A Poor Wise Man................................................................................................................................................1

Mary Roberts Rinehart .............................................................................................................................1

The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened walls, irregular and illpaved streets,

gloomy warehouses, and over all a gray, smokeladen atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty.

Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above the river mist like fairy towers suspended

between Heaven and earth. And again the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the city lay buried

Sometimes it was ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always the city was powerful, significant, important. It was

a vast melting pot. Through its gates came alike the hopeful and the hopeless, the dreamers and those who

would destroy those dreams. From all over the world there came men who sought a chance to labor. They

came in groups, anxious and dumb, carrying with them their pathetic bundles, and shepherded by men with

Raw material, for the crucible of the city, as potentially powerful as the iron ore which entered the city by the

The city took them in, gave them sanctuary, and forgot them. But the shepherds with the cunning eyes

Lily Cardew, standing in the train shed one morning early in March, watched such a line go by. She watched

it with interest. She had developed a new interest in people during the year she had been away. She had seen,

in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men, transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers,

beginning already to be actuated by the same motive. These aliens, going by, would become citizens. Very

soon now they would appear on the streets in new American clothes of extraordinary cut and color, their hair

cut with clippers almost to the crown, and surmounted by derby hats always a size too small.

Lily smiled, and looked out for her mother. She was suddenly unaccountably glad to be back again. She liked

the smoke and the noise, the movement, the sense of things doing. And the sight of her mother, small,

faultlessly tailored, wearing a great bunch of violets, and incongruous in that workaday atmosphere, set her

How familiar it all was! And heavens, how young she looked! The limousine was at the curb, and a footman

as immaculately turned out as her mother stood with a folded rug over his arm. On the seat inside lay a purple

box. Lily had known it would be there. They would be ostensibly from her father, because he had not been

able to meet her, but she knew quite well that Grace Cardew had stopped at the florist's on her way

A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes. The small attentions which in the Cardew

household took the place of loving demonstrations had always touched her. As a family the Cardews were

rather loosely knitted together, but there was something very lovable about her mother.

"Older, I hope," Lily retorted. "What a marvel you are, Grace dear." Now and then she called her mother

"Grace." It was by way of being a small joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old

Anthony, her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row about it.

They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her. "From your father, dear. He wanted so to come, but

things are dreadful at the mill. I suppose you've seen the papers." Lily opened the box, and smiled at her

"Yes, I know. But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear? Honestly, did he send them, or did you

get them? But never mind about that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you broken the

"You darling!" she said. "You know perfectly well that I am nothing in grandfather's young life, but the

Cardew women all have what he likes to call savoir faire. What would they do, father and grandfather, if you

Grace looked rather stiffly ahead. This young daughter of hers, with her directness and her smiling ignoring

of the small subterfuges of life, rather frightened her. The terrible honesty of youth! All these years of ironing

the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties between old Anthony and Howard, and now a third

generation to contend with. A pitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation. She turned and eyed Lily

"You look tired," she said, "and you need attention. I wish you had let me send Castle to you."

But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered her. Lovely rather than beautiful,

perhaps. Her face was less childish than when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions, an

"I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've been very happy, really, and very busy."

"I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it would drive grandfather crazy."

"Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers to camps. Some of them were going to

have babies, too. It was rather awful. We married quite a lot of them, however."

The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter held Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded,

but her eyes had slightly hardened. So this was what war had done to her. She had had no son, and had

thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had hated her all her married life for it. But she had

given her daughter, her cleareyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs of life.

Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, with Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life

painted as a thing of beauty. Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was a quiet sleep, with

heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to age, which had wearied and would rest. Then she

remembered the day when Elinor Cardew, poor unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's roof to have a

"But the baby isn't old," Lily had persisted, standing in front of her mother with angry, accusing eyes.

Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly, as she told Howard later.

"It was such a nice baby," she said, feeling for an idea. "I think probably God was lonely without it, and sent

"But it is still upstairs," Lily had insisted. She had had a curious instinct for truth, even then. But there

Grace's imagination had failed her, and she sent for Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle was a good Catholic, and

very clear in her own mind, but what she left in Lily's brain was a confused conviction that every person was

two persons, a body and a soul. Death was simply a splitup, then. One part of you, the part that bathed every

morning and had its toenails cut, and went to dancing school in a white frock and thin black silk stockings

and carriage boots over pumps, that part was buried and would only came up again at the Resurrection. But

Then there was the matter of tears. People only cried when they hurt themselves. She had been told that again

and again when she threatened tears over her music lesson. But when Aunt Elinor had gone away she had

found Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of tears, weeping. And here again Grace remembered the child's

"Not that;" said Grace, and had brought a box of chocolates and given her one, although they were not

Then Lily had gone away to school. How carefully the school had been selected! When she came back,

however, there had been no more questions, and Grace had sighed with relief. That bad time was over,

anyhow. But Lily was rather difficult those days. She seemed, in some vague way, resentful. Her mother

found her, now and then, in a frowning, halfdefiant mood. And once, when Mademoiselle had ventured

some jesting remark about young Alston Denslow, she was stupefied to see the girl march out of the room,

"I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life," she said, after a brief silence.

"That side of life is life, mother," Lily said gravely. But Grace did not reply to that. It was characteristic of

"I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather. You know he feels strongly about some things. And he hasn't

Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's. She gave her rare caresses shyly, with averted eyes, and

she was always more diffident with her mother than with her father. Such spontaneous bursts of affection as

she sometimes showed had been lavished on Mademoiselle. It was Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously

on her small feast days, Mademoiselle who never demanded affection, and so received it.

"Poor mother!" she said, "I have made it hard for you, haven't I? Is he as bad as ever?"

She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her hands, now and then taking a luxurious sniff.

She did not seem to expect a reply. Between Grace and herself it was quite understood that old Anthony

"We're saved, and it's all over. But sometimes I wonder if we were worth saving. It all seems such a mess,

doesn't it?" She glanced out. They were drawing up before the house, and she looked at her mother

"The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!" she said. "Only she is unfortunately a she, and she hasn't

Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grim old house had she been the son they had

The Cardews had fighting traditions. They had fought in every war from the Revolution on. There had been a

Cardew in Mexico in '48, and in that upper suite of rooms to which her grandfather had retired in wrath on his

son's marriage, she remembered her sense of awe as a child on seeing on the wall the sword he had worn in

the Civil War. He was a small man, and the scabbard was badly worn at the end, mute testimony to the long

forced marches of his youth. Her father had gone to Cuba in '98, and had almost died of typhoid fever there,

Her mother was determinedly gay. There were flowers in the dark old hall, and Grayson, the butler, evidently

waiting inside the door, greeted her with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped her sweets from

Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over her old black dress. Lily recognized in

the collar a great occasion, for Mademoiselle was French and thrifty. Suddenly a wave of warmth and

gladness flooded her. This was home. Dear, familiar home. She had come back. She was the only young thing

in the house. She would bring them gladness and youth. She would try to make them happy. Always before

Not that she formulated such a thought. It was an emotion, rather. She ran up the stairs and hugged

"You darling old thing!" she cried. She lapsed into French. "I saw the collar at once. And think, it is over! It

is finished. And all your nice French relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the sun, and sipping their little

glasses of wine, and rising and bowing when a pretty girl passes. Is it not so?"

Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase. Her French was negligible, and she felt again, as in days gone

by, shut from the little world of two which held her daughter and governess. Old Anthony's doing, that. He

had never forgiven his son his plebeian marriage, and an early conversation returned to her. It was on Lily's

first birthday and he had made one of his rare visits to the nursery. He had brought with him a pearl in a

"All our women have their own pearls," he had said. "She will have her grandmother's also when she marries.

I shall give her one the first year, two the second, and so on." He had stood looking down at the child

critically. "She's a Cardew," he said at last. "Which means that she will be obstinate and selfwilled." He had

paused there, but Grace had not refuted the statement. He had grinned. "As you know," he added. "Is she

"A word or two," Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone than was in his.

"Very well. Get her a French governess. She ought to speak French before she does English. It is one of the

accomplishments of a lady. Get a good woman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her breakfast in her

room. I don't want to have to be pleasant to any chattering French woman at eight in the morning."

Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly. He did not like Howard's wife, but she was not

afraid of him. He respected her for that. He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was found, and at

dinner, the only meal he took with the family, he would now and then send for the governess and Lily to

come in for dessert. That, of course, was later on, when the child was nearly ten. Then would follow a

threecornered conversation in rapid French, Howard and Anthony and Lily, with Mademoiselle joining in

timidly, and with Grace, at the side of the table, pretending to eat and feeling cut off, in a middleclass world

of her own, at the side of the table. Anthony Cardew had retained the head of his table, and he had never

After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, the fact that Lily was sent for, not only

because the old man cared to see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made desperate

efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and

She never told Howard about it. He had his own difficulties with his father, and she would not add to them.

She managed the house, checked over the bills and sent them to the office, put up a cheerful and courageous

front, and after a time sheathed herself in an armor of smiling indifference. But she thanked heaven when the

time came to send Lily away to school. The effort of concealing the armed neutrality between Anthony and

herself was growing more wearing. The girl was observant. And Anthony had been right, she was a Cardew.

She would have fought her grandfather out on it, defied him, accused him, hated him. And Grace wanted

Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she felt the barrier of language, and back of

But in Lily's rooms she was her sane and cheerful self again. Inside the doorway the girl was standing, her

"How lovely of you not to change a thing, mother!" she said. "I was so afraid I know how you hate my

stuff. But I might have known you wouldn't. All the time I've been away, sleeping in a dormitory, and taking

turns at the bath, I have thought of my own little place." She wandered around, touching her familiar

possessions with caressing hands. "I've a good notion," she declared, "to go to bed immediately, just for the

pleasure of lying in linen sheets again." Suddenly she turned to her mother. "I'm afraid you'll find I've made

"People no proper Cardew would care to know." She smiled. "Where's Ellen? I want to tell her I met

somebody she knows out there, the nicest sort of a boy." She went to the doorway and called lustily: "Ellen!

"I wish you wouldn't call, dear." Grace looked anxious. "You know how your grandfather there's a bell for

"What we need around here," said Lily, cheerfully, "is a little more calling. And if grandfather thinks it is

unbefitting the family dignity he can put cotton in his ears. Come in, Ellen. Ellen, do you know that I met

"He's wonderful," said Lily. "I went to the movies with him every Friday night." She turned to her mother.

"You would like him, mother. He couldn't get into the army. He is a little bit lame. And " she surveyed

Grace with amused eyes, "you needn't think what you are thinking. He is tall and thin and not at all

"He is a very fine young man," Ellen said rather stiffly. "He's very highly thought of in the town I come from.

His father was a doctor, and his buggy used to go around day, and night. When he found they wouldn't take

But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became again a housemaid in the Anthony

Cardew house, a selfeffacing, rubberheeled, pinkuniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew,

"Thank you, miss," she said. And went out, leaving Lily rather chilled and openly perplexed.

"Well!" she said. Then she glanced at her mother. "I do believe you are a little shocked, mother, because

Ellen and I have a mutual friend in Mr. William Wallace Cameron! Well, if you want the exact truth, he

hadn't an atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen." She put an arm around Grace's shoulders. "Brace up,

"Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?" Grace asked, rather unhappily. She had never been

inside a moving picture theater. To her they meant something a step above the corner saloon, and a degree

below the burlesque houses. They were constituted of bad air and unchaperoned young women accompanied

by youths who dangled cigarettes from a lower lip, all obviously of the lower class, including the cigarette;

and of other women, sometimes drab, dragged of breast and carrying children who should have been in bed

hours before; or still others, wandering in pairs, young, painted and predatory. She was not imaginative, or

she could not have lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw, in the long line waiting outside

even the meanest of the little theaters that had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cry

of every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance, the call of adventure and the open road.

"Dearest," she said, "I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have changed a lot in twenty years. Sometimes I

think that here, in this house, you don't realize that " she struggled for a phrase "that things have

changed," she ended, lamely. "The social order, and that sort of thing. You know. Caste." She hesitated. She

was young and inarticulate, and when she saw Grace's face, somewhat frightened. But she was not old

Anthony's granddaughter for nothing. "This idea of being a Cardew," she went on, "that's ridiculous, you

know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. The rest is you, dear, and it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot."

Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she paused now and turned. It was to Grace that

"They come home like that, all of them," she said. "In France also. But in time they see the wisdom of the old

"No, indeed," she said. "I am not. I shall probably marry beneath me, as you would call it, but not William

Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered. Grace was reclining on a chaise longue,

towels tucked about her neck and over her pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was applying ice

in a soft cloth to her face. Grace sat up. The towel, pinned around her hair like a coif, gave a placid, almost

"I have spoken to Ellen," she said, her voice cautious. "A young man who does not care for women, a clerk in

"But not handsome," insisted Mademoiselle, "and lame! Also, I know the child. She is not in love. When that

"A phase," she said. She had got the word from old Anthony, who regarded any mental attitude that did not

conform with his own as a condition that would pass. "A phase, only. Now that she is back among familiar

"She 'as had liberty," said Mademoiselle, who sometimes lost an aspirate. "It is like wine to the young. It

But Grace had, for a number of years, heard a great deal of Mademoiselle's country. She settled herself on her

"Call Castle, please," she said. "And do warn her not to voice those ideas of hers to her grandfather. In a

"And lame, and not fond of women," corroborated Mademoiselle. "Ca ne pourrait pas etre mieux, n'estce

Shortly after the Civil War Anthony Cardew had left Pittsburgh and spent a year in finding a location for the

investment of his small capital. That was in the very beginning of the epoch of steel. The iron business had

already laid the foundations of its future greatness, but steel was still in its infancy.

Anthony's father had been an ironmaster in a small way, with a monthly payroll of a few hundred dollars,

and an abiding faith in the future of iron. But he had never dreamed of steel. But "sixtyfive" saw the first

steel rail rolled in America, and Anthony Cardew began to dream. He went to Chicago first, and from there to

Michigan, to see the first successful Bessemer converter. When he started east again he knew what he was to

He was very young and his capital was small. But he had an abiding faith in the new industry. Not that he

dreamed then of floating steel battleships. But he did foresee steel in new and various uses. Later on he was

experimenting with steel cable at the very time Roebling made it a commercial possibility, and with it the

modern suspension bridge and the elevator. He never quite forgave Roebling. That failure of his, the

difference only of a month or so, was one of the few disappointments of his prosperous, selfcentered,

orderly life. That, and Howard's marriage. And, at the height of his prosperity, the realization that Howard's

The city he chose was a small city then, yet it already showed signs of approaching greatness. On the east

side, across the river, he built his first plant, a small one, with the blast heated by passing through cast iron

pipes, with the furnaceman testing the temperature with strips of lead and zinc, and the skip hoist a patient

He had ore within easy hauling distance, and he had fuel, and he had, as time went on, a rapidly increasing

market. Labor was cheap and plentiful, too, and being Americanborn, was willing and intelligent. Perhaps

Anthony Cardew's sins of later years were due to a vast impatience that the labor of the early seventies was

The Cardew fortune began in the seventies. Up to that time there was a struggle, but in the seventies Anthony

did two things. He went to England to see the furnaces there, and brought home a wife, a timid, tall

Englishwoman of irreproachable birth, who remained always an alien in the crude, busy new city. And he

built himself a house, a brick house in lower East Avenue, a house rather like his tall, quiet wife, and run on

English lines. He soon became the leading citizen. He was one of the committee to welcome the Prince of

Wales to the city, and from the very beginning he took his place in the social life.

He found it very raw at times, crude and new. He himself lived with dignity and elegant simplicity. He gave

now and then lengthy, ponderous dinners, making out the lists himself, and handing them over to his timid

English wife in much the manner in which he gave the wine list and the key to the wine cellar to the butler.

And, at the head of his table, he let other men talk and listened. They talked, those industrial pioneers,

especially after the women had gone. They saw the city the center of great business and great railroads. They

talked of its coal, its river, and the great oil fields not far away which were then in their infancy. All of them

dreamed a dream, saw a vision. But not all of them lived to see their dream come true.

In the late eighties, his wife having been by that time decorously interred in one of the first great mausoleums

west of the mountains, Anthony Cardew found himself already wealthy. He owned oil wells and coal mines.

His mines supplied his coke ovens with coal, and his own river boats, as well as railroads in which he was a

He labored ably and well, and not for wealth alone. He was one of a group of bigvisioned men who saw that

a nation was only as great as its industries. It was only in his later years that he loved power for the sake of

power, and when, having outlived his generation, he had developed a rigidity of mind that made him view the

He considered his son Howard's quiet strength weakness. "You have no stamina," he would say. "You have

He had not mellowed with age. He viewed with endless bitterness the passing of his own day and generation,

and the rise to power of younger men; with their "shillyshallying," he would say. He was an aristocrat, an

autocrat, and a survival. He tied Howard's hands in the management of the now vast mills, and then blamed

He had had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl had been the tragedy of his middle years, and Howard had

On the heights outside the city and overlooking the river he owned a farm, and now and then, on Sunday

afternoons in the eighties, he drove out there, with Howard sitting beside him, a rangy boy in his teens, in the

victoria which Anthony considered the proper vehicle for Sunday afternoons. The farmhouse was in a hollow,

but always on those excursions Anthony, fastidiously dressed, picking his way halfirritably through briars

and cornfields, would go to the edge of the cliffs and stand there, looking down. Below was the muddy river,

sluggish always, but a thing of terror in spring freshets. And across was the east side, already a sordid place,

its steel mills belching black smoke that killed the green of the hillsides, its furnaces dwarfed by distance and

Howard would go with him, but Howard dreamed no dreams. He was a sturdy, dependable, unimaginative

boy, watching the squirrels or flinging stones over the palisades. Life for Howard was already a thing

determined. He would go to college, and then he would come back and go into the mill offices. In time, he

would take his father's place. He meant to do it well and honestly. He had but to follow. Anthony had broken

the trail, only by that time it was no longer a trail, but a broad and easy way.

Only once or twice did Anthony Cardew give voice to his dreams. Once he said: "I'll build a house out here

some of these days. Good location. Growth of the city is bound to be in this direction."

What he did not say was that to be there, on that hill, overlooking his activities, his very own, the things he

had builded with such labor, gave him a sense of power. "This below," he felt, with more of pride than

He felt, looking down, the pride of an artist in his picture, of a sculptor who, secure from curious eyes, draws

the sheet from the still moist clay of his modeling, and now from this angle, now from that, studies, criticizes,

But Anthony Cardew never built his house on the cliff. Time was to come when great houses stood there, like

vast forts, overlooking, almost menacing, the valley beneath. For, until the nineties, although the city

distended in all directions, huge, ugly, powerful, infinitely rich, and while in the direction of Anthony's farm

the growth was real and rapid, it was the plain people who lined its rapidly extending avenues with their

twostory brick houses; little homes of infinite tenderness and quiet, along treelined streets, where the

children played on the cobblestones, and at night the horse cars, and later the cable system, brought home

tired clerks and storekeepers to small havens, already growing dingy from the smoke of the distant mills.

Anthony Cardew did not like the plain people. Yet in the end, it was the plain people, those who neither

labored with their hands nor lived by the labor of others it was the plain people who vanquished him.

Vanquished him and tried to protect him. But could not. A smallish man, hard and wiry, he neither saved

himself nor saved others. He had one fetish, power. And one pride, his line. The Cardews were iron masters.

All through her teens Lily had wondered about the mystery concerning her Aunt Elinor. There was an oil

portrait of her in the library, and one of the first things she had been taught was not to speak of it.

Now and then, at intervals of years, Aunt Elinor came back. Her mother and father would look worried, and

Aunt Elinor herself would stay in her rooms, and seldom appeared at meals. Never at dinner. As a child Lily

used to think she had two Aunt Elinors, one the young girl in the gilt frame, and the other the quiet,

In the late eighties Anthony built himself a home, not on the farm, but in a new residence portion of the city.

The old common, grazing ground of family cows, dump and general eyesore, had become a park by that

time, still only a potentially beautiful thing, with the trees that were to be its later glory only thin young

shoots, and on the streets that faced it the wealthy of the city built their homes, brick houses of square

solidity, flush with brick pavements, which were carefully reddened on Saturday mornings. Beyond the

pavements were cobblestoned streets. Anthony Cardew was the first man in the city to have a rubbertired

carriage. The story of Anthony Cardew's new home is the story of Elinor's tragedy. Nor did it stop there. It

carried on to the third generation, to Lily Cardew, and in the end it involved the city itself. Because of the

ruin of one small home all homes were threatened. One small house, and one undying hatred.

Yet the matter was small in itself. An Irishman named Doyle owned the site Anthony coveted. After years of

struggle his small grocery had begun to put him on his feet, and now the new development of the

neighborhood added to his prosperity. He was a driedup, sentimental little man, with two loves, his wife's

memory and his wife's garden, which he still tended religiously between customers; and one ambition, his

son. With the change from common to park, and the improvement in the neighborhood, he began to flourish,

and he, too, like Anthony, dreamed a dream. He would make his son a gentleman, and he would get a shop

assistant and a horse and wagon. Poverty was still his lot, but there were good times coming. He saved

He would not sell to Anthony. When he said he could not sell his wife's garden, Anthony's agents reported

him either mad or deeply scheming. They kept after him, offering much more than the land was worth. Doyle

"He'll get me yet," he would mutter, standing among the white phlox of his little back garden. "He'll get me.

Anthony Cardew waited a year. Then he had the frame building condemned as unsafe, and Doyle gave in.

Anthony built his house. He put a brick stable where the garden had been, and the night watchman for the

property complained that a little man, with wild eyes, often spent half the night standing across the street,

quite still, staring over. If Anthony gave Doyle a thought, it was that progress and growth had their inevitable

victims. But on the first night of Anthony's occupancy of his new house Doyle shot himself beside the stable,

It never reached the newspapers, nor did a stableboy's story of hearing the dying man curse Anthony and all

his works. But nevertheless the story of the Doyle curse on Anthony Cardew spread. Anthony heard it, and

forgot it. But two days later he was dragged from his carriage by young Jim Doyle, returned for the older

Young Doyle did not run away. He stood by, a defiant figure full of hatred, watching Anthony on the cobbles,

"I didn't do it to revenge my father," he said at the trial. "He was nothing to me I did it to show old Cardew

Any sentiment in his favor died at that, and he was given five years in the penitentiary. He was a

demoralizing influence there, already a socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of influencing

men. A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to fury with his unctuous, diabolical tongue.

The penitentiary had not been moved then. It stood in the park, a grim gray thing of stone. Elinor Cardew, a

lonely girl always, used to stand in a window of the new house and watch the walls. Inside there were men

who were shut away from all that greenery around them. Men who could look up at the sky, or down at the

She was always hoping some of them would get away. She hated the sentries, rifle on shoulder, who walked

Anthony's house was square and substantial, with high ceilings. It was paneled with walnut and furnished in

walnut, in those days. Its tables and bureaus were of walnut, with cold white marble tops. And in the parlor

was a square walnut piano, which Elinor hated because she had to sit there three hours each day, slipping on

the top of the horsehaircovered stool, to practice. In cold weather her German governess sat in the frigid

room, with a shawl and mittens, waiting until the onyx clock on the mantelpiece showed that the three hours

Elinor had never heard the story of old Michael Doyle, or of his son Jim. But one night she was seventeen

then, and Jim Doyle had served three years of his sentence sitting at dinner with her father, she said:

Elinor had had an Alsatian governess. That was one reason why Elinor's niece had a French one.

Elinor shrank back a little. She had not minded dining with her father when Howard was at home, but

Howard was at college. Howard had a way of goodnaturedly ignoring his father's asperities, but Elinor was

a suppressed, shy little thing, romantic, aloof, and filled with undesired affections. "She said a hole," she

"Very probably," said Anthony Cardew. And he repeated, thoughtfully, "Very probably."

He did not hear Elinor when she quietly pushed back her chair and said "goodnight." He was sitting at the

table, tapping on the cloth with fingertips that were slightly cold. That evening Anthony Cardew had a visit

from the police, and considerable fiery talk took place in his library. As a result there was a shakeup in city

politics, and a change in the penitentiary management, for Anthony Cardew had a heavy hand and a bitter

memory. And a little cloud on his horizon grew and finally settled down over his life, turning it gray. Jim

Doyle was among those who had escaped. For three months Anthony was followed wherever he went by

detectives, and his house was watched at night. But he was a brave man, and the espionage grew hateful.

Besides, each day added to his sense of security. There came a time when he impatiently dismissed the

Then one day he received a note, in a plain white envelope. It said: "There are worse things than death." And

Doyle was not recaptured. Anthony had iron gratings put on the lower windows of his house after that, and he

hired a special watchman. But nothing happened, and at last he began to forget. He was building the new

furnaces up the river by that time. The era of structural steel for tall buildings was beginning, and he bought

the rights of a process for making cement out of his furnace slag. He was achieving great wealth, although he

Now and then Fraulein braved the terrors of the library, small neatlywritten lists in her hands. Miss Elinor

needed this or that. He would check up the lists, sign his name to them, and Elinor and Fraulein would have a

"Horse?" he said, scowling up at Fraulein. "There are six horses in the stable now."

"Nonsense!" Then he thought a moment. There came back to him a picture of those English gentlewomen

from among whom he had selected his wife, quietvoiced, hardriding, highcolored girls, who could hunt

all day and dance all night. Elinor was a pale little thing. Besides, every gentlewoman should ride.

It was odd, but at that moment Anthony Cardew had an odd sort of vision. He saw the little grocer lying stark

and huddled among the phlox by the stable, and the group of men that stooped over him.

But within a few days Elinor was the owner of a quiet mare, stabled at the academy, and was riding each day

in the tan bark ring between its whitewashed fences, while a mechanical piano gave an air of festivity to

Within a week of that time the riding academy had a new instructor, a tall, thin young man, looking older

than he was, with heavy dark hair and a manner of repressed insolence. A man, the grooms said among

And in less than four months Elinor Cardew ran away from home and was married to Jim Doyle. Anthony

received two letters from a distant city, a long, ecstatic but terrified one from his daughter, and one line on a

Anthony made a new will, leaving Howard everything, and had Elinor's rooms closed. Frau1ein went away,

weeping bitterly, and time went on. Now and then Anthony heard indirectly from Doyle. He taught in a boys'

school for a time, and was dismissed for his radical views. He did brilliant editorial work on a Chicago

newspaper, but now and then he intruded his slanteyed personal views, and in the end he lost his position.

Then he joined the Socialist party, and was making speeches containing radical statements that made the

police of various cities watchful. But he managed to keep within the letter of the law.

Howard Cardew married when Elinor had been gone less than a year. Married the daughter of a small

hotelkeeper in his college town, a pretty, softvoiced girl, intelligent and gentle, and because Howard was

all old Anthony had left, he took her into his home. But for many years he did not forgive her. He had one

hope, that she would give Howard a son to carry on the line. Perhaps the happiest months of Grace Cardew's

married life were those before Lily was born, when her delicate health was safeguarded in every way by her

grim fatherinlaw. But Grace bore a girl child, and very nearly died in the bearing. Anthony Cardew would

He was deeply resentful. The proud fabric of his own weaving would descend in the fullness of time to a

woman. And Howard himself old Anthony was pitilessly hard in his judgments Howard was not a strong

man. A good man. A good son, better than he deserved. But amiable, kindly, without force.

Once the cloud had lifted, and only once. Elinor had come home to have a child. She came at night, a shabby,

worn young woman, with great eyes in a chalkwhite face, and Grayson had not recognized her at first. He

got her some port from the diningroom before he let her go into the library, and stood outside the door, his

usually impassive face working, during the interview which followed. Probably that was Grayson's big hour,

for if Anthony turned her out he intended to go in himself, and fight for the woman he had petted as a child.

But Anthony had not turned her out. He took one comprehensive glance at her thin face and distorted figure.

"He drove me out," she said dully. "He sent me here. He knew I had no place else to go. He knew you

Yes, it was revenge, surely. To send back to him this soiled and broken woman, bearing the mark he had put

upon her that was deviltry, thought out and shrewdly executed. During the next hour Anthony Cardew

suffered, and made Elinor suffer, too. But at the end of that time he found himself confronting a curious

situation. Elinor, ashamed, humbled, was not contrite. It began to dawn on Anthony that Jim Doyle's revenge

He sent for Grace, finally, and Elinor was established in the house. Grace and little Lily's governess had

themselves bathed her and put her to bed, and Mademoiselle had smuggled out of the house the garments

Elinor had worn into it. Grace had gone in the motor one of the first in the city and had sent back all sorts

of lovely garments for Elinor to wear, and quantities of fine materials to be made into tiny garments. Grace

"Do you know," she said to Howard that night, "I believe she is quite mad about him still."

Anthony Cardew gave Elinor sanctuary, but he refused to see her again. Except once.

"Then, if it is a boy, you want me to leave him with you?" she asked, bending over her sewing.

"Good God!" shouted Anthony. "How did I ever happen to have such a craven creature for a daughter?"

"When he turned you out, like any drab of the streets!" bellowed old Anthony. "He never cared for you. He

married you to revenge himself on me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child, and

But again, as on the night she came, he found himself helpless against Elinor's quiet impassivity. He knew

that, let Jim Doyle so much as raise a beckoning finger, and she would go to him. He did not realize that

Elinor had inherited from her quiet mother the doglike quality of love in spite of cruelty. To Howard he

stormed. He considered Elinor's infatuation indecent. She was not a Cardew. The Cardew women had some

pride. And Howard, his handsome figure draped negligently against the library mantel, would puzzle over it,

Elinor's child had been a boy, and old Anthony found some balm in Gilead. Jim Doyle had not raised a finger

to beckon, and if he knew of his son, he made no sign. Anthony still ignored Elinor, but he saw in her child

the third generation of Cardews. Lily he had never counted. He took steps to give the child the Cardew name,

and the fact was announced in the newspapers. Then one day Elinor went out, and did not come back. It was

something Anthony Cardew had not counted on, that a woman could love a man more than her child.

"I simply had to do it, father," she wrote. "You won't understand, of course. I love him, father. Terribly. And

he loves me in his way, even when he is unfaithful to me. I know he has been that. Perhaps if you had wanted

me at home it would have been different. But it kills me to leave the baby. The only reason I can bring myself

to do it is that, the way things are, I cannot give him the things he ought to have. And Jim does not seem to

want him. He has never seen him, for one thing. Besides I am being honest I don't think the atmosphere

There was a letter to Grace, too, a wild hysterical document, filled with instructions for the baby's care. A wet

nurse, for one thing. Grace read it with tears in her eyes, but Anthony saw in it only the ravings of a weak and

He never forgave Elinor, and once more the little grocer's curse thwarted his ambitions. For, deprived of its

mother's milk, the baby died. Old Anthony sometimes wondered if that, too, had been calculated, a part of the

While Grace rested that afternoon of Lily's return, Lily ranged over the house. In twenty odd years the

neighborhood had changed, and only a handful of the old families remained. Many of the other large houses

were prostituted to base uses. Dingy curtains hung at their windows, dingy because of the smoke from the

great furnaces and railroads. The old Osgood residence, nearby, had been turned into apartments, with bottles

of milk and paper bags on its fireescapes, and a pharmacy on the street floor. The Methodist Church,

following its congregation to the vicinity of old Anthony's farm, which was now cut up into city lots, had

abandoned the building, and it had become a garage. The penitentiary had been moved outside the city limits,

and near its old site was a small cementlined lake, the cheerful rendezvous in summer of bathing children

Lily was idle, for the first time in months. She wandered about, even penetrating to those upper rooms sacred

to her grandfather, to which he had retired on Howard's marriage. How strangely commonplace they were

now, in the full light of day, and yet, when he was in them, the doors closed and only Burton, his valet, in

Increasingly, in later years, Lily had felt and resented the domination of the old man. She resented her father's

acquiescence in that domination, her mother's goodhumored tolerance of it. She herself had accepted it,

although unwillingly, but she knew, rather vaguely, that the Lily Cardew who had gone away to the camp and

the Lily Cardew who stood that day before her grandfather's thronelike chair under its lamp, were two

She was uneasy rather than defiant. She meant to keep the peace. She had been brought up to the theory that

no price was too great to pay for peace. But she wondered, as she stood there, if that were entirely true. She

"What's wrong with your grandfather," he had said, truculently, and waving his pipe, "is that everybody gets

down and lets him walk on them. If everybody lets a man use them as doormats, you can't blame him for

"Maybe I will," he said. "I am a rising young man, and my voice may some day be heard in the land.

Sometimes I feel the elements of greatness in me, sweet child. You haven't happened to notice it yourself,

He had gazed at her with solemn anxiety through the smoke of his pipe, and had grinned when she remained

Lily drew a long breath. All that delightful fooling was over; the hard work was over. The nights were gone

when they would wander like children across the parade grounds, or past the bayonet school, with its rows of

tripods upholding imitation enemies made of sacks stuffed with hay, and showing signs of mortal injury with

their greasy entrails protruding. Gone, too, were the hours when Willy sank into the lowest abyss of

"I'm not fighting for it, or getting smashed up for it. I don't want to be a hero, but I'd like to have had one

Once she had found him in the hut, with his head on a table. He said he had a toothache.

"He'll get me too, probably," she reflected, as she went down the stairs, "just as he's got all the others."

Mademoiselle was in Lily's small sitting room, while Castle was unpacking under her supervision. The sight

"How you could wear these things!" cried Mademoiselle. "You, who have always dressed like a princess!"

"I liked them," said Lily, briefly. "Mademoiselle, what am I going to do with myself, now?"

"Do?" Mademoiselle smiled. "Play, as you deserve, Cherie. Dance, and meet nice young men. You are to

"Oh!" said Lily, rather blankly. "I've got to come out, have I? I'd forgotten people did such things. Please run

"That is very bad for discipline," Mademoiselle objected when the maid had gone. "And it is not necessary

"It's awfully necessary for her," Lily observed, cheerfully. "I've been buttoning my own shoes for some time,

and I haven't developed a spinal curvature yet." She kissed Mademoiselle's perplexed face lightly. "Don't get

to worrying about me," she added. "I'll shake down in time, and be just as useless as ever. But I wish you'd

A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious labors with a needle, and fixed her keen

"She is with him," said Mademoiselle, shortly. "They are here now, in the city. How he dared to come back!"

"Why 'certainly' not? He is Aunt Elinor's husband. She isn't doing anything wicked."

"A woman who would leave a home like this," said Mademoiselle, "and a distinguished family. Position.

"Because really," Lily went on, "there is something awfully big about a woman who will stick to one man

like that. I am quite sure I would bite a man who struck me, but suppose I loved him terribly " her voice

trailed off. "You see, dear, I have seen a lot of brutality lately. An army camp isn't a Sunday school picnic.

"You poor dear!" she said. "And mother, too, of course! You're afraid I'm in love with Willy Cameron. Don't

"I'll tell you about him. He is a thin, blond young man, tall and a bit lame. He has curly hair, and he puts

pomade on it to take the curl out. He is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army, and he is perfectly

sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze. You'd better tell mother. And you can tell her he isn't in love

with me, or I with him. You see, I represent what he would call the monied aristocracy of America, and he

"Not at all. He says he belongs to the plain people. The people in between. He is rather oratorical about them.

Mademoiselle relaxed. She had been too long in old Anthony's house to consider very seriously the plain

people. Her world, like Anthony Cardew's, consisted of the financial aristocracy, which invested money in

industries and drew out rich returns, while providing employment for the many; and of the employees of the

magnates, who had recently shown strong tendencies toward upsetting the peace of the land, and had given

old Anthony one or two attacks of irritability when it was better to go up a rear staircase if he were coming

She disappeared, and Mademoiselle heard her rummaging through the drawers of her dressing table. She

It showed a young man, in a large apron over a Red Cross uniform, bending over a low field range with a

"Frying doughnuts," Lily explained. "I was in this hut at first, and I mixed them and cut them, and he fried

them. We made thousands of them. We used to talk about opening a shop somewhere, Cardew and Cameron.

He said my name would be fine for business. He'd fry them in the window, and I'd sell them. And a coffee

"Why not?" she demanded. "And you could be the cashier, like the ones in France, and sit behind a high desk

"He's old, and I intend to be careful. But he doesn't own me, body and soul. And it may be hard to make him

Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was to remember that conversation, and turn it aver in her

shrewd, troubled mind. Was there anything she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony himself?

"And how," said Mademoiselle, trying to smile, "do you propose to assert this new independence of spirit?"

"I am going to see Aunt Elinor," observed Lily. "There, that's eleven buttons on, and I feel I've earned my

dinner. And I'm going to ask Willy Cameron to come here to see me. To dinner. And as he is sure not to have

any evening clothes, for one night in their lives the Cardew men are going to dine in mufti. Which is military,

you dear old thing, for the everyday clothing that the plain people eat in, without apparent suffering!"

Mademoiselle got up. She felt that Grace should be warned at once. And there was a look in Lily's face when

"Then prepare yourself for a blow," said Lily Cardew, cheerfully. "He is here in the city, earning twentyfive

dollars a week in the Eagle Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly preposterous patent potions

Mademoiselle went out into the hall. Over the house, always silent, there had come a deathlike hush. In the

lower hall the footman was hanging up his master's hat and overcoat. Anthony Cardew had come home for

Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily's return, took a walk. From his boarding house near the

Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residence was a halfhour's walk. There were a number of things he had

meant to do that evening, with a view to improving his mind, but instead he took a walk. He had made up a

schedule for those evenings when he was off duty, thinking it out very carefully on the train to the city. And

He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was with him an indulgence rather than a study.

The longest journey he had ever taken in his life was to Washington. That was early in the war, when it did

not seem possible that his country would not use him, a boy who could tramp incredible miles in spite of his

lameness and who could shoot a frightened rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for a slight deflection

"They won't use me, mother," he had said when he got home, home being a small neat house on a tidy street

of a little country town. "I tried every branch, but the only training I've had well, some smart kid said they

weren't planning to serve soda water to the army. They didn't want cripples, you see."

He had been frightfully sorry then and had comforted her at some length, but the fact remained.

"And you the very best they've ever had for mixing prescriptions!" she had said at last. "And a graduate in

"Well," he said, "that's that, and we won't worry about it. There's more than one way of killing a cat."

There was no light of prophecy in William Wallace Cameron's gray eyes, however, when he replied: "More

So he had, and he had come out of his Red Cross work in the camp with one or two things in his heart that

had not been there before. One was a knowledge of men. He could not have put into words what he felt about

men. It was something about the fundamental simplicity of them, for one thing. You got pretty close to them

at night sometimes, especially when the homesick ones had gone to bed, and the phonograph was playing in a

corner of the long, dim room. There were some shamefaced tears hidden under army blankets those nights,

Then, under all the blasphemy, the talk about women, the surface sordidness of their daily lives and thoughts,

there was one instinct common to all, one love, one hidden purity. And the keyword to those depths was

"Home," he said one day to Lily Cardew. "Mostly it's the home they've left, and maybe they didn't think so

much of it then. But they do now. And if it isn't that, it's the home they want to have some day." He looked at

Lily. Sometimes she smiled at things he said, and if she had not been grave he would not have gone on. "You

know," he continued, "there's mostly a girl some place. All this talk about the nation, now " He settled

himself on the edge of the pine table where old Anthony Cardew's granddaughter had been figuring up her

week's accounts, and lighted his pipe, "the nation's too big for us to understand. But what is the nation, but a

"Willy dear," said Lily Cardew, "did you take any money out of the cigar box for anything this week?"

"Dollar sixtyfive for lard," replied Willy dear. "As I was saying, we've got to think of this country in terms

"Good gracious!" said Lily, "I don't live in a palace. Get my pocketbook, will you? I'm out three dollars

somehow, and I'd rather make it up myself than add these figures over again. Go on and talk, Willy. I love

"Not palaces like yours," repeated Mr. Cameron, "and not hovels. But mostly selfrespecting houses, the

homes of the plain people. The middle class, Miss Cardew. My class. The people who never say anything, but

are squeezed between capital, represented by your grandfather, with its parasites, represented by you, and "

"You represent the people who never say anything," observed the slightly flushed parasite of capital, "about

Yet not even old Anthony could have resented the actual relationship between them. Lily Cardew, working

alone in her hut among hundreds of men, was as without sex consciousness as a child. Even then her flaming

interest was in the private soldiers. The officers were able to amuse themselves; they had money and

opportunity. It was the doughboys she loved and mothered. For them she organized her little entertainments.

For them she played and sang in the evenings, when the field range in the kitchen was cold, and her blistered

Gradually, out of the chaos of her early impressions, she began to divide the men in the army into three parts.

There were the American born; they took the war and their part in it as a job to be done, with as few words as

possible. And there were the foreigners to whom America was a religion, a dream come true, whose flaming

love for their new mother inspired them to stuttering eloquence and awkward gestures. And then there was a

third division, small and mostly foreign born, but with a certain percentage of native malcontents, who hated

the war and sneered among themselves at the other dupes who believed that it was a war for freedom. It was a

capitalists' war. They considered the state as an instrument of oppression, as a bungling interference with

liberty and labor; they felt that wealth inevitably brought depravity. They committed both open and overt acts

against discipline, and found in their arrest and imprisonment renewed grievances, additional oppression,

tyranny. And one day a handful of them, having learned Lily's identity, came into her hut and attempted to

"Gentlemen," said one of them, "we have here an example of one of the idle rich, sacrificing herself to make

us happy. Now, boys, be happy. Are we all happy?" He surveyed the group. "Here, you," he addressed a

sulleneyed squat Hungarian. "Smile when I tell you. You're a slave in one of old Cardew's mills, aren't you?

Willy Cameron had entered the room with a platter of doughnuts in his hand, and stood watching, his face

going pale. Quite suddenly there was a crash, and the gang leader went down in a welter of porcelain and

fried pastry. Willy Cameron was badly beaten up, in the end, and the beaters were courtmartialed. But

"But," she said to him, visiting him one day in the base hospital, where he was still an aching, mass of

bruises, "there must be something behind it. They didn't hate me. They only hated my well, my family."

"My dear child," said Willy Cameron, feeling very old and experienced, and, it must be confessed, extremely

happy, "of course there's something behind it. But the most that's behind it is a lot of fellows who want

It was about that time that Lily was exchanged into the town near the camp, and Willy Cameron suddenly

found life a stale thing, and ashes in the mouth. He finally decided that he had not been such a hopeless fool

as to fall in love with her, but that it would be as well not to see her too much.

"The thing to do," he reasoned to himself, "is, first of all, not to see her. Or only on Friday nights, because she

likes the movies, and it would look queer to stop." Thus Willy Cameron speciously to himself, and

deliberately ignoring the fact that some twentyodd officers stood ready to seize those Friday nights. "And

then to work hard, so I'll sleep better, and not lie awake making a fool of myself. And when I get a bit of

idiocy in the daytime, I'd better just walk it off. Because I've got to live with myself a long time, probably,

Which excellent practical advice had cost him considerable shoeleather at first. In a month or two, however,

he considered himself quite cured, and pretended to himself that he was surprised to find it Friday again. But

when, after retreat, the band marched back again to its quarters playing, for instance, "There's a Long, Long

Trail," there was something inside him that insisted on seeing the years ahead as a long, long trail, and that

He got to know that very well indeed during the winter that followed the armistice. Because there was work

to do he stayed and finished up, as did Lily Cardew. But the hut was closed and she was working in the town,

and although they kept up their Friday evenings, the old intimacy was gone. And one night she said:

And on each day of the preceding week he had wakened and said to himself: "This is Monday " or

In February he was sent home. Lily stayed on until the end of March. He went back to his little village of

plain people, and took up life again as best he could. But sometimes it seemed to him that from behind every

firelit window in the evenings he was still wearing out shoeleather, particularly at nights somebody

His mother watched him anxiously. He was thinner than ever, and oddly older, and there was a hollow look

"Why don't you bring home a bottle of tonic from the store, Willy," she said, one evening when he had been

"Tonic!" he said. "Why, I'm all right, mother. Anyhow, I wouldn't take any of that stuff." He caught her eye

and looked away. "It takes a little time to get settled again, that's all, mother."

"The Young People's Society is having an entertainment at the church tonight, Willy."

"Well, maybe I'll go," he agreed to her unspoken suggestion. "If you insist on making me a society man "

"Thought I'd rather read," he explained. "Got a book here on the history of steel. Talk about romances! Let

me read some of it to you. You sit there and close your eyes and just listen to this: 'The first Cardew furnace

Some time later he glanced up. His mother was quietly sleeping, her hands folded in her lap. He closed the

book and sat there, fighting again his patient battle with himself. The book on his knee seemed to symbolize

the gulf between Lily Cardew and himself. But the real gulf, the unbridgeable chasm, between Lily and

No. It was not that. The war had temporarily broken down the old social barriers. Some of them would never

be erected again, although it was the tendency of civilization for men to divide themselves, rather than to be

divided, into the high, the middle and the low. But in his generation young Cameron knew that there would

be no uncrossable bridge between old Anthony's granddaughter and himself, were it not for one thing.

She did not love him. It hurt his pride to realize that she had never thought of him in any terms but that of a

pleasant comradeship. Hardly even as a man. Men fought, in war time. They did not fry doughnuts and write

letters home for the illiterate. Any one of those boys in the ranks was a better man than he was. All this talk

about a man's soul being greater than his body, that was rot. A man was as good as the weakest part of him,

His sensitive face in the lamplight was etched with lines of tragedy. He put the book on the table, and

suddenly flinging his arms across it, dropped his head on them. The slight movement wakened his mother.

After a moment he looked up. "I was almost asleep," he explained, more to protect her than himself. "I I

wish that fool Nelson kid would break his mandolin or his neck," he said irritably. He kissed her and went

upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive, occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the

There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a high courage of sacrifice, and an

exceedingly shrewd brain. She lay awake that night, carefully planning, and when everything was arranged in

orderly fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and carried it to the door of Willy's room. He lay diagonally

across his goldenoak bed, for he was very long, and sleep had rubbed away the tragic lines about his mouth.

"I've seen too much of it," she reflected, without bitterness. She stared around the room. "Too much of it,"

she repeated. And crawled heavily back into bed, a determined little figure, rather chilled.

The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with her brother in California.

"I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu," she explained, "and James has been wanting me this long time.

I don't want to leave you, that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different."

He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He no more suspected her of design than of

"Of course you are going," he said, heartily. "It's the very thing. But I like the way you desert your little son!"

"I've been thinking about that, too," she said, pouring his coffee. "I if you were in the city, now, there

"A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job," he scoffed. "No city for me, mother."

But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pause of the bird whose cage door is

But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in her rocking chair in the bay window of the

sitting room. It was a familiar attitude of hers, homely, middleclass, and in a way symbolic. Had old

Anthony Cardew ever visualized so imaginative a thing as a Nemesis, he would probably have summoned a

vision of a huddled figure in his stableyard, dying, and cursing him as he died. Had Jim Doyle, cunningly

plotting the overthrow of law and order, been able in his arrogance to conceive of such a thing, it might have

been Anthony Cardew he saw. Neither of them, for a moment, dreamed of it as an elderly Scotch Covenanter,

a plain little womanly figure, rocking in a caneseated rocking chair, and making the great sacrifice of her

All of which simply explains how, on a March Wednesday evening of the great year of peace after much

tribulation, Mr. William Wallace Cameron, now a clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy, after an hour of Politics, and

no Economics at all, happened to be taking a walk toward the Cardew house. Such pilgrimages has love taken

for many years, small uncertain ramblings where the fancy leads the feet and far outstrips them, and where

hearthunger hides under various flimsy pretexts; a fine night, a paper to be bought, a dog to be exercised.

Not that Willy Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort of idea that if he saw the magnificence

that housed her, it would through her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself with a

sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he addressed it now and then.

"Even a cat can look at a king," he said once. And again, following some vague train of thought, on a

crowded street: "The People's voice is a queer thing. 'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.' The people's voice,

There were, he felt, two Lily Cardews. One lived in an army camp, and wore plain clothes, and got a bath by

means of calculation and persistency, and went to the movies on Friday nights, and was quite apt to eat

And another one lived inside this great pile of brick, he was standing across from it, by the park railing, by

that time where motor cars drew up, and a footman with an umbrella against a light rain ushered to their

limousines draped women and men in evening clothes, their strong blacks and whites revealed in the light of

the street door. And this Lily Cardew lived in state, bowed to by flunkeys in livery, dressed and undressed

his Scotch sense of decorum resented this by serving women. This Lily Cardew would wear frivolous

ballgowns, such things as he saw in the shop windows, considered money only as a thing of exchange, and

He took his station against the park railings and reflected that it was a good thing he had come, after all.

Because it was the first Lily whom he loved, and she was gone, with the camp and the rest, including war.

What had he in common with those lighted windows, with their heavy laces and draperies?

But although the ache was gone when he turned homeward, the dog still at his heels, he felt strangely lonely

without it. He considered that very definitely he had put love out of his life. Hereafter he would travel the

trail alone. Or accompanied only by History, Politics, Economics, and various divines on Sunday evenings.

"Well, grandfather," said Lily Cardew, "the last of the Cardews is home from the wars."

"So I presume," observed old Anthony. "Owing, however, to your mother's determination to shroud this room

His tone was less unpleasant than his words, however. He was in one of the rare moods of what passed with

him for geniality. For one thing, he had won at the club that afternoon, where every day from four to six he

played bridge with his own little group, reactionaries like himself, men who viewed the difficulties of the

younger employers of labor with amused contempt. For another, he and Howard had had a difference of

"Tut." He had an air of benignantly forgiving her. "You'll find plenty. What did you do before you went

"I'm blessed," said old Anthony, truculently, "if I understand what has come over this country, anyhow. What

is different? We've had a war. We've had other wars, and we didn't think it necessary to change the

Constitution after them. But everything that was right before this war is wrong after it. Lot of young idiots

"Maybe, if it isn't right now, it wasn't right before." Having said it, Lily immediately believed it. She felt

suddenly fired with an intense dislike of anything that her grandfather advocated.

