jadwin owned some ten million bushels of
May wheat, fell the Government report on the visible
supply.

"Well," said Jadwin, "what do you think of it?"

He and Gretry were in the broker's private room in the
offices of Gretry, Converse & Co.  They were studying
the report of the Government as to the supply of wheat,
which had just been published in the editions of the
evening papers.  It was very late in the afternoon of a
lugubrious March day.  Long since the gas and
electricity had been lighted in the office, while in
the streets the lamps at the corners were reflected
downward in long shafts of light upon the drenched
pavements.  From the windows of the room one could see
directly up La Salle Street.  The cable cars, as they
made the turn into or out of the street at the corner
of Monroe, threw momentary glares of red and green
lights across the mists of rain, and filled the air
continually with the jangle of their bells.  Further on
one caught a glimpse of the Court House rising from the
pavement like a rain-washed cliff of black basalt,
picked out with winking lights, and beyond that, at the
extreme end of the vista, the girders and cables of the
La Salle Street bridge.

The sidewalks on either hand were encumbered with the
"six o'clock crowd" that poured out incessantly from
the street entrances of the office buildings. It was a
crowd almost entirely of men, and they moved only in
one direction, buttoned to the chin in rain coats,
their umbrellas bobbing, their feet scuffling through
the little pools of wet in the depressions of the
sidewalk.  They streamed from out the brokers' offices
and commission houses on either side of La Salle
Street, continually, unendingly, moving with the
dragging sluggishness of the fatigue of a hard day's
work.  Under that grey sky and blurring veil of rain
they lost their individualities, they became
conglomerate--a mass, slow-moving, black.  All day long
the torrent had seethed and thundered through the
street--the torrent that swirled out and back from that
vast Pit of roaring within the Board of Trade.  Now the
Pit was stilled, the sluice gates of the torrent
locked, and from out the thousands of offices, from out
the Board of Trade itself, flowed the black and
sluggish lees, the lifeless dregs that filtered back to
their level for a few hours, stagnation, till in the
morning, the whirlpool revolving once more, should
again suck them back into its vortex.

The rain fell uninterruptedly.  There was no wind.  The
cable cars jolted and jostled over the tracks with a
strident whir of vibrating window glass.  In the
street, immediately in front of the entrance to the
Board of Trade, a group of pigeons, garnet-eyed, trim,
with coral-coloured feet and iridescent breasts,
strutted and fluttered, pecking at the handfuls of
wheat that a porter threw them from the windows of the
floor of the Board.

"Well," repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of
his lips his unlit cigar to the other corner of his
mouth, "well, what do you think of it?"

The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics,
replied only by an indefinite movement of the head.

"Why, Sam," observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper,
"there's less than a hundred million bushels in the
farmers' hands.... That's awfully small.  Sam, that's
awfully small."

"It _ain't,_ as you might say, colossal," admitted
Gretry.

There was a long silence while the two men studied the
report still further.  Gretry took a pamphlet of
statistics from a pigeon-hole of his desk, and compared
certain figures with those mentioned in the report.

Outside the rain swept against the windows with the
subdued rustle of silk.  A newsboy raised a Gregorian
chant as he went down the street.

"By George, Sam," Jadwin said again, "do you know that
a whole pile of that wheat has got to go to Europe
before July?  How have the shipments been?"

"About five millions a week."

"Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and it's--
let's see, April, May, June, July--four months before
a new crop.  Eighty million bushels will go out of the
country in the next four months--eighty million out of
less than a hundred millions."

"Looks that way," answered Gretry.

"Here," said Jadwin, "let's get some figures.  Let's
get a squint on the whole situation.  Got a 'Price
Current' here?  Let's find out what the stocks are in
Chicago.  I don't believe the elevators are exactly
bursting, and, say," he called after the broker, who
had started for the front office, "say, find out about
the primary receipts, and the Paris and Liverpool
stocks.  Bet you what you like that Paris and Liverpool
together couldn't show ten million to save their
necks."

In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands full
of pamphlets and "trade" journals.

By now the offices were quite deserted.  The last clerk
had gone home.  Without, the neighbourhood was emptying
rapidly.  Only a few stragglers hurried over the
glistening sidewalks; only a few lights yet remained in
the facades of the tall, grey office buildings.  And in
the widening silence the cooing of the pigeons on the
ledges and window-sills of the Board of Trade Building
made itself heard with increasing distinctness.

Before Gretry's desk the two men leaned over the litter
of papers.  The broker's pencil was in his hand and
from time to time he figured rapidly on a sheet of note
paper.

"And," observed Jadwin after a while, "and you see how
the millers up here in the Northwest have been grinding
up all the grain in sight.  Do you see that?"

"Yes," said Gretry, then he added, "navigation will be
open in another month up there in the straits."

"That's so, too," exclaimed Jadwin, "and what wheat
there is here will be moving out.  I'd forgotten that
point.  Ain't you glad you aren't short of wheat these
days?"

"There's plenty of fellows that are, though," returned
Gretry.  "I've got a lot of short wheat on my books--a
lot of it."

All at once as Gretry spoke Jadwin started, and looked
at him with a curious glance.

"You have, hey?" he said.  "There are a lot of fellows
who have sold short?"

"Oh, yes, some of Crookes' followers--yes, quite a lot
of them."

Jadwin was silent a moment, tugging at his mustache.
Then suddenly he leaned forward, his finger almost in
Gretry's face.

"Why, look here," he cried.  "Don't you see?  Don't you
see"

"See what?" demanded the broker, puzzled at the other's
vehemence.

Jadwin loosened his collar with a forefinger.

"Great Scott! I'll choke in a minute.  See what?  Why, I
own ten million bushels of this wheat already, and
Europe will take eighty million out of the country.
Why, there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago
by May! If I get in now and buy a long line of cash
wheat, where are all these fellows who've sold short
going to get it to deliver to me?  Say, where are they
going to get it?  Come on now, tell me, where are they
going to get it?"

Gretry laid down his pencil and stared at Jadwin,
looked long at the papers on his desk, consulted his
pencilled memoranda, then thrust his hands deep into
his pockets, with a long breath.  Bewildered, and as if
stupefied, he gazed again into Jadwin's face.

"My God!" he murmured at last.

"Well, where are they going to get it?" Jadwin cried
once more, his face suddenly scarlet.

"J.," faltered the broker, "J., I--I'm damned if I
know."

And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on
their feet.  The event which all those past eleven
months had been preparing was suddenly consummated,
suddenly stood revealed, as though a veil had been
ripped asunder, as though an explosion had crashed
through the air upon them, deafening, blinding, Jadwin
sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.

"Sam," he shouted, "do you know--great God!--do you
know what this means?  Sam, we can corner the market!"



VIII


On that particular morning in April, the trading around
the Wheat Pit on the floor of the Chicago Board of
Trade, began practically a full five minutes ahead of
the stroke of the gong; and the throng of brokers and
clerks that surged in and about the Pit itself was so
great that it overflowed and spread out over the floor
between the wheat and corn pits, ousting the traders in
oats from their traditional ground.  The market had
closed the day before with May wheat at ninety-eight
and five-eighths, and the Bulls had prophesied and
promised that the magic legend "Dollar wheat" would be
on the Western Union wires before another twenty-four
hours.

The indications pointed to a lively morning's work.
Never for an instant during the past six weeks had the
trading sagged or languished.  The air of the Pit was
surcharged with a veritable electricity; it had the
effervescence of champagne, or of a mountain-top at
sunrise.  It was buoyant, thrilling.

The "Unknown Bull" was to all appearance still in
control; the whole market hung upon his horns; and from
time to time, one felt the sudden upward thrust,
powerful, tremendous, as he flung the wheat up another
notch.  The "tailers"--the little Bulls--were radiant.
In the dark, they hung hard by their unseen and
mysterious friend who daily, weekly, was making them
richer.  The Bears were scarcely visible.  The Great
Bull in a single superb rush had driven them nearly out
of the Pit.  Growling, grumbling they had retreated,
and only at distance dared so much as to bare a claw.
Just the formidable lowering of the Great Bull's
frontlet sufficed, so it seemed, to check their every
move of aggression or resistance.  And all the while,
Liverpool, Paris, Odessa, and Buda-Pesth clamoured ever
louder and louder for the grain that meant food to the
crowded streets and barren farms of Europe.

A few moments before the opening Charles Cressler was
in the public room, in the southeast corner of the
building, where smoking was allowed, finishing his
morning's cigar.  But as he heard the distant striking
of the gong, and the roar of the Pit as it began to get
under way, with a prolonged rumbling trepidation like
the advancing of a great flood, he threw his cigar away
and stepped out from the public room to the main floor,
going on towards the front windows.  At the sample
tables he filled his pockets with wheat, and once at
the windows raised the sash and spread the pigeons'
breakfast on the granite ledge.

While he was watching the confused fluttering of
flashing wings, that on the instant filled the air in
front of the window, he was all at once surprised to
hear a voice at his elbow, wishing him good morning.

"Seem to know you, don't they?"

Cressler turned about.

"Oh," he said.  "Hullo, hullo--yes, they know me all
right.  Especially that red and white hen.  She's got a
lame wing since yesterday, and if I don't watch, the
others would drive her off.  The pouter brute yonder,
for instance.  He's a regular pirate.  Wants all the
wheat himself.  Don't ever seem to get enough."

"Well," observed the newcomer, laconically, "there are
others."

