THE WEB OF LIFE

BY

ROBERT HERRICK

AUTHOR OF "THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM, " "THE MAN WHO WINS, ""LITERARY LOVE-LETTERS AND OTHER STORIES"

TO G. R. C. 

 "_Hear from the spirit world this mystery: Creation is summed up, O man, in thee; Angel and demon, man and beast, art thou, Yea, thou art all thou dost appear to be!_"

THE WEB OF LIFE

PART I

CHAPTER I

The young surgeon examined the man as he lay on the hospital chair in whichward attendants had left him. The surgeon's fingers touched him deftly, here and there, as if to test the endurance of the flesh he had to dealwith. The head nurse followed his swift movements, wearily moving anincandescent light hither and thither, observing the surgeon with languidinterest. Another nurse, much younger, without the "black band, " watchedthe surgeon from the foot of the cot. Beads of perspiration chasedthemselves down her pale face, caused less by sympathy than by sheerweariness and heat. The small receiving room of St. Isidore's was close andstuffy, surcharged with odors of iodoform and ether. The Chicago spring, solong delayed, had blazed with a sudden fury the last week in March, and nowat ten o'clock not a capful of air strayed into the room, even through theopen windows that faced the lake. 

The patient groaned when the surgeon's fingers first touched him, thenrelapsed into the spluttering, labored respiration of a man in liquor or inheavy pain. A stolid young man who carried the case of instruments freshlysteaming from their antiseptic bath made an observation which the surgeonapparently did not hear. He was thinking, now, his thin face set in afrown, the upper teeth biting hard over the under lip and drawing up thepointed beard. While he thought, he watched the man extended on the chair, watched him like an alert cat, to extract from him some hint as to what heshould do. This absorption seemed to ignore completely the other occupantsof the room, of whom he was the central, commanding figure. The head nurseheld the lamp carelessly, resting her hand over one hip thrown out, herfigure drooping into an ungainly pose. She gazed at the surgeon steadily, as if puzzled at his intense preoccupation over the common case of a man"shot in a row. " Her eyes travelled over the surgeon's neat-fitting eveningdress, which was so bizarre here in the dingy receiving room, redolent ofbloody tasks. Evidently he had been out to some dinner or party, and whenthe injured man was brought in had merely donned his rumpled linen jacketwith its right sleeve half torn from the socket. A spot of blood hadalready spurted into the white bosom of his shirt, smearing its way overthe pearl button, and running under the crisp fold of the shirt. The headnurse was too tired and listless to be impatient, but she had been calledout of hours on this emergency case, and she was not used to the surgeon'spreoccupation. Such things usually went off rapidly at St. Isidore's, andshe could hear the tinkle of the bell as the hall door opened for anothercase. It would be midnight before she could get back to bed! The hospitalwas short-handed, as usual. 

The younger nurse was not watching the patient, nor the good-looking youngsurgeon, who seemed to be the special property of her superior. Even in herfew months of training she had learned to keep herself calm andserviceable, and not to let her mind speculate idly. She was gazing out ofthe window into the dull night. Some locomotives in the railroad yards justoutside were puffing lazily, breathing themselves deeply in the damp, spring air. One hoarser note than the others struck familiarly on thenurse's ear. That was the voice of the engine on the ten-thirty throughexpress, which was waiting to take its train to the east. She knew thatengine's throb, for it was the engine that stood in the yards every eveningwhile she made her first rounds for the night. It was the one which took_her_ train round the southern end of the lake, across the sandyfields, to Michigan, to her home. 

The engine puffed away, and she withdrew her gaze and glanced at thepatient. To her, too, the wounded man was but a case, another error ofhumanity that had come to St. Isidore's for temporary repairs, to startonce more on its erring course, or, perhaps, to go forth unfinished, remanded just there to death. The ten-thirty express was now pulling outthrough the yards in a powerful clamor of clattering switches and heartypulsations that shook the flimsy walls of St. Isidore's, and drew newgroans from the man on the chair. The young nurse's eyes travelled from himto a woman who stood behind the ward tenders, shielded by them and theyoung interne from the group about the hospital chair. This woman, havingno uniform of any sort, must be some one who had come in with the patient, and had stayed unobserved in the disorder of a night case. 

Suddenly the surgeon spoke; his words shot out at the head nurse. 

"We will operate now!"

The interne shrugged his shoulders, but he busied himself in selecting andwiping the instruments. Yet in spite of his decisive words the surgeonseemed to hesitate. 

"Was there any one with this man, --any friend?" he asked the head nurse. 

In reply she looked around vaguely, her mind thrown out of gear by thisunexpected delay. Another freak of the handsome surgeon!

"Any relative or friend?" the surgeon iterated peremptorily, looking aboutat the attendants. 

The little nurse at the foot of the patient, who was not impressed by theirregularity of the surgeon's request, pointed mutely to the figure behindthe ward tenders. The surgeon wheeled about and glanced almost savagely atthe woman, his eyes travelling swiftly from her head to her feet. The womanthus directly questioned by the comprehending glance returned his lookfreely, resentfully. At last when the surgeon's eyes rested once more onher face, this time more gently, she answered:

"I am his wife. "

This statement in some way humanized the scene. The ward tenders and theinterne stared at her blankly; the nurses looked down in unconsciouscomment on the twisted figure by their side. The surgeon drew his handsfrom his pockets and stepped toward the woman, questioning her meanwhilewith his nervous, piercing glance. For a moment neither spoke, but somekind of mute explanation seemed to be going on between them. 

She kept her face level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to theinquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, _his_ wife, the _wife_ of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl. ' And the surgeon's face, alive with a newpreoccupation, seemed to reply: 'Yes, I know! You need not pain yourself bytelling me. '

The patient groaned again, and the surgeon came back at once to the urgentpresent--the case. He led the way to one side, and turning his back uponthe group of assistants he spoke to the woman in low tones. 

"This man, your husband, is pretty badly off. He's got at least two bulletsin bad places. There isn't much chance for him--in his condition, " heexplained brusquely, as if to reconcile his unusual procedure withbusiness-like methods. 

"But I should operate, " he continued; "I shall operate unless there areobjections--unless you object. "

His customary imperious manner was struggling with a special feeling forthis woman before him. She did not reply, but waited to hear where her partmight come in. Her eyes did not fall from his face. 

"There's a chance, " the surgeon went on, "that a certain operation now willbring him around all right. But to-morrow will be too late. "

His words thus far had something foolish in them, and her eyes seemed tosay so. If it was the only chance, and his custom was to operate in suchcases, --if he would have operated had she not been there, why did he gothrough this explanation?

"There may be----complications in his recovery, " he said at last, in lowtones. "The recovery may not be complete. "

She did not seem to understand, and the surgeon frowned at his failure, after wrenching from himself this frankness. The idea, the personal ideathat he had had to put out of his mind so often in operating in hospitalcases, --that it made little difference whether, indeed, it might be a greatdeal wiser if the operation turned out fatally, --possessed his mind. Couldshe be realizing that, too, in her obstinate silence? He tried anotherexplanation. 

"If we do not operate, he will probably have a few hours ofconsciousness--if you had something to say to him?"

Her face flushed. He humiliated her. He must know that she had nothing tosay to _him_, as well as if he had known the whole story. 

"We could make him comfortable, and who knows, to-morrow might not be toolate!" The surgeon ended irritably, impatient at the unprofessionalfrankness of his words, and disgusted that he had taken this woman into hisconfidence. Did she want him to say: 'See here, there's only one chance ina thousand that we can save that carcass; and if he gets that chance, itmay not be a whole one--do you care enough for him to run that dangerousrisk?' But she obstinately kept her own counsel. The professional mannerthat he ridiculed so often was apparently useful in just such cases asthis. It covered up incompetence and hypocrisy often enough, but one couldnot be human and straightforward with women and fools. And women and foolsmade up the greater part of a doctor's business. 

Yet the voice that said, "I am his wife, " rang through his mind andsuggested doubts. Under the miserable story that he had instinctivelyimaged, there probably lay some tender truth. 

"There's a chance, you see!" he resumed more tenderly, probing her for anevidence. "All any of us have, except that he is not in a condition for anoperation. "

This time her mouth quivered. She was struggling for words. "Why do you askme?" she gasped. "What--" but her voice failed her. 

"I should operate, " the surgeon replied gently, anticipating her question. "I, we should think it better that way, only sometimes relatives object. "

He thought that he had probed true and had found what he was after. 

"It is a chance, " she said audibly, finding her voice. "You must do whatyou think--best. I have nothing to say to him. You need not delay forthat. "

"Very well, " the surgeon replied, relieved that his irregular confidencehad resulted in the conventional decision, and that he had not brought onhimself a responsibility shared with her. "You had best step into theoffice. You can do no good here. "

Then, dismissing the unusual from his mind, he stepped quickly back to thepatient. The younger nurse was bathing the swollen, sodden face with apieceof gauze; the head nurse, annoyed at the delay, bustled about, preparingthe dressings under the direction of the interne. 

The wife had not obeyed the doctor's direction to leave the room, however, and remained at the window, staring out into the soft night. At last, whenthe preparations were completed, the younger nurse came and touched her. "You can sit in the office, next door; they may be some time, " she urgedgently. 

As the woman turned to follow the nurse, the surgeon glanced at her oncemore. He was conscious of her calm tread, her admirable self-control. Thesad, passive face with its broad, white brow was the face of a woman whowas just waking to terrible facts, who was struggling to comprehend a worldthat had caught her unawares. She had removed her hat and was carrying itloosely in her hand that had fallen to her side. Her hair swept back in twowaves above the temples with a simplicity that made the head distinguished. Even the nurses' caps betrayed stray curls or rolls. Her figure was large, and the articulation was perfect as she walked, showing that she had hadthe run of fields in her girlhood. Yet she did not stoop as is the habit ofcountry girls; nor was there any unevenness of physique due to hard, manuallabor. 

As she passed the huddle of human flesh stretched out in the wheel-chair, awave of color swept over her face. Then she looked up to the surgeon andseemed to speak to him, as to the one human being in a world of puppets. 'You understand; you understand. It is terrible!'

The surgeon's brown eyes answered hers, but he was puzzled. Had he probedher aright? It was one of those intimate moments that come to nervouslyorganized people, when the petty detail of acquaintanceship and fact isneedless, when each one stands nearly confessed to the other. And then sheleft the room. 

The surgeon proceeded without a word, working intently, swiftly, dexterously. At first the head nurse was too busy in handling bowls andholding instruments to think, even professionally, of the operation. Theinterne, however, gazed in admiration, emitting exclamations of delight asthe surgeon rapidly took one step after another. Then he was sent forsomething, and the head nurse, her chief duties performed, drew herselfupright for a breath, and her keen, little black eyes noticed aninvoluntary tremble, a pause, an uncertainty at a critical moment in thedoctor's tense arm. A wilful current of thought had disturbed his action. The sharp head nurse wondered if Dr. Sommers had had any wine that evening, but she dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against theornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the languidsummer air thus early in the year would shake any man's nerve. But the headnurse understood well that such a wavering of will or muscle must not occuragain, or the hairbreadth chance the drunken fellow had----

She watched that bared arm, her breath held. The long square fingers closedonce more with a firm grip on the instrument. "Miss Lemoris, some No. 3gauze. " Then not a sound until the thing was done, and the surgeon hadturned away to cleanse his hands in the bowl of purple antiseptic wash. 

"My!" the head nurse exclaimed, "Dr. Trip ain't in it. " But the surgeon'sface wore a preoccupied, sombre look, irresponsive to the nurse'sadmiration. While she helped the interne with the complicated dressing, thelittle nurse made ready for removal to the ward. Then when one of the wardtenders had wheeled the muffled figure into the corridor, she hurriedacross to the office. 

"It's all over, " she whispered blithely to the wife, who sat in a dullabstraction, oblivious of the hospital flurry. "And it's going to be allright, I just know. Dr. Sommers is _so_ clever, he'd save a dead man. You had better go now. No use to see him to-night, for he won't come out ofthe opiate until near morning. You can come tomorrow morning, and p'r'apsDr. Sommers will get you a pass in. Visitors only Thursdays and Sundayafternoons usually. "

She hurried off to her duties in the ward. The woman did not rise at once. She did not readjust her thoughts readily; she seemed to be waiting in thechance of seeing some one. The surgeon did not come out of the receivingroom; there was a sound of wheels in the corridor just outside the officedoor, followed by the sound of shuffling feet. Through the open door shecould see two attendants wheeling a stretcher with a man lying motionlessupon it. They waited in the hall outside under a gas-jet, which cast aflickering light upon the outstretched form. This was the next case, whichhad been waiting its turn while her husband was in the receiving room, --ahand from the railroad yards, whose foot had slipped on a damp rail; now apulpy, almost shapeless mass, thinly disguised under a white sheet that hadfallen from his arms and head. She got up and walked out of the room. Shewas not wanted there: the hospital had turned its momentary swift attentionto another case. As she passed the stretcher, the bearers shifted theirburden to give her room. The form on the stretcher moaned indistinctly. 

She looked at the unsightly mass, in her heart envious of his condition. There were things in this world much more evil than this bruised flesh ofwhat had once been a human being. 

CHAPTER II

The next morning Dr. Sommers took his successor through, the surgical ward. Dr. Raymond, whose place he had been holding for a month, was a young, carefully dressed man, fresh from a famous eastern hospital. The nurseseyed him favorably. He was absolutely correct. When the surgeons reachedthe bed marked 8, Dr. Sommers paused. It was the case he had operated onthe night before. He glanced inquiringly at the metal tablet which hungfrom the iron cross-bars above the patient's head. On it was printed inlarge black letters the patient's name, ARTHUR C. PRESTON; on the next linein smaller letters, Admitted March 26th. The remaining space on the cardwas left blank to receive the statement of regimen, etc. A nurse was givingthe patient an iced drink. After swallowing feebly, the man relapsed into asemi-stupor, his eyes opening and closing vacantly. 

As he lay under the covering of a sheet, his arms thrust out bare from theshort-sleeved hospital shirt, his unshaven flushed face contrasting withthe pallid and puffy flesh of neck and arms, he gave an impression ofsensuality emphasized by undress. The head was massive and well formed, andbeneath the bloat of fever and dissipation there showed traces ofrefinement. The soft hands and neat finger-nails, the carefully trimmedhair, were sufficient indications of a kind of luxury. The animalism of theman, however, had developed so early in life that it had obliterated allstrong markings of character. The flaccid, rather fleshy features werethose of the sensual, prodigal young American, who haunts hotels. Cleanshaven and well dressed, the fellow would be indistinguishable from thethousands of overfed and overdrunk young business men, to be seen every dayin the vulgar luxury of Pullman cars, hotel lobbies, and large bar-rooms. 

The young surgeon studied the patient thoughtfully. He explained the casebriefly to his successor, as he had all the others, and before leaving thebed, he had the nurse take the patient's temperature. "Only two degrees offever, " he commented mechanically; "that is very good. Has his wife--hasany one been in to see him?" The head nurse, who stood like an automaton atthe foot of the bed, replied that she had seen no one; in any case, thedoorkeeper would have refused permission unless explicit orders had beengiven. 

Then the doctors continued their rounds, followed by the correct headnurse. When they reached the end of the ward, Dr. Sommers remarkeddisconnectedly: "No. 8 there, the man with the gun-shot wounds, will getwell, I think; but I shouldn't wonder if mental complications followed. Ihave seen cases like that at the Bicetre, where operations on an alcoholicpatient produced paresis. The man got well, " he added harshly, as ifkicking aside some dull formula; "but he was a hopeless idiot. "

The new surgeon stared politely without replying. Such an unprofessionaland uncalled-for expression of opinion was a new experience to him. In theBoston hospital resident surgeons did not make unguarded confidences evento their colleagues. 

The two men finished their inspection without further incident, and went tothe office to examine the system of records. After Sommers had left hissuccessor, he learned from the clerk that "No. 8" had been entered as, "Commercial traveller; shot three times in a saloon row. " Mrs. Preston hadcalled, --from her and the police this information came, --had been informedthat her husband was doing well, but had not asked to see him. She had leftan address at some unknown place a dozen miles south. 

The surgeon's knowledge of the case ended there. As in so many instances, he knew solely the point of tragedy: the before and the after went onoutside the hospital walls, beyond his ken. While he was busy in gettingaway from the hospital, in packing up the few things left in his room, hethought no more about Preston's case or any case. But the last thing he didbefore leaving St. Isidore's was to visit the surgical ward once more andglance at No. 8's chart. The patient was resting quietly; there was everypromise of recovery. 

He left the grimy brick hospital, and made his way toward the rooms he hadengaged in a neighborhood farther south. The weather was unseasonably warmand enervating, and he walked slowly, taking the broad boulevard inpreference to the more noisome avenues, which were thick with slush andmud. It was early in the afternoon, and the few carriages on the boulevardwere standing in front of the fashionable garment shops that occupied thecity end of the drive. He had an unusual, oppressive feeling of idleness;it was the first time since he had left the little Ohio college, where hehad spent his undergraduate years, that he had known this emptiness ofpurpose. There was nothing for him to do now, except to dine at theHitchcocks' to-night. There would be little definite occupation probablyfor weeks, months, until he found some practice. Always hitherto, there hadbeen a succession of duties, tasks, ends that he set himself one on theheels of another, occupying his mind, relieving his will of allresponsibility. 

He was cast out now from his youth, as it were, at thirty-two, to find hisplace in the city, to create his little world. And for the first time sincehe had entered Chicago, seven months before, the city wore a face ofstrangeness, of complete indifference. It hummed on, like a self-absorbedmachine: all he had to do was not to get caught in it, involved, wrecked. For nearly a year he had been a part of it; and yet busy as he had been inthe hospital, he had not sought to place himself strongly. He had gone inand out, here and there, for amusement, but he had returned to thehospital. Now the city was to be his home: somewhere in it he must dig hisown little burrow. 

Unconsciously his gait expressed his detachment. He sauntered idly, lookingwith fresh curiosity at the big, smoke-darkened houses on the boulevard. AtTwenty-Second Street, a cable train clanged its way harshly across hispath. As he looked up, he caught sight of the lake at the end of thestreet, --a narrow blue slab of water between two walls. The vista had astrangely foreign air. But the street itself, with its drays lumbering intothe hidden depths of slimy pools, its dirty, foot-stained cement walks, hadthe indubitable aspect of Chicago. 

Along the boulevard carriages were passing more frequently. The clank ofmetal chains, the beat of hoofs upon the good road-bed, sounded smartly onthe ear. The houses became larger, newer, more flamboyant; richly dressed, handsome women were coming and going between them and their broughams. WhenSommers turned to look back, the boulevard disappeared in the vague, murkyregion of mephitic cloud, beneath which the husbands of those women weretoiling, striving, creating. He walked on and on, enjoying his leisure, speculating idly about the people and the houses. At last, as he nearedFortieth Street, the carriages passed less frequently. He turned back witha little chill, a feeling that he had left the warm, living thing and wastoo much alone. This time he came through Prairie and Calumet Avenues. Here, on the asphalt pavements, the broughams and hansoms rollednoiselessly to and fro among the opulent houses with tidy front grass plotsand shining steps. The avenues were alive with afternoon callers. Atseveral points there were long lines of carriages, attending a reception, or a funeral, or a marriage. 

The air and the relaxation of all purpose tired him. The scene of theprevious evening hung about his mind, coloring the abiding sense ofloneliness. His last triumph in the delicate art of his profession hadgiven him no exhilarating sense of power. He saw the woman's face, miserable and submissive, and he wondered. But he brought himself up with ajerk: this was the danger of permitting any personal feeling or speculationto creep into professional matters. 

 * * * * *

In his new rooms on Twenty-Eighth Street, there was an odor of staletobacco, permeating the confusion created by a careless person. Dresser hadbeen occupying them lately. He had found Sam Dresser, whom he had known asa student in Europe, wandering almost penniless down State Street, and hadoffered him a lodging-place. 

"How did it come out?" Sommers asked the big, blond young man with abeer-stained mustache. 

The big fellow stopped, before answering, to stuff a pipe with tobacco, punching it in with a fat thumb. 

"They'll give me a job--mean one--three dollars a day--nine to five--underthe roof in a big loft, tenth story--with a lot of women hirelings. Regularsweatshop--educational sweatshop. "

Sommers took up some letters from the table and opened them. 

"Well, I've got to scare up some patients to live on, even to make threedollars a day. "

"You!" Dresser exclaimed, eying the letters with naive envy. "You are palswith the fat-fed capitalists. They will see that you get something easy, and one of these days you will marry one of their daughters. Then you willjoin the bank accounts, and good-by. "

He continued to rail, half jestingly, half in earnest, at McNamara andHills, --where he had obtained work, thanks to a letter which Sommers hadprocured for him, --at his companion's relations with the well-to-do, whichhe exaggerated offensively, and at the well-to-do themselves. 

"It was lucky for you, " Sommers remarked good-humoredly, "that I was thickenough with the bloodsuckers to get you that letter from Hitchcock. One ofus will have to stand in with the 'swilling, fat-fed capitalist. '"

"Are those Hitchcocks rich?" Dresser asked, his eye resting wistfully on asquare note that the young doctor had laid aside. 

"I suppose so, " Sommers answered. "Shall we go and have some beer?"

Dresser's blue eyes still followed the little pile of letters--eyes hotwith desires and regrets. A lust burned in them, as his companion couldfeel instinctively, a lust to taste luxury. Under its domination Dresserwas not unlike the patient in No. 8. 

When they turned into the boulevard, which was crowded at this hour oftwilight, men were driving themselves home in high carts, and through thewindows of the broughams shone the luxuries of evening attire. Dresser'sglance shifted from face to face, from one trap to another, sucking in theglitter of the showy scene. The flashing procession on the boulevardpricked his hungry senses, goaded his ambitions. The men and women in thecarriages were the bait; the men and women on the street sniffed it, cravingly, enviously. 

"There's plenty of swag in the place, " Dresser remarked. 

CHAPTER III

The Hitchcocks and the Sommerses came from the same little village inMaine; they had moved west, about the same time, a few years before theCivil War: Alexander Hitchcock to Chicago; the senior Dr. Sommers toMarion, Ohio. Alexander Hitchcock had been colonel of the regiment in whichIsaac Sommers served as surgeon. Although the families had seen little ofone another since the war, yet Alexander Hitchcock's greeting to the youngdoctor when he met the latter in Paris had been more than cordial. Something in the generous, lingering hand-shake of the Chicago merchant hadmade the younger man feel the strength of old ties. 

"I knew your mother, " Colonel Hitchcock had said, smiling gently into theyoung student's face. "I knew her very well, and your father, too, --he wasa brave man, a remarkable man. "

He had sympathetically rolled the hand he still retained in his broad palm. 

"If Marion had only been Chicago! You say he died two years ago? And yourmother long ago? Where will you settle?"

With this abrupt question, Dr. Sommers was taken at once into a kindlyintimacy with the Hitchcocks. Not long after this chance meeting there cameto the young surgeon an offer of a post at St. Isidore's. In thevacillating period of choice, the successful merchant's counsel had had agood deal of influence with Sommers. And his persistent kindliness sincethe choice had been made had done much to render the first year in Chicagoagreeable. 'We must start you right, ' he had seemed to say. 'We mustn'tlose you. '

Those pleasant days in Paris had been rendered more memorable to the youngdoctor by the friendship that came about between him and Miss Hitchcock--afriendship quite independent of anything her family might feel for him. Shelet him see that she made her own world, and that she would welcome him asa member of it. Accustomed as he had been only to the primitive daughtersof the local society in Marion and Exonia, or the chance intercourse withunassorted women in Philadelphia, where he had taken his medical course, and in European pensions, Louise Hitchcock presented a very definite anddelightful picture. That it was but one generation from Hill's Crossing, Maine, to this self-possessed, carefully finished young woman, wasunbelievable. Tall and finished in detail, from the delicate hands and fineears to the sharply moulded chin, she presented a puzzling contrast to theshort, thick, sturdy figure of her mother. And her quick appropriation ofthe blessings of wealth, her immediate enjoyment of the aristocraticassurances that the Hitchcock position had given her in Chicago, showedmarkedly in contrast with the tentativeness of Mrs. Hitchcock. LouiseHitchcock handled her world with perfect self-command; Mrs. Hitchcock wasrather breathless over every manifestation of social change. 

