A Hazard of New Fortunes V5 ..........................................................................................................................1

William Dean Howells .............................................................................................................................1

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Superficially, the affairs of 'Every Other Week' settled into their wonted form again, and for Fulkerson they

seemed thoroughly reinstated. But March had a feeling of impermanency from what had happened, mixed

with a fantastic sense of shame toward Lindau. He did not sympathize with Lindau's opinions; he thought his

remedy for existing evils as wildly impracticable as Colonel Woodburn's. But while he thought this, and

while he could justly blame Fulkerson for Lindau's presence at Dryfoos's dinner, which his zeal had brought

about in spite of March's protests, still he could not rid himself of the reproach of uncandor with Lindau. He

ought to have told him frankly about the ownership of the magazine, and what manner of man the man was

whose money he was taking. But he said that he never could have imagined that he was serious in his

preposterous attitude in regard to a class of men who embody half the prosperity of the country; and he had

moments of revolt against his own humiliation before Lindau, in which he found it monstrous that he should

return Dryfoos's money as if it had been the spoil of a robber. His wife agreed with him in these moments,

and said it was a great relief not to have that tiresome old German coming about. They had to account for his

absence evasively to the children, whom they could not very well tell that their father was living on money

that Lindau disdained to take, even though Lindau was wrong and their father was right. This heightened

Mrs. March's resentment toward both Lindau and Dryfoos, who between them had placed her husband in a

false position. If anything, she resented Dryfoos's conduct more than Lindau's. He had never spoken to March

about the affair since Lindau had renounced his work, or added to the apologetic messages he had sent by

Fulkerson. So far as March knew, Dryfoos had been left to suppose that Lindau had simply stopped for some

reason that did not personally affect him. They never spoke of him, and March was too proud to ask either

Fulkerson or Conrad whether the old man knew that Lindau had returned his money. He avoided talking to

Conrad, from a feeling that if be did he should involuntarily lead him on to speak of his differences with his

father. Between himself and Fulkerson, even, he was uneasily aware of a want of their old perfect

friendliness. Fulkerson had finally behaved with honor and courage; but his provisional reluctance had given

March the measure of Fulkerson's character in one direction, and he could not ignore the fact that it was

He could not make out whether Fulkerson shared his discomfort or not. It certainly wore away, even with

March, as time passed, and with Fulkerson, in the bliss of his fortunate love, it was probably far more

transient, if it existed at all. He advanced into the winter as radiantly as if to meet the spring, and he said that

if there were any pleasanter month of the year than November, it was December, especially when the weather

was good and wet and muddy most of the time, so that you had to keep indoors a long while after you called

Colonel Woodburn had the anxiety, in view of his daughter's engagement, when she asked his consent to it,

that such a dreamer must have in regard to any reality that threatens to affect the course of his reveries. He

had not perhaps taken her marriage into account, except as a remote contingency; and certainly Fulkerson

was not the kind of soninlaw that he had imagined in dealing with that abstraction. But because he had

nothing of the sort definitely in mind, he could not oppose the selection of Fulkerson with success; he really

knew nothing against him, and he knew, many things in his favor; Fulkerson inspired him with the liking that

every one felt for him in a measure; he amused him, he cheered him; and the colonel had been so much used

to leaving action of all kinds to his daughter that when he came to close quarters with the question of a

soninlaw he felt helpless to decide it, and he let her decide it, as if it were still to be decided when it was

submitted to him. She was competent to treat it in all its phases: not merely those of personal interest, but

those of duty to the broken Southern past, sentimentally dear to him, and practically absurd to her. No such

South as he remembered had ever existed to her knowledge, and no such civilization as he imagined would

ever exist, to her belief, anywhere. She took the world as she found it, and made the best of it. She trusted in

Fulkerson; she had proved his magnanimity in a serious emergency; and in small things she was willing

fearlessly to chance it with him. She was not a sentimentalist, and there was nothing fantastic in her

expectations; she was a girl of good sense and right mind, and she liked the immediate practicality as well as

the final honor of Fulkerson. She did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she realized him; she did him

justice, and she would not have believed that she did him more than justice if she had sometimes known him

Their engagement was a fact to which the Leighton household adjusted itself almost as simply as the lovers

themselves; Miss Woodburn told the ladies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson could keep from

March very long. He sent word of it to Mrs. March by her husband; and his engagement perhaps did more

than anything else to confirm the confidence in him which had been shaken by his early behavior in the

Lindau episode, and not wholly restored by his tardy fidelity to March. But now she felt that a man who

wished to get married so obviously and entirely for love was full of all kinds of the best instincts, and only

needed the guidance of a wife, to become very noble. She interested herself intensely in balancing the

respective merits of the engaged couple, and after her call upon Miss Woodburn in her new character she

prided herself upon recognizing the worth of some strictly Southern qualities in her, while maintaining the

general average of New England superiority. She could not reconcile herself to the Virginian custom

illustrated in her having been christened with the surname of Madison; and she said that its pet form of Mad,

Fulkerson was slower in telling Beaton. He was afraid, somehow, of Beaton's taking the matter in the cynical

way; Miss Woodburn said she would break off the engagement if Beaton was left to guess it or find it out by

accident, and then Fulkerson plucked up his courage. Beaton received the news with gravity, and with a sort

of melancholy meekness that strongly moved Fulkerson's sympathy, and made him wish that Beaton was

It made Beaton feel very old; it somehow left him behind and forgotten; in a manner, it made him feel trifled

with. Something of the unfriendliness of fate seemed to overcast his resentment, and he allowed the sadness

of his conviction that he had not the means to marry on to tinge his recognition of the fact that Alma Leighton

would not have wanted him to marry her if he had. He was now often in that martyr mood in which he wished

to help his father; not only to deny himself Chianti, but to forego a furlined overcoat which he intended to

get for the winter, He postponed the moment of actual sacrifice as regarded the Chianti, and he bought the

overcoat in an anguish of selfreproach. He wore it the first evening after he got it in going to call upon the

Leightons, and it seemed to him a piece of ghastly irony when Alma complimented his picturesqueness in it

Oh, fling yourself down on a chair in one of your attitudes of studied negligence; and twist one corner of your

"What made you ask, then?" The girl laughed again with the satisfaction of her sex in cornering a man.

Beaton made a show of not deigning to reply, and put himself in the pose she suggested, frowning.

She put her forehead down on the back of her hand and laughed again. "You ought to be photographed. You

Beaton said: "That's because I know I am being photographed, in one way. I don't think you ought to call me

Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson would once have both feigned a great interest in Alma's sketching Beaton,

and made it the subject of talk, in which they approached as nearly as possible the real interest of their lives.

Now they frankly remained away in the diningroom, which was very cozy after the dinner had disappeared;

the colonel sat with his lamp and paper in the gallery beyond; Mrs. Leighton was about her housekeeping

"They seem to be having a pretty good time in there," said Fulkerson, detaching himself from his own

They both laughed, and Alma said, "They seem to be greatly amused with something in there."

She looked at him as if she were going to snub him openly for using her name; but apparently she decided to

do it covertly. "You didn't at first. I really used to believe you could be serious, once."

"Wetmore has been talking to you about me. He would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase. He spends his

"He says you could be almost anything you wished, if you didn't wish to be everything."

"That sounds more like the school of Wetmore. That's what you say, Alma. Well, if there were something

"We might adapt Kingsley: 'Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever.'" He could not help laughing.

She went on: "I always thought that was the most patronizing and exasperating thing ever addressed to a

human girl; and we've had to stand a good deal in our time. I should like to have it applied to the other 'sect' a

while. As if any girl that was a girl would be good if she had the remotest chance of being clever."

"You want to shock me. Well, I suppose I deserve it. But if I were one tenth part as good as you are, Alma, I

should have a lighter heart than I have now. I know that I'm fickle, but I'm not false, as you think I am."

"I know I'm despicable. I could tell you somethingthe history of this day, eventhat would make you

despise me." Beaton had in mind his purchase of the overcoat, which Alma was getting in so effectively, with

the money he ought to have sent his father. "But," he went on, darkly, with a sense that what he was that

moment suffering for his selfishness must somehow be a kind of atonement, which would finally leave him to

the guiltless enjoyment of the overcoat, "you wouldn't believe the depths of baseness I could descend to."

"I would try," said Alma, rapidly shading the collar, "if you'd give me some hint."

Beaton had a sudden wish to pour out his remorse to her, but he was afraid of her laughing at him. He said to

himself that this was a very wholesome fear, and that if he could always have her at hand he should not make

a fool of himself so often. A man conceives of such an office as the very noblest for a woman; he worships

her for it if he is magnanimous. But Beaton was silent, and Alma put back her head for the right distance on

her sketch. "Mr. Fulkerson thinks you are the sublimest of human beings for advising him to get Colonel

Woodburn to interview Mr. Dryfoos about Lindau. What have you ever done with your Judas?"

"I haven't done anything with it. Nadel thought he would take hold of it at one time, but he dropped it again.

After all, I don't suppose it could be popularized. Fulkerson wanted to offer it as a premium to subscribers for

Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and she merely said, "'Every Other Week' seems to be going on just

"Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe. Fulkerson," said Beaton, with a return to what they were

saying, "has managed the whole business very well. But he exaggerates the value of my advice."

"Very likely," Alma suggested, vaguely. "Or, no! Excuse me! He couldn't, he couldn't!" She laughed

He tried to recover his dignity in saying, "He's 'a very good fellow, and he deserves his happiness."

"That's the secret of the universe," She bit in her lower lip, and looked at him with eyes, of gleaming fun.

"I am serious; and you have the secret of my happiness" He threw himself impulsively forward in his

"I won't pose," he answered, " and you have got to listen to me. You know I'm in love with you; and I know

that once you cared for me. Can't that timewon't itcome back again? Try to think so, Alma!"

"Nothing. But that time is past. I couldn't recall it if I wished. Why did you bring it up? You've broken your

word. You know I wouldn't have let you keep coming here if you hadn't promised never to refer to it."

"No, it isn't thatit's something far deeper. But if it's nothing you have against me, what is it, Alma, that

"But I have. I shall never care for you again, Mr. Beaton; you might as well understand it once for all. Don't

think it's anything in yourself, or that I think you unworthy of me. I'm not so selfsatisfied as that; I know

very well that I'm not a perfect character, and that I've no claim on perfection in anybody else. I think women

who want that are fools; they won't get it, and they don't deserve it. But I've learned a good. deal more about

myself than I knew in St. Barnaby, and a life of work, of art, and of art alone that's what I've made up my

"But I don't believe you, Alma. You're merely laughing at me. And, besides, with me you needn't give up art.

We could work together. You know how much I admire your talent. I believe I could help itserve it; I

"I don't want any slavenor any slavery. I want to be free always. Now do you see? I don't care for you, and

I never could in the old way; but I should have to care for some one more than I believe I ever shall to give up

"I'm glad you see that; and I'm glad you did it. You don't believe me, of course. Why do men think life can be

only the one thing to women? And if you come to the selfish view, who are the happy women? I'm sure that

"Second fiddle. Do you suppose I shouldn't be woman enough to wish my work always less and lower than

"I think the women who keep their hearts have an even chance, at least, of having heart"

"But mine isn't mine to give you, anyhow. And now I don't want you ever to speak to me about this again."

"Oh, there's no danger!" he cried, bitterly. "I shall never willingly see you again."

"That's as you like, Mr. Beaton. We've had to be very frank, but I don't see why we shouldn't be friends. Still,

"Why, if you can consistently," she said, with a smile, and she held out her hand to him.

He went home dazed, and feeling as if it were a bad joke that had been put upon him. At least the affair went

so deep that it estranged the aspect of his familiar studio. Some of the things in it were not very familiar; he

had spent lately a great deal on rugs, on stuffs, on Japanese bricabrac. When he saw these things in the

shops he had felt that he must have them; that they were necessary to him; and he was partly in debt for them,

still without having sent any of his earnings to pay his father. As he looked at them now he liked to fancy

something weird and conscious in them as the silent witnesses of a broken life. He felt about among some of

the smaller objects on the mantel for his pipe. Before he slept he was aware, in the luxury of his despair, of a

remote relief, an escape; and, after all, the understanding he had come to with Alma was only the explicit

formulation of terms long tacit between them. Beaton would have been puzzled more than he knew if she had

taken him seriously. It was inevitable that he should declare himself in love with her; but he was not

disappointed at her rejection of his love; perhaps not so much as he would have been at its acceptance, though

he tried to think otherwise, and to give himself airs of tragedy. He did not really feel that the result was worse

But he did not go to the Leightons again for so long a time that Mrs. Leighton asked Alma what had

"Oh, I think he will. He couldn't very well come the next night. But he has the habit of coming, and with Mr.

Beaton habit is everythingeven the habit of thinking he's in love with some one."

"Alma," said her mother, "I don't think it's very nice for a girl to let a young man keep coming to see her after

"But it does hurt her, Alma. Itit's indelicate. It isn't fair to him; it gives him hopes."

"Well, mamma, it hasn't happened in the given case yet. If Mr. Beaton comes again, I won't see him, and you

"If I could only feel sure, Alma," said her mother, taking up another branch of the inquiry, "that you really

"Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma. I do know my own mind; and, what's worse, I know Mr. Beaton's

"I mean that he spoke to me the other night simply because Mr. Fulkerson's engagement had broken him all

"He let it out himself," Alma went on. "And you wouldn't have thought it was very flattering yourself. When

I'm made love to, after this, I prefer to be made love to in an offyear, when there isn't another engaged

"Tell him that! What do you mean, mamma? I may be indelicate, but I'm not quite so indelicate as that."

"I didn't mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, but I wanted to warn you. I think Mr. Beaton was very much

"Oh yes, for the time being. I suppose he's very much in earnest with Miss Vance at times, and with Miss

Dryfoos at others. Sometimes he's a painter, and sometimes he's an architect, and sometimes he's a sculptor.

"Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma! It's getting so dreadfully personal!"

"And you know that I don't want to let youespecially when I haven't got any real feeling in the matter. But

I should thinkspeaking in the abstract entirelythat if either of those arts was ever going to be in earnest

"I didn't know," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he was doing anything now at the others. I thought he was entirely

"And you certainly can't say, my dear, that he hasn't been very kind very useful to you, in that matter."

"And so I ought to have said yes out of gratitude? Thank you, mamma! I didn't know you held me so cheap."

"You know whether I hold you cheap or not, Alma. I don't want you to cheapen yourself. I don't want you to

"Well, come now, mamma! Suppose you begin. I've been perfectly honest with myself, and I've been honest

with Mr. Beaton. I don't care for him, and I've told him I didn't; so he may be supposed to know it. If he

comes here after this, he'll come as a plain, unostentatious friend of the family, and it's for you to say whether

he shall come in that capacity or not. I hope you won't trifle with him, and let him get the notion that he's

Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical attitude far too keenly to abandon it for anything constructive.

She only said, "You know very well, Alma, that's a matter I can have nothing to do with."

"He's had nothing but the most open and candid treatment from me, mamma. It's you that wants to play fast

and loose with him. And, to tell you the truth, I believe he would like that a good deal better; I believe that, if

there's anything he hates, it's openness and candor." Alma laughed, and put her arms round her mother, who

The winter did not renew for Christine and Mela the social opportunity which the spring had offered. After

the musicale at Mrs. Horn's, they both made their partycall, as Mela said, in due season; but they did not

find Mrs. Horn at home, and neither she nor Miss Vance came to see them after people returned to town in

the fall. They tried to believe for a time that Mrs. Horn had not got their cards; this pretence failed them, and

they fell back upon their pride, or rather Christine's pride. Mela had little but her goodnature to avail her in

any exigency, and if Mrs. Horn or Miss Vance had come to call after a year of neglect, she would have

received them as amiably as if they had not lost a day in coming. But Christine had drawn a line beyond

which they would not have been forgiven; and she had planned the words and the behavior with which she

would have punished them if they had appeared then. Neither sister imagined herself in anywise inferior to

them; but Christine was suspicious, at least, and it was Mela who invented the hypothesis of the lost cards. As

nothing happened to prove or to disprove the fact, she said, "I move we put Coonrod up to gittun' it out of

Christine, however, had the visits of Beaton to console her, and, if these seemed to have no definite aim, she

was willing to rest in the pleasure they gave her vanity; but Mela had nothing. Sometimes she even wished

"It would be the best thing for both of you," said Mrs. Dryfoos, in answer to such a burst of desperation. "I

"Well, what I hate, mother," said Mela, "is, it don't seem to be any place for young men, either." She found

this so good when she had said it that she laughed over it till Christine was angry.

"Oh, don't mind her, mother," said Mela. "She's put out because her old Mr. Beaton ha'r't been round for a

couple o' weeks. If you don't watch out, that fellow 'll give you the slip yit, Christine, after all your pains."