The man who spoke was about forty years of age.  His
name was Calvin Hardy Crookes.  He was very small and
very slim.  His hair was yet dark, and his face--
smooth-shaven and triangulated in shape, like a cat's--
was dark as well.  The eyebrows were thin and black,
and the lips too were thin and were puckered a little,
like the mouth of a tight-shut sack.  The face was
secretive, impassive, and cold.

The man himself was dressed like a dandy.  His coat and
trousers were of the very newest fashion.  He wore a
white waistcoat, drab gaiters, a gold watch and chain,
a jewelled scarf pin, and a seal ring.  From the top
pocket of his coat protruded the finger tips of a pair
of unworn red gloves.

"Yes," continued Crookes, unfolding a brand-new pocket
handkerchief as he spoke.  "There are others--who never
know when they've got enough wheat."

"Oh, you mean the 'Unknown Bull.'"

"I mean the unknown damned fool," returned Crookes
placidly.

There was not a trace of the snob about Charles
Cressler.  No one could be more democratic.  But at the
same time, as this interview proceeded, he could not
fight down nor altogether ignore a certain qualm of
gratified vanity.  Had the matter risen to the realm of
his consciousness, he would have hated himself for
this.  But it went no further than a vaguely felt
increase of self-esteem.  He seemed to feel more
important in his own eyes; he would have liked to have
his friends see him just now talking with this man.
"Crookes was saying to-day--" he would observe when
next he met an acquaintance.  For C.  H.  Crookes was
conceded to be the "biggest man" in La Salle Street.
Not even the growing importance of the new and
mysterious Bull could quite make the market forget the
Great Bear.  Inactive during all this trampling and
goring in the Pit, there were yet those who, even as
they strove against the Bull, cast uneasy glances over
their shoulders, wondering why the Bear did not come to
the help of his own.

"Well, yes," admitted Cressler, combing his short
beard, "yes, he is a fool."

The contrast between the two men was extreme.  Each was
precisely what the other was not.  The one, long,
angular, loose-jointed; the other, tight, trig, small,
and compact.  The one osseous, the other sleek; the one
stoop-shouldered, the other erect as a corporal of
infantry.

But as Cressler was about to continue Crookes put his
chin in the air.

"Hark!" he said.  "What's that?"

For from the direction of the Wheat Pit had come a
sudden and vehement renewal of tumult.  The traders as
one man were roaring in chorus.  There were cheers;
hats went up into the air.  On the floor by the lowest
step two brokers, their hands trumpet-wise to their
mouths, shouted at top voice to certain friends at a
distance, while above them, on the topmost step of the
Pit, a half-dozen others, their arms at fullest
stretch, threw the hand signals that interpreted the
fluctuations in the price, to their associates in the
various parts of the building.  Again and again the
cheers rose, violent hip-hip-hurrahs and tigers, while
from all corners and parts of the floor men and boys
came scurrying up.  Visitors in the gallery leaned
eagerly upon the railing.  Over in the provision pit,
trading ceased for the moment, and all heads were
turned towards the commotion of the wheat traders.

"Ah," commented Crookes, "they did get it there at
last."

For the hand on the dial had suddenly jumped another
degree, and not a messenger boy, not a porter not a
janitor, none whose work or life brought him in touch
with the Board of Trade, that did not feel the thrill.
The news flashed out to the world on a hundred
telegraph wires; it was called to a hundred offices
across the telephone lines.  From every doorway, even,
as it seemed, from every window of the building,
spreading thence all over the city, the State, the
Northwest, the entire nation, sped the magic words,
"Dollar wheat."

Crookes turned to Cressler.

"Can you lunch with me to-day--at Kinsley's?  I'd like
to have a talk with you."

And as soon as Cressler had accepted the invitation,
Crookes, with a succinct nod, turned upon his heel and
walked away.

At Kinsley's that day, in a private room on the second
floor, Cressler met not only Crookes, but his associate
Sweeny, and another gentleman by the name of Freye, the
latter one of his oldest and best-liked friends.

Sweeny was an Irishman, florid, flamboyant, talkative,
who spoke with a faint brogue, and who tagged every
observation, argument, or remark with the phrase, "Do
you understand me, gen'lemen?" Freye, a German-
American, was a quiet fellow, very handsome, with black
side whiskers and a humourous, twinkling eye.  The
three were members of the Board of Trade, and were
always associated with the Bear forces.  Indeed, they
could be said to be its leaders.  Between them, as
Cressler afterwards was accustomed to say, "They could
have bought pretty much all of the West Side."

And during the course of the luncheon these three, with
a simplicity and a directness that for the moment left
Cressler breathless, announced that they were preparing
to drive the Unknown Bull out of the Pit, and asked him
to become one of the clique.

Crookes, whom Cressler intuitively singled out as the
leader, did not so much as open his mouth till Sweeny
ad talked himself breathless, and all the preliminaries
were out of the way.  Then he remarked, his eye as
lifeless as the eye of a fish, his voice as
expressionless as the voice of Fate itself:

"I don't know who the big Bull is, and I don't care a
curse.  But he don't suit my book.  I want him out of
the market.  We've let him have his way now for three
or four months.  We figured we'd let him run to the
dollar mark.  The May option closed this morning at a
dollar and an eighth....  Now we take hold.

"But," Cressler hastened to object, "you forget--I'm
not a speculator."

Freye smiled, and tapped his friend on the arm.

"I guess, Charlie," he said, "that there won't be much
speculating about this."

"Why, gen'lemen," cried Sweeny, brandishing a fork,
we're going to sell him right out o' the market, so we
are.  Simply flood out the son-of-a-gun--you understand
me, gen'lemen?"

Cressler shook his head.

"No," he answered.  "No, you must count me out.  I quit
speculating years ago.  And, besides.  to sell short on
this kind of market--I don't need to tell you what you
risk."

"Risk hell!" muttered Crookes.

"Well, now, I'll explain to you, Charlie," began Freye.

The other two withdrew a little from the conversation.
Crookes, as ever monosyllabic, took himself on in a
little while, and Sweeny, his chair tipped back against
the wall, his hands clasped behind his head, listened
to Freye explaining to Cressler the plans of the
proposed clique and the lines of their attack.

He talked for nearly an hour and a half, at the end of
which time the lunch table was one litter of papers--
letters, contracts, warehouse receipts, tabulated
statistics, and the like.

"Well," said Freye, at length, "well, Charlie, do you
see the game?  What do you think of it?"

"It's about as ingenious a scheme as I ever heard of,
Billy," answered Cressler.  "You can't lose, with
Crookes back of it."

"Well, then, we can count you in, hey?"

"Count nothing," declared Cressler, stoutly.  "I don't
speculate."

"But have you thought of this?" urged Freye, and went
over the entire proposition, from a fresh point of
view, winding up with the exclamation: "Why, Charlie,
we're going to make our everlasting fortunes."

"I don't want any everlasting fortune, Billy Freye,"
protested Cressler.  "Look here, Billy.  You must
remember I'm a pretty old cock.  You boys are all
youngsters.  I've got a little money left and a little
business, and I want to grow old quiet-like.  I had my
fling, you know, when you boys were in knickerbockers.
Now you let me keep out of all this.  You get some one
else."

"No, we'll be jiggered if we do," exclaimed Sweeny.
"Say, are ye scared we can't buy that trade journal?
Why, we have it in our pocket, so we have.  D'ye think
Crookes, now, couldn't make Bear sentiment with the
public, with just the lift o' one forefinger?  Why, he
owns most of the commercial columns of the dailies
already.  D'ye think he couldn't swamp that market with
sellin' orders in the shorter end o' two days?  D'ye
think we won't all hold together, now?  Is that the bug
in the butter?  Sure, now, listen.  Let me tell you----"

"You can't tell me anything about this scheme that
you've not told me before," declared Cressler.  "You'll
win, of course.  Crookes & Co. are like Rothschild--
earthquakes couldn't budge 'em.  But I promised myself
years ago to keep out of the speculative market, and I
mean to stick by it."

"Oh, get on with you, Charlie," said Freye, good-
humouredly, "you're scared."

"Of what," asked Cressler, "speculating?  You bet I am,
and when you're as old as I am, and have been through
three panics, and have known what it meant to have a
corner bust under you, you'll be scared of speculating
too."

"But suppose we can prove to you," said Sweeny, all at
once, "that we're not speculating--that the other
fellow, this fool Bull is doing the speculating?"

"I'll go into anything in the way of legitimate
trading," answered Cressler, getting up from the table.
"You convince me that your clique is not a speculative
clique, and I'll come in.  But I don't see how your
deal can be anything else."

"Will you meet us here to-morrow?" asked Sweeny, as
they got into their overcoats.

"It won't do you any good," persisted Cressler.

"Well, will you meet us just the same?" the other
insisted.  And in the end Cressler accepted.

On the steps of the restaurant they parted, and the two
leaders watched Cressler's broad, stooped shoulders
disappear down the street.

"He's as good as in already," Sweeny declared.  "I'll
fix him to-morrow.  Once a speculator, always a
speculator.  He was the cock of the cow-yard in his
day, and the thing is in the blood.  He gave himself
clean, clean away when he let out he was afraid o'
speculating.  You can't be afraid of anything that
ain't got a hold on you.  Y' understand me now?"

"Well," observed Freye, "we've got to get him in."

"Talk to me about that now," Sweeny answered.  "I'm new
to some parts o' this scheme o' yours yet.  Why is
Crookes so keen on having him in?  I'm not so keen.  We
could get along without him.  He ain't so god-awful
rich, y' know."