Parker Hitchcock, the son, Sommers had not seen until his coming toChicago. At a first glance, then, he could feel that in the son the familyhad taken a further leap from the simplicity of the older generation. Incidentally the young man's cool scrutiny had instructed him that thefamily had not committed Parker Hitchcock to _him_. Young Hitchcockhad returned recently to the family lumber yards on the West Side and thefamily residence on Michigan Avenue, with about equal disgust, so Sommersjudged, for both _milieux_. Even more than his sister, Parker wasconscious of the difference between the old state of things and the new. Society in Chicago was becoming highly organized, a legitimate business ofthe second generation of wealth. The family had the money to spend, and atYale in winter, at Newport and Beverly and Bar Harbor in summer, he hadlearned how to spend it, had watched admiringly how others spent theirwealth. He had begun to educate his family in spending, --in using tobrilliant advantage the fruits of thirty years' hard work and frugality. With his cousin Caspar Porter he maintained a small polo stable at LakeHurst, the new country club. On fair days he left the lumber yards at noon, while Alexander Hitchcock was still shut in behind the dusty glass doors ofhis office. His name was much oftener in the paragraphs of the city pressthan his parents': he was leading the family to new ideals. 

Ideals, Sommers judged, that were not agreeable to old Colonel Hitchcock, slightly menacing even in the eyes of the daughter, whose horizon waswider. Sommers had noticed the little signs of this heated familyatmosphere. A mist of undiscussed views hung about the house, out of whichflashed now and then a sharp speech, a bitter sigh. He had been at thehouse a good deal in a thoroughly informal manner. The Hitchcocks rarelyentertained in the "new" way, for Mrs. Hitchcock had a terror of formality. A dinner, as she understood it, meant a gathering of a few old friends, much hearty food served in unpretentious abundance, and a very little badwine. The type of these entertainments had improved lately under MissHitchcock's influence, but it remained essentially the same, --an occasionfor copious feeding and gossipy, neighborly chat. 

To-night, as Sommers approached the sprawling green stone house on MichiganAvenue, there were signs of unusual animation about the entrance. As hereached the steps a hansom deposited the bulky figure of Brome Porter, Mrs. Hitchcock's brother-in-law. The older man scowled interrogatively at theyoung doctor, as if to say: 'You here? What the devil of a crowd has Alecraked together?' But the two men exchanged essential courtesies and enteredthe house together. 

Porter, Sommers had heard, had once been Alexander Hitchcock's partner inthe lumber business, but had withdrawn from the firm years before. BromePorter was now a banker, as much as he was any one thing. It was easy tosee that the pedestrian business of selling lumber would not satisfy BromePorter. Popularly "rated at five millions, " his fortune had not come out oflumber. Alexander Hitchcock, with all his thrift, had not put by over amillion. Banking, too, would seem to be a tame enterprise for Brome Porter. Mines, railroads, land speculations--he had put his hand into them allmasterfully. Large of limb and awkward, with a pallid, rather stolid face, he looked as if Chicago had laid a heavy hand upon his liver, as if theCarlsbad pilgrimage were a yearly necessity. 'Heavy eating and drinking, strong excitements--too many of them, ' commented the professional glance ofthe doctor. 'Brute force, padded superficially by civilization, ' Sommersadded to himself, disliking Porter's cold eye shots at him. 'Young man, 'his little buried eyes seemed to say, 'young man, if you know what's goodfor you; if you are the right sort; if you do the proper thing, we'll pushyou. Everything in this world depends on being in the right carriage. 'Sommers was tempted whenever he met him to ask him for a good tip: heseemed always to have just come from New York; and when this barbarian wentto Rome, it was for a purpose, which expressed itself sooner or later overthe stock-ticker. But the tip had not come yet. 

As Sommers was reaching the end of his conversational rope with Porter, other guests arrived. Among them was Dr. Lindsay, a famous specialist inthroat diseases. The older doctor nodded genially to Sommers with the airof saying: 'I am so glad to find you _here_. This is the right placefor a promising young man. '

And Sommers in a flash suspected why he had been bidden: the good-naturedMiss Hitchcock wished to bring him a little closer to this influentialmember of his profession. 

"Shall we wait for them?" Dr. Lindsay asked, joining Sommers. "Porter hasgot hold of Carson, and they'll keep up their stories until some one haulsthem out. My wife and daughter have already gone down. How is St. Isidore's?"

"I left to-day. My term is up. I feel homesick already, " the young doctoranswered with a smile. "Chicago is so big, " he added. "I didn't know itbefore. "

"It's quite a village, quite a village, " Dr. Lindsay answered thoughtfully. "We'll have some more talk later, won't we?" he added confidentially, asthey passed downstairs. 

The Hitchcock house revealed itself in the floods of electric light aslarge and undeniably ugly. Built before artistic ambitions and cosmopolitanarchitects had undertaken to soften American angularities, it was merely acommodious building, ample enough for a dozen Hitchcocks to loll about in. Decoratively, it might be described as a museum of survivals from thevarious stages of family history. At each advance in prosperity, in socialideals, some of the former possessions had been swept out of the lowerrooms to the upper stories, in turn to be ousted by their more modernneighbors. Thus one might begin with the rear rooms of the third story tostudy the successive deposits. There the billiard chairs once did servicein the old home on the West Side. In the hall beside the Westminster clockstood a "sofa, " covered with figured velours. That had once adorned the oldTwentieth Street drawing-room; and thrifty Mrs. Hitchcock had notsufficiently readjusted herself to the new state to banish it to the floorabove, where it belonged with some ugly, solid brass andirons. In the sameway, faithful Mr. Hitchcock had seen no good reason why he should degradethe huge steel engraving of the Aurora, which hung prominently at the footof the stairs, in spite of its light oak frame, which was in shockingcontrast with the mahogany panels of the walls. Flanking the staircase wereother engravings, --Landseer's stags and the inevitable Queen Louise. Yetthrough the open arch, in a pleasant study, one could see a good Zorn, aVenom portrait, and some prints. This nook, formerly the library, had beengiven over to the energetic Miss Hitchcock. It was done inShereton, --imitation, but good imitation. From this vantage point theyounger generation planned an extended attack upon the irregular householdgods. 

Sommers realized for the first time how the Aurora and the Queen Louisemust worry Miss Hitchcock; how the neat Swedish maids and the hat-stand inthe hall must offend young Hitchcock. The incongruities of the house hadnever disturbed him. So far as he had noticed them, they accorded well withthe simple characters of his host and hostess. In them, as in the house, akeen observer could trace the series of developments that had taken placesince they had left Hill's Crossing. Yet the full gray beard with the broadshaved upper lip still gave the Chicago merchant the air of a New Englandworthy. And Alexander, in contrast with his brother-in-law, had knottyhands and a tanned complexion that years of "inside business" had notsufficed to smooth. The little habit of kneading the palm which you feltwhen he shook hands, and the broad, humorous smile, had not changed as theyears passed him on from success to success. Mrs. Hitchcock still slurredthe present participle and indulged in other idiomatic freedoms thatendeared her to Sommers. These two, plainly, were not of the generationthat is tainted by ambition. Their story was too well known, from theboarding-house struggle to this sprawling stone house, to be worth thevarnishing. Indeed, they would not tolerate any such detractions from theirwell-earned reputation. The Brome Porters might draw distinctions andprepare for a new social aristocracy; but to them old times were sweet andold friends dear. 

As the guests gathered in the large "front room, " Alexander Hitchcock stoodabove them, as the finest, most courteous spirit. There was race inhim--sweetness and strength and refinement--the qualities of the bestmanhood of democracy. This effect of simplicity and sweetness washeightened in the daughter, Louise. She had been born in Chicago, in thefirst years of the Hitchcock fight. She remembered the time when thebilliard-room chairs were quite the most noted possessions in the basementand three-story brick house on West Adams Street. She had followed thechairs in the course of the Hitchcock evolution until her aunt had insistedon her being sent east to the Beaumanor Park School. Two years of "refinedinfluences" in this famous establishment, with a dozen other girls fromnew-rich families, had softened her tones and prolonged her participles, but had touched her not essentially. Though she shared with her youngerbrother the feeling that the Hitchcocks were not getting the most out oftheir opportunities, she could understand the older people more than he. Ifshe sympathized with her father's belief that the boy ought to learn tosell lumber, or "do something for himself, " yet she liked the fact that heplayed polo. It was the right thing to be energetic, upright, respected; itwas also nice to spend your money as others did. And it was very, very niceto have the money to spend. 

To-night, as Sommers came across the hall to the drawing-room, she left thegroup about the door to welcome him. "Weren't you surprised, " she asked himwith an ironical laugh, "at the people, I mean--all ages and kinds? You seeParker had to be appeased. He didn't want to stay, and I don't know why heshould. So we gave him Laura Lindsay. " She nodded good-naturedly in thedirection of a young girl, whose sharp thin little face was turned joyfullytoward the handsome Parker. "And we added our cousin Caspar, not forconversation, but to give an illusion of youth and gayety. Caspar is thecaptain of the polo team. By the way, what do you think of polo?"

"I never had occasion to think, " the young doctor replied, scrutinizing aheavy, florid-faced young man whom he took to be Caspar Porter. 

"Well, polo is with us at breakfast and dinner. Papa doesn't approve, doesn't believe in young men keeping a stable as Caspar does. Mamma doesn'tknow what she believes. I am arbitrator--it's terrible, the newgeneration, " she broke off whimsically. 

"Which has the right of it?" Sommers asked idly. "The fathers who made themoney, or the sons who want to enjoy it?"

"Both; neither, " she laughed back with an air of comfortable tolerance. Shemight have added, 'You see, I like both kinds--you and Parker's set. '

"Do you know, Dr. Lindsay is here?"

Sommers smiled as he replied, --

"Yes; was it arranged?"

The girl blushed, and moved away. 

"He was anxious to meet you. "

"Of course, " the doctor replied ironically. 

"I could tell you more, " she added alluringly. 

"I have no doubt. Perhaps you had better not, however. "

Miss Hitchcock ceased to smile and looked at him without reply. She hadsomething on the tip of her tongue to tell him, something she had thoughtof pleasantly for the last three days, but she suspected that this man wasnot one who would like to take his good fortune from a woman's hand. 

"Dr. Lindsay is an old friend; we have known him for years. " She spokeneutrally. Sommers merely nodded. 

"He is very successful, _very_, " she added, giving in to her desire alittle. 

"Chicago is a good place for a throat specialist. "

"He is said to be the most--"

"What?"

"You know--has the largest income of any doctor in the city. "Sommers did not reply. At length the girl ventured once more. 

"I hope you will be nice to him. "

"There won't be any question of it. "

"You can be so stiff, so set; I have counted a great deal on this. "

"Politics, politics!" Sommers exclaimed awkwardly. "Who is the man with Mr. Porter?"

"Railway Gazette Carson? That's what he is called. He swallowsrailroads--absorbs 'em. He was a lawyer. They have a house on the NorthSide and a picture, a Sargent. But I'll keep the story. Come! you must meetMrs. Lindsay. "

"Politics, politics!" Sommers murmured to himself, as Miss Hitchcock movedacross the room. 

CHAPTER IV

At the table there were awkward silences, followed by spasmodic localbursts of talk. Sommers, who sat between Miss Hitchcock and Mrs. Lindsay, fell to listening to his host. 

"I was taken for you to-day, Brome, " Mr. Hitchcock said, with a touch ofhumor in his voice. 

Porter laughed at the apparent absurdity of the accusation. 

"I was detained at the office over at the yards. The men and the girls hadpretty nearly all gone. I was just about to leave, when a fellow opened thedoor--he looked like a Swede or a Norwegian. 

"'Is the boss here?' he asked. 

"'Yes, ' said I; 'what can I do for you?'

"'I wants a yob, a yob, ' he shouted, 'and no foolin'. I worked for de bossten years and never lost a day!'

"I thought the man was drunk. 'Who did you work for?' I asked. 'ForPullman, in de vorks, ' he said; then I saw how it was. He was one of thestrikers, or had lost his job before the strike. Some one told him you werein with me, Brome, and a director of the Pullman works. He had footed itclear in from Pullman to find you, to lay hands on you personally. "

Porter laughed rather grimly. 

"That's the first sign!" Carson exclaimed. 

"They'll have enough of it before the works open, " Porter added. 

Parker Hitchcock looked bored. Such things were not in good form; they camefrom the trade element in the family. His cousin Caspar had Miss Lindsay'sattention. She was describing a Polish estate where she had visited thepreceding summer. 

"Did you send him round to our office?" Porter asked jokingly. 

Sommers's keen eyes rested on his host's face inquiringly. 

"No-oh, " Alexander Hitchcock drawled; "I had a talk with him. "

"They are rather dangerous people to talk with, " Dr. Lindsay remarked. 

"He was a Norwegian, a big, fine-looking man. He was _all right_. Hecouldn't talk much English, but he knew that his folks were hungry. 'Yougif me a yob, ' he kept saying, until I explained I wasn't in the business, had nothing to do with the Pullman works. Then he sat down and looked atthe floor. 'I vas fooled. ' Well, it seems he did inlaying work, finecabinet work, and got good pay. He built a house for himself out in someplace, and he was fired among the first last winter, --I guess because hedidn't live in Pullman. "

"That's the story they use, " Brome Porter said sceptically. "You shouldcall the watchman; they're apt to be dangerous. "

"A crowd of 'em, " put in Carson, "were at the Pullman office this morning;wanted to _arbitrate_. "

He spoke deprecatingly of their innocence, but Porter's tones were harsh. 

"To arbitrate! to arbitrate! when we are making money by having 'em quit. "

Miss Hitchcock turned apprehensively to her companion. Her handsome, clearface was perplexed; she was distressed over the way the talk was going. 

"It's as bad as polo!" she exclaimed, in low tones. But the doctor did nothear her. 

"Is it so, " he was asking Colonel Hitchcock, "that the men who had beenthrifty enough to get homes outside of Pullman had to go first because theydidn't pay rent to the company? I heard the same story from a patient inthe hospital. "

By this time Caspar Porter had turned his attention to the conversation atthe other end of the table. His florid face was agape with astonishment atthe doctor's temerity. Parker Hitchcock shrugged his shoulders andmuttered something to Miss Lindsay. The older men moved in their chairs. It was an unhappy topic for dinner conversation in this circle. 

"Well, I don't know, " Colonel Hitchcock replied, a slight smile creepingacross his face. "Some say yes, and some say no. Perhaps Porter can tellyou. "

"We leave all that to the superintendent, " the latter replied stiffly. "Ihaven't looked into it. The works isn't a hospital. "

"That's a minor point, " Carson added, in a high-pitched voice. "The realthing is whether a corporation can manage its own affairs as it thinks bestor not. "

"The thrifty and the shiftless, " interposed Dr. 

Lindsay, nodding to his young colleague. 

"Well, the directors are a unit. That settles the matter, " Porter endeddogmatically. "The men may starve, but they'll never get back now. "

The young doctor's face set in rather rigid lines. He had made a mistake, had put himself outside the sympathies of this comfortable circle. MissHitchcock was looking into the flowers in front of her, evidently searchingfor some remark that would lead the dinner out of this uncomfortableslough, when Brome Porter began again sententiously:

"The laborer has got some hard lessons to learn. This trouble is only asmall part of the bigger trouble. He wants to get more than he is worth. And all our education, the higher education, is a bad thing. " He turnedwith marked emphasis toward the young doctor. "That's why I wouldn't give adollar to any begging college--not a dollar to make a lot of discontented, lazy duffers who go round exciting workingmen to think they're badlytreated. Every dollar given a man to educate himself above his naturalposition is a dollar given to disturb society. "

Before Sommers could accept the challenge in this speech, Miss Hitchcockasked, --

"But what did you do with your visitor, papa?"

"Well, we had some more talk, " he replied evasively. "Maybe that's why Imissed you, Brome, at the club. He stayed most an hour. "

"Did he go then?" the girl pressed on mischievously. 

"Well, I gave him a 'yob' over at the yards. It wasn't much of a 'yob'though. "

This speech aroused some laughter, and the talk drifted on in little wavesinto safer channels. The episode, however, seemed to have made an undueimpression upon Sommers. Miss Hitchcock's efforts to bring him into theconversation failed. As for Mrs. Lindsay, he paid her not the slightestattention. He was coolly taking his own time to think, without any sense ofsocial responsibility. 

"What is the matter?" his companion said to him at last, in her low, insistent voice. "You are behaving so badly. Why won't you do anything onewants you to?"

Sommers glanced at his companion as if she had shaken him out of a dream. Her dark eyes were gleaming with irritation, and her mouth trembled. 

"I had a vision, " Sommers replied coolly. 

"Well!" The man's egotism aroused her impatience, but she lowered her headto catch every syllable of his reply. 

"I seemed to see things in a flash--to feel an iron crust of prejudice. "

The girl's brow contracted in a puzzled frown, but she waited. The youngdoctor tried again to phrase the matter. 

"These people--I mean your comfortable rich--seem to have taken a kind ofoath of self-preservation. To do what is expected of one, to succeed, youmust take the oath. You must defend their institutions, and all that, " heblundered on. 

"I don't know what you mean, " the girl replied coolly, haughtily, raisingher head and glancing over the table. 

"I am not very clear. Perhaps I make a great deal of nothing. My remarkssound 'young' even to me. "

"I don't pretend to understand these questions. I wish men wouldn't talkbusiness at dinner. It is worse than polo!"

She swept his face with a glance of distrust, the lids of her eyes halflowered, as if to put a barrier between them. 

"Yes, " Sommers assented; "it is harder to understand. "

It was curious, he thought, that a woman could take on the new rights, thearistocratic attitude, so much more completely than a man. Miss Hitchcockwas a full generation ahead of the others in her conception of inherited, personal rights. As the dinner dragged on, there occurred no furtheropportunity for talk until near the end, when suddenly the clear, eventones of Miss Hitchcock's voice brought his idle musing to an end. 

"I hope you will talk with Dr. Lindsay. He is a very able man. And, " shehesitated a moment and then looked frankly at him, "he can do so much for ayoung doctor who has his way to make. "

"Don't you think that might make it harder for me to talk to him?" Sommersasked, irritated by her lack of tact. 

The girl's face flushed, and she pressed her lips together as if to pushback a sharp reply. 

"That is unfair. We are going now--but sometime we must talk it out. "

The men stretched themselves and rearranged their chairs in little groups. Parker Hitchcock, Carson, and young Porter--were talking horses; they madeno effort to include the young doctor in their corner. He was beginning tofeel uncomfortably stranded in the middle of the long room, when Dr. Lindsay crossed to his side. The talk at dinner had not put thedistinguished specialist in a sympathetic light, but the younger man feltgrateful for this act of cordiality. They chatted about St. Isidore's, about the medical schools in Chicago, and the medical societies. At lastDr. Lindsay suggested casually, as he refilled his liqueur-glass:

"You have made some plans?"

"No, not serious ones. I have thought of taking a vacation. Then there isanother hospital berth I could have. Head of a small hospital in a miningtown. But I don't like to leave Chicago, on the whole. "

"You are right, " the older physician remarked slowly. "Such a place wouldbury you; you would never be heard of. "

Sommers smiled at the penalty held out, but he did not protest. 

"There isn't any career in hospital work, anyway, for a steady thing. Youget side-tracked. "

"I like it better than family practice, " Sommers jerked out. "You don'thave to fuss with people, women especially. Then I like the excitement ofit. "

"That won't last long, " the older man smiled indulgently. "And you'll havea wife some day, who will make you take a different view. But there areother things--office practice. "

He dilated on the advantages of office practice, while the younger mansmoked and listened deferentially. Office practice offered a pleasantcompromise between the strenuous scientific work of the hospital and thegrind of family practice. There were no night visits, no dreary work withthe poor--or only as much as you cared to do, --and it paid well, if youtook to it. Sommers reflected that the world said it paid Lindsay aboutfifty thousand a year. It led, also, to lectureships, trusteeships--a massof affairs that made a man prominent and important in the community. 

Sommers listened attentively without questioning the agreeable, tactfuldoctor. He could see that something was in the air, that Lindsay was not aman to talk with this degree of intimacy out of pure charity or vanity. Butthe great specialist said nothing very definite after all: he let fall, casually, the fact that good men for office work--men of experience whowere skilful and tactful--were rare. He had just lost a valuable doctorfrom his staff. 

When the men returned to the drawing-room, Parker Hitchcock and his cousintook themselves off. The Lindsays went soon after. Sommers, who hadregained his good sense; tried to make his apologies to Miss Hitchcock. 

"Don't go yet, " she answered cordially. "They will all be disposed of soon, and we can have that talk. Go and look at my prints. "

In a few moments she came up behind him as he was studying the brush workof a little canvas. "I have been thinking of what you said at the table, Dr. Sommers. I have tried to think what you mean, but I can't. "

Her eyes opened in frank, tolerant inquiry. Sommers had seen her like thisa few times, and always with a feeling of nearness. 

"I don't believe that I can make you understand, " he began. 

"Try!"

"The feelings that make us act are generally too vague to be defended. Allthat I could do would be to describe a mood, a passion that takes me nowand then, and makes me want to smash things. "

She nodded her head comprehendingly. 

"Yes, I know that. "

"Not from the same reason, " Sommers laughed. 

"I will tell you what it is: you think the rich are unfair. You didn't likeUncle Brome's talk about the Pullman people. "

"No, and more than that, " he protested; "I don't know anything about thePullman matter; but I hate the--successful. I guess that's about it. "

"You think they are corrupt and luxurious and all that?"

As she spoke she waved one hand negligently toward the Aurora in the hall. They both laughed at the unspoken argument. 

"If you feel like that _here_--"

"I feel that way pretty much all the time in America, " he said bluntly. "Itisn't this house or that, this man's millions or that man's; it's the wholething. "

Miss Hitchcock looked nonplussed. 

"Life is based on getting something others haven't, --as much of it as youcan and as fast as you can. I never felt that so constantly as I have thelast few months. Do you think, " he went on hastily, "that Lindsay, that anydoctor, can _earn_ fifty thousand a year?"

"I don't know. I hate views. " Her voice sounded weary and defeated. 

Sommers rose to his feet, exclaiming, "I thought there were some prettydefinite ones, this evening. "

Miss Hitchcock started, but refused to take the challenge. 

They faced each other for a moment without speaking. Sommers could see thathis blundering words had placed him in a worse position than before. At thesame time he was aware that he regretted it; that "views" werecomparatively unimportant to a young woman; and that this woman, at least, was far better than views. 

"Good night, " she murmured, lowering her eyes as she gave him her hand. Hehesitated a moment, searching for an intelligent word, but finally heturned away without any further attempt to explain himself. 

It was good to be out in the soft March night, to feel once more the freestreets, which alone carry the atmosphere of unprivileged humanity. Themood of the evening was doubtless foolish, boyish, but it was none the lesskeen and convincing. He had never before had the inner, unknown elements ofhis nature so stirred; had never felt this blind, raging protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor soul with hisclamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who livedas if life were a huge poker game; the overfed, red-cheeked Caspar, whom heremembered to have seen only once before, when the young polo captain wasstupid drunk; the silly young cub of a Hitchcock. Even the girl was one ofthem. If it weren't for the women, the men would not be so keen on thescent for gain. The women taught the men how to spend, created the needsfor their wealth. And the social game they were instituting in Chicago wasso emptily imitative, an echo of an echo!

There was Carson: he was your image of modern power--the lean, hungry, seamed face, surmounted by a dirty-gray pall. He was clawing his way to thetop of the heap. 

Sommers stopped to laugh at himself. His fury was foolish, a meregeneralization of discontent from very little data. Still, it was a reliefto be out in the purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluentstone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of a cross street. His way lay through a territory of startling contrasts of wealth andsqualor. The public part of it--the street and the sidewalks--was equallydirty and squalid, once off the boulevard. The cool lake wind was pipingdown the cross streets, driving before it waste paper and dust. In hispreoccupation he stumbled occasionally into some stagnant pool. 

Should he take Lindsay's job, if he had the chance? Obstinately his mindreverted to a newspaper paragraph that had caught his eye months before: onthe occasion of some disturbance over women students in the Western MedicalCollege, Dr. Lindsay had told the men that "physicians should be especiallyconsiderate of women, if for no other reason, _because their success intheir profession would depend very largely on women_. " Certainly, if hehad to decide to-night, he would rather return to Marion, Ohio, than joinhis staff. Such a retreat from the glories of Chicago would beinconceivable to old Hitchcock and to the girl. He reflected that he shouldnot like to put himself away from her forever. 

St. Isidore's loomed ahead in the quiet street, its windows dark except forthe night light in the ward kitchens. He should like to turn in there for afew minutes, to see how the fellow was coming on. The brute ought not topull through. But it was too late: a new regime had begun; his littleperiod of sway had passed, leaving as a last proof of his art this humanjetsam saved for the nonce. And there rose in his heated mind the pitifulface of a resolute woman, questioning him: "You held the keys of life anddeath. Which have you given _me_?"