"No; I ha'n't ever set my traps for anybody." This was what Mela said for want of a better retort; but it was

not quite true. When Kendricks came with Beaton to call after her father's dinner, she used all her cunning to

ensnare him, and she had him to herself as long as Beaton stayed; Dryfoos sent down word that he was not

very well and had gone to bed. The novelty of Mela had worn off for Kendricks, and she found him, as she

frankly told him, not half as entertaining as he was at Mrs. Horn's; but she did her best with him as the only

flirtable material which had yet come to her hand. It would have been her ideal to have the young men stay

till past midnight, and her father come downstairs in his stockingfeet and tell them it was time to go. But

they made a visit of decorous brevity, and Kendricks did not come again. She met him afterward, once, as she

was crossing the pavement in Union Square to get into her coupe, and made the most of him; but it was

necessarily very little, and so he passed out of her life without having left any trace in her heart, though Mela

had a heart that she would have put at the disposition of almost any young man that wanted it. Kendricks

himself, Manhattan cockney as he was, with scarcely more out look into the average American nature than if

he had been kept a prisoner in New York society all his days, perceived a property in her which forbade him

as a man of conscience to trifle with her; something earthly good and kind, if it was simple and vulgar. In

revising his impressions of her, it seemed to him that she would come even to better literary effect if this were

recognized in her; and it made her sacred, in spite of her willingness to fool and to be fooled, in her merely

human quality. After all, he saw that she wished honestly to love and to be loved, and the lures she threw out

to that end seemed to him pathetic rather than ridiculous; he could not join Beaton in laughing at her; and he

did not like Beaton's laughing at the other girl, either. It seemed to Kendricks, with the code of honor which

he mostly kept to himself because he was a little ashamed to find there were so few others like it, that if

Beaton cared nothing for the other girland Christine appeared simply detestable to Kendricks he had

better keep away from her, and not give her the impression he was in love with her. He rather fancied that this

was the part of a gentleman, and he could not have penetrated to that aesthetic and moral complexity which

formed the consciousness of a nature like Beaton's and was chiefly a torment to itself; he could not have

conceived of the wayward impulses indulged at every moment in little things till the straight highway was

traversed and wellnigh lost under their tangle. To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing that one

likes, even though one continues to do what one will; but Kendricks, though a sage of twentyseven, was still

Beaton scarcely understood it himself, perhaps because he was not yet twentyseven. He only knew that his

will was somehow sick; that it spent itself in caprices, and brought him no happiness from the fulfilment of

the most vehement wish. But he was aware that his wishes grew less and less vehement; he began to have a

fear that some time he might have none at all. It seemed to him that if he could once do something that was

thoroughly distasteful to himself, he might make a beginning in the right direction; but when he tried this on a

small scale, it failed, and it seemed stupid. Some sort of expiation was the thing he needed, he was sure; but

he could not think of anything in particular to expiate; a man could not expiate his temperament, and his

temperament was what Beaton decided to be at fault. He perceived that it went deeper than even fate would

have gone; he could have fulfilled an evil destiny and had done with it, however terrible. His trouble was that

he could not escape from himself; and, for the most part, he justified himself in refusing to try. After he had

come to that distinct understanding with Alma Leighton, and experienced the relief it really gave him, he

thought for a while that if it had fallen out otherwise, and she had put him in charge of her destiny, he might

have been better able to manage his own. But as it was, he could only drift, and let all other things take their

course. It was necessary that he should go to see her afterward, to show her that he was equal to the event; but

he did not go so often, and he went rather oftener to the Dryfooses; it was not easy to see Margaret Vance,

except on the society terms. With much sneering and scorning, he fulfilled the duties to Mrs. Horn without

which he knew he should be dropped from her list; but one might go to many of her Thursdays without

getting many words with her niece. Beaton hardly knew whether he wanted many; the girl kept the charm of

her innocent stylishness; but latterly she wanted to talk more about social questions than about the psychical

problems that young people usually debate so personally. Son of the working people as he was, Beaton had

never cared anything about such matters; he did not know about them or wish to know; he was perhaps too

near them. Besides, there was an embarrassment, at least on her part, concerning the Dryfooses. She was too

highminded to blame him for having tempted her to her failure with them by his talk about them; but she

was conscious of avoiding them in her talk. She had decided not to renew the effort she had made in the

spring; because she could not do them good as fellow creatures needing food and warmth and work, and she

would not try to befriend them socially; she had a horror of any such futile sentimentality. She would have

liked to account to Beaton in this way for a course which she suspected he must have heard their comments

upon, but she did not quite know how to do it; she could not be sure how much or how little he cared for

them. Some tentative approaches which she made toward explanation were met with such eager disclaim of

personal interest that she knew less than before what to think; and she turned the talk from the sisters to the

brother, whom it seemed she still continued to meet in their common work among the poor.

"Oh, quite," said Beaton. "He's the kind of person that you might suppose gave the Catholics a hint for the

cloistral life; he's a cloistered naturethe nature that atones and suffers for. But he's awfully dull company,

"Remorselessly. We've got a profane and mundane creature there at the office who runs us all, and it's

shocking merely to see the contact of the tyro natures. When Fulkerson gets to joking Dryfooshe likes to

put his joke in the form of a pretence that Dryfoos is actuated by a selfish motive, that he has an eye to office,

and is working up a political interest for himself on the East Sideit's something inexpressible."

"I should think so," said Miss Vance, with such lofty disapproval that Beaton felt himself included in it for

having merely told what caused it. He could not help saying, in natural rebellion, "Well, the man of one idea

"Oh, I only said the man that held it was. He's flat; he has no relief, no projection."

She seemed unable to answer, and he perceived that he had silenced her to his own, disadvantage. It appeared

to Beaton that she was becoming a little too exacting for comfort in her idealism. He put down the cup of tea

he had been tasting, and said, in his solemn staccato: "I must go. Goodbye!" and got instantly away from

He went up to Mrs. Horn for a moment's hail and farewell, and felt himself subtly detained by her through

fugitive passages of conversation with half a dozen other people. He fancied that at crises of this strange

interview Mrs. Horn was about to become confidential with him, and confidential, of all things, about her

niece. She ended by not having palpably been so. In fact, the concern in her mind would have been difficult

to impart to a young man, and after several experiments Mrs. Horn found it impossible to say that she wished

Margaret could somehow be interested in lower things than those which occupied her. She had watched with

growing anxiety the girl's tendency to various kinds of selfdevotion. She had dark hours in which she even

feared her entire withdrawal from the world in a life of good works. Before now, girls had entered the

Protestant sisterhoods, which appeal so potently to the young and generous imagination, and Margaret was of

just the temperament to be influenced by them. During the past summer she had been unhappy at her

separation from the cares that had engrossed her more and more as their stay in the city drew to an end in the

spring, and she had hurried her aunt back to town earlier in the fall than she would have chosen to come.

Margaret had her correspondents among the workingwomen whom she befriended. Mrs. Horn was at one

time alarmed to find that Margaret was actually promoting a strike of the buttonhole workers. This, of

course, had its ludicrous side, in connection with a young lady in good society, and a person of even so little

humor as Mrs. Horn could not help seeing it. At the same time, she could not help foreboding the worst from

it; she was afraid that Margaret's health would give way under the strain, and that if she did not go into a

sisterhood she would at least go into a decline. She began the winter with all such counteractive measures as

she could employ. At an age when such things weary, she threw herself into the pleasures of society with the

hope of dragging Margaret after her; and a sympathetic witness must have followed with compassion her

course from ball to ball, from reception to reception, from parlor reading to parlorreading, from musicale

to musicale, from play to play, from opera to opera. She tasted, after she had practically renounced them, the

bitter and the insipid flavors of fashionable amusement, in the hope that Margaret might find them sweet, and

now at the end she had to own to herself that she had failed. It was coming Lent again, and the girl had only

grown thinner and more serious with the diversions that did not divert her from the baleful works of

beneficence on which Mrs. Horn felt that she was throwing her youth away. Margaret could have borne either

alone, but together they were wearing her out. She felt it a duty to undergo the pleasures her aunt appointed

for her, but she could not forego the other duties in which she found her only pleasure.

She kept up her music still because she could employ it at the meetings for the entertainment, and, as she

hoped, the elevation of her working women; but she neglected the other aesthetic interests which once

occupied her; and, at sight of Beaton talking with her, Mrs. Horn caught at the hope that he might somehow

be turned to account in reviving Margaret's former interest in art. She asked him if Mr. Wetmore had his

classes that winter as usual; and she said she wished Margaret could be induced to go again: Mr. Wetmore

always said that she did not draw very well, but that she had a great deal of feeling for it, and her work was

interesting. She asked, were the Leightons in town again; and she murmured a regret that she had not been

able to see anything of them, without explaining why; she said she had a fancy that if Margaret knew Miss

Leighton, and what she was doing, it might stimulate her, perhaps. She supposed Miss Leighton was still

But his manner did not encourage Mrs. Horn to pursue her aims in that direction, and she said, with a sigh,

she wished he still had a class; she always fancied that Margaret got more good from his instruction than

He said that she was very good; but there was really nobody who knew half as much as Wetmore, or could

make any one understand half as much. Mrs. Horn was afraid, she said, that Mr. Wetmore's terrible sincerity

discouraged Margaret; he would not let her have any illusions about the outcome of what she was doing; and

did not Mr. Beaton think that some illusion was necessary with young people? Of course, it was very nice of

Mr. Wetmore to be so honest, but it did not always seem to be the wisest thing. She begged Mr. Beaton to try

to think of some one who would be a little less severe. Her tone assumed a deeper interest in the people who

He went away with vanity flattered by the sense of having been appealed to concerning Margaret, and then he

began to chafe at what she had said of Wetmore's honesty, apropos of her wish that he still had a class

himself. Did she mean, confound her? that he was insincere, and would let Miss Vance suppose she had more

talent than she really had? The more Beaton thought of this, the more furious he became, and the more he

was convinced that something like it had been unconsciously if not consciously in her mind. He framed some

keen retorts, to the general effect that with the atmosphere of illusion preserved so completely at home, Miss

Vance hardly needed it in her art studies. Having just determined never to go near Mrs. Horn's Thursdays

again, he decided to go once more, in order to plant this sting in her capacious but somewhat callous bosom;

and he planned how he would lead the talk up to the point from which he should launch it.

In the mean time he felt the need of some present solace, such as only unqualified worship could give him; a

cruel wish to feel his power in some direction where, even if it were resisted, it could not be overcome, drove

him on. That a woman who was to Beaton the embodiment of artificiality should intimate, however

innocentlythe innocence made it all the worsethat he was less honest than Wetmore, whom he knew to

be so much more honest, was something that must be retaliated somewhere before his selfrespect could be

restored. It was only five o'clock, and he went on uptown to the Dryfooses', though he had been there only

"The young ladies are downtown shopping," she said, "but I am very glad of the opportunity of seeing you

"Yes," said Beaton, wondering what that could have to do with her pleasure in seeing him alone. "I believe

"You have lived abroad, too, and so you won't find what I am going to ask so strange. Mr. Beaton, why do

you come so much to this house?" Mrs. Mandel bent forward with an aspect of ladylike interest and smiled.

"Oh, certainly. There's no reason why I shouldn't say, for I wish you to be very frank with me. I ask because

there are two young ladies in this house; and, in a certain way, I have to take the place of a mother to them. I

needn't explain why; you know all the people here, and you understand. I have nothing to say about them, but

I should not be speaking to you now if they were not all rather helpless people. They do not know the world

they have come to live in here, and they cannot help themselves or one another. But you do know it, Mr.

Beaton, and I am sure you know just how much or how little you mean by coming here. You are either

interested in one of these young girls or you are not. If you are, I have nothing more to say. If you are not"

Mrs. Mandel continued to smile, but the smile had grown more perfunctory, and it had an icy gleam.

Beaton looked at her with surprise that he gravely kept to himself. He had always regarded her as a social

nullity, with a kind of pity, to be sure, as a civilized person living among such people as the Dryfooses, but

not without a humorous contempt; he had thought of her as Mandel, and sometimes as Old Mandel, though

she was not half a score of years his senior, and was still well on the sunny side of forty. He reddened, and

then turned an angry pallor. "Excuse me again, Mrs. Mandel. Do you ask this from the young ladies?"

"Certainly not," she said, with the best temper, and with something in her tone that convicted Beaton of

vulgarity, in putting his question of her authority in the form of a sneer. "As I have suggested, they would

hardly know how to help themselves at all in such a matter. I have no objection to saying that I ask it from the

father of the young ladies. Of course, in and for myself I should have no right to know anything about your

affairs. I assure you the duty of knowing isn't very pleasant." The little tremor in her clear voice struck

"I can very well believe that, Mrs. Mandel," he said, with a dreamy sadness in his own. He lifted his eyes and

looked into hers. "If I told you that I cared nothing about them in the way you intimate?"

"Then I should prefer to let you characterize your own conduct in continuing to come here for the year past,

as you have done, and tacitly leading them on to infer differently." They both mechanically kept up the

fiction of plurality in speaking of Christine, but there was no doubt in the mind of either which of the young

ladies the other meant. A good many thoughts went through Beaton's mind, and none of them were flattering.

He had not been unconscious that the part he had played toward this girl was ignoble, and that it had grown

meaner as the fancy which her beauty had at first kindled in him had grown cooler. He was aware that of late

he had been amusing himself with her passion in a way that was not less than cruel, not because he wished to

do so, but because he was listless and wished nothing. He rose in saying: "I might be a little more lenient than

you think, Mrs. Mandel; but I won't trouble you with any palliating theory. I will not come any more."

He bowed, and Mrs. Mandel said, "Of course, it's only your action that I am concerned with."

She seemed to him merely triumphant, and he could not conceive what it had cost her to nerve herself up to

her too easy victory. He left Mrs. Mandel to a far harder lot than had fallen to him, and he went away hating

her as an enemy who had humiliated him at a moment when he particularly needed exalting. It was really

very simple for him to stop going to see Christine Dryfoos, but it was not at all simple for Mrs. Mandel to

deal with the consequences of his not coming. He only thought how lightly she had stopped him, and the poor

woman whom he had left trembling for what she had been obliged to do embodied for him the conscience

"By heavens! this is piling it up," he said to himself through his set teeth, realizing how it had happened right

on top of that stupid insult from Mrs. Horn. Now he should have to give up his place on 'Every Other Week;

he could not keep that, under the circumstances, even if some pretence were not made to get rid of him; he

must hurry and anticipate any such pretence; he must see Fulkerson at once; he wondered where he should

find him at that hour. He thought, with bitterness so real that it gave him a kind of tragical satisfaction, how

certainly he could find him a little later at Mrs. Leighton's; and Fulkerson's happiness became an added

The thing had, of course, come about just at the wrong time. There never had been a time when Beaton

needed money more, when he had spent what he had and what he expected to have so recklessly. He was in

debt to Fulkerson personally and officially for advance payments of salary. The thought of sending money

home made him break into a scoffing laugh, which he turned into a cough in order to deceive the passers.

What sort of face should he go with to Fulkerson and tell him that he renounced his employment on 'Every

Other Week;' and what should he do when he had renounced it? Take pupils, perhaps; open a class? A lurid

conception of a class conducted on those principles of shameless flattery at which Mrs. Horn had hintedhe

believed now she had meant to insult himpresented itself. Why should not he act upon the suggestion? He

thought with loathing for the whole race of womendabblers in art. How easy the thing would be: as easy as

to turn back now and tell that old fool's girl that he loved her, and rake in half his millions. Why should not

he do that? No one else cared for him; and at a year's end, probably, one woman would be like another as far

as the love was concerned, and probably he should not be more tired if the woman were Christine Dryfoos

than if she were Margaret Vance. He kept Alma Leighton out of the question, because at the bottom of his

The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had carried him far down town, he thought; but when he looked

up from it to see where he was he found himself on Sixth Avenue, only a little below Thirtyninth Street,

very hot and blown; that idiotic fur overcoat was stifling. He could not possibly walk down to Eleventh; he

did not want to walk even to the Elevated station at Thirtyfourth; he stopped at the corner to wait for a

surfacecar, and fell again into his bitter fancies. After a while he roused himself and looked up the track, but

there was no car coming. He found himself beside a policeman, who was lazily swinging his club by its thong

"When do you suppose a car will be along?" he asked, rather in a general sarcasm of the absence of the cars

The policeman waited to discharge his tobaccojuice into the gutter. "In about a week," he said,

"Strike," said the policeman. His interest in Beaton's ignorance seemed to overcome his contempt of it.

"Knocked off everywhere this morning except Third Avenue and one or two crosstown lines." He spat again

and kept his bulk at its incline over the gutter to glance at a group of men on the corner below: They were

neatly dressed, and looked like something better than workingmen, and they had a holiday air of being in

"There won't be any trouble till we begin to move the cars," said the policeman.

Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the men whose action would now force him to walk five blocks

and mount the stairs of the Elevated station. "If you'd take out eight or ten of those fellows," he said,

ferociously, "and set them up against a wall and shoot them, you'd save a great deal of bother."

"I guess we sha'n't have to shoot much," said the policeman, still swinging his locust. "Anyway, we shant

begin it. If it comes to a fight, though," he said, with a look at the men under the scooping rim of his helmet,

"we can drive the whole six thousand of 'em into the East River without pullin' a trigger."

"The interest of their money, I suppose," said the officer, with a grin of satisfaction in his irony. "It's got to

run its course. Then they'll come back with their heads tied up and their tails between their legs, and plead to

"If I was a manager of the roads," said Beaton, thinking of how much he was already inconvenienced by the

strike, and obscurely connecting it as one of the series with the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of Mrs.

Horn and Mrs. Mandel, "I would see them starve before I'd take them back every one of them."

"Well," said the policeman, impartially, as a man might whom the companies allowed to ride free, but who

had made friends with a good many drivers and conductors in the course of his free riding, "I guess that's

what the roads would like to do if they could; but the men are too many for them, and there ain't enough other

A man came out of the saloon on the corner where the strikers were standing, noisy drunk, and they began, as

they would have said, to have some fun with him. The policeman left Beaton, and sauntered slowly down

toward the group as if in the natural course of an afternoon ramble. On the other side of the street Beaton

could see another officer sauntering up from the block below. Looking up and down the avenue, so silent of

its horsecar bells, he saw a policeman at every corner. It was rather impressive.

The strike made a good deal of talk in it he office of 'Every Other Week' that is, it made Fulkerson talk a good

deal. He congratulated himself that he was not personally incommoded by it, like some of the fellows who

lived uptown, and had not everything under one roof, as it were. He enjoyed the excitement of it, and he kept

the office boy running out to buy the extras which the newsmen came crying through the street almost every

hour with a lamentable, unintelligible noise. He read not only the latest intelligence of the strike, but the

editorial comments on it, which praised the firm attitude of both parties, and the admirable measures taken by

the police to preserve order. Fulkerson enjoyed the interviews with the police captains and the leaders of the

strike; he equally enjoyed the attempts of the reporters to interview the road managers, which were so

graphically detailed, and with such a fine feeling for the right use of scareheads as to have almost the value

of direct expression from them, though it seemed that they had resolutely refused to speak. He said, at

secondhand from the papers, that if the men behaved themselves and respected the rights of property, they

would have public sympathy with them every time; but just as soon as they began to interfere with the roads'

right to manage their own affairs in their own way, they must be put down with an iron hand; the phrase "iron

hand" did Fulkerson almost as much good as if it had never been used before. News began to come of

fighting between the police and the strikers when the roads tried to move their cars with men imported from

Philadelphia, and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the splendid courage of the police. At the same time, he believed

what the strikers said, and that the trouble was not made by them, but by gangs of roughs acting without their

approval. In this juncture he was relieved by the arrival of the State Board of Arbitration, which took up its

quarters, with a great many scareheads, at one of the principal hotels, and invited the roads and the strikers

to lay the matter in dispute before them; he said that now we should see the working of the greatest piece of

social machinery in modern times. But it appeared to work only in the alacrity of the strikers to submit their

grievance. The road; were as one road in declaring that there was nothing to arbitrate, and that they were

merely asserting their right to manage their own affairs in their own way. One of the presidents was reported

to have told a member of the Board, who personally summoned him, to get out and to go about his business.