"Oh conditions," she said vaguely. She was not at all sure what she meant. And old Anthony realized it, and

"I advise you to get a few arguments from your father, Lily. He is full of them. If he had his way I'd have a

Dinner was a relatively pleasant meal. In her gradual rehabilitation of the house Grace had finally succeeded

in doing over the dining room. Over the old walnut paneling she had hung loose folds of faded blue Italian

velvet, with old silver candle sconces at irregular intervals along the walls. The great table and highbacked

chairs were likewise Italian, and the oldfashioned white marble fireplace had been given an overmantel,

also white, enclosing an old tapestry. For warmth of color there were always flowers, and that night there

Lily liked the luxury of it. She liked the immaculate dinner dress of the two men; she liked her mother's

beautiful neck and arms; she liked the quiet service once more; she even liked herself, moderately, in a light

frock and slippers. But she watched it all with a new interest and a certain detachment. She felt strange and

aloof, not entirely one of them. She felt very keenly that no one of them was vitally interested in this

wonderyear of hers. They asked her perfunctory questions, but Grace's watchful eyes were on the service,

Her father was changed. He looked older and careworn. For the first time she began to wonder about her

father. What was he, really, under that calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior? Did he mind the little

man with the sardonic smile and the swift unpleasant humor, whose glance reduced the men who served into

terrified menials? Her big, blond father, with his rather slow speech, his honest eyes, his slight hesitation

before he grasped some of the finer nuances of his father's wit. No, he was not brilliant, but he was real, real

With the same pitiless judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace was very big, or very indifferent to the

sting of old Anthony's tongue. Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly. Like

Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had loved her child. Quite calmly Lily

decided that, as between her husband and herself, her mother loved her husband. Perhaps that was as it should

be, but it added to her sense of aloofness. And she wondered, too, about these great loves that seemed to feed

Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things, suddenly bent forward and observed to

"I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions as wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because

"Don't answer a question with a question. It's a feminine form of evasion, because you have no answer and no

remedy. Yet, heaven save the country, women are going to vote!" He pushed his plate away and glanced at

"Send him back," ordered Anthony. And when Grace observed that it was difficult to get servants, he broke

into a cold fury. What had come over the world, anyhow? Time was when a gentleman's servants stayed with

the family until they became pensioners, and their children took their places. Now !

Grace said nothing. Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find some comfort there. And Lily, sorry for

"The old days of caste are gone, grandfather. And service, in your sense of the word, went with them."

"Willy Cameron! Was this er person qualified to speak? Does he know anything about what he chooses

"A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country any," observed old Anthony. He bent

forward. "As my granddaughter, and the last of the Cardews," he said, "I have a certain interest in the sources

of your political opinions. They will probably, like your father's, differ from mine. You may not know that

your father has not only opinions, but ambitions." She saw Grace stiffen, and Howard's warning glance at her.

But she saw, too, the look in her mother's eyes, infinitely loving and compassionate. "Dear little mother," she

She felt a vague stirring of what married love at its best must be for a woman, its strange complex of passion

and maternity. She wondered if it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also conscious

of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared

shoulders, and across from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass and faintly smiling.

"It's time somebody went into city politics for some purpose other than graft," said Howard. "I am going to

"You can see," said old Anthony, "why I am interested in your views, or perhaps I should say, in Willy

"What!" he exclaimed, "after the bathhouse and gymnasium you have built at the mill? And the laundries

for the women which I believe they do not use. Surely, Howard, you would not accuse the dear people of

"They are beginning to use them, sir." Howard, in his forties, still addressed his father as "Sir!"

"Antagonist!" Anthony repeated in mock protest. "I am a quiet onlooker at the game. I am amused, naturally.

You must understand," he said to Lily, "that this is a matter of a principle with your father. He believes that

he should serve. My whole contention is that the people don't want to be served. They want to be bossed.

They like it; it's all they know. And they're suspicious of a man who puts his hand into his own pocket instead

"Good wine, this," he observed. "I'm buying all I can lay my hands on, against the approaching drought."

Lily's old distrust of her grandfather revived. Why did people sharpen like that with age? Age should be

mellow, like old wine. And what was she going to do with herself? Already the atmosphere of the house

began to depress and worry her; she felt a new, almost violent impatience with it. It was so unnecessary.

She went to the pipe organ which filled the space behind the staircase, and played a little, but she had never

been very proficient, and her own awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men

talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left the organ and wandered into her mother's

morning room, behind the drawing room, where Grace sat with the coffee tray before her.

"I'm afraid I'm going to be terribly on your hands, mother," she said, "I don't know what to do with myself, so

"It is going to be rather stupid for you at first, of course," Grace said. "Lent, and then so many of the men are

"We can have some luncheons, of course. Just informal ones. And there will be small dinners. You'll have to

"He doesn't like change, for one thing. But I don't know anything about politics. Suzette says "

"He won't support him. Of course I hardly think he would oppose him. I really don't understand about those

"You mean you don't understand him. Well, I do, mother. He has run everything, including father, for so long

"I must, mother. Why, out at the camp " She checked herself. "All the papers say the city is badly governed,

and that he is responsible. And now he is going to fight his own son! The more I think about it, the more I

Grace looked apprehensively toward the door. "You are not allowed to visit her." "You do."

"Not at all. That is all dead and buried. He is a very dangerous man. He is running a Socialist newspaper, and

now he is inciting the mill men to strike. He is preaching terrible things. I haven't been there for months."

"Your father says it amounts to a revolution. I believe he calls it a general strike. I don't really know much

"Socialism isn't revolution, mother, is it? But even then is all this because grandfather drove his father to

"I wish you wouldn't, Lily. Of course it is not that. I daresay he believes what he preaches. He ought to be put

into jail. Why the country lets such men go around, preaching sedition, I don't understand."

Lily remembered something else Willy Cameron had said, and promptly repeated it.

"We had a muzzled press during the war," she said, "and now we've got free speech. And one's as bad as the

But Grace harked back to Suzette, and the last of the Cardews harked with her. Later on people dropped in,

and Lily made a real attempt to get back into her old groove, but that night, when she went upstairs to her

bedroom, with its bright fire, its bed neatly turned down, her dressing gown and slippers laid out, the shaded

lamps shining on the gold and ivory of her dressing table, she was conscious of a sudden homesickness.

Homesickness for her bare little room in the camp barracks, for other young lives, noisy, chattering, often

rather silly, occasionally unpleasant, but young. Radiantly, vitally young. The great house, with its stillness

She went to her window and looked out. Years ago, like Elinor, she had watched the penitentiary walls from

that window, with their endlessly pacing sentries, and had grieved for those men who might look up at the

sky, or down at the earth, but never out and across, to see the spring trees, for instance, or the children

playing on the grass. She remembered the story about Jim Doyle's escape, too. He had dug a perilous way to

freedom. Vaguely she wondered if he were not again digging a perilous way to freedom.

Men seemed always to be wanting freedom, only they had so many different ideas of what freedom was. At

the camp it had meant breaking bounds, balking the Military Police, doing forbidden things generally. Was

that, after all, what freedom meant, to do the forbidden thing? Those people in Russia, for instance, who stole

and burned and appropriated women, in the name of freedom. Were law and order, then, irreconcilable with

"Please find out if Ellen has gone to bed," she said. "If she has not, I would like to talk to her."

"If it's your hair, Miss Lily, Mrs. Cardew has asked me to look after you until she has engaged a maid for

"Not my hair," said Lily, cheerfully. "I rather like doing it myself. I just want to talk to Ellen."

It was a bewildered and rather scandalized Castle who conveyed the message to Ellen.

"I wish you'd stop whistling that thing," said Miss Boyd, irritably. "It makes me low in my mind."

"What are you low about?" Miss Boyd had turned toward the rear of the counter, where a mirror was pasted

to a card above a box of chewing gum, and was carefully adjusting her hair net. "Lady friend turned you

"I'm low because I haven't got a lady friend, Miss Boyd." He held up a sheet of prescription paper and

squinted at it. "Also because the medical profession writes with its feet, apparently. I've done everything to

this but dip it in acid. I've had it pinned to the wall, and tried glancing at it as I went past. Sometimes you can

surprise them that way. But it does no good. I'm going to take it home and dream on it, like bride's cake."

"When I get into the Legislature," said Willy Cameron, "I'm going to have a bill passed compelling doctors to

use typewriters. Take this now. Read upside down, its horse liniment. Read right side up, it's poison. And it's

"The exact and cruel truth." He smiled at her, and had Miss Boyd been more discerning she might have seen

that the smile was slightly forced. Also that his eyes were somewhat sunken in his head. Which might, of

course, have been due to too much political economy and history, and the eminent divines on Sunday

evenings. Miss Boyd, however, was not discerning, and moreover, she was summoning her courage to a

"Why don't you ask me to go to the movies some night?" she said. "I like the movies, and I get sick of going

"My dear child," observed Willy Cameron, "if that young man in the sack suit who comes in to see you every

day were three inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter, I'd ask you this minute."

"Oh, him!" said Miss Boyd, with a selfconscious smile. "I'm through with him. He's a Bolshevik!"

"He has the Bolshevist possessive eye," agreed Willy Cameron, readily. "Does he know you are through with

him? Because that's important, too. You may know it, and I may know it, but if he doesn't know it

"Why don't you say right out you don't want to take me? Willy Cameron's chivalrous soul was suddenly

"I'm just a plain idiot, Miss Edith," he said. "I was only fooling. It will mean a lot to me to have a nice girl go

with me to the movies, or anywhere else. We'll make it tonight, if that suits you, and I'll take a look through

The Eagle Pharmacy was a small one in a quiet neighborhood. During the entire day, and for three evenings a

week, Mr. William Wallace Cameron ran it almost singlehanded, having only the preoccupied assistance of

Miss Boyd in the candy and fancy goods. At the noon and dinner hours, and four evenings a week, he was

relieved by the owner, Mr. Davis, a tired little man with large projecting ears and worried, childlike eyes,

who was nursing an invalid wife at home. A pathetic little man, carrying home with unbounded faith day

after day bottles of liquid foods and beef capsules, and making wistful comments on them when he returned.

"She couldn't seem to keep that last stuff down, Mr. Cameron," he would say. "I'll try something else."

And he would stand before his shelves, eyes upturned, searching, eliminating, choosing.

Miss Boyd attended to the general merchandise, sold stationary and perfumes, candy and fancy soaps, and in

the intervals surveyed the world that lay beyond the plate glass windows with shrewd, sophisticated young

"That new doctor across the street is getting busier," she would say. Or, "The people in 42 have got a Ford.

They haven't got room for a garage, either. Probably have to leave it out at nights."

Her sophistication was kindly in the main. She combined it with an easy tolerance of weakness, and an

invincible and cheery romanticism, as Willy Cameron discovered the night they first went to a moving

picture theater together. She frankly wept and joyously laughed, and now and then, delighted at catching

some film subtlety and fearful that he would miss it, she would nudge him with her elbow.

"What d'you think of that?" she would say. "D'you get it? He thinks he's getting her Alice Joyce, you know

on the telephone, and it's a private wire to the gang." She was rather quiet after that particular speech. Then

she added: "I know a place that's got a secret telephone." But he was absorbed in the picture, and made no

Once or twice she placed an excited hand on his knee. He was very uncomfortable until she removed it,

because he had a helpless sort of impression that she was not quite so unconscious of it as she appeared. Time

had been, and not so long ago, when he might have reciprocated her little advance in the spirit in which it was

offered, might have taken the hand and held it, out of the sheer joy of youth and proximity. But there was

nothing of the philanderer in the Willy Cameron who sat beside Edith Boyd that night in body, while in spirit

he was in another state, walking with his slight limp over crisp snow and sodden mud, but through magic

Would he ever see her again? Ever again? And if he did, what good would it be? He roused himself when

they started toward her home. The girl was chattering happily. She adored Douglas Fairbanks. She knew a

girl who had written for his picture but who didn't get one. She wouldn't do a thing like that. "Did they really

"I think they do," said Willy Cameron. "When that chap was talking over the telephone I could tell what he

was saying by Look here, what did you mean when you said you knew of a place that has a secret

"Oh, forget it. I say a lot of things I don't mean." He was a little puzzled and rather curious, but not at all

He let it drop at that. The street crowds held and interested him. He liked to speculate about them; what life

meant to them, in work and love and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet. A country boy, the

"Hurrying home, most of them, because they've got to get up in the morning and go to work."

"Me? I don't wonder. I know. Most of them have to move fast to keep up with the rent."

"It's the families I'm talking about. In a small town you know all about people, who they live with, and all

He saw that she was not interested. Something he had said started an unpleasant train of thought in her mind.

"I am keeping an eye out for the large young man in the sack suit, you know. If he jumps me, just yell for the

"I certainly will. But I think I'd better let your family look me over first, just so they'll know that I don't

customarily steal the silver spoons when I'm asked out to dinner. Or anything like that."

"So am I, awfully folks! And pretty lonely folks at that. Something like that pup that has adopted me, only

"Well, you are the sort that makes friends," she said, rather vaguely. "That crowd that drops into the shop on

"No, but you've got ideas. You give them something to think about when they go home. I wish I had a mind

He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement. "My Scottish blood," he said despondently. "A

Scot is always a reformer and a preacher, in his heart. I used to orate to my mother, but she liked it. She is a

But he was very crestfallen during the remainder of the way, and rather silent. He wondered, that night before

he went to bed, if he had been didactic to Lily Cardew. He had aired his opinions to her at length, he knew.

He groaned as he took off his coat in his cold little room at the boarding house which lodged and fed him,

Jinx, the little hybrid dog, occupied the seat of his one comfortable chair. He eyed the animal somberly.

"Hereafter, old man," he said, "when I feel a spell of oratory coming on, you will have to be the audience."

He took his dressing gown from a nail behind the door, and commenced to put it on. Then he took it off again

"I can read in bed, which you can't," he observed. "Only, I can't help thinking, with all this town to pick from,

He was extremely quiet all the next day. Miss Boyd could hear him, behind the partition with its "Please

Keep Out" sign, fussing with bottles and occasionally whistling to himself. Once it was the Long, Long Trail,

"Sorry," he said. "I've got in the habit of thinking to the fool thing. Won't do it again."

"I am," he replied, grimly, and disappeared. She could hear the slight unevenness of his steps as he moved

about, but there was no more whistling. Edith Boyd leaned both elbows on the top of a showcase and fell into

a profound and troubled thought. Mostly her thoughts were of Willy Cameron, but some of them were for

herself. Up dreary and sordid bypaths her mind wandered; she was facing ugly facts for the first time, and a

little shudder of disgust shook her. He wanted to meet her family. He was a gentleman and he wanted to meet

her family. Well, he could meet them all right, and maybe he would understand then that she had never had a

chance. In all her young life no man had ever proposed letting her family look him over. Hardly ever had they

visited her at home, and when they did they seemed always glad to get away. She had met them on street

corners, and slipped back alone, fearful of every creak of the old staircase, and her mother's querulous voice

"I'm through with all that," she resolved. "It wasn't any fun anyhow. I'm sick of hating myself."

Some time later Willy Cameron heard the telephone ring, and taking pad and pencil started forward. But Miss

There was a rather lengthy silence while she listened. Then: "You might as well have it straight, Lou. I'm

through.... No, I'm not sick. I'm just through.... I wouldn't.... What's the use?"

Willy Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily conscious that the girl was on the verge of tears. He

puzzled over the situation for some time. His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature, and it had

dawned on him that this composed young lady who manicured her nails out of a pasteboard box during the

slack portion of every day was troubled. In his abstraction he commenced again his melancholy refrain, and a

"Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and tell me what's wrong. Here's a chair. Now sit down and talk it

"There's nothing the matter with me. And if the boss comes in here and finds me "

Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of the chair and began to cry. He was frightfully

distressed. He poured some aromatic ammonia into a medicine glass and picking up her limp hand, closed her

"It wasn't him. He doesn't matter. It's just I got to hating myself." She stood up and carefully dabbed her

eyes. "Heavens, I must be a sight. Now don't you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron. Girls can't go out and

Some time later he glanced out at her. She was standing before the little mirror above the chewing gum,

carefully rubbing her cheeks with a small red pad. After that she reached into the show case, got out a lip

Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life. The children of that group of families which formed the

monied aristocracy of the city knew only their own small circle. They met at dancing classes, where

governesses and occasionally mothers sat around the walls, while the little girls, in handmade white frocks of

exquisite simplicity, their shining hair drawn back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim little dip at the

door before entering, and the boys, in white Eton collars and gleaming pumps, bowed from the waist and then

No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then a brave spirit among the boys would

wander, with assumed unconsciousness but ears rather pink, to the opposite corner where the little girls were

The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one side, the boys on the other, a long line,

with Mrs. Van Buren in the center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to the girls.

The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself. Mrs. Van Buren turned. Another chord. The boys bent, rather too

much, from the waist, while Mrs. Van Buren swept another deep curtsey. The music now, very definite as to

time. Glide and short step to the right. Glide and short step to the left. Dancing school had commenced.

Outside were long lines of motors waiting. The governesses chatted, and sometimes embroidered.

Alton Denslow was generally known as Pink, but the origin of the name was shrouded in mystery. As "Pink"

he had learned to waltz at the dancing class, at a time when he was more attentive to the step than to the

music that accompanied it. As Pink Denslow he had played on a scrub team at Harvard, and got two broken

ribs for his trouble, and as Pink he now paid intermittent visits to the Denslow Bank, between the hunting

season in October and polo at eastern fields and in California. At twentythree he was still the boy of the

dancing class, very careful at parties to ask his hostess to dance, and not noticeably upset when she did,

Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily Cardew. There had been other girls, of

course, times when Lily seemed far away from Cambridge, and some other fair charmer was near. But he had

always known there was only Lily. Once or twice he would have become engaged, had it not been for that.

He was a blond boy, squarely built, goodlooking without being handsome, and on rainy Sundays when there

was no golf he went quite cheerfully to St. Peter's with his mother, and watched a pretty girl in the choir.

A pleasant cumberer of the earth, he had wrapped his talents in a napkin and buried them by the wayside, and

promptly forgotten where they were. He was to find them later on, however, not particularly rusty, and he

It was this pleasant cumberer of the earth, then, who on the morning after Lily's return, stopped his car before

the Cardew house and got out. Immediately following his descent he turned, took a square white box from the

car, ascended the steps, settled his neck in his collar and his tie around it, and rang the bell.

The second man, hastily buttoned into his coat and with a faint odor of silver polish about him, opened the

"Mrs. Cardew and Miss Cardew at home?" he asked. "Yes? Then you might tell Grayson I'm here to

Pink sauntered into the library. He was not so easy as his manner indicated. One never knew about Lily.

Sometimes she was in a mood when she seemed to think a man funny, and not to be taken seriously. And

when she was serious, which was the way he liked her he rather lacked humor she was never serious

about him or herself. It had been religion once, he remembered. She had wanted to know if he believed in the

thirtynine articles, and because he had seen them in the back of the prayerbook, where they certainly

"Well, I don't," said Lily. And there had been rather a bad halfhour, because he had felt that he had to stick

to his thirtynine guns, whatever they were. He had finished on a rather desperate note of appeal.

"See here, Lily," he had said. "Why do you bother your head about such things, anyhow?"

"Eternity's pretty long. Do you believe in eternity?" And there they were, off again, and of course old

Anthony had come in after that, and had wanted to know about his Aunt Marcia, and otherwise had shown

Pink was afraid of Anthony. He felt like a stammering fool when Anthony was around. That was why he had

When he heard Lily coming down the stairs, Pink's honest heart beat somewhat faster. A good many times in

France, but particularly on the ship coming back, he had thought about this meeting. In France a fellow had a

lot of distractions, and Lily had seemed as dear as ever, but extremely remote. But once turned toward home,

and she had filled the entire western horizon. The other men had seen sunsets there, and sometimes a ship, or

"Needn't have worried," he said, rather thickly. "Didn't get to the front until just before the end. My show was

made a labor division in the south of France. If you laugh, I'll take my flowers and go home."

"Why, Pink dear, I wouldn't laugh for anything. And it was the man behind the lines who "

"Won the war," he finished for her, rather grimly. "All right, Lily. We've heard it before. Anyhow, it's all

"Yes, and it's sweet of you. Now sit down and tell me about things. I've got a lot to tell you, too."

He had a sort of quiet obstinacy, however, and he did not sit down. When she had done so he stood in front of

"You've been in a camp. I know that. I heard it over there. Anne Devereaux wrote me. It worried me because

we had girls in the camps over there, and every one of them had a string of suitors a mile long."

"Well, I didn't," said Lily, spiritedly. Then she laughed. He had been afraid she would laugh. "Oh, Pink, how

dear and funny and masculine you are! I have a perfectly uncontrollable desire to kiss you."

Which she did, to his amazement and consternation. Nothing she could have done would more effectually

"If he comes in I shall probably do it again. Pink, you darling child, you are still the little boy at Mrs. Van

Buren's and if you would only purse your lips and count one two three Are you staying to luncheon?"

He was suffering terribly. Also he felt strangely empty inside, because something that he had carried around

She sat very still. She had had to do it, had had to show him, somehow, that she loved him without loving

him as he wanted her to. She had acted on impulse, on an impulse born of intention, but she had hurt him. It

"There's nothing to be angry about," he said, stolidly. "Things have been going on, with me, and staying

where they've always been, with you. That's all. I'm not very keen, you know, and I used to think Your

"Well, I'll trot along." He moved a step, hesitated. "Is there anybody else, Lily?"

"You won't mind if I hang around a bit, then? You can always send me off when you are sick of me. Which

In the end he stayed to luncheon, and managed to eat a very fair one. But he had little lapses into silence, and

"He's such a nice boy, Lily," she said, after he had gone. "And your grandfather would like it. In a way I think

"I want to marry a man, mother. Pink is a boy. He will always be a boy. He doesn't think; he just feels. He is

"I wish," said Grace Cardew unhappily, "I wish you had never gone to that camp."

All afternoon Lily and Grace shopped. Lily was fitted into shining evening gowns, into bright little afternoon

frocks, into Paris wraps. The Cardew name was whispered through the shops, and great piles of exotic things

were brought in for Grace's critical eye. Lily's own attitude was joyously carefree. Long lines of models

walked by, draped in furs, in satins and velvet and chiffon, tall girls, most of them, with hair carefully

dressed, faces delicately tinted and that curious forward thrust at the waist and slight advancement of one

"The only way I could get that twist," Lily confided to her mother, "would be to stand that way and be done

Sometimes, during the few hours since her arrival, Lily had wondered if her year's experiences had coarsened

her. There were so many times when her mother raised her eyebrows. She knew that she had changed, that

the granddaughter of old Anthony Cardew who had come back from the war was not the girl who had gone

away. She had gone away amazingly ignorant; what little she had known of life she had learned away at

school. But even there she had not realized the possibility of wickedness and vice in the world. One of the

girls had run away with a music master who was married, and her name was forbidden to be mentioned. That

She had never heard of prostitution. Near the camp there was a district with a bad name, and the girls of her

organization were forbidden to so much as walk in that direction. It took her a long time to understand, and

she suffered horribly when she did. There were depths of wickedness, then, and of abasement like that in the

world. It was a bad world, a cruel, sordid world. She did not want to live in it.

She had had to reorganize all her ideas of life after that. At first she was flamingly indignant. God had made

His world clean and beautiful, and covered it with flowers and trees that grew, cleanly begotten, from the

earth. Why had He not stopped there? Why had He soiled it with passion and lust?

"Very well," she said. "I see what you mean. But trees and flowers are not God's most beautiful gift to the

"Oh, yes, you are. You have never loved, have you? You are talking of one of the many things that go to

make up love, and out of that one phase of love comes the most wonderful thing in the world. He gives us the

"All bodies are not whole, and not all souls. It is wrong to judge life by its exceptions, or love by its

It had been the little nurse finally who cured her, for she secured Lily's removal to that shady house on a

bystreet, where the tragedies of unwise love and youth sought sanctuary. There were prayers there, morning

and evening. They knelt, those girls, in front of their little wooden chairs, and by far the great majority of

them quite simply laid their burdens before God, and with an equal simplicity, felt that He would help them

"We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and

desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws.... Restore Thou those who are penitent,

according to Thy promises.... And grant, Oh most merciful Father, that we may hereafter live a godly,

After a time Lily learned something that helped her. The soul was greater and stronger than the body and than

the mind. The body failed. It sinned, but that did not touch the unassailable purity and simplicity of the soul.

Lily rose and buttoned her coat. Grace was fastening her sables, and making a delayed decision in satins.

"I was thinking, while we were ordering all that stuff. She is a Cardew, mother. She ought to be having that

sort of thing. And just because grandfather hates her husband, she hasn't anything."

"That is rather silly, dear. They are not in want. I believe he is quite flourishing."

Grace followed her with uneasy eyes. For years she paid a price for peace, and not a small price. She had

placed her pride on the domestic altar, and had counted it a worthy sacrifice for Howard's sake. And she had

succeeded. She knew Anthony Cardew had never forgiven her and would never like her, but he gave her, now

And now Lily had come home, a new and different Lily, with her father's lovableness and his father's

obstinacy. Already Grace saw in the girl the beginning of a passionate protest against things as they were.

Perhaps, had Grace given to Lily the great love of her life, instead of to Howard, she might have understood

her less clearly. As it was, she shivered slightly as she got into the limousine.

Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through which the taxi was passing. She knew

vaguely that she was in the vicinity of one of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any of the Cardew

plants. She had never been permitted to do so. Perhaps the neighborhood would have impressed her more had

she not seen, in the camp, that life can be stripped sometimes to its essentials, and still have lost very little.

But the dinginess depressed her. Smoke was in the atmosphere, like a heavy fog. Soot lay on the

windowsills, and mingled with street dust to form little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river

steamers, guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were gray with soft coal smoke. The foam of

the river falling in broken cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast.

Everywhere she began to see her own name. "Cardew" was on the ore hopper cars that were moving slowly

along a railroad spur. One of the steamers bore "Anthony Cardew" in tall black letters on its side. There was a

Aunt Elinor lived on Cardew Way. She wondered if Aunt Elinor found that curious, as she did. Did she resent

these everpresent reminders of her lost family? Did she have any bitterness because the very grayness of her

Yet there was comfort, stability and a certain dignity about Aunt Elinor's house when she reached it. It stood

in the district, but not of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave indication of being a

flower garden in summer. There were two large gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had

been swept to the last degree of neatness. The steps were freshly scoured, and a small brass doorplate, like a

Suddenly she was glad she had come. The little brick house looked anything but tragic, with its shining

windows, its white curtains and its evenly drawn shades. Through the windows on the right came a flickering

She had braced herself to meet Aunt Elinor at the door, but an elderly woman opened it.

She did not ask Lily's name, but left her in the dark little hall and creaked up the stairs. Lily hesitated. Then,

feeling that Aunt Elinor might not like to find her so unceremoniously received, she pushed open a door

which was only partly closed, and made a step into the room. Only then did she see that it was occupied. A

man sat by the fire, reading. He was holding his book low, to get the light from the fire, and he turned slowly

"I beg your pardon," Lily said. "I am calling on Mrs. Doyle, and when I saw the firelight "

He stood up then, a tall, thin man, with closecropped gray mustache and heavy gray hair above a high,

bulging forehead. She had never seen Jim Doyle, but Mademoiselle had once said that he had pointed ears,

like a satyr. She had immediately recanted, on finding Lily searching in a book for a picture of a satyr. This

man had ears pointed at the top. Lily was too startled then to analyze his face, but later on she was to know

well the high, intellectual forehead, the keen sunken eyes, the full but firmly held mouth and pointed,

"Just a moment." He went out, closing the door behind him, and she heard him going quickly up the stairs. A

door closed above, and a weight settled down on the girl's heart. He was not going to let her see Aunt Elinor.

She was frightened, but she was angry, too. She would not run away. She would wait until he came down,

and if he was insolent, well, she could be haughty. She moved to the fire and stood there, slightly flushed, but

She heard him coming down again almost immediately. He was outside the door. But he did not come in at

once. She had a sudden impression that he was standing there, his hand on the knob, outlining what he meant

to say to her when he showed the door to a hated Cardew. Afterwards she came to know how right that

impression was. He was never spontaneous. He was a man who debated everything, calculated everything

When he came in it was slowly, and with his head bent, as though he still debated within himself. Then:

"I think I have a right to ask what Anthony Cardew's granddaughter is doing in my house."

"I assure you that is all," Lily said haughtily. "It had not occurred to me that you would be here."

"I dare say. Still, strangely enough, I do spend a certain amount of time in my home."

"Wait," he said slowly. "I haven't forbidden her to see you. I asked her to wait. I wanted a few moments. You

She hated him. She loathed his cold eyes, his long, slim white hands. She hated him until he fascinated her.

He went out again, but this time it was the elderly maid who went up the stairs. Doyle himself came back,

and stood before her on the hearth rug. He was slightly smiling, and the look of uncertainty was gone.

"Now that you've seen me, I'm not absolutely poisonous, am I, Miss Lily? You don't mind my calling you

"By Jove, the truth from a Cardew!" Then: "That's an old habit of mine, damning the Cardews. I'll have to try

to get over it, if they are going to reestablish family relations." He was laughing at her, Lily knew, and she

He smiled again, this time not unpleasantly, and suddenly he threw into his rich Irish voice an unexpected

"You mustn't mind me, Miss Lily. I have no reason to love your family, but I am very happy that you came

here today. My wife has missed her people. If you'll run in like this now and then it will do her worlds of

She rather liked him for that speech. He was totally unlike what she had been led to expect, and she felt a sort

of resentment toward her family for misleading her. He was a gentleman, on the surface at least. He had not

been overcordial at first, but then who could have expected cordiality under the circumstances? In Lily's

defense it should be said that the vicissitudes of Elinor's life with Doyle had been kept from her always. She

had but two facts to go on: he had beaten her grandfather as a young man, for a cause, and he held views as to

He was all dignity and charm then. They needed youth in that quiet place. They ought all to be able to forget

the past, which was done with, anyhow. He showed the first genuine interest she had found in her work at the

And all the time he was watching her with calculating eyes. He was a gambler with life, and he rather

"Thank you," he said gravely, when she had finished. "You have done a lot to bridge the gulf that lies I am

sure you have noticed it between the people who saw service in this war and those who stayed at home."

Suddenly Lily saw that the gulf between her family and herself was just that, which was what he had

When Elinor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed and eager, and her husband smiling,

To Lily, Elinor Doyle had been for years a figure of mystery. She had not seen her for many years, and she

had, remembered a thin, girlish figure, tragiceyed, which eternally stood by a window in her room, looking

out. But here was a matronly woman, her face framed with soft, dark hair, with eyes like her father's, with

Howard Cardew's ease of manner, too, but with a strange passivity, either of repression or of fires early

Lily was vaguely disappointed. Aunt Elinor, in soft gray silk, matronly, assured, unenthusiastically pleased to

see her; Doyle himself, cheerful and suave; the neat servant; the fire lit, comfortable room, there was no

drama in all that, no hint of mystery or tragedy. All the hatred at home for an impulsive assault of years ago,

"Yes, of course. I keep forgetting. I live so quietly here that the days go by faster than I know." She put Lily

"Grandfather is very well. Father looks tired. There is some trouble at the mill, I think."

Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her Aunt Elinor was less glad to have her

there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed inclined to make up for Elinor's lack of enthusiasm by his own. He

"Weather's raw," he said. "Sure you are comfortable now? And why not have dinner here? We have an

interesting man coming, and we don't often have the chance to offer our guests a charming young lady."

"Lily only came home yesterday, Jim," Elinor observed. "Her own people will want to see something of her.

Lily felt slightly chilled. For years she had espoused her Aunt Elinor's cause; in the early days she had

painfully hemstitched a small handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to Aunt Elinor's

varying addresses at Christmas. She had felt a childish resentment of Elinor Doyle's martyrdom. And now

"Her father and grandfather are dining out tonight." Had Lily looked up she would have seen Doyle's eyes

"There is a dinner tonight, for the " He checked himself "The steel manufacturers are having a meeting,"

he finished. "I believe to discuss me, among other things. Amazing the amount of discussion my simple

"I hope you will stay, Lily," she said. "You can telephone, if you like. I don't see you often, and there is so

In the end Lily agreed. She would find out from Grayson if the men were really dining out, and if they were

Grayson would notify her mother that she was staying. She did not quite know herself why she had accepted,

unless it was because she was bored and restless at home. Perhaps, too, the lure of doing a forbidden thing

influenced her subconsciously, the thought that her grandfather would detest it. She had not forgiven him

Jim Doyle left her in the back hall at the telephone, and returned to the sitting room, dosing the door behind

"I tried, Jim. You must remember I hardly know her." She got up and placed her hand on his arm, but he

shook it off. "I don't understand, Jim, and I wish you wouldn't. What good is it?"

"I've told you what I want. I want that girl to come here, and to like coming here. That's plain, isn't it? But if

you're going to sit with a frozen face She'll be useful. Useful as hell to a preacher."

"You and your family! Now listen, Elinor. This isn't a matter o the Cardews and me. It may be nothing, but it

may be a big thing. I hardly know yet " His voice trailed off; he stood with his head bent, lost in those

The doorbell rang, and was immediately followed by the opening and closing of the front door.

>From her station at the telephone Lily Cardew saw a man come in, little more than a huge black shadow,

which placed a hat on the stand and then, striking a match, lighted the gas overhead. In the illumination he

stood before the mirror, smoothing back his shining black hair. Then he saw her, stared and retreated into the

The gentleman seemed highly amused. Evidently he considered Lily's presence in the house in the nature of a

huge joke. He was conveying this by pantomime, in deference to the open door, when Doyle nodded toward

"Easiest thing I do," boasted the new arrival cheerily. "'Lo, Mrs. Doyle. Is our niece going to dine with us?"

"I don't know yet, Mr. Akers," she said, without warmth. Louis Akers knew quite well that Elinor did not like

him, and the thought amused him, the more so since as a rule women liked him rather too well. Deep in his

heart he respected Jim Doyle's wife, and sometimes feared her. He respected her because she had behind her

traditions of birth and wealth, things he professed to despise but secretly envied. He feared her because he

She loved Jim Doyle, but he had watched her, and he knew that sometimes she hated Doyle also. He knew

that could be, because there had been women who had both loved and hated himself.

"You'd better look over it," continued Lou. "I don't want to be jailed. You're better at skating over thin ice

than I am. And I've been thinking over the Prohibition matter, Jim. In a sense you're right. It will make them

sullen and angry. But they won't go the limit without booze. I'd advise cacheing a lot of it somewhere, to be

Doyle returned to his old place on the hearthrug, still thoughtful. He had paid no attention to Aker's views

"Do you know that that girl in the hall will be worth forty million dollars some day?"

"Some money," said Akers, calmly. "Which reminds me, Jim, that I've got to have a raise. And pretty soon."

"Tell them to leave me alone, then," said Akers, stretching out his long legs. "All right. We'll talk about that,

Doyle looked at him quickly. Akers' speech about women had crystallized the vague plans which Lily's

arrival had suddenly given rise to. He gave the young man a careful scrutiny, from his handsome head to his

feet, and smiled. It had occurred to him that the Cardew family would loathe a man of Louis Akers' type with

"You might try to make her have a pleasant evening," he suggested dryly. "And, to do that, it might be as

well to remember a number of things, one of which is that she is accustomed to the society of gentlemen."

"She hates her grandfather like poison," Doyle went on. "She doesn't know it, but she does. A little education,

Like Doyle, Akers loved the game of life, and he liked playing for high stakes. He had joined forces with

Doyle because the game was dangerous and exciting, rather than because of any real conviction. Doyle had a

fanatic faith, with all his calculation, but Louis Akers had only calculation and ambition. A practicing

attorney in the city, a specialist in union law openly, a Red in secret, he played his triple game shrewdly and

Doyle turned to go, then stopped and came back. "I was forgetting something," he said, slowly. "What

"I had left something there," Akers said sullenly. "That's the truth, whether you believe it or not. I wasn't

"You're a fool, Louis," Doyle said coldly. "You'll play that game once too often. What happens to you is your

own concern, but what may happen to me is mine. And I'll take mighty good care it doesn't happen."

Doyle was all unction and hospitality when he met Lily in the hall. At dinner he was brilliant, witty, the

gracious host. Akers played up to him. At the foot of the table Elinor sat, outwardly passive, inwardly

puzzled, and watched Lily. She knew the contrast the girl must be drawing, between the bright little meal,

with its simple service and clever talk, and those dreary formal dinners at home when old Anthony sometimes

never spoke at all, or again used his caustic tongue like a scourge. Elinor did not hate her father; he was

simply no longer her father. As for Howard, she had had a childish affection for him, but he had gone away

early to school, and she hardly knew him. But she did not want his child here, drinking in as she was, without

clearly understanding what they meant, Doyle's theories of unrest and revolution.

"You will find that I am an idealist, in a way," he was saying. "That is, if you come often. I hope you will, by

the way. I am perpetually dissatisfied with things as they are, and wanting them changed. With the single

exception of my wife" he bowed to Elinor, "and this little party, which is delightful."

"Don't talk politics, Jim," Elinor hastily interposed. He caught her eye and grinned.

"For one thing, I don't believe that any one should have a lot of money, so that a taxicab could remain ticking

away fabulous sums while a charming young lady dines at her leisure." He smiled again.

"Will it be a lot?" Lily asked. "I thought I'd better keep him, because " She hesitated.

"Because this neighborhood is unlikely to have a cab stand? You were entirely right. But I can see that you

won't like my idealistic community. You see, in it everybody will have enough, and nobody will have too

"Don't take him too seriously, Miss Cardew," said Akers, bending forward. "You and I know that there isn't

Elinor changed the subject; as a girl she had drawn rather well, and she had retained her interest in that form

of art. There was an exhibition in town of colored drawings. Lily should see them. But Jim Doyle countered

"I forgot to mention," he said, "that in this ideal world we were discussing the arts will flourish. Not at once,

"Per aspera ad astra," put in Louis Akers. "You cannot change a world in a day, without revolution "

Lily found Louis Akers interesting. Certainly he was very handsome. And after all, why should there be

misery and hunger in the world? There must be enough for all. It was hardly fair, for instance, that she should

have so much, and others scarcely anything. Only it was like thinking about religion; you didn't get anywhere

with it. You wanted to be good, and tried to be. And you wanted to love God, only He seemed so far away,

mostly. And even that was confusing, because you prayed to God to be forgiven for wickedness, but it was to

One could be sorry for the poor, and even give away all one had, but that would only help a few. It would

have to be that every one who had too much would give up all but what he needed.

"Exactly," said Jim Doyle. "Only in my new world we realize that there would be a few craven spirits who

might not willingly give up what they have. In that case it would be taken from them."

He had a fascinating theory of individualism, too; no man should impose his will and no community its laws,

on the individual. Laws were for slaves. Ethics were better than laws, to control.

"Although," he added, urbanely, "I daresay it might be difficult to convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a

While Louis Akers saw Lily to her taxicab that night Doyle stood in the hall, waiting. He was very content

"She's a nice child," he said. In his eyes was the look of the hunting animal that scents food.

Lily did not sleep very well that night. She was repentant, for one thing, for her mother's evening alone, and

"I've been so worried," she said, "I was afraid your grandfather would get back before you did."

"I'm sorry, mother dear. I know it was selfish. But I've had a wonderful evening."

"All sorts of talk," Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her mother would not understand, and it would only

make her uneasy. "I suppose it is rank hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle."

"I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us. Lily, I want you to promise not to go back there."

There was a little silence. A small feeling of rebellion was rising in the girl's heart.

"Please don't ask me, mother. I oh, don't you understand? It is interesting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to

"Were there any other people there to dinner?" Grace asked, with sudden suspicion.

"Not very young. In his thirties, I should think," Lily hesitated again. She had meant to tell her mother of the

engagement for the next day, but Grace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meet Louis

Akers at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond the fact that she had met him at the Doyle house,

"I hardly know," Lily said frankly. "In your sense of the word, perhaps not, mother. But he is very clever."

Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book. She never retired until Howard came in. And Lily went

upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant. She must live her own life, somehow; have her own friends; think her

own thoughts. The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down on her. It would squeeze her dry, in

She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city. Behind her was her warm, luxurious room, her

deep, soft bed. Yet all through the city there were those who did not sleep warm and soft. Close by, perhaps,

in that deteriorated neighborhood, there were children that very night going to bed hungry.

Because things had always been like that, should they always be so? Wasn't Mr. Doyle right, after all? Only

he went very far. You couldn't, for instance, take from a man the thing he had earned. What about the people

She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to Willy Cameron.

She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft white nightgown, passionately in revolt against the

injustice which gave to her so much and to others so little. And against that quiet domestic tyranny which was

Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough. Louis Akers met her there, and carefully made the rounds

"I'll tell you something, now it's over," he said, his bold eyes fixed on hers. "I loathe galleries and pictures. I

wanted to see you again. That's all. You see, I am starting in by being honest with you."

"Because they are only imitations of life. I like life." He pushed his teacup away. "I don't want tea either. Tea

was an excuse, too." He smiled at her. "Perhaps you don't like honesty," he said. "If you don't you won't care

She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness and effrontery, but he made her vaguely

uneasy. He knew so many things, and yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense of

the word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. He made her insistently conscious of her

And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. She thought, trying to drink her tea

quietly, that he might be very terrible if he loved any one. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind his

But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in her father's way but with highcolored, almost

dramatic good looks. There could be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely took his eyes off

Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised frank eyes to his.

"I am afraid not," she said. "You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's, and you must know that my people and

"What has that got to do with you and me?" Then he laughed. "Might be unpleasant, I suppose. But you go to

"And you put up with that sort of thing?" He leaned closer to her. "You are not a baby, you know. But I will

"Bosh," he said, abruptly. "You go there as often as you can. Elinor Doyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all

right. You pick your own friends, my child, and live your own life. Every human being has that right."

He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her rather more assistance than she required, and

then standing bareheaded in the March wind until the car had moved away. Lily, sitting back in her corner,

was both repelled and thrilled. He was totally unlike the men she knew, those carefully repressed,

conventional cleancut boys, like Pink Denslow. He was raw, vigorous and possibly brutal. She did not quite

like him, but she found herself thinking about him a great deal. The old life was reaching out its friendly, idle

hands toward her. The next day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay little affair of color, chatter

and movement. But Lily found herself with little to say. Her year away had separated her from the small

community of interest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her sitting room

later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and

Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle, carefully guarded. They belonged

together, they and the men who likewise belonged. Now and then there would be changes. A new man, of

irreproachable family connections would come to live in the city, and cause a small flurry. Then in time he

would be appropriated. Or a girl would come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would come

back later, permanently. Always the same faces, the same small talk. Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or

rose or blue or yellow frocks at dinners and dances. Golf at the country club. Travel, in the Cardew private

car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting. Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at

seeing moving picture stars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand. One never had a chance to meet

And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut away in his upstairs room, but holding the

threads of all their lives as a spider clutches the diverging filaments of its web.

"Get in on this, Lily," said a clear young voice. "We're talking about the most interesting men we met in our

"I knew a lot of men. They were not so very interesting. There was a little nurse

"There was one awfully nice boy. He wasn't a soldier, but he was very kind to the men. They adored him."

But they were surfeited with nice young men. They wanted something dramatic, and Willy Cameron was

essentially undramatic. Besides, it was quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap made

"'Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're hiding some one behind this kind person. You must have met somebody

"Not in the camp. I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not in the army. Not a Socialist, really. Much

Their interest died. She could have revived it, she knew, if she mentioned Louis Akers; he would have

answered to their prime requisite in an interesting man. He was both handsome and young. But she felt

The party broke up. By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figures went down the great staircase, where

Grayson stood in the hall and the footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle,

watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of comfort and wellbeing after they had all

gone. This was as it should be. Lily would take up life again where she had left it off, and all would be well.

It was now the sixth day, and she had not yet carried out that absurd idea of asking Ellen's friend to dinner.

"Woman," corrected Willy Cameron. "The word 'lady' is now obsolete, since your sex has entered the

"I said 'lady' and that's what I mean," said Edith. "'May I speak to Mr. Cameron?'" she mimicked. "Regular

Suddenly Willy Cameron went rather pale. If it should be Lily Cardew but then of course it wouldn't be.

It was Lily. Something that had been like a band around his heart suddenly loosened, to fasten about his

Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around. There was no one about save Miss Boyd, who was polishing

"I didn't know," said Willy Cameron. "I didn't know what your people would think. That's all. Tomorrow at

He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood looking out and seeing nothing. She had not

forgotten. He was going to see her. Instead of standing across the street by the park fence, waiting for a

glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her. There would be eight from eleven was

What a wonderful day it was! Spring was surely near. He would like to be able to go and pick up Jinx, and

then take a long walk through the park. He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt

"'May I come in a business suit?'" she mimicked him. "My evening clothes have not arrived yet. 'My valet's

Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist, he caught the bitterness under her

"But it is," he said, genuinely concerned. "Why in the world should I give you a wrong name?"

"Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what will happen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here

about six weeks. Then you'll get a job at the Cardew Mills. They use chemists there, and you will be "

Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man, for instance, whose name he

had learned was Louis Akers, did not come any more. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had been

distinctly a grade above that competent young person, Edith Boyd, if there were such grades these days;

fluent and prosperouslooking, and probably able to offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over.

He had heard her doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask her about Akers she had cut him off curtly.

It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at seventhirty in the morning and was off at six, and the

next he came at ten and stayed until eleven at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Men

wandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a toothbrush, and sat or stood around for an hour or so;

clerks whose families had gone to the movies, bachelors who found their lodging houses dreary, a young

doctor or two, coming in after evening office hours to leave a prescription, and remaining to talk and listen.

The wealthy had their clubs. The workmen of the city had their balls and sometimes their saloons. But in

between was that vast, unorganized male element which was neither, and had neither. To them the

neighborhood pharmacy, open in the evening, warm and bright, gave them a rendezvous. They gathered there

in thousands, the country over. During the war they fought their daily battles there, with newspaper maps.

After the war the League of Nations, local politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal, washed down with soft

The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with the advent of Willy Cameron it was

attaining a new popularity. The roundsman on the beat dropped in, the political boss of the ward, named

Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, the young physician who lived across the street, and others. Back of the store

proper was a room, with the prescription desk at one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three.

Here were a table and a half dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing with colored pins the last positions

before the great allied advance, and an ancient hatrack, which had held from time immemorial an umbrella

"Going to watch this boy," Hendricks confided to Doctor Smalley a night or two after Lily's return, meeting

"He can read my writing, too, which is more than I can do myself. What do you mean, watch him?"

But whatever his purposes Mr. Hendricks kept them to himself. A big, burly man, with a fund of practical

good sense a keen knowledge of men, he had gained a small but loyal following. He was a retired master

plumber, with a small income from careful investments, and he had a curious, almost fanatic love for the city.

"I was born here," he would say, boastfully. "And I've seen it grow from fifty thousand to what it's got now.

But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drug store forum found Willy Cameron extremely silent. He had

been going over his weaknesses, for the thought of Lily always made him humble, and one of them was that

he got carried away by things and talked too much. He did not intend to do that the next night, at the

"Something's scared him off," said Mr. Hendricks to Doctor Smalley, after a half hour of almost taciturnity,

while Willy Cameron smoked his pipe and listened. "Watch him rise to this, though." And aloud:

"Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations, which none of you knows a damn about anyhow, and get

"I'll bite," said Mr. Clarey, who sold life insurance in the daytime and sometimes utilized his evenings in a

"All right," said Mr. Hendricks. "Laugh while you can. I saw the Chief of Police today, and he's got a line of

conversation that makes a man feel like taking his savings out of the bank and burying them in the back

Mr. Hendricks nudged Doctor Smalley, who rose manfully to the occasion. "What does he say?"

"Says the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here. Not all Russians either. Some of our Americans are in

"All over the country. But this is a good field for them. The crust's pretty thin here, and where that's the case

there is likely to be earthquakes and eruptions. The Chief says they're bringing in a bunch of gunmen,

wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial town on the map. Did you get that, Cameron? Gunmen!"

"Any of you men here dissatisfied with this form of government?" inquired Willy, rather truculently.

"Not so you could notice it," said Mr. Clarey. "And once the Republican party gets in "

"That's why," said Willy Cameron. "Of course you are worthless now. You aren't organized. You don't know

how many you are or how strong you are. You can't talk. You sit back and listen until you believe that this

country is only capital and labor. You get squeezed in between them. You see labor getting more money than

you, and howling for still more. You see both capital and labor raising prices until you can't live on what you

get. There are a hundred times as many of you as represent capital and labor combined, and all you do is loaf

here and growl about things being wrong. Why don't you do something? You ought to be running this

country, but you aren't. You're lazy. You don't even vote. You leave running the country to men like Mr.

"All right, son," he said, "I do my bit and like it. Go on. Don't stop to insult me. You can do that any time."

"I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came," said Willy Cameron. "It's preaching a revolution, all

right. I'd like to see its foreign language copies. They'll never overthrow the government, but they may try.

Why don't you fellows combine to fight them? Why don't you learn how strong you are? Ninetenths of the

"What'd I tell you?" whispered Hendricks. "Got them, hasn't he? If he'd suggest arming them with pop bottles

and attacking that gang of anarchists at the cobbler's down the street, they'd do it this minute."

"All right, son," he offered. "We'll combine. Anything you say goes. And we'll get the Jim

"I do," said Hendricks. "But that needn't prejudice you against me any. He's a bad actor, and as smooth as

butter. D'you know what their plan is? They expect to take the city. This city! The " Mr. Hendrick's voice

"The police," said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, "are as filled with sedition as a whale with corset bones.

"The hell they are," said the roundsman aggressively. But Willy Cameron was staring through the smoke

"They might do it, for a while," he said thoughtfully. "There's a tremendous foreign population in the mill

towns around, isn't there? Does anybody in the crowd own a revolver? Or know how to use it if he has one

"I've got one," said the insurance agent. "Don't know how it would work. Found my wife nailing oilcloth with

"Very well. If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need a battery of eightinch guns, would they?"

A little silence fell on the group. Around them the city went about its business; the roar of the day had

softened to muffled night sounds, as though one said: "The city sleeps. Be still." The red glare of the mills

was the fire on the hearth. The hills were its four protecting walls. And the night mist covered it like a

"Here's one representative of the plain people," said Mr. Hendricks, "who is going home to get some sleep.

And tomorrow I'll buy me a gun, and if I can keep the children out of the yard I'll learn to use it."

For a long time after he went home that night Willy Cameron paced the floor of his upper room, paced it until

an irate boarder below hammered on his chandelier. Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth, now

and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willy Cameron's mind was active and not particularly coordinate.

The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boyd and Louis Akers; the plain people; an army marching to the city to loot

and burn and rape, and another army meeting it, saying: "You shall not pass"; Abraham Lincoln, Russia, Lily.

His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardew. He had neglected to cover Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on

the bed and snuggled close to him. He threw an end of the blanket over him and lay there, staring into the

darkness. He was frightfully lonely. At last he fell asleep, and the March wind, coming in through the open

window, overturned a paper leaning against his collar box, on which he had carefully written:

Going home that night Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd, and accompanied her for a block or two. At his corner

"About the same. She isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks. She's just low spirited, but that's enough. I hate to go

"Still, home's a pretty good place," he said. "Especially for a pretty girl." There was unmistakable meaning in

"Sure you have," he agreed affably. "But playing around with Louis Akers is like playing with a

handgrenade, Edith." She said nothing. "I'd cut him out, little girl. He's poor stuff. Mind, I'm not saying he's

a fool, but he's a bad actor. Now if I was a pretty girl, and there was a nice fellow around like this Cameron,

I'd be likely to think he was all right. He's got brains." Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration for brains.