CHAPTER V

The Athenian Building raises its knife-like facade in the centre ofChicago, thirteen stories in all; to the lake it presents a broad wall ofsteel and glass. It is a hive of doctors. Layer after layer, their officesrise, circling the gulf of the elevator-well. At the very crown of thebuilding Dr. Frederick H. Lindsay and his numerous staff occupy almost theentire floor. In one corner, however, a small room embedded in the heavycornice is rented by a dentist, Dr. Ephraim Leonard. The dentist's officeis a snug little hole, scarcely large enough for a desk, a chair, a case ofinstruments, a "laboratory, " and a network of electric appliances. From theone broad window the eye rests upon the blue shield of lake; nearer, almostat the foot of the building, run the ribboned tracks of the railroad yards. They disappear to the south in a smoky haze; to the north they end at thefoot of a lofty grain elevator. Beyond, factories quietly belch sootyclouds. 

Dr. Lindsay coveted this office, but Dr. Leonard clung tenaciously to hislittle strip, every inch that he could possibly pay rent for. He had beenthere since that story was finished. The broad view rested him. When heceased to peer into a patient's mouth, he pushed up his spectacles and tooka long look over the lake. Sometimes, if the patient was human and hadenough temperament to appreciate his treasure, he would idle away a quarterof an hour chatting, enjoying the sun and the clear air of the lake. Whenthe last patient had gone, he would take the chair and have the view tohimself, as from a proscenium box. 

The little office was a busy place: besides the patients there were comingand going a stream of people, --agents, canvassers, acquaintances, andpromoters of schemes. A scheme was always brewing in the dentist's office. Now it was a plan to exploit a new suburb innumerable miles to the west. Again it was a patent contrivance in dentistry. Sometimes the scheme wasnothing more than a risky venture in stocks. These affairs were conductedwith an air of great secrecy in violent whisperings, emphasized by blows ofthe fist upon the back of the chair. The favored patients were deftlyinformed of "a good thing, " the dentist taking advantage of the oneinevitable moment of receptivity for his thrifty promotions. The schemes, it must be said, had never come to much. If Dr. Leonard had survivedwithout any marked loss a dozen years of venturing, he might be said tohave succeeded. He had no time for other games; this was his poker. Theywere always the schemes of little people, very complex in organization, needing a wheel here, a cog there, finally breaking down from the lack ofcapital. Then some "big people" collected the fragments to cast them intothe pot once more. Dr. Leonard added another might-have-been and a new sighto the secret chamber of his soul. But his face was turned outward toreceive the next scheme. 

This time it happened to be a wonderful new process of evolving gas fromdirt and city refuse. He had been explaining it gently to a woman in thechair, from pure intellectual interest, to distract the patient's mind. Hewas not tinkering with teeth this time, however. The woman was sitting inthe chair because it was the only unoccupied space. She had removed her hatand was looking steadily into the lake. At last, when the little officeclerk had left, the talk about the gas generator ceased, and the womanturned her wistful face to the old dentist. There was a sombre pause. 

"Yes, " the dentist muttered finally, "I saw it in the paper Tuesday, no, Monday--it was Monday, wasn't it? and I hoped you'd come in. "

The woman moved her hands restlessly, as if to ask where else she could go. 

"They most always do turn up, " he continued bluntly; "them that no onewants, like your husband. What are you going to do?"

The woman turned her face back to the lake; it was evident that she had noplan. 

"I thought, " the dentist began, recalling her story, "I thought when you'dstarted in the schools--it was a mighty hard thing to do to get you in; ittook all my pull on Mahoney. "

The woman's face flushed. "I know, " she murmured. "They don't want marriedwomen. But if it hadn't been for Mahoney--"

"Then, " interrupted the dentist, "he'd been good enough to let you alonefor most a year, and I thought you were out of your troubles. "

"I knew he would come back, " she interposed quietly. 

"But now he comes back just as everything is nice, and worse, you comeacross him when he is nigh bein' shot to death. Then, worse yet, by whatthe papers said, you went to the hospital with him and gave the whole thingaway. When I saw the name, Alves Preston, printed out, I swore. "

Mrs. Preston smiled at his vehemence. 

"Tell me, Alves, " the old man asked in a rambling manner, "how did you evercome to marry him? I've wanted to ask you that from the first. "

Mrs. Preston rose from the chair and pulled her cloak about her. 

"I couldn't make you understand; I don't myself _now_. "

"D'yer love him?" the dentist persisted, not ungently. 

"Should I be here if I did?" she flashed resentfully. "I was a country girlaway at school, more foolish than one of those dumb Swedes in my class, andhe--"

But she turned again to the window, with an impatient gesture. 

"It is something wrong in a woman, " she murmured. "But she has no chance, no chance. I can't tell you now all the things. "

"Well, " the dentist said soothingly, "let's see just how bad it is. Hasyour boss, the superintendent, or the principal spoke to you, turned youout? I see the reporter went around to the school, nosing after something. "

"They'd just transferred me--miles south, " she answered indifferently. "Iwas glad of it. I don't have to meet the spying, talking teachers, andthink all the time the pupils know it from their parents. They're allforeigners where I am now. They say the Everglade school is the next thingto the last. It's a kind of Purgatory, where they keep you for a few monthsbefore they dismiss you. "

"I didn't know any one was ever dismissed from a Chicago school, " thedentist remarked. 

"Oh, sometimes when the superintendents or the supervisors don't want you. There is a supervisor in the Everglade district--" she stopped a moment, and then continued tranquilly--"he was very intimate at first. I thought hewanted to help me to get on in the school. But he wanted--other things. Perhaps when he doesn't--succeed--that will be the end. "

"It'll blow over, " the dentist said encouragingly. "If the supervisortroubles you much, I'll see Mahoney. You've changed your boarding-place?"

"Yes--but, " she admitted in a moment, "they know it at the hospital. "

Dr. Leonard rubbed his bristly face irritably. 

"I've been to see him--it seemed I ought to--I was the only one whoWOULD in the whole world--the only one to speak a word to him. "

"That makes it worse, " the dentist commented depressingly. "I don't know asyou could get free now if you wanted to. You've put your hand to the ploughagain, my girl, and it's a long furrow. "

"What do you mean?"

"The hospital folks know you're his wife, and they'll expect you to takehim in when he gets better. "

"I suppose so, " Mrs. Preston admitted. "But I suppose, anyway, I shouldtake care of him until he can go away. "

Dr. Leonard threw up his hands in disgust. 

"Alves, why don't you go straight off and get a divorce--for desertion?"

Mrs. Preston opened the heavy lids of her eyes; her face slowly flushed. 

"That would be the end of it?" she asked, in a low voice. 

"Of course! I'll give you the money, and testify for you. Go right ahead, now he is laid up, and have it all ready when he gets out. "

"I couldn't do that, " Mrs. Preston answered, the color fading from herface, and the white lids closing over the eyes. "Besides, he may neverrecover fully. I don't think they expect him to at the hospital. "

"All the more reason, " protested the dentist. "It's mighty hard, " he addedsympathetically. "Women are mostly children, the better sort, and you feelbad, even when they're in trouble through their own foolishness. "

"There is no release, no divorce, " Mrs. Preston continued. "A thing isdone, and it's done. There's no ending it in this life. You can run away, or close your eyes, but you don't escape. He has been--my husband. "

"That's silly! Now let me tell you what I'll do. " The dentist squaredhimself and raised the little lignum-vitae mallet, which he used to drivehome his fillings. 

"Don't you fool round any more. You can't love that fellow, --think younever did now, --and he's given you no reason to be very nice to him. Youjust drop him where you are, and start out alone and make the best of it. You can't do that in Chicago now. Get out of Chicago to-morrer. Go east. Take your maiden name; no one is goin' to be hurt by not knowin' you'remarried. I guess you ain't likely to try it again. "

He paused for objections, and evidently found one himself. 

"If you ain't got the money handy, I'll just fix you up. That gas generatorI was talking to you about is going to make me mints of money. You can goright away to my sister-in-law in Worcester, Ohio. Guess _he_ won'ttrouble you much there. What do you say?"

She had nothing very cogent to say, but the dentist felt an impalpableobstruction of will, unintelligible and persistent. His enthusiasm grew ashe perfected the details of his plan. It was a new kind of scheme, in whichhe took the artistic delight of the incorrigible promoter. His imaginationonce enlisted for the plan, he held to it, arguing, counselling, bullying. "If it's the money, " he ended, "you needn't bother. I'll just put it on thebill. When I am rich, it won't make no difference, nor when you are, either. "

Mrs. Preston took one of his furry hands in hers, and pressed it. She knewthat the ventures had not yet made him rich. Thirty years in Chicago hadnot filled his purse. 

"I'd do it for you, same as for one of my daughters. It's just as easy ashaving a tooth out, and you start over as good as new. "

"It isn't that, " she smiled. "You can't start over as good as new if youare a woman. I couldn't run away. I've put myself into it a second time, without thinking. I chose then just as before, when I followed him to thehospital. When the doctor asked me if he should try to save his life, Iwanted him to die--oh, how I longed that the doctor would refuse to try!Well, he's alive. It is for life. "

She seemed to see before her a long, toilsome ascent, to which she had beendriven to put her feet. 

"Think it over, " the dentist counselled at last, despondently. "Sleep onit. There's Worcester, Ohio, and my sister-in-law. "

Mrs. Preston smiled, and put on her hat. 

"I've taken a lot of your time. "

"That's no account, but I can't see what you came for. You won't let afeller help you. "

"There wasn't any good reason. I came because I was awfully lonely. Thereisn't a soul that I can speak out to, except you. You don't know what thatmeans. I go about in the schoolroom, and up and down the streets, and seethings--horrible things. The world gets to be one big torture chamber, andthen I have to cry out. I come to you to cry out, --because you really care. Now I can go away, and keep silent for a long time. "

"You make too much of it, " the dentist protested. He busied himself inputting the little steel instruments into their purple plush beds andlocking the drawers. 

"Yes, I make too much of it, " Mrs. Preston acknowledged quietly, as sheopened the door. "Good night. "

"I guess she loves him still and don't like to own it. Women are generallyso, " the dentist commented, when he was left alone. He picked up a sheaf ofstock certificates and eyed them critically. "They're nicer than the PlacerMining ones. They just look fit to eat. "

He locked the certificates of stock in the new company into a tiny safe, and prepared to pull down the shade. In the railroad yards below, the greateyes of the locomotives glared though the March dusk. As the suburbantrains pulled out from minute to minute, thick wreaths of smoke shot upabove the white steam blasts of the surrounding buildings. The smoke andsteam were sucked together into the vortex of a cross street. 

'I wished I hadn't let her go alone, ' the dentist mused. 'Some day she'lljust go over there into the lake. '

When Mrs. Preston shut the dentist's door behind her, an office door on theopposite side of the hall opened abruptly, and a young man strode into thehall. She recognized him as the young surgeon who had operated upon herhusband at St. Isidore's. She stepped behind the iron grating of theelevator well and watched him as he waited for the steel car to bob up fromthe lower stories. She was ashamed to meet him, especially now that shefelt committed to the sordid future. 

The little car arrived; the doctor stepped in and disappeared. The doorfrom which he came was covered with a long list of names. She read the namefreshly painted in at the bottom, --Dr. Howard Sommers. 

CHAPTER VI

For Sommers had joined the staff of the great specialist, and resorteddaily to the busy offices in the Athenian Building. A brief vacation hadserved to convince him of the folly that lay in indulging a parcel ofincoherent prejudices at the expense of even that somewhat nebulous thingpopularly called a "career. " Dr. Lindsay made flattering offers; the workpromised to be light, with sufficient opportunity for whatever hospitalpractice he cared to take; and the new aspect of his profession--commercialmedicine he dubbed it--was at least entertaining. If one wished to see thepeople of Chicago at near range, --those who had made the city what it is, and were making it what it will be, --this was pretty nearly the best chancein the world. 

When he had mentioned Lindsay's offer to Dresser, who was rising atlaborious hours and toiling in the McNamara and Hill's offices, he realizedhow unmentionable and trifling were his grounds for hesitation. Dresser'senthusiasm almost persuaded him that Lindsay had given him somethingvaluable. And if he found it difficult to explain his distaste for thething to Dresser, what would he have to say to other people--to theHitchcocks? Yet he made his reservations to himself at least: he was notcommitted to his "career"; he should be merely a spectator, a free-lance, acritic, who keeps the precious treasure of his own independence. Almost atthe start, however, he was made to realize that this nonchalance, whichvindicated himself in his own eyes, could not be evident to others. As hewas entering the Athenian hive one morning, he passed the Hitchcockbrougham drawn up by the curb near a jeweller's shop. Miss Hitchcock, whowas preparing to alight, gave him a cordial smile and an intelligent glancethat was not without a trace of malice. When he crossed the pavement tospeak to her, she fulfilled the malice of her glance:

"You find Dr. Lindsay isn't so bad, after all?" There was no time forexplanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on hermobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip oftriumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivialannoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this _camaraderie_of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many a poor interne. In his mail, thissame morning, came a note from Mrs. E. G. Carson, inviting him to dinner: asign that something notable was expected of his career, for the Carsonswere thrifty of their favors, and were in no position to make socialexperiments. Such was the merry way of the world, elsewhere as here, hereflected, as he turned to the routine of the day. 

The office was in full blast: the telephones rang sharply every fewminutes, telling in their irritable little clang of some prosperous patientwho desired a panacea for human ailments; the reception-room was alreadycrowded with waiting patients of the second class, those who could notcommand appointments by telephone. Whenever the door into this room opened, these expectant ones moved nervously, each one hoping to be called. Then, as the door into the private offices closed, the ones left behind fell backwith sighs to the magazines and illustrated papers with which they soughtto distract their fears or their ennui. 

The thin, tall building shivered slightly at the blows of the fresh Aprilwind. The big windows of the reception-room admitted broad bands ofsunlight. The lake dazzled beneath in gorgeous green and blue shades. Spring had bustled into town from the prairies, insinuating itself into thedirty, cavernous streets, sailing in boisterously over the gleaming lake, eddying in steam wreaths about the lofty buildings. The subtle monitions ofthe air permeated the atmosphere of antiseptics in the office, and whippedthe turbulent spirits of Sommers until, at the lunch hour, he deserted theAthenian Building and telephoned for his horse. 

This saddle horse was one of the compensations for conformity. He had beentoo busy lately, however, to enjoy it. From the bellow of the city hecantered down the boulevards toward the great parks. As he passed theHitchcock house he was minded to see if Miss Hitchcock would join him. Inthe autumn she had ridden with him occasionally, waiving conventionalities, but lately she had made excuses. He divined that Parker Hitchcock hadsneered at such countrified behavior. She was to go away in a few days fora round of visits in the South, and he wanted to see her; but a carriagedrew up before the house, and his horse carried him briskly past down theavenue. From one boulevard to another he passed, keeping his eyes straightahead, avoiding the sight of the comfortable, ugly houses, anxious toescape them and their associations, pressing on for a beyond, for somethingother than this vast, roaring, complacent city. The great park itself wasfilled with people, carriages, bicycles. A stream of carts and horse-backriders was headed for the Driving Club, where there was tennis and the newgame of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway, where the Wreck of the Fair began. He came out, finally, on a broad stretchof sandy field, south of the desolate ruins of the Fair itself. The horsepicked his way daintily among the debris of staff and wood that layscattered about for acres. A wagon road led across this waste land towardthe crumbling Spanish convent. In this place there was a fine sense ofrepose, of vast quiet. Everything was dead; the soft spring air gave nolife. Even in the geniality of the April day, with the brilliant, theatrical waters of the lake in the distance, the scene was gaunt, savage. To the north, a broad dark shadow that stretched out into the lake definedthe city. Nearer, the ample wings of the white Art Building seemed to standguard against the improprieties of civilization. To the far south, a lineof thin trees marked the outer desert of the prairie. Behind, in the west, were straggling flat-buildings, mammoth deserted hotels, one of which wascrowned with a spidery steel tower. Nearer, a frivolous Grecian temple hadbeen wheeled to the confines of the park, and dumped by the roadside toserve as a saloon. 

Sommers rose in his stirrups and gazed about him over the rotting buildingsof the play-city, the scrawny acres that ended in the hard black line ofthe lake, the vast blocks of open land to the south, which would go to makesome new subdivision of the sprawling city. Absorbed, charmed, grimlycontent with the abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. Noevidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon thewaste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortardumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellousclarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering athousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, itshut down on the illimitable, tawdry sweep of defaced earth. 

The horse started: a human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in thedesert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with hiscrop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman heldherself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirtstreaming behind her, her face thrust into the air. Sommers reined in hishorse and jumped down. 

"How is your husband?" he asked brusquely. 

Mrs. Preston looked up with a smile of glad recognition, but she did notanswer immediately. 

"You remember, don't you?" the doctor said kindly. "You are Mrs. Preston, aren't you? I am the doctor who operated on your husband a few weeks ago atthe hospital. "

"Yes, I remember, " she replied, almost sullenly. 

"How is he? I left St. Isidore's the next day. Is he still in thehospital?"

"They discharged him last Monday, " Mrs. Preston answered, in the same dulltone. 

"Ah!" The doctor jerked the bridle which he held in his left hand andprepared to mount. "So he made a quick recovery. "

"No, no! I didn't say that, " she replied passionately. "You knew, you knew_that_ couldn't be. He has--he is--I don't know how to say it. "

Sommers slipped the bridle-rein over the horse's head and walked on by herside. She looked down at the roadway, as if to hide her burning face. 

"Where is he now?" the doctor asked, finally, more gently. 

"With me, down there. " Mrs. Preston waved her hand vaguely toward thesouthern prairie. They began to walk more briskly, with a tacit purpose intheir motion. When the wagon road forked, Mrs. Preston took the branch thatled south out of the park. It opened into a high-banked macadamized avenuebordered by broken wooden sidewalks. The vast flat land began to designitself, as the sun faded out behind the irregular lines of buildings twomiles to the west. A block south, a huge red chimney was pouring tranquillyits volume of dank smoke into the air. On the southern horizon a sootycloud hovered above the mills of South Chicago. But, except for the monsterchimney, the country ahead of the two was bare, vacant, deserted. Theavenue traversed empty lots, mere squares of sand and marsh, cut up inregular patches for future house-builders. Here and there an advertisinglandowner had cemented a few rods of walk and planted a few trees to trapthe possible purchaser into thinking the place "improved. " But the cementwalks were crumbling, the trees had died, and rank thorny weeds chokedabout their roots. The cross streets were merely lined out, a deep ditch oneither side of an embankment. 

"My God, what a place!" the young doctor exclaimed. "The refuse acres ofthe earth. "

The woman smiled bitterly, tranquilly, while her glance roamed over thefamiliar landscape. 

"Yet it is better than the rest, back there, " she protested, in a lowvoice. "At least, there is something open, and a little green in spring, and the nights are calm. It seems the least little bit like what it used tobe in Wisconsin on the lake. But there we had such lovely woodsy hills, andgreat meadows, and fields with cattle, and God's real peace, not thisvacuum. " Her voice grew faint. 

"You liked it there?" the doctor asked musingly. 

"It's all that I have ever known that was--as it should be. My father had afarm, " she explained more easily, "and until he died and I was sent toRockminster College to school, my life was there, by the lake, on the farm, at the seminary on the hill, where my brother was studying--"

The visions of the past developed with endless clews, which she could notfollow aloud. After waiting for her to resume, Sommers asked tentatively:

"Why don't you go back, then?"

She flashed a rapid, indignant glance at him. 

"Now! Go back to what?--With _him_!"

Her lips set tight. He had been stupid, had hit at random. 

"No, no, " she continued, answering her own heart; "they would neverunderstand. There is never any going back--and, sometimes, not much goingahead, " she ended, with an effort to laugh. 

They stopped while the horse nibbled at a tall weed in the roadway. Theyhad got fairly into the prairie, and now at some distance on left and rightgawky Queen Anne houses appeared. But along their path the waste wasunbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, whoflew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandonedelectric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil, sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, butthe freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath across their faces. 

"How came you to get into this spot?" the doctor asked, after his searchingeyes had roamed over the misty landscape, half swamp, half city suburb. 

"I was transferred--about the time of the operation. My school is overthere, " she pointed vaguely toward the southwest. "I could not afford tolive any distance from the school, " she added bluntly. "Besides, I wantedto be alone. "

So she taught, Sommers reflected, yet she had none of the professional air, the faded niceness of face and manner which he associated with the cityschool-teacher. 

"I haven't taught long, " she volunteered, "only about a year. First I wasover by Lincoln Park, near where I had been living. "

"Do you like the teaching?" Sommers asked. 

"I hate it, " she remarked calmly, without any show of passion. "It takes alittle of one's life every day, and leaves you a little more dead. "

They walked in silence for a few minutes, and then Mrs. Preston suddenlystopped. 

"Why do you come?" she exclaimed. "Why do you want to know? It can do nogood, --I know it can do no good, and it is worse to have anyone--_you_--know the hateful thing. I want to crush it in myself, never to tell, no, --no one, " she stopped incoherently. 

"I shall go, " the doctor replied calmly, compassionately. "And it is bestto tell. "

Her rebellious face came back to its wonted repose. 

"Yes, I suppose I make it worse. It is best to tell--sometime. "

CHAPTER VII

As they proceeded, more briskly now, she talked of her life in the Chicagoschools. She had taken the work when nothing else offered in the day of hercalamity. She described the struggle for appointment. If it had not beenfor her father's old friend, a dentist, she would never have succeeded inentering the system. A woman, she explained, must be a Roman Catholic, orhave some influence with the Board, to get an appointment. Qualifications?She had had a better education in the Rockminster school than was required, but if a good-natured schoolteacher hadn't coached her on special points inpedagogy, school management, nature-study, etc. , she would never havepassed the necessary examinations. 

In an impersonal way she described the life of a teacher in a greatAmerican school system: its routine, its spying supervision, itsinjustices, its mechanical ideals, its one preeminent ambition to teach asmany years as it was necessary to obtain a pension. There were thesuperintendents, the supervisors, the special teachers, theprincipals--petty officers of a petty tyranny in which too often seethedgossip, scandal, intrigue. There were the "soft places"; the deceitful, theeasy, the harsh principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poorteacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the greatengine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set insome obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled torevolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers, " "grades of pay, " "constructive work, ""discipline, " etc. , had no special significance to him, typifying merelythe exactions of the mill, the limitations set about the human atom. 

Her manner of telling it all was unpremeditated, incoherent, anddiscursive, and yet strangely effective. She described the contortions ofher kaleidoscope as they came to mind haphazard, with an indifference, aprecise objectivity that made the picture all the more real and universal, not the special story of the special case. 

"The first weeks I was nearly lost; the drawing teacher didn't like me, andreported my room for disorder; the 'cat'--that is what they call theprincipal--kept running in and watching, and the pupils--there wereseventy-five--I could barely keep them quiet. There was no teaching. Howcould one teach all those? Most of our time, even in 'good' rooms, is takenup in keeping order. I was afraid each day would be my last, when MissM'Gann, who was the most friendly one of the teachers, told me what to do. 'Give the drawing teacher something nice from your lunch, and ask her in toeat with you. She is an ignorant old fool, but her brother is high up in aGerman ward. And give the cat taffy. Ask him how he works out thearithmetic lessons, and about his sassing the assistant superintendent, andmake yourself agreeable. '

"I did as I was told, " she ended with a smile, "and things went better fora time. But there was always the married teachers' scare. Every month or sosome one starts the rumor that the Board is going to remove all marriedteachers; there are complaints that the married women crowd out thegirls--those who have to support themselves. "

They both laughed at the irony of the argument, and their laugh did much todo away with the constraint, the tension of their mood. More gayly shementioned certain farcical incidents. 

"Once I saw a principal hurl a book at a sleepy teacher, who was nodding inhis lecture at the Institute. Poor woman! she is so nearly deaf that shecan hear nothing, and they say she can never remember where the lessonsare: the pupils conduct the recitations. But she has taught in that schoolfor twenty-three years, and she is a political influence in the ward. Imagine it!"

They laughed again, and the world seemed lighter. Sommers looked at hiscompanion more closely and appreciatively. Her tone of irony, of amused andimpartial spectatorship, entertained him. Would he, caught like this, wedged into an iron system, take it so lightly, accept it so humanly? Itwas the best the world held out for her: to be permitted to remain in thesystem, to serve out her twenty or thirty years, drying up in the thin, hotair of the schoolroom; then, ultimately, when released, to have the meansto subsist in some third-rate boarding-house until the end. Or marry again?But the dark lines under the eyes, the curve of experience at the mouth, did not warrant that supposition. She had had her trial of thatalternative. 