Then, to Fulkerson's extreme disappointment, the august tribunal, acting on behalf of the sovereign people in

the interest of peace, declared itself powerless, and got out, and would, no doubt, have gone about its business

if it had had any. Fulkerson did not know what to say, perhaps because the extras did not; but March laughed

"It's a good deal like the military manoeuvre of the King of France and his forty thousand men. I suppose

somebody told him at the top of the hill that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out and go about his

business, and that was the reason he marched down after he had marched up with all that ceremony. What

amuses me is to find that in an affair of this kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights, but the

public has no rights at all. The roads and the strikers are allowed to fight out a private war in our midst as

thoroughly and precisely a private war as any we despise the Middle Ages for having tolerated as any

street war in Florence or Veronaand to fight it out at our pains and expense, and we stand by like sheep

and wait till they get tired. It's a funny attitude for a city of fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants."

"What would you do?" asked Fulkerson, a good deal daunted by this view of the case.

"Do? Nothing. Hasn't the State Board of Arbitration declared itself powerless? We have no hold upon the

strikers; and we're so used to being snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we have forgotten our

hold on the roads and always allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way, quite as if we had

nothing to do with them and they owed us no services in return for their privileges."

"That's a good deal so," said Fulkerson, disordering his hair. "Well, it's nuts for the colonel nowadays. He

says if he was boss of this town he would seize the roads on behalf of the people, and man 'em with

policemen, and run 'em till the managers had come to terms with the strikers; and he'd do that every time

"Doesn't that rather savor of the paternalism he condemned in Lindau?" asked March.

"You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson. I thought you were the most engaged man I ever saw; but I guess you're

"Well, the colonel's a glorious old fellow, March. I wish he had the power to do that thing, just for the fun of

looking on while he waltzed in. He's on the keen jump from morning till night, and he's up late and early to

see the row. I'm afraid he'll get shot at some of the fights; he sees them all; I can't get any show at them:

"No, I find I can philosophize the situation about as well from the papers, and that's what I really want to do, I

suppose. Besides, I'm solemnly pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any sort of crowd, under penalty of

having her bring the children and go with me. Her theory is that we must all die together; the children haven't

been at school since the strike began. There's no precaution that Mrs. March hasn't used. She watches me

Fulkerson laughed and said: "Well, it's probably the only thing that's saved your life. Have you seen anything

"Not if he knows it. But I don't know What do you say, March? What's the reason you couldn't get us up a

"No, but seriously. There 'll be plenty of news paper accounts. But you could treat it in the historical

spiritlike something that happened several centuries ago; De Foe's Plague of London style. Heigh? What

made me think of it was Beaton. If I could get hold of him, you two could go round together and take down

its aesthetic aspects. It's a big thing, March, this strike is. I tell you it's imposing to have a private war, as you

say, fought out this way, in the heart of New York, and New York not minding, it a bit. See? Might take that

view of it. With your descriptions and Beaton's sketcheswell, it would just be the greatest card! Come!

"Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs. March if I'm killed and she and the children are not killed with

"Well, it would be difficult. I wonder how it would do to get Kendricks to do the literary part?"

"I've no doubt he'd jump at the chance. I've yet to see the form of literature that Kendricks wouldn't lay down

"Say!" March perceived that Fulkerson was about to vent another inspiration, and smiled patiently. "Look

here! What's the reason we couldn't get one of the strikers to write it up for us?"

"No; I'm in earnest. They say some of those fellowsespecially the foreignersare educated men. I know

one fellowa Bohemianthat used to edit a Bohemian newspaper here. He could write it out in his kind of

"Why not? He'd do it for the cause, wouldn't he? Suppose you put it up on him the next time you see him."

"I don't see Lindau any more," said March. He added, "I guess he's renounced me along with Mr. Dryfoos's

"He came for a while, but he's left off coming now. I don't feel particularly gay about it," March said, with

some resentment of Fulkerson's grin. "He's left me in debt to him for lessons to the children."

Fulkerson laughed out. "Well, he is the greatest old fool! Who'd 'a' thought he'd 'a' been in earnest with those

'brincibles' of his? But I suppose there have to be just such cranks; it takes all kinds to make a world."

"There has to be one such crank, it seems," March partially assented. "One's enough for me."

"I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too," said Fulkerson. "Why, it must act like a schooner of beer on him

all the while, to see 'gabidal' embarrassed like it is by this strike. It must make old Lindau feel like he was

back behind those barricades at Berlin. Well, he's a splendid old fellow; pity he drinks, as I remarked once

When March left the office he did not go home so directly as he came, perhaps because Mrs. March's eye was

not on him. He was very curious about some aspects of the strike, whose importance, as a great social

convulsion, he felt people did not recognize; and, with his temperance in everything, he found its negative

expressions as significant as its more violent phases. He had promised his wife solemnly that he would keep

away ,from these, and he had a natural inclination to keep his promise; he had no wish to be that peaceful

spectator who always gets shot when there is any firing on a mob. He interested himself in the apparent

indifference of the mighty city, which kept on about its business as tranquilly as if the private war being

fought out in its midst were a vague rumor of Indian troubles on the frontier; and he realized how there might

once have been a street feud of forty years in Florence without interfering materially with the industry and

prosperity of the city. On Broadway there was a silence where a jangle and clatter of horsecar bells and

hoofs had been, but it was not very noticeable; and on the avenues, roofed by the elevated roads, this silence

of the surface tracks was not noticeable at all in the roar of the trains overhead. Some of the crosstown cars

were beginning to run again, with a policeman on the rear of each; on the Third Avenge line, operated by

nonunion men, who had not struck, there were two policemen beside the driver of every car, and two beside

the conductor, to protect them from the strikers. But there were no strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue

they stood quietly about in groups on the corners. While March watched them at a safe distance, a car laden

with policemen came down the track, but none of the strikers offered to molest it. In their simple Sunday

best, March thought them very quiet, decentlooking people, and he could well believe that they had nothing

to do with the riotous outbreaks in other parts of the city. He could hardly believe that there were any such

outbreaks; he began more and more to think them mere newspaper exaggerations in the absence of any

disturbance, or the disposition to it, that he could see. He walked on to the East River

Avenues A, B, and C presented the same quiet aspect as Second Avenue; groups of men stood on the corners,

and now and then a policeladen car was brought unmolested down the tracks before them; they looked at it

March got a crosstown car, and came back to the West Side. A policeman, looking very sleepy and tired,

"I suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is over," March suggested, as he got in.

His behavior, from a man born to the joking give and take of our life, impressed March. It gave him a fine

sense of the ferocity which he had read of the French troops putting on toward the populace just before the

coup d'etat; he began to feel like the populace; but he struggled with himself and regained his character of

philosophical observer. In this character he remained in the car and let it carry him by the corner where he

ought to have got out and gone home, and let it keep on with him to one of the farthermost tracks westward,

where so much of the fighting was reported to have taken place. But everything on the way was as quiet as on

Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of the brake that he was half thrown from his seat, and the

Dryfoos sat at breakfast that morning with Mrs. Mandel as usual to pour out his coffee. Conrad had gone

downtown; the two girls lay abed much later than their father breakfasted, and their mother had gradually

grown too feeble to come down till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at the door. Her face was white to the

The old man looked up at her across his coffeecup through his frowning brows. "No."

"Then what's the reason he don't come here any more?" demanded the girl; and her glance darted from her

father to Mrs. Mandel. "Oh, it's you, is it? I'd like to know who told you to meddle in other people's

"I did," said Dryfoos, savagely. "I told her to ask him what he wanted here, and he said he didn't want

"Oh, you did, did you?" said the girl, scarcely less insolently than she had spoken to Mrs. Mandel. "I should

like to know what you did it for? I'd like to know what made you think I wasn't able to take care of myself. I

just knew somebody had been meddling, but I didn't suppose it was you. I can manage my own affairs in my

own way, if you please, and I'll thank you after this to leave me to myself in what don't concern you."

Christine advanced from the doorway toward the table; she had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets,

some of which glittered and dangled from them. She said, "Will you go to him and tell him that this

meddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, and you take it all back?"

"That's all I want of you!" the girl shouted in her turn. "Here are your presents." With both hands she flung

the jewelspins and rings and earrings and braceletsamong the breakfastdishes, from which some of them

sprang to the floor. She stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring from the finger where Beaton put it a year

ago, and dashed that at her father's plate. Then she whirled out of the room, and they heard her running

The old man made a start toward her, but he fell back in his chair before she was gone, and, with a fierce,

grinding movement of his jaws, controlled himself. "Taketake those things up," he gasped to Mrs. Mandel.

He seemed unable to rise again from his chair; but when she asked him if he were unwell, he said no, with an

air of offence, and got quickly to his feet. He mechanically picked up the intaglio ring from the table while he

stood there, and put it on his little finger; his hand was not much bigger than Christine's. "How do you

"She seems to have merely suspected it," said Mrs. Mandel , in a tremor, and with the fright in her eyes which

"Well, it don't make any difference. She had to know, somehow, and now she knows." He started toward the

"Mr. Dryfoos," palpitated Mrs. Mandel, "I can't remain here, after the language your daughter has used to

"Lock yourself up, then," said the old man, rudely. He added, from the hall before lie went out, "I reckon

He took the Elevated road. The strike seemed a vary faroff thing, though the paper he bought to look up the

stockmarket was full of noisy typography about yesterday's troubles on the surface lines. Among the millions

in Wall Street there was some joking and some swearing, but not much thinking, about the six thousand men

who had taken such chances in their attempt to better their condition. Dryfoos heard nothing of the strike in

the lobby of the Stock Exchange, where he spent two or three hours watching a favorite stock of his go up

and go down under the betting. By the time the Exchange closed it had risen eight points, and on this and

some other investments he was five thousand dollars richer than he had been in the morning. But he had

expected to be richer still, and he was by no means satisfied with his luck. All through the excitement of his

winning and losing had played the dull, murderous rage he felt toward they child who had defied him, and

when the game was over and he started home his rage mounted into a sort of frenzy; he would teach her, he

would break her. He walked a long way without thinking, and then waited for a car. None came, and he

"What has got all the cars?" he demanded of the driver, who jumped down from his box to open the door for

"Oh yes," said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy, and he remained staring at the driver after he had taken his

Dryfoos could not think of his street or number, and he said, with uncontrollable fury: "I told you once! Go

up to West Eleventh, and drive along slow on the south side; I'll show you the place."

He could not remember the number of 'Every Other Week' office, where he suddenly decided to stop before

he went home. He wished to see Fulkerson, and ask him something about Beaton: whether he had been about

lately, and whether he had dropped any hint of what had happened concerning Christine; Dryfoos believed

There was nobody but Conrad in the countingroom, whither Dryfoos returned after glancing into

Fulkerson's empty office. "Where's Fulkerson?" he asked, sitting down with his hat on.

"He went out a few moments ago," said Conrad, glancing at the clock. "I'm afraid he isn't coming back again

Dryfoos twisted his head sidewise and upward to indicate March's room. "That other fellow out, too?"

"Do you generally knock off here in the middle of the afternoon ?" asked the old man.

"No," said Conrad, as patiently as if his father had not been there a score of times and found the whole staff

of Every Other leek at work between four and five. "Mr. March, you know, always takes a good deal of his

work home with him, and I suppose Mr. Fulkerson went out so early because there isn't much doing today.

"The strikeyes! It's a pretty piece of business to have everything thrown out because a parcel of lazy hounds

want a chance to lay off and get drunk." Dryfoos seemed to think Conrad would make some answer to this,

but the young man's mild face merely saddened, and he said nothing. "I've got a coupe out there now that I

had to take because I couldn't get a car. If I had my way I'd have a lot of those vagabonds hung. They're

waiting to get the city into a snarl, and then rob the housespack of dirty, worthless whelps. They ought to

call out the militia, and fire into 'em. Clubbing is too good for them." Conrad was still silent, and his father

"Oh, you do, do you? Comin' to your senses a little. Gettin' tired walkin' so much. I should like to know what

"But I'm goin' to make you talk this time!" cried Dryfoos, striking the arm of the chair he sat in with the side

of his fist. A maddening thought of Christine came over him. "As long as you eat my bread, you have got to

do as I say. I won't have my children telling me what I shall do and sha'n't do, or take on airs of being holier

than me. Now, you just speak up! Do you think those loafers are right, or don't you? Come!"

Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. "I think they were very foolish to strikeat this time, when the

"Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they think over there on the East Side that it 'd been wise to strike

before we got the Elevated." Conrad again refused to answer, and his father roared, "What do you think?"

"I think a strike is always bad business. It's war; but sometimes there don't seem any other way for the

workingmen to get justice. They say that sometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a while."

"They got two dollars a day. How much do you think they ought to 'a' got? Twenty?"

Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father. But he decided to answer. "The men say that with

partial work, and fines, and other things, they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety cents a day."

"They lie, and you know they lie," said his father, rising and coming toward him. "And what do you think the

upshot of it all will be, after they've ruined business for another week, and made people hire hacks, and stolen

"Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, I should like to know? How will you feel about it then?

"I shall feel as I do now. I know you don't think that way, and I don't blame youor anybody. But if I have

got to say how I shall feel, why, I shall feel sorry they didn't succeed, for I believe they have a righteous

His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set. "Do you dare so say that to me?"

"You impudent puppy!" shouted the old man. He lifted his hand and struck his son in the face. Conrad caught

his hand with his own left, and, while the blood began to trickle from a wound that Christine's intaglio ring

had made in his temple, he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said, " Father!"

The old man wrenched his fist away and ran out of the house. He remembered his address now, and he gave it

as he plunged into the coupe. He trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of the windows at the passers

as he drove home; he only saw Conrad's mild, grieving, wondering eyes, and the blood slowly trickling from

Conrad went to the neatset bowl in Fulkerson's comfortable room and washed the blood away, and kept

bathing the wound with the cold water till it stopped bleeding. The cut was not deep, and he thought he would

not put anything on it. After a while he locked up the office and started out, be hardly knew where. But he

walked on, in the direction he had taken, till he found himself in Union Square, on the pavement in front of

Brentano's. It seemed to him that he heard some one calling gently to him, "Mr. Dryfoos!"

Conrad looked confusedly around, and the same voice said again, "Mr. Dryfoos!" and he saw that it was a

lady speaking to him from a coupe beside the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss Vance.

She smiled when, he gave signs of having discovered her, and came up to the door of her carriage. "I am so

glad to meet you. I have been longing to talk to somebody; nobody seems to feel about it as I do. Oh, isn't it

horrible? Must they fail? I saw cars running on all the lines as I came across; it made me sick at heart. Must

those brave fellows give in? And everybody seems to hate them soI can't bear it." Her face was estranged

with excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. "You must think me almost crazy to stop you in the

street this way; but when I caught sight of you I had to speak. I knew you would sympathize I knew you

would feel as I do. Oh, how can anybody help honoring those poor men for standing by one another as they

do? They are risking all they have in the world for the sake of justice! Oh, they are true heroes! They are

staking the bread of their wives and children on the dreadful chance they've taken! But no one seems to

understand it. No one seems to see that they are willing to suffer more now that other poor men may suffer

less hereafter. And those wretched creatures that are coming in to take their placesthose traitors"

"No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a thing? It's we people like me, of my classwho

make the poor betray one another. But this dreadful fightingthis hideous paper is full of it!" She held up an

extra, crumpled with her nervous reading. "Can't something be done to stop it? Don't you think that if some

one went among them, and tried to make them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companies and

drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have wanted to go and try; but I am a woman, and I

mustn't! I shouldn't be afraid of the strikers, but I'm afraid of what people would say!" Conrad kept pressing

his handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he thought might be bleeding, and now she noticed this. "Are

"Indeed, you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you get home? Will you get in here with me and let

"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you here and talking in this way? But I know you

"Yes, I feel as you do. You are rightright in every wayI mustn't keep youGoodbye." He stepped

back to bow, but she put her beautiful hand out of the window, and when he took it she wrung his hand hard.

"Thank you, thank you! You are good and you are just! But no one can do anything. It's useless!"

The type of irreproachable coachman on the box whose respectability had suffered through the strange

behavior of his mistress in this interview drove quickly off at her signal, and Conrad stood a moment looking

after the carriage. His heart was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would burst. As he turned to walk away it

seemed to him as if he mounted upon the air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given him, that

crush of the hand: he hoped nothing, he formed no idea from it, but it all filled him with love that cast out the

pain and shame he had been suffering. He believed that he could never be unhappy any more; the hardness

that was in his mind toward his father went out of it; he saw how sorely he had tried him; he grieved that he

had done it, but the means, the difference of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel, he was solemnly glad

of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for his father. "Poor father!" he said under his breath as he went

along. He explained to her about his father in his reverie, and she pitied his father, too.

He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then at times with the longing to do

something to save those mistaken men from themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she

meant when she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished him to try if he, being a man,

could not do something; or if she did not, still he would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what she

had said and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her pleasure in what he was going to do, he

forgot almost what it was; but when he came to a streetcar track he remembered it, and looked up and down

to see if there were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might mingle with and help to keep from

violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all

events had a dream like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in the middle of it, a little way

off, was a streetcar, and around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver was lashing

his horses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs,

brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them in a body,

and then a patrolwagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of policemen leaped out and began to

club the rioters. Conrad could see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows on their skulls

One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, and then he saw at his side a tall, old

man, with a long, white beard, who was calling out at the policemen: "Ah, yes! Glup the strikerssgif it to

them! Why don't you co and glup the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick your Boart of Arpidration

outoftoors? Glup the strikerss they cot no friendts! They cot no money to pribe you, to dreat you!"