"Well, don't judge them all by Akers. This is my corner. Goodnight. Not afraid to go on by yourself, are

"Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith. Haven't seen him since he came back from France."

She went on, her steps lagging. She hated going home. When she reached the little house she did not go in at

once. The March night was not cold, and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light go out in the

secondstory front windows. But it continued to burn steadily, and at last, with a gesture of despair, she rose

She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hear the faint scurrying of water beetles over

the oilclothcovered floor, and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her, and

something crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That new clerk at the store was always talking

about homes. What did he know of squalid city houses, with their insects and rats, their damp, moldy cellars,

their hateful plumbing? A thought struck her. She lighted the gas and stared around. It was as she had

expected. The dishes had not been washed. They were piled in the sink, and a soiled dishtowel had been

She lowered the gas and went upstairs. The hardness had, somehow, gone out of her when she thought of

"It's always bad. But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down my arm that's driving me crazy. I couldn't

Mrs. Boyd complied. She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties, who had set out to conquer life and

had been conquered by it. The hopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the incident of

her widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly. She had accepted Dan's going to France resignedly, with

neither protest nor undue anxiety. She had never been very close to Dan, although she loved him more than

she did Edith. She was the sort of woman who has no fundamental knowledge of men. They had to be fed and

mended for, and they had strange physical wants that made a great deal of trouble in the world. But mostly

they ate and slept and went to work in the morning, and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer.

There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life, however. And through it she had seen Edith well

married, with perhaps a girl to do the house work, and a room where Edith's mother could fold her hands and

"You mean you've quarreled? Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a nice home and everything."

"You could have had him. He was crazy about you. Trouble is with you, you think you've got a fellow hard

Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl. "Listen, mother," she said. "I give you my word,

Lou'd run a mile if he thought any girl wanted to marry him. I know him better than you do. If any one ever

"I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie. No, don't open the window. The

Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Something would have to be done about the house.

Dan was taking to staying out at nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him. And there was the question

of food. Her mother had never learned to cook, and recently more and more of the food had been something

warmed out of a tin. If only they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes. There was a room

on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidy harborings of years, that might be used for a

servant. Or she could move up there, and they could get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman to come in

She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had in mind was Willy Cameron. But the

knowledge that he knew the Cardews had somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from this

sordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to it afterwards. She saw him there, at the

Cardews, surrounded by bowing flunkies a picture of wealth gained from the movies and by women who

moved indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room and conservatory in low gowns without sleeves,

and draped with ropes of pearls. Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for money.

"Mother," she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, "we've got to change things around here. It isn't fair to

Dan, for one thing. We've got to get a girl to do the work. And to do that we'll have to rent a room."

"I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going to let the neighbors begin looking down on

"But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all but three evenings a week. I

don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the store isn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog, and they haven't any yard.

"I won't be bothered with any dog," said the querulous voice, from the darkness.

With a gesture of despair the girl turned away. What was the use, anyhow? Let them go on, then, her mother

and Dan. Only let them let her go on, too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the whole rotten

Her mood of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock, Louis Akers sauntered in for the

first time in days, she looked at him somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it matter?

So long as something took her for a little while away from the sordidness of home, its stale odors, its

"What's got into you lately, Edith?" he inquired, lowering his voice. "You used to be the best little pal ever.

She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be that night, and her face hardened. Had

any one told Edith that she was beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, with his

exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and his sentimental whistling, she would have

laughed. But he gave her something that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of selfrespect. It was

perhaps not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled her to care more for herself.

"I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside work, and the organization came over.

I've been after it for six months. We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the

"Quick, aren't you?" He smiled down at where she stood, firmly entrenched behind a show case. "Well, don't

He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He did not know, nor would have cared had he

known, that her acceptance of his invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and of the

Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire. His man had put out his dinner clothes and

In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices. Before Lily's return, now and then

when he was tired Grace and he had dined by the fire in her boudoir. It had been very restful. He was still in

love with his wife, although, as in most marriages, there was one who gave more than the other. In this case it

was Grace who gave, and Howard who received. But he loved her. He never thought of other women. Only

Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his father's eyes, rather than his own.

He had put up a hard fight with his father. Not about Grace. That was over and done with, although it had

been bad while it lasted. But his real struggle had been to preserve himself, to keep his faiths and his ideals,

and even his personality. In the inessentials he had yielded easily, and so bought peace. Or perhaps a truce, of

a sort. But for the essentials he was standing with a sort of dogged conviction that if he lowered his flag it

would precipitate a crisis. He was not brilliant, but he was intelligent, progressive and kindly. He knew that

There was going to be a strike. The quarrel now was between Anthony's curt "Let them strike," and his own

conviction that a strike at this time might lead to even worse things. 'The men's demands were exorbitant. No

business, no matter how big, could concede them and live. But Howard was debating another phase of the

Not all the mills would go down. A careful canvass of some of the other independent concerns had shown the

men eighty, ninety, even one hundred per cent, loyal. Those were the smaller plants, where there had always

been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners and the men; there the men knew the owners, and the

But the Cardew Mills would go down. There had been no liaison between the Cardews and the workmen. The

very magnitude of the business forbade that. And for many years, too, the Cardews had shown a gross

callousness to the welfare of the laborers. Long ago he had urged on his father the progressive attitude of

other steel men, but Anthony had jeered, and when Howard had forced the issue and gained concessions, it

was too late. The old grievances remained in too many minds. To hate the Cardews bad become a habit. Their

past sins would damn them now. The strike was wrong, a wicked thing. It was without reason and without

There was a tap at his door, and he called "Come in." From her babyhood Lily had had her own peculiar

method of signaling that she stood without, a delicate rapid tattoo of finger nails on the panel. He watched

"Well!" she said. "Thank goodness you haven't started to dress. I tried to get here earlier, but my hair

"Really! Well, I haven't a great variety. The ordinary dinner dress of a gentleman doesn't lend itself to any

extraordinary ornamentation. If you like, I'll pin on that medal from the Iron and Steel Who's coming,

"What a piece of luck! I mean you know what he'd say if I asked him not to dress for dinner."

"Look here, Lily," said her father, sitting upright. "Who is coming here tonight? And why should he upset

"Willy Cameron. You know, father. And he has the queerest ideas about us. Honestly. And I want him to like

"Oh, you'll like him. Everybody does. You will try to make a good impression, won't you, father?"

He got up, and resting his hands on her shoulders, smiled down into her upturned face. "I will," he said. "But

I think I should tell you that your anxiety arouses deep and black suspicions in my mind. Am I to understand

that you have fixed your young affections on this Willy Cameron, and that you want your family to help you

"I love him," she said. "I really do. I could listen to him for hours. But people don't want to marry Willy

There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white young man, quite sexless, whom people

"I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear. Well, ring for Adams, and you think he wouldn't care for the medal?"

"I think he'd love it. He'd probably think some king gave it to you. I'm sure he believes that you and

grandfather habitually hobnob with kings." She turned to go out. "He doesn't approve of kings."

"You are making me extremely uneasy," was her father's shot. "I only hope I acquit myself well."

"Hurry, then. He is sure to be exactly on the hour." Howard was still smiling slightly to himself when, a

halfhour later, he descended the staircase. But he had some difficulty first in reconciling his preconceived

idea of Willy with the tall young man, with the faint unevenness of step, who responded to his greeting so

Why, the girl was blind. This was a man, a fine, upstanding fellow, with a cleancut, sensitive face, and

And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy Cameron that night. He tried him out on

a number of things. In religion, for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not come

"Religion isn't a matter only of churches any more," said Mr. Cameron. "It has to go out into the streets, I

That was all right. Howard felt that himself sometimes. He was a vestryman at Saint Peter's, and although he

felt very devout during the service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine old

building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at the door, when he glanced at the sky to see

"I haven't decided, yet," he said. "I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but although I suppose parties are

necessary, I don't like to feel that I am partybound. Anyhow, the old party lines are gone. I rather look "

"That's really all, sir," said Willy Cameron, unhappily. "I am a Scot, and to start a Scot on reform is fatal."

"I should like extremely to know how you feel about things," said Howard, gravely.

"Only this: So long as one party is, or is considered, the representative of capital, the vested interests, and the

other of labor, the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor the other cannot be adequately

"Before long," said Lily suddenly, "there will be no state. There will be enough for everybody, and nobody

"That's the difficulty about it," said Lily, thoughtfully. "It means a revolution. It would be peaceful, though.

The thing to do is to convince people that it is simple justice, and then they will divide what they have."

But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject. Every one had these attacks of idealism in

youth. They were the exaggerated altruism of adolescence; a part of its dreams and aspirations. He changed

"I like the boy," he said to Grace, later, over the cribbage board in the morning room. "He has character, and

"I rather gathered, from the way she spoke of young Cameron, that she isn't interested there either."

Howard smiled. He was often conscious that after all the years of their common life, his wife's mind and his

Willy Cameron was extremely happy. He had brought his pipe along, although without much hope, but the

"You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave around," she said. "And I want to know

"I live in a boarding house. More house than board, really. And the work's all right. I'm going to study

metallurgy some day. There are night courses at the college, only I haven't many nights."

He had lighted his pipe, and kept his eyes on it mostly, or on the fire. He was afraid to look at Lily, because

there was something he could not keep out of his eyes, but must keep from her. It had been both better and

worse than he had anticipated, seeing her in her home. Lily herself had not changed. She was her wonderful

self, in spite of her frock and her surroundings. But the house, her people, with their ease of wealth and

position, Grace's slight condescension, the elaborate simplicity of dining, the matterofcourseness of the

service. It was not that Lily was above him. That was ridiculous. But she was far removed from him.

"There is something wrong with you, Willy," she said unexpectedly. "You are not happy, or you are not well.

"Well, I've got a dog. That helps. He's a helpless sort of mutt. I carry his meat home from the shop in my

pocket, and I feel like a butcher's wagon, sometimes. But he's taken a queer sort of liking to me, and he is

Dogs were forbidden in the Cardew house, by old Anthony's order, as were pipes, especially old and beloved

"He did follow me. He's probably sitting on the doorstep now. I tried to send him back, but he's an obstinate

"I am going to bring him in," she said. "And if you'll ring that bell we'll get him some dinner."

Half an hour later Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a miserable evening. Some young

whipper snapper who employed a handful of men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew,

was a clog in the wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said: "Tempora mutantur, Mr. Cardew.

"Bah!" said Anthony Cardew, and had left the club in a temper. The club was going to the dogs, along with

the rest of the world. There was only a handful of straightthinking men like himself left in it. Lot of young

So he slammed into his house, threw off his coat and hat, and sniffed. A pungent, acrid odor was floating

Before the fire, on a deep velvet couch, sat his granddaughter. Beside her was a thin young man in a gray suit,

"I am afraid, sir," said Anthony, in a terrible voice, "that you are not acquainted with the rules of my house. I

"Very sorry, Mr. Cardew," Willy Cameron explained. "I didn't know. I'll put it away, sir."

But Anthony was not listening. His eyes had traveled from an empty platter on the hearthrug to a deep chair

where Jinx, both warm and fed at the same time, and extremely distended with meat, lay sleeping. Anthony

"I want you to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather." Lily was rather pale, but she had the Cardew poise. "He was

"Put that dog out," he said, and left the room, his figure rigid and uncompromising.

"Grayson," Lily said, white to the lips, "that dog is to remain here. He's perfectly quiet. And, will you find

"Haven't I made enough trouble?" asked Willy Cameron, unhappily. "I can see her again, you know."

"Don't you see?" she said. "The others have always submitted. I did, too. But I can't keep it up, Willy. I can't

live here and let him treat me like that. Or my friends. I know what will happen. I'll run away, like Aunt

"Why not? They think she is unhappy. She isn't. She ran away and married a man she cared about. I may call

you up some day and ask you to marry me!" she added, less tensely. "You would be an awfully good

"You see," he said painfully, "what only amuses you in that idea is well, it doesn't amuse me, Lily."

"I only meant " she was very uncomfortable. "You are so real and dependable and kind, and I "

"I know what you mean. Like Jinx, there. I'm sorry! I didn't mean that. But you must not talk about marrying

"It won't hurt you to know, although I hadn't meant to tell you. And of course, you know, I am not asking you

to marry me. Only I'd like you to feel that you can count on me, always. The one person a woman can count

"You see, I know you are not in love with me. I cared from the beginning, but I always knew that."

"I wish I did." She was rather close to tears. She had not felt at all like that with Pink. But, although she knew

he was suffering, his quietness deceived her. She had the theory of youth about love, that it was a violent

thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and

then asks. She could not know how he felt about his love for her, that it lay in a sort of cathedral shrine in his

heart. There were holy days when saints left their niches and were shown in city streets, but until that holy

"I won't be a nuisance, you know. I've never had any hope, so I won't make you unhappy. And don't be

unhappy about me, Lily. I would rather love you, even knowing I can't have you, than be loved by anybody

Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more real to her. But he was frightfully

"I'm really very happy, loving you," he added, and smiled down at her reassuringly. But he had for all that a

wild primitive impulse which almost overcame him for a moment, to pick her up in his arms and carry her

out the door and away with him. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from that grim old house, and that despotic

Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired painstakingly about his mother, and his

uncle in California, and the Presbyterian minister. But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused to sit

down, and Willy watched her furtively slipping out again with a slight frown. It was not right, somehow, this

dividing of the world into classes, those who served and those who were served. But he had an idea that it

was those below who made the distinction, nowadays. It was the masses who insisted on isolating the classes.

They made kings, perhaps that they might some day reach up and pull them off their thrones. At the top of the

"I'm no liar, Mademoiselle. Besides, I guess it's no crime to see a boy I've known all his life, and his mother

"You are a fool," said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in her bedroom slippers to her room.

Ellen went up to her room. Heretofore she had given her allegiance to Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in

a more remote fashion, to Howard. But Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that night, sensed a

new division in the family, with Mademoiselle and Anthony and Howard and Grace on one side, and Lily

standing alone, fighting valiantly for the right to live her own life, to receive her own friends, and the friends

of her friends, even though one of these latter might be a servant in her own house.

Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servants' hall, disapproved of Lily's course while she admired it.

"But they're all against her," Ellen reflected. "The poor thing! And just because of Willy Cameron. Well, I'll

In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by

herself. Lily in the little Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her charm, and

being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a

Into Ellen's not very hardworking but monotonous life had comes its first dream of romance.

For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Akers, nor did she go back to the house on Cardew Way. She hated

doing clandestine or forbidden things, and she was, too, determined to add nothing to the tenseness she began

to realize existed at home. She went through her days, struggling to fit herself again into the old environment,

reading to her mother, lending herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small gayeties as Lent permitted, and

She had been forbidden to see him again. It had come about by Grace's confession to Howard as to Lily's visit

"Unless Doyle talks his rubbish to her," he said. "She said something the other night that didn't sound like

"She'd better keep away altogether," he observed, curtly. "She oughtn't to meet men like that."

"I'll tell her," he said. And tell her he did, not too tactfully, and manlike shielding her by not telling her his

"He's not the sort of man I want you to know," he finished. "That ought to be sufficient. Have you seen him

"I had tea with him one afternoon. I often have tea with men, father. You know that."

Because he felt that he had been rather ruthless with her, he stopped in at the jeweler's the next morning and

sent her a tiny jeweled watch. Lily was touched and repentant. She made up her mind not to see Louis Akers

again, and found a certain relief in the decision. She was conscious that he had a peculiar attraction for her, a

purely emotional appeal. He made her feel alive. Even when she disapproved of him, she was conscious of

him. She put him resolutely out of her mind, to have him reappear in her dreams, not as a lover, but as some

one dominant and insistent, commanding her to do absurd, inconsequential things.

Now and then she saw Willy Cameron, and they had gone back, apparently, to the old friendly relationship.

They walked together, and once they went to the moving pictures, to Grace's horror. But there were no

peanuts to eat, and instead of the jingling camp piano there was an orchestra, and it was all strangely

different. Even Willy Cameron was different. He was very silent, and on the way home he did not once speak

Louis Akers had both written and telephoned her, but she made excuses, and did not see him, and the last

time he had hung up the receiver abruptly. She felt an odd mixture of relief and regret.

Spring was well on by that time. Before the Doyle house on Cardew Way the two horsechestnuts were

showing great redbrown buds, ready to fall into leaf with the first warm day, and Elinor, assisted by Jennie,

the elderly maid, was finishing her spring housecleaning. The Cardew mansion showed windowboxes at

each window, filled by the florist with spring flowers, to be replaced later by summer ones. A potted primrose

sat behind the plate glass of the Eagle Pharmacy, among packets of flower seeds and spring tonics, its leaves

occasionally nibbled by the pharmacy cat, out of some atavistic craving survived through long generations of

The children's playground near the Lily furnace was ready; Howard Cardew himself had overseen the

locations of the swings and chutethechutes. And at Friendship an army of workers was sprinkling and

tamping the turf of the polo field. After two years of war, there was to be polo again that spring and early

summer. The Cherry Hill Hunt team was still intact, although some of the visiting outfits had been badly shot

to pieces by the war. But the war was over. It lay behind, a nightmare to be forgotten as soon as possible. It

On a pleasant Monday, Lily motored out to the field with Pink Denslow. It had touched her that he still

wanted her, and it had offered an escape from her own worries. She was fighting a sense of failure that day. It

seemed impossible to reconcile the warring elements at home. Old Anthony and his son were quarreling over

the strike, and Anthony was jibing constantly at Howard over the playground. It was not so much her

grandfather's irritability that depressed her as his tyranny over the household, and his attitude toward her

The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging speeches, only to have what amounted to a

"It is just his way. I don't mind, really. Oh, Lily, don't destroy what I have built up so carefully. It hurts your

"Sometimes," Lily said slowly, "he makes me think Aunt Elinor's husband was right. He believes a lot of

"Well, a sort of Socialism, for one thing, only it isn't exactly that. It's individualism, really, or I think so; the

sort of thing that this house stifles." Grace was too horrified for speech. "I don't want to hurt you, mother, but

don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us, and it's bad for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants?

Or talk to you the way he did tonight?" She smiled faintly. "We're all drowning, and I want to swim, that's

"You are talking nonsense," said Grace sharply. "You have got a lot of ideas from that wretched house, and

now you think they are your own. Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles I shall take you

Lily turned and walked out of the room, and there was something suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of

her shoulders. Her anger did not last long, but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she was older

in many ways than Grace; she had matured in the past year more than her mother in twenty, and she felt

"Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it?" said Pink, breaking in on her thoughts.

"It's not a bad place to live in, after all," said Pink, trying to cheer his own rather unhappy humor. "There is

always spring to expect, when we get low in winter. And there are horses and dogs, and and blossoms on

"You are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't you?" Lily asked, half enviously.

"Well, I'd change some things." He stopped. He wasn't going to go round sighing like a furnace. "But it's a

"Only two. I want to show you one I bought from the Government almost for nothing. Remount man piped

me off. Light in flesh, rather, but fast. Handy, light mouth all he needs is a bit of training."

They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were approaching the Cardew's Friendship

plant. The furnaces had covered the fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust. Such blighted grass as grew

had already lost its fresh green, and the trees showed stunted blossoms. The one oasis of freshness was the

polo field itself, carefully irrigated by underground pipes. The field, with its stables and grandstand, had been

the gift of Anthony Cardew, thereby promoting much discussion with his son. For Howard had wanted the

land for certain purposes of his own, to build a clubhouse for the men at the plant, with a baseball field.

Finding his father obdurate in that, he had urged that the field be thrown open to the men and their families,

save immediately preceding and during the polo season. But he had failed there, too. Anthony Cardew had

insisted, and with some reason, that to use the grounds for band concerts and baseball games, for picnics and

Howard had subsequently found other land, and out of his own private means had carried out his plans, but

the location was less desirable. And he knew what his father refused to believe, that the polo ground, taking

He pointed to the field. A diamond had been roughly outlined on it with bags of sand, and a ballgame was in

"Ruins the turf, that's all." He stopped the car and got out. "Look at this sign. It says 'ballplaying or any

But he only smiled at her reassuringly, and went off. She watched him go with many misgivings, his sturdy

young figure, his careful dress, his air of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering, unconsciously insolent.

They would resent him, she knew, those men and boys. And after all, why should they not use the field?

He turned toward her a face slightly flushed with indignation and set with purpose.

She felt, rather hopelessly, that he was wrong, but that he was right, too. The grounds were private property.

Pink was angry. She could hear his voice, see his gestures. He was shooing them off like a lot of chickens,

and they were laughing. The game had stopped, and the side lines were pressing forward. There was a

moment's debate, with raised voices, a sullen muttering from the crowd, and the line closing into a circle. The

last thing she saw before it closed was a man lunging at Pink, and his counterfeint. Then some one was

down. If it was Pink he was not out, for there was fighting still going on. The laborers working on the

Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened. She was only vaguely conscious of a car that suddenly left the

road, and dashed recklessly across the priceless turf, but she did see, and recognize, Louis Akers as he leaped

from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into the storm center. She could hear his voice, too,

loud and angry, and see the quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed quite near to

her, and eyed her either sullenly or with mocking smiles. She was quite oblivious of them. She got out and

ran with shaking knees across to where Pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply chiseled, with two

"Nothing to worry about, Miss Cardew," he said. "But what sort of idiocy ! Hello, old man, all right now?"

Pink sat up, then rose stiffly and awkwardly. He had a cut over one eye, and he felt for his handkerchief.

"Fouled me," he said. "Filthy lot, anyhow. Wonder they didn't walk on me when I was down." He turned to

the groundskeeper, who had come up. "You ought to know better than to let those fellows cut up this turf,"

"Get into my car," said Akers, not too amiably. "I'll drive you to the stables. I'll be back, Miss Cardew."

Lily went back to the car and sat down. She was shocked and startled, but she was strangely excited. The

crowd had beaten Pink, but it had obeyed Louis Akers like a master. He was a man. He was a strong man. He

must be built of iron. Mentally she saw him again, driving recklessly over the turf, throwing the men to right

After a little he drove back across the field, sending the car forward again at reckless speed. Some vision of

her grandfather, watching the machine careening over the still soft and spongy turf and leaving deep tracks

"No need to worry about our young friend," he said cheerfully. "He is alternately being very sick at his

stomach and cursing the poor working man. But I think I'd better drive you back. He'll be poor company, I'll

He looked at her, his bold eyes challenging, belying the amiable gentleness of his smile.

"I told him. He isn't strong for me. Always hate the fellow who saves you, you know. But he didn't object."

Lily moved into his car obediently. She felt a strange inclination to do what this man wanted. Rather, it was

an inability to oppose him. He went on, big, strong, and imperious. And he carried one along. It was easy and

queer. But she did, unconsciously, what she had never done with Pink or any other man; she sat as far away

He noticed that, and smiled ahead, over the wheel. He had been infuriated over her avoidance of him, but if

'That's not true, and you know it. You've been forbidden to see me, haven't you?"

"I wish you wouldn't fence with me," he said impatiently. "I told you once I was frank. I want you to answer

Had she ever known a man like the one beside her, she would not have given him that opportunity. He

glanced sharply around, and then suddenly stopped the car and turned toward her.

"I'm crazy about you, and you know it," he said. And roughly, violently, he caught her to him and kissed her

again and again. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and she was helpless. After a brief struggle to free herself

Then he freed her. Lily wanted to feel angry, but she felt only humiliated and rather soiled. There were men

like that, then, men who gave way to violent impulses, who lost control of themselves and had to apologize

afterwards. She hated him, but she was sorry for him, too. He would have to be so humble. She was staring

ahead, white and waiting for his explanation, when he released the brake and started the car forward slowly.

"I'm damned if I will. That man back there, Denslow he's the sort who would kiss a girl and then crawl

about it afterwards. I won't. I'm not sorry. A strong man can digest his own sins. I kissed you because I

wanted to. It wasn't an impulse. I meant to when we started. And you're only doing the conventional thing

and pretending to be angry. You're not angry. Good God, girl, be yourself once in a while."

"I'm afraid I don't understand you." Her voice was haughty. "And I must ask you to stop the car and let me

"I'll do nothing of the sort, of course. Now get this straight, Miss Cardew. I haven't done you any harm. I may

have a brutal way of showing that I'm crazy about you, but it's my way. I'm a man, and I'm no hand kisser."

"You think I'm unrestrained, and I am, in a way. But if I did what I really want to do, I'd not take you home at

She felt strangely helpless and rather maternal. With all his strength this sort of man needed to be protected

from himself. She felt no answering thrill whatever to his passion, but as though, having told her he loved

"I'll be good now," he said. "Mind, I'm not sorry. But I don't want to worry you."

He made no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an

anxiety as to the threatened strike, and related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his

"I've a good bit of influence with the A.F.L.," he said. "Doyle's in bad with them, but I'm still solid. But it's

He knew women well, and he saw that she was forgiving him. But she would not forget. He had a cynical

doctrine, to the effect that a woman's first kiss of passion left an ineradicable mark on her, and he was quite

"Please forgive me," he said, his mellow voice contrite and supplicating. "You've been so fine about it that

"That means you intend to see me again. But never is a long word. I'm afraid to promise. You go to my head,

Lily Cardew." They were halted by the traffic, and it gave him a chance to say something he had been

ingeniously formulating in his mind. "I've known lots of girls. I'm no saint. But you are different. You're a

And because she was young and lovely, and because he was always the slave of youth and beauty, he meant

what he said. It was a lie, but he was lying to himself also, and his voice held unmistakable sincerity. But

even then he was watching her, weighing the effect of his words on her. He saw that she was touched.

He was very well pleased with himself on his way home. He left the car at the public garage, and walked,

whistling blithely, to his small bachelor apartment. He was a selfindulgent man, and his rooms were

comfortable to the point of luxury. In the sitting room was a desk, as clean and orderly as Doyle's was untidy.

Having put on his dressing gown he went to it, and with a sheet of paper before him sat for some time

He found his work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was the liaison between organized labor,

which was conservative in the main, and the radical element, both in and out of the organization. He played a

double game, and his work was always the same, to fan the discontent latently smoldering in every man's soul

into a flame. And to do this he had not Doyle's fanaticism. Personally, Louis Akers found the world a pretty

good place. He hated the rich because they had more than he had, but he scorned the poor because they had

less. And he liked the feeling of power he had when, on the platform, men swayed to his words like wheat to

Personal ambition was his fetish, as power was Anthony Cardew's. Sometimes he walked past the exclusive

city clubs, and he dreamed of a time when he, too, would have the entree to them. But time was passing. He

was thirtythree years old when Jim Doyle crossed his path, and the clubs were as far away as ever. It was

Doyle who found the weak place in his armor, and who taught him that when one could not rise it was

But it was Woslosky, the Americanized Pole; who had put the thing in a more appealing form.

"Our friend Doyle to the contrary," he said cynically, "we cannot hope to contend against the inevitable. The

few will always govern the many, in the end. It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy, and then

democracy; but out of this last comes always the one man who crowns himself or is crowned. One of the

Akers did not go to work immediately. He sat for some time, a cigarette in his hand, his eyes slightly

narrowed. He believed that he could marry Lily Cardew. It would take time and all his skill, but he believed

he could do it. His mind wandered to Lily herself, her youth and charm, her soft red mouth, the feel of her

warm young body in his arms. He brought himself up sharply. Where would such a marriage take him?

He pondered the question pro and con. On the one hand the Cardews, on the other, Doyle and a revolutionary

movement. A revolution would be interesting and exciting, and there was strong in him the desire to pull

down. But revolution was troublesome. It was violent and bloody. Even if it succeeded it would be years

He sat low in his chair, his long legs stretched out in his favorite position, and dreamed. He would not play

the fool like Doyle. He would conciliate the family. In the end he would be put up at the clubs; he might even

play polo. His thoughts wandered to Pink Denslow at the polo grounds, and he grinned.

"Young fool!" he reflected. "If I can't beat his time " He ordered dinner to be sent up, and mixed himself a

cocktail, using the utmost care in its preparation. Drinking it, he eyed himself complacently in the small

mirror over the mantel. Yes, life was not bad. It was damned interesting. It was a game. No, it was a race

But it was not the waiter. It was Edith Boyd. He saw her through the mirror, and so addressed her.

"Hello, sweetie," he said. Then he turned. "You oughtn't to come here, Edith. I've told you about that."

"Well, take a good look, then," he said. Her coming fitted in well with the complacence of his mood. Yes, life

He stooped to kiss her, but although she accepted the caress, she did not return it.

On clear Sundays Anthony Cardew played golf all day. He kept his religious observances for bad weather,

but at such times as he attended service he did it with the decorum and dignity of a Cardew, who bowed to his

God but to nothing else. He made the responses properly and with a certain unction, and sat during the

sermon with a vigilant eye on the choir boys, who wriggled. Now and then, however, the eye wandered to the

great stained glass window which was a memorial to his wife. It said beneath: "In memoriam, Lilian

He thought there was too much yellow in John the Baptist. On the Sunday afternoon following her ride into

the city with Louis Akers, Lily found herself alone. Anthony was golfing and Grace and Howard had motored

out of town for luncheon. In a small office near the rear of the hall the second man dozed, waiting for the

doorbell. There would be people in for tea later, as always on Sunday afternoons; girls and men, walking

through the park or motoring up in smart cars, the men a trifle bored because they were not golfing or riding,

the girls chattering about the small inessentials which somehow they made so important.

Lily was wretchedly unhappy. For one thing, she had begun to feel that Mademoiselle was exercising over

her a sort of gentle espionage, and she thought her grandfather was behind it. Out of sheer rebellion she had

gone again to the house on Cardew Way, to find Elinor out and Jim Doyle writing at his desk. He had

received her cordially, and had talked to her as an equal. His deferential attitude had soothed her wounded

"Don't let them break your spirit, Lily," he had said. "Success can make people very hard. I don't know

myself what success would do to me. Plenty, probably." He smiled. "It isn't the past your people won't

"It isn't that," she had said hastily. "It is they say you are inflammatory. Of course they don't understand. I

She had gone home, discontented with her family's lack of vision, and with herself.

She was in a curious frame of mind. The thought of Louis Akers repelled her, but she thought of him

constantly. She analyzed him clearly enough; he was not fine and not sensitive. He was not even kind.

Indeed, she felt that he could be both cruel and ruthless. And if she was the first good woman he had ever

The thought that he had kissed her turned her hot with anger and shame at such times, but the thought

Had she had occupation perhaps she might have been saved, but she had nothing to do. The house went on

with its disciplined service; Lent had made its small demands as to church services, and was over. The

weather was bad, and the golf links still soggy with the spring rains. Her wardrobe was long ago replenished,

And somehow there had opened a breach between herself and the little intimate group that had been hers

before the war. She wondered sometimes what they would think of Louis Akers. They would admire him, at

first, for his opulent good looks, but very soon they would recognize what she knew so well the gulf

between him and the men of their own world, so hard a distinction to divine, yet so real for all that. They

would know instinctively that under his veneer of good manners was something coarse and crude, as she did,

and they would politely snub him. She had no name and no knowledge for the urge in the man that she

vaguely recognized and resented. But she had a full knowledge of the obsession he was becoming in her

"If I could see him here," she reflected, more than once, "I'd get over thinking about him. It's because they

But it was not, and she knew it. She had never heard of his theory about the mark on a woman.

She was hating herself very vigorously on that Sunday afternoon. Mademoiselle and she had lunched alone in

Lily's sittingroom, and Mademoiselle had dozed off in her chair afterwards, a novel on her knee. Lily was

wandering about downstairs when the telephone rang, and she had a quick conviction that it was Louis Akers.

"I've promised Jinx one all day," he explained, "and we might as well combine, if you are not busy."

"You are precisely the person I need today," she said. "And come soon, because I shall have to be back at

When he came he was very neat indeed, and most scrupulous as to his heels being polished. He was also

"Had to sew a button on my coat," he explained. "Then I found I'd sewed in one of my fingers and had to start

Lily was conscious of a change in him. He looked older, she thought, and thinner. His smile, when it came,

was as boyish as ever, but he did not smile so much, and seen in full daylight he was shabby. He seemed

"Read and study. I want to take up metallurgy pretty soon. There's a night course at the college."

"We use metallurgists in the mill. When you are ready I know father would be glad to have you."

"Thanks," he said. "I'd rather get in, wherever I go, by what I know, and not who I know."

She felt considerably snubbed, but she knew his curious pride. After a time, while he threw a stick into the

"Nothing. I've forgotten how to work, I'm afraid. And I'm not very happy, Willy. I ought to be, but I'm just

"You've learned what it is to be useful," he observed gravely, "and now it hardly seems worth while just to

There was a silence. Willy Cameron sat on the bench, bent and staring ahead. Jinx brought the stick, and,

receiving no attention, insinuated a dripping body between his knees. He patted the dog's head absently.

"I have been thinking about the night I went to dinner at your house," he said at last. "I had no business to say

what I said then. I've got a miserable habit of saying just what comes into my mind, and I've been afraid, ever

since, that it would end in your not wanting to see me again. Just try to forget it happened, won't you?"

"All right," he said quietly. "And that's that. Now about your grandfather. I've had him on my mind, too. He

is an old man, and sometimes they are peculiar. I am only sorry I upset him. And you are to forget that, too."

He smiled too, and straightened himself, like a man who has got something off his chest.

"Certainly there is, Miss Cardew. Me. Myself. I want you to know that I'm around, ready to fetch and carry

like Jinx here, and about as necessary, I suppose. We are a good bit alike, Jinx and I. We're satisfied with a

"Well," he said slowly, "you know there are men who prefer a dream to reality. Perhaps I'm like that.

"Right?" he said. "Why, my dear child, most of them want to strike about as much as I want delirium

"Oh, fudge," said Willy Cameron, rudely. "Where do you get all that? You're quoting; aren't you? The strike,

any strike, is an acknowledgment of weakness. It is a resort to the physical because the collective mentality of

labor isn't as strong as the other side. Or labor thinks it isn't, which amounts to the same thing. And there is a

fine line between the fellow who fights for a principle and the one who knocks people down to show how

"Fine little Cardew you are!" he scoffed. "Don't make any mistake. There have been fights by labor for a

principle, and the principle won, as good always wins over evil. But this is different. It's a direct play by men

who don't realize what they are doing, into the hands of a lot of well, we'll call them anarchists. It's

"I do," he said grimly. "That's a family accident and you can't help it. But I do mean Doyle. Doyle and a Pole

named Woslosky, and a scoundrel of an attorney here in town, named Akers, among others."

"If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily," he said at last, "I can only tell you this. They can

disguise it in all the fine terms they want. It is treason, and they are traitors. I know. I've had a talk with the

"Not very well." But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her cheeks. He drew a long breath.

They were very silent as they walked. Willy Cameron was pained and anxious. He knew Akers' type rather

than the man himself, but he knew the type well. Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who

attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate, pagan love promiscuously, and

put the responsibility for the misery they caused on the Creator because He had made them as they were.

He was agonized by another train of thought. For him Lily had always been something fine, beautiful,

infinitely remote. There were other girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less,

with the soil of life. Even when, they kept clean they saw it all about them, and looked on it with shrewd,

sophisticated eyes. But Lily was Lily. The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen him

"Maybe, but I'm going to anyhow, Lily. I don't like to think of you seeing Akers. I don't know anything

against him, and I suppose if I did I wouldn't tell you. But he is not your sort."

"I know that as well as you do. I know him better than you do. But, he stands for something, at least," she

added rather hotly. "None of the other men I know stand for anything very much. Even you, Willy."

"I stand for the preservation of my country," he said gravely. "I mean, I represent a lot of people who well,

who don't believe that change always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and Akers

and that lot want they won't get. I don't believe if you say you want what they want that you know what

He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of arguing with her.

"I am being rather anxious. I wouldn't dare, of course, if we hadn't been such friends. But Akers is wrong,

wrong every way, and I have to tell you that, even if it means that you will never see me again. He takes a

"Haven't we had enough of Mr. Akers?" Lily asked coldly. "If you cannot speak of anything else, please don't

"Goodby," she said primly. "It was very nice of you to call me up. Goodby, Jinx." She went up the steps,

He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping through the mud without noticing it, and

now and then making little despairing gestures. He was helpless. He had cut himself off from her like a fool.

Akers. Akers and Edith Boyd. Other women. Akers and other women. And now Lily. Good God, Lily!

Jinx was tired. He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet on his master's shabby trouser leg, and

pleading with low whines. Willy Cameron stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked him under his

arm. When it commenced to rain he put him under his coat and plunged his head through the mud and wet

Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she was remorseful. For one thing, her own

anger bewildered her. After all, he had meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if it cost him

She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had disappeared. She went in again, remorseful and

unhappy. What had come over her to treat him like that? He had looked almost stricken.

"Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew," said the footman. "He is in the drawingroom."

Louis Akers had been waiting for some time. He had lounged into the drawingroom, with an ease assumed

for the servant's benefit, and had immediately lighted a cigarette. That done, and the servant departed, he had

carefully appraised his surroundings. He liked the stiff formality of the room. He liked the servant in his dark

maroon livery. He liked the silence and decorum. Most of all, he liked himself in these surroundings. He

wandered around, touching a bowl here, a vase there, eyeing carefully the ancient altar cloth that lay on a

He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming down the staircase, followed by his wife, and

getting into his waiting limousine; sitting at the head of his table, while the important men of the city listened

to what he had to say. It would come, as sure as God made little fishes. And Doyle was a fool. He, Louis

Akers, would marry Lily Cardew and block that other game. But he would let the Cardews know who it was

who had blocked it and saved their skins. They'd have to receive him after that; they would cringe to him.

Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life. He had gone to the window and through it he saw

Lily and Willy Cameron outside. He clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath, apprehensively. But

Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched him up the street with calculating, slightly narrowed eyes.

The fact that Lily Cardew knew the clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication. His

surprise was lost in anxiety. But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather pale and unsmiling, found him

facing the door, his manner easy, his head well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height. She

He took her outstretched hand, smiling down at her, and suddenly made an attempt to draw her to him.

He let her go at once. He had not played his little game so long without learning its fine points. There were

times to woo a woman with a strong arm, and there were other times that required other methods.

"Righto," he said, "I'm sorry. I've been thinking about you so much that I daresay I have got farther in our

friendship than I should. Do you know that you haven't been out of my mind since that ride we had together?"

"I don't mind, no. But I am trying very hard to forget that ride, and I don't want to talk about it."

"Isn't it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly find a tremendous attraction that draws

them together, in spite of the fact that everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?"

While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than the things she promised, of power and

gratified ambition. But he found her, with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and with the tact of

"You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily," he said. "If you'll only promise to let me see you now and

She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still trying to remember all the things that Louis

"Then," he said slowly, "you are going to cut me off from the one decent influence in my life."

She was still revolving that in her mind when tea came. Akers, having shot his bolt, watched with interest the

preparation for the little ceremony, the old Georgian teaspoons, the Crown Derby cups, the bellshaped

Queen Anne teapot, beautifully chased, the old pierced sugar basin. Almost his gaze was proprietary. And he

watched Lily, her casual handling of those priceless treasures, her taking for granted of service and beauty,

her acceptance of quality because she had never known anything else, watched her with possessive eyes.

"You are being very nice to me, in view of the fact that you did not ask me to come. And also remembering

"I knew that, or I should not have come. I don't want to make trouble for you, child." His voice was infinitely

caressing. "As it happens, I know your grandfather's Sunday habits, and I met your father and mother on the

He smiled down at her. "I have ways of knowing quite a lot of things. Especially when they are as vital to me

"You know how vital this is to me, don't you?" he said. "You're not going to cut me off, are you?"

On the first day of May, William Wallace Cameron moved his trunk, the framed photograph of his mother,

eleven books, an alarm clock and Jinx to the Boyd house. He went for two reasons. First, after his initial call

at the dreary little house, he began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family. The second

He began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family as soon as he had met Mrs. Boyd.

"I don't know what's come over the children," Mrs. Boyd said, fretfully. She sat rocking persistently in the

dreary little parlor. Her chair inched steadily along the dull carpet, and once or twice she brought up just as

She hitched the chair into place again. Edith had gone out. It was her idea of an evening call to serve cakes

and coffee, and a strong and acrid odor was seeping through the doorway. "There's Dan come home from the

war, and when he gets back from the mill he just sits and stares ahead of him. He won't even talk about the

"It takes some time for the men who were over to get settled down again, you know."

"Well, there's Edith," continued the querulous voice. "You'd think the cat had got her tongue, too. I tell you,

Mr. Cameron, there are meals here when if I didn't talk there wouldn't be a word spoken."

Mr. Cameron looked up. It had occurred to him lately, not precisely that a cat had got away with Edith's

tongue, but that something undeniably had got away with her cheerfulness. There were entire days in the

store when she neglected to manicure her nails, and stood looking out past the fading primrose in the window

"Of course, the house isn't very cheerful," sighed Mrs. Boyd. "I'm a sick woman, Mr. Cameron. My back

"I know," said Mr. Cameron. "My mother has that, sometimes. If you like I'll mix you up some liniment, and

"Thanks. I've tried most everything. Edith wants to rent a room, so we can keep a hired girl, but it's hard to

get a girl. They want all the money on earth, and they eat something awful. That's a nice friendly dog of

It was perhaps Jinx who decided Willy Cameron. Jinx was at that moment occupying the only upholstered

chair, but he had developed a strong liking for the frail little lady with the querulous voice and the shabby

black dress. He had, indeed, insisted shortly after his entrance on leaping into her lap, and had thus sat for

"Just let him sit," Mrs. Boyd said placidly. "I like a dog. And he can't hurt this skirt I've got on. It's on its last

With which bit of unconscious humor Willy Cameron had sat down. Something warm and kindly glowed in

his heart. He felt that dogs have a curious instinct for knowing what lies concealed in the human heart, and

It was later in the evening, however, that he said, over Edith's bakery cakes and her atrocious coffee:

"If you really mean that about a roomer, I know of one." He glanced at Edith. "Very neat. Careful with

matches. Hard to get up in the morning, but interesting, highly intelligent, and a clever talker. That's his one

"Really?" said Mrs. Boyd. "Well, talk would be a change here. He sounds kind of pleasant. Who is he?"

"You'll have to excuse me. I didn't recognize you by the description," said Mrs. Boyd, unconsciously. "Well,

Even Edith laughed at that. She had been very silent all evening, sitting most of the time with her hands in

her lap, and her eyes on Willy Cameron. Rather like Jinx's eyes they were, steady, unblinking, loyal, and with

"We don't know how to keep a house," she persisted, to him. "We can't even cook you know that's rotten

coffee. I'll show you the room, if you like, but I won't feel hurt if you don't take it, I'll be worried if you do."

Mrs. Boyd watched them perplexedly as they went out, the tall young man with his uneven step, and Edith,

who had changed so greatly in the last few weeks, and blew hot one minute and cold the next. Now that she

had seen Willy Cameron, Mrs. Boyd wanted him to come. He would bring new life into the little house. He

was cheerful. He was not glum like Dan or discontented like Edie. And the dog She got up slowly and

"Nice Jinx," she said, and stroked his head with a thin and stringy hand. "Nice doggie."

She took a cake from the plate and fed it to him, bit by bit. She felt happier than she had for a long time, since

"I meant it," said Edith, on the stairs. "You stay away. We're a poor lot, and we're unlucky, too. Don't get

He looked at her anxiously, and any doubts he might have had, born of the dreariness, the odors of stale food

and of the musty cellar below, of the shabby room she proceeded to show him, died in an impulse to

somehow, some way, lift this small group of people out of the slough of despondency which seemed to be

"Why, what's the matter with the room?" he said. "Just wait until I've got busy in it! I'm a paper hanger and a

So on the first of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political Economy and History and Travel and the

rest gave way to anxious cuttings and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint. The old house took

on new life and activity, the latter sometimes pernicious, as when Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs

with a pail of paint in his hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the back yard for a border the seeds of

which were already sprouting in a flat box in the kitchen, ran a pickaxe into his foot.

Some changes were immediate, such as the whitewashing of the cellar and the unpainted fence in the yard,

where Willy Cameron visualized, later on, great draperies of morning glories. He papered the parlor, and

coaxed Mrs. Boyd to wash the curtains, although she protested that, with the mill smoke, it was useless labor.

But there were some changes that he knew only time would effect. Sometimes he went to his bed worn out

both physically and spiritually, as though the burden of lifting three lifesodden souls was too much. Not that

he thought of that, however. What he did know was that the food was poor. No servant had been found, and

years of lack of system had left Mrs. Boyd's mind confused and erratic. She would spend hours concocting

expensive desserts, while the vegetables boiled dry and scorched and meat turned to leather, only to bring

pridefully to the table some flavorless mixture garnished according to a picture in the cook book, and totally

She would have ambitious cleaning days, too, starting late and leaving off with beds unmade to prepare the

evening meal. Dan, home from the mill and newly adopting Willy Cameron's system of cleaning up for

"Hell of a way to live," he said once. "I'd get married, but how can a fellow know whether a girl will make a

The relations between Dan and Edith were not particularly cordial. Willy Cameron found their bickering

understandable enough, but he was puzzled, sometimes, to find that Dan was surreptitiously watching his

sister. Edith was conscious of it, too, and one evening she broke into irritated speech.

"I was wondering what has come over you," said Dan, ungraciously. "You used to be a nice kid. Now you're

Willy spoke to him that night when they were setting out rows of seedlings, under the supervision of Jinx.

"I wouldn't worry her, Dan," he said; "it is the spring, probably. It gets into people, you know. I'm that way

Dan glanced at him quickly, but whatever he may have had in his mind, he said nothing just then. However,

"She's got something on her mind. I know her. But I won't have her talking back to mother."

A week or so after Willy Cameron had moved, Mr. Hendricks rang the bell of the Boyd house, and then, after

"Upstairs," came Willy Cameron's voice, somewhat thickened with carpet tacks. So Mr. Hendricks climbed

part of the way, when he found his head on a level with that of the young gentleman he sought, who was

"Don't stop," said Mr. Hendricks. "Merely friendly call. And for heaven's sake don't swallow a tack, son. I'm

"Don't know yet. Make speeches, probably. If Howard Cardew, or any Cardew, thinks he's going to be mayor

"I don't give a tinker's dam who's mayor of this town, so long as he gives it honest government."

"That's right," said Mr. Hendricks approvingly. "Old Cardew's been running it for years, and you could put all

the honest government he's given us in a hollow tooth. If you'll stop that hammering, I'd like to make a

Mr. Hendricks chuckled, as Willy Cameron led the way to his room. He wandered around the room while

"Great snakes!" he said. "Spargo's Bolshevism! Political Economy, History of . What are you planning to

"I haven't decided yet. It's a hard job, and mighty thankless. But I won't be your mayor, even for you."

"All right," he said. "Of course if you'd wanted it!" He took two large cigars from the row in his breast pocket

Mr. Hendrick's face became serious and very thoughtful. "I don't know that I have ever made it clear to you,

Cameron," he said, "but I've got a peculiar feeling for this city. I like it, the way some people like their

families. It's well, it's home to me, for one thing. I like to go out in the evenings and walk around, and I say

to myself: 'This is my town. And we, it and me, are sending stuff all over the world. I like to think that

somewhere, maybe in China, they are riding on our rails and fighting with guns made from our steel. Maybe

"Well, that's the way I feel about it, anyhow. And this Bolshevist stuff gets under my skin. I've got a home

and a family here. I started in to work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made and saved right here. It

Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe. He nodded. Mr. Hendricks bent forward and pointed a finger at him.

"And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going to put up and probably elect? We're an

industrial city, son, with a big labor vote, and if it stands together they're being swindled into putting up as

an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals in the country. That man Akers."

"I don't want Edith to hear me," he said. "He's a friend of hers. But he's a bad actor, son. He's wrong with

women, for one thing, and when I think that all he's got to oppose him is Howard Cardew " Mr. Hendricks

"Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife likes a bit of gossip. She knows them

both by sight, and she ran into them one day in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a corner, and the girl

Willy Cameron got up and closed the window. He stood there, with his back to the light, for a full minute.

"I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks. I have met her. She isn't the sort of girl who

Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly. He had made it his business to study men, and there was something in

Willy Cameron's voice that caught his attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.

"Maybe," he conceded. "Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely to be magnified in this town. If she's as

keen as the men in her family, she'll get wise to him pretty soon. Willy Cameron came back then, but Mr.

"We've got to lick Cardew," he said, "but I'm cursed if I want to do it with Akers."

When there was no comment, he looked up. Yes, the boy had had a blow. Mr. Hendricks was sorry. If that

was the way the wind blew it was hopeless. It was more than that; it was tragic.

"The Cardews are always being talked about. You couldn't drop her a hint, I suppose?"

He made a violent effort and pulled himself together. "So it is Akers and Howard Cardew, and one's a knave

"Right," said Mr. Hendricks. "And one's Bolshevist, if I know anything, and the other is capital, and has

Which was slightly mixed, owing to a repressed excitement now making itself evident in Mr. Hendricks's

"Why not run an independent candidate?" Willy Cameron asked quietly. "I've been shouting about the plain

"That's the talk," said Mr. Hendricks, letting his excitement have full sway. "They could. They could run this

town and run it right, if they'd take the trouble. Now look here, son, I don't usually talk about myself, but

I'm honest. I don't say I wouldn't get off a streetcar without paying my fare if the conductor didn't lift it! But

I'm honest. I don't lie. I keep my word. And I live clean which you can't say for Lou Akers. Why shouldn't I

run on an independent ticket? I mightn't be elected, but I'd make a damned good try."

"I don't know that my opinion is of any value, Mr. Hendricks. But I hope you get it, and I think you have a

"Do anything! What do you suppose I came here for? You're going to elect me. You're going to make

speeches and kiss babies, and tell the ordinary folks they're worth something after all. You got me started on

The future maker of mayors here stepped back in his amazement, and Jinx emitted a piercing howl. When

"The people we're going after don't want oratory. They want good, straight talk, and a fellow behind it who

doesn't believe the country's headed straight for perdition. We've had enough calamity bowlers. You've got

the way out. The plain people. The hope of the nation. And, by God, you love your country, and not for what

you can get out of it. That's a thing a fellow's got to have inside him. He can't pretend it and get it over."

It was late when Mr. Hendricks left. He went away with all the old envelopes in his pockets covered with

"Just wait a minute, son," he would say. "I've got to make some speeches myself. Repeat that, now. 'Sins of

omission are as great, even greater than sins of commission. The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to

But it was not Hendricks and his campaign that kept the F.M. of M. awake until dawn. He sat in front of his

soft coal fire, and when it died to graywhite ash he still sat there, unconscious of the chill of the spring

night. Mostly he thought of Lily, and of Louis Akers, big and handsome, of his insolent eyes and his

selfindulgent mouth. Into that curious whirlpool that is the mind came now and then other visions: His

mother asleep in her chair; the men in the War Department who had turned him down; a girl at home who had

loved him, and made him feel desperately unhappy because he could not love her in return. Was love always

like that? If it was what He intended, why was it so often without reciprocation?