She did not question him, and evinced no curiosity about his world. She hadtouched it on the extreme edge, and she was content with that, satisfiedprobably that this unexpected renewal of their connection was mostcasual--too fortunate to happen again. So she took him into a perfectlyeasy intimacy; it was the nearness that comes between two people when thereis slight probability of a common future. 

At last she turned into one of the streets that crossed the avenue at longintervals. This one was more developed than those they had passed: a row ofgigantic telephone poles stretched along its side; two car tracks in useindicated that it was a thoroughfare. At the corner there was anadvertising sign of The Hub Clothing House; and beneath, on one spoke of atiny hub, _This is Ninety-first Street_; and at right angles onanother spoke, _This is Washington Avenue_. He remembered vaguelyhaving seen a Washington Avenue miles to the north. The thing had beendrawn on the map by a ruler, without regard to habitations; on the map itprobably went on into Indiana, to the Ohio River, --to the Gulf for all heknew. 

Yet the cross-road was more promising than anything they had met: a truckfarm bordered one side; a line of tall willows suggested faintly thecountry. Just beyond the tracks of a railroad the ground rose almostimperceptibly, and a grove of stunted oaks covered the miniature hill. Thebronzed leaves still hanging from the trees made something like shadebeside the road. 

"That is better, " Sommers exclaimed, relieved to find a little oasis in thedesert of sand and weeds. 

The woman smiled. "It is almost a forest; it runs south for a block. Andbeyond there is the loveliest meadow, all tender green now. Over there youcan see the Everglade School, where I spend my days. The people are Swedes, mostly, --operatives in the factories at Grand Crossing and on therailroads. Many of the children can scarcely understand a word ofEnglish, --and their habits! But they are better than the Poles, in theHalsted Street district, or the Russians in another West Side district. Andwe have a brick building, not rooms rented in a wooden house. And theprincipal is an old woman, too fat to climb all the stairs to my room. So Iam left alone to reign among my young barbarians. "

When they reached the grove, Mrs. Preston crossed the car tracks andentered a little grassy lane that skirted the stunted oaks. A few hundredfeet from the street stood a cottage built of yellow "Milwaukee" brick. Itwas quite hidden from the street by the oak grove. The lane ended justbeyond in a tangle of weeds and undergrowth. On the west side there was anopen, marshy lot which separated the cottage in the trees from StoneyIsland Avenue, --the artery that connects Pullman and the surroundingvillages with Chicago. 

An old German had lived in it, Mrs. Preston explained, until his death ayear or two ago. He had a little chicken farm. As no one else wanted tolive in such a desolate place, so far from the scattered hamlets, she hadgot it for a small rent. The house was a tiny imitation of a castle, withcrenelated parapet and tower. Crumbling now and weather-stained, it had aquaint, human, wistful air. Its face was turned away from the road toward abit of garden, which was fenced off from the lane by arbors of grape-vines. 

Sommers tied his horse to the gate post. Mrs. Preston did not speak afterthey reached the house. Her face had lost its animation. They stood stillfor some time, gazing into the peaceful garden plot and the bronzed oaksbeyond, as if loath to break the intimacy of the last half hour. In thesolitude, the dead silence of the place, there seemed to lurk misfortuneand pain. Suddenly from a distance sounded the whirr of an electric car, passing on the avenue behind them. The noise came softened across the openlot--a distant murmur from the big city that was otherwise so remote. 

The spring twilight had descended, softening all brutal details. The broadhorizon above the lake was piled deep with clouds. Beyond the oak trees, inthe southern sky, great tongues of flame shot up into the dark heavens outof the blast furnaces of the steel works. Deep-toned, full-throated frogshad begun their monotonous chant. 

CHAPTER VIII

"Shall we go in?" the doctor asked at last. 

Mrs. Preston started, and her hand closed instinctively upon the gate, asif to bar further entrance to her privacy. Then without reply she openedthe gate, led the way across the tiny lawn, and unlocked the cottage door. They entered a large room, from which some narrow stairs led to thechambers above. Floor and walls were bare, and the only furniture consistedof two wooden chairs, a small coal-stove, and a pine table of considerablesize. This was covered with books, school exercises, and a few dishes. Mrs. Preston brusquely flung off her cape and hat, and faced the doctor. 

"I might as well tell you the main thing before you see him. He--"

"That is scarcely necessary, " Sommers replied gently. "I probably know whatyou are thinking of. "

A flush, caused by the revealed shame, crept over her face, lighting it tothe extreme corners under the temples and ears. As she stood there, humiliated, yet defiant of him and of the world, Sommers remembered thefirst time he had seen her that night at the hospital. He read her, somehow, extraordinarily well; he knew the misery, the longing, the anger, the hate, the stubborn power to fight. Her deep eyes glanced at himfrankly, willing to be read by this stranger out of the multitude of men. They had no more need of words now than at that first moment in theoperating room at St. Isidore's. They were man and woman, in the presenceof a fate that could not be softened by words. 

"You are right, " she said softly. "Yet sometime I want to tell youthings--not now. I will go and see how he is. "

When she had left the room, Sommers examined the few objects about him inthe manner of a man who draws his conclusions from innumerable, imponderable data. Then he took a chair to the window and sat down. She wasvery real to him, this woman, and compelling, with her silences, her brokenphrases. Rarely, very rarely before in his life, had he had this experienceof intimacy without foreknowledge, without background--the sense of dealingwith a human soul nakedly. 

"Will you come now?"

Mrs. Preston had returned and held the stair-door open for him. Sommerslooked at her searchingly, curious to find where this power lay. Her facehad grown white and set. The features and the figure were those of a largewoman. Her hair, bronzed in the sunlight as he remembered, was dark in thegloom of this room. The plain, symmetrical arrangement of the hair abovethe large brow and features made her seem older than she was. The deep-seteyes, the quivering lips, and the thin nostrils gave life to the passive, restrained face. The passions of her life lay just beneath the surface offlesh. 

"He is very talkative, and wanders--"

The doctor nodded and followed her up the steep stairs, which were closedat the head by a stout door. The upper story was divided about equally intotwo rooms. The east room, to which Mrs. Preston opened the door, wasplainly furnished, yet in comparison with the room below it seemed almostluxurious. Two windows gave a clear view above the little oak copse, thelines of empty freight cars on the siding, and a mile of low meadow thatlay between the cottage and the fringe of settlement along the lake. Through another window at the north the bleak prospect of Stoney IslandAvenue could be seen, flanked on one side by a huge sign over a saloon. Near this window on a lounge lay the patient. 

Preston's personal appearance had not improved during his illness: hisface, over the lower half of which a black beard had grown rankly, waspuffy with convalescent fat. His hands that drummed idly against the couchwere white and flabby. As he half rose and extended his hand to the doctor, he betrayed, indefinably, remote traces of superior breeding. 

"Excuse me, doctor, " he said apologetically. "Mrs. Preston keeps me a closeprisoner. But she won't have the whip-hand very long. "

He laughed boisterously, as Sommers shook hands and sat down. 

"Women know they've got you while you are sick. They like to keep an eye ona man, eh?"

He laughed again, confidentially, as if the doctor, being a man, wouldappreciate the point. Then he continued, nervously, without pause:

"But I have some business to attend to. I must get out of this as soon asyou can patch me up so I can walk straight. I ought to have been in Denvera month ago. There's a man out there, who comes in from his ranch twohundred miles to see me. He is a fine fellow, strapping, big six-footer. _He_ knows how to put in his time day and night, when he gets to town. I remember one time we were in Frisco together--ever been in Frisco? It's agreat place for a good dinner, and all you want to drink. Drink--my! I'veseen the time--"

He rambled on, now and then pausing to laugh boisterously at somerecollection. As his whirligig tale touched upon indecent episodes, hisvoice lowered and he sought for convenient euphemisms, helped out bysympathetic nods. Mrs. Preston made several attempts to interrupt hisaimless, wandering talk; but he started again each time, excited by thepresence of the doctor. His mind was like a bag of loosely associatedideas. Any jar seemed to set loose a long line of reminiscences, veryvaguely connected. The doctor encouraged him to talk, to develop himself, to reveal the story of his roadside debaucheries. He listened attentively, evincing an interest in the incoherent tale. Mrs. Preston watched thedoctor's face with restless eyes. 

Finally Preston ended his husky monotone in a querulous entreaty. "I need alittle whiskey to keep me going. Tell _her_, won't you?--to let mehave a little drink. My regular allowance was a pint a day, and I haven'thad a drop for four weeks. Your Chicago whiskey is rotten bad, though, Itell you. I just stepped into a place to get a drink with Joe Campbell--hisfather owns a big pulp mill in Michigan--well--we had one or two drinks, and the first thing I knew there was shooting all over the place, and someone grabbed me, and I was thrown into the street--"

Mrs. Preston exclaimed, "Do you want to hear _more_?"

Sommers rose. "I'll come again to see you, Mr. Preston, and I will leavesomething that will help you. Good night. "

"It was good of you to take this interest, doctor. I am glad to have metyou, Doctor--?"

"Sommers, " suggested the doctor, smiling at the evidences of forgottenbreeding that cropped out of the general decay. 

"Well, Dr. Sommers, I hope we shall meet again when I am more myself. "

When they returned to the room below, Mrs. Preston lit a lamp. After someminutes Sommers asked, "How long has this been going on?"

"For years--before he left college; he was taken out of Yale because of it. All I know is what he tells when he is not--responsible. "

"Ah!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. 

"_I_ never knew, " Mrs. Preston added quickly, "until we had beenmarried a year. He was away so much of the time, and he was very differentthen--I mean he didn't ramble on as he does now. He was not flabby andchildish, not before the operation. "

The doctor turned his face away. 

"About two years ago some of the men he was with brought him home, drunk. Afterward he didn't seem to care. But he was away most of the time, travelling, going from place to place, always living in hotels, alwaysdrinking until some illness brought him back. "

"And this time?" the doctor asked. 

Mrs. Preston shut her lips, as if there were things she could not say yet. 

"I was not living with him. " In a few moments, she continued quietly: "Isuppose I should have been but for one thing. He told me he was going toNew York, and I found him with another woman, living in a hotel not a milefrom our home. I don't know why I should have made so much of that. I hadsuspected for months that there were other women; but seeing it, knowingthat he knew I had seen it! I nearly starved before I got work. "

Confession, the details, the whole story, appealed to her evidently asobvious, typical, useless. She tried to select simple words, to leave thefacts undimmed by passionate speech. 

"As I told you, an old friend of my father's helped me to get work. Thatkept me from ending it just there. As the months went on and he did not tryto find me, I got used to the round, to the school, the living on, dead andalive. I thought of getting a divorce, of finding some country school inanother state. Dr. Leonard urged me to. I might have--I don't know. Butaccidentally _he_ was brought back. I was going home from a teachers'meeting that night. I saw him lying on the pavement, thrown out of thesaloon, as he told you. A crowd gathered. He was unconscious. I wanted torun away, to leave him, to escape. He groaned. I couldn't--I couldn't. "

She sighed wearily at the memory of her illogical act. The doctor noddedsympathetically. It was a fatal moment, the point of decision in her life. He understood what it meant to her. 

"There was no one else to take him--to be responsible. He had been mine. After all, the divorce would have made no difference; it never can. Youhave to take your failures; you have to endure. "

"Has he any relatives?" Sommers asked. 

"A few; they were done with him long ago. They had money, and they wantedto get rid of him. They put him into a business that would keep him awayfrom them; that would give him the best chance to kill himself--going abouteverywhere, always travelling, always with men who drink and live in hotelsas he has. They shoved him into the world to let the world, or any one whowould, take care of him. "

It had been her lot, because of the error of her incompetent heart, to takecharge of this flotsam. That was so evident that she had given up seekingfor escape. 

"He is helpless now, " she added, as for excuse. "It would be cruel. "

For a moment the doctor's face looked hard. Was it, he seemed to be turningover in his mind, that she loved him a little in the depths of her heart?That was an irritating trait of feminine stupidity. But one intelligentglance at her calm face rendered that supposition impossible. She wasmerely largely human, with a sense of remote claims. 

"And now what will you do?" he asked. 

Her eyes were brooding on that now. Finally she exclaimed with an impatientgesture:

"How can I tell! He may get strong enough to leave me--in peace. He maycome back again to rest and get well. And that may go on and on until oneof us dies, or I am discharged. As I told you, they are trying now toexclude married teachers from the schools. And I am married!"

Sommers saw that she had faced the sordid situation; that she expected norelief from the clouds. He got up and looked at his watch. 

"I shall come again. We will see what can be done. "

This was a convention of the profession. Nothing could be done for thatman, and he knew it. She knew it also. She smiled mournfully as they shookhands. Yet as he moved toward the door she asked in a low tone:

"Won't you tell me what you call it? There is no use in not telling me. "

"Paresis, " Sommers replied shortly. As her face was still inquiring, headded: "Brain trouble. In his case a kind of decay of the tissue; perhapsinherited, certainly hastened by his habits, probably precipitated by theoperation. "

His glance met hers, and they both fell silent before the common thought. In the practice of his profession he had done this for her, in obedience tothe cowardly rules of that profession. He had saved life--animation--tothis mass of corruption. Except for his skill, this waste being would havegone its way quietly to death, thereby purifying all life by that little. He added at last in a mechanical tone:

"That results sometimes from such an operation. You can't tell how it willaffect the brain, especially when the history of the case is a bad one. Hewill have to be sent away to an institution if--; but the only thing nowis to wait to see what will happen. Good night. I shall see you in a fewdays, " he concluded abruptly. 

He was determined to speculate no more, to give her no hopes that mightprove groundless. The future was uncertain: the patient might haveconvulsions, paralysis, locomotor ataxia, mere imbecility with normalphysical functions, or intermittent insanity. It was highly unprofessionalto speculate in this loose fashion about the outcome of an operation. 

Mrs. Preston watched him as he crossed the lawn and untied his horse. Shehad not thanked him for coming, for promising to come again, he reflectedwith relief. She was no weak, dependent fool. He rode down the sodded lane, and as his horse picked his way carefully toward the avenue where theelectric cars were shooting back and forth like magnified fireflies, heturned in his saddle to look once more at the cottage. One light gleamedfrom the room he had just left. He could see the outline of the woman'sform standing by the open window. The place was lonely and forbiddingenough, isolated and withdrawn as the life of the woman within it. She wasset apart with the thing that had been man stretched out above in stupor, or restlessly babbling over his dirty tale. God knew why! Yet, physicianand unsentimental thinker that he was, he felt to a certain degree theinevitableness of her fate. The common thing would be to shake the dirtfrom one's shoes, to turn one's back on the diseased and mistaken being, "to put it away where it would not trouble, "--but she did not seek toescape. 

And he had been the instrument to execute for her this decree of fate, tobind it permanently, a lifetime curse. 

The frogs were making merry in the marshy fields along the avenue. Theirrobust chorus mingled with the whir of the cars. Soft, dark clouds weredriving lakeward. The blast furnaces of the steel works in South Chicagosilently opened and belched flame, and silently closed again. A rosy vapor, as from some Tartarean breathing, hovered about the mouths of the furnaces. Moment by moment these mouths opened and belched and closed. It was thefiery respiration of a gigantic beast, of a long worm whose dark bodyenveloped the smoky city. The beast heaved and panted and rested, again andagain--the beast that lay on its belly for many a mile, whose ample stomachwas the city, there northward, hid in smoke. 

CHAPTER IX

Long after the horse's hoofs had ceased to beat in the still evening, Mrs. Preston sat by the open window in the bare cottage room, her head restingon her arms, her eyes peering into the soft darkness in the path of theshadowy figure that had passed down Stoney Island Avenue into the nightbeyond her ken. She had not asked him to return. But he had promised to. Indeed, he did not seem to be far away: she could feel his gentle eyes, hisimperious face, his sympathetic voice. It was not much that she could makeof him; but her imagination built gratefully on his few words and simpleacts, until he became--as when he had spoken to her at the hospital--amasterful spirit, dominating that vague, warm land of dreams in which shetook refuge during waking hours. 

She should see him again--she must see him again, that was all. And yetwhat was the good of it? Only a new pain in thus revealing her sores--apain mixed with a subtle anaesthetic, sweeter than anything she had knownin this life. In the end she would have to do without this anodyne; wouldhave to meet her hard and brutal world. Just now, while the yoke was hot tothe neck, she might take this mercy to temper the anguish. On the long hillroad before her it would be a grateful memory. It seemed now that she hadput herself to the yoke, had taken the hill road very lightly. She had notthought of accepting the dentist's advice. With the fierce energy of hercrushed, spoiled youth, she had taken her measures: had found this littlecottage, hid in the oak copse; had prepared it with her own hands; had goneto the hospital to fetch her husband. That never ending journey from thehospital to the cottage! His ceaseless babble, the foul overflow from hisfeeble mind, had sapped her courage. 

Her head dropped weakly upon her arms; useless tears started. Before thatday she had had some joy in this cottage. There were glorious sunrises fromthe lake and sunsets over the desolate marshes. The rank swamp grasses weregrowing long, covering decently the unkempt soil. At night, alone, she hadcomfort in the multitudinous cries from the railroads that ribbed theprairie in this outskirt of the city. The shrieks of the locomotives werelike the calls of great savage birds, raising their voices melodiously asthey fled to and fro into the roaring cavern of the city, outward to thesilent country, to the happier, freer regions of man. As they rushed, theybore her with them to those shadowy lands far away in the sweet stillnessof summer-scented noons, in the solemn quiet of autumn nights. Her dayswere beset with visions like these--visions of a cool, quiet, tranquilworld; of conditions of peace; of yearnings satisfied; of toil that did notlacerate. Yes! that world was, somewhere. Her heart was convinced of it, asher father's had been convinced of the reality of paradise. That which shehad never been, that which she could not be now--it must exist somewhere. Singularly childish it seemed even to herself, this perpetual obsession bythe desire for happiness, --inarticulate, unformed desire. It haunted her, night and morning, haunted her as the desire for food haunts the famished, the desire for action the prisoned. It urged on her footsteps in the stillafternoons as she wandered over this vast waste of houseless blocks. Up anddown the endless checker-board of empty streets and avenues she had roamed, gleaning what joys were to be had in the metallic atmosphere, the stuntedcopses, the marshy pools spotted with the blue shields of fleur-de-lys. Foreven here, in the refuse corner of the great city, Nature doled outniggardly gifts of green growth--proofs of her unquenchable bounty. 

This hunger for joy had included no desire for companionship. When herchild died, the last person had slipped out of her world. To-night therewas a strange, almost fearful sense that this vacant, tenantless life mightchange. Was there some one among these dull figures that would take life, speak, touch _her_?

There was a movement in the rooms above. She started. Had she locked thedoor securely? Preston had tried before to drag himself out of the cottage, across the intervening lot, to the saloon on Stoney Island Avenue, whoseimmense black and gold sign he could see from his chamber. That must nothappen here, in the neighborhood of the Everglade School. She must keep himwell concealed until he should be strong enough to go far away, on the oldround of travel and debauch, from city to city, wearing out his brutishnessand returning to her only when spent. 

The movements above increased. He was pounding at the door. 

"Are you going to let me starve? Where are you?" the sick man called outquerulously. 

She sprang up; she had forgotten to get supper. When she took the foodupstairs, Preston was dragging himself about the room. He was excited, andanxious to talk. 

"Did that doctor fix me up? I don't remember seeing him in the hospital. "

"He operated when you were received. He left the next day, " she answered. 

"It must have been a neat job. I guess I was in a pretty tough state, " hemused more quietly. "How did he happen to look me up?"

"I met him accidentally in the park, " she explained briefly, anxious tohave done with the subject. "He offered to come back with me to see you. Perhaps, " she added more bitterly, "he wanted to see what he had done. "

"I suppose he knows?"

She nodded. 

"Well, I can't see why he bothers around. I don't want his attentions. "

As she prepared to leave the room, after pulling down the shades andopening the bed, he said apologetically:

"It was pretty good of you to take me in after--I have treated you badly, Alves. But it's no use in going back over that. I guess I was made so. There are lots of men like that, or worse. "

"I suppose so, " she assented coldly. 

"Why are you so stiff with me? You hardly look at me, and you touch me asif I were a piece of dirt. Supposing I take a brace and we start over, somewhere else? I am tired of knocking round. Come over and kiss me, won'tyou?"

Mrs. Preston paused in her work, the color mounting in her face. At firstshe made no reply, but as she crossed to the door, she said in a cool, distant tone:

"I don't think I shall ever kiss you again or let you touch me, if I canhelp it. Do you happen to remember where I saw you last--I mean before Ifound you in the street--six months ago?"

His face grew troubled, as if he were trying to recollect. 

"Oh! that woman? Well, that's past. "

"Yes, that woman. I took you here, " she continued, her full voice gatheringpassion, "because you are helpless and an outcast. And because I had takenyou before, ignorantly, I feel bound to defend you as you never defended_me_. But I am not bound to do more, and you have sense enough--"

"You were ready enough to bind yourself, if I remember. "

She answered meekly:

"I can't think it was the same woman who did that--who was blind and cheapenough to do that. Something has shown me that I am other than the foolishcreature you took so easily with a marriage ring, because you could nothave her in an easier way! But the old, silly country girl has gone andleft me this----Why did it have to be?" she exclaimed more incoherently. "Why did you not let me read what you are? I had only a few wretched weeksto learn you--and I was ignorant and foolish and young. You had me helplessat Barrington! Was it such a clever thing to cheat a girl from a Wisconsinvillage?"

Preston answered apologetically, --

"Well, I married you. "

"Married me! You make a good deal of that! Perhaps it would have beenbetter if you had not married me. My child and I could have died togetherthen. But I was _married_, and so I struggled. The child died, died, do you hear, because you had left me without money to get it what itneeded. I sat and saw it die. You were--"

She closed her lips as if to repress further words. As she reached thedoor, she said in her usual neutral tones:

"So long as you are decent, keep from drinking, and don't get me intotrouble at the school, you may stay and take what I can give you. "

"'May stay!'" Preston roared, getting to his feet and making a step tointercept her before she closed the door. His legs trembled, and he fell. She knelt over him to see if he had injured himself, and then satisfiedthat he was not hurt, she left the room, barring the door from the outside. She was none too soon in taking this precaution, for as she swung the heavyoak bar into its socket, --a convenient device of the old German, who hadthe reputation of being a miser, --she could hear Preston dragging himselftoward the door, cursing as he stumbled over the furniture. She creptwearily downstairs into the bare room. Some one was moving in the tinykitchen beyond. 

"Is that you, Anna?" Mrs. Preston called. 

"Ye-es, " a slow voice responded. Presently a young woman came forward. Shewas large and very fair, with the pale complexion and intense blue eyes ofthe Swede. 

"I came in and found no one here, so I was cleaning up for you. I havetime. John has gone to a meeting--there are many meetings now and not muchwork. You will eat something?"

She went back to the kitchen and returned with warm food. 

"Yes, I am faint. " Mrs. Preston's arms trembled. She laughed nervously asshe spilled her tea. 

"You are not well? You cannot live so--it's no use, " the strong Swedecontinued monotonously. "The men are bad enough when they are good; butwhen they are bad, a woman can do nothing. "

"Tell me about the strike. "

Anna Svenson laughed contemptuously, as if such affairs were a part ofmen's foolishness. 

"They're talking of going out, all the railroad men, if the roads use thePullmans. That's what John has gone to see about. Work is hard to find, sothey're going to make less of it. "

She stood easily, her arms by her side, watching Mrs. Preston eat, andtalking in an even, unexcited tone. 

"Father likes the job I told you about--over at the lumber yards. He camein last Sunday. He says the folks out his way are near starving. Svensonthinks of quitting his job. "

She laughed gently. 

"Life is like that, " Mrs. Preston assented. "You can't manage it. "

"No, why should one?" Anna Svenson replied coolly. "Children come, theydie, they grow up, they fight, they starve, and they have children. It wasso over there; it is so here--only more pay and more drink some days; lesspay, less drink other days. I shall wash the dishes. Sit still. "

She came and went quickly, noiselessly. When everything had been done, sheopened a window and leaned out, looking into the darkness. The fact of herpresence seemed to bring peace to the room. 

"It is a good night, " she said, drawing her head in. "There, Svenson haslit the lamp. I must go. "

"Good night, Anna. " Mrs. Preston took her hand. It was large and cool. 

"You shake hands?" Mrs. Svenson asked, with a smile. "When I was workingout, people like you never shook hands. "

"People like me! What have I that makes me different from you?"