The officer lifted his club, and the old man threw his left arm up to shield his head. Conrad recognized

Zindau, and now he saw the empty sleeve dangle in the air over the stump of his wrist. He heard a shot in that

turmoil beside the car, and something seemed to strike him in the breast. He was going to say to the

policeman: "Don't strike him! He's an old soldier! You see he has no hand!" but he could not speak, he could

not move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his face: it was not bad, not cruel; it was like the

face of a statue, fixed, perdurablea mere image of irresponsible and involuntary authority. Then Conrad

March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at the same moment he saw Lindau drop under the

club of the policeman, who left him where he fell and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing the rioters. The

fighting round the car in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped his horses into a gallop, and the place was left

March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had implored him to keep away from the rioting; but

he could not have left Lindau lying there if he would. Something stronger than his will drew him to the spot,

In the cares which Mrs. March shared with her husband that night she was supported partly by principle, but

mainly by the, potent excitement which bewildered Conrad's family and took all reality from what had

happened. It was nearly midnight when the Marches left them and walked away toward the Elevated station

with Fulkerson. Everything had been done, by that time, that could be done; and Fulkerson was not without

that satisfaction in the businesslike despatch of all the details which attends each step in such an affair and

helps to make death tolerable even to the most sorely stricken. We are creatures of the moment; we live from

one little space to another; and only one interest at a time fills these. Fulkerson was cheerful when they got

into the street, almost gay; and Mrs. March experienced a rebound from her depression which she felt that she

ought not to have experienced. But she condoned the offence a little in herself, because her husband remained

so constant in his gravity; and, pending the final accounting he must make her for having been where he

could be of so much use from the first instant of the calamity, she was tenderly, gratefully proud of all the use

he had been to Conrad's family, and especially his miserable old father. To her mind, March was the principal

actor in the whole affair, and much more important in having seen it than those who had suffered in it. In fact,

"Well, well," said Fulkerson. "They'll get along now. We've done all we could, and there's nothing left but for

them to bear it. Of course it's awful, but I guess it 'll come out all right. I mean," he added, "they'll pull

"I suppose," said March, "that nothing is put on us that we can't bear. But I should think," he went on,

musingly, "that when God sees what we poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed round with this eternal

"Basil!" said his wife. But in her heart she drew nearer to him for the words she thought she ought to rebuke

"Oh, I know," he said, "we school ourselves to despise human nature. But God did not make us despicable,

and I say, whatever end He meant us for, He must have some such thrill of joy in our adequacy to fate as a

father feels when his son shows himself a man. When I think what we can be if we must, I can't believe the

"Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of us," said Fulkerson, with a piety of his own.

"That poor boy's father!" sighed Mrs. March. "I can't get his face out of my sight. He looked so much worse

"Oh, death doesn't look bad," said March. "It's life that looks so in its presence. Death is peace and pardon. I

"Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough," said Mrs. March. "I hope he will be careful after this."

March did not try to defend Lindau against her theory of the case, which inexorably held him responsible for

"Lindau's going to come out all right, I guess," said Fulkerson. "He was firstrate when I saw him at the

hospital tonight." He whispered in March's ear, at a chance he got in mounting the station stairs: "I didn't

like to tell you there at the house, but I guess you'd better know. They had to take Lindau's arm off near the

In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for them, the bereaved family whom the Marches had just left

lingered together, and tried to get strength to part for the night. They were all spent with the fatigue that

comes from heaven to such misery as theirs, and they sat in a torpor in which each waited for the other to

Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose and went out of the room without saying a word, and they

"I reckon the rest of us better be goun' too, father. Here, let's git mother started."

She put her arm round her mother, to lift her from her chair, but the old man did not stir, and Mela called

"Ain't there anybody agoin' to set up with it?" she asked, in her hoarse pipe. "It appears like folks hain't got

any feelin's in New York. Woon't some o' the neighbors come and offer to set up, without waitin' to be

"Oh, that's all right, mother. The men 'll attend to that. Don't you bother any," Mela coaxed, and she kept her

"Why, Mely, child! I can't feel right to have it left to hirelin's so. But there ain't anybody any more to see

"Well, mother, you are pretty mixed!" said Mela, with a strong tendency to break into her large guffaw. But

she checked herself and said: "I know just how you feel, though. It keeps acomun' and agoun'; and it's so and

it ain't so, all at once; that's the plague of it. Well, father! Ain't you goun' to come?"

"I'm goin' to stay, Mela," said the old man, gently, without moving. "Get your mother to bed, that's a good

"Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it 'll do you good to set up. I wished I could set up with you; but I don't

seem to have the stren'th I did when the twins died. I must git my sleep, so's toI don't like very well to have

you broke of your rest, Jacob, but there don't appear to be anybody else. You wouldn't have to do it if

"Well, do come along, then, mother," said Mela; and she got her out of the room, with Mrs. Mandel's help,

From the top the old woman called down, "You tell Coonrod" She stopped, and he heard her groan out,

He sat, one silence in the diningroom, where they had all lingered together, and in the library beyond the

hireling watcher sat, another silence. The time passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in the house

ceased, so that they heard each other breathe, and the vague, remote rumor of the city invaded the inner

stillness. It grew louder toward morning, and then Dryfoos knew from the watcher's deeper breathing that he

He crept by him to the drawingroom, where his son was; the place was full of the awful sweetness of the

flowers that Fulkerson had brought, and that lay above the pulseless breast. The old man turned up a burner in

He could not move when he saw his wife coming down the stairway in the hall. She was in her long, white

flannel bed gown, and the candle she carried shook with her nervous tremor. He thought she might be

walking in her sleep, but she said, quite simply, "I woke up, and I couldn't git to sleep ag'in without comin' to

have a look." She stood beside their dead son with him. "well, he's beautiful, Jacob. He was the prettiest

baby! And he was always good, Coonrod was; I'll say that for him. I don't believe he ever give me a minute's

care in his whole life. I reckon I liked him about the best of all the children; but I don't know as I ever done

much to show it. But you was always good to him, Jacob; you always done the best for him, ever since he

was a little feller. I used to be afraid you'd spoil him sometimes in them days; but I guess you're glad now for

every time you didn't cross him. I don't suppose since the twins died you ever hit him a lick." She stooped and

peered closer at the face. "Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye Dryfoos saw it, too, the wound that

he had feared to look for, and that now seemed to redden on his eight. He broke into a low, wavering cry, like

a child's in despair, like an animal's in terror, like a soul's in the anguish of remorse.

The evening after the funeral, while the Marches sat together talking it over, and making approaches, through

its shadow, to the question of their own future, which it involved, they were startled by the twitter of the

electric bell at their apartment door. It was really not so late as the children's having gone to bed made it

seem; but at nine o'clock it was too late for any probable visitor except Fulkerson. It might be he, and March

was glad to postpone the impending question to his curiosity concerning the immediate business Fulkerson

might have with him. He went himself to the door, and confronted there a lady deeply veiled in black and

"Are you alone, Mr. Marchyou and Mrs. March ?" asked the lady, behind her veil; and, as he hesitated, she

said: "You don't know me! Miss Vance"; and she threw back her veil, showing her face wan and agitated in

the dark folds. "I am very anxious to see youto speak with you both. May I come in?"

"Why, certainly, Miss Vance," he answered, still too much stupefied by her presence to realize it.

She promptly entered, and saying, with a glance at the hall chair by the door, "My maid can sit here?"

Mrs. March showed herself more capable of coping with the fact. She welcomed Miss Vance with the liking

they both felt for the girl, and with the sympathy which her troubled face inspired.

"I won't tire you with excuses for coming, Mrs. March," she said, "for it was the only thing left for me to do;

and I come at my aunt's suggestion." She added this as if it would help to account for her more on the

conventional plane, and she had the instinctive good taste to address herself throughout to Mrs. March as

much as possible, though what she had to say was mainly for March. "I don't know how to beginI don't

know how to speak of this terrible affair. But you know what I mean. I feel as if I had lived a whole lifetime

since it happened. I don't want you to pity me for it," she said, forestalling a politeness from Mrs. March. "I'm

the last one to be thought of, and you mustn't mind me if I try to make you. I came to find out all of the truth

that I can, and when I know just what that is I shall know what to do. I have read the inquest; it's all burned

into my brain. But I don't care for that for myself: you must let me say such things without minding me. I

know that your husbandthat Mr. March was there; I read his testimony; and I wished to ask himto ask

him" She stopped and looked distractedly about. "But what folly! He must have said everything he

knewhe had to." Her eves wandered to him from his wife, on whom she had kept them with instinctive

"Perhaps I had better tell you something first. I had just parted with himit couldn't have been more than

half an hourin front of Brentano's; he must have gone straight to his death. We were talking, and II said,

Why didn't some one go among the strikers and plead with them to be peaceable, and keep them from

attacking the new men. I knew that he felt as I did about the strikers: that he was their friend. Did you

"I am sorry," March began, "I didn't see him at all tilltill I saw him lying dead."

"My husband was there purely by accident," Mrs. March put in. "I had begged and entreated him not to go

near the striking anywhere. And he had just got out of the car, and saw the policeman strike that wretched

Lindauhe's been such an anxiety to me ever since we have had anything to do with him here; my husband

knew him when he was a boy in the West. Mr. March came home from it all perfectly prostrated; it made us

all sick! Nothing so horrible ever came into our lives before. I assure you it was the most shocking

Miss Vance listened to her with that look of patience which those who have seen much of the real suffering

of the worldthe daily portion of the poorhave for the nervous woes of comfortable people. March hung

his head; he knew it would be useless to protest that his share of the calamity was, by comparison,

After she had heard Mrs. March to the end even of her repetitions, Miss Vance said, as if it were a mere

matter of course that she should have looked the affair up, "Yes, I have seen Mr. Lindau at the hospital"

"My husband goes every day to see him," Mrs. March interrupted, to give. a final touch to the conception of

"I could almost say he had earned the right to be wrong. He's a man of the most generous instincts, and a high

ideal of justice, of equitytoo high to be considered by a policeman with a club in his hand," said March,

with a bold defiance of his wife's different opinion of Lindau. "It's the policeman's business, I suppose, to

"Oh, I don't blame Mr. Lindau ; I don't blame the policeman; he was as much a mere instrument as his club

was. I am only trying to find out how much I am to blame myself. I had no thought of Mr. Dryfoos's going

thereof his attempting to talk with the strikers and keep them quiet; I was only thinking, as women do, of

But perhaps he understood me to ask him to goperhaps my words sent him to his death."

She had a sort of calm in her courage to know the worst truth as to her responsibility that forbade any wish to

flatter her out of it. "I'm afraid," said March, "that is what can never be known now." After a moment he

added: "But why should you wish to know? If he went there as a peacemaker, he died in a good cause, in

"Yes," said the girl; " I have thought of that. But death is awful; we must not think patiently, forgivingly of

sending any one to their death in the best cause." "I fancy life was an awful thing to Conrad Dryfoos," March

replied. "He was thwarted and disappointed, without even pleasing the ambition that thwarted and

disappointed him. That poor old man, his father, warped him from his simple, lifelong wish to be a minister,

and was trying to make a business man of him. If it will be any consolation to you to know it, Miss Vance, I

can assure you that he was very unhappy, and I don't see how he could ever have been happy here."

"It won't," said the girl, steadily. "If people are born into this world, it's because they were meant to live in it.

It isn't a question of being happy here; no one is happy, in that old, selfish way, or can be; but he could have

"Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows? He may have been trying to silence Lindau."

Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite understand. Then she turned to March. "He might have been

unhappy, as we all are; but I know that his life here would have had a higher happiness than we wish for or

"He looked strangely happy that day when he left me. He had hurt himself somehow, and his face was

bleeding from a scratch; he kept his handkerchief up; he was pale, but such a light came into his face when he

shook handsah, I know he went to try and do what I said!" They were all silent, while she dried her eyes

and then put her handkerchief back into the pocket from which she had suddenly pulled it, with a series of

vivid, youngladyish gestures, which struck March by their incongruity with the occasion of their talk, and

yet by their harmony with the rest of her elegance. "I am sorry, Miss Vance)" be began, "that I can't really tell

"You are very kind," she said, controlling herself and rising quickly. "I thank youthank you both very

much." She turned to Mrs. March and shook hands with her and then with him. "I might have knownI did

know that there wasn't anything more for you to tell. But at least I've found out from you that there was

nothing, and now I can begin to bear what I must. How are those poor creatureshis mother and father, his

sisters? Some day, I hope, I shall be ashamed to have postponed them to the thought of myself; but I can't

She addressed her question to Mrs. March, who answered: "I can understand. But they were pleased with the

"Would you go to see them?" asked the girl. "Would you tell them what I've told you?"

"I don't see what good it would do. They wouldn't understand. But if it would relieve you"

She left them to long debate of the event. At the end Mrs. March said, "She is a strange being; such a mixture

Her husband answered: "She's the potentiality of several kinds of fanatic. She's very unhappy, and I don't see

how she's to be happier about that poor fellow. I shouldn't be surprised if she did inspire him to attempt

"Well, you got out of it very well, Basil. I admired the way you managed. I was afraid you'd say something

"Oh, with a plain line of truth before me, as the only possible thing, I can get on pretty well. When it comes

She seemed insensible of his jest. "Of course, he was in love with her. That was the light that came into his

Their affliction brought the Dryfooses into humaner relations with the Marches, who had hitherto regarded

them as a necessary evil, as the odious means of their own prosperity. Mrs. March found that the women of

the family seemed glad of her coming, and in the sense of her usefulness to them all she began to feel a

kindness even for Christine. But she could not help seeing that between the girl and her father there was an

unsettled account, somehow, and that it was Christine and not the old man who was holding out. She thought

that their sorrow had tended to refine the others. Mela was much more subdued, and, except when she

abandoned herself to a childish interest in her mourning, she did nothing to shock Mrs. March's taste or to

seem unworthy of her grief. She was very good to her mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and to her

father, whom it had apparently fallen upon with crushing weight. Once, after visiting their house, Mrs. March

described to March a little scene between Dryfoos and Mela, when he came home from Wall Street, and the

girl met him at the door with a kind of country simpleness, and took his hat and stick, and brought him into

the room where Mrs. March sat, looking tired and broken. She found this look of Dryfoos's pathetic, and

dwelt on the sort of stupefaction there was in it; he must have loved his son more than they ever realized. "

Yes," said March, " I suspect he did. He's never been about the place since that day; he was always dropping

in before, on his way uptown. He seems to go down to Wall Street every day, just as before, but I suppose

that's mechanical; he wouldn't know what else to do; I dare say it's best for him. The sanguine Fulkerson is

getting a little anxious about the future of 'Every Other Week.' Now Conrad's gone, he isn't sure the old man

will want to keep on with it, or whether he'll have to look up another Angel. He wants to get married, I

"Well, of course. I hadn't overlooked that, you may be sure. One of the things that Fulkerson and I have

discussed is a scheme for buying the magazine. Its success is pretty well assured now, and I shouldn't be

"And I don't want to. I wish we could go back and live in it and get the rent, too! It would be quite a support.

But I suppose if Dryfoos won't keep on, it must come to another Angel. I hope it won't be a literary one, with

"Do you think so? Well, perhaps. But I don't believe Fulkerson would let me stand long between him and an

"Well, then, I believe he would. And you've never seen anything, Basil, to make you really think that Mr.

"I think I came pretty near an undervaluation in that Lindau trouble. I shall always wonder what put a

backbone into Fulkerson just at that crisis. Fulkerson doesn't strike me as the stuff of a moral hero."

March did not answer. "What a noble thing life is, anyway! Here I am, well on the way to fifty, after

twentyfive years of hard work, looking forward to the potential poorhouse as confidently as I did in youth.

We might have saved a little more than we have saved; but the little more wouldn't avail if I were turned out

of my place now; and we should have lived sordidly to no purpose. Some one always has you by the throat,

unless you have some one else in your grip. I wonder if that's the attitude the Almighty intended His

respectable creatures to take toward one another! I wonder if He meant our civilization, the battle we fight in,

the game we trick in! I wonder if He considers it final, and if the kingdom of heaven on earth, which we pray

"You inferred it from the quality of my piety?" March laughed, and then suddenly sobered. "Yes, I saw him.

It's going rather hard with him, I'm afraid. The amputation doesn't heal very well; the shock was very great,

and he's old. It 'll take time. There's so much pain that they have to keep him under opiates, and I don't think

"It's horrible! Horrible!" said Mrs. March. "I can't get over it! After losing his hand in the war, to lose his

whole arm now in this way! It does seem too cruel! Of course he oughtn't to have been there; we can say that.

"Well, I wasn't exactly advising the police to go and club the railroad presidents."

"I don't deny it. All that was distinctly the chance of life and death. That belonged to God; and no doubt it

was law, though it seems chance. But what I object to is this economic chanceworld in which we live, and

which we men seem to have created. It ought to be law as inflexible in human affairs as the order of day and

night in the physical world that if a man will work he shall both rest and eat, and shall not be harassed with

any question as to how his repose and his provision shall come. Nothing less ideal than this satisfies the

reason. But in our state of things no one is secure of this. No one is sure of finding work; no one is sure of not

losing it. I may have my work taken away from me at any moment by the caprice, the mood, the indigestion

of a man who has not the qualification for knowing whether I do it well, or ill. At my time of lifeat every

time of lifea man ought to feel that if he will keep on doing his duty he shall not suffer in himself or in

those who are dear to him, except through natural causes. But no man can feel this as things are now; and so

we go on, pushing and pulling, climbing and crawling, thrusting aside and trampling underfoot; lying,

cheating, stealing; and then we get to the end, covered with blood and dirt and sin and shame, and look back

over the way we've come to a palace of our own, or the poorhouse, which is about the only possession we

can claim in common with our brothermen, I don't think the retrospect can be pleasing."

"I know, I know!" said his wife. "I think of those things, too, Basil. Life isn't what it seems when you look

forward to it. But I think people would suffer less, and wouldn't have to work so hard, and could make all

reasonable provision for the future, if they were not so greedy and so foolish."

"Oh, without doubt! We can't put it all on the conditions; we must put some of the blame on character. But

conditions make character; and people are greedy and foolish, and wish to have and to shine, because having

and shining are held up to them by civilization as the chief good of life. We all know they are not the chief

good, perhaps not good at all; but if some one ventures to say so, all the rest of us call him a fraud and a

crank, and go moiling and toiling on to the palace or the poorhouse. We can't help it. If one were less greedy

or less foolish, some one else would have and would shine at his expense. We don't moil and toil to ourselves

alone; the palace or the poorhouse is not merely for ourselves, but for our children, whom we've brought up

in the superstition that having and shining is the chief good. We dare not teach them otherwise, for fear they

may falter in the fight when it comes their turn, and the children of others will crowd them out of the palace

into the poorhouse. If we felt sure that honest work shared by all would bring them honest food shared by

all, some heroic few of us, who did not wish our children to rise above their fellowsthough we could not

bear to have them fall belowmight trust them with the truth. But we have no such assurance, and so we go

"Basil, Basil! I was always willing to live more simply than you. You know I was!"