"No, but he's a solid, conservative cash grain man,"
answered Freye, "who hasn't been associated with
speculating for years.  Crookes has got to have that
element in the clique before we can approach Stires &
Co.  We may have to get a pile of money from them, and
they're apt to be scary and cautious.  Cressler being
in, do you see, gives the clique a substantial,
conservative character.  You let Crookes manage it.  He
knows his business."

"Say," exclaimed Sweeny, an idea occurring to him, "I
thought Crookes was going to put us wise to-day.  He
must know by now who the Big Bull is."

"No doubt he does know," answered the other.  "He'll
tell us when he's ready.  But I think I could copper
the individual.  There was a great big jag of wheat
sold to Liverpool a little while ago through Gretry,
Converse & Co., who've been acting for Curtis Jadwin
for a good many years."

"Oh, Jadwin, hey?  Hi! we're after big game now, I'm
thinking."

"But look here," warned Freye.  "Here's a point.
Cressler is not to know by the longest kind of chalk;
anyhow not until he's so far in, he can't pull out.  He
and Jadwin are good friends, I'm told.  Hello, it's
raining a little.  Well, I've got to be moving.  See
you at lunch to-morrow."

As Cressler turned into La Salle Street the light
sprinkle of rain suddenly swelled to a deluge, and he
had barely time to dodge into the portico of the
Illinois Trust to escape a drenching.  All the passers-
by close at hand were making for the same shelter, and
among these Cressler was surprised to see Curtis
Jadwin, who came running up the narrow lane from the
cafe entrance of the Grand Pacific Hotel.

"Hello! Hello, J.," he cried, when his friend came
panting up the steps, "as the whale said to Jonah,
'Come in out of the wet.'"

The two friends stood a moment under the portico, their
coat collars turned up, watching the scurrying in the
street.

"Well," said Cressler, at last, "I see we got 'dollar
wheat' this morning."

"Yes," answered Jadwin, nodding, "'dollar wheat.'"

"I suppose," went on Cressler, "I suppose you are
sorry, now that you're not in it any more."

"Oh, no," replied Jadwin, nibbling off the end of a
cigar.  "No, I'm--I'm just as well out of it."

"And it's for good and all this time, eh?"

"For good and all."

"Well," commented Cressler, "some one else has begun
where you left off, I guess.  This Unknown Bull, I
mean.  All the boys are trying to find out who he is.
Crookes, though, was saying to me--Cal Crookes, you
know--he was saying he didn't care who he was.  Crookes
is out of the market, too, I understand--and means to
keep out, he says, till the Big Bull gets tired.
Wonder who the Big Bull is."

"Oh, there isn't any Big Bull," blustered Jadwin.
"There's simply a lot of heavy buying, or maybe there
might be a ring of New York men operating through
Gretry.  I don't know; and I guess I'm like Crookes, I
don't care--now that I'm out of the game.  Real estate
is too lively now to think of anything else; keeps me
on the keen jump early and late.  I tell you what,
Charlie, this city isn't half grown yet.  And do you
know, I've noticed another thing--cities grow to the
westward.  I've got a building and loan association
going, out in the suburbs on the West Side, that's a
dandy.  Well, looks as though the rain had stopped.
Remember me to madam.  So long, Charlie."

On leaving Cressler Jadwin went on to his offices in
The Rookery, close at hand.  But he had no more than
settled himself at his desk, when he was called up on
his telephone.

"Hello!" said a small, dry transformation of Gretry's
voice.  "Hello, is that you, J.?  Well, in the matter of
that cash wheat in Duluth, I've bought that for you."

"All right," answered Jadwin, then he added, "I guess
we had better have a long talk now."

"I was going to propose that," answered the broker.
"Meet me this evening at seven at the Grand Pacific.
It's just as well that we're not seen together
nowadays.  Don't ask for me.  Go right into the
smoking-room.  I'll be there.  And, by the way, I shall
expect a reply from Minneapolis about half-past five
this afternoon.  I would like to be able to get at you
at once when that comes in.  Can you wait down for
that?"

"Well, I _was_ going home," objected Jadwin.  "I wasn't
home to dinner last night, and Mrs. Jadwin----"

"This is pretty important, you know," warned the
broker.  "And if I call you up on your residence
telephone, there's always the chance of somebody
cutting in and overhearing us."

"Oh, very well, then," assented Jadwin.  "I'll call it
a day.  I'll get home for luncheon to-morrow.  It can't
be helped.  By the way, I met Cressler this afternoon,
Sam, and he seemed sort of suspicious of things, to me--
as though he had an inkling"

"Better hang up," came back the broker's voice.
"Better hang up, J.  There's big risk telephoning like
this.  I'll see you to-night.  Good-by."

And so it was that about half an hour later Laura was
called to the telephone in the library.

"Oh, not coming home at all to-night?" she cried
blankly in response to Jadwin's message.

"It's just impossible, old girl," he answered.

"But why?" she insisted.

"Oh, business; this building and loan association of
mine."

"Oh, I know it can't be that.  Why don't you let Mr.
Gretry manage your----"

But at this point Jadwin, the warning of Gretry still
fresh in his mind, interrupted quickly:

"I must hang up now, Laura.  Good-by.  I'll see you to-
morrow noon and explain it all to you.  Good-by....
Laura....  Hello! ... Are you there yet? ... Hello,
hello!"

But Jadwin had heard in the receiver the rattle and
click as of a tiny door closing.  The receiver was
silent and dead; and he knew that his wife,
disappointed and angry, had "hung up" without saying
good-by.

The days passed.  Soon another week had gone by.  The
wheat market steadied down after the dollar mark was
reached, and for a few days a calmer period intervened.
Down beneath the surface, below the ebb and flow of the
currents, the great forces were silently at work
reshaping the "situation."  Millions of dollars were
beginning to be set in motion to govern the millions of
bushels of wheat.  At the end of the third week of the
month Freye reported to Crookes that Cressler was "in,"
and promptly negotiations were opened between the
clique and the great banking house of the Stires.  But
meanwhile Jadwin and Gretry, foreseeing no opposition,
realising the incalculable advantage that their
knowledge of the possibility of a "corner" gave them,
were, quietly enough, gathering in the grain.  As early
as the end of March Jadwin, as incidental to his
contemplated corner of May wheat, had bought up a full
half of the small supply of cash wheat in Duluth,
Chicago, Liverpool and Paris--some twenty million
bushels; and against this had sold short an equal
amount of the July option.  Having the actual wheat in
hand he could not lose.  If wheat went up, his twenty
million bushels were all the more valuable; if it went
down, he covered his short sales at a profit.  And all
the while, steadily, persistently, he bought May wheat,
till Gretry's book showed him to be possessed of over
twenty million bushels of the grain deliverable for
that month.

But all this took not only his every minute of time,
but his every thought, his every consideration.  He who
had only so short a while before considered the amount
of five million bushels burdensome, demanding careful
attention, was now called upon to watch, govern, and
control the tremendous forces latent in a line of forty
million.  At times he remembered the Curtis Jadwin of
the spring before his marriage, the Curtis Jadwin who
had sold a pitiful million on the strength of the news
of the French import duty, and had considered the deal
"big."  Well, he was a different man since that time.
Then he had been suspicious of speculation, had feared
it even.  Now he had discovered that there were in him
powers, capabilities, and a breadth of grasp hitherto
unsuspected.  He could control the Chicago wheat
market, and the man who could do that might well call
himself "great," without presumption.  He knew that he
overtopped them all--Gretry, the Crookes gang, the
arrogant, sneering Bears, all the men of the world of
the Board of Trade.  He was stronger, bigger, shrewder
than them all.  A few days now would show, when they
would all wake to the fact that wheat, which they had
promised to deliver before they had it in hand, was not
to be got except from him--and at whatever price he
chose to impose.  He could exact from them a hundred
dollars a bushel if he chose, and they must pay him the
price or become bankrupts.

By now his mind was upon this one great fact--May
Wheat--continually.  It was with him the instant he
woke in the morning.  It kept him company during his
hasty breakfast; in the rhythm of his horses' hoofs, as
the team carried him down town he heard, "Wheat--wheat--
wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat."  No sooner did he enter La
Salle Street, than the roar of traffic came to his ears
as the roar of the torrent of wheat which drove through
Chicago from the Western farms to the mills and
bakeshops of Europe.  There at the foot of the street
the torrent swirled once upon itself, forty million
strong, in the eddy which he told himself he mastered.
The afternoon waned, night came on.  The day's business
was to be gone over; the morrow's campaign was to be
planned; little, unexpected side issues, a score of
them, a hundred of them, cropped out from hour to hour;
new decisions had to be taken each minute.  At dinner
time he left the office, and his horses carried him
home again, while again their hoofs upon the asphalt
beat out unceasingly the monotone of the one refrain,
"Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat."  At dinner
table he could not eat.  Between each course he found
himself going over the day's work, testing it,
questioning himself, "Was this rightly done?" "Was that
particular decision sound?" "Is there a loophole here?"
"Just what was the meaning of that despatch?" After the
meal the papers, contracts, statistics and reports
which he had brought with him in his Gladstone bag were
to be studied.  As often as not Gretry called, and the
two, shut in the library, talked, discussed, and
planned till long after midnight.

Then at last, when he had shut the front door upon his
lieutenant and turned to face the empty, silent house,
came the moment's reaction.  The tired brain flagged
and drooped; exhaustion, like a weight of lead, hung
upon his heels.  But somewhere a hall clock struck, a
single, booming note, like a gong--like the signal that
would unchain the tempest in the Pit to-morrow morning.
Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat!  Instantly
the jaded senses braced again, instantly the wearied
mind sprang to its post.  He turned out the lights, he
locked the front door.  Long since the great house was
asleep.  In the cold, dim silence of the earliest dawn
Curtis Jadwin went to bed, only to lie awake, staring
up into the darkness, planning, devising new measures,
reviewing the day's doings, while the faint tides of
blood behind the eardrums murmured ceaselessly to the
overdriven brain, "Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--
wheat.  Forty million bushels, forty million, forty
million."