"Oh, nothing; not much, " she replied tranquilly. 

With a sigh Mrs. Preston took up a bundle of grammar exercises and sortedthem. She was too weary for this task: she could not go on just yet. Shedrew her chair over to the window and sat there long quarter hours, watching the electric cars. They announced themselves from a great distanceby a low singing on the overhead wire; then with a rush and a rumble thebig, lighted things dashed across the void, and rumbled on with a clatterof smashing iron as they took the switches recklessly. The noise soothedher; in the quiet intervals she was listening for sounds from upstairs. Thenight was still and languorous, one of the peaceful nights of large spaceswhen the heavens brood over the earth like a mother over a fretful child. At last no more cars came booming out of the distance. She shut the windowsand bolted the door; then she prepared slowly to undress. 

For the first time in months she looked at herself curiously, taking animpersonal, calm survey of this body. She sought for signs of slovenlydecay, --thinning rusty hair, untidy nails, grimy hands, dried skin, --thosemarks which she had seen in so many teachers who had abandoned themselveswithout hope to the unmarried state and had grown careless of their bodies. As she wound her hair into heavy ropes and braided them, it gave her asharp sense of joy, this body of hers, so firm and warm with blood, sounmarked by her sordid struggle. It was well to be one's self, to own thetenement of the soul; for a time it had not been hers--she reddened withthe shame of the thought! But she had gained possession once more, never, never to lose it. 

She listened carefully for noises from above; then flung herself on thecouch, utterly wearied. In a moment she was asleep, having shed the yearsof pain, and a frank smile crept over the calm face. 

CHAPTER X

After giving the invalid his breakfast, and arranging him on his couchwhere he could see the cars pass, Mrs. Preston hurried over to theEverglade School, which was only two blocks west of Stoney Island Avenue. At noon she slipped out, while the other teachers gathered in one of thelarger rooms to chat and unroll their luncheons. These were wrapped inlittle fancy napkins that were carefully shaken and folded to serve for thenext day. As the Everglade teachers had dismissed Mrs. Preston from thefirst as queer, her absence from the noon gossip was rather welcome, thoughresented. 

The recess hour gave Mrs. Preston enough time to carry upstairs a coldmeal, to take a hasty nibble of food, and to hurry back across the vacantlots before the gong should ring for the afternoon session. At the close ofschool she returned to the cottage more deliberately, to finish her housework before taking her daily walk. Occasionally she found this work alreadyperformed; Anna Svenson's robust form would greet her as she entered thecottage, with the apologetic phrase, "My fingers were restless. " Mrs. Svenson had an unquenchable appetite for work. The two women would have asilent cup of tea; then Mrs. Svenson would smile in her broad, apatheticmanner, saying, "One lives, you see, after all, " and disappear through theoak copse. Thus very quickly between the school and the cottage Mrs. Preston's day arranged itself in a routine. 

Three days after the unexpected visit from the doctor, Mrs. Preston foundon her return from the school a woman's bicycle leaning against the gate. Under the arbor sat the owner of the bicycle, fanning herself with a little"perky" hat. She wore a short plaid skirt, high shoes elaborately laced, and a flaming violet waist. Her eyes were travelling over the cottage andall its premises. 

"Miss M'Gann!" Mrs. Preston exclaimed. 

"My!" the young woman responded, "but they did send you to kingdom come. You're the next thing, Alves, to Indiana. I do hope you can get out of thissoon. "

Mrs. Preston sat down beside her in the little arbor, and made politeinquiries about the school where they had taught together, about JaneM'Gann's "beaux, " the "cat, " and the "house" where she boarded. 

"It was good of you to come all this way to see me, " she concluded. 

"I wanted a ride. We had a half day off--infectious disease in RosaMacraw's room. Besides, I told the girls I'd hunt you out. How _are_you? You look rather down. Say, you mustn't shut yourself off here wherefolks can't get at you. Why don't you live up town, at the house?"

"I can't, " Mrs. Preston answered briefly. 

"Do you know the news? The 'cat' has gone up higher. They made himsupervisor, 'count of his sly walk, I guess. And we've got a new principal. He's fine. You can just do what you want with him, if you handle him right. Oh, do you know Rosemarry King, the girl that used to dress so queer, hasbeen discharged? She lived in bachelor-girl apartments with a lot ofartists, and they say they were pretty lively. And Miss Cohen is going tobe married, ain't coming back any more after this year. Some of us thoughtwe could work it so as the new principal--Hoff's his name--would ask tohave you transferred back to one of those places. There's just a chance. Now I've told all my news and everything!"

At that moment a man's figure appeared at an upper window. He was in adressing-gown, and unshaven. Miss M'Gann's keen vision spied him at once. 

"You'll get queer, if you stay here!" she said falteringly. "I guess I am queer already, " Mrs. Preston answered with a smile. "Let usgo inside and have some tea. "

Miss M'Gann looked the room over critically. 

"You must come down to the house some night soon and meet the principal. Herides a wheel, and we girls see considerable of him. If you are nice tohim, he'll do anything--he is one of the soft kind, sweet on all women, andlikes a little adoration. "

"No, I don't believe I can. " Mrs. Preston listened. There was noise in thechamber above. "Besides, I like it out here. I like the quiet, " she added. 

Miss M'Gann looked at her incredulously, as if she were waiting to hearmore. As nothing came, she went on:

"We are having high times over the new readers. The 'cat' has done a set ofreaders for the fourth and fifth. McNamara and Hills are bringing 'em out. The Express Book Co. Has a lot of money in the old ones, and they arefighting hard to keep the cat's out of the schools. They're sending menaround to get reports from the teachers. There's a man, one of theiragents, who comes over to the house pretty often. He's a college man, was aprofessor at Exonia. "

"Excuse me, " Mrs. Preston interrupted. The continued noise in the roomoverhead had made her more and more nervous. She had not heard MissM'Gann's story, which would probably be the preface of a tender personalepisode. "I will be back in a moment, " she said, closing the sitting-roomdoor carefully. 

Miss M'Gann sat forward, listening intently. She could hear the stairscreak under Mrs. Preston's quick steps; then there was silence; then anangry voice, a man's voice. Excited by this mystery, she rose noiselesslyand set the hall door ajar. She could hear Alves Preston's voice:

"You must not come down. You aren't fit. "

"Thank you for your advice, " a man's voice replied. "Who's your visitor?Some man? I am going to see. Don't make a scene. "

There was the sound of a scuffle; then the cry of a woman, as she fell backexhausted from her physical struggle. 

"P'r'aps he's murdering her!"

Miss M'Gann opened the door at the foot of the stairs wide enough to detecta half-clothed man trying to pry open with one arm a heavy door above. Shehesitated for a moment, but when the man had shoved the door back a littlefarther, enough for her to see Mrs. Preston struggling with all her force, she called out:

"Can I help you, Mrs. Preston?"

"No, no, go back! Go out of the house!"

"Well, I never!" Miss M'Gann ejaculated, and retreated to the sitting room, leaving the door ajar, however. 

The struggle ended shortly, and soon the man appeared, plunging, tumblingover the stairs. Wrenching open the front door he stumbled down the stepsto the road. He was hatless, collarless, and his feet were shod inslippers. As he reached the gate he looked at himself as if accustomed totake pride in his personal appearance, drew a handkerchief from his pocketand wound it negligently about his neck. Then, gazing about to get hisbearings, he aimed for the road. Just as he crossed the car tracks, headingfor the saloon with the big sign, Mrs. Preston entered the room. Her facewas pale and drawn. Miss M'Gann was too embarrassed to speak, and shepretended to look into the kitchen. 

"You will see now why I don't want a transfer, " Mrs. Preston began, tobreak the awkward silence. "I must look after my husband. "

"My!" Miss M'Gann exclaimed, and then restrained herself. She nodded herhead slowly, and crossed to where Mrs. Preston had seated herself. 

"But it's terrible to think of you here alone, " she remarked gently. Shehad intended to put her arm about Mrs. Preston's waist, but somethingdeterred her. "I wish I could come out and stay right on. I'm going tospend the night, anyway. Father was that kind, " she added in a lower voice. 

Mrs. Preston winced under her sympathy and shook her head. "No, no! I ambetter alone. You mustn't stay. "

"You'd ought to have _some_ woman here, " the girl insisted, with thefeminine instinct for the natural league of women. "At least, some one tolook after the house and keep you company. "

"I have thought of trying to find a servant, " Mrs. Preston admitted. "Butwhat servant--" she left the sentence unfinished, "even if I could pay thewages, " she continued. "Anna comes in sometimes--she's a young Swede whohas a sister in the school. But I've got to get on alone somehow. "

"Well, if that's what getting married is, it's no wonder more of us girlsdon't get married, as I told Mr. Dresser. "

There was a knock at the outside door. Miss M'Gann quickly barricadedherself behind the long table, while Mrs. Preston opened the door andadmitted the visitor. Miss M'Gann came forward with evident relief, andMrs. Preston introduced her visitors, "Dr. Sommers, Miss M'Gann. "

Miss M'Gann greeted the doctor warmly. 

"Why, this must be Mr. Dresser's Dr. Sommers. " The young doctor bowed andlook annoyed. Miss M'Gann, finding that she could get little from either ofthe two silent people, took her leave. 

"I'll not forget you, dear, " she said, squeezing Mrs. Preston's hand. 

When she had ridden away, Mrs. Preston returned to the little sitting roomand dropped wearily into a chair. 

"_He_ has just gone, escaped!" she exclaimed. "Just before you came. "

The doctor whistled. "Do you know where he's gone to?"

She pointed silently to the low wooden building across the neighboringavenue. 

"If he makes a row, it will all get out. I shall lose my place. "

The doctor nodded. 

"Has it happened before?"

"He's tried of late. But I have kept him in and barred the door. This timehe forced it open. I was not strong enough to hold it. "

The doctor hesitated a moment, and then, as if making a sudden resolve, hetook his hat. 

"I'll try to bring him back. "

From the open window she could see him walk leisurely down the lane to thestreet, and pick his way carefully over the broken planks of the sidewalkto the avenue. Then he disappeared behind the short shutters that crossedthe door of the saloon. 

For some reason this seemed the one thing unbearable in her experience. Thebitterness of it all welled up and overflowed in a few hot tears that stungher hands as they dropped slowly from the burning eyes. It was a long timebefore the little blinds swung out, and the doctor appeared with herhusband. Preston was talking affably, fluently, and now and then he tappedthe doctor familiarly on his shoulders to emphasize a remark. Sommersresponded enough to keep his companion's interest. Once he gentlyrestrained him, as the hatless man plunged carelessly forward in front ofan approaching car. As the pair neared the house, the woman at the windowcould hear the rapid flow of talk. Preston was excited, self-assertive, andelaborately courteous. 

"After you, doctor. Will you come upstairs to my room?" she caught as theyentered the gate. "My wife, doctor, is all right, good woman; but, like therest of them, foolish. "

And the babbling continued until some one closed the heavy door at the headof the stairs. Then there was noise, as of a man getting into bed. In timeit was quiet, and just as she was about to make the effort of finding outwhat had happened, Sommers came downstairs and signed to her to sit down. 

"I have given him a hypodermic injection. He won't trouble you any moreto-night, " he said, staring dreamily out into the twilight. 

CHAPTER XI

"This is too much for you, " Sommers observed finally. 

After his meditation he had come to much the same obvious conclusion thatMiss M'Gann had formed previously. The woman moved wearily in her chair. 

"It can't go on, " the doctor proceeded. "No one can tell what he might doin his accesses--what violence he would do to you, to himself. "

"He may get better, " she suggested. 

Sommers shook his head slowly. 

"I am afraid not; the only thing to be hoped for is that he will get worse, much worse, as rapidly as possible. "

Mrs. Preston stood his questioning eyes as he delivered this unprofessionalopinion. 

"Meantime you must protect yourself. The least harm his outbreaks will dowill be to make a scandal, to make it necessary for you to leave yourschool. "

"What can I do?" she asked, almost irritably. 

"There are institutions. "

"I have no money. "

"And I suppose they would not do, now, while he is apparently gettingbetter. They would not help him, even if we should get him confined. His isone of those cases where the common law prescribes liberty. "

There was nothing further to say in this direction. Sommers seemed to bethinking. At last, with an impulsive motion, he exclaimed:

"It should not have been! No, it should not have been. "

He paused. Her eyes had lowered from his face. She knew his unexpressedthought. 

"And more than that, if you and I and the world thought straight, he_would not be here now_. "

"No, I suppose not, " she acquiesced quietly, following his thought word byword. "Well, as it is, I guess it's for life--for _my_ life, atleast. "

"If one could only love enough--" he mused. 

"Love!" she exclaimed passionately, at this blasphemous intrusion. "Doesone love such as that, --the man who betrayed your youth?"

"Not you and I. But one who could love enough--"

Her disdainful smile stopped him. 

"I followed him to the hospital. I took him here, I don't know why. I guessit's my fate. He was once mine, and I can't escape that--but as to love--doyou think I am as low as that?"

"You have no duties except the duties love makes, " the doctor suggested. "He is no longer even the man you married. He is not a man in any sense ofthe word. He is merely a failure, a mistake; and if society is afraid torid itself of him, society must provide for him. "

"Yes, yes, " she murmured, as if all this were familiar ground to her mind. "But I am the nearest member of society--the one whose business it is toattend to this mistake. It's my contribution, " she ended with a feeblesmile. 

"Society has no right to expect too much from any one. The whole sacrificemustn't fall where it crushes. I say that such a case should be treated bythe public authorities, and should be treated once for all. "

She rose and looked into his eyes, as if to say, 'You _were_ society, and you did not dare. ' In a moment she turned away, and said, "Don't youbelieve in a soul?"

"Yes, " he smiled back. "And that poor soul and others like it, many, manythousands, who cannot grow, should be at rest--one long rest; to let othersouls grow, unblasted by their foul touch. "

"I have thought so, " she replied calmly, taking his belief as an equal. "Tolet joy into the world somewhere before death. " Her wistful tone rang outinto the room. "But that would be murder, " she continued. "We should haveto call it murder, shouldn't we? And that is a fearful word. I could neverquite forget it. I should always ask myself if I were right, if I had theright to judge. I am a coward. The work is too much for me. "

"We will not think of it, " Sommers replied abruptly, unconsciously puttinghimself in company with her, as she had herself with him. "We have but tofollow the conventions of medicine and wait. "

"Yes, wait!"

"Medicine, medicine, " he continued irritably. "All our medicine is but acontrivance to keep up the farce, to continue the ills of humanity, to keepthe wretched and diseased where they have no right to be!"

"And you are a doctor! How can you be?"

"Because, " he answered in the same tone of unprofessional honesty that hehad used toward her, "like most men, I am a coward and conventional. I havelearned to do as the others do. Medicine and education!" Sommers laughedironically. "They are the two sciences where men turn and turn and emitnoise and do nothing. The doctor and the teacher learn a few tricks andkeep on repeating them as the priest does the ceremony of the mass. "

"That's about right for the teacher, " she laughed. "We cut our cloth almostall alike. "

Unconsciously they drifted farther and farther into intimacy. Sommerstalked as he thought, with question and protest, intolerant of conventions, of formulas. They forgot the diseased burden that lay in the chamber above, with its incessant claims, its daily problems. They forgot themselves, thusstrangely brought together and revealed to each other, at one glance as itwere, without the tiresome preliminary acquaintanceship of civilization. Ithad grown dark in the room before Sommers came back to the reality of anevening engagement. 

"You can get a train on the railroad west of the avenue, " Mrs. Prestonsuggested. "But won't you let me give you something to eat?"

"Not this time, " Sommers answered, taking his hat "Perhaps when I comeagain--in a few days. I want to think--what can be done. "

She did not urge him to stay. She was surprised at her boldness insuggesting it. He had assumed the impersonal, professional manner oncemore. That precious hour of free talk had been but an episode, arelaxation. He gave directions as he went to the door. 

"The patient will sleep till to-morrow. It will take two or three days toget over this relapse. "

Then he took a pad from his pocket and scribbled a prescription. 

"Should he grow unmanageable, you had better give him one of thesepowders--two, if necessary. But no more; they are pretty strong. "

He placed the leaf of pencilled paper on the table. The next minute hisrapid footsteps crunched on the gravel path. Even after he was gone and shewas left quite alone in her old condition, the dead, nerveless sense ofdespair did not return. An unreasonable lightness of spirit buoyed her--afeeling that after a desolate winter a new season was coming, that herlittle world was growing larger, lighting indefinably with rare beauty. 

CHAPTER XII

The engagement was not one to be missed, at least by a young professionalman who had his way to make, his patients to assemble, in the fiercestruggle of Chicago. The occasion was innocent enough and stupidenough, --a lecture at the Carsons' by one of the innumerable lecturersto the polite world that infest large cities. The Pre-Aztec Remains inMexico, Sommers surmised, were but a subterfuge; this lecture was merelyone of the signs that the Carsons had arrived at a certain stage in theirpilgrimage. 

They had come from Omaha five years before; they were on their way to NewYork, where they would be due five years hence. From railroad law, Carsonhad grown to the business of organizing monopolies. Some of his handiworksin this order of art had been among the first to take the field. He wasresting now, while the country was suffering from its prolonged fit of theblues, and his wife was organizing their social life. They had picked up alarge house on the North Boulevard, a bargain ready for their needs; it hadbeen built for the Bidwells, just before the panic. 

A rapid glance over the rooms proved to Sommers that Mrs. Carson was asclever a manipulator of capitalists as her husband. There were a few of themore important people of the city, such as Alexander Hitchcock, FerdinandDunster, the Polot families, the Blaisdells, the Anthons. There were also afew of the more distinctly "smart" people, and a number who might becounted as social possibilities. Sommers had seen something in asuperficial way of many of these people. Thanks to the Hitchcocks'introduction, and also to the receptive attitude of a society that wasstill very largely fluid, he had gone hither and thither pretty widelyduring this past year. There were quieter, less pretentious circles thanthis in which the Carsons aspired to move, but he had not yet found them. Anything that had a retiring disposition disappeared from sight in Chicago. Society was still a collection of heterogeneous names that appeared dailyin print. As such it offered unrivalled opportunities for aspiration. 

Sommers had not come to the Carsons in the fulfilment of an aspiration. Mrs. R. Gordon Carson bored him. Her fussy conscious manners bespoke tooplainly the insignificant suburban society in which she had played a minorpart. He came because Dr. Lindsay had told him casually that LouiseHitchcock was in town again. He arrived late, when the lecture was nearlyover, and lingered in the hall on the fringe of the gathering. 

Carson had some reputation for his pictures. There was one, a Sargent, aportrait of the protagonist in this little drama of success, that hung in arecess of the hall at the foot of the stairs. R. Gordon Carson, as thegreat psychologist had seen him, was a striking person, an embodiment ofmodern waywardness, an outcropping of the trivial and vulgar. In a sacquecoat, with the negligent lounging air of the hotel foyer, he stared at you, this Mr. R. Gordon Carson, impudently almost, very much at his ease. Narrowhead, high forehead, thin hair, large eyes, a great protruding nose, a thinchin, smooth-shaven, yet with a bristly complexion, --there he was, the manfrom an Iowa farm, the man from the Sioux Falls court-house, the man fromOmaha, the man now fully ripe from Chicago. Here was no class, no race, nothing in order; a feature picked up here, another there, a thirddeveloped, a fourth dormant--the whole memorable but unforgivably ordinary. 

Not far away, standing in the doorway of the next room, was Carson himself. The great painter had undressed him and revealed him. What a comment tohang in one's own home! The abiding impression of the portrait wasself-assurance; hasty criticism would have called it conceit. All thedeeper qualities of humanity were rubbed out for the sake of this one greatexpression of egotism. 

When the lecture was finished, a little group formed about the host; he wastelling his experience with the great master, a series of anecdotes thathad made his way in circles where success was not enough. 

"I knew he was a hard customer, " Sommers overheard him saying, "and I gavehim all the rope he wanted. 'It may be two years before I do anything onyour portrait, Mr. Carson, ' he said. 

"'Take five, ' I told him. 

"'I shall charge five thousand. '

"'Make it ten, ' said I. 

"'I shall paint your ears. '

"'And the nose too. '

"Well, he sent it to me inside of a year with his compliments. The fancystruck him, he wrote. It was easy to do; I was a good type and all that. Well, there it is. "

He turned on an additional bunch of electric lights before the picture. 

"Good, isn't it?" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed behind Sommers. 

"Too good, " he muttered. "I shouldn't have dared to hang it. "

The girl's smooth brow contracted. 

"Don't you think it was fine, though, his making up his mind out there inSioux Falls that what he wanted was pictures, and the best pictures, andthat he'd have Sargent do his portrait?"

"No more than it's fine for all the rest of these well-dressed men andwomen to make up their minds that they want to be rich and luxurious andimportant and all that. "

Her face became still more puzzled. 

"But it is fine! And the successful people are the interesting people. "

"That has nothing to do with the matter, " he returned dogmatically. 

"Don't you think so?" she replied distantly, with a note of reproof in hervoice. He was too young, too unimportant to cast such aspersion upon thiscomfortable, good-natured world where there was so much fun to be had. Shecould not see the possessing image in his mind, the picture of theafternoon--the unsuccessful woman. 

"There is nothing honorable in wealth, " he added, as she turned to examinea delicate landscape. Her eyes flashed defiantly. 

"It means--"

"All this, " he moved his hand contemptuously. "Ah, yes, and a lot more, " headded, as her lip trembled. "It shows power and ability and thrift andpurpose and provides means for generosity and philanthropy. But it rots. "

"What do you mean?"

"Because it turns the people who have it into a class that come to feelthemselves divinely appointed. Whereas it is all a gamble, a lucky gamble!"

"Not all wealth is a lucky gamble!" she retorted hotly. 

Sommers paused, discomfited at the personal turn to the thought. 

"I think the most successful would be the first to admit it, " he answeredthoughtfully. 

"I don't understand you, " the girl replied more calmly. "I suppose you area socialist, or something of that sort. I can't understand such matterswell enough to argue with you. And I hoped to find you in another mood whenI came back; but we fall out always, it seems, over the most trivialmatters. "

"I am afraid I am very blunt, " he said contritely. "I came here to find_you_; what do you want me to talk about, --Stewart's engagement toMiss Polot? It was given the chief place in the newspaper this morning. "

"Sh, sh!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed cautiously. Little groups were moving inand out of the rooms, and at that moment a pale-faced, slight young mancame up to Miss Hitchcock. 

"May I offer my congratulations?" she said, turning to him with the smilethat Sommers's remark had caused still on her lips. The young man simpered, uttered the requisite platitude, and moved away. 

"Did you congratulate him on the Polot connection or on the girl?" theyoung doctor asked. 

"You don't know Estelle Polot! She is _impossible_. But Burton Stewarthas got _just_ what he wanted. No one thought that he would do as wellas that. You know they are _fearfully_ rich--she can't escape having anumber of millions. Don't you think a man of forty is to be congratulatedon having what he has been looking for for twenty years?"

Miss Hitchcock's neat, nonchalant enunciation gave the picture additionalrelief. 

"I don't see how he has the face to show himself. All these people arelaughing about it. "

"It _is_ a bad case, but don't you believe that they are not envyinghim and praising him. He is a clever man, and he won't let the Polot moneygo to waste. He has taken the largest purse--the rest were too light. "

Miss Hitchcock seemed to find infinite resources of mirth in the affair. Other people drifted by them. Several of the younger women stopped andexchanged amused glances with Miss Hitchcock. 

"He's been attentive to all these, " Miss Hitchcock explained to Sommers. 

"The Polot money is very bad, isn't it?"

Miss Hitchcock shrugged her shoulders. 

"It is current coin. "

"The system is worse than the _dot_ and _mariage de convenance_. There is no pretension of sentiment in that, at least. See him hanging overthe girl--faugh!"

"You _are_ crude, " Miss Hitchcock admitted, candidly. "Let us move outof this crowd. Some one will overhear you. "

They sauntered into the dimly lighted hall, where there were fewer people, and he continued truculently:

"I remember that side by side with the report of Miss Polot's engagementwas a short account of the starvation at Pullman, and another column washeaded, 'Nothing to arbitrate: Pullman says he has nothing to arbitrate. 'Did you see that the reporters carefully estimated just how much MissPolot's share of the plunder would be?"

"What you need is golf. I have been teaching papa at the Springs. It is agreat resource, and it increases your sense of humor. "

"It doesn't seem to have rested you, " Sommers answered. "You are tired orworried. "

"Worse yet!" she laughed nervously. "Clearly, you won't do. You must goback to Marion. "

She looked up at him from her low seat with brilliant, mocking eyes. "I have thought of that. It would not be the worst thing that could happen. Would _you_ think it possible--Marion?" he asked clumsily. 