"I know you always said so, my dear. But how many bellratchets and speakingtubes would you be willing

to have at the street door below? I remember that when we were looking for a flat you rejected every building

that had a bellratchet or a speakingtube, and would have nothing to do with any that had more than an

electric button; you wanted a hallboy, with electric buttons all over him. I don't blame you. I find such

"And do you mean to say, Basil," she asked, abandoning this unprofitable branch of the inquiry, "that you are

really uneasy about your place? that you are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an Angel, and Mr.

"Play me false? Oh, it wouldn't be playing me false. It would be merely looking out for himself, if the new

"Wouldn't I? Well, if any one offered me more salary than 'Every Other Week' payssay, twice as

muchwhat do you think my duty to my suffering family would be? It's give and take in the business world,

Isabel; especially take. But as to being uneasy, I'm not, in the least. I've the spirit of a lion, when it comes to

such a chance as that. When I see how readily the sensibilities of the passing stranger can be worked in New

York, I think of taking up the role of that desperate man on Third Avenue who went along looking for

garbage in the gutter to eat. I think I could pick up at least twenty or thirty cents a day by that little game, and

"Basil!" cried his wife. "You don't mean to say that man was an impostor! And I've gone about, ever since,

feeling that one such case in a million, the bare possibility of it, was enough to justify all that Lindau said

March laughed teasingly. "Oh, I don't say he was an impostor. Perhaps he really was hungry; but, if he

wasn't, what do you think of a civilization that makes the opportunity of such a fraud? that gives us all such a

bad conscience for the need which is that we weaken to the need that isn't? Suppose that poor fellow wasn't

personally founded on fact: nevertheless, he represented the truth; he was the ideal of the suffering which

would be less effective if realistically treated. That man is a great comfort to me. He probably rioted for days

on that quarter I gave him; made a dinner very likely, or a champagne supper; and if 'Every Other Week'

wants to get rid of me, I intend to work that racket. You can hang round the corner with Bella, and Tom can

come up to me in tears, at stated intervals, and ask me if I've found anything yet. To be sure, we might be

arrested and sent up somewhere. But even in that extreme case we should be provided for. Oh no, I'm not

afraid of losing my place! I've merely a sort of psychological curiosity to know how men like Dryfoos and

It was a curiosity which Fulkerson himself shared, at least concerning Dryfoos. "I don't know what the old

man's going to do," he said to March the day after the Marches had talked their future over. "Said anything to

"You're anxious, I suppose, same as I am. Fact is," said Fulkerson, blushing a little, "I can't ask to have a day

named till I know where I am in connection with the old man. I can't tell whether I've got to look out for

"Yes," March said, "much sooner than it seems to us. We're so anxious about the future that we don't

"That's something so. The old man's hardly had time yet to pull himself together. Well, I'm glad you feel that

way about it, March. I guess it's more of a blow to him than we realize. He was a good deal bound up in

Coonrod, though he didn't always use him very well. Well, I reckon it's apt to happen so oftentimes; curious

"Why, that poor boy himself," pursued Fulkerson, had streaks of the mule in him that could give odds to

Beaton, and he must have tried the old man by the way he would give in to his will and hold out against his

judgment. I don't believe he ever budged a hairsbreadth from his original position about wanting to be a

preacher and not wanting to be a business man. Well, of course! I don't think business is all in all; but it must

have made the old man mad to find that without saying anything, or doing anything to show it, and after

seeming to come over to his ground, and really coming, practically, Coonrod was just exactly where he first

"Do you think so? It seems to me that everybody's got convictions. Beaton himself, who hasn't a principle to

throw at a dog, has got convictions the size of a barn. They ain't always the same ones, I know, but they're

always to the same effect, as far as Beaton's being Number One is concerned. The old man's got convictions

or did have, unless this thing lately has shaken him all upand he believes that money will do everything.

Colonel Woodburn's got convictions that he wouldn't part with for untold millions. Why, March, you got

"Well, neither do I; but I know you were ready to kick the trough over for them when the old man wanted us

"Oh yes," said March; he remembered the fact; but he was still uncertain just what the convictions were that

"I suppose we could have got along without you," Fulkerson mused aloud. "It's astonishing how you always

can get along in this world without the man that is simply indispensable. Makes a fellow realize that he could

take a day off now and then without deranging the solar system a great deal. Now here's Coonrodor, rather,

he isn't. But that boy managed his part of the schooner so well that I used to tremble when I thought of his

getting the better of the old man and going into a convent or something of that kind; and now here he is,

snuffed out in half a second, and I don't believe but what we shall be sailing along just as chipper as usual

inside of thirty days. I reckon it will bring the old man to the point when I come to talk with him about who's

to be put in Coonrod's place. I don't like very well to start the subject with him; but it's got to be done some

"Yes," March admitted. "It's terrible to think how unnecessary even the best and wisest of us is to the

purposes of Providence. When I looked at that poor young fellow's face sometimesso gentle and true and

pure I used to think the world was appreciably richer for his being in it. But are we appreciably poorer for

"No, I don't reckon we are," said Fulkerson. "And what a lot of the raw material of all kinds the Almighty

must have, to waste us the way He seems to do. Think of throwing away a precious creature like Coonrod

Dryfoos on one chance in a thousand of getting that old fool of a Lindau out of the way of being clubbed! For

I suppose that was what Coonrod was up to. Say! Have you been round to see Lindau today?"

Something in the tone or the manner of Fulkerson startled March. "No! I haven't seen him since yesterday."

"Well, I don't know," said Fulkerson. "I guess I saw him a little while after you did, and that young doctor

Or not worried, exactly; they can't afford to let such things worry them, I suppose; but"

"I think I'll go now," said March, with a pang at heart. He had gone every day to see Lindau, but this day he

had thought he would not go, and that was why his heart smote him. He knew that if he were in Lindau's

place Lindau would never have left his side if he could have helped it. March tried to believe that the case

was the same, as it stood now; it seemed to him that he was always going to or from the hospital; he said to

himself that it must do Lindau harm to be visited so much. But be knew that this was not true when he was

met at the door of the ward where Lindau lay by the young doctor, who had come to feel a personal interest in

"Oh no. He has been failing very fast since you saw him yesterday, and now" They had been walking

softly and talking softly down the aisle between the long rows of beds. "Would you care to see him?"

The doctor made a slight gesture toward the white canvas screen which in such places forms the

deathchamber of the poor and friendless. "Come round this wayhe won't know you! I've got rather fond

of the poor old fellow. He wouldn't have a clergymansort of agnostic, isn't he? A good many of these

They both stopped. Lindau's grand, patriarchal head, foreshortened to their view, lay white upon the pillow,

and his broad, white beard flowed upon the sheet, which heaved with those long last breaths. Beside his bed

Margaret Vance was kneeling; her veil was thrown back, and her face was lifted; she held clasped between

In spite of the experience of the whole race from time immemorial, when death comes to any one we know

we helplessly regard it as an incident of life, which will presently go on as before. Perhaps this is an

instinctive perception of the truth that it does go on somewhere; but we have a sense of death as absolutely

the end even for earth only if it relates to some one remote or indifferent to us. March tried to project Lindau

to the necessary distance from himself in order to realize the fact in his case, but he could not, though the man

with whom his youth had been associated in a poetic friendship had not actually reentered the region of his

affection to the same degree, or in any like degree. The changed conditions forbade that. He had a soreness of

heart concerning him; but he could not make sure whether this soreness was grief for his death, or remorse

for his own uncandor with him about Dryfoos, or a foreboding of that accounting with his conscience which

he knew his wife would now exact of him down to the last minutest particular of their joint and several

He felt something knock against his shoulder, and he looked up to have his hat struck from his head by a

horse's nose. He saw the horse put his foot on the hat, and he reflected, "Now it will always look like an

accordion," and he heard the horse's driver address him some sarcasms before he could fully awaken to the

situation. He was standing bareheaded in the middle of Fifth Avenue and blocking the tide of carriages

flowing in either direction. Among the faces put out of the carriage windows he saw that of Dryfoos looking

from a coupe. The old man knew him, and said, "Jump in here, Mr. March"; and March, who had

mechanically picked up his hat, and was thinking, " Now I shall have to tell Isabel about this at once, and she

will never trust me on the street again without her," mechanically obeyed. Her confidence in him had been

undermined by his being so near Conrad when he was shot; and it went through his mind that he would get

Dryfoos to drive him to a hatter's, where he could buy a new hat, and not be obliged to confess his narrow

escape to his wife till the incident was some days old and she could bear it better. It quite drove Lindau's

death out of his mind for the moment; and when Dryfoos said if he was going home he would drive up to the

first crossstreet and turn back with him, March said he would be glad if he would take him to a hatstore.

The old man put his head out again and told the driver to take them to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. "There's a hat

store around there somewhere, seems to me," he said; and they talked of March's accident as well as they

could in the rattle and clatter of the street till they reached the place. March got his hat, passing a joke with

the hatter about the impossibility of pressing his old hat over again, and came out to thank Dryfoos and take

"If you ain't in any great hurry," the old man said, "I wish you'd get in here a minute. I'd like to have a little

"Oh, certainly," said March, and he thought: "It's coming now about what he intends to do with 'Every Other

Dryfoos called up to his driver, who bent his head down sidewise to listen: "Go over there on Madison

Avenue, onto that asphalt, and keep drivin' up and down till I stop you. I can't hear myself think on these

pavements," he said to March. But after they got upon the asphalt, and began smoothly rolling over it, he

seemed in no haste to begin. At last he said, "I wanted to talk with you about thatthat Dutchman that was at

my dinnerLindau," and March's heart gave a jump with wonder whether he could already have heard of

Lindau's death; but in an instant he perceived that this was impossible. "I been talkin' with Fulkerson about

March nodded; it seemed to him he could not speak. He could not make out from the close face of the old

man anything of his motive. It was set, but set as a piece of broken mechanism is when it has lost the power

to relax itself. There was no other history in it of what the man had passed through in his son's death.

"I don't know," Dryfoos resumed, looking aside at the cloth windowstrap, which he kept fingering, "as you

quite understood what made me the maddest. I didn't tell him I could talk Dutch, because I can't keep it up

with a regular German; but my father was Pennsylvany Dutch, and I could understand what he was saying to

you about me. I know I had no business to understood it, after I let him think I couldn't but I did, and I didn't

like very well to have a man callin' me a traitor and a tyrant at my own table. Well, I look at it differently

now, and I reckon I had better have tried to put up with it; and I would, if I could have known" He stopped

with a quivering lip, and then went on: "Then, again, I didn't like his talkin' that paternalism of his. I always

heard it was the worst kind of thing for the country; I was brought up to think the best government was the

one that governs the least; and I didn't want to hear that kind of talk from a man that was livin' on my money.

I couldn't bear it from him. Or I thought I couldn't beforebefore" He stopped again, and gulped. "I

reckon now there ain't anything I couldn't bear." March was moved by the blunt words and the mute stare

forward with which they ended. "Mr. Dryfoos, I didn't know that you understood Lindau's German, or I

shouldn't have allowed him he wouldn't have allowed himselfto go on. He wouldn't have knowingly

abused his position of guest to censure you, no matter how much he condemned you." "I don't care for it

now," said Dryfoos. "It's all past and gone, as far as I'm concerned; but I wanted you to see that I wasn't tryin'

"No; I see now," March assented, though he thought, his position still justified. "I wish"

"I don't know as I understand much about his opinions, anyway; but I ain't ready to say I want the men

dependent on me to manage my business for me. I always tried to do the square thing by my hands; and in

that particular case out there I took on all the old hands just as fast as they left their Union. As for the game I

March could have laughed to think how far this old man was from even conceiving of Lindau's point'of view,

and how he was saying the worst of himself that Lindau could have said of him. No one could have

characterized the kind of thing he had done more severely than he when he called it dog eat dog.

"There's a great deal to be said on both sides," March began, hoping to lead up through this generality to the

"Well, all I wanted him to know is that I wasn't trying to punish him for what he said about things in general.

You naturally got that idea, I reckon; but I always went in for lettin' people say what they please and think

"I don't suppose he bears malice for it," said Dryfoos, " but what I want to do is to have him told so. He could

understand just why I didn't want to be called hard names, and yet I didn't object to his thinkin' whatever he

"No one can speak to him, no one can tell him," March began again, but again Dryfoos prevented him from

"I understand it's a delicate thing; and I'm not askin' you to do it. What I would really like to doif you think

he could be prepared for it, some way, and could stand itwould be to go to him myself, and tell him just

what the trouble was. I'm in hopes, if I done that, he could see how I felt about it."

A picture of Dryfoos going to the dead Lindau with his vain regrets presented itself to March, and he tried

once more to make the old man understand. "Mr. Dryfoos," be said, "Lindau is past all that forever," and he

"I got a particular reason why I want him to believe it wasn't his ideas I objected tothem ideas of his about

the government carryin' everything on and givin' work. I don't understand 'em exactly, but I found a

writin'amongmy son'sthings" (he seemed to force the words through his teeth), "and I reckon

hethoughtthat way. Kind of a diarywhere he put downhis thoughts. My son and mewe differed

about a good many things." His chin shook, and from time to time he stopped. "I wasn't very good to him, I

reckon; I crossed him where I guess I got no business to cross him; but I thought everything ofCoonrod.

He was the best boy, from a baby, that ever was; just so patient and mild, and done whatever he was told. I

ought to 'a' let him been a preacher! Oh, my son! my son!" The sobs could not be kept back any longer; they

shook the old man with a violence that made March afraid for him; but he controlled himself at last with a

series of hoarse sounds like barks. "Well, it's all past and gone! But as I understand you from what you saw,

"That 'll do, then! I want you to have him come back and write for the book when he gets well. I want you to

find out and let me know if there's anything I can do for him. I'll feel as if I done itfor my son. I'll take

him into my own house, and do for him there, if you say so, when he gets so he can be moved. I'll wait on

him myself. It's what Coonrod 'd do, if he was here. I don't feel any hardness to him because it was him that

got Coonrod killed, as you might say, in one sense of the term; but I've tried to think it out, and I feel like I

was all the more beholden to him because my son died tryin' to save him. Whatever I do, I'll be doin' it for

Coonrod, and that's enough for me." He seemed to have finished, and he turned to March as if to hear what he

March hesitated. "I'm afraid, Mr. DryfoosDidn't Fulkerson tell you that Lindau was very sick?"

Now it had to come, though the fact had been latterly playing fast and loose with March's consciousness.

Something almost made him smile; the willingness he had once felt to give this old man pain; then he

consoled himself by thinking that at least he was not obliged to meet Dryfoos's wish to make atonement with

the fact that Lindau had renounced him, and would on no terms work for such a man as he, or suffer any

kindness from him. In this light Lindau seemed the harder of the two, and March had the momentary force to

"How did he take it? How could he bear it? Oh, Basil! I wonder you could have the heart to say it to him. It

"Yes, cruel enough, my dear," March owned to his wife, when they talked the matter over on his return home.

He could not wait till the children were out of the way, and afterward neither he nor his wife was sorry that he

had spoken of it before them. The girl cried plentifully for her old friend who was dead, and said she hated

Mr. Dryfoos, and then was sorry for him, too; and the boy listened to all, and spoke with a serious sense that

pleased his father. "But as to how he took it," March went on to answer his wife's question about

Dryfoos"how do any of us take a thing that hurts? Some of us cry out, and some of us don't. Dryfoos drew

a kind of long, quivering breath, as a child does when it grievesthere's something curiously simple and

primitive about himand didn't say anything. After a while he asked me how he could see the people at the

hospital about the remains; I gave him my card to the young doctor there that had charge of Lindau. I suppose

he was still carrying forward his plan of reparation in his mindto the dead for the dead. But how useless! If

he could have taken the living Lindau home with him, and cared for him all his days, what would it have

profited the gentle creature whose life his worldly ambition vexed and thwarted here? He might as well offer

a sacrifice at Conrad's grave. Children," said March, turning to them, "death is an exile that no remorse and

no love can reach. Remember that, and be good to every one here on earth, for your longing to retrieve any

harshness or unkindness to the dead will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you. I wonder," he mused, "if one

of the reasons why we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be hereafter isn't because if we were sure of

another world we might be still more brutal to one another here, in the hope of making reparation somewhere

else. Perhaps, if we ever come to obey the law of love on earth, the mystery of death will be taken away."

"Well"the ancestral Puritanism spoke in Mrs. March" these two old men have been terribly punished.

They have both been violent and wilful, and they have both been punished. No one need ever tell me there is

March always disliked to hear her talk in this way, which did both her head and heart injustice. "And

"Ah, well, if you put it in that way, yes. That goes on continually. That's another mystery."

He fell to brooding on it, and presently he heard his son saying, "I suppose, papa, that Mr. Lindau died in a

March was startled. He had always been so sorry for Lindau, and admired his courage and generosity so

much, that he had never fairly considered this question. "Why, yes," he answered; "he died in the cause of

disorder; he was trying to obstruct the law. No doubt there was a wrong there, an inconsistency and an

injustice that he felt keenly; but it could not be reached in his way without greater wrong."

"Yes; that's what I thought," said the boy. "And what's the use of our ever fighting about anything in

"We can, if we're honest, and don't buy and sell one another's votes," said his father. "And men like Lindau,

who renounce the American means as hopeless, and let their love of justice hurry them into sympathy with

violenceyes, they are wrong; and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause, as you say, Tom."

"Oh, I don't defend myself," said March. "I was there in the cause of literary curiosity and of conjugal

disobedience. But Conradyes, he had some business there: it was his business to suffer there for the sins of

others. Isabel, we can't throw aside that old doctrine of the Atonement yet. The life of Christ, it wasn't only in

healing the sick and going about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as great a mystery

as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or

less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even wish to suffer

for them. That's what has created the religious orders in all timesthe brotherhoods and sisterhoods that

belong to our day as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl like Margaret Vance, who

has everything that the world can offer her young beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the

"Yes, yes!" cried Mrs. March. "Howhow did she look there, Basil?" She had her feminine misgivings; she

was not sure but the girl was something of a poseuse, and enjoyed the picturesqueness, as well as the pain;

"Well," she said, when March had told again the little there was to tell, "I suppose it must be a great trial to a

"Oh, Christ came into the world to teach us how to live rightly in it, too. If we were all to spend our time in

hospitals, it would be rather dismal for the homes. But perhaps you don't think the homes are worth

He got up and kissed her. "I think the gimcrackeries are." He took the hat he had set down on the parlor table

"Well, that's right. I don't like you to wear them too long. Did you leave the old one to be pressed?"