Whole days now went by when he saw his wife only at
breakfast and at dinner.  At times she was angry, hurt,
and grieved that he should leave her so much alone.
But there were moments when she was sorry for him.  She
seemed to divine that he was not all to blame.

What Laura thought he could only guess.  She no longer
spoke of his absorption in business.  At times he
thought he saw reproach and appeal in her dark eyes, at
times anger and a pride cruelly wounded.  A few months
ago this would have touched him.  But now he all at
once broke out vehemently:

"You think I am wilfully doing this! You don't know,
you haven't a guess.  I corner the wheat!  Great
heavens, it is the wheat that has cornered me!  The
corner made itself.  I happened to stand between two
sets of circumstances, and they made me do what I've
done.  I couldn't get out of it now, with all the good
will in the world.  Go to the theatre to-night with you
and the Cresslers?  Why, old girl, you might as well
ask me to go to Jericho.  Let that Mr. Corthell take my
place."

And very naturally this is what was done.  The artist
sent a great bunch of roses to Mrs. Jadwin upon the
receipt of her invitation, and after the play had the
party to supper in his apartments, that overlooked the
Lake Front.  Supper over, he escorted her, Mrs.
Cressler, and Page back to their respective homes.

By a coincidence that struck them all as very amusing,
he was the only man of the party.  At the last moment
Page had received a telegram from Landry.  He was, it
appeared, sick, and in bed.  The day's work on the
Board of Trade had quite used him up for the moment,
and his doctor forbade him to stir out of doors.  Mrs.
Cressler explained that Charlie had something on his
mind these days, that was making an old man of him.

"He don't ever talk shop with me," she said.  "I'm sure
he hasn't been speculating, but he's worried and
fidgety to beat all I ever saw, this last week; and now
this evening he had to take himself off to meet some
customer or other at the Palmer House."

They dropped Mrs. Cressler at the door of her home and
then went on to the Jadwins'.

"I remember," said Laura to Corthell, "that once before
the three of us came home this way.  Remember?  It was
the night of the opera.  That was the night I first met
Mr. Jadwin."

"It was the night of the Helmick failure," said Page,
seriously, "and the office buildings were all lit up.
See," she added, as they drove up to the house,
"there's a light in the library, and it must be nearly
one o'clock.  Mr. Jadwin is up yet."

Laura fell suddenly silent.  When was it all going to
end, and how?  Night after night her husband shut
himself thus in the library, and toiled on till early
dawn.  She enjoyed no companionship with him.  Her
evenings were long, her time hung with insupportable
heaviness upon her hands.

"Shall you be at home?" inquired Corthell, as he held
her hand a moment at the door.  "Shall you be at home
to-morrow evening?  May I come and play to you again?"

"Yes, yes," she answered.  "Yes, I shall be home.  Yes,
do come."

Laura's carriage drove the artist back to his
apartments.  All the way he sat motionless in his
place, looking out of the window with unseeing eyes.
His cigarette went out.  He drew another from his case,
but forgot to light it.

Thoughtful and abstracted he slowly mounted the
stairway--the elevator having stopped for the night--to
his studio, let himself in, and, throwing aside his hat
and coat, sat down without lighting the gas in front of
the fireplace, where (the weather being even yet sharp)
an armful of logs smouldered on the flagstones.

His man, Evans, came from out an inner room to ask if
he wanted anything.  Corthell got out of his evening
coat, and Evans brought him his smoking-jacket and set
the little table with its long tin box of cigarettes
and ash trays at his elbow.  Then he lit the tall lamp
of corroded bronze, with its heavy silk shade, that
stood on a table in the angle of the room, drew the
curtains, put a fresh log upon the fire, held the tiny
silver alcohol burner to Corthell while the latter
lighted a fresh cigarette, and then with a murmured
"Good-night, sir," went out, closing the door with the
precaution of a depredator.

This suite of rooms, facing the Lake Front, was what
Corthell called "home," Whenever he went away, he left
it exactly as it was, in the charge of the faithful
Evans; and no mater how long he was absent, he never
returned thither without a sense of welcome and relief.
Even now, perplexed as he was, he was conscious of a
feeling of comfort and pleasure as he settled himself
in his chair.

The lamp threw a dull illumination about the room.  It
was a picturesque apartment, carefully planned.  Not an
object that had not been chosen with care and the
utmost discrimination.  The walls had been treated with
copper leaf till they produced a sombre, iridescent
effect of green and faint gold, that suggested the
depth of a forest glade shot through with the sunset.
Shelves bearing eighteenth-century books in seal brown
tree calf--Addison, the "Spectator," Junius and Racine,
Rochefoucauld and Pascal hung against it here and
there.  On every hand the eye rested upon some small
masterpiece of art or workmanship.  Now it was an
antique portrait bust of the days of decadent Rome,
black marble with a bronze tiara; now a framed page of
a fourteenth-century version of "Li Quatres Filz
d'Aymon," with an illuminated letter of miraculous
workmanship; or a Renaissance gonfalon of silk once
white but now brown with age, yet in the centre blazing
with the escutcheon and quarterings of a dead queen.
Between the windows stood an ivory statuette of the
"Venus of the Heel," done in the days of the
magnificent Lorenzo.  An original Cazin, and a chalk
drawing by Baudry hung against the wall close by
together with a bronze tablet by Saint Gaudens; while
across the entire end of the room opposite the
fireplace, worked in the tapestry of the best period of
the northern French school, Halcyone, her arms already
blossoming into wings, hovered over the dead body of
Ceyx, his long hair streaming like seaweed in the blue
waters of the AEgean.

For a long time Corthell sat motionless, looking into
the fire.  In an adjoining room a clock chimed the half
hour of one, and the artist stirred, passing his long
fingers across his eyes.

After a long while he rose, and going to the fireplace,
leaned an arm against the overhanging shelf, and
resting his forehead against it, remained in that
position, looking down at the smouldering logs.

"She is unhappy," he murmured at length.  "It is not
difficult to see that....  Unhappy and lonely.  Oh,
fool, fool to have left her when you might have stayed!
Oh, fool, fool, not to find the strength to leave her
now when you should not remain!"

The following evening Corthell called upon Mrs. Jadwin.
She was alone, as he usually found her.  He had brought
a book of poems with him, and instead of passing the
evening in the art gallery, as they had planned, he
read aloud to her from Rossetti.  Nothing could have
been more conventional than their conversation, nothing
more impersonal.  But on his way home one feature of
their talk suddenly occurred to him.  It struck him as
significant; but of what he did not care to put into
words.  Neither he nor Laura had once spoken of Jadwin
throughout the entire evening.

Little by little the companionship grew.  Corthell shut
his eyes, his ears.  The thought of Laura, the
recollection of their last evening together, the
anticipation of the next meeting filled all his waking
hours.  He refused to think; he resigned himself to the
drift of the current.  Jadwin he rarely saw.  But on
those few occasions when he and Laura's husband met, he
could detect no lack of cordiality in the other's
greeting.  Once even Jadwin had remarked:

"I'm very glad you have come to see Mrs. Jadwin,
Corthell.  I have to be away so much these days, I'm
afraid she would be lonesome if it wasn't for some one
like you to drop in now and then and talk art to her."

By slow degrees the companionship trended toward
intimacy.  At the various theatres and concerts he was
her escort.  He called upon her two or three times each
week.  At his studio entertainments Laura was always
present.  How--Corthell asked himself--did she regard
the affair?  She gave him no sign; she never intimated
that his presence was otherwise than agreeable.  Was
this tacit acquiescence of hers an encouragement?  Was
she willing to _afficher_ herself, as a married woman,
with a cavalier?  Her married life was intolerable, he
was sure of that; her husband uncongenial.  He told
himself that she detested him.

Once, however, this belief was rather shocked by an
unexpected and (to him) an inconsistent reaction on
Laura's part.  She had made an engagement with him to
spend an afternoon in the Art Institute, looking over
certain newly acquired canvases.  But upon calling for
her an hour after luncheon he was informed that Mrs.
Jadwin was not at home.  When next she saw him she told
him that she had spent the entire day with her husband.
They had taken an early train and had gone up to Geneva
Lake to look over their country house, and to prepare
for its opening, later on in the spring.  They had
taken the decision so unexpectedly that she had no time
to tell him of the change in her plans.  Corthell
wondered if she had--as a matter of fact--forgotten all
about her appointment with him.  He never quite
understood the incident, and afterwards asked himself
whether or no he could be so sure, after all, of the
estrangement between the husband and wife.  He guessed
it to be possible that on this occasion Jadwin had
suddenly decided to give himself a holiday, and that
Laura had been quick to take advantage of it.  Was it
true, then, that Jadwin had but to speak the word to
have Laura forget all else?  Was it true that the mere
nod of his head was enough to call her back to him?
Corthell was puzzled.  He would not admit this to be
true.  She was, he was persuaded, a woman of more
spirit, of more pride than this would seem to indicate.
Corthell ended by believing that Jadwin had, in some
way, coerced her; though he fancied that for the few
days immediately following the excursion Laura had
never been gayer, more alert, more radiant.