He took to walking about the room, according to his old habit, and obediently Jinx followed him.

It was four by his alarm clock when Edith knocked at his door. She was in a wrapper flung over her

"I wish you would go to bed," she said, rather petulantly. "Are you sick, or anything?"

"I don't sleep much lately." Their voices were cautious. "I never go to sleep until you're settled down,

She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed the stairs slowly and left him in the doorway, puzzled

At six that morning Dan, tiptoeing downstairs to warm his leftover coffee and get his own breakfast, heard

a voice from Willy Cameron's room, and opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up in bed with his eyes

closed and his arms extended, and was concluding a speech to a dream audience in deep and oratorical tones.

Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather primitive, he edged his way into the room and filled the

It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the house that Lily's family learned of it.

Lily's state of mind during that week had been an unhappy one. She magnified the incident until her nerves

were on edge, and Grace, finding her alternating between almost demonstrative affection and strange

aloofness, was bewildered and hurt. Mademoiselle watched her secretly, shook her head, and set herself to

work to find out what was wrong. It was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis.

Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as time went on she found it increasingly difficult to

tell about it. She should, she knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to explain why she had

She meant to go to her father with it. It was he who had forbidden her to see Akers, for one thing. And she

felt nearer to her father than to her mother, always. Since her return she had developed an almost passionate

admiration for Howard, founded perhaps on her grandfather's attitude toward him. She was strongly partizan.

and she watched her father, day after day, fighting his eternal battles with Anthony, sometimes winning, often

losing, but standing for a principle like a rock while the seas of old Anthony's wrath washed over and often

She was rather wistful those days, struggling with her own perplexities, and blindly reaching out for a hand to

help her. But she could not bring herself to confession. She would wander into her father's dressingroom

before she went to bed, and, sitting on the arm of his deep chair, would try indirectly to get him to solve the

problems that were troubling her. But he was inarticulate and rather shy with her. He had difficulty,

sometimes, after her long absence at school and camp, in realizing her as the little girl who had once begged

He had been accustomed to her searchings for interesting abstractions for years. She used to talk about

But he had rather floundered there. He could not discuss physical attraction with her.

"But if he is faithful to her now, father? Don't you think, whatever a man has been, if he really cares for a

"Sometimes, not always." The subject was painful to him. He did not want his daughter to know the sordid

things of life. But he added, gallantly: "Of course a good woman can do almost anything she wants with a

On the Sunday following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of it, by the devious route of the servants'

hall, and she went to Lily at once, yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar. She needed courage, and

"It is not," she said, "that they wish to curtail your liberty, Lily. But to have that man come here, when he

But Mademoiselle made her error there. She was fearful of Grace's attitude unless she forewarned her, and

Grace, frightened, immediately made it a matter of a family conclave. She had not intended to include

The result was that instead of Lily going to them with her confession, she was summoned, to find her family

a unit for once and combined against her. She was not to see Louis Akers again, or the Doyles.

They demanded a promise, but she refused. Yet even then, standing before them, forced to a defiance she did

not feel, she was puzzled as well as angry. They were wrong, and yet in some strange way they were right,

too. She was Cardew enough to get their point of view. But she was Cardew enough, too, to defy them.

"You must understand," she said, her hands folded in front of her, "that it is not so much that I care to see the

people you are talking about. It is that I feel I have the right to choose my own friends."

"That is not the point, grandfather. I went away to school when I was a little girl. I have been away for five

years. You cannot seem to realize that I am a woman now, not a child. You bring me in here like a bad child."

In the end old Anthony had slammed out of the room. There were arguments after that, tears on Grace's part,

persuasion on Howard's; but Lily had frozen against what she considered their tyranny, and Howard found in

"Very well," he said finally. "You have the arrogance of youth, and its cruelty, Lily. And you are making us

"I have only seen him four times. If you would give me some reasons for all this fuss "

"Good heavens, no!" he exploded. "The man's a radical, too. That in itself ought to be enough."

"Besides," she said, looking at him with her direct gaze, "isn't there some reason in what the radicals believe,

father? Maybe it is a dream that can't come true, but it is rather a fine dream, isn't it?"

It was then that Howard followed his father's example, and flung out of the room.

After that Lily went, very deliberately and without secrecy, to the house on Cardew Way. She found a

welcome there, not so marked on her Aunt Elinor's part as on Doyle's, but a welcome. She found approval,

too, where at home she had only suspicion and a solicitude based on anxiety. She found a clever little circle

there, and sometimes a cultured one; underpaid, disgruntled, but brilliant professors from the college, a

journalist or two, a city councilman, even prosperous merchants, and now and then strange bearded

foreigners who were passing through the city and who talked brilliantly of the vision of Lenine and the future

She learned that the true League of Nations was not a political alliance, but a union of all the leveled peoples

of the world. She had no curiosity as to how this leveling was to be brought about. All she knew was that

these brilliant dreamers made her welcome, and that instead of the dinner chat at home, small personalities,

old Anthony's comments on his food, her father's heavy silence, here was world talk, vast in its scope,

Almost always Louis Akers was there; it pleased her to see how the other men listened to him, deferred to his

views, laughed at his wit. She did not know the care exercised in selecting the groups she was to meet, the

restraints imposed on them. And she could not know that from her visits the Doyle establishment was gaining

Because of those small open forums, sometimes noted in the papers, those innocuous gatherings, it was

possible to hold in that very room other meetings, not open and not innocuous, where practical plans took the

place of discontented yearnings, and where the talk was more often of fighting than of brotherhood.

She was, by the first of May, frankly infatuated with Louis Akers, yet with a curious knowledge that what she

felt was infatuation only. She would lie wideeyed at night and rehearse painfully the weaknesses she saw so

clearly in him. But the next time she saw him she would yield to his arms, passively but without protest. She

She was following the first uncurbed impulse of her life. Guarded and more or less isolated from other youth,

she had always lived a strong inner life, purely mental, largely interrogative. She had had strong childish

impulses, sometimes of pure affection, occasionally of sheer contrariness, but always her impulses had been

She had got, somehow, to feel that impulse was wrong. It ranked with disobedience. It partook of the nature

of sin. People who did wicked things did them on impulse, and were sorry ever after; but then it was too late.

As she grew older, she added something to that. Impulses of the mind led to impulses of the body, and

impulse was wrong. Passion was an impulse of the body. Therefore it was sin. It was the one sin one could

not talk about, so one was never quite clear about it. However, one thing seemed beyond dispute; it was

predominatingly a masculine wickedness. Good women were beyond and above it, its victims sometimes,

like those girls at the camp, or its toys, like the sodden creatures in the segregated district who hung, smiling

But good women were not like that. If they were, then they were not good. They did not lie awake

remembering the savage clasp of a man's arms, knowing all the time that this was not love, but something

quite different. Or if it was love, that it was painful and certainly not beautiful.

Sometimes she thought about Willy Cameron. He had had very exalted ideas about love. He used to be rather

"It's the fundamental principle of the universe," he would say, waving his pipe wildly. "But it means

suffering, dear child. It feeds on martyrdom and fattens on sacrifice. And as the h.c. of l. doesn't affect either

"What does it do, Willy, if it hasn't any martyrdom and sacrifice to feed on? Do you mean to say that when it

"Practically," he had said. "It then becomes domestic contentment, and expresses itself in the shape of

But that had been in the old carefree days, before Willy had thought he loved her, and before she had met

She made a desperate effort one day to talk to her mother. She wanted, somehow, to be set right in her own

eyes. But Grace could not meet her even half way; she did not know anything about different sorts of love,

but she did know that love was beautiful, if you met the right man and married him. But it had to be some one

who was your sort, because in the end marriage was only a sort of glorified companionship.

The moral in that, so obviously pointed at Louis Akers, invalidated the rest of it for Lily.

She was in a state of constant emotional excitement by that time, and it was only a night or two after that she

quarreled with her grandfather. There had been a dinner party, a heavy, pompous affair, largely attended, for

although spring was well advanced, the usual May hegira to the country or the coast had not yet commenced.

Industrial conditions in and around the city were too disturbed for the large employers to get away, and

following Lent there had been a sort of sporadic gayety, covering a vast uneasiness. There was to be no polo

Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle

house, and found it very dull. These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because they held her

grandfather's opinions, or because they kept their own convictions to themselves, seemed to her of a bygone

time. She did not see in them a safe counterpoise to a people which in its reaction from the old order, was

ready to swing to anything that was new. She saw only a dozen or so elderly gentlemen, immaculate and

prosperous, peering through their glasses after a world which had passed them by.

They were very grave that night. The situation was serious. The talk turned inevitably to the approaching

strike, and from that to a possible attempt on the part of the radical element toward violence. The older men

poohpoohed that, but the younger ones were uncertain. Isolated riotings, yes. But a coordinated attempt

against the city, no. Labour was greedy, but it was lawabiding. Ah, but it was being fired by incendiary

literature. Then what were the police doing? They were doing everything. They were doing nothing. The

governor was secretly a radical. Nonsense. The governor was saying little, but was waiting and watching. A

general strike was only another word for revolution. No. It would be attempted, perhaps, but only to

After a time Lily made a discovery. She found that even into that carefully selected gathering had crept a

surprising spirit, based on the necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father's convictions, and

went even further. One or two, even, who, cautiously for fear of old Anthony's ears, voiced a belief that

before long invested money would be given a fixed return, all surplus profits to be divided among the

The government's share of all business was to form a contingent fund for such emergencies, it seemed.

Lily listened attentively. Was it because they feared that if they did not voluntarily divide their profits they

would be taken from them? Enough for all, and to none too much. Was that what they feared? Or was it a

"Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united. But capital has not learned that lesson. It will not

take a loss for a principle. It will not unite. It is suspicious and jealous, so it fights its individual battles alone,

But then to offset that there was something Willy Cameron had said one day, frying doughnuts for her with

"Don't forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy," he had said. "Capital has its side, and a darned good

one, too. It's got a sense of responsibility to the country, which labor may have individually but hasn't got

These men at the table were grave, burdened with responsibility. Her father. Even her grandfather. It was no

longer a question of profit. It was a question of keeping the country going. They were like men forced to

travel, and breasting a strong head wind. There were some there who would turn, in time, and travel with the

gale. But there were others like her grandfather, obstinate and secretly frightened, who would refuse. Who

would, to change the figure, sit like misers over their treasure, an eye on the window of life for thieves.

She went upstairs, perplexed and thoughtful. Some time later she heard the family ascending, the click of her

mother's high heels on the polished wood of the staircase, her father's sturdy tread, and a moment or two later

her grandfather's slow, rather weary step. Suddenly she felt sorry for him, for his age, for his false gods of

power and pride, for the disappointment she was to him. She flung open her door impulsively and con

"I just wanted to say goodnight, grandfather," she said breathlessly. "And that I am sorry."

Lily was almost certain that she caught a flash of tenderness in his eyes, and certainly his voice had softened.

"You looked very pretty tonight," he said. But he passed on, and she had again the sense of rebuff with

which he met all her small overtures at that time. However, he turned at the foot of the upper flight.

She had been summoned before to those mysterious upper rooms of his, where entrance was always by

request, and generally such requests presaged trouble. But she followed him lightheartedly enough then. His

The lamp beside his highbacked, almost thronelike chair was lighted, and in the dressingroom beyond his

valet was moving about, preparing for the night. Anthony dismissed the man, and sat down under the lamp.

"You heard the discussion downstairs, tonight, Lily. Personally I anticipate no trouble, but if there is any it

may be directed at this house." He smiled grimly. "I cannot rely on my personal popularity to protect me, I

fear. Your mother obstinately refuses to leave your father, but I have decided to send you to your grandaunt

"That is hardly pertinent, is it? The situation is this: She intends to open the Newport house early in June, and

at my request she will bring you out there. Next fall we will do something here; I haven't decided just what."

There was a sudden wild surge of revolt in Lily. She hated Newport. Grandaunt Caroline was a terrible

person. She was like Anthony, domineering and cruel, and with even less control over her tongue.

"I need not point out the advantages of the plan," said Anthony suavely. "There may be trouble here, although

I doubt it. But in any event you will have to come out, and this seems an excellent way.

"Is it a good thing to spend a lot of money now, grandfather, when there is so much discontent?"

Old Anthony had a small jagged vein down the center of his forehead, and in anger or his rare excitements it

"I consider it vitally important to the country to continue its social life as before the war."

"Frightened! Good God, nobody's frightened. It will take more than a handful of demagogues to upset this

government. Which brings me to a subject you insist on reopening, by your conduct. I have reason to believe

"Perhaps because I was forbidden," she said, slowly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that I may consider your

If she looked for an outburst from him it did not come. He stood for a moment, deep in thought.

"I know that he tried to beat you, grandfather. I am sorry, but that was long ago. And there was a reason for it,

"I see," he said, slowly. "What you are conveying to me, not too delicately, is that you have definitely allied

yourself with my enemies. That, here in my own house, you intend to defy me. That, regardless of my wishes

or commands, while eating my food, you purpose to traffic with a man who has sworn to get me, sooner or

"And that you intend to. Do I understand also that you refuse to go to Newport?"

"Very well. I am glad we have had this little talk. It makes my own course quite plain. Goodnight."

He opened the door for her and she went out and down the stairs. She felt very calm, and as though

something irrevocable had happened. With her anger at her grandfather there was mixed a sort of pity for

him, because she knew that nothing he could do would change the fundamental situation. Even if he locked

her up, and that was possible, he would know that he had not really changed things, or her. She felt

surprisingly strong. All these years that she had feared him, and yet when it came to a direct issue, he was

helpless! What had he but his wicked tongue, and what did that matter to deaf ears?

She found her maid gone, and Mademoiselle waiting to help her undress. Mademoiselle often did that. It

"He wants me to go. Unhook me, Mademoiselle, and then run off and go to bed. You ought not to wait up

"Newport!" said Mademoiselle, deftly slipping off the white and silver that was Lily's gown. "It will be

Mademoiselle broke into rapid expostulation, in French. Every girl wanted to make her debut at Newport.

Here it was all industry, money, dirt. Men who slaved in offices daily. At Newport was gathered the real

leisure class of America, those who knew how to play, who lived. But Lily, taking off her birthday pearls

"I'm not going," she said. "I might as well tell you, for you'll hear about it later. I have quarreled with him,

She went away very soon, sadly troubled. There were bad times coming. The old peaceful quiet days were

gone, for age and obstinacy had met youth and the arrogance of youth, and it was to be battle.

But there was a truce for a time. Lily came and went without interference, and without comment. Nothing

more was said about Newport. She motored on bright days to the country club, lunched and played golf or

tennis, rode along the country lanes with Pink Denslow, accepted such invitations as came her way cheerfully

enough but without enthusiasm, and was very gentle to her mother. But Mademoiselle found her tense and

And there were times when she disappeared for an hour or two in the afternoons, proffering no excuses, and

came back flushed, and perhaps a little frightened. On the evenings that followed those small excursions she

was particularly gentle to her mother. Mademoiselle watched and waited for the blow she feared was about to

fall. She felt sure that the girl was seeing Louis Akers, and that she would ultimately marry him. In her

despair she fell back on Willy Cameron and persuaded Grace to invite him to dinner. It was meant to be a

surprise for Lily, but she had telephoned at seven o'clock that she was dining at the Doyles'.

It was that evening that Willy Cameron learned that Mr. Hendricks had been right about Lily. He and Grace

dined alone, for Howard was away at a political conference, and Anthony had dined at his club. And in the

"I have no right to burden you with our troubles, Mr. Cameron," Grace said, "but she is so fond of you, and

she has great respect for your judgment. If you could only talk to her about the anxiety she is causing. These

Doyles, or rather Mr. Doyle the wife is Mr. Cardew's sister are putting all sorts of ideas into her head.

And she has met a man there, a Mr. Akers, and I'm afraid she thinks she is in love with him, Mr. Cameron."

"Then it seems to be Mr. Cardew who needs to be talked to, doesn't it?" he said. "I wouldn't worry too much,

He was very downhearted when he left. Grace's last words placed a heavy burden on him.

"I simply feel," she said, "that you can do more with her than we can, and that if something isn't done she will

To picture Lily as willfully going her own gait at that period would be most unfair. She was suffering cruelly;

the impulse that led her to meet Louis Akers against her family's wishes was irresistible, but there was a new

angle to her visits to the Doyle house. She was going there now, not so much because she wished to go, as

There was something mysterious about her Aunt Elinor, mysterious and very sad. Even her smile had pathos

in it, and she was smiling less and less. She sat in those bright little gatherings, in them but not of them,

unbrilliant and very quiet. Sometimes she gave Lily the sense that like Lily herself she was waiting. Waiting

Lily had a queer feeling too, once or twice, that Elinor was afraid. But again, afraid of what? Sometimes she

wondered if Elinor Doyle was afraid of her husband; certainly there were times, when they were alone, when

"You can see what a clever wife I have," he said once. "Sometimes I wonder, Elinor, how you have lived

"Perhaps the difficulty," Elinor had said quietly, "is because we differ as to what really counts."

Lily brought Elinor something she needed, of youth and irresponsible chatter, and in the end the girl found

the older woman depending on her. To cut her off from that small solace was unthinkable. And then too she

formed Elinor's sole link with her former world, a world of dinners and receptions, of clothes and horses and

men who habitually dressed for dinner, of the wealth and panoply of life. A world in which her interest

"A rosecolored chiffon over yellow. It gives the oddest effect, like an Ophelia rose."

One day she told her about not going to Newport, and was surprised to see Elinor troubled.

"I just Lily, don't see too much of Louis Akers. Don't let him carry you off your feet. He is goodlooking,

"That isn't enough to say, Aunt Nellie," she said gravely. "You must have a reason."

"That's because he has never known any good women." Lily rose valiantly to his defense, but the words hurt

"I don't know," Elinor said helplessly. "But there is something else. It will cut you off from your family."

"You wouldn't live with him a year. There are different ways of caring, Lily. There is such a thing as being

carried away by a man's violent devotion, but it isn't the violent love that lasts."

Lily considered that carefully, and she felt that there was some truth in it. When Louis Akers came to take her

"Because, with all her vicissitudes, she's still a snob," he said roughly. "My family was nothing, so I'm

"I am not at all sure that I would be." She made an effort then to throw off the strange bond that held her to

him. "I should like to have three months, Louis, to get a well, a sort of perspective. I can't think clearly

"And I'm always around? Thanks." But she had alarmed him. "You're hurting me awfully, little girl," he said,

in a different tone. "I can't live without seeing you, and you know it. You're all I have in life. You have

everything, wealth, friends, position. You could play for three months and never miss me. But you are all I

In the end she capitulated Jim Doyle was very content those days. There had been a time when Jim Doyle

was the honest advocate of labor, a flaming partizan of those who worked with their hands. But he had

traveled a long road since then, from dreamer to conspirator. Once he had planned to build up; now he plotted

His weekly paper had enormous power. To the workers he had begun to preach class consciousness, and the

doctrine of being true to their class. From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step. Ostensibly he

stood for a vast equality, world wide and beneficent; actually he preached an inflammable doctrine of an

earth where the last shall be first. He advocated the overthrow of all centralized government, and considered

the wages system robbery. Under it workers were slaves, and employers of workers slavemasters. It was

with such phrases that he had for months been consistently inflaming the inflammable foreign element in and

around the city, and not the foreign element only. A certain percentage of Americanborn workmen fell

He had no scruples, and preached none. He preached only revolt, and in that revolt defiance of all existing

laws. He had no religion; Christ to him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system that still

crucified those who fought the established order. In his new world there would be no churches and no laws.

Fanatic he was, but practical fanatic, and the more dangerous for that. He had viewed the failure of the plan to

capture a city in the northwest in February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had acted

prematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. The plan in itself was right. And he had

watched the scant reports of the uprising in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very steps taken

to suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities and left the nation with a feeling of false

The people were always like that. Twice in a hundred years France had experienced the commune. Each time

she had been warned, and each time she had waited too long. Ever so often in the life of every nation came

these periodic outbursts of discontent, economic in their origin, and ran their course like diseases, contagious,

The commune always followed long and costly wars. The people would dance, but they revolted at paying

The plan in Seattle had been well enough conceived; the city light plant was to have been taken over during

the early evening of February 6, and at ten o'clock that night the city was to have gone dark. But the reign of

terrorization that was to follow had revolted Jim Osborne, one of their leaders, and from his hotel bedroom he

If it had not been for Osborne, and the conservative element behind him, a flame would have been kindled at

Doyle watched Gompers cynically.. He considered his advocacy of patriotic cooperation between labor and

the Government during the war the skillful attitude of an opportunist. Gompers could do better with public

opinion behind him than without it. He was an opportunist, riding the wave which would carry him farthest.

Playing both ends against the middle, and the middle, himself. He saw Gompers, watching the release of

tension that followed the armistice and seeing the great child he had fathered, grown now and conscious of its

Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become a follower, into strange and difficult

The war had made labor's day. No public move was made without consulting organized labor, and a certain

element in it had grown drunk with power. To this element Doyle appealed. It was Doyle who wrote the

carefully prepared incendiary speeches, which were learned verbatim by his agents for delivery. For Doyle

knew one thing, and knew it well. Labor, thinking along new lines, must think along the same lines. Be

taught the same doctrines. Be pushed in one direction There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting

his outrageous doctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a small circle of the intelligentsia, and too

openly heterodox to be dangerous. And the other, secretly plotting against the city, wary, cautious, practical

and deadly, waiting to overthrow the established order and substitute for it chaos. It was only incidental to

But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. He meant to be that. He steadily widened

the breach between Lily and her family, and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers with

relish. He had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate had thrust it into his hands, and he meant to

He was in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked sitting back and watching the slow

development of his plans. It was like chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat

back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell, with slow agonizing, into the trap.

A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a way to widen the gulf between Lily and her

grandfather. Elinor seldom left the house, and Lily had done some shopping for her. The two women were in

"I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group," he said, "but I am inclined to think that a

certain gentleman, standing not far from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a certain department of our

great city government. And from his unflattering lack of interest in me, that he "

"Sit down," he said, in a tone Lily had never heard him use before. And to Lily, more gently: "I am not

altogether surprised. As a matter of fact, I have known it for some time. Your esteemed grandfather seems to

"I'm afraid so. You see, you are a very important person, and if you will venture in the slums which surround

the Cardew Mills, you should be protected. At any time, for instance, Aunt Elinor and I may despoil you of

"Don't talk like that, Jim," Elinor protested. She was very pale. "Are you sure he is watching Lily?"

Lily sat still, frozen with anger. So this was her grandfather's method of dealing with her. He could not lock

her up, but he would know, day by day, and hour by hour, what she was doing. She could see him reading

carefully his wicked little notes on her day. Perhaps he was watching her mail, too. Then when he had

secured a hateful total he would go to her father, and together they would send her away somewhere. Away

from Louis Akers. If he was watching her mail too he would know that Louis was in love with her. They

would rake up all the things that belonged in the past he was done with, and recite them to her. As though

She went to the window and looked out. Yes, she had seen the detective before. He must have been hanging

around for days, his face unconsciously impressing itself upon her. When she turned:

"If you don't mind, Aunt Nellie, I think I'll dine out with him somewhere. I want to talk to him alone."

"If my grandfather uses low and detestable means to spy on me, Aunt Nellie, he deserves what he gets,

When Louis Akers came at halfpast six, he found that she had been crying, but she greeted him calmly

enough, with her head held high. Elinor, watching her, thought she was very like old Anthony himself just

Willy Cameron came home from a night class in metallurgy the evening after the day Lily had made her

declaration of independence, and let himself in with his night key. There was a light in the little parlor, and

He was not surprised at that. She had developed a maternal affection for him stronger than any she showed

for either Edith or Dan. She revealed it in rather touching ways, too, keeping accounts when he accused her

of gross extravagance, for she spent Dan's swollen wages wastefully; making him coffee late at night, and

forcing him to drink it, although it kept him awake for hours; and never going to bed until he was safely

He came in as early as possible, therefore, for he had had Doctor Smalley in to see her, and the result had

"Heart's bad," said the doctor, when they had retired to Willy's room. "Leaks like a sieve. And there may be

"What is there to do?" Willy asked, feeling helpless and extremely shocked. "We might send her

"Nothing to do. Don't send her away; she'd die of loneliness. Keep her quiet and keep her happy. Don't let her

worry. She only has a short time, I should say, and you can't lengthen it. It could be shortened, of course, if

"What's the use?" asked Doctor Smalley, philosophically. "If they fuss over her she'll suspect something."

As he went down the stairs he looked about him. The hall was fresh with new paper and white paint, and in

the yard at the rear, visible through an open door, the border of annuals was putting out its first blossoms.

"Nice little place you've got here," he observed. "I think I see the fine hand of Miss Edith, eh?"

He had made renewed efforts to get a servant after that, but the invalid herself balked him. When he found an

applicant Mrs. Boyd would sit, very much the grande dame, and question her, although she always ended by

"She looked like the sort that would be running out at nights," she would say. Or: "She wouldn't take telling,

and I know the way you like your things, Willy. I could see by looking at her that she couldn't cook at all."

She cherished the delusion that he was improving and gaining flesh under her ministrations, and there was a

sort of jealousy in her care for him. She wanted to yield to no one the right to sit proudly behind one of her

"Now I made this for you, Willy, because I know country boys like pies. Just see if that crust isn't nice."

"I certainly did." And to please her he would clear his plate. He rather ran to digestive tablets those days, and

Edith, surprising him with one at the kitchen sink one evening, accused him roundly of hypocrisy.

"I don't know why you stay anyhow," she said, staring into the yard where Jinx was burying a bone in the

"I'm not hungry. Willy, I wish you'd go away. What right we got to tie you up with us, anyhow? We're a poor

He ran up the stairs, and forcibly putting Mrs. Boyd in a chair, made up his own bed, awkwardly and with an

eye on her chest, which rose and fell alarmingly. It was after that that he warned Edith.

"She's not strong," he said. "She needs care and well, to be happy. That's up to the three of us. For one

thing, she must not have a shock. I'm going to warn Dan against exploding paper bags; she goes white every

Dan was at a meeting, and Willy dried the supper dishes for Edith. She was silent and morose. Finally she

"She's not very strong for me, Willy. You needn't look so shocked. She loves Dan and you, but not me. I don't

"That's different. You're right, though. Pride's her middle name. It nearly killed her at first to take a roomer,

because she is always thinking of what the neighbors will say. That's why she hates me sometimes."

"But it's true. That fool Hodge woman at the corner came here one day last winter and filled her up with a lot

She eyed him furtively. If only he wouldn't always believe in her! It was almost worse than to have him know

the truth. But he went along with his head in the clouds; all women were good and all men meant well.

Sometimes it worked out; Dan, for instance. Dan was trying to live up to him. But it was too late for her.

It was Willy Cameron's night off, and they went, the three of them, to the movies that evening. To Mrs. Boyd

the movies was the acme of dissipation. She would, if warned in advance, spend the entire day with her hair

in curlers, and once there she feasted her starved romantic soul to repletion. But that night the building was

stifling, and without any warning Edith suddenly got up and walked toward the door. There was something

odd about her walk and Willy followed her, but she turned on him almost fiercely outside.

"I wish you'd let me alone," she said, and then swayed a little. But she did not faint.

"I'm going home," she said. "You stay with her. And for heaven's sake don't stare at me like that. I'm all

Nevertheless he had taken her home, Edith obstinately silent and sullen, and Willy anxious and perplexed. At

"Now go back to her, and tell her I just got sick of the picture. It was the smells in that rotten place. They'd

She looked at him with suspicious eyes. "If you run Smalley in on me I'll leave home." "Will you go to bed?"

He had found things rather more difficult after that. Two women, both ill and refusing to acknowledge it, and

the prospect of Dan's being called out by the union. Try as he would, he could not introduce any habit of

thrift into the family. Dan's money came and went, and on Saturday nights there was not only nothing left,

but often a deficit. Dan, skillfully worked upon outside, began to develop a grievance, also, and on his rare

"It's just hand to mouth all the time," he would grumble. "A fellow working for the Cardews never gets

Willy Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but with his women folks. And Dan was one

of thousands. His wages went for food, too much food, food spoiled in cooking. There were men, with able

"And have a store bill a mile long! You know mother as well as I do. She means well, but she's a fool with

He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left it, but he revealed once that there were

long idle periods when the heating was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew sat and

"But I'm there, all right," he said. "I'm not playing golf or riding in my automobile. I'm on the job.",

"Well," said Willy Cameron, "I'm on the job about eleven hours a day, and I wear out more shoe leather than

"It's a question of principle," said Dan doggedly. "I've got no personal kick, y'understand. Only I'm not

So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of independence, Willy Cameron made his

way rather heavily toward the Boyd house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for

Hendricks already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his night class in metallurgy.

He had had a letter from his mother, too, and he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not

at all sure where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the Boyds flat, seemed impossible.

He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over the telephone, but, attuned as he was

to every inflection of her voice, he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had

"I'm sorry," she had said. "I'll call you up next week some time I have a lot of things I want to talk over with

And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had learned something more about Jim

Doyle, the real Doyle and not the poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations against

him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must

not go to the house on Cardew Way. A man's loyalty was like a woman's virtue; it could not be questionable.

He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very

stiff on the edge of her chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suitcase and brown paper bundle at her feet.

"I make it a point to hold my head high," she was saying. "I guess there was a lot of talk when I took a

Ellen's face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour, letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like

"I am, Willy. Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed, and I came to borrow ten dollars, if you

That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and reveling in a fresh audience, showed

"She says she's been living at the Cardews," she put in, rocking valiantly. "I guess most any place would

seem tame after that. I do hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and then

She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every indication of going up the chimney.

Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore the inscription: "James Duncan Cameron,

"Eleven o'clock," he said sternly. "And me promising the doctor I'd have you in bed at ten sharp every night!

" or I shall have to carry you," he threatened. It was an old joke between them, and she rose, smiling, her

Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew she liked him to do that, that she

would expect to find him there when she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.

"I've left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left tonight, I did too."

"It's awful, Willy. I don't know all of it, but they've been having her followed, or her grandfather did. I think

there's a man in it. Followed! And her a good girl! Her grandfather's been treating her like a dog for weeks.

We all noticed it. And tonight there was a quarrel, with all of them at her like a pack of dogs, and her

"I don't know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went right off to the housekeeper and told her

He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course. Then, if she had left her home rather

than give him up, she was really in love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment

that she had fled to Louis Akers' protection, however. That was the last thing she would do. She would have

"They drove her out, I tell you," Ellen cried, irritably. "At least that's what it amounted to. There are things no

"Of course you can have all I've got," he said. "But you must not go tonight, Miss Ellen. It's too late. I'll give

And he prevailed over her protests, in the end. It was not until he saw her settled there, hiding her sense of

strangeness under an impassive mask, that he went downstairs again and took his hat from its hook.

Lily must go back home, he knew. It was unthinkable that she should break with her family, and go to the

Doyles. He had too little selfconsciousness to question the propriety of his own interference, too much love

for her to care whether she resented that interference. And he was filled with a vast anger at Jim Doyle. He

saw in all this, somehow, Doyle's work; how it would play into Doyle's plans to have Anthony Cardew's

granddaughter a member of his household. He would take her away from there if he had to carry her.

He was a long time in getting to the mill district, and a longer time still in finding Cardew Way. At an

allnight pharmacy he learned which was the house, and his determined movements took on a sort of

uncertainty. It was very late. Ellen had waited for him for some time. If Lily were in that sinister darkened

house across the street, the family had probably retired. And for the first time, too, he began to doubt if Doyle

Nevertheless, the urgency to get her away from there, if she were there, prevailed at last, and a strip of light in

an upper window, as from an imperfectly fitting blind, assured him that some one was still awake in the

He went across the street and opening the gate, strode up the walk. Almost immediately he was confronted by

the figure of a man who had been concealed by the trunk of one of the trees. He lounged forward, huge,

"Damn private about your business, aren't you?" jeered the sentry, still in cautious tones. "Well, you can write

"All I want to do," persisted Mr. William Wallace Cameron, growing slightly giddy with repressed fury, "is

There was rather an interesting moment then, because the figure lunged at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron,

stooping low and swiftly, as well as to one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which

means a cooleyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his fists. The first took the shadow just

below his breastbone, and the left caught him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes

produces a large effect. The figure sat down on the brick walk and grunted, and Mr. Cameron, judging that he

had about ten seconds' leeway, felt in the dazed person's right hand pocket for the revolver he knew would be

there, and secured it. The sitting figure made puffing, feeble attempts to prevent him, but there was no real

Mr. Cameron himself was feeling extremely triumphant and as strong as a lion. He was rather sorry no one

had seen the affair, but that of course was subconscious. And he was more cheerful than he had been for

some days. He had been up against so many purely intangible obstacles lately that it was a relief to find one

"Now I'll have a few words with you, my desperate friend," he said. "I've got your gun, and I am hell with a

revolver, because I've never fired one, and there's a sort of homicidal beginner's luck about the thing. If you

move or speak, I'll shoot it into you first and when it's empty I'll choke it down your throat and strangle you

After which ferocious speech he strolled up the path, revolver in hand, and rang the doorbell. He put the

weapon in his pocket then, but he kept his hand upon it. He had read somewhere that a revolver was quite

useable from a pocket. There was no immediate answer to the bell, and he turned and surveyed the man under

the tree, faintly distinguishable in the blackness. It had occurred to him that the number of guns a man may

There were heavy, deliberate footsteps inside, and the door was flung open. No glare of light followed it,

however. There was a man there, alarmingly tall, who seemed to stare at him, and then beyond him into the

"My name is Cameron, Mr. Doyle. T have had a small difference with your watchdog, but he finally let me

"Ah!" said Mr. Doyle, urbanely. "You have happened on one of my good friends, I see. I have many enemies,

Mr. Cameron was that the name? And my friends sometimes like to keep an eye on me. It is rather

"Very touching," said Mr. Cameron, "but if he bothers me going out you may be short one friend. Mr. Doyle,

A door opened into the hall, throwing a shaft of light on the wall across and letting out the sounds of voices.

"Shut that door," said Doyle, wheeling sharply. It was closed at once. "Now," he said, turning to his visitor,

"I'll tell you this. My niece is here." He emphasized the "my." "She has come to me for refuge, and I intend to

give it to her. You won't see her tonight, and if you come from her people you can tell them she came here

of her own free will, and that if she stays it will be because she wants to. Joe!" he called into the darkness.

All at once Willy Cameron was staring at a dosed door, on the inner side of which a bolt was being slipped.

He felt absurd and futile, and not at all like a lion. With the revolver in his hand, he went down the steps.

"Don't bother about the gate, Joe," he said. "I like to open my own gates. And don't try any tricks, Joe. Get

Fearful mutterings followed that, but the shadow retired, and he made an undisturbed exit to the street. Once

on the streetcar, the entire episode became unreal and theatrical, with only the drag of Joe's revolver in his

It was after midnight when, shoes in hand, he crept up the stairs to Dan's room, and careful not to disturb him,

slipped into his side of the double bed. He did not sleep at all. He lay there, facing the fact that Lily had

delivered herself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy of her house, and not only of her house, an enemy of

the country. That conference that night was a sinister one. Brought to book about it, Doyle might claim it as a

labor meeting. Organizers planning a strike might did indeed hold secret conferences, but they did not

post armed guards. They opened business offices, and brought in the press men, and shouted their grievances

This was different. This was anarchy. And in every city it was going on, this rallying of the malcontents, the

idlers, the envious and the dangerous, to the red flag. Organized labor gathered together the workmen, but

men like Doyle were organizing the riffraff of the country. They secured a small percentage of idealists and

pseudointellectuals, and taught them a socalled internationalism which under the name of brotherhood was

nothing but a raid on private property, a scheme of pillage and arson. They allied with themselves imported

laborers from Europe, men with everything to gain and nothing to lose, and by magnifying real grievances

and inflaming them with imaginary ones, were building out of this material the rank and file of an anarchist

On toward morning he remembered something, and sat bolt upright in bed. Edith had once said something

about knowing of a secret telephone. She had known Louis Akers very well. He might have told her what she

knew, or have shown her, in some braggart moment. A certain type of man was unable to keep a secret from

a woman. But that would imply For the first time he wondered what Edith's relations with Louis Akers

The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her days there, the feeling she had of

sanctuary did not offset Lily's clear knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing. Even her

grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered now as a feeble old man, fighting his losing

battle in a changing world, and yet with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the end.

She had determined, that first night in Elinor's immaculate guest room, to go back the next day. They had

been right at home, by all the tenets to which they adhered so religiously. She had broken the unwritten law

not to break bread with an enemy of her house. She had done what they had expressly forbidden, done it over

"On top of all this," old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of her delinquencies from some notes in his

hand, "you dined last night openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly my

"He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to kill me."

"I don't believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let him come here "

"Never in this house," said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his hand. "He will come here over my

"Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a rake, a dog."

"Just a moment, father," Howard had put in, quietly. "Lily, do you care for this man? I mean by that, do you

"He has asked me. I have not given him any answer yet. I don't want to marry a man my family will not

Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a bitterness of language that turned Lily cold

and obstinate. She heard him through, with her father vainly trying to break in and save the situation; then she

She had made no plan, of course. She hated doing theatrical things. But shut in her bedroom with the doors

locked, Anthony's furious words came back, his threats, his bitter sneers. She felt strangely alone, too. In all

the great house she had no one to support her. Mademoiselle, her father and mother, even the servants, were

tacitly aligned with the opposition. Except Ellen. She had felt lately that Ellen, in her humble way, had

In spite of the warmth of her greeting, Lily had felt a reserve in Aunt Elinor's welcome. It was as though she

"I had to do it, Aunt Elinor," she said, when they had gone upstairs. There was a labor conference, Doyle had

"I know," said Elinor. "I understand. I'll pin back the curtains so you can open your windows. The night air is

Some time later Lily roused from the light sleep of emotional exhaustion. She had thought she heard Willy

Cameron's voice. But that was absurd, of course, and she lay back to toss uneasily for hours. Out of all her

thinking there emerged at last her real self, so long overlaid with her infatuation. She would go home again,

and make what amends she could. They were wrong about Louis Akers, but they were right, too.

Lying there, as the dawn slowly turned her windows to gray, she saw him with a new clarity. She had a swift

vision of what life with him would mean. Intervals of passionate loving, of boyish dependence on her, and

then a new face. Never again was she to see him with such clearness. He was incapable of loyalty to a

woman, even though he loved her. He was born to be a wanderer in love, an experimenter in passion. She

even recognized in him an incurable sensuous curiosity about women, that would be quite remote from his

love for her. He would see nothing wrong in his infidelities, so long as she did not know and did not suffer.

And he would come back to her from them, watchful for suspicion, relieved when he did not find it, and

bringing her small gifts which would be actually burnt offerings to his own soul.

She made up her mind to give him up. She would go home in the morning, make her peace with them all, and

She slept after that, and at ten o'clock Elinor wakened her with the word that her father was downstairs.

Elinor was very pale. It had been a shock to her to see her brother in her home after all the years, and a still

"I am so sorry, Howard," she had said. The sight of him had set her lips trembling. He patted her shoulder.

"An obstinate, doandbedamned lot," he said slowly. "I'd like to see my little girl, Nellie. We can't have

He held Lily in much the same way when she came down, an arm around her, his big shoulders thrown back

as though he would guard her against the world. But he was very uneasy and depressed, at that. He had come

on a difficult errand, and because he had no finesse he blundered badly. It was some time before she gathered

"Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe," he put in hastily, seeing her puzzled face, "I think I can

"Lily, dear," he said, hoarse with anxiety, "we simply have to remember that he is a very old man, and that

his mind is not elastic. He is feeling very bitter now, but he will get over it."

"And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven! I was ready to go back, but he won't have me. Is that it?"

"Only just for the present." He threw out his hands. "I have tried everything. I suppose, in a way, I could

insist, make a point of it, but there are other things to be considered. His age, for one thing, and then the

strike. If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no concession, no argument with the men, it makes it very

"I see. It is wicked that any one man should have such power. The city, the mills, his family it's wicked."

But she was conscious of no deep anger against Anthony now. She merely saw that between them, they, she

and her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be passed. And in Howard's efforts she saw the

"I am afraid it is a final break, father," she said. "And if he shuts me out I must live my own life. But I am not

He had to be content with that. After all, his own sister but he wished it were not Jim Doyle's house. Not

that he regarded Lily's shift toward what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all youth had a slant toward

socialism, and outgrew it. But he went away sorely troubled, after a few words with Elinor Doyle alone.

"Not always, Howard. He doesn't drink now, so that is over. And I think there are no other women. But when

things go wrong I suffer, of course." She stared past him toward the open window.

"I couldn't go home, Howard. You know what it would be. Worse than Lily. And I'm too old to start out by

"I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself," he said eagerly; "that would be a

"We'll manage all right," she said. "I'll make Lily comfortable and as happy as I can."

He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have noticed with what care she was choosing her

words. His father's age, his unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire soon from the arbitrary

stand he had taken. Elinor hardly heard him. Months afterwards he was to remember the distant look in her

eyes, a sort of halffrightened determination, but he was selfengrossed just then.

"Don't let her marry him, Nellie! Better than any one, you ought to know what that would mean."

In the end he went away not greatly comforted, to fight his own battles, to meet committees from the union,

and having met them, to find himself facing the fact that, driven by some strange urge he could not

understand, the leaders wished a strike. There were times when he wondered what would happen if he should

suddenly yield every point, make every concession. They would only make further demands, he felt. They

seemed determined to put him out of business. If only he could have dealt with the men directly, instead of

with their paid representatives, he felt that he would get somewhere. But always, interposed between himself

It was like representative government. It did not always represent. It, too, was founded on representation in

good faith; but there was not always good faith. The union system was wrong. It was like politics. The few

handled the many. The union, with its allpowerful leaders, was only another form of autocracy. It was

He had no quarrel with the union. He puzzled it out, traveling unaccustomed mental paths. The country was

founded on liberty. All men were created free and equal. Free, yes, but equal? Was not equality a long way

ahead along a thorny road? Men were not equal in the effort they made, nor did equal efforts bring equal

result. If there was class antagonism behind all this unrest, would there not always be those who rose by dint

of ceaseless effort? Equality of opportunity, yes. Equality of effort and result, no.

To destroy the chance of gain was to put a premium on inertia; to kill ambition; to reduce the high without

At noon on the same day Willy Cameron went back to the house on Cardew Way, to find Lily composed and

resigned, instead of the militant figure he had expected. He asked her to go home, and she told him then that

"I meant to go, Willy," she finished. "I meant to go this morning. But you see how things are."

He had stood for a long time, looking at nothing very hard. "I see," be said finally. "Of course your

grandfather will be sorry in a day or two, but he may not swallow his pride very soon."

"You can afford to be magnanimous with all your life before you." Then he faced her. "Besides, Lily, you're

wrong. Dead wrong. You've hurt three people, and all you've got out of it has been your own way."

"I don't know about that. And a good many crimes have been committed in its name." Even in his

unhappiness he was controversial. "We are never really free, so long as we love people, and they love us.

Well " He picked up his old felt hat and absently turned down the brim; it was raining. "I'll have to get

"I wasn't hungry," he had said, and had gone away, his coat collar turned up against the shower. Lily had had

a presentiment that he was taking himself out of her life, that he had given her up as a bad job. She felt

depressed and lonely, and not quite so sure of herself as she bad been; rather, although she did not put it that

way, as though something fine had passed her way, like Pippa singing, and had then gone on.

She settled down as well as she could to her new life, making no plans, however, and always with the stricken

feeling that she had gained her own point at the cost of much suffering. She telephoned to her mother daily,

broken little conversations with long pauses while Grace steadied her voice. Once her mother hung up the

receiver hastily, and Lily guessed that her grandfather had come in. She felt very bitter toward him.

But she found the small oneage interesting, in a quiet way; to make her own bed and mend her stockings

Grace had sent her a trunkful of clothing; and on the elderly maid's afternoon out, to help Elinor with the

supper. She seldom went out, but Louis Akers came daily, and on the sixth day of her stay she promised to

She had not meant to do it, but it was difficult to refuse him. She had let him think she would do it ultimately,

for one thing. And, however clearly she might analyze him in his absences, his strange attraction reasserted

"But not soon, Louis," she said, holding him off. "And I ought to tell you I don't think we will be happy

"Because " she found it hard to put into words "because love with you is a sort of selfish thing, I think."

"I'll lie down now and let you tramp on me," he said exultantly, and held out his arms. But even as she moved

There was a new air of maturity about Lily those days, and sometimes a sort of aloofness that both maddened

him and increased his desire to possess her. She went into his arms, but when he held her closest she

"I want to be engaged a long time, Louis. We have so much to learn about each other."

He thought that rather childish. But whatever had been his motive in the beginning, he was desperately in

love with her by that time, and because of that he frightened her sometimes. He was less sure of himself, too,

even after she had accepted him, and to prove his continued dominance over her he would bully her.

But her infatuation persisted, although there were times when his inordinate vitality and his caresses gave her

a sense of physical weariness, times when sheer contact revolted her. He seemed always to want to touch her.

Fastidiously reared, taught a sort of aloofness from childhood, Lily found herself wondering if all men in love

Ellen was staying at the Boyd house. She went downstairs the morning after her arrival, and found the bread

bakery breadtoasted and growing cold on the table, while a slice of ham, ready to be cooked, was not yet

Dan had already gone, and his halfempty cup of black coffee was on the kitchen table. Ellen sniffed it and

She rolled up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the frying pan, with much the same

grimness with which she had sat the night before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way

they looked after Willy Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw out the coffee, which she

suspected had been made by the timesaving method of pouring water on last night's grounds, and made a

fresh pot of it. After that she inspected the tea towels, and getting a tin dishpan, set them to boil in it on the

Ellen disapproved of her surroundings; she disapproved of any woman who did not boil her tea towels. And

when Edith came down carefully dressed and undeniably rouged she formed a disapproving opinion of that

young lady, which was that she was trying to land Willy Cameron, and that he would be better dead than

"A friend of Willy's! Well, I guess you needn't pay for your breakfast by cooking it. Mother's probably run

out for something she never has anything in the house and is talking somewhere. I'll take that fork."

"All right," she acceded indifferently. "If you're going to eat it you'd better cook it. We're rotten housekeepers

"I should think, if you're going to keep boarders, somebody would learn to cook. Mr. Cameron's mother is the

Her tone was truculent. Ellen's world, the world of short hours and easy service, of the decorum of the

Cardew servants' hall, of luxury and dignity and good pay, had suddenly gone to pieces about her. She was

feeling very bitter, especially toward a certain chauffeur who had prophesied the end of all service. He had

made the statement that before long all people would be equal. There would be no above and belowstairs,

"They'll drive their own cars, then, damn them," he had said once, "if they can get any to drive. And answer

their own bells, if they've got any to ring. And get up and cook their own breakfasts."

"Which you won't have any to cook," Grayson had said irritably, from the head of the long table. "Just a

word, my man. That sort of talk is forbidden here. One word more and I go to Mr. Cardew."

The chauffeur had not sulked, however. "All right, Mr. Grayson," he said affably. "But I can go on thinking, I

daresay. And some of these days you'll be wishing you'd climbed on the band wagon before it's too late."

Ellen, turning the ham carefully, was conscious that her revolt had been only partially on Lily's account. It

was not so much Lily's plight as the abuse of power, although she did not put it that way, that had driven her

out. Ellen then had carried out her own small revolution, and where had it put her? She had lost a good home,

Edith poured herself a cup of coffee, and taking a piece of toast from the oven, stood nibbling it. The crumbs

"Got out of the wrong side of the bed, didn't you?" Edith asked. "Willy's bed, I suppose. I'm not hungry, and I

Ellen stared. It was her first knowledge that this girl, this painted hussy, worked in Willy's pharmacy, and her

suspicions increased. She had a quick vision, as she had once had of Lily, of Edith in the Cameron house;

Edith reading or embroidering on the front porch while Willy's mother slaved for her; Edith on the same

porch in the evening, with all the boys in town around her. She knew the type, the sort that set an entire

village by the ears and in the end left home and husband and ran away with a traveling salesman.

Ellen had already got Willy married and divorced when Mrs. Boyd came in. She carried the milk pail, but her

When Willy Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into the parlor. His pallor was not lost on

her, or his sunken eyes. He looked badly fed, shabby, and harassed, and he bore the marks of his sleepless

"I'm very comfortable. We've tried to get a ser " He changed color at that. In the simple life of the village at

home a woman whose only training was the town standard of good housekeeping might go into service in the

city and not lose caste. But she was never thought of as a servant. " help," he substituted. "But we can't get

"How do you know what she's thinking? It's all over her. It's Willy this and Willy that and men are such

There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to forget; Edith at his doorway, with that odd look

in her eyes; Edith never going to sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain things she had said, that

"That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen. But even if it were true, which it isn't, don't you think it would be rather nice

"That'll finish it," Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around the parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at

"If you're going to stay here I will," she announced abruptly. "I owe that much to your mother. I've got some

money. I'll take what they'd pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another family." Then,

seeing hesitation in his eyes: "That Woman's sick, and you've got to be looked after. I could do all the work,

He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries, and she was accustomed to luxury. There

was no room for her. But in the end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith

"It's a hole," she said, "cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer. But there's room for a cot, and I guess we

"I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith," he said for perhaps the twentieth time since he had found out

"No chance," she said cheerfully. "Mother would raise the devil if you tried it." She glanced at Ellen's face.

When they finally departed on a halfrun Ellen was established as a fixture in the Boyd house, and was

already piling all the cooking utensils into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching for lye with

Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred. It was not, in spite of predictions, a general walkout.

Some of the mills, particularly the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with reduced forces kept on, but

the chain of Cardew Mills was closed. There was occasional rioting by the foreign element in outlying

Dan was out of work, and the loss of his pay was a serious matter in the little house. He had managed to lay

by a hundred dollars, and Willy Cameron had banked it for him, but there was a real problem to be faced. On

the night of the day the Cardew Mills went down Willy called a meeting of the household after supper,

around the dining room table. He had been in to see Mr. Hendricks, who had been laid up with bronchitis,

"The irresistible force and the immovable body, son," he said. "They'll stay set this time. And unless I miss

my guess that is playing Doyle's hand for him, all right. His chance will come when the men have used up

their savings and are growing bitter. Every strike plays into the hands of the enemy, son, and they know it.

The moment production ceases prices go up, and soon all the money in the world won't pay them wages

He had a store of homely common sense, and a gift of putting things into few words. Willy Cameron, going

"The only way to solve this problem of living," he said, "is to see how much we can work, and not how little.