"Well, the hatter seemed to think it was hardly worth pressing," said March. He decided that for the present

It was in a manner grotesque, but to March it was all the more natural for that reason, that Dryfoos should

have Lindau's funeral from his house. He knew the old man to be darkly groping, through the payment of

these vain honors to the dead, for some atonement to his son, and he imagined him finding in them such

No one knew what Lindau's religion was, and in default they had had the Anglican burial service read over

him; it seems so often the refuge of the homeless dead. Mrs. Dryfoos came down for the ceremony. She

understood that it was for Coonrod's sake that his father wished the funeral to be there; and she confided to

Mrs. March that she believed Coonrod would have been pleased. "Coonrod was a member of the 'Piscopal

Church; and fawther's doin' the whole thing for Coonrod as much as for anybody. He thought the world of

Coonrod, fawther did. Mela, she kind of thought it would look queer to have two funerals from the same

house, handrunnin', as you might call it, and one of 'em no relation, either; but when she saw how fawther

was bent on it, she give in. Seems as if she was tryin' to make up to fawther for Coonrod as much as she

March felt all the grotesqueness, the hopeless absurdity of Dryfoos's endeavor at atonement in these vain

obsequies to the man for whom he believed his son to have died; but the effort had its magnanimity, its

pathos, and there was a poetry that appealed to him in the reconciliation through death of men, of ideas, of

conditions, that could only have gone warring on in life. He thought, as the priest went on with the solemn

liturgy, how all the world must come together in that peace which, struggle and strive as we may, shall claim

us at last. He looked at Dryfoos, and wondered whether he would consider these rites a sufficient tribute, or

whether there was enough in him to make him realize their futility, except as a mere sign of his wish to

retrieve the past. He thought how we never can atone for the wrong we do; the heart we have grieved and

wounded cannot kindle with pity for us when once it is stilled; and yet we can put our evil from us with

penitence, and somehow, somewhere, the order of loving kindness, which our passion or our wilfulness has

Dryfoos, through Fulkerson, had asked all the more intimate contributors of 'Every Other Week' to come.

Beaton was absent, but Fulkerson had brought Miss Woodburn, with her father, and Mrs. Leighton and Alma,

to fill up, as he said. Mela was much present, and was official with the arrangement of the flowers and the

welcome of the guests. She imparted this impersonality to her reception of Kendricks, whom Fulkerson met

in the outer hall with his party, and whom he presented in whisper to them all. Kendricks smiled under his

breath, as it were, and was then mutely and seriously polite to the Leightons. Alma brought a little bunch of

flowers, which were lost in those which Dryfoos had ordered to be unsparingly provided.

It was a kind of satisfaction to Mela to have Miss Vance come, and reassuring as to how it would look to

have the funeral there; Miss Vance would certainly not have come unless it had been all right; she had come,

"No, she ain't a bit well, and she ain't been, ever since Coonrod died. I don't know, what's got over her," said

Mela. She added, "Well, I should 'a' thought Mr. Beaton would 'a' made out to 'a' come!"

"Beaton's peculiar," said Fulkerson. "If he thinks you want him he takes a pleasure in not letting you have

Christine kept her room, and for the most part kept her bed; but there seemed nothing definitely the matter

with her, and she would not let them call a doctor. Her mother said she reckoned she was beginning to feel

the spring weather, that always perfectly pulled a body down in New York; and Mela said if being as cross as

two sticks was any sign of spring fever, Christine had it bad. She was faithfully kind to her, and submitted

to all her humors, but she recompensed herself by the freest criticism of Christine when not in actual

attendance on her. Christine would not suffer Mrs. Mandel to approach her, and she had with her father a

sullen submission which was not resignation. For her, apparently, Conrad had not died, or had died in vain.

"Pshaw!" said Mela, one morning when she came to breakfast, "I reckon if we was to send up an old card of

Mr. Beaton's she'd rattle downstairs fast enough. If she's sick, she's lovesick. It makes me sick to see her."

Mela was talking to Mrs. Mandel, but her father looked up from his plate and listened. Mela went on: "I don't

know what's made the fellow quit comun'. But he was an aggravatun' thing, and no more dependable than

water. It's just like Air. Fulkerson said, if he thinks you want him he'll take a pleasure in not lettun' you have

him. I reckon that's what's the matter with Christine. I believe in my heart the girl 'll die if she don't git him."

Mela went on to eat her breakfast with her own good appetite. She now always came down to keep her father

company, as she said, and she did her best to cheer and comfort him. At least she kept the talk going, and she

had it nearly all to herself, for Mrs. Mandel was now merely staying on provisionally, and, in the absence of

any regrets or excuses from Christine, was looking ruefully forward to the moment when she must leave even

The old man said nothing at table, but, when Mela went up to see if she could do anything for Christine, he

She gave them as fully as she could remember them, and the old man made no comment on them. But he

went out directly after, and at the 'Every Other Week' office he climbed the stairs to Fulkerson's room and

asked for Beaton's address. No one yet had taken charge of Conrad's work, and Fulkerson was running the

thing himself, as he said, till he could talk with Dryfoos about it. The old man would not look into the empty

room where he had last seen his son alive; he turned his face away and hurried by the door.

The course of public events carried Beaton's private affairs beyond the reach of his simple first intention to

renounce his connection with 'Every Other Week.' In fact, this was not perhaps so simple as it seemed, and

long before it could be put in effect it appeared still simpler to do nothing about the matterto remain

passive and leave the initiative to Dryfoos, to maintain the dignity of unconsciousness and let recognition of

any change in the situation come from those who had caused the change. After all, it was rather absurd to

propose making a purely personal question the pivot on which his relations with 'Every Other Week' turned.

He took a hint from March's position and decided that he did not know Dryfoos in these relations; he knew

only Fulkerson, who had certainly had nothing to do with Mrs. Mandel's asking his intentions. As he reflected

upon this he became less eager to look Fulkerson up and make the magazine a partner of his own sufferings.

This was the soberer mood to which Beaton trusted that night even before he slept, and he awoke fully

confirmed in it. As he examined the offence done him in the cold light of day, he perceived that it had not

come either from Mrs. Mandel, who was visibly the faltering and unwilling instrument of it, or from

Christine, who was altogether ignorant of it, but from Dryfoos, whom he could not hurt by giving up his

place. He could only punish Fulkerson by that, and Fulkerson was innocent. Justice and interest alike dictated

the passive course to which Beaton inclined; and he reflected that he might safely leave the punishment of

Dryfoos to Christine, who would find out what had happened, and would be able to take care of herself in any

Beaton did not go to the office during the week that followed upon this conclusion; but they were used there

to these sudden absences of his, and, as his work for the time was in train, nothing was made of his staying

away, except the sarcastic comment which the thought of him was apt to excite in the literary department. He

no longer came so much to the Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no state of mind to miss any one there except

Miss Woodburn, whom he never missed. Beaton was left, then, unmolestedly awaiting the course of destiny,

when he read in the morning paper, over his coffee at Maroni's, the deeply scareheaded story of Conrad's

death and the clubbing of Lindau. He probably cared as little for either of them as any man that ever saw

them; but he felt a shock, if not a pang, at Conrad's fate, so out of keeping with his life and character. He did

not know what to do; and he did nothing. He was not asked to the funeral, but he had not expected that, and,

when Fulkerson brought him notice that Lindau was also to be buried from Dryfoos's house, it was without

his usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away. In his sort, and as much as a man could who was

necessarily so much taken up with himself, he was sorry for Conrad's father; Beaton had a peculiar tenderness

for his own father, and he imagined how his father would feel if it were he who had been killed in Conrad's

place, as it might very well have been; he sympathized with himself in view of the possibility; and for once

they were mistaken who thought him indifferent and merely brutal in his failure to appear at Lindau's

He would really have gone if he had known how to reconcile his presence in that house with the terms of his

effective banishment from it; and he was rather forgivingly finding himself wronged in the situation, when

Dryfoos knocked at the studio door the morning after Lindau's funeral. Beaton roared out, "Come in!" as he

always did to a knock if he had not a model; if he had a model he set the door slightly ajar, and with his

palette on his thumb frowned at his visitor and told him he could not come in. Dryfoos fumbled about for the

knob in the dim passageway outside, and Beaton, who had experience of people's difficulties with it,

suddenly jerked the door open. The two men stood confronted, and at first sight of each other their quiescent

dislike revived. Each would have been willing to turn away from the other, but that was not possible. Beaton

snorted some sort of inarticulate salutation, which Dryfoos did not try to return; he asked if he could see him

alone for a minute or two, and Beaton bade him come in, and swept some paintblotched rags from the chair

which he told him to take. He noticed, as the old man sank tremulously into it, that his movement was like

that of his own father, and also that he looked very much like Christine. Dryfoos folded his hands

tremulously on the top of his hornhandled stick, and he was rather finely haggard, with the dark hollows

round his black eyes and the fall of the muscles on either side of his chin. He had forgotten to take his soft,

Dryfoos suddenly pulled himself together from the dreary absence into which he fell at first. "Young man,"

he began, "maybe I've come here on a fool's errand," and Beaton rather fancied that beginning.

But it embarrassed him a little, and he said, with a shy glance aside, "I don't know what you mean." "I

reckon," Dryfoos answered, quietly, "you got your notion, though. I set that woman on to speak to you the

way she done. But if there was anything wrong in the way she spoke, or if you didn't feel like she had any

right to question you up as if we suspected you of anything mean, I want you to say so."

"I ain't very well up in the ways of the world, and I don't pretend to be. All I want is to be fair and square with

everybody. I've made mistakes, though, in my time" He stopped, and Beaton was not proof against the

misery of his face, which was twisted as with some strong physical ache. "I don't know as I want to make any

more, if I can help it. I don't know but what you had a right to keep on comin', and if you had I want you to

say so. Don't you be afraid but what I'll take it in the right way. I don't want to take advantage of anybody,

Beaton did not find the humiliation of the man who had humiliated him so sweet as he could have fancied it

might be. He knew how it had come about, and that it was an effect of love for his child; it did not matter by

what ungracious means she had brought him to know that he loved her better than his own will, that his wish

for her happiness was stronger than his pride; it was enough that he was now somehow brought to give proof

of it. Beaton could not be aware of all that dark coil of circumstance through which Dryfoos's present action

evolved itself; the worst of this was buried in the secret of the old man's heart, a worm of perpetual torment.

What was apparent to another was that he was broken by the sorrow that had fallen upon him, and it was this

that Beaton respected and pitied in his impulse to be frank and kind in his answer.

"No, I had no right to keep coming to your house in the way I did, unlessunless I meant more than I ever

said." Beaton added: "I don't say that what you did was usualin this country, at any rate; but I can't say you

were wrong. Since you speak to me about the matter, it's only fair to myself to say that a good deal goes on in

"And you say Mrs. Mandel done right?" asked Dryfoos, as if he wished simply to be assured of a point of

"That's all I wanted to know," said Dryfoos; but apparently he had not finished, and he did not go, though the

silence that Beaton now kept gave him a chance to do so. He began a series of questions which had no

relation to the matter in hand, though they were strictly personal to Beaton. "What countryman are you?" he

"He's in the monument business, as he calls it. He's a tombstone cutter." Now that he was launched, Beaton

saw no reason for not declaring, "My father's always been a poor man, and worked with his own hands for his

living." He had too slight esteem socially for Dryfoos to conceal a fact from him that he might have wished to

"Well, that's right," said Dryfoos. "I used to farm it myself. I've got a good pile of money together, now. At

first it didn't come easy; but now it's got started it pours in and pours in; it seems like there was no end to it.

I've got well on to three million; but it couldn't keep me from losin' my son. It can't buy me back a minute of

He grieved this out as if to himself rather than to Beaton, who, scarcely ventured to say, "I knowI am very

"Well, I don't know," said Beaton, a little scornfully. "You don't. take a thing of that kind up, I fancy. I

"My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did stop him or I thought I did. But I reckon he was a preacher, all

the same, every minute of his life. As you say, it ain't any use to try to stop a thing like that. I reckon if a child

has got any particular bent, it was given to it; and it's goin' against the grain, it's goin' against the law, to try to

bend it some other way. There's lots of good business men, Mr. Beaton, twenty of 'em to every good

"I imagine more than twenty," said Beaton, amused and touched through his curiosity as to what the old man

"I lost two little fellerstwins," said Dryfoos, sadly. "But we hain't ever had but just the five. Ever take

"Yes," said Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the queries as seriously as the rest. "I don't think I am good at it."

Dryfoos got to his feet. "I wish you'd paint a likeness of my son. You've seen him plenty of times. We won't

Beaton was astonished, and in a mistaken way he was disgusted. He saw that Dryfoos was trying to undo

Mrs. Mandel's work practically, and get him to come again to his house; that he now conceived of the offence

given him as condoned, and wished to restore the former situation. He knew that he was attempting this for

Christine's sake, but he was not the man to imagine that Dryfoos was trying not only to tolerate him, but to

like him; and, in fact, Dryfoos was not wholly conscious himself of this end. What they both understood was

that Dryfoos was endeavoring to get at Beaton through Conrad's memory; but with one this was its dedication

to a purpose of self sacrifice, and with the other a vulgar and shameless use of it.

"Why not?" Dryfoos persisted. "We got some photographs of him; he didn't like to sit very well; but his

"I couldn't do itI couldn't. I can't even consider it. I'm very sorry. I would, if it were possible. But it isn't

"It isn't that, Mr. Dryfoos. But I'm not in the way of that kind of thing any more."

The old man did not notice him. He sat with his head fallen forward, and his chin resting on his folded hands.

Thinking of the portrait, he saw Conrad's face before him, reproachful, astonished, but all gentle as it looked

when Conrad caught his hand that day after he struck him; he heard him say, "Father!" and the sweat

gathered on his forehead. "Oh, my God!" he groaned. "No; there ain't anything I can do now."

Beaton did not know whether Dryfoos was speaking to him or not. He started toward him. "Are you ill?"

"No, there ain't anything the matter," said the old man. "But I guess I'll lay down on your settee a minute." He

tottered with Beaton's help to the aesthetic couch covered with a tigerskin, on which Beaton had once

thought of painting a Cleopatra; but he could never get the right model. As the old man stretched himself out

on it, pale and suffering, he did not look much like a Cleopatra, but Beaton was struck with his effectiveness,

and the likeness between him and his daughter; she would make a very good Cleopatra in some ways. All the

time, while these thoughts passed through his mind, he was afraid Dryfoos would die. The old man fetched

his breath in gasps, which presently smoothed and lengthened into his normal breathing. Beaton got him a

"You've got to excuse me," he said, getting back to his characteristic grimness with surprising suddenness,

when once he began to recover himself. "I've been through a good deal lately; and sometimes it ketches me

In his life of selfish immunity from grief, Beaton could not understand this experience that poignant sorrow

brings; he said to himself that Dryfoos was going the way of angina pectoris; as he began shuffling off the

tigerskin he said: "Had you better get up? Wouldn't you like me to call a doctor?"

"I'm all right, young man." Dryfoos took his hat and stick from him, but he made for the door so uncertainly

that Beaton put his hand under his elbow and helped him out, and down the stairs, to his coupe.

"I guess I'm able to go home alone," said Dryfoos, in a surly tone, and he put his head out of the window and

called up "Home!" to the driver, who immediately started off and left Beaton standing beside the curbstone.

Beaton wasted the rest of the day in the emotions and speculations which Dryfoos's call inspired. It was not

that they continuously occupied him, but they broke up the train of other thoughts, and spoiled him for work;

a very little spoiled Beaton for work; he required just the right mood for work. He comprehended perfectly

well that Dryfoos had made him that extraordinary embassy because he wished him to renew his visits, and

he easily imagined the means that had brought him to this pass. From what he knew of that girl he did not

envy her father his meeting with her when he must tell her his mission had failed. But had it failed? When

Beaton came to ask himself this question, he could only perceive that he and Dryfoos had failed to find any

ground of sympathy, and had parted in the same dislike with which they had met. But as to any other failure,

it was certainly tacit, and it still rested with him to give it effect. He could go back to Dryfoos's house, as

freely as before, and it was clear that he was very much desired to come back. But if he went back it was also

clear that he must go back with intentions more explicit than before, and now he had to ask himself just how

much or how little he had meant by going there. His liking for Christine had certainly not increased, but the

charm, on the other hand, of holding a leopardess in leash had not yet palled upon him. In his life of

inconstancies, it was a pleasure to rest upon something fixed, and the man who had no control over himself

liked logically enough to feel his control of some one else. The fact cannot other wise be put in terms, and the

attraction which Christine Dryfoos had for him, apart from this, escapes from all terms, as anything purely

and merely passional must. He had seen from the first that she was a cat, and so far as youth forecasts such

things, he felt that she would be a shrew. But he had a perverse sense of her beauty, and he knew a sort of life

in which her power to molest him with her temper could be reduced to the smallest proportions, and even

broken to pieces. Then the consciousness of her money entered. It was evident that the old man had

mentioned his millions in the way of a hint to him of what he might reasonably expect if he would turn and

be his sonin law. Beaton did not put it to himself in those words; and in fact his cogitations were not in

words at all. It was the play of cognitions, of sensations, formlessly tending to the effect which can only be

very clumsily interpreted in language. But when he got to this point in them, Beaton rose to magnanimity and

in a flash of dramatic reverie disposed of a part of Dryfoos's riches in placing his father and mother, and his

brothers and sisters, beyond all pecuniary anxiety forever. He had no shame, no scruple in this, for he had

been a pensioner upon others ever since a Syracusan amateur of the arts had detected his talent and given him

the money to go and study abroad. Beaton had always considered the money a loan, to be repaid out of his

future success; but he now never dreamt of repaying it; as the man was rich, he had even a contempt for the

notion of repaying him; but this did not prevent him from feeling very keenly the hardships he put his father

to in borrowing money from him, though he never repaid his father, either. In this reverie he saw himself

sacrificed in marriage with Christine Dryfoos, in a kind of admiring selfpity, and he was melted by the

spectacle of the dignity with which he suffered all the lifelong trials ensuing from his unselfishness. The

fancy that Alma Leighton came bitterly to regret him, contributed to soothe and flatter him, and he was not

There had been times when, as he believed, that beautiful girl's high thoughts had tended toward him; there

had been looks, gestures, even words, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; and Beaton

saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn's confidential appeal to him to get Margaret interested in art

again as something by no means necessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a master of

illusion. If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life of good works to which her niece was visibly

abandoning herself, Beaton could not doubt which she would choose; the only question was how real the

As he thought of these two girls, one so charming and the other so divine, it became indefinitely difficult to

renounce them for Christine Dryfoos, with her sultry temper and her earthbound ideals. Life had been so

flattering to Beaton hitherto that he could not believe them both finally indifferent; and if they were not

indifferent, perhaps he did not wish either of them to be very definite. What he really longed for was their

sympathy; for a man who is able to walk round quite ruthlessly on the feelings of others often has very tender

feelings of his own, easily lacerated, and eagerly responsive to the caresses of compassion. In this frame

Beaton determined to go that afternoon, though it was not Mrs. Horn's day, and call upon her in the hope of

possibly seeing Miss Vance alone. As he continued in it, he took this for a sign and actually went. It did not

fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs. Horn to talking again about her niece, and Mrs. Horn again

regretted that nothing could be done by the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works.