Her eyes did not fall, but rested steadily on his face. Under this cleargaze his remark appeared to him preposterous. She seemed to show him howprecipitate, unformed, --crude, as she said, --all his acts were. Instead ofanswering his question, she said gently:

"Yes, you are right. I _am_ worried, and I came here tonight to escapeit. But one doesn't escape worries with you. One increases them. You makeme feel guilty, uncomfortable. Now get me something thoroughly cold, andperhaps we can have that long-promised talk. "

When Sommers returned with a glass of champagne, a number of men hadgathered about Miss Hitchcock, and she left him on the outside, intentionally it seemed, while she chatted with them, bandying allusionsthat meant nothing to him. Sommers saw that he had been a bore. He slippedout of the group and wandered into the large library, where the guests wereeating and drinking. A heavy, serious man, whom he had seen at variousplaces, spoke to him. He said something about the lecture, then somethingabout Miss Polot's engagement. "They'll go to New York, " he ventured. "Stewart has some position there, some family. " He talked about theStewarts and the Polots, and finally he went to the dressing room to smoke. 

Sommers had made up his mind to leave, and was looking for Mrs. Carson, when he came across Miss Hitchcock again. 

"The man you were talking with is quite a tragedy, " she said unconcernedly, picking up the conversation where she had dropped it. "I knew him when heleft college. He was an athletic fellow, a handsome man. His people werenice, but not rich. He was planning to go to Montana to take a place insome mines, but he got engaged to the daughter of a very wealthy man. Hedidn't go. He married Miss Prudence Fisher, and he has simply grown fat. It's an old story--"

"And a tragic enough one. We ought to change the old proverb, 'It is easierfor a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a poor man tomarry a rich man's daughter. '"

"It ought not to be so, if the man were a man. "

She dwelt upon the last word until the young doctor's face flushed. Thenwith the sudden transition of mood, which so often perplexed Sommers, shesaid gently, confidently:

"You are quite right. My journey did me no good. There were worries, and wecan't go away this summer. The business situation will keep papa here, andhe is so lonely without me that I hadn't the heart to suggest leaving him. So we have taken a house at Lake Forest. I shall teach you golf at the newCountry Club, if you will deign to waste your time on us. You will see moreof these good people. "

"You must think me--" Sommers began penitently. 

"Yes, _they_ would say 'raw' and 'green. ' I don't know. I must gonow. "

A few minutes later, Sommers met Colonel Hitchcock in the dressing room. Ashe was leaving, the old merchant detained him. 

"Are you going north? Perhaps you will wait for me and let me take you tothe city. Louise is going on to a dance. "

Sommers waited outside the room. From the bedroom at the end of the hallcame a soft murmur of women's voices. He hoped that Miss Hitchcock wouldappear before her father took him off. He should like to see her again--tohear her voice. Every moment some one nodded to him, distracting hisattention, but his eyes reverted immediately to the end of the hall. Menand women were passing out, down the broad staircase that ended in front ofthe intelligent portrait. The women in rich opera cloaks, the men in blackcapes carrying their crush hats under their arms, were all alike; they weremore like every other collection of the successful in the broad earth thanone might have expected. 

Sommers caught bits of the conversation. 

"Jim has taken the Paysons' place. "

"Is that so? We are going to York. "

"--Shall join them in Paris--dinner last Friday--did you see _The SecondMrs. Tanqueray_--our horses are always ill--"

It sounded like the rustle of skirts, the stretching of kid. There wasdulness in the atmosphere. Yet if it was dull, Sommers realized that it washis own fault--a conclusion he usually took away with him from the feastsof the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of hisopportunities. The ability to cultivate acquaintances, to push his way intoa good place in this sleek company of the well-to-do, --an abilitycharacteristically American, --he was utterly without. It would be betterfor him, he reflected with depression, to return to Marion, Ohio, or somesimilar side-track of the world, or to reenter the hospital and buryhimself in a quite subordinate position. 

There was still an eddy of guests about the host and his wife near thegreat portrait. They were laughing loudly. Carson's thin face was beaming. Even Mrs. Carson's face had lost some of its tension. Sommers could watchher manner from his position in the upper hall. She was dismissing a minorguest with a metallic smile. 'To aspire to this!' he murmuredunconsciously. 'This, the triumph of success!'

"Still waiting?"

Miss Hitchcock was passing, her long wrap trailing lightly behind. Her eyesglowed underneath a white mantilla. 

"I am ready to go now, " Sommers replied. "You are too tired for the dance. "

"I must go--I can't bear to miss anything. It is stupid--but it is excitingat the same time. Good-by. Remember, Lake Forest in a fortnight. And learnto take it easily!"

She smiled and disappeared in the wake of Mrs. Porter. How easily sheseemed to take it! The man she married would have to be of the world, aslarge a world as she could contrive to get. She would always be "going on. "Imaginatively, with the ignorance of a young man, he attributed to herappetites for luxury, for power, for success. _He_ was merely aninstance of her tolerance. Really he was a very little thing in her cosmos, and if he wished to be more, he would have to take an interest in justthis. 

Colonel Hitchcock came out at last, in close conversation with oldBlaisdell. They were talking business. Hitchcock's kindly face was furrowedand aged, Sommers noticed. The old merchant put his arm through the youngdoctor's, and with this support Sommers received the intimate farewell fromMrs. Carson. 

Colonel Hitchcock ordered the driver to take them to the Metropolitan Club. 

"Our talk may take us some time, " he explained. "I have been trying to findyou for several days. I have something to ask you to do for me. You maythink it strange that I should go to you instead of to one of my oldfriends. But it is something Isaac would have done for me. It is for myboy. "

The weariness of years was in his voice. As briefly and as simply as hecould, he stated the matter. Parker had disappeared; he had gone to NewYork and there drawn heavily on his father. The journey which ColonelHitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose offinding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now therewas a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father to follow it up himself. 

"I don't understand the boy, " Colonel Hitchcock concluded. "I'm afraideverything I do is wrong. I get angry. I have no patience with his polo, his spending so much money uselessly--he spends ten times as much money asany man among my friends did at his age. "

"You have ten times as much as any one of their fathers had, " Sommersprotested with a smile. 

"Well, then, I guess I had better stop, if that's what it means. He mayfind there isn't so much after all. This panic is pushing me. _I_can't leave Chicago another day. He should be here fighting with me, helping me--and he is sneaking in some hotel, with his tail between hislegs. "

He breathed heavily at the bitterness of the thought. Everything in hislife had been honorable, open to all: he had fought fair and hard andlong--for this. 

"If it weren't for Louise and his mother, I would let him starve until hewas ready to come home. But his mother is ill--she can't be troubled. "

"And you can't let him disgrace himself publicly--do something that wouldmake it hard for him to come back at all, " Sommers suggested. 

"No, I suppose not, " the older man admitted, with a grateful glance. "Ican't refuse to help him, poor boy; perhaps I have made him weak. "

Sommers offered to do what he could, --to hunt Parker up, get him on hisfeet, and bring him back to Chicago. He would leave that night. They hadstopped at the club to finish their talk, and while Colonel Hitchcock waswriting some letters, Sommers drove to his rooms for his bag. It was nearlymidnight before he returned. As they drove over to the station, ColonelHitchcock said:

"I have told him the whole thing: how hard pressed I am; how his mother isworrying and ill--well, I don't feel it will make much difference. He could_see_ all that. "

"You must remember that he has always had every inducement to enjoyhimself, " the young doctor ventured. "He doesn't understand _your_life. You sent him to a very nice private school, and whenever he failedgot him tutors. You made him feel that he was a special case in the world. And he has always been thrown with boys and young men who felt _they_were special cases. At college he lived with the same set--"

"His mother and I wanted him to start with every advantage, to have agentleman's education. At home he's seen nothing of extravagance andself-indulgence. "

Sommers nodded sympathetically. It was useless to discuss the matter. Theupright, courageous old merchant, whose pride was that he had nevercommitted one mean action in the accumulation of his fortune, could neverunderstand this common misfortune. He belonged to a different world fromthat in which his son was to take his part. They turned to othertopics, --the business depression, the strike, the threatened interferenceof the American Railway Union. 

"Blaisdell, who is the general manager of the C. K. And G. , " ColonelHitchcock remarked, "was saying tonight that he expected the Pullman peoplewould induce the A. R. U. To strike. If they stir up the unions all overthe country, business will get worse and worse. All we needed to makethings as bad as can be was a great railroad strike. "

"I suppose so, " Sommers responded. "Why won't the Pullman people consent toarbitrate?"

The old merchant shook his head. 

"They'd divide their twenty millions of surplus and go out of businessfirst. They say they're saving money on the strike. Did you ever know ofpeople with the whip-hand who had anything to arbitrate?"

CHAPTER XIII

Dr. Lindsay's offices were ingeniously arranged on three sides of theAthenian Building. The patient entering from the hall, just beside theelevators, passed by a long, narrow corridor to the waiting room, andthence to one of the tiny offices of the attending physicians; or, if hewere fortunate enough, he was led at once to the private office of thegreat Lindsay, at the end of the inner corridor. By a transverse passage hewas then shunted off to a door that opened into the public hall justopposite the elevator well. The incoming patient was received by a womanclerk, who took his name, and was dismissed by another woman clerk, whocollected fees and made appointments. If he came by special appointment, several stages in his progress were omitted, and he passed at once to oneof the smaller offices, where he waited until the machine was ready toproceed with his case. Thus in the office there was a perpetual stream ofthe sick and suffering, in, around, out, crossed by the coming and goingthrough transverse passages of the "staff, " the attendants, the clerks, messengers, etc. Each atom in the stream was welling over with egotisticwoes, far too many for the brief moment in which he would be closeted withthe great one, who held the invisible keys of relief, who penetrated thismystery of human maladjustment. It was a busy, toiling, active, subduedplace, where the tinkle of the telephone bell, the hum of electricannunciators, as one member of the staff signalled to another, vibrated inthe tense atmosphere. Into this hive poured the suffering, mounting fromthe street, load after load, in the swiftly flying cages; their visit made, their joss-sticks burned, they dropped down once more to the chill worldbelow, where they must carry on the burden of living. 

The attending physicians arrived at nine. The "shop, " as they called it, opened at ten; Lindsay was due at eleven and departed at three. Thereafterthe hive gradually emptied, and by four the stenographers and clerks wereleft alone to attend to purely business matters. Sommers came late the dayafter his return from New York. The general door being opened to admit apatient, he walked in and handed his coat and hat to the boy in buttons atthe door. The patient who had entered with him was being questioned by theneat young woman whose business it was to stand guard at the outer door. 

"What is your name, please?"

Her tones were finely adjusted to the caste of the patient. Judging fromthe icy sharpness on this occasion, the patient was not high in the scale. 

"Caroline Ducharme, " the woman replied. 

"Write it out, please. "

The patient did so with some difficulty, scrawling half over the neat padthe clerk pushed toward her. 

"You wish to consult Dr. Lindsay?"

"The big doctor, --yes, mum. "

"Did he make an appointment with you?"

"What's that?"

"Have you been here before?"

"No, mum. "

"You will have to pay the fee in advance. "

"What's that, please?"

"Ten dollars. "

"Ten?"

The clerk tapped irritably on her desk with her pencil. 

"Yes, _ten_ dollars for the first visit; five after that; operationsfrom fifty to five hundred. "

The woman clutched tightly a small reticule. "I hain't the money!" sheexclaimed at last. "I thought it would be two dollars. "

"You'll have to go to the hospital, then. "

The clerk turned to a pile of letters. 

"Don't he see nobody here without he pays ten?" the woman asked. 

"No. "

"Where is the hospital?"

"St. Isidore's--the clinic is every other Saturday at nine. "

"But my head hurts awful bad. The doctor up our way don't know anythingabout it. "

The clerk no longer answered; she had turned half around in herswivel-chair. Sommers leaned over her desk, and said, --

"Show her into my room, No. 3, Miss Clark. "

"Dr. Lindsay is _very_ particular, " the clerk protested. 

"I will be responsible, " Sommers answered sharply, in the tone he hadlearned to use with hospital clerks when they opposed his will. He turnedto get his mail. The clerk shrugged her shoulders with a motion that said, 'Take her there yourself. ' Sommers beckoned to the woman to follow him. Hetook her to one of the little compartments on the inner corridor, which waslined with strange devices: electrical machines, compressed air valves, steam sprays--all the enginery of the latest invention. 

"Now what is it?" he asked gruffly. He was vexed that the matter shouldoccur at this time, when he was on rather cool terms with Lindsay. The caseproved to be an interesting one, however. There were nervous complications;it could not be diagnosed at a glance. After spending half an hour inmaking a careful examination, he gave the woman a preliminary treatment, and dismissed her with directions to call the next day. 

"You will lose your eyesight, if you don't take care, " he said. "We'll seeto-morrow. "

"No, " the woman shook her head. "I've had enough of her lip. You'se allright; but I guess I'll have to go blind. I can't stand your prices. Here'stwo dollars, all I got. "

She held out a dirty bill. 

"In the world?" Sommers added smilingly. It was a familiar formula. 

"Just about, " she admitted defiantly. "And if my eyes go back on me, Iguess 'twill be St. Isidore, or St. Somebody. You see I need my eyes prettybad just now for one thing. "

"What's that?" the doctor asked good-naturedly, waving the money aside. 

"To look for _him_. He's in Chicago somewheres, I know. "

"Ducharme?" the doctor inquired carelessly. 

The woman nodded, her not uncomely broad face assuming a strange expressionof determined fierceness. At that moment an assistant rapped at the doorwith a summons from Dr. Lindsay. 

"Turn up this evening, then, at the address on this card, " Sommers said toMrs. Ducharme, handing her his card. 

He would have preferred hearing that story about Ducharme to charging oldP. F. Wort with electricity. He went through the treatment with hisaccustomed deftness, however. As he was leaving the room, Dr. Lindsay askedhim to wait. 

"Mr. Porter is about to go abroad, to try the baths at Marienbad. I haveadvised him to take one of our doctors with him to look after his diet andcomfort in travelling, --one that can continue our treatment and becompanionable. It will just take the dull season. I'd like to run overmyself, but my affairs--"

Lindsay completed the idea by sweeping his broad, fleshy hand over thelarge office desk, which was loaded with letters, reports, and documents ofvarious kinds. 

"What d'ye say, Sommers?"

"Do you think Porter would want me?" Sommers asked idly. He had seen in thepaper that morning that Porter was out of town, and was going to Europe forhis health. Porter had been out of town, persistently, ever since thePullman strike had grown ugly. The duties of the directors were performed, to all intents and purposes, by an under-official, a third vice-president. Those duties at present consisted chiefly in saying from day to day: "Thecompany has nothing to arbitrate. There is a strike; the men have a rightto strike. The company doesn't interfere with the men, " etc. The thirdvice-president could make these announcements as judiciously as the greatPorter. 

"I have an idea, " continued Sommers, "that Porter might not want me; he hasnever been over-cordial. "

"Nonsense!" replied the busy doctor. "Porter will take any one I advise himto. All expenses and a thousand dollars--very good pay. "

"Is Porter very ill?" Sommers asked. "I thought he was in fair health, thelast time I saw him. "

Lindsay looked at the young doctor with a sharp, experienced glance. Therewas a half smile on his face as he answered soberly:

"Porter has been living rather hard. He needs a rest--fatty degenerationmay set in. "

"Brought on by the strike?"

Lindsay smiled broadly this time. 

"Coincident with the strike, let us say. "

"I don't believe I can leave Chicago just now, " the young doctor repliedfinally. 

Lindsay stared at him as if he were demented. 

"I've a case or two I am interested in, " Sommers explained nonchalantly. "Nothing much, but I don't care to leave. Besides, I don't think Porterwould be an agreeable companion. "

"Very well, " Lindsay replied indifferently. "French will go--a jolly, companionable, chatty fellow. "

The young doctor felt that Lindsay was enumerating pointedly the qualitieshe lacked. 

"Porter's connection will be worth thousands to the man he takes to. He'sin a dozen different corporations where they pay good salaries tophysicians. Of course, if you've started a practice already--"

"I don't suppose my cases are good for ten dollars. "

Lindsay's handsome, gray-whiskered face expressed a polite disgust. 

"There's another matter I'd like to speak about--"

"The patient Ducharme?" Sommers asked quickly. 

"I don't know her name, --the woman Miss Clark says you admitted against myrules. You know there are the free dispensaries for those who can't pay, and, indeed, I give my own services. I cannot afford to maintain this plantwithout fees. In short, I am surprised at such a breach of professionaletiquette. "

Sommers got up from his seat nervously and then sat down again. Lindsayundoubtedly had the right to do exactly what he pleased on his ownpremises. 

"Very well, " he replied shortly. "It shan't occur again. I have told theDucharme woman to call at my rooms for treatment, and I will give MissClark her ten dollars. She was an exceptionally interesting and instructivecase. "

Lindsay elevated his eyebrows politely. 

"Yes, yes, but you know we specialists are so liable to be imposed upon. Every one tries to escape his fee; no one would employ Carson, for example, unless he had the means to pay his fee, would he?"

"The cases are not exactly parallel. "

"All cases of employment are parallel, " Lindsay replied with emphasis. "Every man is entitled to what he can get, from the roustabout on the wharfto our friend Porter, and no more. "

"I have often thought, " Sommers protested rather vaguely, "that clergymenand doctors should be employed by the state to do what they can; it isn'tmuch!"

"There are the hospitals. " Lindsay got up from his chair at the sound of anelectric bell. "And our very best professional men practise there, givetheir time and money and strength. You will have to excuse me, as Mr. Carson has an appointment, and I have already kept him waiting. Will yousee Mrs. Winter and young Long at eleven thirty and eleven forty-five?"

As Sommers was leaving, Lindsay called out over his shoulder, "And can youtake the clinic, Saturday? I must go to St. Louis in consultation. GeneralR. P. Atkinson, president of the Omaha and Gulf, an old friend--"

"Shall be delighted, " the young doctor replied with a smile. 

As he stepped into the corridor, one of the young women clerks was fillingin an appointment slip on the long roll that hung on a metal cylinder. Thiswas an improved device, something like a cash-register machine, thatprinted off the name opposite a certain hour that was permanently printedon the slip. The hours of the office day were divided into five-minuteperiods, but, as two assisting physicians were constantly in attendancebeside Sommers, the allotted time for each patient was about fifteenminutes. 

"Mrs. Winter is in No. 3, " the clerk told him. "Long in No. 1, and Mr. Harrison and a Miss Frost in the reception room. "

So the machine ground on. Even the prescriptions were formularized to suchan extent that most of them were stencilled and went by numbers. The clerkat the end of the corridor handed the patient a little card, on which wasprinted No. 3033, No. 3127, etc. , as he circled by in the last turn of theoffice. There was an apothecary store on the floor below, where the patientcould sit in an easy-chair and read the papers while the prescriptioncalled for by his number was being fetched by an elegant young woman. 

Sommers hurried through with Mrs. Winter, who was a fussy, nervous littlewoman from the West Side; she resented having "a young feller" thrust onher. 

"I knew Dr. Lindsay when he was filling prescriptions on Madison Street, "she said spitefully. 

Sommers smiled. "That must have been a good while ago, before Chicago was abig place. "

"Before you was born, young man; before all the doctors who could came downhere in a bunch and set up offices and asked fees enough of a body to keep'em going for a year!"

Then young Long; then one, two, three new patients, who had to havephysical examinations before being admitted to Lindsay. Once or twiceLindsay sent for Sommers to assist him in a delicate matter, and Sommershurried off, leaving his half-dressed patient to cool his heels before aradiator. After the examinations there was an odd patient or two thatLindsay had left when he had gone out to lunch with some gentlemen at theMetropolitan Club. By two o'clock Sommers got away to take a hasty luncheonin a bakery, after which he returned to a new string of cases. 

To-day "the rush, " as the clerks called it, was greater than usual. Theattendants were nervous and irritable, answered sharply and saucily, untilSommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice goton his nerves. It was too "intensive. " He could not keep his head and enterthoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shovedat him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, wasgiving conventional directions, relying upon the printed prescriptions andmechanical devices. All these devices were ingenious, --they would do noharm, --and they might do good, ought to do good, --if the cursed humansystem would only come up to the standard. 

At last he seized his coat and hat, and escaped. The noiseless cage droppeddown, down, past numerous suites of doctors' offices similar to Lindsay's, with their ground-glass windows emblazoned by dozens of names. Thisbuilding was a kind of modern Chicago Lourdes. All but two or three of thesuites were rented to some form of the medical fraternity. Down, down: herea druggist's clerk hailing the descending car; there an upward car stoppingto deliver its load of human freight bound for the rooms of another greatspecialist, --Thornton, the skin doctor. At last he reached the ground floorand the gusty street. Across the way stood a line of carriages waiting forwomen who were shopping at the huge dry-goods emporium, and through thebarbaric displays of the great windows Sommers could see the clerks movinghither and thither behind the counters. It did not differ materially fromhis emporium: it was less select, larger, but not more profitable, considering the amount of capital employed, than his shop. Marshall Fielddecked out the body; Lindsay, Thornton, and Co. Repaired the body as bestthey could. It was all one trade. 

On State Street the sandwich men were sauntering dejectedly through thecrowd of shoppers: "_Professor Herman Sorter, Chiropodist. _" "_Go toManassas for Spectacles_";--it was the same thing. Across the street, onthe less reputable western side, flared the celluloid signs of the quacks:"_The parlors of famous old Dr. Green_. " "_The original and only Dr. Potter. Visit Dr. Potter. No cure, no charge. Examination free. _" Thesame business! Lindsay would advertise as "old Dr. Lindsay, " if it paid toadvertise, --paid socially and commercially. Dr. Lindsay's offices probably"took in" more in a month than "old Dr. Green" made in a year, without theexpense of advertising. Lindsay would lose much more by adopting themethods of quackery than he could ever make: he would lose hospitalconnections, standing in the professional journals, and social prestige. Lindsay was quite shrewd in sticking to the conventions of the profession. 

CHAPTER XIV

When Sommers reached his rooms that evening, he found Mrs. Ducharme waitingfor him. She held in her hand his card. 

"I thought you'd give me the go-by, " she exclaimed, as he entered. "Yourkind is smooth enough, but they don't want to be bothered. But I came allthe same--on the chance. "

"What have you been doing?" the doctor inquired, without noticing hersurliness. "Walking about in the streets all day and making yourinflammation worse?"

"Well, you see I must find _him_, and I don't know where to look forhim. "

"Well, you won't find your husband walking about the streets, especially ifhe's gone off with another woman; but you will get blind and have to go tothe hospital!"

"Well, I'll kill _her first_. "

"You will do nothing of the sort, " said the doctor, wearily. "You'll make afuss, and your husband will hit you again, and go away. "

"He was all right, as nice a man as you could find before _she_ cameto Peory. You see she is married to another man, a baker, and they lived inDecatur. Ducharme--he's a Frenchman--knew her in Decatur where he worked ina restaurant, and he came to Peory to get rid of her. And he got a job andwas real steady and quiet. Then we got married, and Ducharme was as nice aman as you ever knew. But we wasn't married a week--we had a kafetogether--before _she_ got wind o' his being married and come to town. He told me she was trying to get him to go away, and he said how he didn'twant to; but she had influence with him and was worrying around. Well, thethird day he sent me a note by a little boy. 'Caroline, ' it said, 'you'se agood woman and an honest woman and we could get on first rate together;but, Caroline, I don't love you when she is about. She calls me, and Igo. '"

"Well, that's all there is to it, isn't it?" Sommers asked, half amused. "You can't keep him away from the other woman. Now you are a sensible, capable woman. Just give him up and find a place to work. "

Mrs. Ducharme shook her head sorrowfully. 

"That won't do. I just think and think, and I can't work. He was such anice man, so gentlemanlike and quiet, so long as she stayed away. But Ididn't tell you: I found 'em in Peory in a place not fit for hogs to livein, and I watched my chance and gave it to the woman. But Ducharme came inand he pushed me out, and I fell, and guess I cracked my head. That's whenmy eye began to hurt. The kafe business ran out, and I followed them toChicago. And here I been for three months, doing most anything, houseworkgenerally. But I can't keep a place. Just so often I have to up and out onthe road and try to find him. I'll brain that woman yet!"

She uttered this last assertion tranquilly. 

"She don't amount to much, --a measly, sandy-haired, cheap thing. _I_come of respectable folks, who had a farm outer Gales City, and neverworked out 'fore this happened. But now I can't settle down to nothin';it's always that Frenchman before my eyes, and _her_. "

"Well, and after you have found her and disposed of her?" asked Sommers. 