But the days went on, and it was easy to see that his
business kept Jadwin more and more from his wife.
Often now, Corthell knew, he passed the night down
town, and upon those occasions when he managed to get
home after the day's work, he was exhausted, worn out,
and went to bed almost immediately after dinner.  More
than ever now the artist and Mrs. Jadwin were thrown
together.

On a certain Sunday evening, the first really hot day
of the year, Laura and Page went over to spend an hour
with the Cresslers, and--as they were all wont to do in
the old days before Laura's marriage--the party "sat
out on the front stoop."  For a wonder, Jadwin was able
to be present.  Laura had prevailed upon him to give
her this evening and the evening of the following
Wednesday--on which latter occasion she had planned
that they were to take a long drive in the park in the
buggy, just the two of them, as it had been in the days
of their courtship.

Corthell came to the Cresslers quite as a matter of
course.  He had dined with the Jadwins at the great
North Avenue house and afterwards the three, preferring
to walk, had come down to the Cresslers on foot.

But evidently the artist was to see but little of Laura
Jadwin that evening.  She contrived to keep by her
husband continually.  She even managed to get him away
from the others, and the two, leaving the rest upon the
steps, sat in the parlour of the Cresslers' house,
talking.

By and by Laura, full of her projects, exclaimed:

"Where shall we go?  I thought, perhaps, we would not
have dinner at home, but you could come back to the
house just a little--a little bit--early, and you could
drive me out to the restaurant there in the park, and
we could have dinner there, just as though we weren't
married just as though we were sweethearts again.  Oh,
I do hope the weather will be fine."

"Oh," answered Jadwin, "you mean Wednesday evening.
Dear old girl, honestly, I--I don't believe I can make
it after all.  You see, Wednesday----"

Laura sat suddenly erect.

"But you said," she began, her voice faltering a
little, "you said----"

"Honey, I know I did, but you must let me off this time
again."

She did not answer.  It was too dark for him to see her
face; but, uneasy at her silence, he began an elaborate
explanation.  Laura, however, interrupted.  Calmly
enough, she said:

"Oh, that's all right.  No, no, I don't mind.  Of
course, if you are busy."

"Well, you see, don't you, old girl?"

"Oh, yes, yes, I see," she answered.  She rose.

"I think," she said, "we had better be going home.
Don't you?"

"Yes, I do," he assented.  "I'm pretty tired myself.
I've had a hard day's work.  I'm thirsty, too," he
added, as he got up.  "Would you like to have a drink
of water, too?"

She shook her head, and while he disappeared in the
direction of the Cresslers' dining-room, she stood
alone a moment in the darkened room looking out into
the street.  She felt that her cheeks were hot.  Her
hands, hanging at her sides, shut themselves into tight
fists.

"What, you are all alone?" said Corthell's voice,
behind her.

She turned about quickly.

"I must be going," he said.  "I came to say good
night."  He held out his hand.

"Good night," she answered, as she gave him hers.  Then
all at once she added:

"Come to see me again--soon, will you?  Come Wednesday
night."

And then, his heart leaping to his throat, Corthell
felt her hand, as it lay in his, close for an instant
firmly about his fingers.

"I shall expect you Wednesday then?" she repeated.

He crushed her hand in his grip, and suddenly bent and
kissed it.

"Good night," she said, quietly.  Jadwin's step sounded
at the doorway.

"Good night," he whispered, and in another moment was
gone.

During these days Laura no longer knew herself.  At
every hour she changed; her moods came and went with a
rapidity that bewildered all those who were around her.
At times her gaiety filled the whole of her beautiful
house; at times she shut herself in her apartments,
denying herself to every one, and, her head bowed upon
her folded arms, wept as though her heart was breaking,
without knowing why.

For a few days a veritable seizure of religious
enthusiasm held sway over her.  She spoke of endowing a
hospital, of doing church work among the "slums" of the
city.  But no sooner had her friends readjusted their
points of view to suit this new development than she
was off upon another tangent, and was one afternoon
seen at the races, with Mrs. Gretry, in her showiest
victoria, wearing a great flaring hat and a bouquet of
crimson flowers.

She never repeated this performance, however, for a new
fad took possession of her the very next day.  She
memorised the role of Lady Macbeth, built a stage in
the ballroom at the top of the house, and, locking
herself in, rehearsed the part, for three days
uninterruptedly, dressed in elaborate costume,
declaiming in chest tones to the empty room:

"'The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the entrance
of Duncan under my battlements.'"

Then, tiring of Lady Macbeth, she took up Juliet,
Portia, and Ophelia; each with appropriate costumes,
studying with tireless avidity, and frightening Aunt
Wess' with her declaration that "she might go on the
stage after all."  She even entertained the notion of
having Sheldon Corthell paint her portrait as Lady
Macbeth.

As often as the thought of the artist presented itself
to her she fought to put it from her.  Yes, yes, he
came to see her often, very often.  Perhaps he loved
her yet.  Well, suppose he did?  He had always loved
her.  It was not wrong to have him love her, to have
him with her.  Without his company, great heavens, her
life would be lonely beyond words and beyond endurance
Besides, was it to be thought, for an instant, that
she, she, Laura Jadwin, in her pitch of pride, with all
her beauty, with her quick, keen mind, was to pine, to
droop to fade in oblivion and neglect?  Was she to
blame?  Let those who neglected her look to it.  Her
youth was all with her yet, and all her power to
attract, to compel admiration.

When Corthell came to see her on the Wednesday evening
in question, Laura said to him, after a few moments,
conversation in the drawing-room:

"Oh, you remember the picture you taught me to
appreciate--the picture of the little pool in the art
gallery, the one you called 'Despair'?" I have hung it
in my own particular room upstairs--my sitting-room--so
as to have it where I can see it always.  I love it
now.  But," she added, "I am not sure about the light.
I think it could be hung to better advantage."  She
hesitated a moment, then, with a sudden, impulsive
movement, she turned to him.

"Won't you come up with me, and tell me where to hang
it?"

They took the little elevator to the floor above, and
Laura led the artist to the room in question--her
"sitting-room," a wide, airy place, the polished floor
covered with deep skins, the walls wainscotted half way
to the ceiling, in dull woods.  Shelves of books were
everywhere, together with potted plants and tall brass
lamps.  A long "Madeira" chair stood at the window
which overlooked the park and lake, and near to it a
great round table of San Domingo mahogany, with tea
things and almost diaphanous china.

"What a beautiful room," murmured Corthell, as she
touched the button in the wall that opened the current,
"and how much you have impressed your individuality
upon it.  I should have known that you lived here.  If
you were thousands of miles away and I had entered
here, I should have known it was yours--and loved it
for such."

"Here is the picture," she said, indicating where it
hung.  "Doesn't it seem to you that the light is bad?"

But he explained to her that it was not so, and that
she had but to incline the canvas a little more from
the wall to get a good effect.

"Of course, of course," she assented, as he held the
picture in place.  "Of course.  I shall have it hung
over again to-morrow."

For some moments they remained standing in the centre
of the room, looking at the picture and talking of it.
And then, without remembering just how it had happened,
Laura found herself leaning back in the Madeira chair,
Corthell seated near at hand by the round table.

"I am glad you like my room," she said.  "It is here
that I spend most of my time.  Often lately I have had
my dinner here.  Page goes out a great deal now, and so
I am left alone occasionally.  Last night I sat here in
the dark for a long time.  The house was so still,
everybody was out--even some of the servants.  It was
so warm, I raised the windows and I sat here for hours
looking out over the lake.  I could hear it lapping and
washing against the shore--almost like a sea.  And it
was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the time
when I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and
years ago, picking whortle-berries down in the 'water
lot,' and how I got lost once in the corn--the stalks
were away above my head--and how happy I was when my
father would take me up on the hay wagon.  Ah, I was
happy in those days--just a freckled, black-haired slip
of a little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all
scratched with the berry bushes."

She had begun by dramatising, but by now she was
acting--acting with all her histrionic power at fullest
stretch, acting the part of a woman unhappy amid
luxuries, who looked back with regret and with longing
towards a joyous, simple childhood.  She was sincere
and she was not sincere.  Part of her--one of those two
Laura Jadwins who at different times, but with equal
right called themselves "I," knew just what effect her
words, her pose, would have upon a man who sympathised
with her, who loved her.  But the other Laura Jadwin
would have resented as petty, as even wrong, the
insinuation that she was not wholly, thoroughly
sincere.  All that she was saying was true.  No one, so
she believed, ever was placed before as she was placed
now.  No one had ever spoken as now she spoke.  Her
chin upon one slender finger, she went on, her eyes
growing wide:

"If I had only known then that those days were to be,
the happiest of my life....  This great house, all the
beauty of it, and all this wealth, what does it amount
to?" Her voice was the voice of Phedre, and the gesture
of lassitude with which she let her arms fall into her
lap was precisely that which only the day before she
had used to accompany Portia's plaint of


     --my little body is a-weary of this great world.


Yet, at the same time, Laura knew that her heart was
genuinely aching with real sadness, and that the tears
which stood in her eyes were as sincere as any she had
ever shed.

"All this wealth," she continued, her head dropping
back upon the cushion of the chair as she spoke, "what
does it matter; for what does it compensate?  Oh, I
would give it all gladly, gladly, to be that little
black-haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn's
water lot; with my hands stained with the whortle-
berries and the nettles in my fingers--and my little
lover, who called me his beau-heart and bought me a
blue hair ribbon, and kissed me behind the pump house."

"Ah," said Corthell, quickly and earnestly, "that is
the secret.  It was love--even the foolish boy and girl
love--love that after all made your life sweet then."