"Is she at home? Will you let me see her?" asked Beacon, with something of the scientific interest of a

physician inquiring for a patient whose symptoms have been rehearsed to him. He had not asked for her

"Yes, certainly," said Mrs. Horn, and she went herself to call Margaret, and she did not return with her. The

girl entered with the gentle grace peculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own consolation, could

not help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look. At sight of her, the vague hope he had never

quite relinquished, that they might be something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart. She wore

black, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress received a nunlike effect from the pensive

absence of her face. "Decidedly," thought Beaton, "she is far gone in good works."

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at once to talk to her of the subject he had

been discussing with her aunt. He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her back upon

"You know very well," she answered, " that I couldn't do anything in that way worth the time I should waste

on it. Don't talk of it, please. I suppose my aunt has been asking you to say this, but it's no use. I'm sorry it's

no use, she wishes it so much; but I'm not sorry otherwise. You can find the pleasure at least of doing good

work in it; but I couldn't find anything in it but a barren amusement. Mr. Wetmore is right; for me, it's like

She put aside the whole subject with a look. "You were not at Mr. Dryfoos's the other day. Have you seen

"I haven't been there for some time, no," said Beaton, evasively. But he thought if he was to get on to

anything, he had better be candid. "Mr. Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He's got a queer notion. He

"No, I couldn't do such a thing. It isn't in my way. I told him so. His son had a beautiful face an antique

profile; a sort of early Christian type; but I'm too much of a pagan for that sort of thing."

"Yes," Beaton continued, not quite liking her assent after he had invited it. He had his pride in being a pagan,

a Greek, but it failed him in her presence, now; and he wished that she had protested he was none. "He was a

singular creature; a kind of survival; an exile in our time and place. I don't know: we don't quite expect a saint

to be rustic; but with all his goodness Conrad Dryfoos was a country person. If he were not dying for a cause

you could imagine him milking." Beaton intended a contempt that came from the bitterness of having himself

His contempt did not reach Miss Vance. "He died for a cause," she said. "The holiest."

"I haven't been quite sure," said Beaton. "But in any case he had no business there. The police were on hand

"I can't let you talk so!" cried the girl. "It's shocking! Oh, I know it's the way people talk, and the worst is that

in the sight of the world it's the right way. But the blessing on the peacemakers is not for the policemen with

Beaton saw that she was nervous; he made his reflection that she was altogether too far gone in good works

for the fine arts to reach her; he began to think how he could turn her primitive Christianity to the account of

his modern heathenism. He had no deeper design than to get flattered back into his own favor far enough to

find courage for some sort of decisive step. In his heart he was trying to will whether he should or should not

go back to Dryfoos's house. It could not be from the caprice that had formerly taken him; it must be from a

definite purpose; again he realized this. "Of course; you are right," he said. "I wish I could have answered that

old man differently. I fancy he was bound up in his son, though he quarrelled with him, and crossed him. But

I couldn't do it; it wasn't possible." He said to himself that if she said " No," now, he would be ruled by her

agreement with him; and if she disagreed with him, he would be ruled still by the chance, and would go no

more to the Dryfooses'. He found himself embarrassed to the point of blushing when she said nothing, and

left him, as it were, on his own hands. "I should like to have given him that comfort; I fancy he hasn't much

He dropped his head in a fit attitude for compassion; but she poured no pity upon it.

"There is no comfort for us in ourselves," she said. "It's hard to get outside; but there's only despair within.

When we think we have done something for others, by some great effort, we find it's all for our own vanity."

"Yes," said Beaton. "If I could paint pictures for righteousness' sake, I should have been glad to do Conrad

Dryfoos for his father. I felt sorry for him. Did the rest seem very much broken up? You saw them all?"

"Not all. Miss Dryfoos was ill, her sister said. It's hard to tell how much people suffer. His mother seemed

bewildered. The younger sister is a simple creature; she looks like him; I think she must have something of

"Not much spirit of any kind, I imagine," said Beaton. "But she's amiably material. Did they say Miss

"I don't know. I haven't tried to see so much of them as I might, the past winter. I was not sure about her

when I met her; I've never seen much of people, except in my own set, and thevery poor. I have been

afraid I didn't understand her. She may have a kind of pride that would not let her do herself justice."

Beaton felt the unconscious dislike in the endeavor of praise. "Then she seems to you like a person whose

"I didn't say that. I can't judge of her at all; but where we don't know, don't you think we ought to imagine the

"Oh yes," said Beaton. "I didn't know but what I once said of them might have prejudiced you against them. I

have accused myself of it." He always took a tone of conscientiousness, of selfcensure, in talking with Miss

"Oh no. And I never allowed myself to form any judgment of her. She is very pretty, don't you think, in a

"She has a beautiful brunette coloring: that floury white and the delicate pink in it. Her eyes are beautiful."

"She's graceful, too," said Beaton. "I've tried her in color; but I didn't make it out."

"I've wondered sometimes," said Miss Vance, "whether that elusive quality you find in some people you try

to paint doesn't characterize them all through. Miss Dryfoos might be ever so much finer and better than we

"Perhaps," said Beaton, gloomily; and he went away profoundly discouraged by this last analysis of

Christine's character. The angelic imperviousness of Miss Vance to properties of which his own wickedness

was so keenly aware in Christine might have made him laugh, if it had not been such a serious affair with

him. As it was, he smiled to think how very differently Alma Leighton would have judged her from Miss

Vance's premises. He liked that clear vision of Alma's even when it pierced his own disguises. Yes, that was

the light he had let die out, and it might have shone upon his path through life. Beaton never felt so

poignantly the disadvantage of having on any given occasion been wanting to his own interests through his

selflove as in this. He had no one to blame but himself for what had happened, but he blamed Alma for what

might happen in the future because she shut out the way of retrieval and return. When be thought of the

attitude she had taken toward him, it seemed incredible, and he was always longing to give her a final chance

to reverse her final judgment. It appeared to him that the time had come for this now, if ever.

While we are still young we feel a kind of pride, a sort of fierce pleasure, in any important experience, such

as we have read of or heard of in the lives of others, no matter how painful. It was this pride, this pleasure,

which Beaton now felt in realizing that the toils of fate were about him, that between him and a future of

which Christine Dryfoos must be the genius there was nothing but the will, the mood, the fancy of a girl who

had not given him the hope that either could ever again be in his favor. He had nothing to trust to, in fact, but

his knowledge that he had once had them all; she did not deny that; but neither did she conceal that he had

flung away his power over them, and she had told him that they never could be his again. A man knows that

he can love and wholly cease to love, not once merely, but several times; he recognizes the fact in regard to

himself, both theoretically and practically; but in regard to women he cherishes the superstition of the

romances that love is once for all, and forever. It was because Beaton would not believe that Alma Leighton,

being a woman, could put him out of her heart after suffering him to steal into it, that he now hoped anything

from her, and she had been so explicit when they last spoke of that affair that he did not hope much. He said

to himself that he was going to cast himself on her mercy, to take whatever chance of life, love, and work

there was in her having the smallest pity on him. If she would have none, then there was but one thing he

could do: marry Christine and go abroad. He did not see how he could bring this alternative to bear upon

Alma; even if she knew what he would do in case of a final rejection, he had grounds for fearing she would

not care; but he brought it to bear upon himself, and it nerved him to a desperate courage. He could hardly

wait for evening to come, before he went to see her; when it came, it seemed to have come too soon. He had

wrought himself thoroughly into the conviction that he was in earnest, and that everything depended upon her

answer to him, but it was not till he found himself in her presence, and alone with her, that he realized the

truth of his conviction. Then the influences of her grace, her gayety, her arch beauty, above all, her good

sense, penetrated his soul like a subtle intoxication, and he said to himself that he was right; he could not live

without her; these attributes of hers were what he needed to win him, to cheer him, to charm him, to guide

him. He longed so to please her, to ingratiate himself with her, that he attempted to be light like her in his

"Oh, I dare say you wouldn't think it's dreadful," he said, with bitterness. "It's simply the case of a man who

"Can any one else help a man unmake a fool of himself?" she asked, with a smile.

She did not ask him what the case was, but he was launched now, and he pressed on. "I am the man who has

"And you can help me out if you will. Alma, I wish you could see me as I really am."

"No; you don't. You formulated me in a certain way, and you won't allow for the change that takes place in

She laughed, and he too, ruefully. "You're cruel. Not but what I deserve your mockery. But the change was

not from the capacity of making a fool of myself. I suppose I shall always do that more or lessunless you

help me. Alma! Why can't you have a little compassion? You know that I must always love you."

"Nothing makes me doubt that like your saying it, Mr. Beaton. But now you've broken your word"

"Yes, I'm to blame. I was wrong to let you comeafter that. And so I forgive you for speaking to me in that

way again. But it's perfectly impossible and perfectly useless for me to hear you any more on that subject;

"Forever. This is truly the last time I will ever see you if I can help it. Oh, I feel sorry enough for you!" she

said, with a glance at his face. "I do believe you are in earnest. But it's too late now. Don't let us talk about it

"And so goodbye ! Well, I've nothing more to say, and I might as well say that. I think you've been very

good to me. It seems to me as if you had beenshall I say it?trying to give me a chance. Is that so?" She

"You found it was no use! Well, I thank you for trying. It's curious to think that I once had your trust, your

regard, and now I haven't it. You don't mind my remembering that I had? It'll be some little consolation, and I

believe it will be some help. I know I can't retrieve the past now. It is too late. It seems too

preposterousperfectly luridthat I could have been going to tell you what a tangle I'd got myself in, and

to ask you to help untangle me. I must choke in the infernal coil, but I'd like to have the sweetness of your

He had gone on some such terms before; was it now for the last time? She believed it was. She felt in herself

a satiety, a fatigue, in which his good looks, his invented airs and poses, his real trouble, were all alike

repulsive. She did not acquit herself of the wrong of having let him think she might yet have liked him as she

once did; but she had been honestly willing to see whether she could. It had mystified her to find that when

they first met in New York, after their summer in St. Barnaby, she cared nothing for him; she had expected to

punish him for his neglect, and then fancy him as before, but she did not. More and more she saw him selfish

and mean, weakwilled, narrowminded, and hard hearted; and aimless, with all his talent. She admired his

talent in proportion as she learned more of artists, and perceived how uncommon it was; but she said to

herself that if she were going to devote herself to art, she would do it at firsthand. She was perfectly serene

and happy in her final rejection of Beaton; he had worn out not only her fancy, but her sympathy, too.

This was what her mother would not believe when Alma reported the interview to her; she would not believe

it was the last time they should meet; death itself can hardly convince us that it is the last time of anything, of

everything between ourselves and the dead. "Well, Alma," she said, "I hope you'll never regret what you've

"You may be sure I shall not regret it. If ever I'm lowspirited about anything, I'll think of giving Mr. Beaton

"And don't you expect to get married? Do you intend to be an old maid?" demanded her mother, in the bonds

of the superstition women have so long been under to the effect that every woman must wish to get married,

"Well, mamma," said Alma, "I intend being a young one for a few years yet; and then I'll see. If I meet the

right person, all well and good; if not, not. But I shall pick and choose, as a man does; I won't merely be

"What nonsense, mamma! A girl can get any man she wants, if she goes about. it the right way. And when

my 'fated fairy prince' comes along, I shall just simply make furious love to him and grab him. Of course, I

shall make a decent pretence of talking in my sleep. I believe it's done that way more than half the time. The

fated fairy prince wouldn't see the princess in nine cases out of ten if she didn't say something; he would go

Mrs. Leighton tried to look unspeakable horror; but she broke down and laughed. " Well, you are a strange

"I don't know about that. But one thing I do know, mamma, and that is that Prince Beaton isn't the F. F. P. for

me. How strange you are, mamma! Don't you think it would be perfectly disgusting to accept a person you

"And now I don't. And he didn't care for me once, and now he does. And so we're quits."

"You had better brace up and try, mamma; for as Mr. Fulkerson says, it's as sure as guns. From the crown of

his head to the sole of his foot, he's loathsome to me; and he keeps getting loathsomer. Ugh! Goodnight!"

"Well, I guess she's given him the grand bounce at last," said Fulkerson to March in one of their moments of

confidence at the office. "That's Mad's inference from appearancesand disappearances; and some little

"Well, I don't know that I have any criticisms to offer," said March. "It may be bad for Beaton, but it's a very

"Well, I don't know. I always kind of hoped it would turn out the other way. You know I always had a

"It's a pity she hadn't. I tell you, March, it ain't so easy for a girl to get married, here in the East, that she can

"It's a commonsense view. Beaton has the making of a firstrate fellow in him. He's the raw material of a

great artist and a good citizen. All he wants is somebody to take him in hand and keep him from makin' an

ass of himself and kickin' over the traces generally, and ridin' two or three horses bareback at once."

"It seems a simple problem, though the metaphor is rather complicated," said March. "But talk to Miss

He began to turn over the manuscripts on his table, and Fulkerson went away. But March found himself

thinking of the matter from time to time during the day, and he spoke to his wife about it when he went home.

"Yes, it's a pity she couldn't have made up her mind to have him. It's better for a woman to be married."

"I thought Paul only went so far as to say it was well. But what would become of Miss Leighton's artistic

"It seems to me you were able to tell at. that age, Isabel. But let's examine this thing. (This thing! I believe

Fulkerson is characterizing my whole parlance, as well as your morals.) Why shouldn't we rejoice as much at

a nonmarriage as a marriage? When we consider the enormous risks people take in linking their lives

together, after not half so much thought as goes to an ordinary horse trade, I think we ought to be glad

whenever they don't do it. I believe that this popular demand for the matrimony of others comes from our

novelreading. We get to thinking that there is no other happiness or goodfortune in life except marriage;

and it's offered in fiction as the highest premium for virtue, courage, beauty, learning, and saving human life.

We all know it isn't. We know that in reality marriage is dog cheap, and anybody can have it for the

askingif he keeps asking enough people. Byandby some fellow will wake up and see that a firstclass

story can be written from the anti marriage point of view; and he'll begin with an engaged couple, and

devote his novel to disengaging them and rendering them separately happy ever after in the denouement. It

"Why don't you write it, Basil?" she asked. "It's a delightful idea. You could do it splendidly."

He became fascinated with the notion. He developed it in detail; but at the end he sighed and said: "With this

'Every Other Week' work on my hands, of course I can't attempt a novel. But perhaps I sha'n't have it long."

She was instantly anxious to know what he meant, and the novel and Miss Leighton's affair were both

dropped out of their thoughts. "What do you mean? Has Mr. Fulkerson said anything yet?"

"Not a word. He knows no more about it than I do. Dryfoos hasn't spoken, and we're both afraid to ask him.

"But it's pretty uncomfortable, to be kept hanging by the gills so, as Fulkerson says."

March and Fulkerson said the same to each other; and Fulkerson said that if the old man pulled out, he did

not know what would happen. He had no capital to carry the thing on, and the very fact that the old man had

pulled out would damage it so that it would be hard to get anybody else to put it. In the mean time Fulkerson

was running Conrad's officework, when he ought to be looking after the outside interests of the thing; and

"I don't know which it's worse for, March: you or me. I don't know, under the circumstances, whether it's

worse to have a family or to want to have one. Of courseof course! We can't hurry the old man up. It

He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos for some money; he did not need any, but, he said maybe the

demand would act as a hint upon him. One day, about a week after Alma's final rejection of Beaton, Dryfoos

came into March's office. Fulkerson was out, but the old man seemed not to have tried to see him.

He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after he sat down, and looked at March awhile with his old eyes,

which had the vitreous glitter of old. eyes stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said, abruptly, "Mr. March,

"I don't understand, exactly," March began; but of course he understood that Dryfoos was offering to let him

The old man knew he understood, and so he did not explain. He said: "I am going to Europe, to take my

family there. The doctor thinks it might do my wife some good; and I ain't very well myself, and my girls

both want to go; and so we're goin'. If you want to take this thing off my hands, I reckon I can let you have it

in 'most any shape you say. You're all settled here in New York, and I don't suppose you want to break up,

much, at your time of life, and I've been thinkin' whether you wouldn't like to take the thing."

The word, which Dryfoos had now used three times, made March at last think of Fulkerson; he had been

filled too full of himself to think of any one else till he had mastered the notion of such wonderful good

fortune as seemed about falling to him. But now he did think of Fulkerson, and with some shame and

confusion; for he remembered how, when Dryfoos had last approached him there on the business of his

connection with 'Every Other Week,' he had been very haughty with him, and told him that he did not know

him in this connection. He blushed to find how far his thoughts had now run without encountering this

"No, I hain't. It ain't a question of management. It's a question of buying and selling. I offer the thing to you

March saw the real difference in the two cases, and he was glad to see it, because he could act more

decisively if not hampered by an obligation to consistency. "I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos; extremely

gratified; and it's no use pretending that I shouldn't be happy beyond bounds to get possession of 'Every Other

March hastened to say: "I feel bound to Mr. Fulkerson in every way. He got me to come here, and I couldn't

"Very soon, now," said March, looking at his watch. "He was only to be gone a moment," and while he went

on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered why the old man should have come first to speak with him, and

whether it was from some obscure wish to make him reparation for displeasures in the past, or from a distrust

"What? YesI don't knowI reckon. We got our passage engaged. It's on one of them French boats. We're

"Yes. I reckon we're goin' for them. 'Tain't likely my wife and me would want to pull up stakes at our age,"

"But you may find it do you good, Mr. Dryfoos," said March, with a kindness that was real, mixed as it was

"Well, maybe, maybe," sighed the old man; and he dropped his head forward. "It don't make a great deal of

"I hope Mrs. Dryfoos is as well as usual," said March, finding the ground delicate and difficult.