"Oh, Ducharme will be all right then! He'll follow me like a lamb. Hedoesn't want to mess around with such. But she's got some power over him. "

"Simply he wants to live with her and not with you. "

The woman nodded her head sadly. 

"I guess that's about it; but you see if she weren't around, he wouldn'tknow that he didn't love me. "

Mrs. Ducharme wiped away her tears, and looked at the doctor in hopes thathe might suggest some plan by which she could accomplish her end. To himshe was but another case of a badly working mechanism. Either from the blowon her head or from hereditary influences she had a predisposition to afixed idea. That tendency had cultivated this aberration about the womanher husband preferred to her. Should she happen on this woman in herwanderings about Chicago, there would be one of those blind newspapertragedies, --a trial, and a term of years in prison. As he meditated on thisan idea seized the doctor; there was a way to distract her. 

"The best thing for you to do, " he said severely, "is to go to work. "

"Can't get no place, " she replied despondently. "Have no references andcan't keep a place. See a feller going up the street that looks likeDucharme, and I must go after him. "

"I have a place in mind where you won't be likely to see many men that looklike Ducharme!"

He explained to her the situation of the Ninety-first Street cottage, andwhat Mrs. Preston needed. 

"You take this note there to-morrow morning, and tell her that you arewilling to work for a home. Then I'll attend to the wages. If you do what Iwant, --keep that fellow well locked up and relieve Mrs. Preston ofcare, --I'll give you good wages. Not a word to her, mind, about that. Andwhen you want to hunt Ducharme, just notify Mrs. Preston and go ahead. Onlysee that you hunt him in the daytime. Don't leave her alone nights. Now, let's see your eye. "

The woman took the brief note which he scribbled after examining her, andsaid dejectedly:

"She won't want me long--no one does, least of all Ducharme. "

Sommers laughed. 

"Guess I better go straight down, " she remarked more hopefully as she left. 

He should have taken the woman to the cottage, he reflected after she hadgone, instead of sending her in this brusque manner. He had not seen Mrs. Preston since his return, and he did not know what had happened to her inthe meantime. To-morrow he would find time to ride down there and see howthings were going with the sick man. 

There was much mail lying on his table. Nothing had been forwarded byDresser, in accordance with the directions he had telegraphed him. And hehad seen nothing of Dresser yesterday or to-day. The rooms looked as if theman had been gone some time. Dresser owed him money, --more than he couldspare conveniently, --but that troubled him less than the thought ofDresser's folly. It was likely that he had thrown up his position--he hadchafed against it from the first--and had taken to the precarious career ofprofessional agitator. Dresser had been speaking at meetings in Pullman, with apparent success, and his mind had been full of "the industrial war, "as he called it. Sommers recalled that the man had been allowed to leaveExonia College, where he had taught for a year on his return from Germany, because (as he put it) "he held doctrines subversive of the holy state ofwealth and a high tariff. " That he was of the stuff that martyrs of speechare made, Sommers knew well enough, and such men return to their havensooner or later. 

Sommers sorted his letters listlessly. The Ducharme affair troubled him. Hecould see that a split with Lindsay was coming; but it must not be broughtabout by any act of professional discourtesy on his part. Although he wasthe most efficient surgeon Lindsay had, it would not take much to bringabout his discharge. Probably the suggestion about Porter was merely apolite means of getting him out of the office. Lindsay had said somepointed things about "the critical attitude. " The "critical attitude" toLindsay's kind was the last crime. 

Ordinarily he would not have cared. The sacrifice of the three thousanddollars which Lindsay paid him would have its own consolation. He could getback his freedom. But the matter was not so simple as it had been. It wasmixed now with another affair: if he should leave Lindsay, especially afterany disagreement with the popular specialist, he would put himself fartherfrom Miss Hitchcock than ever. As it was, he was quite penniless enough;but thrown on his own resources--he remembered the heavy, sad young man atthe Carsons', and Miss Hitchcock's remark about him. 

Yet this reflection that in some way it was complicated, that he could notact impulsively and naturally, angered him. He was shrewd enough to knowthat Lindsay's patronage was due, not to the fact that he was the cleverestsurgeon he had, but to the fact that, well--the daughter of AlexanderHitchcock thought kindly of him. These rich and successful! They formed akind of secret society, pledged to advance any member, to keep the othersout by indifference. When the others managed to get in, for any reason, they lent them aid to the exclusion of those left outside. So long as itlooked as if he were to have a berth in their cabin, they would be amiable, but not otherwise. 

Among the letters on the desk was one from Miss Hitchcock, asking him tospend the coming Saturday and Sunday at Lake Forest. There was to be asmall house party, and the new club was to be open. Sommers prepared toanswer it at once--to regret. He had promised himself to see Mrs. Prestoninstead. In writing the letter it seemed to him that he was taking aposition, was definitely deciding something, and at the close he tore it intwo and took a fresh sheet. Now was the time, if he cared for the girl, tocome nearer to her. He had told himself all the way back from New York thathe did care--too much. She was not like the rest. He laughed at himself. Afew years hence she would be like the rest and, what is more, he should notfind her so absorbing now, if she were not like the rest, essentially. 

He wrote a conventional note of acceptance, and went out to mail it. Possibly all these people were right in reading the world, and the aim oflife was to show one's power to get on. He was worried over that elementaryaspect of things rather late in life. 

CHAPTER XV

These days there were many people on the streets, but few were busy. Thelarge department stores were empty; at the doors stood idle floor-walkersand clerks. It was too warm for the rich to buy, and the poor had no money. The poor had come lean and hungry out of the terrible winter that followedthe World's Fair. In that beautiful enterprise the prodigal city had putforth her utmost strength, and, having shown the world the supreme flowerof her energy, had collapsed. There was gloom, not only in La Salle Streetwhere people failed, but throughout the city, where the engine of play hadexhausted the forces of all. The city's huge garment was too large for it;miles of empty stores, hotels, flat-buildings, showed its shrunken state. Tens of thousands of human beings, lured to the festive city by abnormalwages, had been left stranded, without food or a right to shelter in itstenantless buildings. 

As the spring months moved on in unseasonable, torrid heat, all the soresof the social system swelled and began to break. The bleak winter had seenmute starvation and misery, and the blasts of summer had brought no revivalof industry. Capital was sullen, and labor violent. There were meetings andcounter-meetings; agitators, panaceas, university lecturers, sociologizingpreachers, philanthropists, politicians--discontent and discord. Thelaborer starved, and the employer sulked. 

"The extravagant poor are unwilling to let the thrifty reap the rewards oftheir savings and abstinence, " lectured the Political Economist of thestandard school. "The law of wages and capital is immutable. More scienceis needed. "

"The rich are vultures and sharks, " shrieked the Labor Agitator. 

"And will ye let your brother starve?" exhorted the Preacher. 

"For it is as clear as the nose on your face that corporations corruptlegislatures, and buy judges, and oppress the poor, " insinuated theSocialist. 

"It's that wretched free trade, " howled the hungry Politician, "andCleveland and all his evil deeds. See what we will do for you. "

"Yes, it's free trade, " bawled one newspaper. 

"It's nefarious England, " snarled another. 

"It's the greed of Wall Street, the crime against silver, the burden of themortgage, " vociferated a third. 

"It's 'hard times, '" the meek sighed, and furbished up last year's clothes, and cut the butcher's bill. 

"Yes, it's 'hard times, ' a time of psychological depression and distrust, "softly said the rich man. "A good time to invest my savings profitably. Real estate is low; bonds and mortgages are as cheap as dirt. Some daypeople will be cheerful once more, and these good things will multiply andyield fourfold. Yea, I will not bury my talent in a napkin. "

Thus the body social threw out much smoke, but no vital heat; here andthere, the red glare of violence burst up through the dust of words and theinsufferable cant of the world. 

The first sore to break, ironically enough, was in the "model industrialtown" of Pullman. That dispute over the question of a living wage grewbitterer day by day. Well-to-do people praised the directors for their firmresolve to keep the company's enormous surplus quite intact. The men saidthe officers of the company lied: it was an affair of complicatedbookkeeping. The brutal fact of it was that the company rested within itslegal rights. The unreasonable people were dissatisfied with an eighth of aloaf, while their employers were content with a half. Then there wastrouble among the mines, and the state troops were called out. Soresmultiplied; men talked; but capital could not be coerced. 

But while politicians squabbled and capitalists sulked and economiststalked, a strong tide of fellowship in misery was rising from west to east. Unconsciously, far beneath the surface, the current was moving, --a currentof common feeling, of solidarity among those who work by day for theirdaily bread. The country was growing richer, but they were poorer. Therebegan to be talk of Debs, the leader of a great labor machine. The A. R. U. Had fought one greedy corporation with success, and intimidated another. Sometime in June this Debs and his lieutenant, Howard, came to Chicago. Thenewspapers had little paragraphs of meagre information about the A. R. U. Convention. One day there was a meeting in which a committee of the Pullmanstrikers set forth their case. At the close of that meeting the greatboycott had been declared. "Mere bluff, " said the newspapers. But themanagers of the railroads "got together. " Some of them had already cut thewage lists on their roads. They did not feel sure that it was all "bluff. "

 * * * * *

It was the first day of the A. R. U. Boycott. Sommers left the AthenianBuilding at noon, for Dr. Lindsay's clients carried their infirmities outof town in hot weather. He took his way across the city toward the stationof the Northwestern Railroad, wondering whether Debs's threats had beencarried out, and if consequently he should be compelled to remain in townover Sunday. On the street corners and in front of the newspaper officeslittle knots of men, wearing bits of white ribbon in their buttonholes, were idling. They were quiet, curious, dully waiting to see what thispreposterous stroke might mean for them. In the heavy noonday air of thestreets they moved lethargically, drifting westward to the hall where theA. R. U. Committees were in session. Oblivious of his engagements, Sommersfollowed them, hearing the burden of their talk, feeling their aimlessdiscontent, their bitterness at the grind of circumstances. This prodigalcountry of theirs had been exploited, --shamefully, rapaciously, swinishly, --and now that the first signs of exhaustion were showingthemselves, the people's eyes were opening to the story of greed. Democracy! Say, rather, Plutocracy, the most unblushing the world had everseen, --the aristocracy of THOSE WHO HAVE. 

Thus meditating, he jostled against a group of men who were coming from asaloon. All but one wore the typical black clothes and derby hats of theworkman's best attire; one had on a loose-fitting, English tweed suit. Inthis latter person Sommers was scarcely surprised to recognize Dresser. Thebig shoulders of the blond-haired fellow towered above the others; he wastalking excitedly, and they were listening. When they started to cross thestreet, Sommers touched Dresser. 

"What are you doing here?" he demanded abruptly. 

"What are _you_ doing? You had better get out of town along with yourrich friends. " He motioned sneeringly at the bag in Sommers's hand. 

"I fancied you might be up to something of this kind, " Sommers went on, unheeding his sneer. 

"I had enough of that job of faking up text-books and jollyingschoolteachers. So I chucked it. "

"Why did you chuck me, too?"

"I thought you might be sick of having me hang about, and especially nowthat I am in with the other crowd. "

"That's rot, " Sommers laughed. "However, you needn't feel it necessary toapologize. What are you doing with 'the other crowd'?"

"I'm secretary of the central committee, " Dresser replied, with someimportance. 

"Oh, that's it!" Sommers exclaimed. "It's better than being a boot-licker to the rich. "

"Like the doctors? Well, we won't quarrel. I suppose you mean to give 'us'a hard time of it? Come in when it is all settled, and we will talk itover. Meantime you've got enough mischief on your hands to last you forsome months. "

"I don't blame you, " Dresser said benignantly, "for your position. Perhapsif _I_ had had the opportunities--"

"That's just it. Your crowd are all alike, at least the leaders; they arehungry for the fleshpots. If _they_ had the opportunities, _we_should be served as they are now. That's the chief trouble, --nobody reallycares to make the sacrifices. And that is why this row will be ended on theold terms: the rich will buy out the leaders. Better times will come, andwe shall all settle down to the same old game of grab on the same oldbasis. But _you_, " Sommers turned on the sauntering blue-eyed fellow, "people like you are the real curse. "

"Why?"

"Because you are insincere. All you want is the pie. You make me feel thatthe privileged classes are right in getting what they can out of foolsand--knaves. "

"That's about enough. I suppose you are put out about the money--"

"Don't be an ass, Dresser. I don't need the hundred. And I don't want aquarrel. I think you are playing with dynamite, because you can't get theplunder others have got. Look out when the dynamite comes down. "

"It makes no difference to me, " Dresser protested sullenly. 

"No! That's why you are dangerous. Well, good-by. Get your friends to leavethe Northwestern open a day or two longer. "

"There won't be a train running on the Northwestern to-morrow. I've seenthe orders. "

"Well, I shall foot it home, then. "

They shook hands, and Dresser hurried on after his friends. Sommersretraced his steps toward the station. Dresser's vulgar and silly phrase, "boot-licker to the rich, " turned up oddly in his memory. It annoyed him. Every man who sought to change his place, to get out of the ranks, was in away a "boot-licker to the rich. " He recalled that he was on his way to therich now, with a subconscious purpose in his mind of joining them if hecould. Miss Hitchcock's wealth would not be enormous, and it would be easyenough to show that he was not "boot-licker to the rich. " But it was hardto escape caste prejudices, to live with those who prize ease and yet keepone's own ideals and opinions. If this woman had the courage to leave herpeople, to open a new life with him elsewhere--he smiled at the picture ofMiss Hitchcock conjured up by the idea. 

The streets were filthy as always, and the sultry west wind was sweepingthe filth down the street canons. Here in the district of wholesalebusiness houses a kind of midsummer gloom reigned. Many stores were vacant, their broad windows plastered with play-bills. Even in the warehouses alongthe river a strange stillness prevailed. "Nothing was doing, " in the idiomof the street. Along the platforms of the railroad company's train house, however, a large crowd of idlers had assembled. They were watching to seewhether the trainmen would make up the Overland Limited. Debs had said thatthis company would not move its through trains if it persisted in using thetabooed Pullmans. Stout chains had been attached to the sleepers to preventany daring attempt to cut out the cars at the last moment. A number ofofficials from the general offices were hurrying to and fro apprehensively. There was some delay, but finally the heavy train began to move. It woundslowly out of the shed, in a sullen silence of the onlookers. In the yardsit halted. There was a derisive cry, but in a few moments it started againand disappeared. 

"I guess it's all bluff, " a smartly dressed young man remarked to Sommers. "There's the general manager getting into the Lake Forest two-ten, andSmith of the C. , B. And Q. , and Rollins of the Santa Fe, are with him. Thegeneral managers have been in session most of last night and this morning. They're going to fight it out, if it costs a hundred millions. "

The young man's views seemed to be the popular ones in the Lake Foresttrain. It was crowded with young business men, bound out of town for theirholiday. Not a few were going to the country club at Lake Forest. In thistime of business stagnation they were cultivating the new game of golf. There was a general air of blithe relief when the train pulled out of theyards, and the dirty, sultry, restless city was left behind. "Blamed fools to strike now, " remarked a fat, perspiring stockbroker. "Roads aren't earning anything, anyhow. "

The conductor who was taking the tickets smiled and kept his own counsel. 

"Good time to buy rails, all the same, " his companion answered. 

"I guess this'll yank old Pullman back to town, " another remarked, glancingup from his paper. 

"You don't know him. It won't bother _him_. He's keeping coolsomewhere in the St. Lawrence. It's up to the railroads now. "

"Let's see your clubs. Did you get 'em straight from Scotland? That's apretty iron. "

Older men were chatting confidentially and shaking their heads. But theatmosphere was not gloomy; an air of easy, assured optimism prevailed. "Iguess it will all come out right, somehow, and the men will be glad to getback to work.... If Cleveland and his free trade were in hell!... " And thetrain sped on through the northern suburbs, coming every now and thenwithin eyeshot of the sparkling lake. The holiday feeling gained as thetrain got farther away from the smoke and heat of the city. The young menbelonged to the "nicer" people, who knew each other in a friendly, well-bred way. It was a comfortable, social kind of picnic of the betterclasses. 

Most of the younger men, and Sommers with them, got into the omnibuswaiting at the Lake Forest station, and proceeded at once to the club. There, in the sprawling, freshly painted club-house, set down on asun-baked, treeless slope, people were already gathered. A polo match wasin progress and also a golf tournament. The verandas were filled withladies. One part of the verandas had been screened off, and there, in akind of outdoor cafe, people were lunching or sipping cool drinks. At oneof the tables Sommers found Miss Hitchcock and Mrs. Porter, surrounded by agroup of young men and women who were talking and laughing excitedly. 

"Ah! you couldn't get the twelve-thirty, " Miss Hitchcock exclaimed, asSommers edged to her. "We waited luncheon for you until the train came; butyou are in time for the polo. Caspar is playing--and Parker, " she added ina lower tone. "Let us go down there and watch them. "

Miss Hitchcock detached herself skilfully from the buzzing circle on theveranda, and the two stepped out on the springy turf. The undulatingprairie was covered with a golden haze. Half a mile west a thin line oftrees pencilled the horizon. The golf course lay up and down the gentleturfy swells between the club-house and the wind-break of trees. The pologrounds were off to the left, in a little hollow beside a copse of oak. There were not many trees over the sixty or more acres, and the roads oneither side of the club grounds were marked by dense clouds of dust. Yet itwas gay--open to the June heavens, with a sense of limitless breathingspace. And it was also very decorous, well-bred, and conventional. 

As they strolled leisurely over the lawns in front of the club-house, MissHitchcock stopped frequently to speak to some group of spectators, or togreet cheerfully a golfer as he started for the first tee. She seemed veryanimated and happy; the decorative scene fitted her admirably. Dr. Lindsaycame up the slope, laboring toward the ninth hole with prodigious welter. 

"That's the way he keeps young, " Miss Hitchcock commented approvingly. "He's one of the best golfers in the club. I like to see the older menshowing that they have powers of enjoyment left. "

"I guess there's no doubt about Lindsay's powers of enjoyment, " Sommersretorted idly. 

They passed Mrs. Carson, "ingeniously and correctly associated, " as MissHitchcock commented, and little Laura Lindsay flirting with young Polot. 

Miss Hitchcock quickened her pace, for the polo had already begun. They sawCaspar Porter's little pony fidgeting under its heavy burden. It becameunmanageable and careered wildly up and down the field, well out of rangeof the players. Indeed, most of the ponies seemed inclined to keep theirshins out of the melee. Sommers laughed rather ill-naturedly, and MissHitchcock frowned. She disliked slovenly playing, and shoddy methods evenin polo. When the umpire called time, Parker Hitchcock rode up to wherethey were standing and shook hands with the young doctor. As he trottedoff, his sister said earnestly:

"You have done so much for him; we can never thank you. "

"I don't believe I have done so very much, " Sommers replied. He did notlike to have her refer to his mission in New York, or to make, woman-wise, a sentimental story out of a nasty little scrape. 

"I think polo will help him; papa agrees with me now. "

"Indeed!" Sommers smiled, "What is it that you don't say?" the girl flashed at him resentfully. 

"Merely, that this is a nice green paddock for a young man to be turned outin--when he has barked his shins. Do you know what happens to the ordinaryyoung man who is--a bit wild?"

"Well, let us not go into it. I am afraid of you to-day. "

"Yes, I am in one of my crude moods to-day, I confess. I had no business tocome. "

"Not at all. This is just the place for you. Nice people, nice day, nicesporty feeling in the air. You need relaxation badly. "

"I don't think I shall get it exactly here. "

"Why not?"

The girl looked out over the shaven turf, dotted with the white figures ofthe golfers, at the careering ponies which had begun the new round in thematch, up the slope where the club verandas were gay with familiarfigures, --and it all seemed very good. The man at her side could see allthat and more beyond. He had come within the hour from the din of the city, where the wealth that flowered here was made. And there was a primitive, eternal, unanswerable question harassing his soul. 

CHAPTER XVI

"Shall we walk over to the lake, " the girl suggested gently, as if anxiousto humor some incomprehensible child. "There is a lovely ravine we canexplore, all cool and shady, and this sun is growing oppressive. "

Sommers accepted gratefully the concession she made to his unsocial mood. The ravine path revealed unexpected wildness and freshness. The peace oftwilight had already descended there. Miss Hitchcock strolled on, apparently forgetful of fatigue, of the distance they were putting betweenthem and the club-house. Sommers respected the charm of the occasion, and, content with evading the chattering crowd, refrained from all strenuousdiscussion. This happy, well-bred, contented woman, full of vitality andinterest, soothed all asperities. She laid him in subtle subjection to her. So they chatted of the trivial things that must be crossed and exploredbefore understanding can come. When they neared the lake, the sun had sunkso far that the beach was one long, dark strip of shade. The little waveslapped coolly along the breakwaters. They continued their stroll, walkingeasily on the hard sand, each unwilling to break the moment of perfectadjustment. Finally the girl confessed her fatigue, and sat down beside abreakwater, throwing off her hat, and pushing her hair away from hertemples. She looked up at the man and smiled. 'You see, ' she seemed to say, 'I can meet you on your own ground, and the world is very beautiful whenone gets away, when one gets away!'

"Why did you refuse to go abroad with Uncle Brome?" she asked suddenly. Shewas looking out idly across the lake, but something in her voice puzzledSommers. 

"I didn't want to go. "

"Chicago fascinates you already!"

"There were more reasons than one, " he answered, after a moment'shesitation, as if he could trust himself no farther. The girl smiled a bit, quite to herself. Her throat palpitated a little, and then she turned herhead. 

"Tell me about the cases. Are they so interesting?"

"There is one curious case, " the young doctor responded with masculineliteralness. "It's hardly a case, but an affair I have mixed myself upwith. Do you remember the night of the dinner at your house when Lindsaywas there? The evening before I had been at the Paysons' dance, and when Ireturned there was an emergency case just brought to the hospital. They hadtelephoned for me, but had missed me. Well, the fellow was a drunken brutethat had been shot a number of times. His wife was with him. "

Sommers paused, finding now that he had started on his tale that it wasdifficult to bring out his point, to make this girl understand thesignificance of it, and the reason why he told it to her. She wasattentive, but he thought she was a trifle bored. Soon he began again andwent over all the steps of the affair. 

"You see, " he concluded, "I was morally certain that, if the operationsucceeded, the fellow would be worse than useless in this world. Now it'scoming true. Of course _I_ have no responsibility; I did what anyother doctor should have done, I suppose; and, if it had been an ordinaryhospital case, I don't suppose that I should have thought twice about it. But you see that I--this woman has got her load of misery saddled on her, perhaps for life, and partly through me. "

"I think she did right, " the girl responded quickly, looking at the casefrom an entirely different side. 

"I am not sure of that, " Sommers retorted brusquely. 

"What kind of a woman is she?" the girl inquired with interest, ignoringhis last remark. 

"I don't think I could make you understand her. I don't myself now. "

"Is she pretty?"

"I don't know. She makes you see her always. "

The girl moved as if the evening wind had touched her, and put on her hat. 

"She's a desperately literal woman, primitive, the kind you nevermeet--well, out here. She has a thirst for happiness, and doesn't get adrop. "

"She must be common, or she wouldn't have married that man, " Miss Hitchcockcommented in a hard tone. She rose, and without discussion they took thepath that led along the bluff to the cottages. 

"I didn't think so, " the doctor answered positively. "And if you knew her, you wouldn't think so. "

After a moment he said tentatively, "I wish you could meet her. "

"I should be glad to, " Miss Hitchcock replied sweetly, but withoutinterest. 

Sommers realized the instant he had spoken that he had made a mistake, thathis idea was a purely conventional one. The two women could have nothingbut their sex in common, and that common possession was as likely to be aground for difference as for agreement. It was always useless to bring twopeople of different classes together. Three generations back the familiesof these two women were probably on the same level of society. And, aswoman to woman, the schoolteacher, who travelled the dreary path betweenthe dingy cottage and the Everglade School, was as full of power and beautyas this velvety specimen of plutocracy. It was sentimental, however, toignore the present facts. Evidently Miss Hitchcock had followed the sameline of reasoning, for when she spoke again she referred distantly to Mrs. Preston. 

"Those people--teachers--have their own clubs and society. Mrs. Bannertonwas a teacher in the schools before she was married. Do you know Mrs. Bannerton?"

"I have met Mrs. Bannerton, " Sommers answered indifferently. 