She let her hands fall into her lap, and, musing,
turned the rings back and forth upon her fingers.

"Don't you think so?" he asked, in a low voice.

She bent her head slowly, without replying.  Then for a
long moment neither spoke.  Laura played with her
rings.  The artist, leaning forward in his chair,
looked with vague eyes across the room.  And no
interval of time since his return, no words that had
ever passed between them, had been so fraught with
significance, so potent in drawing them together as
this brief, wordless moment.

At last Corthell turned towards her.

"You must not think," he murmured, "that your life is
without love now.  I will not have you believe that."

But she made no answer.

"If you would only see," he went on.  "If you would
only condescend to look, you would know that there is a
love which has enfolded your life for years.  You have
shut it out from you always.  But it has been yours,
just the same; it has lain at your door, it has looked--
oh, God knows with what longing!--through your
windows.  You have never stirred abroad that it has not
followed you.  Not a footprint of yours that it does
not know and cherish.  Do you think that your life is
without love?  Why, it is all around you--all around you
but voiceless.  It has no right to speak, it only has
the right to suffer."

Still Laura said no word.  Her head turned from him,
she looked out of the window, and once more the seconds
passed while neither spoke.  The clock on the table
ticked steadily.  In the distance, through the open
window, came the incessant, mournful wash of the lake.
All around them the house was still.  At length Laura
sat upright in her chair.

"I think I will have this room done over while we are
away this summer," she said.  "Don't you think it would
be effective if the wainscotting went almost to the
ceiling?"

He glanced critically about the room.

"Very," he answered, briskly.  "There is no background
so beautiful as wood."

"And I might finish it off at the top with a narrow
shelf."

"Provided you promised not to put brass 'plaques' or
pewter kitchen ware upon it."

"Do smoke," she urged him.  "I know you want to.  You
will find matches on the table."

But Corthell, as he lit his cigarette, produced his own
match box.  It was a curious bit of antique silver,
which he had bought in a Viennese pawnshop, heart-
shaped and topped with a small ducal coronet of worn
gold.  On one side he had caused his name to be
engraved in small script.  Now.  as Laura admired it,
he held it towards her.

"An old pouncet-box, I believe," he informed her, "or
possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails."  He
spilled the matches into his hand.  "You see the red
stain still on the inside; and--smell," he added, as
she took it from him.  "Even the odour of the sulphur
matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume,
distilled perhaps three centuries ago."

An hour later Corthell left her.  She did not follow
him further than the threshold of the room, but let him
find his way to the front door alone.

When he had gone she returned to the room, and for a
little while sat in her accustomed place by the window
overlooking the park and the lake.  Very soon after
Corthell's departure she heard Page, Landry Court, and
Mrs. Wessels come in; then at length rousing from her
reverie she prepared for bed.  But, as she passed the
round mahogany table, on her way to her bedroom, she
was aware of a little object lying upon it, near to
where she had sat.

"Oh, he forgot it," she murmured, as she picked up
Corthell's heart-shaped match box.  She glanced at it a
moment, indifferently; but her mind was full of other
things.  She laid it down again upon the table, and
going on to her own room, went to bed.

Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the morning
Laura presided at breakfast table in his place.  Landry
Court, Page, and Aunt Wess' were there; for
occasionally nowadays, when the trio went to one of
their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed
over night at the house.

"Any message for your husband, Mrs. Jadwin?" inquired
Landry, as he prepared to go down town after breakfast.
"I always see him in Mr. Gretry's office the first
thing.  Any message for him?"

"No," answered Laura, simply.

"Oh, by the way," spoke up Aunt Wess', "we met that Mr.
Corthell on the corner last night, just as he was
leaving.  I was real sorry not to get home here before
he left.  I've never heard him play on that big organ,
and I've been wanting to for ever so long.  I hurried
home last night, hoping I might have caught him before
he left.  I was regularly disappointed."

"That's too bad," murmured Laura, and then, for obscure
reasons, she had the stupidity to add: "And we were in
the art gallery the whole evening.  He played
beautifully."

Towards eleven o'clock that morning Laura took her
usual ride, but she had not been away from the house
quite an hour before she turned back.

All at once she had remembered something.  She returned
homeward, now urging Crusader to a flying gallop, now
curbing him to his slowest ambling walk.  That which
had so abruptly presented itself to her mind was the
fact that Corthell's match box--his name engraved
across its front--still lay in plain sight upon the
table in her sitting-room--the peculiar and particular
place of her privacy.

It was so much her own, this room, that she had given
orders that the servants were to ignore it in their
day's routine.  She looked after its order herself.
Yet, for all that, the maids or the housekeeper often
passed through it, on their way to the suite beyond,
and occasionally Page or Aunt Wess' came there to read,
in her absence.  The family spoke of the place
sometimes as the "upstairs sitting-room," sometimes
simply as "Laura's room."

Now, as she cantered homeward, Laura had it vividly in
her mind that she had not so much as glanced at the
room before leaving the house that morning.  The
servants would not touch the place.  But it was quite
possible that Aunt Wess' or Page----

Laura, the blood mounting to her forehead, struck the
horse sharply with her crop.  The pettiness of the
predicament, the small meanness of her situation struck
across her face like the flagellations of tiny whips.
That she should stoop to this! She who had held her
head so high.

Abruptly she reined in the horse again.  No, she would
not hurry.  Exercising all her self-control, she went
on her way with deliberate slowness, so that it was
past twelve o'clock when she dismounted under the
carriage porch.

Her fingers clutched tightly about her crop, she
mounted to her sitting-room and entered, closing the
door behind her,

She went directly to the table, and then, catching her
breath, with a quick, apprehensive sinking of the
heart, stopped short.  The little heart-shaped match
box was gone, and on the couch in the corner of the
room Page, her book fallen to the floor beside her, lay
curled up and asleep.

A loop of her riding-habit over her arm, the toe of her
boot tapping the floor nervously, Laura stood
motionless in the centre of the room, her lips tight
pressed, the fingers of one gloved hand drumming
rapidly upon her riding-crop.  She was bewildered, and
an anxiety cruelly poignant, a dread of something she
could not name, gripped suddenly at her throat.

Could she have been mistaken?  Was it upon the table
that she had seen the match box after all?  If it lay
elsewhere about the room, she must find it at once.
Never had she felt so degraded as now, when, moving
with such softness and swiftness as she could in her
agitation command, she went here and there about the
room, peering into the corners of her desk, searching
upon the floor, upon the chairs, everywhere, anywhere;
her face crimson, her breath failing her, her hands
opening and shutting.

But the silver heart with its crown of worn gold was
not to be found.  Laura, at the end of half an hour,
was obliged to give over searching.  She was certain
the match box lay upon the mahogany table when last she
left the room.  It had not been mislaid; of that she
was now persuaded.

But while she sat at the desk, still in habit and hat,
rummaging for the fourth time among the drawers and
shelves, she was all at once aware, even without
turning around, that Page was awake and watching her.
Laura cleared her throat.

"Have you seen my blue note paper, Page?" she asked.
"I want to drop a note to Mrs. Cressler, right away."

"No," said Page, as she rose from the couch.  "No, I
haven't seen it."  She came towards her sister across
the room.  "I thought, maybe," she added, gravely, as
she drew the heart-shaped match box from her pocket,
"that you might be looking for this.  I took it.  I
knew you wouldn't care to have Mr. Jadwin find it
here."

Laura struck the little silver heart from Page's hand,
with a violence that sent it spinning across the room,
and sprang to her feet.

"You took it!" she cried.  "You took it! How dare you!
What do you mean?  What do I care if Curtis should find
it here?  What's it to me that he should know that Mr.
Corthell came up here?  Of course he was here."

But Page, though very pale, was perfectly calm under
her sister's outburst.

"If you didn't care whether any one knew that Mr.
Corthell came up here," she said, quietly, "why did you
tell us this morning at breakfast that you and he were
in the art gallery the whole evening?  I thought," she
added, with elaborate blandness, "I thought I would be
doing you a service in hiding the match box."

"A service! You! What have I to hide?" cried Laura,
almost inarticulate.  "Of course I said we were in the
art gallery the whole evening.  So we were.  We did--I
do remember now--we did come up here for an instant, to
see how my picture hung.  We went downstairs again at
once.  We did not so much as sit down.  He was not in
the room two minutes."

"He was here," returned Page, "long enough to smoke
half a dozen times."  She pointed to a silver pen tray
on the mahogany table, hidden behind a book rack and
littered with the ashes and charred stumps of some five
or six cigarettes.

"Really, Laura," Page remarked.  "Really, you manage
very awkwardly, it seems to me."

Laura caught her riding-crop in her right hand

"Don't you--don't you make me forget myself;" she
cried, breathlessly.

"It seems to me," observed Page, quietly, "that you've
done that long since, yourself."

Laura flung the crop down and folded her arms.

"Now," she cried, her eyes blazing and rivetted upon
Page's.  "Now, just what do you mean?  Sit down," she
commanded, flinging a hand towards a chair, "sit down,
and tell me just what you mean by all this."

But Page remained standing.  She met her sister's gaze
without wavering.

"Do you want me to believe," she answered, "that it
made no difference to you that Mr. Corthell's match
safe was here?"

"Not the least," exclaimed Laura.  "Not the least."

"Then why did you search for it so when you came in?  I
was not asleep all of the time.  I saw you."