Germany's working ten hours a day, and producing. We're talking about six, and loafing and fighting while

So Willy went home and called his meeting, and knowing Mrs. Boyd's regard for figures, set down and added

or subtracted, he placed a pad and pencil on the table before him. It was an odd group: Dan sullen, resenting

the strike and the causes that had led to it; Ellen, austere and competent; Mrs. Boyd with a lace fichu pinned

around her neck, now that she had achieved the dignity of hired help, and Edith. Edith silent, morose and

fixing now and then rather haggard eyes on Willy Cameron's unruly hair. She seldom met his eyes.

"First of all," said Willy, "we'll take our weekly assets. Of course Dan will get something temporarily, but

"You are all the family I have just now. Why not? Anyhow, I'll have to keep out lunch money and carfare,

Ellen had made a great reduction in expenses, but food was high. And there was gas and coal, and Dan's

small insurance, and the rent. There was absolutely no margin, and a sort of silence fell.

"Well, I'll tell you about that," Willy said, feeling for words. "I'm going to be busy helping Mr. Hendricks in

his campaign. Then next fall well, I'll either go back or Hendricks will make me chief of police, or

something." He smiled around the table. "I ought to get some sort of graft out of it."

"Mother!" Edith protested. "He mustn't sacrifice himself for us. What are we to him anyhow? A lot of stones

It was after Willy had declared that this was his home now, and he had a right to help keep it going, and after

Ellen had observed that she had some money laid by and would not take any wages during the strike, that the

meeting threatened to become emotional. Mrs. Boyd shed a few tears, and as she never by any chance carried

a handkerchief, let them flow over her fichu. And Dan shook Willy's hand and Ellen's, and said that if he'd

had his way he'd be working, and not sitting round like a stiff letting other people work for him. But Edith got

up and went out into the little back garden, and did not come back until the meeting was both actually and

morally broken up. When she heard Dan go out, and Ellen and Mrs. Boyd go upstairs, chatting in a new

amiability brought about by trouble and sacrifice, she put on her hat and left the house.

Ellen, rousing on her cot in Edith's upper room, heard her come in some time later, and undress and get into

Ellen fell asleep, and in her sleep she dreamed that Mrs. Boyd had taken sick and was moaning. The moaning

was terrible; it filled the little house. Ellen wakened suddenly. It was not moaning; it was strange, heavy

"Are you sick?" she called, and getting up, her knees hardly holding her, she lighted the gas at its unshaded

Edith was lying there, her mouth open, her lips bleached and twisted. Her stertorous breathing filled the

The girl was only partially conscious. Ellen ran down the stairs and into Willy's room.

"Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her," he said, and ran up the stairs. Almost immediately he was down

again, searching for alcohol; he found a small quantity and poured that down the swollen throat. He roused

Dan then, and sent him running madly for Doctor Smalley, with a warning to bring him past Mrs. Boyd's

door quietly, and to bring an intubation set with him in case her throat should close. Then, on one of his

innumerable journeys up and down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd herself, in her nightgown, and

"Edith is sick. I don't want you to go up. It may be contagious. It's her throat."

And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs in her nightgown, a shaken helpless figure,

asking countless questions of those that hurried past. But they reassured her, and after a time she went

downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconced with it in the lower hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid

Upstairs the battle went on. There were times when the paralyzed muscles almost stopped lifting the chest

walls, when each breath was a new miracle. Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eight o'clock came a brisk

young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron's assistance, an operation was performed. After that, and for days,

The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having a childlike faith in medical men, betrayed no

anxiety after the first hour or two. She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down through the house while

she herself was kept out of that upper room where Edith lay, conscious now but sullen, disfigured, silent. She

was happy, too, to have her old domain hers again, while Ellen nursed; to make again her flavorless desserts,

her mounds of rubberlike gelatine, her pies. She brewed broths daily, and when Edith could swallow she sent

up the results of hours of cooking which Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top, and heated

Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking. Ellen did her duty, and more; got up at night; was gentle

with rather heavy hands; bathed the girl and brushed and braided her long hair. But there were hours during

that simulated quarantine when a brooding silence held in the sickroom, and when Ellen, turning suddenly,

would find Edith's eyes on her, full of angry distrust. At those times Ellen was glad that Edith could not

Edith could not speak. She wrote her wants with a stub of pencil, or made signs. One day she motioned

"You needn't be frightened," she said. "When those scabs come off the doctor says you'll hardly be marked at

"He's all right. They've got a girl at the store to take your place, but I guess you can go back if you want to."

Then, seeing the hunger in the girl's eyes: "He's out a good bit these nights. He's making speeches for that Mr.

The confinement told on Ellen. She would sit for hours, wondering what had become of Lily. Had she gone

back home? Was she seeing that other man? Perhaps her valiant loyalty to Lily faded somewhat during those

days, because she began to guess Willy Cameron's secret. If a girl had no eyes in her head, and couldn't see

that Willy Cameron was the finest gentleman who ever stepped in shoe leather, that girl had something wrong

Then, sometimes, she wondered how Edith's condition was going to be kept from her mother. She had

measured Mrs. Boyd's pride by that time, her almost terrible respectability. She rather hoped that the sick

woman would die some night, easily and painlessly in her sleep, because death was easier than some things.

She liked Mrs. Boyd; she felt a slightly contemptuous but real affection for her.

Then one night Edith heard Willy's voice below, and indicated that she wanted to see him. He came in,

stooping under the sheet which Mrs. Boyd had heard belonged in the doorway of diphtheria, and stood

looking down at her. His heart ached. He sat down on the bed beside her and stroked her hand.

"Poor little girl," he said. "We've got to make things very happy for her, to make up for all this!"

But Edith freed her hand, and reaching out for paper and pencil stub, wrote something and gave it to Ellen.

But Edith made an insistent gesture, and Ellen, flushed and wretched, had to tell. He made no sign, but sat

stroking Edith's hand, only he stared rather fixedly at the wall, conscious that the girl's eyes were watching

him for a single gesture of surprise or anger. He felt no anger, only a great perplexity and sadness, an

"I'm sorry, little sister," he said, and did the kindest thing he could think of, bent over and kissed her on the

forehead. "Of course I know how you feel, but it is a big thing to bear a child, isn't it? It is the only miracle

"Even then," he persisted, "it's a big thing. We would have this one come under happier circumstances if we

could, but we will welcome and take care of it, anyhow. A child's a child, and mighty valuable. And," he

He stayed a little while after that, but he read aloud, choosing a humorous story and laughing very hard at all

the proper places. In the end he brought a faint smile to Edith's blistered lips, and a small lift to the cloud that

He made a speech that night, and into it he put all of his aching, anxious soul; Edith and Dan and Lily were

behind it. Akers and Doyle. It was at a meeting in the hall over the city market, and the audience a new men's

"Sometimes," he said, "I am asked what it is that we want, we men who are standing behind Hendricks as an

independent candidate." He was supposed to bring Mr. Hendricks' name in as often as possible. "I answer that

we want honest government, law and order, an end to this conviction that the country is owned by the unions

and the capitalists, a fair deal for the plain people, which is you and I, my friends. But I answer still further,

we want one thing more, a greater thing, and that thing we shall have. All through this great country tonight

are groups of men hoping and planning for an incredible thing. They are not great in numbers; they are,

however, organized, competent, intelligent and deadly. They plow the land with discord to sow the seeds of

"And against them, what? The people like you and me; the men with homes they love; the men with little

businesses they have fought and labored to secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, the honest laborers,

the Godfearing rich. I tell you, we are the people, and it is time we knew our power.

"And this is the thing we want, we the people; the greater thing, the thing we shall have; that this government,

this country which we love, which has three times been saved at such cost of blood, shall survive."

It was after that speech that he met Pink Denslow for the first time. A square, solidly built young man edged

"Name's Denslow," said Pink. "Liked what you said. Have you time to run over to my club with me and have

"I know Miss Cardew," said Willy Cameron, guardedly. And they were both rather silent for a time.

That night proved to be a significant one for them both, as it happened. They struck up a curious sort of

friendship, based on a humble admiration on Pink's part, and with Willy Cameron on sheer hunger for the

society of his kind. He had been suffering a real mental starvation. He had been constantly giving out and

Pink developed a habit of dropping into the pharmacy when he happened to be nearby. He was rather

wistfully envious of that year in the camp, when Lily Cardew and Cameron had been together, and at first it

was the bond of Lily that sent him to the shop. In the beginning the shop irritated him, because it seemed an

incongruous background for the fiery young orator. But later on he joined the small open forum in the back

room, and perhaps for the first time in his idle years he began to think. He had made the sacrifice of his

luxurious young life to go to war, had slept in mud and risked his body and been hungry and cold and often

frightfully homesick. And now it appeared that a lot of madmen were going to try to undo all that he had

helped to do. He was surprised and highly indignant. Even a handful of agitators, it seemed, could do

One night he and Willy Cameron slipped into a meeting of a Russian Society, wearing old clothes, which

with Willy was not difficult, and shuffling up dirty stairs without molestation. They came away thoughtful.

"They're not dangerous," Willy Cameron said. "That's talk. But it shows a state of mind. The real incendiaries

It was after a mob of foreigners had tried to capture the town of Donesson, near Pittsburgh, and had been

turned back by a hastily armed body of its citizens, doctors, lawyers and shopkeepers, that a nebulous plan

If one could unite the plain people politically, or against a foreign war, why could they not be united against

an enemy at home? The South had had a similar problem, and the result was the Ku Klux Klan.

The Chief of Police was convinced that a plan was being formulated to repeat the Seattle experiment against

the city. The Mayor was dubious. He was not a strong man; he had a conviction that because a thing never

"The mob has done it before," urged the Chief of Police one day. "They took Paris, and it was damned

He was rather uneasy after that. It had occurred to him that the Chief might have referred to Paris, Illinois.

Now and then Pink coaxed Willy Cameron to his club, and for those rare occasions he provided always a

little group of men like themselves, young, eager, loyal, and struggling with the new problems of the day. In

Most of the men had been in the army, and he found in them an eager anxiety to face the coming situation

and combat it. In the end the nucleus of the new Vigilance Committee was formed there.

Not immediately. The idea was of slow growth even with its originator, and it only reached the point of

speech when Mr. Hendricks stopped in one day at the pharmacy and brought a bundle which he slapped down

"Read that dynamite," he said, his face flushed and lowering. "A man I know got it translated for me. Read it

and then tell me whether I'm an alarmist and a plain fool, or if it means trouble around here."

Louis Akers had by that time announced his candidacy for Mayor, and organized labor was behind him to an

alarming extent. When Willy Cameron went with Pink to the club that afternoon, he found Akers under

discussion, and he heard some facts about that gentleman's private life which left him silent and morose. Pink

knew nothing of Lily's friendship with Akers. Indeed, Pink did not know that Lily was in the city, and Willy

Cameron had not undeceived him. It had pleased Anthony Cardew to announce in the press that Lily was

making a round of visits, and the secret was not his to divulge. But the question which was always in his

mind rose again. What did she see in the man? How could she have thrown away her home and her family for

"He may," he said; "with three candidates we're splitting the vote three ways, and it's hard to predict. Mr.

Cardew can't be elected, but he weakens Hendricks. One thing's sure. Where's my pipe?" Silence while Mr.

Cameron searched for his pipe, and took his own time to divulge the sure thing. "If Hendricks is elected he'll

clear out the entire bunch of anarchists. The present man's afraid. But if Akers can hypnotize labor into voting

for him, and he gets it, it will be up to the city to protect itself, for he won't. He'll let them hold their infamous

meetings and spread their damnable doctrine, and you know what they've tried to do in other places." He

explained what he had in mind then, finding them expectant and eager. There ought to be some sort of citizen

organization, to supplement the state and city forces. Nothing spectacular; indeed, the least said about it the

better. He harked back then to his idea of the plain people, with homes to protect.

"That needn't keep you fellows out," he said, with his whimsical smile. "But the rank and file will have to

constitute the big end. We don't want a lot of busybodies, pussyfooting around with guns and looking for

trouble. We had enough of that during the war. We would want some men who would answer a riot call if

He had some of the translations Hendricks had brought him in his pocket, and they circulated around the

"That looks like it, doesn't it? And they are getting that sort of stuff all the time. There are a hundred thousand

"Yes. I like doing things in the open myself, but you've got to fight a rat in his hole, if he won't come out."

"I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime and took in washing at night to support the

"We'd better have a constitution and all that, don't you think?" Pink asked. "We can draw up a tentative one,

and then fix it up at the first meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll go like a fire."

"We don't need that sort of stuff," he said, "and if we begin that we might as well put it in the newspapers.

We want men who can keep their mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a card agreeing to stand by the

government and to preserve law and order. Then an office and a filing case, and their addresses, so we can get

Then and there, in twenty words, Willy Cameron wrote the now historic oath of the new Vigilance

Committee, on the back of an old envelope. It was a promise, an agreement rather than an oath. There was a

little hush as the paper passed from hand to hand. Not a man there but felt a certain solemnity in the occasion.

To preserve the Union and the flag, to fight all sedition, to love their country and support it; the very

simplicity of the words was impressive. And the mere putting of it into visible form crystallized their hitherto

vague anxieties, pointed to a real enemy and a real danger. Yet, as Willy Cameron pointed out, they might

"Our job," he said, "is only as a last resort. Only for real trouble. Until the state troops can get here, for

instance, and if the constabulary is greatly outnumbered. It's their work up to a certain point. We'll fight if

It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financed immediately. Pink offered an office in the bank

building. Some one agreed to pay a clerk who should belong to the committee. It was practical, businesslike,

and done. And, although he had protested, he found himself made the head of the organization.

" without title and without pay," he stipulated. "If you wish a title on me, I'll resign."

For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walking out after nightfall with Louis

occasionally, but shrinkingly keeping to quiet back streets. She had a horror of meeting some one she knew,

of explanations and of gossip. But after a time the desire to see her mother became overwhelming. She took

to making little flying visits home at an hour when her grandfather was certain to be away, going in a taxicab,

and reaching the house somewhat breathless and excited. She was driven by an impulse toward the old

familiar things; she was homesick for them all, for her mother, for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for her

little toilet table, for her bed and her reading lamp. For the old house itself.

She was still an alien where she was. Elinor Doyle was a perpetual enigma to her; now and then she thought

she had penetrated behind the gentle mask that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond it something

inscrutable. There was a dead line in Elinor's life across which Lily never stepped. Whatever Elinor's battles

were, she fought them alone, and Lily had begun to realize that there were battles.

The atmosphere of the little house had changed. Sometimes, after she had gone to bed, she heard Doyle's

voice from the room across the hall, raised angrily. He was nervous and impatient; at times he dropped the

unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she found herself looking into a pair of cold blue eyes which

The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming. A sort of early summer lethargy had

apparently settled on the house. Doyle wrote for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group of

intellectuals, as he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summer vacations. But she discovered that there were

She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur. On those evenings Elinor always made an

early move toward bed, and Lily would repair to her hot lowceiled room, to sit in the darkness by the

That was how she learned of the conferences. She had no curiosity about them at first. They had something to

do with the strike, she considered, and with that her interest died. Strikes were a symptom, and ultimately,

through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they would discover the cure for the disease that caused them. She was

Then, one night, she went downstairs for a glass of ice water, and found the lower floor dark, and subdued

voices coming from the study. The kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it, placing the

key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer. The door was partly glass, and Elinor had a fear of the glass

On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroom door, and Doyle's voice outside, a

savage voice that she scarcely recognized. When she had thrown on her dressing gown and opened the door

he had instantly caught her by the shoulder, and she bore the imprints of his fingers for days.

"None of your business why not," he said, and gave her an angry shake. "Hereafter, when you find that door

"Take your hands off me!" She was rather like her grandfather at that moment, and his lost caution came

"Sorry!" he said. "I get a bit emphatic at times. But there are times when a locked door becomes a mighty

The next day he removed the key from the door, and substituted a bolt. Elinor made no protest.

Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced to knock at the study door and call Doyle. She

had an instant's impression of the room crowded with strange figures. The heavy odors of sweating bodies, of

tobacco, and of stale beer came through the halfopen door and revolted her. And Doyle had refused to go

She began to feel that she could not remain there very long. The atmosphere was variable. It was either

cynical or sinister, and she hated them both. She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyle both wanted her there

and did not want her, and that he was changing his attitude toward her Aunt Elinor. Sometimes she saw him

But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, and she turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the

open day. He at least was what he appeared to be. There was nothing mysterious about him.

He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the house with his presence, and demanding her in

Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, because those phases of his passion for her tired

her. But there were times when he put her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, his handsome face

uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, his arms across her knees. It was not altogether studied. He was

a born wooer, but he had his hours of humility, of vague aspirations. His insistent body was always greater

than his soul, but now and then, when he was physically weary, he had a spiritual moment.

It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise from him. He had been, from his position on the

"He couldn't have got it, anyhow. And he doesn't want it. I do, honey. I need it in my business. When the

"I don't like the men who come here, Louis. I wish they were not friends of yours."

"But what do you draw a salary for?" He was immediately on the alert, but her eyes were candid and

"There may be some bad times coming, honey." He bent his head and kissed her hands, lying motionless in

"You must remember, dear, that for all your theories, which are very sweet, this is a man's world, and men

"Well, the war was brutal, wasn't it? And you were in a white heat supporting it, weren't you? How about

another war," he chose his words carefully "just as reasonable and just? You've heard Doyle. You know

He was amazed at her horror, a horror that made her recoil from him and push his hands away when he tried

to touch her. He got up angrily and stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets.

"What the devil did you think all this talk meant?" he demanded. "You've heard enough of it."

"I don't know and I don't care." Suddenly, with one of the quick changes she knew so well, he caught her

hands and drawing her to her feet, put his arms around her. "All I know is that I love you, and if you say the

"Marry me, honey," he begged. "Marry me now. Do you think I'll let anything in God's world come between

us? Marry me, and I'll do more than leave them." He was whispering to her, stroking her hair. "I'll cut the

whole outfit. And on the day I go into your house as your husband I'll tell your people some things they want

"They'll try to do plenty, old girl," he said, "but I'm not afraid of them, and they know it. Marry me, Lily," he

He gave her a sense of power, over him and over evil. She felt suddenly an enormous responsibility, that of a

"You can save me, honey," he whispered, and kneeling suddenly, he kissed the toe of her small shoe.

He was strong. But he was weak too. He needed her. "I'll do it, Louis," she said. "You you will be good to

The mood of exaltation upheld her through the night, and into the next day. Elinor eyed her curiously, and

with some anxiety. It was a long time since she had been a girl, going about stareyed with power over a

At noon Louis came in for a hasty luncheon, and before he left he drew Lily into the little study and slipped a

solitaire diamond on her engagement finger. To Lily the moment was almost a holy one, but he seemed more

interested in the quality of the stone and its appearance on her hand than in its symbolism.

"Well, you've passed into good hands," he said, and laughed his great, vibrant laugh. "Costing me money

A little of her exaltation died then. But perhaps men were like that, shyly covering the things they felt

"Except the Doyles, of course," he said. "I am not taking any chances on losing you, child."

"Not unless you want to be kidnaped and taken home. It's only a matter of a day or two, anyhow."

And he found her curiously obstinate and determined. She did not quite know herself why she demanded

delay, except that she shrank from delivering herself into hands that were so tender and might be so cruel. It

He was rather sulky when he went away, and he had told her the exact amount he had paid for her ring.

Having forced him to agree to the delay, she found her mood of exaltation returning. As always, it was when

he was not with he that she saw him most clearly, and she saw his real need for her. She had a sense of peace,

too, now that at last something was decided. Her future, for better or worse, would no longer be that helpless

waiting which had been hers for so long. And out of her happiness came a desire to do kind things, to pat

"I am going out for a little while, Aunt Nellie," she said, "and when I come back I want to tell you

Elinor went back heavyhearted to her knitting. It was very difficult always to sit by and wait. Never to raise

Lily was rather surprised, when she reached the Eagle Pharmacy, to find Pink Denslow coming out. It gave

her a little pang, too; he looked so clean and sane and normal, so much a part of her old life. And it hurt her,

"Why, Lily!" he said, and stood there, gazing at her, hat in hand, the sun on his gleaming, carefully brushed

"I have not been away, Pink. I left home it's a long story. I am staying with my aunt, Mrs. Doyle."

"If you knew what I suspect about Doyle, Lily, you wouldn't let the same roof cover you." But he added,

Lily's head had gone up a trifle. Why did her old world always try to put her in the wrong? She had had to

"Since you feel as you do, I'm afraid that's impossible. Mr. Doyle's roof is the only roof I have."

"Not now. I left, and my grandfather won't have me back. You mustn't blame him, Pink. We quarreled and I

For a moment after she turned and disappeared inside the pharmacy door he stood there, then he put on his

hat and strode down the street, unhappy and perplexed. If only she had needed him, if she had not looked so

selfpossessed and so ever so faintly defiant, as though she dared him to pity her, he would have known what

to do. All he needed was to be needed. His open face was full of trouble. It was unthinkable that Lily should

be in that center of anarchy; more unthinkable that Doyle might have filled her up with all sorts of wild ideas.

Women were queer; they liked theories. A man could have a theory of life and play with it and boast about it,

but never dream of living up to it. But give one to a woman, and she chewed on it like a dog on a bone. If

The encounter had hurt Lily, too. The fine edge of her exaltation was gone, and it did not return during her

brief talk with Willy Cameron. He looked much older and very thin; there were lines around his eyes she had

never seen before, and she hated seeing him in his present surroundings. But she liked him for his very

unconsciousness of those surroundings. One always had to take Willy Cameron as he was.

"Do you like it, Willy?" she asked. It had dawned on her, with a sort of panic, that there was really very little

"Well, it's my daily bread, and with bread costing what it does, I cling to it like a limpet to a rock."

She was lost again. She glanced around the little shop, where once Edith Boyd had manicured her nails

behind the counter, and where now a middleaged woman stood with listless eyes looking out over the street.

Lily glanced up as he stopped. She had drawn off her gloves, and his eyes had fallen on her engagement ring.

To Lily there had always been a feeling of unreality about his declaration of love for her. He had been so

restrained, so careful to ask nothing in exchange, so without expectation of return, that she had put it out of

her mind as an impulse. She had not dreamed that he could still care, after these months of silence. But he

"I am going to be married, Willy," she said, in a low tone. It is doubtful if he could have spoken, just then.

And as if to add a finishing touch of burlesque to the meeting, a small boy with a swollen jaw came in just

He welcomed the interruption, she saw. He was very professional instantly, and so absorbed for a moment in

"Let's see it," he said in a businesslike, slightly strained voice. "Better have it out, old chap. But I'll give you

Which he proceeded to do. When he came back to Lily he was quite calm and selfpossessed. As he had

never thought of dramatizing himself, nor thought of himself at all, it did not occur to him that drama requires

setting, that tragedy required black velvet rather than toothbrushes, and that a small boy with an aching

All he knew was that he had somehow achieved a moment in which to steady himself, and to find that a man

can suffer horribly and still smile. He did that, very gravely, when he came back to Lily.

"He wants me to marry him. He wants it very much, Willy. And I know you don't like him, but he has

changed. Women always think they have changed men, I know. But he is very different."

There was something childish about her, he thought. Childish and infinitely touching. He remembered a night

at the camp, when some of the troops had departed for overseas, and he had found her alone and crying in

her hut. "I just can't let them go," she had sobbed. "I just can't. Some of them will never come back."

Wasn't there something of that spirit in her now, the feeling that she could not let Akers go, lest worse befall

him? He did not know. All he knew was that she was more like the Lily Cardew he had known then than she

But there was anger in him, too. Anger at Anthony Cardew. Anger at the Doyles. And a smoldering, bitter

anger at Louis Akers, that he should take the dregs of his life and offer them to her as new wine. That he

should dare to link his scheming, plotting days to this girl, so wise and yet so ignorant, so cleareyed and yet

"Lily," he said, slowly, "there is one thing you ought to do. Go home, make your peace there, and get all this

on the right footing. Then have him there. You have never seen him in that environment, yet that is the world

The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprising catholicity of range. Already it included

lawyers and doctors, chauffeurs, butchers, clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck gardeners from the

surrounding county, railroad employees, and some of the strikers from the mills, men who had obeyed their

union order to quit work, but had obeyed it unwillingly; men who resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks

On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers, one of the cards of the new Vigilance

Committee was being inspected with cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices in the

Searing Building. They studied it with interest, while the man who had brought it stood by.

The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During the day two stenographers, both men,

sat before machines and made a pretense of business at such times as the door opened, or when an occasional

client, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates. At such times the clerks were politely regretful. The

There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably professional cleaners. They came and

went, or sat along the walls, waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to be

accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less fluency, with Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.

There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pails and brushes, soap and ladders. But there was

a great safe also, and its compartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues, a supply constantly

depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen, carrying out the pails of honest labor, carried them loaded

Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrine of no God; of no government, and of no

church; of the confiscation of private property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape, arson and pillage.

And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatres were crowded, its expensive shops, its

hotels. Two classes of people were spending money prodigally; women with shawls over their heads, women

who in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove in automobiles to order their winter supply of

coal, and vast amounts of liquors were being bought by the foreign element against the approaching

On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction from war. The newspapers were filled with

the summer plans of the wealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Among the list of

And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being ground the professional and salaried men

with families, the women clerks, the vast army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They went

through their days doggedly, with little anxious lines around their eyes, suffering a thousand small

deprivations, bewildered, tortured with apprehension of tomorrow, and yet patiently believing that, as things

"It's bound to clear up soon," said Joe Wilkinson over the back fence one night late in June, to Willy

Cameron. Joe supported a large family of younger brothers and sisters in the house next door, and was

employed in a department store. "I figure it this way both sides need each other, don't they? Something like

marriage, you know. It'll all be over in six months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now it's summer, because

"Wait and see," said Joe, cryptically. "If you think you're going to be the only Central Park in this vicinity

you've got to think again." He hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searching for

There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron's attention. He thought about Joe a great deal

that night. Joe was another one who must never know about Edith's trouble. The boy had little enough, and if

he had built a dream about Edith Boyd he must keep his dream. He was rather discouraged that night, was

Willy Cameron, and he began to think that dreams were the best things in life. They were a sort of sanctuary

to which one fled to escape realities. Perhaps no reality was ever as beautiful as one's dream of it.

Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes during his rare leisure he walked to Cardew Way

through the warm night, and past the Doyle house, but he never saw her, and because it did not occur to him

that she might want to see him he never made an attempt to call. Always after those futile excursions he was

inclined to long silences, and only Jinx could have told how many hours he sat in his room at night, in the

secondhand easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand and eyes on nothing in particular, lost in a dream world

where the fields bore a strong resemblance to the parade ground of an army camp, and through which field he

But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediate problems, of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd

and Edith, that a little of his fine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departed from him. The

meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took on a political bearing, and Hendricks was generally the

central figure. The ward felt that Mr. Hendricks was already elected, and called him "Mr. Mayor." At the

same time the steel strike pursued a course of comparative calm. At Friendship and at Baxter there had been

rioting, and a fatality or two, but the state constabulary had the situation well in hand. On a Sunday morning

Willy Cameron went out to Baxter on the trolley, and came home greatly comforted. The cooleyed

efficiency of the state police reassured him. He compared them, disciplined, steady, calm with the calmness

of their dangerous calling, with the rabble of foreigners who shuffled along the sidewalks, and he felt that his

He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned in the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now

mostly confined to her room, spent much time in searching for these notices, and then in painfully cutting

them out and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothing about him she felt thwarted, and

was liable to sharp remarks on newspapers in general, and on those of the city in particular.

Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like other strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd,

having plowed the field for sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk with Edith.

She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early in July, the scars on her face now only

faint red blotches, and he placed her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Dan had brought her down

and had made a real effort to be kind, but his suspicion of the situation made it difficult for him to dissemble,

and soon he went out. Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the open window came the shrieks of numerous

They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron talking with a sort of determined optimism.

"I wish you'd close the window," she said at last. "Those crazy Wilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to

"All right." He closed the window and stood looking down at her. "Are you sure you want me to hear it?" he

"Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers while I've been shut away up there, Willy. It

kept me from thinking. And if things are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get into trouble doing

"You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in the Searing Building."

"Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police will want something definite to go on."

"I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, at night. And I know there's a telephone

hidden in the drawer of the desk in the back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell them

"What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't much to go on."

"When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk," she said briefly, and before that sordid picture Willy

"No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me." He got up and took a restless turn or two about the

little rooms Edith's problem had begun to obsess him. Not for long would it he possible to keep her condition

"Have you ever thought," he said at last, "that this man, whoever he is, ought to marry you?"

"I don't want to marry him," she said. "I wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth."

He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed on Louis Akers, but he could not be sure.

"I won't tell you his name, either," Edith added, shrewishly. Then her voice softened. "I will tell you this,

Willy," she said wistfully. "I was a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out. It's the

"I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks," he said. "And we may go on and have a talk with the Chief

After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now and then looked in to see if she was

Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse at that. But suppose they trapped Louis

Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with her the news of the family. At first she

had sternly refused to talk about the Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had been long and

monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form, when she could talk, of incessant questions.

So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leaving home, and called her a poor thing in her

heart. Quite lately she had heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be, soon. Now her

motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wanted to tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but

she wanted Lily to marry Louis Akers. She wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way, and

Willy was not like Dan; he did not seem to think her forever lost. He had always been thoughtful, but lately

he had been very tender with her. Men did strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget, after a

long time. She could board the child out somewhere, if it lived. Sometimes they didn't live.

She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, moved to sudden pity for the frail life now

wearing to its close. If that were life she did not want it, with its drab days and futile effort, its incessant

deprivations, its hands, gnarled with work that got nowhere, its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.

"I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother," she said from the doorway. "How's the pain down your

arm?" "Bring me the mucilage, Edie," requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped up in bed and surrounded by

newspapers. "I've found Willy's name again. I've got fourteen now. Where's the scissors?"

Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, and still sit among her pillows, snipping?

"I wonder," said Mrs. Boyd, "did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen is so saving that she grudges him a bone."

"He looks all right," said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lord did that for people, when they

reached a certain point. Maybe He took away the fear of death, by showing after years of it that life was not

so valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity, and her dread of what lay beyond. She had

prayed first, because she wanted to have some place on the other side. She had prayed to be received young

Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than life, and that was love. Her mother was

upheld by love. That was what the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love of her

starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because his hand was close by to hold to.

For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw what love might be, and might do. She

held out both hands in the darkness, but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. If she could only

have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray path that stretched ahead, years and years of

Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story, and together late that evening they

saw the Chief of Police at his house. Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watch on

the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company and thus ultimately getting the heads of the organization.

"Every day means more of their infernal propaganda," he said, "and if this girl's telling a straight story, the

thing to do is to get the outfit now. Those clerks, for instance we'll get some information out of them. That

"Going to ball it up, of course," Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly, on the way home. "Won't wait, because if

Akers gets in he's out, and he wants to make a big strike first. I'll drop in tomorrow evening and tell you

He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle of redbound pamphlets under his arm, and a

"What did I tell you, Cameron?" he demanded, breathing heavily. "Yes, they got them all right. Got a safe

full of stuff so inflammable that, since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse than that

first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks, and a halfdozen foreigners, too. And that's all they got."

"Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the Myers Housecleaning Company, that they never

saw the inside of the vault, and they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest. They'll

have to let them go, son. Here. You can do most everything. Can you read Croatian? No? Well, here's

something in English to cut your wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellows

It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he saw behind it Jim Doyle and other men like

Doyle, men who knew the discontents of the world, and would fatten by them; men who, secretly envious of

the upper classes and unable to attain to them, would pull all men to their own level, or lower. Men who

cloaked their own jealousies with the garb of idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous, and imminent.

The pamphlets spoke of "the day." It was a Prussian phrase. The revolution was Prussian. And like the

Germans, they offered loot as a reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and greed

Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at the city he loved.

"Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?" he asked. "Will our people take it up? Is the American

"Not a bit of it," said Willy Cameron stoutly." They're about as able to overthrow the government as you are

"No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in it. It's the hole we don't want."

To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, which he carried with an increased arrogance

"Confound the man," said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golf links one Sunday morning while Anthony

Cardew, hectic with rage, searched for a lost ball and refused to drop another. "He'll hold us up all morning,

for that ball, just as he tries to hold up all progress." He lowered his voice. "What's happened to the

"Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. I guess that's the answer. Hey, Cardew! D'you

want these young cubs behind us to play through, or are you going to show some sense and come on?"

Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to a reluctant admiration of his courage. But there

was no cordiality between them. They were in accord again, as to the strike, although from different angles.

Both of them knew that they were fighting for very life; both of them felt that the strikers' demands meant the

end of industry, meant that the man who risked money in a business would eventually cease to control that

business, although if losses came it would be he, and not the workmen, who bore them. Howard had gone as

far as he could in concessions, and the result was only the demand for more. The Cardews, father and son,

His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty, but he was rather late with his support,

and in private he retained his cynical attitude. He had not come over at all until he learned that Louis Akers

was an opposition candidate. At that his wrath knew no bounds and the next day he presented a large check to

"Can't you hear him?" he demanded. "He'd stalk into headquarters as important as an office boy who's been

sent to the bank for money, and he'd slam down his check and say just two words."

"'Buy 'em'," quoted Mr. Hendricks. "The old boy doesn't know that things have changed since the 80's. This

city has changed, my lad. It's voting now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why these foreign language

papers can play the devil with us. The only knowledge the poor wretches have got of us is what they're given

to read. And most of it stinks of sedition. Queer thing, this thinking. A fellow can think himself into murder."

The strike was going along quietly enough. There had been rioting through the country, but not of any great

significance. It was in reality a sort of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waiting for the other to show

himself in the open. The representatives of the press, gathered in the various steel cities, with automobiles

arranged for to take them quickly to any disturbance that might develop, found themselves with little news

On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, and realized with a shock that she was

looking thin and much older. He kissed her and then held her off and looked at her.

"You've got to keep your courage up, dear," he said. "I don't think it will be long now."

"No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there. Even Elinor " he checked himself. "I'll

Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech rather at length.

"So far as I can make out, Howard," he said, "this man Hendricks is getting pretty strong. He has a young

fellow talking for him who gets over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought off.

He goes around shouting that he's a plain man, after the support of the plain people. Although I'm damned if I

Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed the blame for it on Lily, and spent

as many evenings away from home as possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to

the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his

tool and his creature, merely staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to his

lawyers with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master even in his own home. His employees

would not work for him, his family disobeyed him, his government held him up and shook him. In the good

"I'm going out," he said, as he rose from the table. "Grace, that chef is worse than the last. You'd better send

"I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are no servants anywhere."

No cooks, either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that, with the exception of Grayson, the servants in

his house were vaguely hostile to the family. They gave grudging service, worked short hours, and, the only

class of labor to which the high cost of food was a negligible matter, demanded wages he considered

"I don't know what the world's coming to," he snarled. "Well, I'm off. Thank God, there are still clubs for a

In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson had brought liqueurs and coffee and had

"I met young Denslow today," he said. "He came in to see me. As a matter of fact, I signed a card he had

Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, as impressive as it had been when Willy

"That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to be a general strike, with an endeavor to

turn it into a revolution. Perhaps only local, but these things have a tendency to spread. Denslow had some

literature which referred to an attempt to take over the city. They have other information, too, all pointing the

"Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born. Their plans are fairly comprehensive; they mean to

dynamite the water works, shut down the gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies. Then when

"Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take over the banks, for one thing."

"What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same time? Or rioting in other places,

In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced. But he had no faith in the plain people, and

said so. "They'll see property destroyed and never lift a hand," he said. "Didn't I stand by in Pittsburgh during

the railroad riots, and watch them smile while the yards burned? Because the railroads meant capital to them,

"Precisely," said Howard, "but after twentyfour hours they were fighting like demons to restore law and

order. It is" he fingered the card "to save that twentyfour hours that this organization is being formed. It

is secret. Did I tell you that? And the idea originated with the young man you spoke about as supporting

Hendricks you met him here once, a friend of Lily's. His name is Cameron William Wallace Cameron."

Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on his forehead swelled with anger. After a time:

"That is the supposition. But they have nothing on him yet; he is too shrewd for that. And that leads to

"Actually, no. In effect but we needn't go into that now. The situation is very serious. I can imagine that

nothing could fit better into his plans than to have her there. She gives him a cachet of respectability. Do you

"She is probably one of them now. God knows how much of his rotten doctrine she has absorbed."

"His theories, possibly. His practice, no. She certainly has no idea ... it has come to this, father. She must

have a home somewhere, and if it cannot be here, Grace and I must make one for her elsewhere."

Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at that moment, or liked him less.

"We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot go on as they are. We have waited for you to

see that, all three of us, and now this new situation makes it imperative to take some action."

"He would hardly come, under the circumstances. Besides, her friendship with him is only a part of her

revolt. If she comes home it will be with the understanding that she does not see him again."

"That is what it actually was. She found her liberty interfered with, and she staged her own small rebellion. It

"It was very Cardew," said old Anthony, and smiled faintly. He had, to tell the truth, developed a grudging

admiration for his granddaughter in the past two months. He saw in her many of his own qualities, good and

bad. And, more than he cared to own, he had missed her and the young life she had brought into the quiet

house. Most important of all, she was the last of the Cardews. Although his capitulation when it came was

"Bring her home," he said, "but tell her about Akers. If she says that is off, I'll forget the rest."

On her way to her room that night Grace Cardew encountered Mademoiselle, a pale, unhappy Mademoiselle,

who seemed to spend her time mostly in Lily's empty rooms or wandering about corridors. Whenever the

three members of the family were together she would retire to her own quarters, and there feverishly with her

rosary would pray for a softening of hearts. She did not comprehend these Americans, who were so kind to

"I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle," Grace said, not very steadily. "I have good news for you."

Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression, and flinging her arms around Grace's neck she kissed

"We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle. I think things will be different now."

"But she must be different, too," she said. "She is sweet and good, but she is strong of will, too. The will to

do, to achieve, that is one thing, and very good. But the will to go. one's own way, that is another."

But, alone later on, her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered. If youth were the indictment against

Lily, was she not still young? It took years, or suffering, or sometimes both, to break the will of youth and

It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself, and thus save her the humiliation of

coming back alone. All morning housemaids were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxed and

rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished to refulgence. And all morning Mademoiselle

scolded and ran suspicious fingers into corners, and arranged and rearranged great boxes of flowers.

Long before the time she had ordered the car Grace was downstairs, dressed for the street, and clad in cool

shining silk, was pacing the shaded hall. There was a vague air of expectation about the old house. In a room

off the pantry the second man was polishing the buttons of his livery, using a pasteboard card with a hole in it

to save the fabric beneath. Grayson pottered about in the drawing room, alert for the parlor maid's sins of

The telephone in the library rang, and Grayson answered it, while Grace stood in the doorway.

"A message from Miss Lily," he said. "Mrs. Doyle has telephoned that Miss Lily is on her way here."

Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily with her good news, to bring her home bag

and baggage, to lead her into the house and to say, in effect, that this was home, her home. She had felt that

She went upstairs, and taking off her hat, smoothed her soft dark hair. She did not want Lily to see how she

had worried; she eyed herself carefully for lines. Then she went down, to more waiting, and for the first time,

Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was no doubt about her close embrace of her

mother, her happiness at seeing her. She did not remove her gloves, however, and after she had put Grace in a

chair and perched herself on the arm of it, there was a little pause. Each was preparing to tell something, each

"I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear," she said. "I we want you to come home to us again."

"All of us. Your grandfather, too. He expects to find you here tonight. I can explain to your Aunt Elinor

Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When she came back her eyes were filled with tears,

Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother's face Lily flung herself on her knees beside the

"Mother, mother," she said, "you must know how I love you. Love you both. Don't look like that. I can't bear

"Mother," Lily begged, desperately, "let me come home. Let me bring him here. I'll wait, if you'll only do

that. He is different; I know all that you want to say about his past. He has never had a real chance in all his

life. He won't belong at first, but he's a man, mother, a strong man. And it's awfully important. He can do so

"I don't understand you," Grace said coldly. "What can a man like that do, but wreck all our lives?"

Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. "I'll tell you about that later," she said, and slowly

got to her feet. "Is that all, mother? You won't see him? I can't bring him here? Isn't there any compromise?

"I wanted you so," Lily said, drearily, "I need you so just now. I am going to be married, and I have no one to

go to. Aunt Elinor doesn't understand, either. Every way I look I find I suppose I can't come back at all,

Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters, trivial affairs. This that was happening, an

irrevocable break with her family, was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. She wondered dully if any

man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew, subconsciously, that Louis Akers was not. All her exaltation

was gone, and in its stead was a sort of dogged determination to see the thing through now, at any cost; to

remake Louis into the man he could be, to build her own house of life, and having built it, to live in it as

She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but there was a feeling of finality in them both.

Mademoiselle, waiting at the top of the stairs, heard the door close and could not believe her ears. Grace went

upstairs, her face a blank before the servants, and shut herself in her room. And in Lily's boudoir the roses

The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder. In some cities there had been rioting, but

halfhearted and easily controlled. Almost without exception it was the foreign and unassimilated element

that broke the peace. Alien women spat on the state police, and flung stones at them. Here and there property

was destroyed. A few bomb outrages filled the newspapers with great scareheads, and sent troops and a

In the American Federation of Labor a stocky little man grimly fought to oppose the Radical element, which

was slowly gaining ground, and at the same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies, united at

last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded, stood doggedly and courageously together,

waiting for a return of sanity to the world. The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywhere in the country

production was reduced by the cessation of labor, and as a result the cost of living was mounting.

And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that to cease to labor may express a grievance, but that

in itself it righted no wrongs. Rather, it turned that great weapon, public opinion, without which no

movement may succeed, against it. And that to stand behind the country in war was not enough. It must stand

It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The weak link in the labor chain was its

Radical element. Rioters were arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vain the unions protested their

lack of sympathy with the unruly element. The vast respectable family of union labor found itself accused of

At Friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its meetings in a hall. When that was

On the fifteenth of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused polo field, and the next day awakened to

the sound of hammers, and to find a high wooden fence, reenforced with barbed wire, being built around the

field, with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In a few days the fence was finished, only to be

partly demolished the next night, secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to hold

meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly held in the woods near the town, but the

On the restored fence around the polo grounds a Red flag was found one morning, and two nights later the

Then, about the first of August, out of a clear sky, sporadic riotings began to occur. They seemed to originate

without cause, and to end as suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts, but one or

two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not all foreign strikers from the mills. They were garment

workers, hotel waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to no end, apparently. They

began with a chance word, fought their furious way for an hour or so, and ended, leaving a trail of broken

On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable size. The police were badly

outnumbered, and a surprising majority of the rioters were armed, with revolvers, with wooden bludgeons,

lengths of pipe and short, wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until the police found themselves

suddenly and mysteriously reenforced by a coolheaded number of citizens, led by a tall thin man who

limped slightly, and who disposed his heterogeneous support with a few words and considerable skill.

The same thin young man, stopping later in an alley way to investigate an arm badly bruised by an iron bar,

overheard a conversation between two roundsmen, met under a lamppost after the battle, for comfort and a

"Search me," said Henry. "D'you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too. D'you notice that? Probably hurt in

The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the Vigilance Committee. Willy Cameron was inclined to regard them

as without direction or intention, purely as manifestations of hate, and as such contrary to the plans of their

leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the recent outburst, sized up the situation

"You can boil a kettle too hard," he said, "and then the lid pops off. Doyle and that outfit of his have been

burning the fire a little high, that's all. They'll quit now, because they want to get us off guard later. You and

your committee can take a vacation, unless you can set them to electioneering for me. They've had enough for

a while, the devils. They'll wait now for Akers to get in and make things easy for them. Mind my words, boy.

And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of order still occurred, but no big ones. To the headquarters in

the Denslow Bank came an increasing volume of information, to be duly docketed and filed. Some of it was

valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following up. Thus one night Pink and a picked

band, following a vague clew, went in automobiles to the state borderline, and held up and captured two

trucks loaded with whiskey and destined for Friendship and Baxter. He reported to Willy Cameron late that

"Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road," he said. "Hurt like sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who

But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality, in the Boyd house things were rapidly

approaching a climax, and that through Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The

strike was on his nerves; he felt his position keenly, resented Willy Cameron supporting the family, and had

Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty, and an open break came on an evening when she said

that she felt able to go to work again. They were at the table, and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen,

carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than scanty, and finally Dan pushed his plate

"Going back to work, are you?" he sneered. "And how long do you think you'll be able to work?"

"You keep quiet," Edith flared at him. "I'm going to work. That's all you need to know. I can't sit here and let

a man who doesn't belong to us provide every bite we eat, if you can." Willy Cameron got up and closed the

"Now," he said when he came back, "we might as well have this out. Dan has a right to be told, Edith, and he

can help us plan something." He turned to Dan. "It must be kept from your mother, Dan."

"Plan something!" Dan snarled. "I know what to plan, all right. I'll find the " he broke into foul, furious

language, but suddenly Willy Cameron rose, and there was something threatening in his eyes.

"I know who it is," Dan said, more quietly, "and he's got to marry her, or I'll kill him."

"You know, do you? Well, you don't," Edith said, "and I won't marry him anyhow."

"You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see mother disgraced, sick as she is, and let you get away

with it? Where does Akers live? You know, don't you? You've been there, haven't you?"

"Yes, I know," she said, hysterically, "but I won't tell you. And I won't marry him. I hate him. If you go to

him he'll beat you to death." Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Akers' brutal hands overwhelmed her.

"A lot you'd care," he said, coldly. "As if we didn't have enough already! As if you couldn't have married Joe

"Be quiet, Dan," Willy Cameron interrupted him. "That sort of talk doesn't help any. Edith is right. If you go

"God!" Dan muttered. "With all the men in the world, to choose that rotten anarchist!"

It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in the badly lighted little room around the

disordered table, with Ellen grimly listening in the doorway, and the odors of cooking still heavy in the air.

Edith sat there, her hands on the table, staring ahead, and recounted her wrongs. She had never had a chance.

Home had always been a place to get away from. Nobody had cared what became of her. And hadn't she tried

to get out of the way? Only they all did their best to make her live. She wished she had died.

Dan, huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at nothing with hopeless eyes.

Afterwards Willy Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in detail. He remembered its setting, but of

all the argument and quarreling only one thing stood out distinctly, and that was Edith's acceptance of Dan's

accusation. It was Akers, then. And Lily Cardew was going to marry him. Was in love with him.

"Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him to marry me. I tell you I'd die first."

He left them there, sitting in the half light, and going out into the hall picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him

and called to him, and before he went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed to him, as he bent over her,

that her lips were bluer than ever, her breath a little shallower and more difficult. Her untouched supper tray

"I wasn't hungry," she explained. "Seems to me, Willy, if you'd let me go downstairs so I could get some of

my own cooking I'd eat better. Ellen's all right, but I kind o' crave sweet stuff, and she don't like making

"You'll be down before long," he assured her. "And making me pies. Remember those pies you used to

He kissed her when he left. He had always marveled at the strange lack of demonstrativeness in the

"Now remember," he said, "light out at ten o'clock, and no going downstairs in the middle of the night

The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling, and went down the stairs and out into the

He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Akers, and to find out from him if he could what truth there

was in Edith Boyd's accusation. He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did

anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men. If he could get the facts from Louis Akers but he had no

idea of what he would do then. He couldn't very well tell Lily, but her people might do something. Or Mrs.

He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than marry Akers, under the circumstances.

That her failure to marry Louis Akers would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never even

considered. All that had been settled long ago, when she said she did not love him.

At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home, and for an hour or two he walked the streets. The

city seemed less majestic to him than usual; its quiet bystreets were lined with homes, it is true, but those

very streets hid also vice and degradation, and ugly passions. They sheltered, but also they concealed.

At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict, and was told that Mr. Akers had come in.

It was Akers himself who opened the door. Because the night was hot he had shed coat and shirt, and his fine

torso, bare to the shoulders and at the neck, gleamed in the electric light. Willy Cameron had hot seen him

since those spring days when he had made his casual, boldeyed visits to Edith at the pharmacy, and he had a

swift insight into the power this man must have over women. He himself was tall; but Akers was taller, fully

muscled, his head strongly set on a neck like a column. But he surmised that the man was soft, out of

Akers' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when he opened the door.

Akers had, rather unwillingly, thrown the door wide, and he went in. The room was very hot, for a small fire,

littered as to its edges with papers, burned in the grate. Although he knew that Akers had guessed the

meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two when each sparred for an opening.

"You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible. Is that true?"

Louis Akers was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known that Edith would tell. But what he had not

counted on was that she would tell any one who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving the pharmacy had

He was keeping himself well under control, but Akers saw his hand clench, and resorted to other tactics. He

was not angry himself, but he was wary now; he considered that life was unnecessarily complicated, and that

"She won't marry you," Willy Cameron said steadily. "That's not the point I want your own acknowledgment

Akers was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted a cigarette and over the match stared at the other

"No!" he said suddenly. "I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility. She knew her way around long before I

ever saw her. Ask her. She can't lie about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say. I played around

Willy Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, and Akers eyed him warily.

"None of that," he cautioned. "I don't know what interest you've got in this, and I don't give a Goddamn. But

"I don't like to soil my hands on you," he said, "but I don't mind telling you that any man who ruins a girl's

Some time later Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street. He wore his coat collar turned up to

conceal the absence of certain articles of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost. And he wore, too, a

The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy. It was tired of fighting. For two years it had labored

at high tension for the European war. It had paid taxes and bought bonds, for the war. It had saved and

skimped and denied itself, for the war. And for the war it had made steel, steel for cannon and for tanks, for

ships and for railroads. It had labored hard and well, and now all it wanted was to be allowed to get back to

It said, in effect: "I have both fought and labored, sacrificed and endured. Give me now my rest of nights,

after a day's work. Give me marriage and children. Give me contentment. Give me the things I have loved

And because the city craved peace, it was hard to rouse it to its danger. It was warweary, and its weariness

Then, the same night that had seen Willy Cameron's encounter with Akers, it was roused from its lethargy. A

series of bomb outrages shook the downtown district. The Denslow Bank was the first to go. Willy Cameron,

inspecting a cut lip in his mirror, heard a dull explosion, and ran down to the street. There he was joined by

Joe Wilkinson, in trousers over his night shirt, and as they looked, a dull red glare showed against the sky.

Joe went back for more clothing, but Willy Cameron ran down the street. At the first corner he heard a

second explosion, further away and to the east, but apparently no fire followed it. That, he learned later, was

The Denslow Bank was burning. The facade had been shattered and from the interior already poured a steady

flow of flame and smoke. He stood among the crowd, while the engines throbbed and the great fire hose lay

along the streets, and watched the little upper room where the precious records of the Committee were

burning brightly. The front wall gone, the small office stood open to the world, a bright and shameless thing,

After a time he happened on Pink Denslow, wandering alone on the outskirts of the crowd.

"Just about kill the governor, this," said Pink, heavily. "Don't suppose the watchmen got out, either. Not that

"Yes. Do you realize that every record we've got has gone? D'you suppose those fellows knew about them?"