"Middlin', middlin'," said the old man. "My daughter Christine, she ain't very well."

"Oh," said March. It was quite impossible for him to affect a more explicit interest in the fact. He and

Dryfoos sat silent for a few moments, and he was vainly casting about in his thought for something else

which would tide them over the interval till Fulkerson came, when he heard his step on the stairs.

"Hello, hello!" he said. "Meeting of the clans!" It was always a meeting of the clans, with Fulkerson, or a

field day, or an extra session, or a regular conclave, whenever he saw people of any common interest

together. "Hain't seen you here for a good while, Mr. Dryfoos. Did think some of running away with 'Every

He gave Dryfoos his hand, and pushed aside the papers on the corner of March's desk, and sat down there,

and went on briskly with the nonsense he could always talk while he was waiting for another to develop any

matter of business; he told March afterward that he scented business in the air as soon as he came into the

Dryfoos seemed determined to leave the word to March, who said, after an inquiring look at him, "Mr.

"Well, that's good; that suits yours truly; March Fulkerson, publishers and proprietors, won't pretend it don't,

"The terms," said the old man, "are whatever you want 'em. I haven't got any more use for the concern" He

gulped, and stopped; they knew what he was thinking of, and they looked down in pity. He went on: "I won't

put any more money in it; but what I've put in a'ready can stay; and you can pay me four per cent."

"Well, I call that pretty white," said Fulkerson. "It's a bargain as far as I'm concerned. I suppose you'll want to

"Yes; I shall," said March. "I can see that it's a great chance; but I want to talk it over with my wife."

He went out, and Fulkerson began to dance round the room. He caught March about his stalwart girth and

tried to make him waltz; the office boy came to the door and looked on with approval.

"It's just throwing the thing into our mouths," said Fulkerson. "The wedding will be this day week. No cards!

Teedlelumptydiddle! Teedle lumptydee! What do you suppose he means by it, March ?" he asked,

bringing himself soberly up, of a sudden. "What is his little game? Or is he crazy? It don't seem like the

"I suppose," March suggested, "that he's got money enough, so that he don't care for this"

"Pshaw! You're a poet! Don't you know that the more money that kind of man has got, the more he cares for

money? It's some fancy of hislike having Lindau's funeral at his houseBy Jings, March, I believe you're

"I do! He seemed to take a kind of shine to you from the day you wouldn't turn off old Lindau; he did, indeed.

It kind of shook him up. It made him think you had something in you. He was deceived by appearances. Look

here! I'm going round to see Mrs. March with you, and explain the thing to her. I know Mrs. March! She

wouldn't believe you knew what you were going in for. She has a great respect for your mind, but she don't

"All right," said March, glad of the notion; and it was really a comfort to have Fulkerson with him to develop

all the points; and it was delightful to see how clearly and quickly she seized them; it made March proud of

her. She was only angry that they had lost any time in coming to submit so plain a case to her.

Mr. Dryfoos might change his mind in the night, and then everything would be lost. They must go to him

"Might as well send a district messenger; he'd get there next week," said Fulkerson. "No, no! It 'll all keep till

tomorrow, and be the better for it. If he's got this fancy for March, as I say, he ain't agoing to change it in a

single night. People don't change their fancies for March in a lifetime. Heigh?"

When Fulkerson turned up very early at the office next morning, as March did, he was less strenuous about

Dryfoos's fancy for March. It was as if Miss Woodburn might have blown cold upon that theory, as

something unjust to his own merit, for which she would naturally be more jealous than he.

March told him what he had forgotten to tell him the day before, though he had been trying, all through their

"Oh, ho!" cried Fulkerson. "That's the milk in the cocoanut, is it? Well, I thought there must be something."

But this fact had not changed Mrs. March at all in her conviction that it was Mr. Dryfoos's fancy for her

husband which had moved him to make him this extraordinary offer, and she reminded him that it had first

been made to him, without regard to Fulkerson. "And perhaps," she went on, "Mr. Dryfoos has been

changedsoftened; and doesn't find money all in all any more. He's had enough to change him, poor old

"Does anything from without change us?" her husband mused aloud. "We're brought up to think so by the

novelists, who really have the charge of people's thinking, nowadays. But I doubt it, especially if the thing

outside is some great event, something cataclysmal, like this tremendous sorrow of Dryfoos's."

"Then what is it that changes us?" demanded his wife, almost angry with him for his heresy.

"Well, it won't do to say, the Holy Spirit indwelling. That would sound like cant at this day. But the old

fellows that used to say that had some glimpses of the truth. They knew that it is the still, small voice that the

soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom. I suppose I should have to say that we didn't change at all. We

develop. There's the making of several characters in each of us; we are each several characters, and

sometimes this character has the lead in us, and sometimes that. From what Fulkerson has told me of

Dryfoos, I should say he had always had the potentiality of better things in him than he has ever been yet; and

perhaps the time has come for the good to have its chance. The growth in one direction has stopped; it's

begun in another; that's all. The man hasn't been changed by his son's death; it stunned, it benumbed him; but

it couldn't change him. It was an event, like any other, and it had to happen as much as his being born. It was

forecast from the beginning of time, and was as entirely an effect of his coming into the world"

"Then you think," he said, "that a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of God?" and he laughed

provokingly. But he went on more soberly: "I don't know what it all means Isabel though I believe it means

good. What did Christ himself say? That if one rose from the dead it would not avail. And yet we are always

looking for the miraculous! I believe that unhappy old man truly grieves for his son, whom he treated cruelly

without the final intention of cruelty, for he loved him and wished to be proud of him; but I don't think his

death has changed him, any more than the smallest event in the chain of events remotely working through his

nature from the beginning. But why do you think he's changed at all? Because he offers to sell me Every

Other Week on easy terms? He says himself that he has no further use for the thing; and he knows perfectly

well that he couldn't get his money out of it now, without an enormous shrinkage. He couldn't appear at this

late day as the owner, and sell it to anybody but Fulkerson and me for a fifth of what it's cost him. He can sell

it to us for all it's cost him; and four per cent. is no bad interest on his money till we can pay it back. It's a

good thing for us; but we have to ask whether Dryfoos has done us the good, or whether it's the blessing of

Heaven. If it's merely the blessing of Heaven, I don't propose being grateful for it."

"It's business," he assented. "Business is business; but I don't say it isn't disgusting. Lindau had a low opinion

"I think that with all his faults Mr. Dryfoos is a better man than Lindau," she proclaimed.

"Well, he's certainly able to offer us a better thing in 'Every Other Week,'" said March.

She knew he was enamoured of the literary finish of his cynicism, and that at heart he was as humbly and

Beaton was at his best when he parted for the last time with Alma Leighton, for he saw then that what had

happened to him was the necessary consequence of what he had been, if not what he had done. Afterward he

lost this clear vision; he began to deny the fact; he drew upon his knowledge of life, and in arguing himself

into a different frame of mind he alleged the case of different people who had done and been much worse

things than he, and yet no such disagreeable consequence had befallen them. Then he saw that it was all the

work of blind chance, and he said to himself that it was this that made him desperate, and willing to call evil

his good, and to take his own wherever he could find it. There was a great deal that was literary and factitious

and tawdry in the mood in which he went to see Christine Dryfoos, the night when the Marches sat talking

their prospects over; and nothing that was decided in his purpose. He knew what the drift of his mind was,

but he had always preferred to let chance determine his events, and now since chance had played him such an

ill turn with Alma, he left it the whole responsibility. Not in terms, but in effect, this was his thought as he

walked on uptown to pay the first of the visits which Dryfoos had practically invited him to resume. He had

an insolent satisfaction in having delayed it so long; if he was going back he was going back on his own

conditions, and these were to be as hard and humiliating as he could make them. But this intention again was

inchoate, floating, the stuff of an intention, rather than intention; an expression of temperament chiefly.

He had been expected before that. Christine had got out of Mela that her father had been at Beaton's studio;

and then she had gone at the old man and got from him every smallest fact of the interview there. She had

flung back in his teeth the goodwill toward herself with which he had gone to Beaton. She was furious with

shame and resentment; she told him he had made bad worse, that he had made a fool of himself to no end; she

spared neither his age nor his griefbroken spirit, in which his will could not rise against hers. She filled the

house with her rage, screaming it out upon him; but when her fury was once spent, she began to have some

hopes from what her father had done. She no longer kept her bed; every evening she dressed herself in the

dress Beaton admired the most, and sat up till a certain hour to receive him. She had fixed a day in her own

mind before which, if he came, she would forgive him all he had made her suffer: the mortification, the

suspense, the despair. Beyond this, she had the purpose of making her father go to Europe; she felt that she

could no longer live in America, with the double disgrace that had been put upon her.

Beaton rang, and while the servant was coming the insolent caprice seized him to ask for the young ladies

instead of the old man, as he had supposed of course he should do. The maid who answered the bell, in the

place of the reluctant Irishman of other days, had all his hesitation in admitting that the young ladies were at

He found Mela in the drawingroom. At sight of him she looked scared; but she seemed to be reassured by

his calm. He asked if he was not to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Dryfoos, too; and Mela said she

reckoned the girl had gone upstairs to tell her. Mela was in black, and Beaton noted how well the solid sable

became her rich redblonde beauty; he wondered what the effect would be with Christine.

But she, when she appeared, was not in mourning. He fancied that she wore the lustrous black silk, with the

breadths of white Venetian lace about the neck which he had praised, because he praised it. Her cheeks

burned with a Jacqueminot crimson; what should be white in her face was chalky white. She carried a plumed

ostrich fan, black and soft, and after giving him her hand, sat down and waved it to and fro slowly, as he

remembered her doing the night they first met. She had no ideas, except such as related intimately to herself,

and she had no gabble, like Mela; and she let him talk. It was past the day when she promised herself she

would forgive him; but as he talked on she felt all her passion for him revive, and the conflict of desires, the

desire to hate, the desire to love, made a dizzying whirl in her brain. She looked at him, half doubting

whether he was really there or not. He had never looked so handsome, with his dreamy eyes floating under

his heavy overhanging hair, and his pointed brown beard defined against his lustrous shirtfront. His mellowly

modulated, mysterious voice lulled her; when Mela made an errand out of the room, and Beaton crossed to

"Are you cold?" he asked, and she felt the cruel mockery and exultant consciousness of power in his tone, as

perhaps a wild thing feels captivity in the voice of its keeper. But now, she said she would still forgive him if

Mela came back, and the talk fell again to the former level; but Beaton had not said anything that really

meant what she wished, and she saw that he intended to say nothing. Her heart began to burn like a fire in her

Beaton asked when; and then he rose, and said if it was so soon, he supposed he should not see them again,

unless he saw them in Paris; he might very likely run over during the summer. He said to himself that he had

Christine rose, with a kind of gasp; and mechanically followed him to the door of the drawingroom; Mela

came, too; and while he was putting on his overcoat, she gurgled and bubbled in goodhumor with all the

world. Christine stood looking at him, and thinking how still handsomer he was in his overcoat; and that fire

burned fiercer in her. She felt him more than life to her and knew him lost, and the frenzy, that makes a

woman kill the man she loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she cannot have for all hers, possessed her

lawless soul. He gave his hand to Mela, and said, in his windharp stop, "Goodbye."

As he put out his hand to Christine, she pushed it aside with a scream of rage; she flashed at him, and with

both hands made a feline pass at the face he bent toward her. He sprang back, and after an instant of

"I, don't care," Christine shrieked. "I'll tear his eyes out!" She flew upstairs to her own room, and left the

Beaton found himself, he did not know how, in his studio, reeking with perspiration and breathless. He must

almost have run. He struck a match with a shaking hand, and looked at his face in the glass. He expected to

see the bleeding marks of her nails on his cheeks, but he could see nothing. He grovelled inwardly; it was all

There was a pistol among the dusty bricabrac on the mantel which he had kept loaded to fire at a cat in the

area. He took it and sat looking into the muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill him. It slipped

through his hand and struck the floor, and there was a report; he sprang into the air, feeling that he had been

shot. But he found himself still alive, with only a burning line along his cheek, such as one of Christine's

He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact that he had got his punishment in the right way, and that his

The Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the Dryfooses off on the French steamer. There was no longer any

business obligation on them to be civil, and there was greater kindness for that reason in the attention they

offered. 'Every Other Week' had been made over to the joint ownership of March and Fulkerson, and the

details arranged with a hardness on Dryfoos's side which certainly left Mrs. March with a sense of his

incomplete regeneration. Yet when she saw him there on the steamer, she pitied him; he looked wearied and

bewildered; even his wife, with her twitching head, and her prophecies of evil, croaked hoarsely out, while

she clung to Mrs. March's hand where they sat together till the leavetakers were ordered ashore, was less

pathetic. Mela was looking after both of them, and trying to cheer them in a joyful excitement. "I tell 'em it's

goun' to add ten years to both their lives," she said. "The voyage 'll do their healths good; and then, we're

gittun' away from that miser'ble pack o' servants that was eatun' us up, there in New York. I hate the place!"

she said, as if they had already left it. "Yes, Mrs. Mandel's goun', too," she added, following the direction of

Mrs. March's eyes where they noted Mrs. Mandel, speaking to Christine on the other side of the cabin. "Her

and Christine had a kind of a spat, and she was goun' to leave, but here only the other day, Christine offered

to make it up with her, and now they're as thick as thieves. Well, I reckon we couldn't very well 'a' got along

Mrs. March's eyes still dwelt upon Christine's face; it was full of a furtive wildness. She seemed to be

keeping a watch to prevent herself from looking as if she were looking for some one. "Do you know," Mrs.

March said to her husband as they jingled along homeward in the Christopher Street bobtail car, "I thought

she was in love with that detestable Mr. Beaton of yours at one time; and that he was amusing himself with

"I can bear a good deal, Isabel," said March, " but I wish you wouldn't attribute Beaton to me. He's the

"Well, at any rate, I hope, now, you'll both get rid of him, in the reforms you're going to carry out."

These reforms were for a greater economy in the management of 'Every Other Week;' but in their very nature

they could not include the suppression of Beaton. He had always shown himself capable and loyal to the

interests of the magazine, and both the new owners were glad to keep him. He was glad to stay, though he

made a gruff pretence of indifference, when they came to look over the new arrangement with him. In his

heart he knew that he was a fraud; but at least he could say to himself with truth that he had not now the

March and Fulkerson retrenched at several points where it had seemed indispensable to spend, as long as they

were not spending their own: that was only human. Fulkerson absorbed Conrad's department into his, and

March found that he could dispense with Kendricks in the place of assistant which he had lately filled since

Fulkerson had decided that March was overworked. They reduced the number of illustrated articles, and they

systematized the payment of contributors strictly according to the sales of each number, on their original plan

of cooperation: they had got to paying rather lavishly for material without reference to the sales.

Fulkerson took a little time to get married, and went on his wedding journey out to Niagara, and down the St.

Lawrence to Quebec over the line of travel that the Marches had taken on their wedding journey. He had the

pleasure of going from Montreal to Quebec on the same boat on which he first met March.

They have continued very good friends, and their wives are almost without the rivalry that usually embitters

the wives of partners. At first Mrs. March did not like Mrs. Fulkerson's speaking of her husband as the

Ownah, and March as the Edito'; but it appeared that this was only a convenient method of recognizing the

predominant quality in each, and was meant neither to affirm nor to deny anything. Colonel Woodburn

offered as his contribution to the celebration of the copartnership, which Fulkerson could not be prevented

from dedicating with a little dinner, the story of Fulkerson's magnanimous behavior in regard to Dryfoos at

that crucial moment when it was a question whether he should give up Dryfoos or give up March. Fulkerson

winced at it; but Mrs. March told her husband that now, whatever happened, she should never have any

misgivings of Fulkerson again; and she asked him if he did not think he ought to apologize to him for the

doubts with which he had once inspired her. March said that he did not think so.

The Fulkersons spent the summer at a seaside hotel in easy reach of the city; but they returned early to Mrs.

Leighton's, with whom they are to board till spring, when they are going to fit up Fulkerson's bachelor

apartment for housekeeping. Mrs. March, with her Boston scruple, thinks it will be odd, living over the

'Every Other Week' offices; but there will be a separate street entrance to the apartment; and besides, in New

The future of the Leightons promises no immediate change. Kendricks goes there a good deal to see the

Fulkersons, and Mrs. Fulkerson says he comes to see Alma. He has seemed taken with her ever since he first

met her at Dryfoos's, the day of Lindau's funeral, and though Fulkerson objects to dating a fancy of that kind

from an occasion of that kind, he justly argues with March that there can be no harm in it, and that we are

liable to be struck by lightning any time. In the mean while there is no proof that Alma returns Kendricks's

interest, if he feels any. She has got a little bit of color into the fall exhibition; but the fall exhibition is never

so good as the spring exhibition. Wetmore is rather sorry she has succeeded in this, though he promoted her

success. He says her real hope is in black and white, and it is a pity for her to lose sight of her original aim of

News has come from Paris of the engagement of Christine Dryfoos. There the Dryfooses met with the

success denied them in New York; many American plutocrats must await their apotheosis in Europe, where

society has them, as it were, in a translation. Shortly after their arrival they were celebrated in the news

papers as the first millionaire American family of naturalgas extraction who had arrived in the capital of

civilization; and at a French wateringplace Christine encountered her fatea nobleman full of present debts

and of duels in the past. Fulkerson says the old man can manage the debtor, and Christine can look out for the

duellist. "They say those fellows generally whip their wives. He'd better not try it with Christine, I reckon,

One day, shortly after their return to town in the autumn from the brief summer outing they permitted

themselves, the Marches met Margaret Vance. At first they did not know her in the dress of the sisterhood

which she wore; but she smiled joyfully, almost gayly, on seeing them, and though she hurried by with the

sister who accompanied her, and did not stay to speak, they felt that the peace that passeth understanding had

"Well, she is at rest, there can't be any doubt of that," he said, as he glanced round at the drifting black robe

"Yes, now she can do all the good she likes," sighed his wife. "I wonderI wonder if she ever told his father

"I don't know. I don't care. In any event, it would be right. She did nothing wrong. If she unwittingly sent him