"Because," answered Laura, "because--I--because--"
Then all at once she burst out afresh: "Have I got to
answer to you for what I do?  Have I got to explain?  All
your life long you've pretended to judge your sister.
Now you've gone too far.  Now I forbid it--from this
day on.  What I do is my affair; I'll ask nobody's
advice.  I'll do as I please, do you understand?" The
tears sprang to her eyes, the sobs strangled in her
throat.  "I'll do as I please, as I please," and with
the words she sank down in the chair by her desk and
struck her bare knuckles again and again upon the open
lid, crying out through her tears and her sobs, and
from between her tight-shut teeth: "I'll do as I
please, do you understand?  As I please, as I please! I
will be happy.  I will, I will, I will!"

"Oh, darling, dearest----" cried Page, running forward.
But Laura, on her feet once more, thrust her back.

"Don't touch me," she cried.  "I hate you!" She put her
fists to her temples and, her eyes closed, rocked
herself to and fro.  "Don't you touch me.  Go away from
me; go away from me.  I hate you; I hate you all.  I
hate this house, I hate this life.  You are all killing
me.  Oh, my God, if I could only die!"

She flung herself full length upon the couch, face
downward.  Her sobs shook her from head to foot.

Page knelt at her side, an arm about her shoulder, but
to all her sister's consolations Laura, her voice
muffled in her folded arms, only cried:

"Let me alone, let me alone.  Don't touch me."

For a time Page tried to make herself heard; then,
after a moment's reflection, she got up and drew out
the pin in Laura's hat.  She took off the hat, loosened
the scarf around Laura's neck, and then deftly,
silently, while her sister lay inert and sobbing
beneath her hands, removed the stiff, tight riding-
habit.  She brought a towel dipped in cold water from
the adjoining room and bathed Laura's face and hands.

But her sister would not be comforted, would not
respond to her entreaties or caresses.  The better part
of an hour went by; Page, knowing her sister's nature,
in the end held her peace, waiting for the paroxysm to
wear itself out.

After a while Laura's weeping resolved itself into
long, shuddering breaths, and at length she managed to
say, in a faint, choked voice:

"Will you bring me the cologne from my dressing-table,
honey?  My head aches so."

And, as Page ran towards the door, she added: "And my
hand mirror, too.  Are my eyes all swollen?"

And that was the last word upon the subject between the
two sisters.

But the evening of the same day, between eight and nine
o'clock, while Laura was searching the shelves of the
library for a book with which to while away the long
evening that she knew impended, Corthell's card was
brought to her.

"I am not at home," she told the servant.  "Or--wait,"
she added.  Then, after a moment's thought, she said:
"Very well.  Show him in here."

Laura received the artist, standing very erect and pale
upon the great white rug before the empty fireplace.
Her hands were behind her back when he came in, and as
he crossed the room she did not move.

"I was not going to see you at first," she said.  "I
told the servant I was not at home.  But I changed my
mind--I wanted to say something to you."

He stood at the other end of the fireplace, an elbow
upon an angle of the massive mantel, and as she spoke
the last words he looked at her quickly.  As usual,
they were quite alone.  The heavy, muffling curtain of
the doorway shut them in effectually.

"I have something to say to you," continued Laura.
Then, quietly enough, she said:

"You must not come to see me any more."

He turned abruptly away from her, and for a moment did
not speak.  Then at last, his voice low, he faced her
again and asked:

"Have I offended?"

She shook her head.

"No," he said, quietly.  "No, I knew it was not that."
There was a long silence.  The artist looked at the
floor his hand slowly stroking the back of one of the
big leather chairs.

"I knew it must come," he answered, at length, "sooner
or later.  You are right--of course.  I should not have
come back to America.  I should not have believed that
I was strong enough to trust myself.  Then"--he looked
at her steadily.  His words came from his lips one by
one, very slowly.  His voice was hardly more than a
whisper.  "Then, I am--never to see you--again... Is
that it?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what that means for me?" he cried.  "Do
you realise----" he drew in his breath sharply.  "Never
to see you again! To lose even the little that is left
to me now.  I--I----"  He turned away quickly and
walked to a window and stood a moment, his back turned,
looking out, his hands clasped behind him.  Then, after
a long moment, he faced about.  His manner was quiet
again, his voice very low.

"But before I go," he said, "will you answer me, at
least, this--it can do no harm now that I am to leave
you--answer me, and I know you will speak the truth:
Are you happy, Laura?"

She closed her eyes.

"You have not the right to know."

"You are not happy," he declared.  "I can see it, I
know it.  If you were, you would have told me so.... If
I promise you," he went on.  "If I promise you to go
away now, and never to try to see you again, may I come
once more--to say good-by?"

She shook her head.

"It is so little for you to grant," he pleaded, "and it
is so incalculably much for me to look forward to in
the little time that yet remains.  I do not even ask to
see you alone.  I will not harass you with any
heroics."

"Oh, what good will it do," she cried, wearily, "for
you to see me again?  Why will you make me more unhappy
than I am?  Why did you come back?"

"Because," he answered, steadily, "because I love you
more than"--he partly raised a clenched fist and let it
fall slowly upon the back of the chair," more than any
other consideration in the world."

"Don't!" she cried.  "You must not.  Never, never say
that to me again.  Will you go--please?"

"Oh, if I had not gone from you four years ago!" he
cried.  "If I had only stayed then! Not a day of my
life since that I have not regretted it.  You could
have loved me then.  I know it, I know it, and, God
forgive me, but I know you could love me now----"

"Will you go?" she cried.

"I dare you to say you could not," he flashed out

Laura shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears.
"I could not, I could not," she murmured, monotonously,
over and over again.  "I could not, I could not."

She heard him start suddenly, and opened her eyes in
time to see him come quickly towards her.  She threw
out a defensive hand, but he caught the arm itself to
him and, before she could resist, had kissed it again
and again through the interstices of the lace sleeve.
Upon her bare shoulder she felt the sudden passion of
his lips.

A quick, sharp gasp, a sudden qualm of breathlessness
wrenched through her, to her very finger tips, with a
fierce leap of the blood, a wild bound of the heart.

She tore back from him with a violence that rent away
the lace upon her arm, and stood off from him, erect
and rigid, a fine, delicate, trembling vibrating
through all her being.  On her pale cheeks the colour
suddenly flamed.

"Go, go," was all she had voice to utter.

"And may I see you once more--only once?"

"Yes, yes, anything, only go, go--if you love me!"

He left the room.  In another moment she heard the
front door close.


"Curtis," said Laura, when next she saw her husband,
"Curtis, you could not--stay with me, that last time.
Remember?  When we were to go for a drive.  Can you
spend this evening with me?  Just us two, here at home--
or I'll go out with you.  I'll do anything you say."
She looked at him steadily an instant.  "It is not--not
easy for a woman to ask--for me to ask favours like
this.  Each time I tell myself it will be the last.  I
am--you must remember this, Curtis, I am--perhaps I am
a little proud.  Don't you see?"

They were at breakfast table again.  It was the morning
after Laura had given Corthell his dismissal.  As she
spoke Jadwin brought his hand down upon the table with
a bang.

"You bet I will," he exclaimed; "you bet I'll stay with
you to-night.  Business can go to the devil! And we
won't go out either; we'll stay right here.  You get
something to read to me, and we'll have one of our old
evenings again.  We----"

All at once Jadwin paused, laid down his knife and
fork, and looked strangely to and fro about the room.

"We'll have one of our old evenings again," he
repeated, slowly.

"What is it, Curtis?" demanded his wife.  "What is the
matter?"

"Oh--nothing," he answered.

"Why, yes there was.  Tell me."

"No, no.  I'm all right now," he returned, briskly
enough.

"No," she insisted.  "You must tell me.  Are you sick?"

He hesitated a moment.  Then:

"Sick?" he queried.  "No, indeed.  But--I'll tell you.
Since a few days I've had," he put his fingers to his
forehead between his eyes, "I've had a queer sensation
right there.  It comes and goes."

"A headache?"

"N-no.  It's hard to describe.  A sort of numbness.
Sometimes it's as though there was a heavy iron cap--a
helmet on my head.  And sometimes it--I don't know it
seems as if there were fog, or something or other,
inside.  I'll take a good long rest this summer, as
soon as we can get away.  Another month or six weeks,
and I'll have things ship-shape and so as I can leave
them.  Then we'll go up to Geneva, and, by Jingo, I'll
loaf."  He was silent for a moment, frowning, passing
his hand across his forehead and winking his eyes.
Then, with a return of his usual alertness, he looked
at his watch.

"Hi!" he exclaimed.  "I must be off.  I won't be home
to dinner to-night.  But you can expect me by eight
o'clock, sure.  I promise I'll be here on the minute.

But, as he kissed his wife good-by, Laura put her arms
about his neck.

"Oh, I don't want you to leave me at all, ever, ever!
Curtis, love me, love me always, dear.  And be
thoughtful of me and kind to me.  And remember that you
are all I have in the world; you are father and mother
to me, and my dear husband as well.  I know you do love
me; but there are times--Oh," she cried, suddenly "if I
thought you did not love me--love me better than
anything, anything--I could not love you; Curtis, I
could not, I could not.  No, no," she cried, "don't
interrupt.  Hear me out.  Maybe it is wrong of me to
feel that way, but I'm only a woman, dear.  I love you
but I love Love too.  Women are like that; right or
wrong, weak or strong, they must be--must be loved
above everything else in the world.  Now go, go to your
business; you mustn't be late.  Hark, there is Jarvis
with the team.  Go now.  Good-by, good-by, and I'll
expect you at eight."

True to his word, Jadwin reached his home that evening
promptly at the promised hour.  As he came into the
house, however, the door-man met him in the hall, and,
as he took his master's hat and stick, explained that
Mrs. Jadwin was in the art gallery, and that she had
said he was to come there at once.