"Trouble is," Pink went on, "you don't know who to trust. They're not all foreigners. Let's get away from

They wandered through the night together, almost unconsciously in the direction of the City Club, but within

a block of it they realized that something was wrong. A hospital ambulance dashed by, its gong ringing

The club was more sinister than the burning bank; it was a mass of grim wreckage, black and gaping, with

now and then the sound of settling masonry, and already dotted with the moving flashlights of men who

To Pink this catastrophe was infinitely greater than that of the bank. Men he knew had lived there. There

were old club servants who were like family retainers; one or two employees were exservice men for whom

he had found employment. He stood there, with Willy Cameron's hand on his arm, with a new maturity and a

"Before God," he said solemnly, "I swear never to rest until the fellows behind this are tried, condemned and

The death list for that night numbered thirteen, the two watchmen at the bank and eleven men at the club, two

of them members. Willy Cameron, going home at dawn, exhausted and covered with plaster dust, bought an

extra and learned that a third bomb, less powerful, had wrecked the mayor's house. It had been placed under

the sleeping porch, and but for the accident of a sick baby the entire family would have been wiped out.

Even his high courage began to waver. His records were gone; that was all to do over again. But what seemed

to him the impasse was this fighting in the dark. An unseen enemy, always. And an enemy which combined

with skill a total lack of any rules of warfare, which killed here, there and everywhere, as though for the sheer

joy of killing. It struck at the high but killed the low. And it had only begun.

Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and appearing in the next. Lily Cardew at that

stage of her life had a considerable amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination, although it was

softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her, women who had loved, and suffered dominance

because they loved. Her very infatuation for Louis Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was possibly an inheritance

from her foremothers, who had been wont to overlook the evil in a man for the strength in him. Only Lily

mistook physical strength for moral fibre, insolence and effrontery for courage.

In both her virtues and her faults, however, irrespective of heredity, Lily represented very fully the girl of her

position and period. With no traditions to follow, setting her course by no compass, taught to think but not

how to think, resentful of tyranny but unused to freedom, she moved ahead along the path she had elected to

Her infatuation for Louis Akers had come to a new phase of its rapid development. She had reached that

point where a woman realizes that the man she loves is, not a god of strength and wisdom, but a great child

who needs her. It is at that point that one of two things happens: the weak woman abandons him, and follows

her dream elsewhere. The woman of character, her maternal instinct roused, marries him, bears him children,

is both wife and mother to him, and finds in their united weaknesses such strength as she can.

In her youth and selfsufficiency Lily stood ready to give, rather than to receive. She felt now that he needed

her more than she needed him. There was something unconsciously patronizing those days in her attitude

toward him, and if he recognized it he did not resent it. Women had always been "easy" for him. Her very

aloofness, her faint condescension, her air of a young grande dame, were a part of her attraction for him.

Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when it gains sight, it dies. Already Lily was

seeing him with the critical eyes of youth, his loud voice, his overfastidious dress, his occasional

grossnesses. To offset these she placed vast importance on his promise to leave his old associates when she

The time was very close now. She could not hold him off much longer, and she began to feel, too, that she

must soon leave the house on Cardew Way. Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious and

ungracious. She knew that he had no knowledge of Louis's promise, but he began to feel that she was

And in Louis Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to pull out until after the election. He was

ambitious, and again and again he urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he were

That issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and learned the terms on which she might return

"Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet," she said. "You have known their attitude all along, haven't you?"

"I'll show them," he said, thickly. "Damned snobs!" He glanced at her then uneasily, and her expression put

him on his guard. "I didn't mean that, little girl. Honestly I didn't. I don't care for myself. It's you."

"You must understand that they think they are acting for my good. And I am not sure," she added, her clear

But a little later he broke out again. If he wasn't good enough to enter their house, he'd show them something.

The election would show them something. They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of the city. She saw then

Lily sat back, listening and thinking. Sometimes she thought that he did not love her at all. He always said he

"I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis," she said, when he had exhausted himself. "I don't

That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her hands, begging her not to give him up, and

"You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?" he implored her. But she thought of Willy Cameron, oddly

enough, even while his arms were around her; of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching,

suppliant and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what she now knew was the blow

They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men in love, the men who offer much

and give little, the others who, out of a deep humility, offer little and give everything they have.

In the end. nothing was settled. After he had gone Lily, went up to Elinor's room. She had found in Elinor

lately a sort of nervous tension that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of her

visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis within the next few days. Elinor had dropped her sewing

"Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry him," Elinor said, almost violently. "I

have sat by and waited, because I thought you would surely see your mistake. But now Lily, do you envy

"You are different," she said finally. "You will break, where I have only bent."

But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be able to take any strong initiative

now. And all her moral and physical courage she was saving for a great emergency.

Cardew Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of the bomb outrages of that night.

When she went down to breakfast the next morning she found Jim Doyle pacing the floor of the dining room

in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper clenched in his hand. By the window stood Elinor, very pale and with

slightly reddened eyes. They had not heard her, and Doyle continued a furious harangue.

"The fools!" he said. "Damn such material as I have to work with! This isn't the time, and they know it. I've

Elinor saw her then, and made a gesture of warning. But it was too late. Lily had a certain quality of

"Is anything wrong?" she asked, and went at once to Elinor. She had once or twice before this stood between

"Everything is as happy as a May morning," Doyle sneered. "Your Aunt Elinor has an unpleasant habit of

Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily. He did not know how much she had heard, how much she knew. At the

moment he did not care. He had a reckless impulse to tell her the truth, but his habitual caution prevailed. He

Lily was equally cold. Her dislike of him had been growing for weeks, coupled to a new and strange distrust.

"I do," he said urbanely. "Particularly when I am fighting my wife's family. May I pour you some coffee?"

"May I give you a word of advice, Lily?" he said. "Don't treat your husband to tears at breakfast unless you

"You're a selfsufficient child, aren't you? Well, the best of us do it, sometimes."

He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts, and he went out, carrying the newspaper with him.

Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a menace. With all her theories he knew that

a word of the truth would send her flying, breathless with outrage, out of his door. He could quite plainly

visualize that homecoming of hers. The instant steps that would be taken against him, old Anthony on the

wire appealing to the governor, Howard closeted with the Chief of Police, an instant closing of the net. And

No. She must stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling and mouthing! In the room across

the hall where his desk stood he paced the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and

not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in the hollow of his hand. From that his

dreams ranged far. He saw himself the head, not of the nation there would be no nation, as such but of the

country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they were, showed him the ease with which the

Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of Pink Denslow. She had assumed some of

Elinor's cares for the day, for Elinor herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to attend

to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Elinor's small stock of fine china when the bell rang.

"Mr. Denslow is calling," said Jennie. "I didn't know if you'd see him, so I said I didn't know if you were in.

Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was covered with plaster dust, even to the

For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first time in his life perhaps, entirely

Her color faded. Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's eyes, and the hard strained look of his

"All the ruins," he said. "You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and the club?"

It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it all, a dreadful picture which had

somehow superimposed upon it a vision of Jim Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that this was not

"That's all," he finished. "Eleven at the club, two of them my own fellows. In France, you know. I found one

of them myself, this morning." He stared past her, over her head. "Killed for nothing, the way the Germans

"No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course. Lily, I want you to leave here. If you don't, if you stay now,

you're one of them, whether you believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that?"

She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard, and the mental shock had brought her dizziness and a faint

nausea. He stood watching her, and when she glanced up at him it seemed to her that Pink was hard. Hard

"Do you believe what they preach?" he demanded. "I've got to know, Lily. I've suffered the tortures of the

"No. You ought to know me better than that. But I don't believe that it started here, Pink. He was very angry

"He's behind it all right," Pink said grimly. "Maybe he didn't plant the bombs, but his infernal influence did it,

just the same. Do you mean to say you've lived here all this time and don't know he is plotting a revolution?

What if he didn't authorize these things last night? He is only waiting, to place a hundred bombs instead of

"We've got their own statements. Department of Justice found them. The fools, to think they can overthrow

There was a short pause, with Lily struggling to understand. Pink's set face relaxed somewhat. All that night

"I never dreamed of it, Pink. I suppose all the talk I've heard meant that, but I never are you sure? About

"We know he is behind it. We haven't got the goods on him yet, but we know. Cameron knows. You ask him

"Yes. He's had some vision, while the rest of us ! He's got a lot of us working now, Lily. We are on the

right trail, too, although we lost some records last night that put us back a couple of months. We'll get them,

all right. We'll smash their little revolution into a cocked hat." It occurred to him, then, that this house was a

poor place for such a confidence. "I'll tell you about it later. Get your things now, and let me take you home."

But Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy. She was stricken with sudden conviction; the

very mention of Willy Cameron gave Pink's statements authority. But to go like that, to leave Elinor in that

house, with all that it implied, was impossible. And there was her own private problem to dispose of.

"I'll go this afternoon, Pink. I'll promise you that. But I can't go with you now. I can't. You'll have to take my

"Of course you didn't know," he said, sturdily. "But I hate like thunder to go and leave you here." He picked

Lily's mind was working more clearly now. This was the thing Louis Akers had been concerned with, then, a

revolution against his country. But it was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon. He was not a killer.

She knew him well, and he was not a killer. He had got to a certain point, and then the thing had sickened

him. Even without her he would never have gone through with it. But it would be necessary now to get his

"Suppose," she said, hesitatingly, "suppose I tell you that I think I am going to be able to help you before

"But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally?" she persisted. "Some one who knows all about certain

"Ware the fellow who sells information," Pink said. "But we'll be glad to have it. We need it, God knows.

He kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and selfconsciously, but withal reverently. She

wondered, rather dully, why she could not love Pink. A woman would be so safe with him, so sure.

She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told her. But little by little things came back to

her; the man on guard in the garden; the incident of the locked kitchen door; Jim Doyle once talking angrily

over a telephone in his study, although no telephone, so far as she knew, was installed in the room; his recent

She went back to Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all along, and plotted with them; even if

his stomach had turned now, he had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw him,

misled as she had been by Doyle's highsounding phrases, lured on by one of those wild dreams of empire to

which men were sometimes given. She did not love him any more; she was sorry for him.

She saw her position with the utmost clearness. To go home was to abandon him, to lose him for those who

needed what he could give, to send him back to the enemy. She had told Pink she could secure an ally for a

price, and she was the price. There was not an ounce of melodrama in her, as she stood facing the situation.

She considered, quite simply, that she had assumed an obligation which she must carry out. Perhaps her pride

was dictating to her also. To go crawling home, bowed to the dust, to admit that life had beaten her, to face

She remembered Elinor's homecomings of years ago, the strained air of the household, the whispering

servants, and Elinor herself shut away, or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father

Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that uncompromisingly. She would marry Louis,

and hold him to his promise, and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come. But at the thought

of marriage she found herself trembling violently. With no love and no real respect to build on, with an

intuitive knowledge of the man's primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which she had

But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully determined. At Elinor's door she

tapped lightly, and she heard movements within. Then Elinor opened the door wide. She had been lying on

her bed, and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it. Lily felt a wave of intense pity for

Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to desperation.

"You know what is going on," she said, her voice strained. "You don't believe it is right; you know it is

wicked. Clothe it in all the fine language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked. If you stay here you

"It's too late for that," Lily said, stonily. "But it is not too late for you to get away."

"I shall stay," Elinor said, with an air of finality. But Lily made one more effort.

"No, he is killing himself." Suddenly Elinor flared into a passionate outburst. "Don't you think I know where

all this is leading? Do you believe for a moment that I think all this can lead to anything but death? It is a

madness, Lily; they are all mad, these men. Don't you know that I have talked and argued and prayed, against

"Then come away. You have done all you could, and you have failed, haven't you?"

"It is not time for me to go," Elinor said. And Lily, puzzled and baffled, found herself again looking into

Elinor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home, and together they packed almost in silence. Once

"You said you had not understood before, but that now you do. What did you mean?"

"Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor? It isn't that I don't trust you. You must believe that, but don't

"Yes, I suppose I am one of them," she said quietly. "And you are right. You must not tell me anything. Pink

Willy Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at all the night before, he felt singularly

awake and active. The Committee had made temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy, and

there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of the afternoon. Pink Denslow had come in late, and

There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get files and card indexes. Greater secrecy was to

be preserved and enjoined, the location of the office to be known only to a small inner circle, and careful

policing of it and of the building which housed it to be established. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files

would be kept in other places. The Committee groaned over its own underestimate of the knowledge of the

The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bank building where their file was kept, and

the club, where ninetenths of the officers of the Committee were members. The significance of the double

When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind. He found it rather difficult to broach the matter in his

mind. It was always hard for him to talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing conviction that

Willy Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron, too, was in love with Lily. There had

been a queer look in his face on those rare occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation, and

Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willy Cameron, a strange, loyal, half wistful,

totally unselfish devotion. It had steadied him, when the loss of Li1y might have made him reckless, and had

taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable business opportunities, which Willy Cameron

"I'll stay here until this other thing is settled," was Willy's invariable answer. "I have a certain amount of time

here, and the fellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion. In an office it would be different. And

So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed, and then said, with some difficulty:

"No. She thought it was just talk. And they'd kept the papers from her. She hadn't heard about last night.

"I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeat Hendricks by splitting the vote, and let the

"I know it," Pink observed, "but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't after you've told him. They've put a lot of

money in, and once a Cardew has invested in a thing he holds on like death. Especially the old man. Wouldn't

wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Akers last night," he added.

Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door into the shop, and opened a window.

"Noon edition has it," Pink said. "Claims to have been attacked in his rooms by two masked men. Probably

wouldn't have told it, but the doctor talked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he?"

He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily on her way home, clear once more of the poisonous

atmosphere of Doyle and his associates; Akers temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the

normal influences of her home life show him to her in a real perspective; and a rather unholy but very human

joy that he had given Akers a part of what was coming to him all united to cheer him. He saw Lily going

home, and a great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactful and careful, if only they

would be understanding and kind. If they would only be normal and everyday, and accept her as though she

had never been away. These people were so hedged about with conventions and restrictions, they put so much

emphasis on the letter and so little on the spirit. If only God, if only they wouldn't patronize her!

His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt, that afternoon, a real homesickness for his mother.

He saw her, ample and comfortable and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to ignore

If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that great house, full of curious eyes and whispering

He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr. Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his

"Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son," he observed. "But this bomb business has settled them.

"They've bought a halfpage in all the morning papers, disclaiming all responsibility and calling on all

"Have they, now," said Hendricks, with grudging admiration. "Can you beat that? Where do they get the

money, anyhow? If I lost my watch these days I'd have to do some highfinance before I'd be able to

"All right, see Cardew," were his parting words. "But he doesn't want this election any more than I want my

right leg. He'll stick. You can talk, Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words, any more

Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy and fine. His very vernacular made him

popular; his honesty was beyond suspicion. If he belonged to the old school in politics, he had most of its

virtues and few of its vices. He would take care of his friends, undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice

of friends. He would make the city a good place to live in. Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, not a center of

trade so much as a vast settlement of homes. Business supported the city in his mind, not the city business.

Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of a desperate remedy for a desperate disease

that Willy Cameron, after a careful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had no hope of

seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roof gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort

Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and son, in the library smoking. He had

arrived at a bad moment, for the bomb outrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the given

conditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and left Howard with a feeling of helplessness.

Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offered him a chair.

"I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron," he said. "You made me wish I could have had your

"I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening, but I am not free at any other time."

"When we go into politics," said old Anthony in his jibing voice, "the ordinary amenities have to go. When

"What's that?" Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his own house, this whippersnapper

The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for the family. Howard glanced at him,

"If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that I am heavily interested in this matter

myself," said old Anthony. "I have put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out, I want to

hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with your independent candidate who can't talk English."

"No," he said, slowly. "It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew

"It's like this," Willy Cameron said. "Your son knows it. Even if we drop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly

and I mean that nobody with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city. There's no

Howard had listened attentively and without anger. "For a long time, Mr. Cameron," he said, "I have been

urging men of of position in the city, to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional

politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to well, you can say to blaze a trail. It is not being

"The Cardews made this town, sir," he barked. "Willingness to serve, piffle! We need a business man to run

"If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick. And how do we know that your

Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too? You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do

heaven knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to the public imagination. You

don't say anything about votes, but you see that they vote for your man. Isn't that true?"

"Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is an anarchist. He calls himself something else, but

The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony Cardew. After all, more than

anything else, he wanted Akers defeated. The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough,

in Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard. What Willy Cameron told about

Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about

Cameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began, slowly, to dispose Anthony in his favor.

"If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking," he said, quietly obstinate. "Grant your

And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy which had been his own weapon for so

many years, retired in high dudgeon to his upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable

soul on an unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's last sanctuary, his club, was blown up about him, and a

With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a man who has made a final stand.

"What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly," he observed, "because you probably do not

"Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was a condition we felt forced to make, and

"Denslow saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. He had told her of the bombs, and of

other things. She hadn't understood before, and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't let her

"Will you telephone and find out if she is there?" Howard went to the telephone at once. It seemed to Willy

Cameron that he stood there for uncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity of waiting, he knew

what the answer would be. And that he knew, too, what that answer meant, where she had gone, what she had

done. If only she had come to him. If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself. He

"She is not there," Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all life had gone. "She left this afternoon, at

four o'clock. Of course she has friends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We had managed to make it

Willy Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst before it came, and unlike the older man,

"Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels," he said. "And if you will drop me downtown I'll tell you

In one way Howard had been correct in his surmise. It had been Lily's idea to go to a hotel until she had made

some definite plan. She would telephone Louis then, and the rest she did not think beyond that. She called a

taxi and took a small bag with her, but in the taxicab she suddenly realized that she could not go to any of the

She wanted a little time to herself, time to think. And before it was discovered that she had left Cardew Way

she must see Louis, and judge again if he intended to act in good faith. While he was with her, reiterating his

promises, she believed him, but when he was gone, she always felt, a curious doubt.

She thought then of finding a quiet room somewhere, and stopping the cab, bought a newspaper. It was when

she was searching for the "rooms for rent" column that she saw he had been attacked and slightly injured.

They had got him. He had said that if they ever suspected him of playing them false they would get him, and

now they had done so. That removed the last doubt of his good faith from her mind. She felt indignation and

dismay, and a sort of aching consciousness that always she brought only trouble to the people who cared for

her; she felt that she was going through her life, leaving only unhappiness behind her.

She told the chauffeur to go to the Benedict Apartments, and sitting back read the notice again. He had been

attacked by two masked men and badly bruised, after putting up a terrific resistance. They would wear masks,

of course. They loved the theatrical. Their very flag was theatrical. And he had made a hard fight That was

She was a Cardew, and she loved strength. There were other men, men like Willy Cameron, for instance, who

were lovable in many ways, but they were not fighters. They sat back, and let life beat them, and they took

the hurt bravely and stoically. But they never got life by the throat and shook it until it gave up what they

She had never been in a bachelors' apartment house before, and she was both frightened and selfconscious.

The girl at the desk eyed her curiously while she telephoned her message, and watched her as she moved

"Face's kind of familiar to me," said the telephone girl, reflectively. "Looks worried, doesn't she? Two

masked men! Huh! All Sam took up there last night was a thin fellow with a limp."

In the meantime, outside the door of Akers' apartment, Lily's fine courage almost left her. Had it not been for

the eyes of the elevator man, fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone away, even

Louis himself admitted her, an oddly battered Louis, in a dressing gown and slippers; an oddly watchful

Louis, too, waiting, after the manner of men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump.

He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat there, unable to go out, and had

wondered just when Cameron would see her and tell her about Edith Boyd. For, just as Willy Cameron

rushed him for the first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth about marrying another

girl, under the given circumstances. Only that had not been the sort of language in which it was delivered.

He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his, if he played it right.

"Bad enough, dear," he said, "but I gave them some trouble, too." He pushed a chair toward her. "It was like

"Please!" she said. "Not here. And I can't sit down. I can't stay. I only came because I wanted to tell you

something and I didn't want to telephone it. Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those bombs last night. He didn't

want it to happen before the election, but that doesn't alter the fact, does it?"

"I couldn't stay, could I?" She looked up at him, the little wistful glance that Willy always found so infinitely

touching, like the appeal of a willful but lovable child, that has somehow got into trouble. "And I can't go

She hesitated. She hated making terms with him, and yet somehow she must make terms.

Apparently merely putting the thought into words crystallized all his fears of the past hours; seeing her there,

too, had intensified his want of her. She stood there, where he had so often dreamed of seeing her, but still

holding him off with the aloofness that both chilled and inflamed him, and with a question in her eyes. He

"Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them, if I marry you, and doing all you can to stop

Suddenly she was trembling violently, and her lips felt dry and stiff. He pushed her into a chair, and knelt

Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts; Lily his, in his arms, in spite of that whitefaced drug

clerk with the cold eyes; himself in the Cardew house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardew at his own

cynical game; and persistently held back and often rising again to the surface, Woslosky and Doyle and the

others, killers that they were, pursuing him with their vengeance over the world. They would have to be

"I must go, Louis," she said. "I can't stay here. I felt very queer downstairs. They all stared so."

There was a clock on the mantel shelf, and he looked at it. It was a quarter before five.

"One thing is sure, Lily," he said. "You can't wander about alone, and you are right you can't stay here.

For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself, and that the net, of her own making,

But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle. In a few days, even tomorrow, but

not just then. He listened, impatiently, his eyes on the clock. Beside it in the mirror he saw his own marred

face, and it added to his anger. In the end he took control of the situation; went into his bedroom, changed

into a coat, and came out again, ready for the street. He telephoned down for a taxicab, and then confronted

"I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily," he said. "Now I'm in charge. It won't be

tomorrow or next week or next month. It will be now. You're here. You've given them a chance to talk

In the cab he explained more fully. They would get a license, and then go to one of the hotels. There they

"All regularly and in order, honey," he said, and kissed her hand. She had hardly heard. She was staring

ahead, not thinking, not listening, not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his sheer

"I'm mad about you, girl," he said. "Mad. And now you are going to be mine, until death do us part."

She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little. Girls were like that, at such times. They always took a

step back for every two steps forward. He let her hand go, and took a careful survey of his face in the mirror

of the cab. The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below his eye would last for days. He cursed under

It was after nine o'clock when one of the Cardew cars stopped not far from the Benedict Apartments, and

He was quite certain that Louis Akers would know where Lily was, and he anticipated the interview with a

sort of grim humor. There might be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the night

before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if he had to choke the knowledge out of that

leering devil's thick white throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more than a

"Well, look who's here!" muttered the telephone girl, and watched his approach, with its faint limp, over the

top of her desk. Behind, from his cage, the elevator man was staring with avid interest.

"I suppose Mr. Akers is in?" said Willy Cameron, politely. The girl smiled up at him.

"I'll say he ought to be, after last night! What're you going to do now? Kill him?"

"Fortythree's out" Sam partly shut the elevator door; he had seen Fortythree's rooms the night before, and

"No, sir!" said Sam. "I'll take you up to look, if you like. And about an hour ago he sent a boy here with a

note, to get some of his clothes. The young lady at the desk was out at the movies at the time."

On the street again Willy Cameron took himself fiercely in hand. There were a halfdozen reasons why

Akers might go to the Saint Elmo. He might, for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron, would go back to

the Benedict. He might be hiding from Dan, or from reporters. But there had been, apparently, no attempt to

He found a taxicab, and as it drew up at the curb before the hotel he saw the Cardew car moving away. It

But Louis Akers was. He got his room number from a clerk and went up, still determinedly holding on to

himself. Afterwards he had no clear recollection of any interval between the Benedict and the moment he

found himself standing outside a door on an upper floor of the Saint Elmo. From that time on it was as clear

as crystal, his own sudden calm, the overturning of a chair inside, a man's voice, slightly raised, which he

recognized, and then the thin crash of a wineglass dropped or thrown to the floor.

In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the remains of a dinner for two. Akers was standing

by the table, his chair overturned behind him, a splintered glass at his feet, staring angrily at the window.

Even then Willy Cameron saw that he had had too much to drink, and that he was in an ugly mood. He was in

dinner clothes, but with his bruised face and scowling brows he looked a sinister imitation of a gentleman.

Neither of them glanced at the door. Evidently the waiter had been moving in and out, and Akers considered

"Come and sit down," he said angrily. "I've quit drinking, I tell you. Good God, just because I've had a little

wine and I had the hell of a time getting it you won't eat and won't talk. Come here."

"Stay where you are, Lily," said Willy Cameron, from inside the closed door. "Or perhaps you'd better get

Akers had wheeled at the voice, and now stood staring incredulously. First anger, and then a grin of triumph,

showed in his face. Drink had made him not so much drunk as reckless. He had lost last night, but today he

"Listen, Lily dear," he said gravely. "Your father is searching the city for you. Do you know what that

means? Don't you see that you must go home at once? You can't dine here in a private suite, like this, and not

Akers took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself, and he knew now that the other man had a

swing to his right arm like the driving rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table, and his hand

He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning. "Not going to kill him, my dear," he said. "Merely

That was a slip, and he knew it. Lily had left the window and come forward, a stricken slip of a girl, and he

"Go into the other room and close the door," he ordered. "When I've thrown this fellow out, you can come

"Because," Willy Cameron said steadily, "he had got a girl into trouble, and then insulted her. I wouldn't tell

Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching for support. But she steadied herself. Neither man

At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken man. Grace had been lying awake in

her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained absence, and brooding, as she now did continually, over Lily's

At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come in and go upstairs, and for some time after that she

heard him steadily pacing back and forth overhead. Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony. He had made

himself at such cost, and now when he was old, he had everything and yet nothing.

They had never understood women, these Cardews. Howard was gentle with them where Anthony was hard,

but he did not understand, either. She herself, of other blood, got along by making few demands, but the

Cardew women were as insistent in their demands as the men. Elinor, Lily She formed a sudden resolution,

and getting up, dressed feverishly. She had no plan in her mind, nothing but a desperate resolution to put

Lily's case before her grandfather, and to beg that she be brought home without conditions.

She was frightened as she went up the stairs. Never before had she permitted things to come to an issue

Anthony Cardew opened it. The room was dark, save for one lamp burning dimly on a great mahogany table,

"I heard you walking about," she said breathlessly. "May I come in and talk to you?"

"Come in," he said, with a sort of grave heaviness. "Shall I light the other lamps?"

"Will you sit down? No? Do you mind if I do? I am very tired. I suppose it is about Lily?"

Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very old and very weary. A tired little old man, almost a broken

"Not under the conditions. But she must come back, father. To let her stay on there, in that house, after last

"You're a good woman, Grace," he said, still heavily. "We Cardews all marry good women, but we don't

know how to treat them. Even Howard " His voice trailed off. "No, she can't stay there," he said, after a

"You are a woman, Grace. You ought to know something about girls. Does she actually care for him, or is it

because he offers the liberty she thinks we fail to give her? Or" he smiled faintly "is it Cardew

"I don't know. She wanted to come home. She begged it was dreadful." Grace hesitated. "Even that couldn't

be as bad as this, father," she said. "We have all lived our own lives, you and Howard and myself, and now

"And a pretty mess we have made of them!" His tone was grim. "No, I can't say that we offer her any

felicitous examples. But the fellow's plan is transparent enough. He is ambitious. He sees himself installed

here, one of us. Mark my words, Grace, he may love the child, but his real actuating motive is that. He's a

Radical, because since he can't climb up, he'll pull down. But once let him get his foot on the Cardew ladder,

He sat after that, his head dropped on his chest, his hands resting on the arms of his chair, in a brooding

"Better bring her home," he said finally. "Tell her I surrender. I want her here. Let her bring that fellow here,

too, if she has to see him. But for God's sake, Grace," he added, with a flash of his old fire, "show her some

Suddenly Grace bent over and kissed him. He put up his hand, and patted her on the shoulder.

"A good woman, Grace," he said, "and a good daughter to me. I'm sorry. I'll try to do better."

As Grace straightened she heard the door close below, and Howard's voice. Almost immediately she heard

him coming up the staircase, and going out into the hall she called softly to him.

She heard him turn and go slowly down the stairs. His voice had been strained and unnatural. As she turned

"I rather think so," said old Anthony, slowly. They went together down the stairs.

In the library Lily was standing, facing the door, a quiet figure, listening and waiting. Howard had dropped

into a chair and was staring ahead. And beyond the circle of lights was a shadowy figure, vaguely familiar,

The discovery that Lily had left his house threw Jim Doyle into a frenzy. The very manner of her going filled

him with dark suspicion. Either she had heard more that morning than he had thought, or In his cunning

mind for weeks there had been growing a smoldering suspicion of his wife. She was too quiet, too

acquiescent. In the beginning, when Woslosky had brought the scheme to him, and had promised it financial

support from Europe, he had taken a cruel and savage delight in outlining it to her, in seeing her cringe and

He had not feared her then. She had borne with so much, endured, tolerated, accepted, that he had not

The plan had appealed to his cynical soul from the first. It was the apotheosis of cynicism, this reducing of a

world to its lowest level. And it had amused him to see his wife, a gentlewoman born, bewildered before the

"I bow before intelligence. It is German. Also it is Russian. Also it is of all nations. All this talk now, of a

League of Nations, a few dull diplomats acting as God over the peoples of the earth!" His eyes blazed.

But he watched her after that, not that he was afraid of her, but because her reaction as a woman was

important. He feared women in the movement. It had its disciples, fervent and eloquent, paid and unpaid

women agitators, but he did not trust them. They were invariably women without home ties, women with

nothing to protect, women with everything to gain and nothing to lose. The woman in the home was a natural

antiradical. Not the police, not even the army, but the woman in the home was the deadly enemy of the great

He began to hate Elinor, not so much for herself, as for the women she represented. She became the

embodiment of possible failure. She stood in his path, passively resistant, stubbornly brave.

She was not a clever woman, and she was slow in gathering the full significance of a nationwide general

strike, that with an end of all production the nonproducing world would be beaten to its knees. And then she

waited for a world movement, forgetting that a flame must start somewhere and then spread. But she listened

and learned. There was a great deal of talk about class and mass. She learned that the mass, for instance, was

hungry for a change. It would welcome any change. Woslosky had been in Russia when the Kerensky regime

was overthrown, and had seen that strange three days when the submerged part of the city filled the streets,

Had it not been for its leaders, the mass would have risen like a tide, and ebbed again.

Elinor had struggled to understand. This was not Socialism. Jim had been a Socialist for years. He had

believed that the gradual elevation of the few, the gradual subjection of the many, would go on until the

majority would drag the few down to their own level. But this new dream was something immediate. At her

table she began to hear talk of substituting for that slow process a militant minority. She was a long time,

months, in discovering that Jim Doyle was one of the leaders of that militant minority, and that the methods

Then had begun Elinor Doyle's long battle, at first to hold him back, and that failing, the fight between her

duty to her husband and that to her country. He had been her one occupation and obsession too long to be

easily abandoned, but she was sturdily national, too. In the end she made her decision. She lived in his house,

She hated herself for it. Every fine fiber of her revolted. But as time went on, and she learned the full

wickedness of the thing, her days became one long waiting. She saw one move after another succeed, strike

after strike slowing production, and thus increasing the cost of living. She saw the growing discontent and

muttering, the vicious circle of labor striking for more money, and by its own ceasing of activity making the

very increases they asked inadequate. And behind it all she saw the ceaseless working, the endless sowing, of

She was obliged to wait. A few men talking in secret meetings, a hidden propaganda of crime and disorder

there was nothing to strike at. And Elinor, while not clever, had the Cardew shrewdness. She saw that, like

She had no hope that the government would take hold. Government was aloof, haughty, and secure in its own

strength. Just now, too, it was objective, not subjective. It was like a horse set to win a race, and unconscious

Elinor knew Doyle was beginning to suspect her. Sometimes she thought he would kill her, if he discovered

what she meant to do. She did not greatly care. She waited for some inkling of the day set for the uprising in

the city, and saved out of her small house allowance by innumerable economies and subterfuges. When she

found out the time she would go to the Governor of the State. He seemed to be a strong man, and she would

Cut off from her own world, and with no roots thrown out in the new, she had no friends, no one to confide in

or of whom to ask assistance. And she was afraid to go to Howard. He would precipitate things. The leaders

would escape, and a new group would take their places. Such a group, she knew, stood ready for that very

On the afternoon of Lily's departure she heard Doyle come in. He had not recovered from his morning's

anger, and she heard his voice, raised in some violent reproof to Jennie. He came up the stairs, his head

sagged forward, his every step deliberate, heavy, ominous. He had an evening paper in his hand, and he gave

It was the paragraph about Louis Akers. Elinor read it. "Who were the masked men?" she asked. "Do you

"I wish to God I did. I'd Makes him a laughing stock, of course. And just now, when Where's Lily?"

She passed him and went out into the hall. But he followed her and caught her by the arm as she reached the

"She had a visitor this afternoon, a young man. He must have told her something about last night. She came

"Yes." Elinor had cowered against the wall. "Jim, don't look like that. You frighten me. I couldn't keep her

He was eyeing her coldly, calculatingly. All his suspicions of the past weeks suddenly crystallized. "And you

let her go, after that," he said slowly. "You were glad to have her go. You didn't deny what she said. You let

He struck her then. The blow was as remorseless as his voice, as deliberate. She fell down the staircase

The elderly maid came running from the kitchen, and found him halfway down the stairs, his eyes still

"She fell," he said, still staring down. But the servant faced him, her eyes full of hate.

But Elinor was not dead. Doctor Smalley, making rounds in a nearby hospital and answering the emergency

call, found her lying on her bed, fully conscious and in great pain, while her husband bent over her in

seeming agony of mind. She had broken her leg. He sent Doyle out during the setting. It was a principle of

Life had beaten Lily Cardew. She went about the house, pathetically reminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those

days when she had sought sanctuary there; but where Elinor had seen those days only as interludes in her

stormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace. She was very tender, very thoughtful, insistently cheerful,

as though determined that her own illfortune should not affect the rest of the household.

But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end. Life for her was over. Her bright dreams were gone,

her future settled. Without so putting it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to service, to small kindnesses,

and little thoughtful acts. She was, daily and hourly, making reparation to them all for what she had cost

That was the thing that had gone out of life. Hope. Her loathing of Louis Akers was gone. She did not hate

him. Rather she felt toward him a sort of numbed indifference. She wished never to see him again, but the

revolt that had followed her knowledge of the conditions under which he had married her was gone. She tried

to understand his viewpoint, to make allowances for his lack of some fundamental creed to live by. But as the

days went on, with that healthy tendency of the mind to bury pain, she found him, from a figure that bulked

But always he would shut off certain things. Love, and marriage, and of course the hope of happiness.

After the scene at the Saint Elmo, when he had refused to let her go, and when Willy Cameron had at last

locked him in the bedroom of the suite and had taken her away, there had followed a complete silence. She

had waited for some move or his part, perhaps an announcement of the marriage in the newspapers, but

nothing had appeared. He had commenced a whirlwind campaign for the mayoralty and was receiving a

The months at the house on Cardew Way seemed more and more dreamlike, and that quality of remoteness

was accentuated by the fact that she had not been able to talk to Elinor. She had telephoned more than once

during the week, but a new maid had answered. Mrs. Doyle was out. Mrs. Doyle was unable to come to the

telephone. The girl was a foreigner, with something of Woslosky's burr in her voice.

Lily had not left the house since her return. During that family conclave which had followed her arrival, a

stricken thing of few words and long anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that. He had been

curiously mild with her, her grand father. He had made no friendly overtures, but he had neither jibed nor

"It's done," he had said briefly. "The thing now is to keep her out of his clutches." He had turned to her. "I

It was then that Willy Cameron had gone. Afterwards she thought that he must have been waiting, patiently

Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last. There was something. sinister about it, and finally

Howard himself went to the Doyle house. Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the following Tuesday he

made his call, timing it so that Doyle would probably be away from home. But he came back baffled.

"She was not at home," he said. "I had to take the servant's word for it, but: I think the girl was lying."

"What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?" Howard said impatiently.

But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return only increased his anxiety. The house

was a hotbed of conspiracy, and for her own reasons Elinor was remaining there. It was no place for a sister

of his. But Elinor for years had only touched the outer fringes of his life, and his days were crowded with

other things; the increasing arrogance of the strikers, the utter uselessness of trying to make terms with them,

his own determination to continue to fight his futile political campaign. He put her out of his mind.

Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened. Anthony and Lily were in the library. Old

Anthony without a club was Old Anthony lost, and he had developed a habit, at first rather embarrassing to

the others, of spending much of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turned saint. He still let the lash of his

tongue play over the household, but his old zest in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overtures to

Lily, intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly selfconscious. Grace, watching him, often felt him rather

touching. It was obvious to her that he blamed himself, rather than Lily, for what had happened.

"And leave out the politics," he had said, "I get enough of that wherever I go."

As she read she felt him watching her, and in the middle of a paragraph he suddenly said:

"Supporting him! He's carrying him on his back," grunted Anthony. "What is it, Grayson?"

"Send her in," said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his face twitching; it occurred to her then that

this strange old man might still love his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.

It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tall gaunt woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to

"There is and there isn't," Jennie said, somberly. "I just wanted to tell you, and I don't care if he kills me for

"But they said we didn't know do you mean that she has been there all this time, hurt?"

"I mean just that," said Jennie, stolidly. "I helped set it, with him pretending to be all worked up, for the

doctor to see. He got rid of me all right. He's got one of his spies there now, a Bolshevik like himself. You

Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his car. Lily, frightened by the look on his

But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and drew on his gloves.

Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who has made up his mind to follow a certain

Acting on Willy Cameron's suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his membership in the union and frequented the

meetings. He learned various things, that the strike vote had been padded, for instance, and that the Radicals

had taken advantage of the absence of some of the conservative leaders to secure such support as they had

received. He found the better class of workmen dissatisfied and unhappy. Some of them, men who loved their

tools, had resented the order to put them down where they were and walk out, and this resentment, childish as

it seemed, was an expression of their general dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves built up.

Finally Dan's persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to his war record, brought him reward. He

was elected member of a conference to take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for a general strike.

It was arranged that the delegates take the floor one after the other, and hold it for as long as possible. Then

The arguments were carefully prepared. The general strike was to be urged as the one salvation of the labor

movement. It would prove the solidarity of labor. And, at the Council meeting a few days later, the rank and

file were impressed by the arguments. Dan, gnawing his nails and listening, watched anxiously. The idea was

favorably received, and the delegates went back to their local unions, to urge, coerce and threaten.

Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of violence, but violence was in the air,

nevertheless. The quantity of revolutionary literature increased greatly during the following ten days, and

now it was no longer furtively distributed. It was sold or given away at all meetings; it flooded the various

headquarters with its skillful compound of lies and truth. The leaders notified of the situation, pretended that

Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home. On a Sunday following, there was a mass meeting at the

Colosseum, and a business agent of one of the unions made an impassioned speech. He recited old and new

grievances, said that the government had failed to live up to its promises, that the government boards were

always unjust to the workers, and ended with a statement of the steel makers' profits. Dan turned impatiently

Dan fell silent. He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of tongue. It was at that meeting that for the first

Old Anthony's excursion to his daughter's house had not prospered. During the drive to Cardew Way he sat

forward on the edge of the seat of his limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and anger, his stick

tightly clutched in his hand. Almost before the machine stopped he was out on the pavement, scanning the

The building was dark. Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously, for the household knew that Anthony Cardew

had sworn never to darken his daughter's door, saw his erect, militant figure enter the gate and lose itself in

the shadow of the house. There followed a short interval of nothing in particular, and then a tall man appeared

Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor. Astounded and alarmed. But he recovered himself quickly,

"This is something I never expected to see," he said, "Mr. Anthony Cardew on my doorstep."

"I don't give a damn what you expected to see," said Mr. Anthony Cardew. "I want to see my daughter."

"But I love to quibble," sneered Doyle. "However, if you insist I might as well tell you, I haven't the

"I'll ask you a question," said old Anthony. "Is it true that my daughter has been hurt?"

"You infernal scoundrel," shouted Anthony, and raising his cane, brought it down with a crack on Doyle's

head. The chauffeur was halfway up the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the

"Stop that!" yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer. When he reached the steps old Anthony

was hanging his stick over his left forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it. This was

"I am going to see my daughter, Paul," said Anthony Cardew. "Can you open the door?"

He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him sprawling inside at Doyle's feet. He

was up in an instant, squared to fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms folded,

and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared he covered with the cynical mask that was

"I do," said old Anthony grimly. "I'll go first, Paul. You follow me, but I'd advise you to come up

"What!" he said, "Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble home, and anticipating violence!

He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the two men had reached the top. Then he

followed them. The mask had dropped from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked,

Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father's voice, and her first impulse was one of almost

unbearable relief. They had found her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was a

prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner. The girl downstairs was one of them,

and her jailer. A jailer who fed her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was all.

Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the night after her injury he had taken

pains to verify his suspicions. He had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In the

end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook in which for months she had kept her

careful records. Here and there, scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members of

The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and carefully remembered. He had read them

out to her as he came to them, suffering as she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not killed

her. He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a madeyed fanatic named Olga, and from that

time on he visited her once daily. In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning of all

punishments; he told her of the movement's progress, of its ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its

inevitable success. What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among them; what

leading citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that that implied; and again the Cardews headed the list.

When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present, solicitous and attentive. She got out of

her bed one day, and dragging her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and finding some

opportunity of giving it to the doctor. Only to discover that they had taken away her pen, pencils and paper.

She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment. Olga had helped her back into bed

without a word, but from that time on had spent most of her day on the upper floor. Not until Doyle came in

would she go downstairs to prepare his food. Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the

stairs. She knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never let her be taken away. He would kill her

first. He might kill Anthony Cardew. She had a sickening sense of tragedy coming up the staircase, tragedy

which took the form of her father's familiar deliberate step. Perhaps had she known of the chauffeur's

presence she might have chanced it, for every fiber of her tired body was crying for release. But she saw only

Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her. With her long hair in braids, she seemed young,

almost girlish. She looked like the little girl who had gone to dancing school in short white frocks and long

"I've just learned about it, Elinor," he said. He moved to the bed and stood beside it, looking down, but he did

She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her heart for the part she had to play. It was

difficult; she was so infinitely moved by her father's coming, and in the dim light he, too, looked like himself

"Good God, home! Do you mean to tell me that, with all you must know about this man, you still want to stay

Old Anthony was bewildered and angry. Elinor put out a hand to touch him, but he drew back.

"The servant you had here came to see me tonight, Elinor. She said that that blackguard outside there had

struck you and you fell down the stairs. If you tell me that's the truth I'll break every bone in his body."

"But it isn't true," she said wildly. "You mustn't think that. I fell. I slipped and fell."

"Do you mean to say that you won't let me have you taken home? You are still going to stay with this man?

"I know what you think he is." She tried to smile, and he looked away from her quickly and stared around the

room, seeing nothing, however. Suddenly he turned and walked to the door; but he stopped there, his hand on

"Once more, Elinor," he said, "I ask you if you will let me take you back with me. This is the last time. I have

come, after a good many years of bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer you a home. Will you

Her courage almost failed her. She lay back, her eyes closed and her face colorless. The word itself was little

Her father opened the door and went out. She heard him going down the stairs, heard other footsteps that

followed him, and listened in an agony of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below. But nothing

happened. The outside door closed, and after a moment she opened her eyes. Doyle was standing by the bed.

"So," he said, "you intend to give me the pleasure of your society for some time, do you?"

"You liar!" he said softly. "Do you think I don't understand why you want to remain here? You are cleverer

than I thought you were, but you are not as clever as I am. You'd have done better to have let him take you

"Perhaps I would." He lighted a cigarette. "But it is a pleasant thought to play with, and I shall miss it when

the thing is fait accompli. I see Olga has left you without ice water. Shall I bring you some?"

He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher, some time later, and placed it on the stand beside

In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new heaviness. Ellen, watching keenly, knew

why the little house was so cheerless and somber. It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to it its gayer

moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with

something hot for Mrs. Boyd's tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the frugality of the meals with

campaign anecdotes; Willy, lamenting the lack of a chance to fish, and subsequently eliciting a rare smile

from Edith by being discovered angling in the kitchen sink with a piece of twine on the end of his umbrella.

Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them. And then suddenly it ceased. He made an effort,

but there was no spontaneity in him. He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very little. He began to look

almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching him with jealous, loving eyes, gave voice at last to the thought that

"I wish you'd go away," she said, "and let us fight this thing out ourselves. Dan would have to get something

"Then you're a fool," she observed, bitterly. "You can't help me any, and there's no use hanging mother

Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid's tray. They were alone together, standing in the kitchen

"If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think could you ever have cared for me?"

"I never thought about you that way," he said, simply. "I do care for you. You know that."

"You are in love with Lily Cardew. That's why you don't I've known it all along, Willy. I used to think

you'd get over it, never seeing her and all that. But you don't, do you?" She looked up at him. "The real thing

He was most uncomfortable, hut he drew her hand within his arm again and held it there.

"Don't get to thinking that you care anything about me," he said. "There's not as much love in the world as

there ought to be, and we all need to hold hands, but don't fancy anything like that."

"I wanted to tell you. If I hadn't known about her I wouldn't have told you, but you said it when you said

there's not as much love as there ought to be. I'm gone, but I guess my caring for you hasn't hurt me any. It's

She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn garden. There was such brooding trouble in

"I think she does. She watches me all the time, and she asked to see Dan tonight. Only he didn't come

"You must deny it, Edith," he said, almost fiercely. "She must not know, ever. That is one thing we can save

But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that Edith was right, and that matters had reached

a crisis. The sick woman had eaten nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious. There was an unspoken

question in them, too, as she turned them on him. Most significant of all, the little album was not beside her,

"I wish you weren't going out, Willy," she said querulously. "I want to talk to you about something."

"I won't sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy." But he could not face that situation then. He needed time, for

one thing. Surely there must be some way out, some way to send this frail little woman dreamless to her last

He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election was close at hand. Pink Denslow took him

about in his car, and stood waiting for him at the back of the crowd. In the intervals between hall and hall

Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very grave, but he could not know that the young man beside him

was trying to solve a difficult question. Which was: did two wrongs ever make a right?

"I have some things to think over. Pink," he said. "Thanks for the car. It saves a lot of time."

Pink sat at the wheel, carefully scrutinizing Willy. It struck him then that Cameron looked fagged and

Pink knew nothing of Lily's marriage, nor of the events that had followed it. To his uninquiring mind all was

as it should be with her; she was at home again, although strangely quiet and very sweet, and her small world

was at peace with her. It was all right with her, he considered, although all wrong with him. Except that she

was strangely subdued, which rather worried him. It was not possible, for instance, to rouse her to one of their

"I don't know." Pink's honest voice showed perplexity. "She looks all right, and the family's eating out of her

Willy Cameron was facing the decision of his life that night, as he walked home. Lily was gone, out of his

reach and out of his life. But then she had never been within either. She was only something wonderful and

far away, like a star to which men looked and sometimes prayed. Some day she would be free again, and then

But he knew that he would always love her, to the end of his days, and even beyond, in that heaven in which

he so simply believed. All the things that puzzled him would be straightened out there, and perhaps a man

who had loved a woman and lost her here would find her there, and walk hand in hand with her, through the

Not that that satisfied him. He was a very earthly lover, with the hungry arms of youth. He yearned

unspeakably for her. He would have died for her as easily as he would have lived for her, but he could do

That was one side of him. The other, having put her away in that warm corner of his heart which was hers

always, was busy with the practical problem of the Boyds. He saw only one way out, and that way he had

been seeing with increasing clearness for several days. Edith's candor that night, and Mrs. Boyd's suspicions,

clearly pointed to it. There was one way by which to save Edith and her child, and to save the dying woman

Edith was sitting on the doorstep, alone. He sat down on the step below her, rather silent, still busy with his

"She's not asleep. She's waiting for me to go up, Willy. She means to call me in and ask me"

"I'd better explain what I mean," he said, speaking with some difficulty. "I mean go through the ceremony

with me. I don't mean actual marriage. That wouldn't be fair to either of us, because you know that I care for

"Of course. Your child has the right to a name, dear. And, if you don't mind telling a lie to save our souls, and

It seemed so surprisingly simple, put into words, and the light on the girl's face was his answer. A few words,

so easily spoken, and two lives were saved. No, three, for Edith's child must be considered.

"You are like God," said Edith, in a low voice. "Like God." And fell to soft weeping. She was unutterably

happy and relieved. She sat there, not daring to touch him, and looked out into the quiet street. Before her she

saw all the things that she had thought were gone; honor, a place in the world again, the right to look into her

mother's eyes; she saw marriage and happy, golden days. He did not love her, but he would be hers, and

perhaps in His own good time the Manager of all destinies would make him love her. She would try so hard

Mrs. Boyd was asleep when at last Edith went up the staircase, and Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot

attic room, heard the girl softly humming to herself as she undressed, and marveled.

When Lily had been at home for some time, and Louis Akers had made no attempt to see her, or to announce

the marriage, the vigilance of the household began to relax. Howard Cardew had already consulted the family

lawyer about an annulment, and that gentleman had sent a letter to Akers, which had received no reply.

Then one afternoon Grayson, whose instructions had been absolute as to admitting Akers to the house,

opened the door to Mrs. Denslow, who was calling, and found behind that lady Louis Akers himself. He

made an effort to close the door behind the lady, but Akers was too quick for him, and a scene at the moment

He ushered Mrs. Denslow into the drawing room, and coming out, closed the doors.

But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that Grayson took them.

"I have come to see my wife," he said. "Tell her that, and that if she doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and

When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase, and the elderly servant, astounded at the

"You don't, don't you? Very well. Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and that either she will come down or I'll go

He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the library. He was very carefully dressed, and

momentarily exultant over the success of his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary, and inclined to regard

the house as a possible trap. He had made a gambler's venture, risking everything on the cards he held, and

without much confidence in them. His vanity declined to believe that his old power over Lily was gone, but

he had held a purely physical dominance over so many women that he knew both his strength and his

What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights since he had seen her, was her recoil

from him on Willy Cameron's announcement. She had known he had led the life of his sort; he had never

played the plaster saint to her. And she had accepted her knowledge of his connection with the Red

movement, on his mere promise to reform. But this other, thisaccident, and she had turned from him with a

horror that made him furious to remember. These silly stareyed virgins, who accepted careful abstractions

and then turned sick at life itself, a man was a fool to put himself in their hands.

Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a thin, tiredfaced, suddenly old

Mademoiselle, much given those days to early masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the man

who had ruined Lily's life, and that soon. To Mademoiselle marriage was a final thing and divorce a

Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that time a burden similar to his, of keeping up

Grayson came in and closed the door behind him. Anger and anxiety were in his worn old face, and Lily got

"I'm sorry, Miss lily. He was in the vestibule behind Mrs. Denslow, and I couldn't keep him out. I think he

"You must not see him," she said in rapid French. "Remain here, and I shall telephone for your father. Lock

"I am going down," Lily said quietly. "I owe him that. You need not be frightened. And don't tell mother; it

Her heart was beating fast as she went down the stairs. From the drawing room came the voices of Grace and

Mrs. Denslow, chatting amiably. The second man was carrying in tea, the old silver service gleaming. Over

all the lower floor was an air of peace and comfort, the passionless atmosphere of daily life running in old

When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her. She had, on turning, a swift picture of Grayson,

taking up his stand in the hall, and it gave her a sense of comfort. She knew he would remain there,

Then she faced the man standing by the center table. He made no move toward her, did not even speak at

once. It left on her the burden of the opening, of setting the key of what was to come. She was steady enough

"Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis," she said. "I suppose we must talk it over some time."

"Yes," he agreed, his eyes on her. "We must. I have married a wife, and I want her, Lily."

"Because of something that happened before I knew you? I never made any pretensions about my life before

we met. But I did promise to go straight if you'd have me, and I have. I've lived up to my bargain. What about

"It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you I have thought and thought, Louis. There is only

"Marry her? A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am the father of her child! It's the oldest trick in

the word. Besides " He played his best card "she won't marry me. Ask Cameron, who chose to make

In spite of herself Lily winced. Out of the wreckage of the past few weeks one thing had seemed to remain,

something to hold to, solid and dependable and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron. She had found, in

these last days, something infinitely comforting in the thought that he cared for her. It was because he had

"I am not going back to you, Louis. I think you know that. No amount of talking about things can change

"Why don't you face life and try to understand it?" he demanded, brutally. "Men are like that. Women are like

that sometimes. You can't measure human passions with a tape line. That's what you good women try to do,

and you make life a merry little hell." He made an effort, and softened his voice. "I'll be true to you, Lily, if

"No," she said, "you would mean to be, but you would not. You have no foundation to build on."

"Not that. I know you, that's all. I understand so much that I didn't before. What you call love is only

something different. When that was gone there would be the same thing again. You would be sorry, but I

Her coolness disconcerted him. Two small triangular bits of color showed in his face. He had been prepared

for tears, even for a refusal to return, but this cleareyed appraisal of himself, and the accuracy of it, confused

him. He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate

love to her, but her only expression was one of distaste. When at last he caught her to him she perforce

submitted, a frozen thing that told him, more than any words, how completely he had lost her. He threw her

"Don't you think you'd better go?" Lily said wearily. "I don't like to hurt you. I am to blame for a great deal.

But there is no use going on, is there? I'll give you your freedom as soon as I can. You will want that, of

"My freedom! Do you think I am going to let you go like that? I'll fight you and your family in every court in

the country before I give you up. You can't bring Edith Boyd up against me, either. If she does that I'll bring

Lily was very pale, but still calm. She made a movement toward the bell, but he caught her hand before she

"I'll get your Willy Cameron, too," he said, his face distorted with anger. "I'll get him good. You've done a

bad thing for your friends and your family today, Lily. I'll go the limit on getting back at them. I've got the

He flung out into the hall, and toward the door. There he encountered Grayson, who reminded him of his hat

Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing there, staring ahead and trembling

violently. He brought her a cup of tea, and stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.

The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes. The newspaper men from New York

were gradually recalled, as the mill towns became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place. Here

and there mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again and went back to work, many with depleted

But the strikers had lost, and knew it. Howard Cardew, facing the situation with his customary honesty, saw

in the gradual return of the men to work only the urgency of providing for their families, and realized that it

was not peace that was coming, but an armed neutrality. The Cardew Mills were still down, but by winter he

was confident they would be open again. To what purpose? To more wrangling and bickering, more strikes?

Where was the middle ground? He was willing to give the men a percentage of the profits they made. He did

not want great wealth, only an honest return for his invested capital. But he wanted to manage his own

The coal miners were going out. The Cardews owned coal mines. The miners wanted to work a minimum day

for a maximum wage, but the country must have coal. Shorter hours meant more men for the mines, and they

would have to be imported. But labor resented the importation of foreign workers.

Still, he was grateful for peace. The strike dragged on, with only occasional acts of violence. From the hill

above Baxter a sniper daily fired with a long range rifle at the toluol tank in the center of one of the mills, and

had so far escaped capture, as the tank had escaped damage. But he knew well enough that a long strike was

playing into the hands of the Reds. It was impossible to sow the seeds of revolution so long as a man s

dinnerpail was full, his rent paid, and his family contented. But a long strike, with bank accounts becoming

"Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess," he

One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages. They had had a salutary effect on the honest labor

element. These had no sympathy with such methods and said so. But a certain element, both native and

One thing surprised and irritated Howard. Public sentiment was not so much with the strikers, as against the

mill owners. The strike worked a hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on the great mills;

they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought them prosperity, had indeed made them possible, and

they felt now only bitter resentment at the loss of trade. In his anger Howard saw them as parasites, fattening

on the conceptions and strength of those who had made the city. They were men who built nothing,

originated nothing. Men who hated the ladder by which they had climbed, who cared little how shaky its

In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the demobilization of the state troops, save for

two companies. The men at the Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had voted to remain

out, but their leaders appeared to have them well in hand, and no trouble was anticipated. The agents of the

Department of Justice, however, were still suspicious. The foreigners had plenty of money. Given as they

were to hoarding their savings in their homes, the local banks were unable to say if they were drawing on

Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the western end of the state, and in the north, in the

steel towns. There were ugly riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the old tactics of night shootings

and destruction of property began. In the threatening chaos Baxter and Friendship, and the city nearby, stood

out by contrast for their very orderliness. The state constabulary remained in diminished numbers, a still

magnificent body of men but far too few for any real emergency, and the Federal agents, suspicious but

The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense of futility, almost of absurdity. They had

armed and enrolled themselves against what? The growth of the organization slowed down, but it already

numbered thousands of members. Only its leaders retained their faith in its ultimate necessity, and they owed

It was owing to him that the city was divided into a series of zones, so that notification of an emergency

could be made rapidly by telephone and messenger. Owing to him, too, was a new central office, with some

one on duty day and night. Rather ironically, the new quarters were the dismantled rooms of the Myers

On the day after his proposal to Edith, Willy Cameron received an unexpected holiday. Mrs. Davis, the

invalid wife of the owner of the Eagle Pharmacy, died and the store was closed. He had seen Edith for only a

few moments that morning, but it was understood then that the marriage would take place either that day or

He had been physically so weary the night before that he had slept, but the morning found him with a

heaviness of spirit that he could not throw off. The exaltation of the night before was gone, and all that

remained was a dogged sense of a duty to be done. Although he smiled at Edith, his face remained with her

"I'll make it up to him," she thought, humbly. "I'll make it up to him somehow."

Then, with Ellen out doing her morning marketing, she heard the feeble thump of a cane overhead which was

her mother's signal. She was determined not to see her mother again until she could say that she was married,

"She's trying to get up!" Edith thought, panicky. "If she gets up it will kill her."

She stood at the foot of the stairs, scarcely breathing, and listened. There was a dreadful silence above. She

stole up, finally, to where she could see her mother. Mrs. Boyd was still in her bed, but lying with open eyes,

"I thought that glass would bring you," she said sharply, but with difficulty. "I want you to stand over there

"Don't! Don't talk like that, mother," she begged. "I know what you mean. It's all right, mother. Honestly it is.

"No. I'm telling you. I've been married a long time. You don't you worry, mother. You just lie there and

There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light that flared up and died away again.

"Who to?" she asked. "If it's some corner loafer, Edie " Edith had gained new courage and new facility.

"You've guessed it," said Edith, and burying her face in the bed clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven

for the lie and for all that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end to earn the love of the

There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one on the credit side of the balance, one

She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When Edith moved, a little later, her mother was

It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she had done. She shrank from doing it. It was

one thing for Willy to have done it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly afraid of Ellen. And

"And you'd take him that way!" she said, scornfully. "You'd hide behind him, besides spoiling his life for

"It's to save yourself. You can't fool me. And if you think I'm going to sit by and let him do it, you can think

"All right," Ellen said triumphantly. "She's quiet and peaceful now, isn't she? You don't have to get married

It was then that Edith realized what she had done. He would still marry her, of course, but behind all his

anxiety to save her had been the real actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's mind. That was

She could. She could and she would. She set her small mouth firmly, and confronted the future; she saw

herself, without his strength to support her, going down and down. She remembered those drabs of the street

on whom she had turned such cynical eyes in her virtuous youth, and she saw herself one of that lost

When Willy Cameron left the pharmacy that day it was almost noon. He went to the house of mourning first,

and found Mr. Davis in a chair in a closed room, a tired little man in a new black necktie around a not

overclean collar, his occupation of years gone, confronting a new and terrible leisure that he did not know

"You know how it is, Willy," he said, blinking his reddened eyelids. "You kind of wish sometimes that you

had somebody to help you bear your burden, and then it's taken away, but you're kind of bent over and used

There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again. In a few hours now he would have taken a wife, and

whatever travesty of marriage resulted, he would have to keep away from Lily. He meant to play square with

He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things she must be trying to forget. He decided in

the end that it would hurt her, so he did not go. But he walked, on his way to see Pink Denslow at the

temporary bank, through a corner of the park near the house, and took a sort of formal and heartbreaking

Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with Lily at the end of it somewhere, like water

to the thirsty traveler, or home to the wanderer; like a camp fire at night. But now, life seemed to him a broad

But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the sunlight. It was the weaklings who were crowded

It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either from Louis Akers or from the unseen enemy

he was fighting. He had a curious lack of physical fear. But once or twice that day, as he went about, he

happened to notice a small man, foreign in appearance and shabbily dressed. He saw him first when he came

He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him to be present. He meant to tell him the

facts. The intimacy between them was now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither

wanted nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He had based his life on honesty.

Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set before any outsider the conditions at the

Boyd house, or his own sense of obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme sounded

In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement written large all over him.

"I sent for you," he said, "because I think we've got something at last. One of our fellows has just been in, that

storekeeper I told you about from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they're meeting, back

in the hills. He's made a map of it. Look, here's the town, and here's the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile

and a half, there's a German outfit, a family, with a farm. They're using the barn, according to this chap."

"That's the point. It's the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in to the movies in the town on meeting

nights. The place has been searched twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them warning.

The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have rigged up telephones in the trees."

"I had to swear to keep it to ourselves," Pink said at last. "Cusick won't let the Federal agents in on it. They've

"You know them. They'll go in and fight like hell when the time comes, but they're likely to gum the game

"What you mean is, that it's too good a thing to throw to the other fellow. Well, I'm on, if you want me. But

Pink had come armed for such surrender. He produced a road map of the county and spread it on the desk.

"Here's the main road to Friendship," he said, "and here's the road they use. But there's another way, back of

the hills. Cusick said it was a dirt lane, but dry. It's about forty miles by it to a point a mile or so behind the

"All right," said Willy Cameron. "We use that road, and get to the farm, and what then? Surrender?"

"That's enough. They'll search the place, automatically. You're talking suicide, you know."

But his mind was working rapidly. He was a country boy, and he knew barns. There would be other

outbuildings, too, probably a number of them. The Germans always had plenty of them. And the information

"That's the point," Pink said eagerly. "The family has been all over the town this morning. It is going on a

picnic, and he says those picnics of theirs last half the night. What he got from the noise they were making

"This fellow says they drop everything and go. The whole outfit. They're as busy raising an alibi as the other

"It looks too simple, Pink," he said reflectively. He sat for some time, filling and lighting his pipe, and

considering as he did so. He was older than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and very

"One of the best men we've got. They've fired his place once, and he's keen to get them."

"Then I'd better go along and look after you. But I tell you how I see it. After I've done that I'll go as far as

you like. Either there is nothing to it and we're fools for our pains, or there's a lot to it, and in that case we are

Life had been very dull for him since his return from France. He had done considerable suffering and more

thinking than was usual with him, but he had had no action. But behind his boyish zest there was something

more, something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his prayers; a deep and holy thing, that

always gave him a lump in his throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of men

stood at attention. Something he was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his country.

At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of a small printing shop in the heart of

the city. It went on to the accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two printers, in their

Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him, smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper

"I don't know why you're so damned suspicious, Jim," he was saying. "Cusick says the stall about the Federal

"I think, Akers," Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, that you are letting your desire to get this Cameron

fellow run away with your judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take their

A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand. With one hand Akers took the

Ellen was greatly disturbed. At three o'clock that afternoon she found Edith and announced her intention of

"I don't hate you." Ellen was slightly mollified. "But when I see you trying to put your burdens on other

"I love him so, Ellen," she whispered, "and I'll try so hard to make him happy."

"Never mind," she said. "The Good Man's got a way of fixing things to suit Himself. And I guess He knows

Mrs. Boyd was sleeping. Edith went back to her sewing. She had depended all her life on her mother's needle,

and now that that had failed her she was hastily putting some clothing into repair. In the kitchen near the

stove the suit she meant to be married in was hung to dry, after pressing. She was quietly happy.

Willy Cameron found her there. He told her of Mrs. Davis' death, and then placed the license on the table at

"1 think it would be better tomorrow, Edith," he said. He glanced down at the needle in her unaccustomed

fingers; she seemed very appealing, with her new task and the new light in her eyes. After all, it was worth

He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about. Then she heard the scraping of his

chair as he drew it to his desk, and vaguely wondered. When he came down he had a sealed envelope in his

"I am going out, Edith," he said. "I shall be late getting back, and I am going to ask you to do something for

"If I am not back here by two o'clock tonight," he said, "I want you to open that letter and read it. Then go to

the nearest telephone, and call up the number I've written down. Ask for the man whose name is given, and

"What I really expect," he said, smiling down at her, "is to be back, feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven

o'clock. I'm providing against an emergency that will almost surely never happen, and I am depending on the

Very soon after that he went away. She sat for some time after he had gone, fingering the blank white

Dan came in and went up the stairs. That reminded her of the dinner, and she sat down in the kitchen with a

pan of potatoes on her knee. As she pared them she sang. She was still singing when Ellen came back.

Something had happened to Ellen. She stood in the kitchen, her hat still on, drawing her cotton gloves

Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with the absorbed eyes of a sleepwalker.

"Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea. Then maybe you'll feel like talking about it."

"I don't want any tea. Do you know that that man Akers has married Lily Cardew?"

"The devil out of hell that he is." Ellen's voice was terrible. "And all the time knowing that you She's at

home, the poor child, and Mademoiselle just sat and cried when she told me. It's a secret," she added,

fiercely. "You keep your mouth shut about it. She never lived with him. She left him right off. I wouldn't

know it now but the servants were talking about the house being forbidden to him, and I went straight to

Mademoiselle. I said: 'You keep him away from Miss Lily, because I know something about him.' It was

She went out and up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily. Edith sat still, the pan on her knee, and thought.

Did Willy know? Was that why he was willing to marry her? She was swept with bitter jealousy, and added

to that came suspicion. Something very near the truth flashed into her mind and stayed there. ln her bitterness

she saw Willy telling Lily of Akers and herself, and taking her away, or having her taken. It must have been

But her anger slowly subsided; in the end she began to feel that the new situation rendered her own position

more secure, even justified her own approaching marriage. Since Lily was gone, why should she not marry

Willy Cameron? If what Ellen had said was true she knew him well enough to know that he would

She moved about the kitchen, making up the fire, working automatically in that methodless way that always

set Ellen's teeth on edge, and thinking. But subconsciously she was listening, too. She had heard Dan go into

his mother's room and close the door. She was bracing herself against his coming down.

Dan was difficult those days, irritable and exacting. Moody, too, and much away from home. He hated

idleness at its best, and the strike was idleness at its worst. Behind the movement toward the general strike,

too, he felt there was some hidden and sinister influence at work, an influence that was determined to turn

That very afternoon, for the first time, he had heard whispered the phrase: "when the town goes dark." There

He did not go to his mother's room at once. Instead, he drew a chair to his window and sat there staring out

on the little street. When the town went dark, what about all the little streets like this one?

After an hour or so of ominous quiet Edith heard him go into his mother's room. Her hands trembled as she

She heard him coming down at last, and suddenly remembering the license, hid it in a drawer. She knew that

he would destroy it if he saw it. And Dan's face justified the move. He came in and stood glowering at her,

"She was worried, Dan. And it will be true tomorrow. You Dan, you didn't tell her it was a lie, did you?"

"I'll lock you up first," he said, angrily. "I've been expecting something like that. I've watched you, and I've

seen you watching him. You'll not do it, do you hear? D'you think I'd let you get away with that? Isn't it

She made no reply, but went on with a perfunctory laying of the table. Her mouth had gone very dry.

"The poor fish," Dan snarled. "I thought he had some sense. Letting himself in for a nice life, isn't he? We're

not his kind, and you know it. He knows more in a minute than you'll know all your days. In about three

When she made no reply, he called to the dog and went out into the yard. She saw him there, brooding and

sullen, and she knew that he had not finished. He would say no more to her, but he would wait and have it out

Supper was silent. No one ate much, and Ellen, coming down with the tray, reported Mrs. Boyd as very tired,

"She looks bad to me," she said to Edith. "I think the doctor ought to see her."

Edith was glad to get out of the house. She had avoided the streets lately, but as it was the supper hour the

pavements were empty. Only Joe Wilkinson, bareheaded, stood in the next doorway, and smiled and flushed

She waited impatiently. She liked Joe, but she did not want him then. She wanted to think and plan alone and

in the open air, away from the little house with its odors and its querulous thumping cane upstairs; away from

He came out almost immediately, followed by a string of little Wilkinsons, clamoring to go along.

"Do you mind?" he asked her. "They can trail along behind. The poor kids don't get out much."

"Bring them along, of course," she said, somewhat resignedly. And with a flash of her old spirit: "I might

They moved down the street, with five little Wilkinsons trailing along behind, and Edith was uncomfortably

"You don't look well," he said at last. "You're wearing yourself out taking care of your mother, Edith."

"Am I?" She laughed a little, but the words touched her. "Don't think I'm better than I am, Joe."

"You're the most wonderful girl in the world. I guess you know how I feel about that."

But at that moment a very little Wilkinson fell headlong and burst into loud, despairing wails. Joe set her on

her feet, brushed her down with a fatherly hand, and on her refusal to walk further picked her up and carried

her. The obvious impossibility of going on with what he had been saying made him smile sheepishly.

"Can you beat it?" he said helplessly, "these darn kids !" But he held the child close.

At the next corner he turned toward home. Edith stopped and watched his valiant young back, his small train

of followers. He was going to be very sad when he knew, poor Joe, with his vicarious fatherhood, his

>From the doctor's office, the waiting room lined with patient figures, she went on. She had a very definite

plan in mind, but it took all her courage to carry it through. Outside the Benedict Apartments she hesitated,

"He's out, miss," he said. "He's out most all the time now, with the election coming on."

"Sometimes early, sometimes late," said Sam, watching her. Everything pertaining to Louis Akers was of

supreme interest those days to the Benedict employees. The beating he had received, the coming election, the

mysterious young woman who had come but once, and the black days that had followed his return from the

St. Elmo out of such patchwork they were building a small drama of their own. Sam was trying to fit in

The Benedict was neither more moral nor less than its kind. An unwritten law kept respectable women away,

but the management showed no inclination to interfere where there was no noise or disorder. Employees were

supposed to see that no feminine visitors remained after midnight, that was all.

"You might go up and wait for him," Sam suggested. "That is, if it's important."

At half past ten that night Louis Akers went back to his rooms. The telephone girl watched him sharply as he

"No. Sam let her in and took her up. He said he thought you wouldn't mind. She'd been here before."

The thought of Edith never entered Akers' head. It was Lily, Lily miraculously come back to him. Lily, his

Going up in the elevator he hastily formulated a plan of action. He would not be too ready to forgive; she had

cost him too much. But in the end he would take her in his arms and hold her close. Lily! Lily!

It was the bitterness of his disappointment that made him brutal. Wicked and unscrupulous as he was with

men, with women he was as gentle as he was cruel. He put them from him relentlessly and kissed them

goodby. It was his boast that any one of them would come back to him if he wanted her.

Edith, listening for his step, was startled at the change in his face when he saw her.

"If I am, what are you going to do about it?" His eyes were wary, but his color was coming back. He was

It seemed to him incredible that she had come there to taunt him, she who was responsible for the shipwreck

of his marriage. That she could come there and face him, and not expect him to kill her where she stood.

"It's true enough." He swore under his breath. "She didn't leave me. She was taken away. And I'll get her back

if I You little fool, I ought to kill you. If you wanted a cheap revenge, you've got it."

"Because, if she is, I am going to marry Mr. Cameron tomorrow." At the sight of his astounded face she went

"I wanted to be fair to him. And I think he is I think he used to be terribly in love with her."

Quite apart from his increasing fear of Willy Cameron and his Committee, there had been in Akers for some

time a latent jealousy of him. In a flash he saw the room at the Saint Elmo, and a coldeyed man inside the

doorway. The humiliation of that scene had never left him, of his own maudlin inadequacy, of hearing from

beyond a closed and locked door, the closing of another door behind Lily and the man who had taken her

"So," he said, "he is terribly in love with my wife, and he intends to marry you. That's interesting. Because,

"Listen," he said deliberately. "Men who stick their heads into the lion's jaws are apt to lose them. Our young

friend Cameron has done that. I'll change the figure. When a man tries to stop a great machine by putting his

impudent fingers into the cog wheels, the man's a fool. He may lose his hand, or he may lose his life."

Fortunately for Edith he moved on that speech to the side table, and mixed himself a highball. It gave her a

moment to summon her scattered wits, to decide on a plan of action. Her early training on the streets, her

recent months of deceit, helped her now. If he had expected any outburst from her it did not come.

"That is," he added slowly, "I've warned you. You'd better warn him. He's doing his best to get into trouble."

She knew him well, saw the craftiness come back into his eyes, and met it with equal strategy.

"I'll tell him," she said, moving toward the door. "You haven't scared me for a minute and you won't scare

"You're a boaster," she said, with the door open. "You always were. And you'll never lay a hand on him.

She was through the doorway by that time, and in terror for fear, having told her so much, he would try to

detain her. She saw the idea come into his face, too, just as she slipped outside. He made a move toward her.

She slammed the door and ran down the hallway toward the stairs. She heard him open the door and come out

She stumbled on the second flight of stairs and fell a halfdozen steps, but she picked herself up and ran on.

At the bottom of the lower flight she stopped and listened, but he had gone back. She heard the slam of his

But the insistent need of haste drove her on, headlong. She shot through the lobby, past the staring telephone

girl, and into the street, and there settled down into steady running, her elbows close to her sides, trying to

remember to breathe slowly and evenly. She must get home somehow, get the envelope and follow the

directions inside. Her thoughts raced with her. It was almost eleven o'clock and Willy had been gone for

At something after seven o'clock that night Willy Cameron and Pink Denslow reached that point on the

Mayville Road which had been designated by the storekeeper, Cusick. They left the car there, hidden in a

grove, and struck off across country to the west. Willy Cameron had been thoughtful for some time, and as

"One of the best men we've got," Pink replied, confidently. "He's put us on to several things."

"Good citizen," said Pink, with promptness. "You've got to remember, Cameron, that a lot of these fellows

are better Americans than we are. They're like religious converts, stronger than the ones born in the fold.

They're Americans because they want to be. Anyhow, you ought to be strong for him, Cameron. He said to

"I'll tell you how strong I am for him later," Willy Cameron said, grimly. "Just at this minute I'm waiting to

They advanced with infinite caution, for the evening was still light. Going slowly, it was well after eight and

fairly dark before they came within sight of the farm buildings in the valley below. Long unpainted, they

were barely discernable in the shadows of the hills. The land around had been carefully cleared, and both men

"Doesn't look very good, does it?" Pink observed. "I will say this, for seclusion and keeping away unwanted

They stood on the alert, but only the evening sounds of country and forest rewarded them.

"Plain scare on my part, probably. I don't so much mind this little excursion, Pink, as I hate the idea that a

certain gentleman named Cusick may have a chance to come to our funerals and laugh himself to death."

When real darkness had fallen, they had reached the lower fringe of the woods. Pink had the fault of the city

dweller, however, of being unable to step lightly in the dark, and their progress had been less silent than it

should have been. In spite of his handicap, Willy Cameron made his way with the instinctive knowledge of

"Pretty poor," Pink said in a discouraged whisper, after a twig had burst under his foot with a report like the

"Listen, Pink. I'm going in alone to look around. Stop muttering and listen to me. It's poor strategy not to

"I'm a poor prune at the best," Pink said stubbornly, "but I am not going to let you go into that place alone.

"Very well. Then we'll both stay here. You are about as quiet as a horse going through a corn patch."

"If you insist on stealing the whole show," he said, sulkily, "what am I to do? Run to town for help, if you

"I'm not going to round up the outfit, if there is one. I haven't lost my mind. I'll see what is going on, or about

"Better meet at the machine," he decided, after a glance at the sky. "In half an hour you won't be able to see

your hand in front of you. Wait here for a halfhour or so, and then start back, and for heaven's sake don't

shoot at anything you see moving. As a matter of fact, I might as well have your revolver. I won't need it, but

He took the revolver and slipped away into the darkness, leaving Pink both melancholy and disturbed.

Unaccustomed to night in the woods, he found his nerves twitching at every sound. In the war there had been

a definite enemy, definitely placed. Even when he had gone into that vile strip between the trenches, there

Not a sound came from the farm buildings. Willy Cameron's progress, too, was noiseless. With no way to tell

the lapse of time, and gauging it by his war experience, when an hour had apparently passed by, he knew that

Time dragged on. A cow, unmilked, lowed plaintively once or twice. A September night breeze set the dying

leaves on the trees to rustling, and stirred the dried ones about his feet. Pink's mind, gradually reassured,

turned to other things. He thought of Lily Cardew, for one. Like Willy Cameron, he knew he would always

love her, but unlike Willy, the first pain of her loss was gone. He was glad that time was over. He was glad

that she was at home again, safe from those Some one was moving near him, passing within twenty feet.

Whoever it was was stepping cautiously but blunderingly. It was not Cameron, then. He was a footfall only,

not even an outline. Before Pink could decide on a line of action, the sound was lost.

Every sense acute, he waited. He had decided that if the incident were repeated, he would make an effort to

get the fellow from behind, but there was no return. The wind had died again, and there was no longer even

Suddenly he saw a red flash near the barn, and an instant later heard the report of a pistol. Came immediately

after that a brief fusillade of shots, a pause, then two or three scattering ones.

With the first shot Pink started running. He was vaguely conscious of other steps near him, running also, but

he could see nothing. His whole mind was set on finding Willy Cameron. Alone he had not a chance, but two

of them together could put up a fight. He pelted along, stumbling, recovering, stumbling again.

Another shot was fired. They hadn't got him yet, or they wouldn't be shooting. He raised his voice in a great

He ran into a low fence then, and it threw him. He had hardly got to his knees before the other running figure

had hurled itself on him, and struck him with the butt of a revolver. He dropped flat and lay still.

For weeks Woslosky had known of the growing strength of the Vigilance Committee, and that it was arming

It threatened absolutely the success of his plans. Even the election of Akers and the changes he would make

in the city police; even the ruse of other strikes and machinemade riotings to call away the state troops,

none of these, or all of them, would be effectual against an organized body of citizens, duly called to the

And such an organization was already effected. Within a week, when the first card reached his hands, it had

grown to respectable proportions. Woslosky went to Doyle, and they made their countermoves quickly. No

more violence. A seemingly real but deceptive orderliness. They were dealing with inflammatory material,

however, and now and then it got out of hand. Unlike Doyle the calculating, who made each move slowly and

"We can't hold them much longer," he complained, bitterly. "This thing of holding them off until after the

Woslosky did not like Louis Akers. What was more important, he distrusted him. When he heard of his

"He's in this thing for what he can get out of it," he said. "He'll go as far as he can, with safety, to be accepted

"Exactly," was Doyle's dry comment, "with safety, you said. Well, he knows you and he knows me, and he'll

But Doyle only smiled. He had known many women and loved none of them, and he was temperamentally

unable to understand the type of man who saw the world through a woman's eyes and in them.

So Woslosky was compelled to watch the growth of Willy Cameron's organization, and to hold in check the

violent passions he had himself roused, and to wait, gnawing his nails with inaction and his heart with rage.

That the organization's growth was coincident with a new interest in local politics, as though some vital force

That a drug clerk named Cameron was the founder and moving spirit of the league, and that he was, using

Hendricks' candidacy as a means, rousing the city to a burning patriotic activity that Mr. Woslosky regarded

And that this same Willy Cameron had apparently a knowledge of certain plans, which was rather worse than

For instance, there were the lists of the various city stores and their estimated contents, missing from Mr.

Woslosky's own inconspicuous trunk in a storage house. On that had been based the plan for feeding the

revolution, by the simple expedient of exchanging by organized pillage the contents of the city stores for food

Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out. He had no anxiety as to troops which

would be sent against them, because he had a cynical belief that a man's country was less to him than various

other things, including his stomach. He believed that all armies were riddled with sedition and fundamentally

Copies of other important matters, too, were missing. Lists of officials for the revolutionary city government

and of deputies to take the places of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the radicals, the city light,

water and power plants; a schedule of public eating houses to take the place of the restaurants.

Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given name getting on his nerves. He considered

him a dangerous enemy to progress, that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky advocated, and he

suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding trunks in storage. Mr. Woslosky had the oldworld idea that the

best government was a despotism tempered by assassination. He thought considerably about Willy Cameron.

But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by Louis Akers. Woslosky was skeptical. It

was true that Cameron might stick his head into the lion's jaws, but precautions had been known to be taken

He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and made a strategic survey of the situation. The

house was closed and locked, but he was not concerned with the house. Cusick had told Denslow the

meetings were held late at night in the barn, and to the barn Woslosky repaired, sawedoff shotgun under his

coat and cigarette in mouth, and inspected it with his evil smile. Two men, young and reckless, might easily

Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below, whistling softly to himself. He began to

enjoy the prospect. He gathered some eggs from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat, and breaking the

lock of the kitchen door he and his outfit looted the closet there and had an early supper, being careful to

Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among the outbuildings, one as a sentry near the

woods, and two in the barn itself. He himself took up his station inside the barn door, sitting on the floor with

his gun across his knees. Looking out from there, he saw the sharp flash of a hastily extinguished match, and

"I've got to go out," he said cautiously. "Don't you fools shoot me when I come back."

Some five minutes later he came back, still noiselessly, and treading like a cat. He could only locate the barn

door by feeling for it, and above the light scraping of his fingers he could hear, inside, cautious footsteps over

the board floor. He scowled again. Damn this country quiet, anyhow! But he had found the doorway, and was

feeling his way through when he found himself caught and violently thrown. The fall and the surprise stunned

him. He lay still for an infuriated helpless second, with a knee on his chest and both arms tightly held, to hear

"You fool!" snarled Woslosky from the floor, "let me up. You've half killed me. Didn't I tell you I was going

"But you came in a couple of minutes ago. Somebody came in. You heard him, Cusick, didn't you?"

Woslosky whirled and closed and fastened the barn doors, and almost with the same movement drew a

The Pole burst into blasphemous anger, punctuated with sharp questions. Both men had heard the cautious

entrance they had taken for his own, both men had remained silent and unsuspicious, and both were positive

He stationed one man at the door, and commenced a merciless search. The summer's hay filled one end, but it

was closely packed below and offered no refuge. Armed with the shotgun, and with the flash in his pocket,

Woslosky climbed the ladder to the loft, going softly. He listened at the top, and then searched it with the

light, holding it far to the left for a possible bullet. The loft was empty. He climbed into it and walked over it,

gun in one hand and flash in the other, searching for some buried figure. But there was nothing. The loft was

fragrant with the newly dried hay, sweet and empty. Woslosky descended the ladder again, the flash

extinguished, and stood again on the barn floor, considering. Cusick was a man without imagination, and he

Suddenly there was a whirr of wings outside and above, excited flutterings first, and then a general flight of

"We've got him, boys," he said, without excitement. "Outside, and call the others. He's on the roof."

Cusick whistled shrilly, and as the Pole ran out he met the others coming pellmell toward him. He flung a

guard of all five of them around the barn, and himself walked off a hundred feet or so and gazed upward. The

very outline of the ridge pole was indistinguishable, and he swore softly. In the hope of drawing an answering

flash he fired, but without result. The explosion echoed and reechoed, died away.

He called to Cusick, and had him try the same experiment, following the line of the gutter as nearly as

possible in the darkness, on that side, and emptying his revolver. Still silence.

Woslosky began to doubt. The pigeons might have seen his flashlight, might have heard his own stealthy

movements. He was intensely irritated. The shooting, if the alarm had been false, had ruined everything. He

saw, as in a vision, Doyle's sneering face when he told him. Beside him Cusick was reloading his revolver in

Then, out of the night, came a call from the direction of the woods, and unintelligible at that distance.

Woslosky made no reply. He was listening. Some one was approaching, now running, now stopping as

though confused. Woslosky held his gun ready, and waited. Then, from a distance, he heard his name called.

He stepped inside the door of the barn and showed the light for a moment. Soon after the sentry floundered

"I got one of them," he gasped. "Hit him with my gun. He's lying back by the stone fence."

"He did. That's how I knew it wasn't one of our fellows. He called Cameron, so he's the other one."

Woslosky drew a deep breath. Then it was Cameron on the roof. It was Cameron they wanted.

"He'll sleep for an hour or two, if he ever wakes up," Pink's assailant boasted. But Woslosky was taking no

chances that night. He sent two men after Pink, and began to pace the floor thoughtfully. If he could have

waited for daylight it would have been simple enough, but he did not know how much time he had. He did

not underestimate young Cameron's intelligence, and it had occurred to him that that young Scot might

cannily have provided against his failure to return. Then, too, the state constabulary had an uncomfortable

habit of riding lonely back roads at night, and shots could be heard a long distance off.

He had never surveyed the barn roof closely, but he knew that it was steeply pitched. Cameron, then, was

probably braced somewhere in the gutter. The departure of the two men had left him shorthanded, and he

waited impatiently for their return. With a ladder, provided it could be quietly placed, a man could shoot from

a corner along two sides of the roof. With two ladders, at diagonal corners, they could get him. But a careful

"We know you're there, Cameron," he said. "If you come down we won't hurt you. If you don't, we'll get you,

Soon after that the two men carried in Pink Denslow, and laid him on the floor of the barn. Then Woslosky

tried again, more reckless this time with anger. He stood out somewhat from the wall and called:

"One more chance, Cameron, or we'll put a bullet through your friend here. Come down, or we'll "

Something struck him heavily and he fell, with a bullet in the shoulder. He struggled to his feet and gained

He regained the barn and had his arm supported in an extemporized sling. Then he ordered Pink to be tied,

and fighting down his pain considered the situation. Cameron was on the roof, and armed. Even if he had no

extra shells he still had five shots in reserve, and he would not waste any of them. Whoever tried to scale the

walls would be done in at once; whoever attempted to follow him to the roof by way of the loft would be shot

instantly. And his own condition demanded haste; the bullet, striking from above, had broken his arm. Every

He thought of setting fire to the barn. Then Cameron would have the choice of two things, to surrender or to

be killed. He might get some of them first, however. Well, that was a part of the game.

"I've just thought of something, Cameron," he called. "We're going to fire the barn. Your young friend is

here, tied, and we'll leave him here. Do you get that? Either throw down that gun of yours, and come down,

or I'm inclined to think you'll be up against it. I'll give you a minute or so to think it over."

At halfpast eleven o'clock that night the first of four automobiles drove into Friendship. It was driven by a

hatless young man in a raincoat over a suit of silk pajamas, and it contained four County detectives and the

city Chief of Police. Behind it, but well outdistanced, came the other cars, some of them driven by leading

At a cross street in Friendship the lead car drew up, and flashlights were turned on a road map in the rear of

the car. There was some argument over the proper road, and a member of the state constabulary, riding up to

"Wish I could go along," he said, wistfully. "The place you want is back there. I can't leave the town, but I'll

He rode on ahead, his big black horse restive in the light from the lamps behind him. At the end of a lane he

He broke off and stared ahead to where a dull red glare, reflected on the low hanging clouds, had appeared

He jerked his revolver free, dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, and was off on a dead run. Half way up

the hill the car passed him, the black going hard, and its rider's face, under the rim of his uniform hat, a stern

profile. His reins lay loose on the animal's neck, and he was examining his gun.

The road mounted to a summit, and dipped again. They were in a long valley, and the burning barn was

clearly outlined at the far end of it. One side was already flaming, and tongues of fire leaped out through the

roof. The men in the car were standing now, doors open, ready to leap, while the car lurched and swayed over

As they drew nearer they could see three watching figures against the burning building, and as they turned

into the lane which led to the barnyard a shot rang out and one of the figures dropped and lay still. There was

a cry of warning from somewhere, and before the detectives could leap from the car, the group had scattered,

running wildly. The state policeman threw his horse back on its hunches, and fired without apparently taking

aim at one of the running shadows. The man threw up his arms and fell. The state policeman galloped toward

Firing as they ran, detectives leaped out of the car and gave chase, and so it was that the young gentleman in

bedroom slippers and pajamas, standing in his car and shielding his eyes against the glare, saw a curious

First of all, the roof blazed up brightly, and he perceived a human figure, hanging by its hands from the eaves

and preparing to drop. The young gentleman in pajamas was feeling rather out of things by that time, so he

made a hasty exit from his car toward the barn, losing a slipper as he did so, and yelling in a slightly

hysterical manner. It thus happened that he and the dropping figure reached the same spot at almost the same

moment, one result of which was that the young gentleman in pajamas found himself struck a violent blow

with a doubledup fist, and at the same moment his bare right foot was tramped on with extreme

The young gentleman in pajamas reeled back dizzily and gave tongue, while standing on one foot. The person

he addressed was the state constable, and his instructions were to get the fugitive and kill him. But the

fugitive here did a very. strange thing. Through the handkerchief which it was now seen he wore tied over his

mouth, he told the running policeman to go to perdition, and then with seeming suicidal intent rushed into the

burning barn. From it he emerged a moment later, dragging a figure bound hand and foot, blackened with

smoke, and with its clothing smoldering in a dozen places; a figure which alternately coughed and swore in a

strangled whisper, but which found breath for a loud whoop almost immediately after, on its being immersed,

Very soon after that the other cars arrived. They drew up and men emerged from them, variously clothed and

even more variously armed, but all they saw was the ruined embers of the barn, and in the glow five figures.

Of the five one lay, face up to the sky, as though the prostrate body followed with its eyes the unkillable

traitor soul of one Cusick, lately storekeeper at Friendship. Woslosky, wounded for the second time, lay on an

automobile rug on the ground, conscious but sullenly silent. On the driving seat of an automobile sat a young

gentleman with an overcoat over a pair of silk pajamas, carefully inspecting the toes of his right foot by the

light of a match, while another young gentleman with a white handkerchief around his head was sitting on the

running board of the same car, dripping water and rather dazedly staring at the ruins.

And beside him stood a gaunt figure, blackened of face, minus eyebrows and charred of hair, and

considerably torn as to clothing. A figure which seemed disinclined to talk, and which gave its explanations

in short, staccato sentences. Having done which, it relapsed into uncompromising silence again.

Some time later the detectives returned. They had made no further captures, for the refugees had known the

country, and once outside the light from the burning barn search was useless. The Chief of Police approached

"The next time you try to raid an anarchist meeting, Cameron," he said, "you'd better honor me with your

"I have," he said; "I'll never trust a pigeon again." The Chief thought him slightly unhinged by the night's

Edith Boyd's child was prematurely born at the Memorial Hospital early the next morning. It lived only a few

When Willy Cameron reached the house at two o'clock that night he found Dan in the lower hall, a new Dan,

"Mother's gone, Willy," he said quietly. "I don't think she knew anything about it. Ellen heard her breathing

hard and went in, but she wasn't conscious." He sat down on the horsehair covered chair by the stand. "I

don't know anything about these things," he observed, still with that strange new composure. "What do you

He looked about him. The presence of death gave a new dignity to the little house. Through the open door he

could see in the parlor Mrs. Boyd's rocking chair, in which she had traveled so many conversational miles.

Even the chair had gained dignity; that which it had once enthroned had now penetrated the ultimate mystery.

He was shaken and very weary. His mind worked slowly and torpidly, so that even grief came with an effort.

He was grieved; he knew that. Some one who had loved him and depended on him was gone; some one who

"I'll tell you something, Dan. She probably saved my life tonight. I'll tell you how later. And if she is still

But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make. He was trying to think straight, but it was not easy. He knew

that for some reason Edith had not waited until midnight to open the envelope. She had telephoned her

message clearly, he had learned, but with great excitement, saying that there was a plot against his life, and

giving the farmhouse and the message he had left in full; and she had not rung off until she knew that a posse

Three hours. He looked at his watch. Either she had been hurt or was a prisoner, or he came close to the

"We'll try the hospitals first, Dan," he said. "And the best way to do that is by telephone. I don't like Ellen

Dan acquiesced unwillingly. He resumed his seat in the hail, and Willy Cameron went upstairs. Ellen was

moving softly about, setting in order the little upper room. The windows were opened, and through them

came the soft night wind, giving a semblance of life and movement under it to the sheet that covered the quiet

Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of thankfulness in his heart. She had been

saved much, and if from some new angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision of eternity,

and its understanding. She would see how sometimes the soul must lose here to gain beyond. She would see

the world filled with its Ediths, and she would know that they too were a part of the great plan, and that the

He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small inarticulate prayer, standing beside the bed while

Ellen straightened the few toilet articles on the dresser, that she might have rest, and then a long and placid

"Your hair looks queer, Willy," she said. "And I declare your clothes are a sight." She turned, sternly. "Where

"The less said about her the better. She came back in a terrible state about something or other, ran in and up

to your room, and out again. I tried to tell her her mother wasn't so well, but she looked as if she didn't hear

It was four o'clock in the morning when Willy Cameron located Edith. He had gone to the pharmacy and let

himself in, intending to telephone, but the card on the door, edged with black, gave him a curious sense of

being surrounded that night by death, and he stood for a moment, unwilling to begin for fear of some further

tragedy. In that moment, what with reaction from excitement and weariness, he had a feeling of futility, of

He saw Mr. Davis, sitting alone in his house; he saw Ellen moving about that quiet upper room; he saw

Cusick lying on the ground beside the smoldering heap that had been the barn, and staring up with eyes that

saw only the vast infinity that was the sky. All the struggling and the fighting, and it came to that.

He picked up the telephone book at last, and finding the hospital list in the directory began his monotonous

calling of numbers, and still the revolt was in his mind. Even life lay through the gates of death; daily and

hourly women everywhere laid down their lives that some new soul be born. But the revulsion came with

that, a return to something nearer the normal. Daily and hourly women lived, having brought to pass the

At halfpast four he located Edith at the Memorial, and learned that her child had been born dead, but that

she was doing well. He was suddenly exhausted; he sat down on a stool before the counter, and with his arms

across it and his head on them, fell almost instantly asleep. When he waked it was almost seven and the

intermittent sounds of early morning came through the closed doors, as though the city stirred but had not

He went to the door and opened it, looking out. He had been wrong before. Death was a beginning and not an

end; it was the morning of the spirit. Tired bodies lay down to sleep and their souls wakened to the morning,

>From the chimneys of the houses nearby small spirals of smoke began to ascend, definite promise of food

and morning cheer behind the closed doors, where the milk bottles stood like small white sentinels and the

morning paper was bent over the knob. Morning in the city, with children searching for lost stockings and

buttoning little battered shoes; with women hurrying about, from stove to closet, from table to stove; with all

In her bed in the maternity ward Edith at first lay through the days, watching the other women with their

babies, and wondering over the strange instinct that made them hover, like queer misshaped ministering

angels, over the tiny quivering bundles. Some of them were like herself, or herself as she might have been,

bearing their children out of wedlock. Yet they faced their indefinite futures impassively, content in relief

from pain, in the child in their arms, in present peace and security. She could not understand.

She herself felt no sense of loss. Having never held her child in her arms she did not feel them empty.

She had not been told of her mother's death; men were not admitted to the ward, but early on that first

morning, when she lay there, hardly conscious but in an ecstasy of relief from pain, Ellen had come. A tired

"How do you feel?" she had asked, sitting down selfconsciously beside the bed. The ward had its eyes on

She had roused herself with an effort. Ellen reminded her of something, something that had to do with Willy

"He's all right. It was him that found you were here. You lie back now; the nurse is looking."

Edith lay down and closed her eyes, and the ecstasy of relief and peace gave to her pale face an almost

"You poor thing!" she said. "I've been as mean to you as I knew how to be. I'm going to be different, Edith.

So for three days Edith lay and rested. She felt that God had been very good to her, and she began to think of

God as having given her another chance. This time He had let her off, but He had given her a warning. He

had said, in effect, that if she lived straight and thought straight from now on He would forget this thing she

Then what about Willy Cameron? Did He mean her to hold him to that now? Willy did not love her. Perhaps

he would grow to love her, but she was seeing things more clearly than she had before, and one of the things

she saw was that Willy Cameron was a onewoman man, and that she was not the woman.

The ward moved in its orderly routine around her. The babies were carried out, bathed and brought back,

their nuzzling mouths open for the waiting motherbreast. The nurses moved about, efficient, kindly,

whimsically maternal. Women went out when their hour came, swollen of feature and figure, and were

wheeled back later on, etherealized, purified as by fire, and later on were given their babies. Their faces were

queer then, frightened and proud at first, and later watchful and tenderly brooding.

For three days Edith's struggle went on. She had her strong hours and her weak ones. There were moments

when, exhausted and yet exalted, she determined to give him up altogether, to live the fiction of the marriage

until her mother's death, and then to give up the house and never see him again. If she gave him up she must

never see him again. At those times she prayed not to love him any longer, and sometimes, for a little while

But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured them married, and dreamed a dream of

bringing him to her feet. He had offered a marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and human.

He did not want her now, but in the end he would want her; young as she was she knew already the strength

Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swolleneyed Ellen, dressed in black with black

cotton gloves, and a black veil around her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of duty of her

class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in her kitchen apron as without black. She stood in

Her first thought was not of her mother at all. She saw only that the God who had saved her had made her

decision for her, and that now she would never marry Willy Cameron. All this time He had let her dream and

"She's gone. Edith," she said; "we didn't tell you before, but you have to know sometime. We buried her this

Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the years ahead. She was a little girl again,

"Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie. And tomorrow's Saturday. So you don't need to get up until

She lay there. She saw her mother growing older and more frail, the house more untidy, and her mother's

bright spirit fading to the drab of her surroundings. She saw herself, slipping in late at night, listening always

for that uneasy querulous voice. And then she saw those recent months, when her mother had bloomed with

happiness; she saw her struggling with her beloved desserts, cheerfully unconscious of any failure in them;

she saw her, living like a lady, as she had said, with every anxiety kept from her. There had been times when

her thin face had been almost illuminated with her new content and satisfaction.

"Mother!" she said, huskily. And lay there, crying quietly, with Ellen holding her hand. All that was hard and

rebellious in Edith Boyd was swept away in that rush of grief, and in its place there came a new courage and

resolution. She would meet the future alone, meet it and overcome it. But not alone, either; there was always

It was a Sunday afternoon, and the nurse had picked up the worn ward Bible and was reading from it, aloud.

In their rocking chairs in a semicircle around her were the women, some with sleeping babies in their arms,

"Let not your heart be troubled," read the nurse, in a grave young voice. "Ye believe in God. Believe also in

Edith Boyd saw her mother in the Father's house, pottering about some small celestial duty, and eagerly

seeking and receiving approval. She saw her, in some celestial rocking chair, her tired hands folded, slowly

rocking and resting. And perhaps, as she sat there, she held Edith's child on her knee, like the mothers in the

It was at this time that Doyle showed his hand, with his customary fearlessness. He made a series of

incendiary speeches, the general theme being that the hour was close at hand for putting the fear of God into

the exploiting classes for all time to come. His impassioned oratory, coming at the psychological moment,

when the long strike had brought its train of debt and evictions, made a profound impression. Had he asked

As it was, it was some time before all the unions had voted for it. And the day was not set. Doyle was holding

off, and for a reason. Day by day he saw a growth of the theory of Bolshevism among the socalled

intellectual groups of the country. Almost every university had its radicals, men who saw emerging from

Russia the beginning of a new earth. Every class now had its Bolshevists. They found a ready market for their

propaganda, intelligent and insidious as it was, among a certain liberal element of the nation, disgruntled with

The reaction from that autocracy was a swinging to the other extreme, and, as if to work into the hands of the

revolutionary party, living costs remained at the maximum. The cry of the revolutionists, to all enough and to

none too much, found a response not only in the anxious minds of honest workmen, but among an underpaid

intelligentsia. Neither political party offered any relief; the old lines no longer held, and new lines of cleavage

had come. Progressive Republicans and Democrats had united against reactionary members of both parties.

The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the old story of the many led by the few. Always

it had come, autocracy, the too great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the

angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by the people themselves, into democracy.

And then in time again, by that steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who

emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was autocracy again, and again the

But such movements had always been, in the last analysis, the work of the few. It had always been the

militant minority which ruled. Always the great mass of the people had submitted. They had fought, one way

or the other when the time came, but without any deep conviction behind them. They wanted peace, the right

to labor. They warred, to find peace. Small concern was it, to the peasant plowing his field, whether one man

It came to this, then, Willy Cameron argued to himself. This new world conflict was a struggle between the

contented and the discontented. In Europe, discontent might conquer, but in America, never. There were too

many who owned a field or had the chance to labor. There were too many ways legitimately to aspire. Those

who wanted something for nothing were but a handful to those who wanted to give that they might receive.

Three days before the election, Willy Cameron received a note from Lily, sent by hand.

"Father wants to see you tonight," she wrote, "and mother suggests that as you are busy, you try to come to

He took the letter home with him and placed it in a locked drawer of his desk, along with a hard and shrunken

doughnut, tied with a bow of Christmas ribbon, which had once helped to adorn the Christmas tree they had

trimmed together. There were other things in the drawer; a postcard photograph, rather blurred, of Lily in the

doorway of her little hut, smiling; and the cigar box which had been her cash register at the camp.

He stood for some time looking down at the post card; it did not seem possible that in the few months since

those wonderful days, life could have been so cruel to them both. Lily married, and he himself

Ellen came up when he was tying his tie. She stood behind him, watching him in the mirror.

"I don't know what you've done to your hair, Willy," she said; "it certainly looks queer."

"It usually looks queer, so why worry, heart of my heart?" But he turned and put an arm around her

shoulders. "What would the world be without women like you, Ellen?" he said gravely.

"I haven't done anything but my duty," Ellen said, in her prim voice. "Listen, Willy. I saw Edith again

"She said it wouldn't be any good, Willy. She's made up her mind." She watched him anxiously. "You're not

"Dan can do that. He's changed, since she went." Ellen glanced toward Mrs. Boyd's empty room. "You've

done enough, Willy. You've seen them through, all of them. I isn't it time you began to think about

He was putting on his coat, and she picked a bit of thread from it, with nervous fingers.