Laura had planned a little surprise.  The art gallery
was darkened.  Here and there behind the dull-blue
shades a light burned low.  But one of the movable
reflectors that were used to throw a light upon the
pictures in the topmost rows was burning brilliantly.
It was turned from Jadwin as he entered, and its broad
cone of intense white light was thrown full upon Laura,
who stood over against the organ in the full costume of
"Theodora."

For an instant Jadwin was taken all aback.

"What the devil!," he ejaculated, stopping short in the
doorway.

Laura ran forward to him, the chains, ornaments, and
swinging pendants chiming furiously as she moved.

"I did surprise you, I did surprise you," she laughed.
"Isn't it gorgeous?" She turned about before him, her
arms raised.  "Isn't it superb?  Do you remember
Bernhardt--and that scene in the Emperor Justinian's
box at the amphitheatre?  Say now that your wife isn't
beautiful.  I am, am I not?" she exclaimed defiantly,
her head raised.  "Say it, say it."

"Well, what for a girl!" gasped Jadwin, "to get herself
up----"

"Say that I am beautiful," commanded Laura.

"Well, I just about guess you are," he cried.

"The most beautiful woman you have ever known?  she
insisted.  Then on the instant added: "Oh, I may be
really as plain as a kitchen-maid, but you must believe
that I am not.  I would rather be ugly and have you
think me beautiful, than to be the most beautiful woman
in the world and have you think me plain.  Tell me--am
I not the most beautiful woman you ever saw?"

"The most beautiful I ever saw," he repeated,
fervently.  "But--Lord, what will you do next?
Whatever put it into your head to get into this rig?"

"Oh, I don't know.  I just took the notion.  You've
seen me in every one of my gowns.  I sent down for
this, this morning, just after you left.  Curtis, if
you hadn't made me love you enough to be your wife,
Laura Dearborn would have been a great actress.  I feel
it in my finger tips.  Ah!" she cried, suddenly
flinging up her head till the pendants of the crown
clashed again.  "I could have been magnificent.  You
don't believe it.  Listen.  This is Athalia--the queen
in the Old Testament, you remember."

"Hold on," he protested.  "I thought you were this
Theodora person."

"I know--but never mind.  I am anything I choose.  Sit
down; listen.  It's from Racine's 'Athalie,' and the
wicked queen has had this terrible dream of her mother
Jezabel.  It's French, but I'll make you see."

And "taking stage," as it were, in the centre of the
room, Laura began:


   "Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser
   Et moi, je lui tendais les mains pour l'embrasser;
   Mais je n'ai plus trouve q'un horrible melange
   D'os et de chair meurtris et traines dans la fange,
   Des lambeaux pleins de sang, et des membres affreux
   Que les chiens d'evorants se disputaient entre eux."


"Great God!" exclaimed Jadwin, ignorant of the words
yet, in spite of himself, carried away by the fury and
passion of her rendering.

Laura struck her palms together.

"Just what 'Abner' says," she cried.  "The very words."

"Abner?"

"In the play.  I knew I could make you feel it."

"Well, well," murmured her husband, shaking his head,
bewildered even yet.  "Well, it's a strange wife I've
got here."

"When you've realised that," returned Laura, "you've
just begun to understand me."

Never had he seen her gayer.  Her vivacity was
bewildering.

"I wish," she cried, all at once, "I wish I had dressed
as 'Carmen,' and I would have danced for you.  Oh, and
you could have played the air for me on the organ.  I
have the costume upstairs now.  Wait! I will, I will!
Sit right where you are--no, fix the attachment to the
organ while I'm gone.  Oh, be gay with me to-night, she
cried, throwing her arms around him.  "This is my
night, isn't it?  And I am to be just as foolish as I
please."

With the words she ran from the room, but was back in
an incredibly short time, gowned as Bizet's cigarette
girl, a red rose in her black hair, castanets upon her
fingers.

Jadwin began the bolero.

"Can you see me dance, and play at the same time?"

"Yes, yes.  Go on.  How do you know anything about a
Spanish dance?"

"I learned it long ago.  I know everything about
anything I choose, to-night.  Play, play it _fast._

She danced as though she would never tire, with the
same force of passion that she had thrown into Athalie.
Her yellow skirt was a flash of flame spurting from the
floor, and her whole body seemed to move with the same
wild, untamed spirit as a tongue of fire.  The
castanets snapped like the crackling of sparks; her
black mantilla was a hovering cloud of smoke.  She was
incarnate flame, capricious and riotous, elusive and
dazzling.

Then suddenly she tossed the castanets far across the
room and dropped upon the couch, panting and laughing.

"There," she cried, "now I feel better.  That had to
come out.  Come over here and sit by me.  Now, maybe
you'll admit that I can dance too."

"You sure can," answered Jadwin, as she made a place
for him among the cushions.  "That was wonderful.  But,
at the same time, old girl, I wouldn't--wouldn't----"

"Wouldn't what?"

"Well, do too much of that.  It's sort of over-wrought--
a little, and unnatural.  I like you best when you are
your old self, quiet, and calm, and dignified.  It's
when you are quiet that you are at your best.  I didn't
know you had this streak in you.  You are that
excitable to-night!"

"Let me be so then.  It's myself, for the moment
whatever it is.  But now I'll be quiet.  Now we'll
talk.  Have you had a hard day?  Oh, and did your head
bother you again?"

"No, things were a little easier down town to-day.  But
that queer feeling in my head did come back as I was
coming home--and my head aches a little now, besides."

"Your head aches!" she exclaimed.  "Let me do something
for it.  And I've been making it worse with all my
foolishness."

"No, no; that's all right," he assured her.  "I tell
you what we'll do.  I'll lie down here a bit, and you
play something for me.  Something quiet.  I get so
tired down there in La Salle Street, Laura, you don't
know."

And while he stretched out at full length upon the
couch, his wife, at the organ, played the music she
knew he liked best--old songs, "Daisy Dean," "Lord
Lovell," "When Stars Are in the Quiet Sky," and "Open
Thy Lattice to Me."

When at length she paused, he nodded his head with
pleasure.

"That's pretty," he said.  "Ah, that _is_ blame pretty.
Honey, it's just like medicine to me," he continued,
"to lie here, quiet like this, with the lights low, and
have my dear girl play those old, old tunes.  My old
governor, Laura, used to play that 'Open the Lattice to
me,' that and 'Father, oh, Father, Come Home with me
Now'--used to play 'em on his fiddle."  His arm under
his head, he went on, looking vaguely at the opposite
wall.  "Lord love me, I can see that kitchen in the old
farmhouse as plain!  The walls were just logs and
plaster, and there were upright supports in each
corner, where we used to measure our heights--we
children.  And the fireplace was there," he added,
gesturing with his arm, "and there was the wood box,
and over here was an old kind of dresser with drawers,
and the torty-shell cat always had her kittens under
there.  Honey, I was happy then.  Of course I've got
you now, and that's all the difference in the world.
But you're the only thing that does make a difference.
We've got a fine place and a mint of money I suppose--
and I'm proud of it.  But I don't know....  If they'd
let me be and put us two--just you and me--back in the
old house with the bare floors and the rawhide chairs
and the shuck beds, I guess we'd manage.  If you're
happy, you're happy; that's about the size of it.  And
sometimes I think that we'd be happier--you and I--
chumming along shoulder to shoulder, poor an' working
hard, than making big money an' spending big money,
why--oh, I don't know ... if you're happy, that's the
thing that counts, and if all this stuff," he kicked
out a careless foot at the pictures, the heavy
hangings, the glass cabinets of bibelots, "if all this
stuff stood in the way of it--well--it could go to the
devil! That's not poetry maybe, but it's the truth."

Laura came over to where her husband lay, and sat by
him, and took his head in her lap, smoothing his
forehead with her long white hands.

"Oh, if I could only keep you like this always," she
murmured.  "Keep you untroubled, and kind, and true.
This is my husband again.  Oh, you are a man, Curtis; a
great, strong, kind-hearted man, with no little graces,
nor petty culture, nor trivial fine speeches, nor false
sham, imitation polish.  I love you.  Ah, I love you,
love you, dear!"

"Old girl!" said Jadwin, stroking her hand.

"Do you want me to read to you now?" she asked.

"Just this is pretty good, it seems to me."

As he spoke, there came a step in the hall and a knock.

Laura sat up, frowning.

"I told them I was not to be disturbed," she exclaimed
under her breath.  Then, "Come in," she called.

"Mr. Gretry, sir," announced the servant.  "Said he
wished to see you at once, sir."

"Tell him," cried Laura, turning quickly to Jadwin,
"tell him you're not at home--that you can't see him."

"I've got to see him," answered Jadwin, sitting up.
"He wouldn't come here himself unless it was for
something important."

"Can I come in, J.?" spoke the broker, from the hall.
And even through the thick curtains they could hear how
his voice rang with excitement and anxiety.

"Can I come in?  I followed the servant right up, you
see.  I know----"

"Yes, yes.  Come in," answered Jadwin.  Laura, her face
flushing, threw a fold of the couch cover over her
costume as Gretry, his hat still on his head, stepped
quickly into the room.

Jadwin met him half way, and Laura from her place on
the couch heard the rapidly spoken words between the
general and his lieutenant.

"Now we're in for it!" Gretry exclaimed.

"Yes--well?" Jadwin's voice was as incisive and quick
as the fall of an axe.

"I've just found out," said Gretry, "that Crookes and
his crowd