"Willy, I want to tell you something. The Cardews won't let that marriage stand, and you know it. I think she

"That's because you are fond of me," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm not the sort of man girls care about,

Ellen. Let's face that. The General Manager said when he planned me, 'Here's going to be a fellow who is to

have everything in the world, health, intelligence, wit and the beauty of an Adonis, but he has to lack

But Ellen, glancing up swiftly, saw that although his tone was light, there was pain in his eyes.

He reflected on Edith's decision as he walked through the park toward the Cardew house. It had not surprised

him, and yet he knew it had cost her an effort. How great an effort, manlike, he would never understand, but

something of what she had gone through he realized. He wondered vaguely whether, had there never been a

Lily Cardew in his life, he could ever have cared for Edith. Perhaps. Not the Edith of the early days, that was

certain. But this new Edith, with her gentleness and meekness, her clear, suffering eyes, her strange new

She had sent him a message of warning about Akers, and from it he had reconstructed much of the events of

"Tell him to watch Louis Akers," she had said. "I don't know how near Willy was to trouble the other night,

"I'll tell you all about it some day," he had said. But he had told Dan the whole story, and, although he did not

know it, Dan had from that time on been his selfconstituted bodyguard. During his campaign speeches Dan

was always near, his right hand on a revolver in his coat pocket, and for hours at a time he stood outside the

pharmacy, favoring every seeker for drugs or soap or perfume with a scowling inspection. When he could not

do it, he enlisted Joe Wilkinson in the evenings, and sometimes the two of them, armed, policed the meeting

As a matter of fact, Joe Wilkinson was following him that night. On his way to the Cardews Willy Cameron,

suddenly remembering the uncanny ability of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining meanwhile at a safe

distance in the rear, turned suddenly and saw Joe, walking sturdily along in rubbersoled shoes, and obsessed

"Thought that looked like your back," he said. "Nice evening for a walk, isn't it?"

"Let me look at you, Joe," said Willy Cameron. "You look strange to me. Ah, now I have it. You look like a

"I guess I'd better tell you. Dan's told me about her. I " Joe hesitated. Then: "She never seemed like that sort

Joe, his real business forgotten, walked on with eyes down and shoulders drooping.

"I might as well finish with it," he said, "now I've started. I've always been crazy about her. Of course now

"I think it's rather like this, Joe," Willy Cameron said, after a pause. "We are not one person, really. We are

all two or three people, and all different. We are bad and good, depending on which of us is the strongest at

the time, and now and then we pay so much for the bad we do that we bury that part. That's what has

happened to Edith. Unless, of course," he added, "we go on convincing her that she is still the thing she

"I'd like to kill the man," Joe said. But after a little, as they neared the edge of the park, he looked up.

The atmosphere of the Cardew house was subtly changed and very friendly. Willy Cameron found himself

received as an old friend, with no tendency to forget the service he had rendered, or that, in their darkest hour,

To his surprise Pink Denslow was there, and he saw at once that Pink had been telling them of the night at the

farm house. Pink was himself again, save for a small shaved place at the back of his head, covered with

"I've told them, Cameron," he said. "If I could only tell it generally I'd be the most popular man in the city, at

"Pair of young fools," old Anthony muttered, with his sardonic smile. But in his handclasp, as in Howard's,

there was warmth and a sort of envy, envy of youth and the adventurous spirit of youth.

Lily was very quiet. The story had meant more to her than to the others. She had more nearly understood

Pink's reference to the sealed envelope Willy Cameron had left, and the help sent by Edith Boyd. She

connected that with Louis Akers, and from that to Akers' threat against Cameron was only a step. She was

frightened and somewhat resentful, that this other girl should have saved him from a revenge that she knew

was directed at herself. That she, who had brought this thing about, had sat quietly at home while another

Dinner was almost gay. Perhaps the gayety was somewhat forced, with Pink keeping his eyes from Lily's

face, and Howard Cardew relapsing now and then into abstracted silence. Because of the men who served,

the conversation was carefully general. It was only in the library later, the men gathered together over their

Howard Cardew was about to withdraw from the contest. "I'm late in coming to this decision," he said.

"Perhaps too late. But after a careful canvas of the situation, I find you are right, Cameron. Unless I

withdraw, Akers" he found a difficulty in speaking the name "will be elected. At least it looks that way."

"And if he is," old Anthony put in, "he'll turn all the devils of hell loose on us."

It was late; very late. The Cardews stood ready to flood the papers with announcements of Howard's

withdrawal, and urging his supporters to vote for Hendricks, but the time was short. Howard had asked his

campaign managers to meet there that night, and also Hendricks and one or two of his men, but personally he

And, as it happened, the meeting developed more enthusiasm than optimism. Cardew's withdrawal would be

made the most of by the opposition. They would play it up as the end of the old regime, the beginning of new

Before midnight the conference broke up, to catch the morning editions. Willy Cameron, detained behind the

But when he went in she seemed to have nothing to say. She sat in a low chair, in a soft dark dress which

emphasized her paleness. To Willy Cameron she had never seemed more beautiful, or more remote.

"Do you remember how you used to whistle 'The Long, Long Trail,' Willy?" she said at last. "All evening I

have been sitting here thinking what a long trail we have both traveled since then."

"Only you have gone up, Willy. And I have gone down, into the valley. I wish" she smiled faintly "I wish

"I couldn't help reminding you of things." "But I never forget them, anyhow. Sometimes I almost go mad,

remembering. It isn't quite as selfish as it sounds. I've hurt them all so. Willy, do you mind telling me about

"About Edith Boyd? I'd like to tell you, Lily. Her mother is dead, and she lost her child. She is in the

"Tell me about her sending help that night. She really saved your life, didn't she?"

While he was telling her she sat staring straight ahead, her fingers interlaced in her lap. She was telling

herself that all this could not possibly matter to her, that she had cut herself off, finally and forever, from the

Quite suddenly she knew that she did not want his friendship. She wanted to see again in his face the look

that had been there the night he had told her, very simply, that he loved her. And it would never be there; it

was not there now. She had killed his love. All the light in his face was for some one else, another girl, a girl

"I wonder if you know how much you have told me that you did not intend to tell?"

"I think, Willy," she said, quietly. "that you care a great deal more for Edith Boyd than you think you do.

He looked at her in stupefaction. How could she say that? How could she fail to know better than that? And

"You are wrong about that. I " He made a little gesture of despair. He could not tell her now that he loved

He felt absurd and helpless. He could not deny that, yet how could she sit there, cool and faintly smiling, and

not know that as she sat there so she sat enshrined in his heart. She was his saint, to kneel and pray to; and

she was his woman, the one woman of his life. More woman than saint, he knew, and even for that he loved

"I don't know what to say to you, Lily," he said, at last. "She it is possible that she thinks she cares, but

"Her child had a right to a name. And there were other things. I can't very well explain them to you. Her

mother was ill. Can't you understand, Lily? I don't want to throw any heroics." In his excitement he had

lapsed into boyish vernacular. "Here was a plain problem, and a simple way to solve it. But it is off now,

He had a mad impulse to take her in his arms, and holding her close to rest her there. She looked so tired. For

"I thought you would not care to talk about him. That's over and done, Lily. I want to forget about it, myself."

She looked up at him, and had he had Louis Akers' intuitive knowledge of women he would have understood

But the hurt of her marriage was still too fresh in him for speech. He could not discuss Louis Akers with her.

"No," he said, after a moment, "I don't think you ever did. I'll come in some evening, if I may, Lily. I must

How old he looked, for him! How far removed from those busy, cheerful days at the camp! And there were

new lines of repression in his face; from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Above his ears his hair

"You have been having rather a hard time, Willy, haven't you'?" she said, suddenly.

She was studying him with the newly opened eyes of love. What was it he showed that the other men she

knew lacked? Sensitiveness? Kindness? But her father was both sensitive and kind. So was Pink, in less

"I think it is patience," she said. And to his unspoken question: "You are very patient, aren't you?"

"I never thought about it. For heaven's sake don't turn my mind in on myself, Lily. I'll be running around in

"Do you know that father says you have more influence than any other man in the city?"

"And I think he and grandfather are planning to try to get you, when the mills reopen. Father suggested it,

but grandfather says you'd have the presidency of the company in six months, and he'd be sharpening your

For just a moment, before he left, they were back to where they had been months ago, enjoying together their

small jokes and their small mishaps. The present fell away, with its hovering tragedy, and they were boy and

girl together. Exaltation and sacrifice were a part of their love, as of all real and lasting passion, but there was

"I love her. I like her. I adore her," was the cry in Willy Cameron's heart when he started home that night.

Elinor Doyle was up and about her room. She walked slowly and with difficulty, using crutches, and she

spent most of the time at her window, watching and waiting. From Lily there came, at frequent intervals,

notes, flowers and small delicacies. The flowers and food Olga brought to her, but the notes she never saw.

She knew they came. She could see the car stop at the curb, and the chauffeur, his shoulders squared and his

She felt more helpless than ever. The doctor came less often, but the vigilance was never relaxed, and she

had, too, less and less hope of being able to give any warning. Doyle was seldom at home, and when he was

he had ceased to give her his taunting information. She was quite sure now of his relations with the Russian

girl, and her uncertainty as to her course was gone. She was no longer his wife. He held another woman in his

Woslosky had developed blood poisoning, and was at the point of death, with a stolid policeman on guard at

his bedside. She knew that from the newspapers she occasionally saw. And she connected Doyle unerringly

with the tragedy at the farm behind Friendship. She recognized, too, since that failure, a change in his manner

to her. She saw that he now both hated her and feared her, and that she had become only a burden and a

menace to him. He might decide to do away with her, to kill her. He would not do it himself; he never did his

own dirty work, but the Russian girl Olga was in love with Jim Doyle. Elinor knew that, as she knew many

things, by a sort of intuition. She watched them in the room together, and she knew that to Doyle the girl was

an incident, the vehicle of his occasional passion, a strumpet and a tool. He did not even like her; she saw him

looking at her sometimes with a sort of amused contempt. But Olga's somber eyes followed him as he moved,

She was afraid of Olga. She did not care particularly about death, but it must not come before she had learned

enough to be able to send out a warning. She thought if it came it might be by poison in the food that was

sent up, but she had to eat to live. She took to eating only one thing on her tray, and she thought she detected

By Doyle's increasing sullenness she knew things were not going well with him, and she found a certain

courage in that, but she knew him too well to believe that he would give up easily. And she drew certain

deductions from the newspapers she studied so tirelessly. She saw the announcement of the unusual number

of hunting licenses issued, for one thing, and she knew the cover that such licenses furnished armed men

patrolling the country. The state permitted the sale of firearms without restriction. Other states did the same,

She watched the election closely. She knew that if Akers were elected the general strike and the chaos to

follow would be held back until he had taken office and made the necessary changes in the city

administration, but that if he went down to defeat the Council would turn loose its impatient hordes at once.

She waited for election day with burning anxiety. When it came it so happened that she was left alone all day

in the house. Early in the morning Olga brought her a tray and told her she was going out. She was changed,

the Russian; she had dropped the mask of sodden servility and stood before her, erect, cunningly intelligent

"I am going to be away all day, Mrs. Doyle," she said, in her excellent English. "I have work to do."

"I am not a houseworker. I came to help Mr. Doyle. Today I shall make speeches."

"Me? That is my work, here, in Russia, everywhere. In Russia it is the women who speak, the men who do

Always afterwards Elinor remembered the five minutes that followed, for Olga, standing before her, suddenly

burst into impassioned oratory. She cited the wrongs of the poor under the old regime. She painted in glowing

colors the new. She was excited, hectic, powerful. Elinor in her chair, an aristocrat to the fingertips, was

Long after Olga had gone she sat there, wondering at the real conviction, the intensity of passion, of hate and

of revenge that actuated this newest tool of Doyle's. Doyle and his associates might be actuated by

selfinterest, but the real danger in the movement lay not with the Doyles of the world, but with these fanatic

liberators. They preached to the poor a new religion, not of creed or of Church, but of freedom. Freedom

without laws of God or of man, freedom of love, of lust, of time, of all responsibility. And the poor, weighted

Perhaps it was not the doctrine itself that was wrong. It was its imposition by force on a world not yet ready

for it that was wrong; its imposition by violence. It might come, but not this way. Not, God preventing, this

There was a polling place across the street, in the basement of a school house. The vote was heavy and all day

men lounged on the pavements, smoking and talking. Once she saw Olga in the crowd, and later on Louis

Akers drove up in an open automobile, handsome, apparently confident, and greeted with cheers. But Elinor,

Late that night she heard Doyle come in and move about the lower floor. She knew every emphasis of his

walk, and when in the room underneath she heard him settle down to steady, deliberate pacing, she knew that

At midnight he came up the stairs and unlocked her door. He entered, closing the door behind him, and stood

looking at her. His face was so strange that she wondered if he had decided to do away with her.

"Tomorrow," he said, in an inflectionless voice, "you will be moved by automobile to a farm I have selected

"I suppose I am to understand from this that Louis has been defeated and there is no longer any reason for

"You will find that out when you get there. I will tell you this: It is a lonely place, without a telephone. You'll

She gazed at him. It seemed unbelievable to her that she had once lain in this man's arms.

"Yes, I've thought of it. But killing is a confession of fear, my dear. I am not afraid of you."

"I think you are. You are afraid now to tell me when you are going to try to put this wild plan into execution."

"Yes," he agreed again. "I am afraid. You have a sort of diabolical ingenuity, not intelligence so much as

cunning. But because I always do the thing I'm afraid to do, I'll tell you. Of course, if you succeed in passing

it on " He shrugged his shoulders. "Very well, then. With your usual logic of deduction, you have guessed

correctly. Louis Akers has been defeated. Your family and how strangely you are a Cardew! lost its

courage at the last moment, and a gentleman named Hendricks is now setting up imitation beer and cheap

Behind his mocking voice she knew the real fury of the man, kept carefully in control by his iron will.

"As you have also correctly surmised," he went on, "there is now nothing to be gained by any delay. A very

few days, three or four, and " His voice grew hard and terrible "the first stone in the foundation of this

capitalistic government will go. Inevitable law, inevitable retribution " His voice trailed off. He turned like

"I've told you," he said darkly. "I am not afraid of you. You can no more stop this thing than you can stop

She heard him in his room for some time after that, and she surmised from the way he moved, from closet to

bed and back again, that he was packing a bag. At two o'clock she heard Olga coming in; the girl was singing

in Russian, and Elinor had a sickening conviction that she had been drinking. She heard Doyle send her off to

bed, his voice angry and disgusted, and resume his packing, and ten minutes later she heard a car draw up on

the street, and knew that he was off, to begin the mobilization of his heterogeneous forces.

Ever since she had been able to leave her bed Elinor had been formulating a plan of escape. Once the door

had been left unlocked, but her clothing had been removed from the room, and then, too, she had not learned

the thing she was waiting for. Now she had clothing, a dark dressing gown and slippers, and she had the

She had often thought of the window, In the day time it frightened her to look down, although it fascinated

her, too. But at night it seemed much simpler. The void below was concealed in the darkness, a soft darkness

She was not a brave woman. She had moral rather than physical courage. It was easier for her to face Doyle

in a black mood than the gulf below the windowsill, but she knew now that she must get away, if she were

to go at all. She got out of bed, and using her crutches carefully moved to the sill, trying to accustom herself

to the thought of going over the edge. The plaster cast on her leg was a real handicap. She must get it over

She found her scissors, and, stripping the bed, sat down to cut and tear the bedding into strips. Prisoners

escaped that way; she had read about such things. But the knots took up an amazing amount of length. It was

four o'clock in the morning when she had a serviceable rope, and she knew it was too short. In the end she

She began to suspect, too, that Olga was not sleeping. She smelled faintly the odor of the long Russian

cigarettes the girl smoked. She put out her light and worked in the darkness, a strange figure of adventure,

this middleaged woman with her smooth hair and lined face, sitting in her cambric nightgown with her

She secured the end of the rope to the foot of her metal bed, pushing the bed painfully and cautiously, inch by

inch, to the window. And in so doing she knocked over the callbell on the stand, and almost immediately

"I don't want anything, Olga," she called, "I knocked the bell over accidentally."

Olga hesitated, muttered, moved away again. Elinor was covered with a cold sweat.

She began to think of the window as a refuge. Surely nothing outside could be so terrible as this house itself.

She dropped her crutches. They fell with two soft thuds on the earth below and it seemed to her that they

were a long time in falling. She listened after that, but Olga made no sign. Then slowly and painfully she

worked her injured leg over the sill, and sat there looking down and breathing with difficulty. Then she freed

Election night found various groups in various places. In the back room of the Eagle Pharmacy was gathered

once again the neighborhood forum, a wildly excited forum, which ever and anon pounded Mr. Hendricks on

the back, and drank round after round of soda water and pop. Doctor Smalley, coming in rather late found

them all there, calling Mr. Hendricks "Mr. Mayor" or "Your Honor," reciting election anecdotes, and

prophesying the end of the Reds. Only Willy Cameron, sitting on a table near the window, was silent.

Mr. Hendricks, called upon for a speech, rose with his soda water glass in his hand.

"I've got a toast for you, boys," he said. "You've been talking all evening about my winning this election.

Well, I've been elected, but I didn't win it. It was the plain people of this town who elected me, and they did it

because my young friend on the table yonder told them to." He raised his glass. "Cameron!" he said.

"I haven't any voice left," he said, "and you've heard me say all I know a dozen times. The plain truth is that

Mr. Hendricks got the election because he was the best man, and enough people knew it. That's all."

To Mr. Hendricks the night was one of splendid solemnity. He felt at once very strong and very weak, very

proud and very humble. He would do his best, and if honesty meant anything, the people would have it, but

he knew that honesty was not enough. The city needed a strong man; he hoped that the Good Man who made

cities as He made men, both evil and good, would lend him a hand with things. As prayer in his mind was

indissolubly connected with church, he made up his mind to go to church the next Sunday and get matters

Louis Akers had gone home early. By five o'clock he knew that the chances were against him, but he felt a

real lethargy as to the outcome. He had fought, and fought hard, but it was only the surface mind of him that

struggled. Only the surface mind of him hated, and had ambitions, dreamed revenge. Underneath that surface

mind was a sore that ate like a cancer, and that sore was his desertion by Lily Cardew. For once in his life he

At six o'clock Doyle had called him on the telephone and told him that Woslosky was dead, but the death of

the Pole had been discounted in advance, and already his place had been filled by a Russian agent, who had

taken the first syllable of his name and called himself Ross. Louis Akers heard the news apathetically, and

By eight o'clock he knew that he had lost the election, but that, too, seemed relatively unimportant. He was

not thinking coherently, but certain vague ideas floated through his mind. There was a law of compensation

in the universe: it was all rot to believe that one was paid or punished in the hereafter for what one did. Hell

was real, but it was on earth and its place was in a man's mind. He couldn't get away from it, because each

man carried his own hell around with him. It was all stored up there; nothing he had done was left out, and

Ross and Doyle, with one or two others, found him there at nine o'clock, an untasted meal on the table, and

the ends of innumerable cigarettes on the hearth. In the conference that followed he took but little part. The

Russian urged immediate action, and Doyle by a saturnine silence tacitly agreed with him. But Louis only

half heard them. His mind was busy with that matter of hell. Only once he looked up. Ross was making use

"Militant minority!" he said scornfully, "you overwork that idea, Ross. What we've got here now is a militant

majority, and that's what elected Hendricks. You're licked before you begin. And my advice is, don't begin."

"You act like a whipped dog," Doyle said, "crawling under the doorstep for fear somebody else with a strap

"They're organized against us. We could have put it over six months ago. Not now."

Akers relapsed into silence. His interest in the conspiracy had always been purely selfinterest; he had never

had Woslosky's passion, or Doyle's cold fanaticism. They had carried him off his feet with their promises, but

how much were they worth? They had failed to elect him. Every bit of brains, cunning and resource in their

This matter of hell, now? Suppose one put by something on the other account? Suppose one turned square?

Wouldn't that earn something? Suppose that one went to the Cardews and put all his cards on the table,

asking nothing in return? Suppose one gave up the bypaths of life, and love in a hedgerow, and did the other

He roused himself and took a perfunctory part in the conversation, but his mind obstinately returned to itself.

He knew every rendezvous of the Red element in the country; he knew where their literature was printed; he

knew the storehouses of arms and ammunition, and the plans for carrying on the city government by the

Suppose he turned informer? Could he set a price, and that price Lily? But he discarded that. He was not

selling now, he was earning. He would set himself right first, and provided the government got the leaders

before those leaders got him, as they would surely try to do he would have earned something, surely.

Lily had come to him once when he called. She might come again, when he had earned her.

Doyle sat back in his chair and watched him. He saw that he had gone to pieces under defeat, and men did

strange things at those times. With uncanny shrewdness he gauged Akers' reaction; his loss of confidence

and, he surmised, his loyalty. He would follow his own interest now, and if he thought that it lay in turning

When the conference broke up Doyle was sure of where his man stood. He was not worried. They did not

need Akers any longer. He had been a presentable tool, a lay figure to give the organization front, and they

had overrated him, at that. He had failed them. Doyle, watching him contemptuously, realized in him his

Outside the building Doyle drew the Russian aside, and spoke to him. Ross started, then grinned.

"You're wrong," he said. "He won't try it. But of course he may, and we'll see that he doesn't get away with

DOCTOR Smalley was by way of achieving a practice. During his morning and evening office hours he had

less and less time to read the papers and the current magazines in his little back office, or to compare the

He took to making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to the outrage of various head nurses, who

did not like the staff to come avisiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every bed corner

a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and temperatured, and in the exact center of the bed.

Interns were different. They were like husbands. They came and went, seeing things at their worst as well as

at their best, but mostly at their worst. Like husbands, too, they developed a sort of philosophy as to the early

Doctor Smalley, being a bachelor, was entirely blind to the early morning deficiencies of his wards. Besides,

he was young and had had a cold shower and two eggs and various other things, and he saw the world at eight

A.M. as a good place. He would get into his little car, whistling, and driving through the market square he

would sometimes stop and buy a bag of apples for the children's ward, or a bunch of fall flowers. Thus

"Looks all right to me," he would reply cheerfully, and cast an eager eye over the ward. To him they were all

his children, large and small, and if he did not exactly carry healing in his wings, having no wings, he brought

them courage and a breath of fresh morning air, slightly tinged with bay rum, and the feeling that this was a

new day. A new page, on which to write such wonderful things (in the order book) as: "Jennie may get up

On the morning after the election Doctor Smalley rose unusually early, and did five minutes of dumb bells,

breathing very deep before his window, having started the cold water in the tub first. At the end of that time

he padded in his bare feet to the top of the stairs and called in a huge, deepbreathing voice:

These two cryptic words seeming to be perfectly understood below, followed the sound of a body plunging

into water, a prolonged "Wow!" from the bathroom, and noisy hurried splashing. Dressing was a rapid

process, due to a method learned during college days, which consists of wearing as little as possible, and

arranging it at night so that two thrusts (trousers and underdrawers), one enveloping gesture (shirt and

undershirt), and a gymnastic effort of standing first on one leg and then on the other (socks and shoes),

While putting on his collar and tie the doctor stood again by the window, and lustily called the garage across

Annabelle had breakfasted, on gasoline, oil and water. The doctor finished tying his tie, singing lustily, and

went to the door. At the door he stopped singing, put on a carefully professional air, restrained an impulse to

slide down the stairrail, and descended with the dignity of a man with a growing practice and a possible

At halfpast seven he was on his way to the hospital. He stopped at the market and bought three dozen

oranges out of a tendollar bill he had won on the election, and almost bought a live rabbit because it looked

so dreary in its slatted box. He restrained himself, because his housekeeper had a weakness for stewed rabbit,

and turned into Cardew Way. He passed the Doyle house slowly, inspecting it as he went, because he had a

patient there, and because he had felt that there was something mysterious about the household, quite aside

from the saturnine Doyle himself. He knew all about Doyle, of course; all, that is, that there was to know, but

he was a newcomer to the city, and he did not know that Doyle's wife was a Cardew. Sometimes he had felt

that he was under a sort of espionage all the time he was in the house. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it?

There was something curious about one of the windows. He slowed Annabelle and gazed at it. That was

He stopped Annabelle and stared. Then he drew up to the curb and got out of the car. He was rather uneasy

when he opened the gate and started up the walk, but there was no movement of life in the house. At the foot

of the steps he saw something, and almost stopped breathing. Behind a clump of winterbare shrubbery was

He parted the branches and saw Elinor Doyle lying there, conscious and white with pain. Perhaps never in his

life was Doctor Smalley to be so rewarded as with the look in her eyes when she saw him.

"I tried to. I was a prisoner. Don't take me back to the house, doctor. Don't take me back!"

"Of course I'll not take you back," he said, soothingly. "I'll carry you out to my car. It may hurt, but try to be

She managed that, and he raised her slowly, but the pain must have been frightful, for a moment later he felt

her arms relax and knew that she had fainted. He got to the car somehow, kicked the oranges into the gutter,

and placed her, collapsed, on the seat. It was only then that he dared to look behind him, but the house, like

the street, was without signs of life. As he turned the next corner, however, he saw Doyle getting off a

streetcar, and probably never before had Annabelle made such speed as she did for the next six blocks

Hours later Elinor Cardew wakened in a quiet room with gray walls, and with the sickening sweet odor of

ether over everything. Instead of Olga a quiet nurse sat by her bed, and standing by a window, in lowvoiced

conversation, were two men. One she knew, the doctor. The other, a tall young man with a slight limp as he

came toward her, she had never seen before. A friendly young man, thin, and grave of voice, who put a hand

"You are not to worry about anything, Mrs. Doyle. You understand me, don't you? Everything. is all right. I

"Your own people," he said. "I have already telephoned to your brother. And the leg's fixed. Everything's as

Elinor closed her eyes. She felt no pain and no curiosity. Only there was something she had to do, and do

quickly. What was it? But she could not remember, because she felt very sleepy and relaxed, and as though

It was evening when she looked up again, and the room was dark. The doctor had gone, and the grave young

man was still in the room. There was another figure there, tall and straight, and at first she thought it was Jim

"Jim!" she said. And then: "You must go away, Jim. I warn you. I am going to tell all I know."

But the figure turned, and it was Howard Cardew, a tense and strained Howard Cardew, who loomed

"I'm sorry, Nellie dear," he said, bending over her. "If we'd only known can you talk now?"

"I want to tell you something first, Nellie. I think we have located the Russian woman, but we haven't got

Howard was not very subtle, but Willy Cameron saw her face and understood. It was strange beyond belief,

he felt, this loyalty of women to their men, even after love had gone; this feeling that, having once lain in a

man's arms, they have taken a vow of protection over that man. It was not so much that they were his as that

he was theirs. Jim Doyle had made her a prisoner, had treated her brutally, was a traitor to her and to his

It was dark when Howard Cardew and Willy Cameron left the hospital. Elinor's information had been

detailed and exact. Under cover of the general strike the radical element intended to take over the city. On the

evening of the first day of the strike, armed groups from the revolutionary party would proceed first to the

municipal light plant, and, having driven out any employees who remained at their posts, or such volunteers

Elinor was convinced that following this would come various bomb outrages, perhaps a great number of

them, but of this she had no detailed information. What she did know, however, was the dependence that

Doyle and the other leaders were placing in the foreign element in the nearby mill towns and from one or two

Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more than forty thousand foreign laborers. Subtract from that

the loyal aliens, but add a certain percentage of the nativeborn element, members of seditious societies and

As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive. Only a small percentage, she knew and told

them, were adequately armed. There were a few machine guns, and some longrange rifles, but by far the

greater number had only revolvers. The remainder had extemporized weapons, bars of iron, pieces of pipe,

They were a rabble, not an army, without organization and with few leaders. Their fighting was certain to be

as individualistic as their doctrines. They had two elements in their favor only, numbers and surprise.

To oppose them, if the worst came, there were perhaps five thousand armed men, including the city and

county police, the state constabulary, and the citizens who had signed the cards of the Vigilance Committee.

The local post of the American Legion stood ready for instant service, and a few national guard troops still

remained in the vicinity. "What they expect," she said, looking up from her pillows with tragic eyes, "is that

They reassured her, and after a time she slept again. When she wakened, at midnight, the room was empty

save for a nurse reading under a night lamp behind a screen. Elinor was not in pain. She lay there, listening to

the night sounds of the hospital, the watchman shuffling along the corridor in slippers, the closing of a

There was a shuffling of feet in the street below, the sound of many men, not marching but grimly walking,

"That's queer!" she said. "About thirty men, and not saying a word. They walk like soldiers, but they're not in

Elinor pondered that, but it was not for some days that she knew that Pink Denslow and a picked number of

volunteers from the American Legion had that night, quite silently and unemotionally, broken into the

printing office where Doyle and Akers had met Cusick, and had, not so silently but still unemotionally,

There was a little city, and few men within it; And there came a great king against it, and besieged it, And

built great bulwarks against it; Now there was found in it a Poor Wise Man, And he by his wisdom delivered

The general strike occurred two days later, at midday. During the interval a joint committee representing the

workers, the employers and the public had held a protracted sitting, but without result, and by one o'clock the

city was in the throes of a complete tieup. Laundry and delivery wagons were abandoned where they stood.

Some of the street cars had been returned to the barns, but others stood in the street where the crews had

There was no disorder, however, and the city took its difficulties with a quiet patience and a certain sense of

"Strikers, the world is the workers' for the taking, and the workers are the vast majority in society. Your

interests are paramount to those of a small, useless band of parasites who exploit you to their advantage. You

have nothing to lose but your chains and you have a world to gain. The world for the workers."

There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal employees had refused to strike, and only

by force would the city go dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange psychology of the

mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by three o'clock that afternoon the light plant and city water

supply had been secured against attack by effectual policing. The power plant for the car lines was likewise

protected, and at five o'clock a line of street cars, stalled on Amanda Street, began to show signs of life.

The first car was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, unobtrusively ready for trouble, and headed by a tall

youth who limped slightly and wore an extremely anxious expression. He went forward and commenced a

series of experiments with levers and brake, in which process incidentally he liberated a quantity of sand onto

the rails. A moment later the car lurched forward, and then stopped with a jerk.

Willy Cameron looked behind him and grinned. The entire guard was piled in an ignoble mass on the floor.

By six o'clock volunteer crews were running a number of cars, and had been subjected to nothing worse than

abuse. Strikers lined the streets and watched them, but the grim faces of the guards kept them back. They

jeered from the curbs, but except for the flinging of an occasional stone they made no inimical move.

By eight o'clock it was clear that the tieup would be only partial. Volunteers from all walks of life were in

line at the temporary headquarters of the Vigilance Committee and were being detailed, for police duty, to

bring in the trains with the morning milk, to move street cars and trucks. The water plant and the reservoirs

were protected. Willy Cameron, abandoning his car after the homeward rush of the evening, found a line

Troops had been sent for, but it took time to mobilize and move them. It would be morning before they

arrived. And the governor, over the long distance wire to the mayor, was inclined to be querulous.

"We'll send them, of course," he said. "But if the strikers are keeping quiet I don't know what the country's

coming to. We're holding a conference here now. There's rioting breaking out all over the state."

There was a conference held in the Mayor's office that night: Cameron and Cardew and one or two others of

the Vigilance Committee, two agents of the government secret service, the captains of the companies of state

troops and constabulary, the Chief of Police, the Mayor himself, and some representatives of the conservative

element of organized labor. Quiet men, these last, uneasy and anxious, as ignorant as the others of which way

the black cat, the symbol of sabotage and destruction, would jump. The majority of their men would stand for

order, they declared, but there were some who would go over. They urged, to offset that reflection on their

But, by midnight, it seemed as though the situation was solving itself. In the segregated district there had

been a small riot, and another along the river front, disturbances quickly ended by the police and the

volunteer deputies. The city had not gone dark. The bombs had not exploded. Word came in that by back

roads and devious paths the most rabid of the agitators were leaving town. And before two o'clock Howard

At three o'clock the Cardew doorbell rang, and Howard, not asleep, flung on his dressing gown and went out

Howard smiled, but went back and got his revolver. The visitor was Willy Cameron.

"I don't like to waken you," he said, "but word has come in of suspicious movements at Baxter and

Friendship, and one or two other places. It looks like concerted action of some sort."

"They still have one card to play. The foreign element outside hasn't been heard from. It looks as though the

While Howard was hastily dressing, Willy Cameron waited below. He caught a glimpse of himself in the big

mirror and looked away. His face was drawn and haggard, his eyes hollow and his collar a wilted string. He

was dusty and shabby, too, and to Lily, coming down the staircase, he looked almost ill.

Lily was in a soft negligee garment, her bare feet thrust into slippers, but she was too anxious to be

He explained, after a momentary hesitation. "It may crystallize into something, or it may not," he finished.

"I may have one chance to fight for my country," he said, rather grimly. "Don't begrudge me that." But he

But as he moved away she called him back, more breathlessly than ever, and quite white.

"I don't want you to go without knowing Willy, do you remember once that you said you cared for me?"

"But I've done so many things," she said, wistfully. "You ought to hate me." And when he said nothing, for

Howard went back to the municipal building, driving furiously through the empty streets. The news was

ominous. Small bodies of men, avoiding the highways, were focusing at different points in the open country.

The state police had been fired at from ambush, and two of them had been killed. They had ridden into and

dispersed various gatherings in the darkness, but only to have them reform in other places. The enemy was

still shadowy, elusive; it was apparently saving its ammunition. It did little shooting, but reports of the firing

of farmhouses and of buildings in small, unprotected towns began to come in rapidly.

In a short time the messages began to be more significant, indicating that the groups were coalescing and that

a revolutionary army, with the city its objective, was coming down the river, evidently making for the bridge

"They've lighted a fire they can't put out," was Howard's comment. His mouth was very dry and his face

twitching, for he saw, behind the frail barrier of the Chester Street bridge, the quiet houses of the city, the

sleeping children. He saw Grace and Lily, and Elinor. He was among the first to reach the river front.

All through the dawn volunteers labored at the bridge head. Members of the Vigilance Committee, policemen

and firemen, doctors, lawyers, clerks, shopkeepers, they looted the river wharves with willing, unskillful

hands. They turned coal wagons on their sides, carried packing cases and boxes, and, under the direction of

men who wore the Legion button, built skillfully and well. Willy Cameron toiled with the others. He lifted

and pulled and struggled, and in the midst of his labor he had again that old dream of the city. The city was a

vast number of units, and those units were homes. Behind each of those men there was, somewhere, in some

quiet neighborhood, a home. It was for their homes they were fighting, for the right of children to play in

peaceful streets, for the right to go back at night to the rest they had earned by honest labor, for the right of

Then, in the flare of a gasoline torch, he came face to face with Louis Akers. The two men confronted each

other, silently, with hostility. Neither moved aside, but it was Akers who spoke first.

"Smart as ever," Akers observed, watching him intently. "As it happens, I'm here because I want to be, and

For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his wife, but there was something strange

"I could be useful to you fellows," he was saying, "but it seems you don't want help. I've been trying to see

He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided. It would be like the man as he knew him,

this turning informer when he saw the strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of intuition, too, that

Akers might see, in this new role, some possible chance to win back with Lily Cardew. He saw how the

"I've got a car here. If you mean what you say, and it's straight, I'll take you."

On their way to it, threading in and out among the toiling crowd, Willy Cameron had a chance to observe the

change in the other man, his drooping shoulders and the almost lassitude of his walk. He went ahead,

charging the mass and going through it by sheer bulk and weight, his hands in his coat pockets, his soft hat

pulled low over his face. Neither of them noticed that one of the former clerks of the Myers Housecleaning

Company followed close behind, or that, holding to a tire, he rode on the rear of the Cardew automobile as it

It seemed to him that Akers found the answer satisfactory. He sat back in the deep seat, and lighted a

The Municipal Building was under guard. Willy Cameron went up the steps and spoke to the sentry there. It

was while his back was turned that the sharp crack of a revolver rang out, and he whirled, in time to see Louis

The shadowy groups through the countryside had commenced to coalesce. Groups of twenty became a rabble

of five hundred. The five hundred grew, and joined other five hundreds. From Baxter alone over two

thousand rioters, mostly foreigners, started out, and by daylight the main body of the enemy reached the

outskirts of the city, a long, irregular line of laughing, jostling, shouting men, constantly renewed at the rear

until the procession covered miles of roadway. They were of all races and all types; individually they were,

many of them, like boys playing truant from school, not quite certain of themselves, smiling and yet uneasy,

not entirely wicked in intent. But they were shepherded by men with cunning eyes, men who knew well that a

mob is greater than the sum of its parts, more wicked than the individuals who compose it, more cruel, more

As it marched it laughed. It was like a lion at play, ready to leap at the first scratch that brought blood.

Where the street car line met the Friendship Road the advance was met by the Chief of Police, on horseback

and followed by a guard of mounted men, and ordered back. The van hesitated, but it was urged ahead,

pushed on by the irresistible force behind it, and it came on no longer singing, but slowly, inevitably, sullenly

As the Chief turned his horse was shot under him. He took another horse from one of his guard, and they

retired, moving slowly and with drawn revolvers. There was no further shooting at that time, nothing but the

irresistible advance. The police could no more have held the armed rabble than they could have held the

invading hordes in Belgium. At the end of the street the Chief stopped and looked back. They had passed

In the mill district, which they had now reached, they received reenforcements, justifying the judgment of the

conference that to have erected their barricades there would have been to expose the city's defenders to attack

from the rear. And the mill district suffered comparatively little. It was the business portion of the city toward

which they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores, the hotels and restaurants, the homes of the wealthy.

Pleased by the lack of opposition the mob grew more cheerful. The lion played. They pressed forward,

wanton and jeering, firing now and then at random, breaking windows as they passed, looting small shops

which they stripped like locusts. Their pockets bulging, and the taste of pillage forecasting what was to come,

they moved onward more rapidly, shooting at upper windows or into the air, laughing, yelling, cursing,

talking. From the barricades, long before the mileslong column came into view, could be heard the ominous

It was when they found the bridge barricaded on the far side, however, that the lion bared its teeth and

snarled. Temporarily checked by the play of machine guns which swept the bridge and kept it clear for a

time, they commenced wild, wasteful firing, from the bridgehead and from along the Cardew wharves.

Their leaders were prepared, and sent snipers into the bridge towers, but the machine guns continued to fire.

That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council had anticipated from the reports of the night

before. They were prepared to take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not prepared for the thing that

defeated them; that as the mob is braver than the individual, so also it is more cowardly.

Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the dense mass behind that was every moment

growing denser, a few hundreds found themselves facing the steady machinegun fire from behind the

barricades, and unable either to advance or to retire. Thus trapped, they turned on their own forces behind

them, and tried to fight their way to safety, but the inexorable pressure kept on, and the defenders, watching

and powerless, saw men fling themselves from the bridges and disappear in the water below, rather than

advance into the machinegun zone. The guns were not firing into the rioters, but before them, to hold them

back, and into that leaden stream there were no brave spirits to hurl themselves.

The trapped men turned on their own and battled for escape. With the same violence which had been directed

toward the city they now fought each other, and the bridge slowly cleared. But the mob did not disperse.

It spread out on the bank across, a howling, frustrated, futile mass, disorganized and demoralized, which fired

its useless guns across the river, which seethed and tossed and struggled, and spent itself in its own wild fury.

And all the time cooleyed men, on the wharves across, watched and waited for the time to attack.

"They're sick at their stomachs now," said an old army sergeant, watching, to Willy Cameron. "The dirty

devils! They'll be starting their filthy work over there soon, and that's the zero hour."

Willy Cameron nodded. He had seen one young Russian boy with a childlike face venture forward alone

into the fire zone and drop. He still lay there, on the bridge. And all of Willy Cameron was in revolt. What

had he been told, that boy, that had made him ready to pour out his young life like wine? There were others

like him in that milling multitude on the river bank across, young men who had come to America with a

dream in their hearts, and America had done this to them. Or had she? She had taken them in, but they were

not her own, and now, since she would not take them, they would take her. Was that it? Was it that America

Robbed of the city proper, the mob turned on the mill district it had invaded. Its dream of lust and greed was

Like a battle charge, as indeed it was, the mounted city and state police crossed the bridge. It was followed by

the state troops on foot, by city policemen in orderly files, and then by the armed citizens. The bridge

vibrated to the step of marching men, going out to fight for their homes. The real battle was fought there,

around the Cardew mills, a battle where the loyalists were greatly outnumbered, and where the rioters fought,

according to their teaching, with every trick they could devise. Posted in upper windows they fired down

from comparative safety; ambulances crossed and recrossed the bridges. The streets were filled with rioting

men, striking out murderously with bars and spikes. Fires flamed up and burned themselves out. In one place,

eight blocks of millworkers' houses, with their furnishings, went in a quarter of an hour.

Willy Cameron was fighting like a demon. Long ago his reserve of ammunition had given out, and he was

fighting with the butt end of his revolver. Around him had rallied some of the men he knew best, Pink and

Mr. Hendricks, Doctor Smalley, Dan and Joe Wilkinson, and they stayed together as, street by street, the

revolutionists were driven back. There were dead and wounded everywhere, injured men who had crawled

Suddenly, to his amazement, Willy saw old Anthony Cardew. He had somehow achieved an upper window of

the mill office building, and he was showing himself fearlessly, a rifle in his hands; in his face was a great

anger, but there was more than that. Willy Cameron, thinking it over later, decided that it was perplexity. He

He never did understand. For other eyes also had seen old Anthony Cardew. Willy Cameron, breasting the

mob and fighting madly toward the door of the building, with Pink behind him, heard a cheer and an angry

roar, and, looking up, saw that the old man had disappeared. They found him there later on, the rifle beside

him, his small and valiant figure looking, with eyes no longer defiant, toward the Heaven which puts, for its

By eleven o'clock the revolution was over. Sodden groups of men, thoroughly cowed and frightened, were on

their way by back roads to the places they had left a few hours before. They had no longer dreams of empire.

Behind them they could see, on the horizon, the city itself, the smoke from its chimneys, the spires of its

churches. Both, homes and churches, they had meant to destroy, but behind both there was the indestructible.

On the crest of a hilltop overlooking the city a man was standing, looking down to where the softened

towers of the great steel bridges rose above the river mist like fairy towers. Below him lay the city, powerful,

The man saw the city only as a vast crucible, into which he had flung his all, and out of which had come only

defeat and failure. But the city was not a crucible. The melting pot of a nation is not a thing of cities, but of

The city was not a melting pot. It was a sanctuary. The man stood silent and morose, his chin dropped on his

Beside and somewhat behind him stood a woman, a somber, passionate figure, waiting passively. His eyes

traveled from the city to her, and rested on her, contemptuous, thwarted, cynical.

Late that afternoon Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street, toward the Boyd house. The light of

battle was still in Dan's eyes, his clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with the fine

"Y'ask me," he said, "and I'll tell the world this thing's done for. It was just as well to let them give it a try,

"If you don't mind I'll go in your place and wash up," he remarked, as they neared the house. "I'll scare the

Edith was in the parlor. She had sat there almost all day, in an agony of fear. At four o'clock the smallest

Wilkinson had hammered at the front door, and on being admitted had made a shameless demand.

Edith had got the bread and sugar, and, having lured the baby into the parlor, had held her while she ate,

receiving now and then an exceedingly sticky kiss in payment. After a little the child's head began to droop,

and Edith drew the small head down onto her breast. She sat there, rocking gently, while the chair slowly

The child brought her comfort. She began to understand those grave rocking figures in the hospital ward,

women who sat, with eyes that seemed to look into distant places, with a child's head on their breasts.

After all, that was life for a woman. Love was only a part of the scheme of life, a means to an end. And that

She felt no bitterness now, and no anger. He was dead. It was hard to think of him as dead, who had been so

vitally alive. She was sorry he had had to die, but death was like love and children, it was a part of some

general scheme of things. Suppose this had been his child she was holding? Would she so easily have

Then she thought of Willy Cameron. The bitterness had strangely gone out of that, too. Perhaps, vaguely, she

began to realize that only young love gives itself passionately and desperately, when there is no hope of a

return, and that the agonies of youth, although terrible enough, pass with youth itself.

Joe found her there, the chair displaying its usual tendency to climb the chimney flue, and stood in the

doorway, looking at her with haunted, hungry eyes. There was a sort of despair in Joe those days, and now he

He came into the room, and suddenly he was kneeling beside the chair, his head buried against the baby's

warm, round body. His bent shoulders shook, and Edith, still with the maternal impulse strong within her, put

"I can't," he repeated. "And when I saw you like that just now, with the kid in your arms I used to think that

"That!" he said, astonished. "I don't mean that, Edith. I've had my fight about that, and got it over. That's done

"But I do care for you. Perhaps not quite the way you care, Joe but I've been through such a lot. I can't seem

Edith smiled. Peace, in that noisy house next door, with children and kittens and puppies everywhere! And

yet it would be peace, after all, a peace of the soul, the peace of a good man's love. After a time, too, there

"If you want me, I'll marry you," she said, very simply. "I'll be a good wife, Joe. And I want children. I want

He never noticed that the kiss she gave him, over the sleeping baby, was slightly tinged with granulated

OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his great bed. There had been a bad hour;

death seems so strangely to erase faults and leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the

house, and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace's boudoir, Howard was sitting,

his arms around his wife, telling her the story of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'

But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end it was Willy Cameron who told her. He had

brought back all that was mortal of Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up the

stairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to be useful. Howard found him there, a strange,

"It's hard to thank you, Cameron," he said; "you seem to be always about when we need help. And" he

It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulent dressingroom that Howard first spoke to

"I haven't told her, Cameron." He was anxious and puzzled. "She'll have to be told soon, of course. I don't

"She has a great deal of courage. It will be a shock, but not a grief. But I have been thinking " Willy

Cameron hesitated. "She must not feel any remorse," he went on. "She must not feel that she contributed to it

"It isn't facts that matter now. We can't help those. And no one can tell what actually led to his change of

"I wish you would tell her," he said. "I'm a blundering fool when it comes to her. I suppose I care too much."

He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, and pondered over it later.

And Howard drew a deep breath of relief. It was shortly after that he broached another matter, rather

"I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron," he said, "but this thing today might have been a

different story if it had not been for you. And don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis. It's nothing of

the sort but I would like to feel that you were working with me. I'd hate like thunder to have you working

But the discussion ended there. Both men knew that it would be taken up later, at some more opportune time,

So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from Willy Cameron. She stood, straight and

erect, and heard him through, watching him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day.

But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known long ago, in some infinitely remote

"I am sorry," she said, when he finished. "I didn't want him to die. You know that, don't you? I never wished

Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for the first time in her healthy young life.

An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe

Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her viewpoint somewhat since the spring. After all, what

mattered was happiness. Wealth and worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end, to

the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the shades drawn and the heavy odors of

"She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron," she said. "It was but a crisis of the nerves, and to be expected. And

Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure, which issued with extreme rapidity from the

library door, and went up the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure lost

momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved forward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the

library and sniffed at the unmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and stood

before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in the old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile

on his lips. He saw the endless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then death. Grayson was

old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew house. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to

"Wherever you are, sir," he said, "you needn't worry any more. The line will carry on, sir. The line will carry

Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and gathered Lily close in his arms.

Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes. It saw, slowly emerging from the chaos of

war, new nations, like children, taking their first feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born at full term

might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered, and making a valiant but losing fight for life. It saw

that war is never good, but always evil; that war takes everything and gives nothing, save that sometimes a

It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast democracy of heaven, and Louis Akers passed

through the Traitors' Gate of eternity to be judged and perhaps reprieved. For a man is many men, good and

It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the Russian, Ross, bland, cunning and eternally plotting, in

New England under another name. And Mr. Hendricks ordering a new suit for the day of taking office. And

Doctor Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums on Annabelle, against a football game, and taking a pretty

It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young man in the Eagle Pharmacy, a young man who did not

smoke a pipe, and allowed no visitors in the back room. And it saw Willy Cameron in the laboratory of the

reopened Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead of grains and drams, and learning to touch any piece of metal

On the evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressed excitement about the Cardew house.

Mademoiselle, in a new silk dress, ran about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson with a cloth,

for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vases of flowers, and spilling water at

each shift. At six o'clock had arrived a large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and

there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers other excitable and emotional women to

At seven o'clock Elinor Cardew, lovely in black satin, was carried down the stairs and placed in a position

which commanded both the hall and the drawingroom. For some strange reason it was essential that she

(a) Mr. Alston Denslow, in evening clothes and gardenia, and feeling in his right waistcoat pocket

(b) An excited woman of middle age, in a black silk dress still faintly bearing the creases of five days in a

trunk, and accompanied by a mongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle, Pink, and

Howard Cardew. ("He said Jinx was to come," she explained breathlessly to her bodyguard. "I never knew

(d) Aunt Caroline, in her diamond dog collar and purple velvet, and determined to make the best of things.

(e) The real bishop this time, and his assistant, followed by a valet with a suitcase, containing the proper

habiliments for a prince of the church while functioning. (A military term, since the Bishop had been in the

(f) A few unimportant important people, very curious, and the women uncertain about the proper garb for a

(i) An overfull taxicab, containing inside it Ellen, Edith, Dan and Joe. The overflow, consisting of a tall

young man, displaying repressed excitement and new evening clothes, with gardenia, sat on the seat outside

beside the chauffeur and repeated to himself a sort of chant accompanied by furious searchings of his

The city moved on about its business. In thousands of homes the lights shone down on little family groups,

infinitely tender little groups. The workers of the city were there, the doors shut, the fires burning. To each

man the thing he had earned, not the thing that he took. To all men the right to labor, to love, and to rest. To

children, the right to play. To women, the hearth, and the peace of the hearth. To lovers, love, and marriage,

At the great organ behind the staircase the organist sat. In stiff rows near him were the Cardew servants,

Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited. And as he waited he kept his eyes on the portrait of old Anthony, in

the drawingroom beyond. There was a fixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was reassurance. It was

as though he would say to the portrait: "It has all come out very well, you see, sir. It always works out

somehow. We worry and fret, we old ones, but the young come along, and somehow or other they manage,

Over the house was the strange hush of waiting. It had waited before this, for birth and for death, but never

The Bishop was waiting also, and he too had his eyes fixed on old Anthony's portrait, a straight, leveleyed

gaze, as of man to man, as of prince of the church to prince of industry. The Bishop's eyes said: "All shall be

The Bishop was as successful in his line as Anthony Cardew had been in his. He cleared his throat.

The organist sat at the great organ behind the staircase, waiting. He was playing very softly, with his eyes

turned up. He had played the same music many times before, and always he felt very solemn, as one who

makes history. He sighed. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was only an accompaniment to life, to which

others sang and prayed, were christened, confirmed and married. But what was the song without the music?