He was annoyed at the trivial insertion of Mrs. Bannerton into theconversation. He had failed to make Mrs. Preston's story appear important, or even interesting, and the girl by his side had shown him delicately thathe was a bore. They walked more rapidly in the gathering twilight. The sunhad sunk behind the trees, and the ravine below their path was gloomy. Themood of the day had changed, and he was sorry--for everything. It was apetty matter--it was always some petty thing--that came in between them. Helonged to recall the moment on the beach when she had asked him, with aflicker of a smile upon her face, why he had decided to remain in Chicago. But they were strangers to each other now, --hopelessly strangers, --and theworst of it was that they both knew it. 

 * * * * *

There was a large house party at the Hitchcock cottage. The Porters and theLindsays, with other guests, were there for the holidays of the Fourth, andsome more people came in for dinner. The men who had arrived on the latetrains brought more news of the strike: the Illinois Central was tied up, the Rock Island service was crippled, and there were reports that theNorthwestern men were going out _en masse_ on the morrow. The youngerpeople took the matter gayly, as an opportune occasion for an extendedlark. The older men discussed the strike from all sides, and looked grave. Over the cigars the general attitude toward the situation came outstrongly: the strikers were rash fools; they'd find that out in a fewweeks. They could do a great deal of harm under their dangerous leaders, but, if need be, the courts, the state, the federal government, would beinvoked for aid. Law and order and private rights must be respected. Themen said these things ponderously, with the conviction that they werereciting a holy creed of eternal right. They were men of experience, whohad never questioned the worth of the society in which they were privilegedto live. They knew each other, and they knew life, and at the bottom it wasas useless to kick against the laws of society as to interfere with thelaws of nature. Besides, it was all very good--a fair enough field for anyone. 

Sommers was excited by the reports. It made him restless to be lolling hereoutside of the storm when such a momentous affair was moving down the lakeunder the leaden pall of the city smoke. He asked questions eagerly, andfinally got into discussion with old Boardman, one of the counsel for alarge railroad. 

"Who is that raw youth?" old Boardman asked Porter, when the younger menjoined the ladies on the veranda. 

"Some protege of Alec's, " Brome Porter replied. "Son of an oldfriend--fresh chap. "

"I am afraid our young friend is not going to turn out well, " Dr. Lindsay, who had overheard the discussion, added in a distressed tone. "I have donewhat I can for him, but he is very opinionated and green--yes, very green. Pity--he is a clever fellow, one of the cleverest young surgeons in thecity. "

"He talks about what he doesn't _know_, " Boardman pronouncedsententiously. "When he's lived with decent folks a little longer, he'llget some sense knocked into his puppy head, maybe. "

"Maybe, " Brome Porter assented, dismissing this crude, raw, green, ignorantyoung man with a contemptuous grunt. 

Outside on the brick terrace the younger people had gathered in a circleand were discussing the polo match. Miss Hitchcock's clear, mocking voicecould be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon. The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne hehad taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. ParkerHitchcock came to his rescue. 

"I say, Lou, it's absurd to compare us with the teams east. We haven't thestable. Who ever heard of playing with two ponies?"

He appealed to Sommers, who happened to be seated next him. 

"Steve Bayliss buys ponies by the carload and takes his pick. You can'tplay polo without good ponies, can you?"

"I don't know, " Sommers answered indifferently. 

He was looking at the lights along the shore, and contriving some excuse tocut short his visit. It was clear that he was uncomfortably out of hiselement in the chattering circle. He was too dull to add joy to such agathering, and he got little joy from it. And he was feverishly anxious tobe doing something, to put his hand to some plough--to escape the perpetualirritation of talk. 

The chatter went on from polo to golf and gossip until the group broke upinto flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach, Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiablepurpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. He talkedadmiringly of the manner in which the general managers had taken hold ofthe strike. 

"Most of them are from the ranks, you know, " he said, "fought their way upto the head, just as any one of those fellows could if he had the ability, and they _know_ what they're doing. "

"There is no one so bitter, so arrogant, so proud as your son of a peasantwho has got the upper hand, " Sommers commented philosophically. 

"The son of a peasant?" Lindsay repeated, bewildered. 

"Yes, that's what our money-makers are, --from the soil, from the masses. And when they feel their power, they use it worse than the most arrogantaristocrats. Of course the strikers are all wrong, poor fools!" he hastenedto add. "But they are not as bad as the others, as _those who have_. The men will be licked fast enough, and licked badly. They always will be. But it is a brutal game, a brutal game, this business success, --a good dealworse than war, where you line up in the open at least. "

Sommers spoke nonchalantly, as if his views could not interest Dr. Lindsay, but were interesting to himself, nevertheless. 

"That's pretty fierce!" Lindsay remarked, with a laugh. "I guess youhaven't seen much of business. If you had been here during the anarchistriots--"

Sommers involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. The anarchist was the mostterrifying bugaboo in Chicago, referred to as a kind of Asiatic plague thatmight break out at any time. Before Lindsay could get his argumentlaunched, however, some of the guests drifted out to the terrace, and thetwo men separated. 

Later in the evening Sommers found Miss Hitchcock alone, and explained toher that he should have to leave in the morning, as that would probably bethe last chance to reach Chicago for some days. She did not urge him tostay, and expressed her regret at his departure in conventional phrases. They were standing by the edge of the terrace, which ran along the bluffabove the lake. A faint murmur of little waves rose to them from the beachbeneath. 

"It is so heavenly quiet!" the girl murmured, as if to reproach hisdissatisfied, restless spirit. "So this is good-bye?" she added, at length. 

Sommers knew that she meant this would be the end of their intimacy, ofanything but the commonplace service of the world. 

"I hope not, " he answered regretfully. 

"Why is it we differ?" she asked swiftly. "I am sorry we should disagree onsuch really unimportant matters. "

"Don't say that, " Sommers protested. "You know that it is just because youare intelligent and big enough to realize that they _are_ importantthat--"

"We strike them every time?" she inquired. 

"Laura Lindsay and Caspar would think we were drivelling idiots. "

"I am not so sure they wouldn't be right!" She laughed nervously, andlocked her hands tightly together. He turned away in discomfort, andneither spoke for a long time. Finally he broke the silence, --

"At any rate, you can see that I am scarcely a fit guest!"

"So you are determined to go in this way--back to your--case?"

At the scorn of her last words Sommers threw up his head haughtily. 

"Yes, back to my case. "

CHAPTER XVII

Mrs. Ducharme opened the door of the cottage in response to Sommers'sknock. Attired in a black house dress, with her dark hair smoothly brushedback from round, fat features, she was a peaceful figure. Sommers thoughtthere was some truth in her contention that "Ducharme ought to get adecent-looking woman, anyway. "

"How is Mr. Preston?" he asked. 

Mrs. Ducharme shook her head mournfully. 

"Bad, allus awful bad--and _pitiful_. Calling for stuff in a voice fitto break your heart. "

"Mind you don't let him get any, " the doctor counselled, preparing to goupstairs. 

"Better not go up there jest yet, " the woman whispered. "He _did_ getaway from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there. " She hitched hershoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found outtill he'd been gone 'most two hours, and, my! such goings on; we had to gittwo perlicemen. "

"I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in asevere tone. 

"It was the last time, " the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come inhere. Miss Preston ain't got back from school, --she's late to-day. "

Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharmeleaned against the door-post, fingering her apron in an embarrassed manner. 

"I've got cured, " she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it'sbeen most a week since you sent me here. "

"Did you follow my treatment?"

"No! I was out one afternoon--after Mrs. Preston came back from school--andI had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I passed a buildin' down here aways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over thewindows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in greattheaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I waslookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along andhelped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finishin'with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood ofthe lamb. ' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough churchfitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin'folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, andthe old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me andsays, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walkedto the platform, and they prayed over me--you aren't mad, are you?" sheasked suspiciously. 

Sommers laughed. 

"Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any ratethe old fellow--Dr. --Dr. --Po--"

"Dr. Potz, " Sommers suggested. 

"That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him aboutDucharme. And _he_ says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it outby prayin'. But he wants money. "

"How much will it cost to cast out the devil?" the doctor inquired. 

"The doctor says he must have ten dollars to loosen the bonds. "

"Well, " Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars onaccount of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. Youlet him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the otherwoman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring thedevil back again. "

The woman took the money eagerly. 

"You can go right off to find the doctor, " Sommers continued. "I'll stayhere until Mrs. Preston returns. But let me look at your eye, and seewhether the doctor has cast that devil out for good and all. "

He examined the eye as well as he could without appliances. Sure enough, sofar as he could detect, the eye was normal, the peculiar paralysis haddisappeared. 

"You are quite right, " he pronounced at last. "The doctor has handled thisdevil very ably. You can tell Mrs. Preston that I approve of your going tothat doctor. "

"I wonder where Mrs. Preston can be: she's most always here by half-pastfour, and it's after five. He, " the woman pointed upstairs to Preston'srooms, "is sleeping off the effects of the dose Mrs. Preston gave him. "

"The powders?" the doctor asked. 

"Yes, sir. She had to give him two before he would sleep. Well, I'll beback by supper time. If he calls you, be careful about the bar on thedoor. "

After Mrs. Ducharme had gone, the doctor examined every object in thelittle room. It was all so bare! Needlessly so, Sommers thought at first, contrasting the bleak room with the comfortable simplicity of his ownrooms. The strip of coarse thin rug, the open Franklin stove, the pinekitchen table, the three straight chairs--it was as if the woman, crusheddown from all aspirations, had defiantly willed to exist with as little ofthis world's furniture as might be. On the table were a few school books, ateacher's manual of drawing, a school mythology, and at one side two orthree other volumes, which Sommers took up with more interest. One was abook on psychology--a large modern work on the subject. A second was anantiquated popular treatise on "Diseases of the Mind. " Another volume wasan even greater surprise--Balzac's _Une Passion dans la Desert_, awell-dirtied copy from the public library. They were fierce condiments fora lonely mind!

His examination over, he noiselessly stepped into the hall and wentupstairs. After some fumbling he unbolted the door and tiptoed into theroom, where Preston lay like a log. The fortnight had changed him markedly. There was no longer any prospect that he would sink under his disease, asSommers had half expected. He had grown stouter, and his flesh had ahealthy tint. "It will take it out of his mind, " he muttered to himself, watching the hanging jaw that fell nervelessly away from the mouth, disclosing the teeth. 

As he watched the man's form, so drearily promising of physical power, heheard a light footstep at the outer door, which he had left unbarred. Onturning he caught the look of relief that passed over Mrs. Preston's faceat the sight of the man lying quietly in his bed. What a state of fear shemust live in!

Without a word the two descended, Sommers carefully barring and bolting thedoor. When they reached her room, her manner changed, and she spoke with anote of elation in her voice:

"I was _so_ afraid that you would not come again after sending mehelp. "

"I shall come as often and as long as you need me, " Sommers answered, taking her hand kindly. "He has had another attack, " he continued. "Mrs. Ducharme told me--I sent her out--and I suppose he's sleeping off theopiate. "

"Yes, it was dreadful, worse than anything yet. " She uttered these wordsjerkily, walking up and down the room in excitement. "And I've just leftthe schoolhouse. The assistant superintendent was there to see me. He waskind enough, but he said it couldn't happen again. There was scandal aboutit now. And yesterday I heard a child, one of my pupils, say to hiscompanion, 'She's the teacher who's got a drunken husband. '"

Her voice was dreary, not rebellious. 

"I don't know what to do. I cannot move. It would be worse in any otherneighborhood. I thought, " she added in a low voice, "that he would go away, for a time at least, but his mind is so weak, and he has some trouble withwalking. But he gets stronger, stronger, O God, every day! I have to seehim grow stronger, and I grow weaker. "

"It is simply preposterous, " the doctor protested in matter-of-fact tones, "to kill yourself, to put yourself in such a position for a man, who is nolonger a man. For a man you cannot love, " he added. 

"What would be the use of running away from the trouble? He has ruined mylife. Alves Preston is a mere thing that eats and sleeps. She will be thatkind of thing as long as she lives. "

"That is romantic rot, " the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined inthat way. One life has been wrecked; but you, _you_ are bigger thanthat life. You can recover--bury it away--and love and have children andfind that it is a good thing to live. That is the beauty of humanweakness--we forget ourselves of yesterday. "

In answer to his words her face, which he had once thought too immobile andpassive for beauty, flamed with color, the dark eyes flashing beneath thebroad white brow. 

"Am I just caught in a fog?" she murmured. 

"You are living in a way that would make any woman mad. I might twistmyself into as many knots as you have. I might say that _I_ had causedthis disaster; that March evening my hand was too true. For I knew then theman ought to die. "

He blurted out his admission roughly. 

"I knew you did, " she said softly, "and that has made it easier. "

His voice trembled when he spoke again. "But I live with facts, notfancies. And the facts are that that ruined thing should not clog you, ruin_you_. Get rid of him in any way you will, --I advise the countyasylum. Get rid of him, and do it quickly before he crazes you. "

When he had finished, there was an oppressive stillness in the room, as ifsome sentence had been declared. Mrs. Preston got up and walked to and fro, evidently battling with herself. She stopped opposite him finally. 

"The only thing that would justify _that_ would be to know that yougrasped it all--real happiness in that one bold stroke. Such conviction can_never_ come. "

"Happiness!" he exclaimed scornfully. "If you mean a good, comfortabletime, you won't find any certainty about _that_. But you can get freedom tolive out your life--"

"You fail to understand. There _is_ happiness. See, --come here. "

She led him to the front window, which was open toward the peaceful littlelawn. On the railroad track behind the copse of scrub oak an unskilfultrain crew was making up a long train of freight cars. Their shouts, punctuated by the rumbling reverberations from the long train as italternately buckled up and stretched out, was the one discord in the softnight. All else was hushed, even to the giant chimneys in the steel works. One solitary furnace lamped the growing darkness. It was midsummer now inthese marshy spots, and a very living nature breathed and pulsed, even inthe puddles between the house and the avenue. 

"You can hear it in the night air, " she murmured; "the joy that comesrising up from the earth, the joy of living. Ah! that is why we aremade--to have happiness and joy, to rejoice the heart of God, to make Godlive, for _He_ must be happiness itself; and when we are happy andfeel joy in living, He must grow stronger. And when we are weak and bitter, when the world haunts us as I felt this afternoon on leaving thesuperintendent, when men strike and starve, and others are hard andgrasping--then He must shrink and grow small and suffer. There _is_happiness, " she ended, breathing her belief as a prayer into the solitudeand night. 

"What will you do to get it?" Sommers asked, shortly. 

"Do to get it?" She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When itcomes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, and nothing shallhinder me. "

"Meantime?" the doctor questioned significantly. 

"Don't ask me!" She sank into a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. And neither spoke until the sound of footsteps was heard on the walk. 

"There is Mrs. Ducharme coming home from the charmer of devils. It is timefor me to go, " Sommers said. 

The room was so dark that he could not see her face, as he extended hishand; but he could feel the repressed breathing, the passionate air abouther person. 

"Remember, " he said slowly, "whenever you need me--want me foranything--send a message, and I shall come at once. We will settle thisthing together. "

There was a sharp pressure on his hand, her thin fingers drawing him towardher involuntarily. Then his hand dropped, and he groped his way to thedoor. 

CHAPTER XVIII

The cars were still whirring up and down Stoney Island Avenue when Sommersleft the cottage, but he did not think to stop one. Instead, he walked onheedlessly, mechanically, toward the city. Frequently he stumbled and withdifficulty saved himself from falling over the dislocated planks of thewooden walk. The June night was brilliant above with countless points oflight. A gentle wind drew in shore from the lake, stirring the tall rushesin the adjacent swamps. Occasionally a bicyclist sped by, the light fromhis lantern wagging like a crazy firefly. The night was strangely still;the clamorous railroads were asleep. Far away to the south a solitaryengine snorted at intervals, indicating the effort of some untrained handto move the perishing freight. Chicago was a helpless giant to-night. Whenhe came to the region of saloons, which were crowded with strikers, heturned away from the noise and the stench of bad beer, and struck into agrass-grown street in the direction of the lake. There he walked on, unmindful of time or destination, in the marvellous state of consciousdream. 

The little space of one day separated him from that final meeting with MissHitchcock in the pleasant cottage above the lake. He had gone there, drawnby her, and he had gone away repelled, at strife with himself, with her. Nothing had happened since, and yet everything. As he had said to anotherwoman, Mrs. Preston was a woman you remembered. And he had said that of awoman very different from the one he had seen and spoken with this night. That stricken, depressed creature of the night of the operation had fadedaway, and in her place was this passionate, large-hearted woman, who hadspoken to him bravely as an equal in the dark room of the forbiddingcottage. She had thrown a spell into his life this night, and his stepswere wandering on, purposeless, unconscious, with an exhilaration akin tosome subtle opiate. 

Her life was set in noisome places. Yet the poor mass of clay in the upperroom that had burdened her so grievously--what was it, after all, but oneof the ephemeral unrealities of life to be brushed aside? Decay, defeat, falling and groaning; disease, blind doctoring of disease; hunger andsorrow and sordid misery; the grime of living here in Chicago in the sharpdiscords of this nineteenth century; the brutal rich, the brutalized poor;the stupid good, the pedantic, the foolish, --all, all that made the wakingworld of his experience! It was like the smoke wreath above the lampingtorch of the blast-furnace. It was the screen upon which glowed the rosycolors of the essential fire. The fire, --that was the one great thing, --thefire was life itself. 

As he walked on in the tumultuous sensations of dream, the discords ofliving were swept away: the beautiful flesh that rotted; the noble humanfigures that it was well to have covered; the shame of woman's form, ofman's corrupted carcass; the world that has, with its beauty and charm, side by side with the world that has not, with its grime and its nastiness. In the dream that he dreamed the difference between the woman who hadadornment and the other sad one back there in the cottage was as nothing. The irritating paradox of life was reconciled: there was greatreasonableness in things, and he had found it. 

Men fought and gambled to-day in the factories, the shops, the railroads, as they fought in the dark ages, for the same ends--for sensual pleasures, gross love of power, barbaric show. They would fight on, glorifying theirpetty deeds of personal gain; but not always. The mystery of human defeatin the midst of success would be borne in upon them. The barbarians oftrade would give way, as had the barbarians of feudal war. This heaving, moaning city, blessedly quiet tonight, would learn its lesson of futility. His eyes that had been long searching the dark were opened now, and hecould bide his few years of life in peace. He had labored too long in thecharnel house. 

He forgave life for its disgusting manifestations, for the triviality ofLindsay, for the fleshy Porter with his finger in the stock market, for theambitious Carson who would better have rested in his father's dugout inIowa. They were a part of the travailing world, without which it could notfulfil its appointed destiny. It was childish to dislike them; with thisGod-given peace and understanding one could never be impatient, nor foam atthe mouth. He could enter into himself and remove them from him, from_her_. Some day they two would quietly leave it all, depart to a placewhere as man and woman they could live life simply, sweetly. Yes, they hadalready departed, had faded away from the strife, and he was no longer indoubt about anything. He had ceased to think, and for the first moment inhis life he was content to feel. 

All emotion over life must come to be transmuted to this--an elementalstate of conviction transforming the tawdry acts of life. There was butthis one everlasting emotion which equalized everything, in which allmanifestations of life had their proper place and proportion, according towhich man could work in joy. She and he were accidents of the story. Theymight go out into darkness to-night; there was eternal time and multitudesof others to take their place, to feel the ancient, purifying fire--to loveand have peace. 

CHAPTER XIX

The Fourth, of July had never before been kept in the like manner inChicago. There was a row or two at Grand Crossing between the strikers andthe railroad officials, several derailed cars and spiked switches, a row atBlue Island, and a bonfire in the stock yards. People were not travellingon this holiday, and the main streets were strangely silent and dull. 

Sommers had found no one at the office in the Athenian Building. Lindsayhad not been in since the strike began. Probably he would not appear untilthe disorderly city had settled down. Sommers had taken the clinicyesterday; to-day there was nothing for him to do except exercise his horseby a long ride in the blazing sunshine. Before he left the office atelegram came from Lake Forest, announcing that a postponed meeting of theboard of managers of the summer sanitarium for poor babies would be put offindefinitely. Sommers knew what that meant--no appropriation for carryingon the work. At the last meeting the board of managers, who were women forthe most part, had disagreed about the advisability of undertaking the workthis season, when every one was feeling poor. Some women had beenespecially violent against supporting the charity in those districts wherethe strikers lived. 

Miss Hitchcock, who was the secretary, and Sommers had got the heatedmembers of the board to suppress their prejudices for the present, and votea temporary subsidy. The telegram meant that under the presentcircumstances it would be hopeless to try to extract money from the usualsources. The sanitarium and creche would have to close within a week, andSommers was left to arrange matters. After he had taken the necessarymeasures, he started on his ride. He had in mind to ride out of the cityalong the lines of railroad to the southwest to see whether the newspaperreports of the strike were justified or, as he suspected, grosslyexaggerated. The newspapers, at first inclined to side with the Pullman menin their demand for arbitration, had suddenly turned about and weredenouncing the strikers as anarchists. They were spreading broadcastthroughout the country violent reports of incendiarism and riot. 

Outside of the stations and the adjacent yards Sommers found little to see. A great stagnation had settled over the city this hot July day. Somewhatdisappointed in his search for excitement he came back at nightfall to thecool stretches of the South Parks. He turned into the desolate Midway, where the unsightly wheel hung an inert, abortive mass in the violet dusk. His way home lay in the other direction, and his horse trotted languidly. He had determined to turn back, when suddenly a tongue of flame shot up amile away toward the lake. This first long tongue ran out, followed byanother and another, and yet others that raced north and south and up intothe night. 

"The Fair Buildings!" a man on a bicycle shouted, and sped away. 

The broad flames now illuminated the dome of the Administration Buildingand the facades of the Court of Honor. Sommers spurred his horse, while theloungers suddenly, with one cry, poured from the park along the rough pathsof the Midway, streaming out across the prairie toward the fire. He plungedinto the cool gulf under the Illinois Central tracks, then out into a glareof full day, before the wild, licking flames. The Court of Honor with itsempty lagoon and broken bridges was more beautiful in the savage glow ofthe ravaging fire than ever on the gala nights of the exposition. Thefantastic fury of the scene fascinated man and beast. The streaming linesof people raced on, and the horse snorted and plunged into the mass. Nowthe crackling as of paper burning in a brisk wind could be heard. There wasa shout from the crowd. The flames had gained the Peristyle--that noblefantasy plucked from another, distant life and planted here above thebarbaric glow of the lake in the lustrous atmosphere of Chicago. Thehorseman holding his restive steeds drove in a sea of flame. Through theempty arches the dark waters of the lake caught the reflection and sombrelyrelighted the scene. 

Sommers almost knocked over a woman who was gazing in speechless absorptionat the panorama of flame. In the light of the fire he could see that it wasMrs. Preston. She seemed entranced, fascinated like an animal by thesavagery of the fierce fire. 

"It is grand, beautiful, " she murmured to Sommers, who had dismounted. Herlarge frame trembled with suppressed excitement, and her face glowed. 

"Beauty eating beauty, " Sommers replied sadly. 

"They ought to go, just like this--shoot up into the sky in flame and die, expire in the last beauty. "

The excitement of the scene loosened her tongue, gave her whole beingexpression, and made her words thrill. She took off her hat as if to freeher body, even by that little, while she drank in the scene of leapingflames, the crescendo of light, the pathetic, noble emptiness between thefire-eaten pillars of the Peristyle. 

"That is better than the Fair itself. It is fiercer--not mere play. "

"Nature has taken a hand, " Sommers said grimly, "and knocks about man'stoys. Look!"

He pointed to the fairylike brightness of the island in the lagoon. Thegreen leafage of the shrubbery was suffused in tender light; the watersreflected calmly all their drapery, but none of the savage desolation ofthe pyre in the Court of Honor. Beyond where the gracious pile of the ArtBuilding stretched across the horizon the light clouds of smoke floated, agray wreath in the night. The seething mass of flame began to abate, tolessen almost imperceptibly, exhausting itself slowly with deep groans likethe dying of a master passion. 

Sommers suggested that they should circle the fire to the south, where theycould see to better advantage the Peristyle now burning almost alone. Theymade the circuit slowly, Sommers leading his frightened animal among therefuse of the grounds. Mrs. Preston walked tranquilly by his side, her facestill illuminated by the fading glow. The prairie lay in gloomy vastness, lighted but a little way by the waning fire. Along the avenue forms of menand women--mere mites--were running to and fro. The figures were those ofgnomes toiling under a gloomy, uncertain firmament, or of animals furtivelypeeping out of the gloom of dusk in a mountain valley. Helpless shapesdoomed to wander on the sandy strand of the earth!

The two found a place above the little inlet, directly across from theburning Peristyle. The fire had burned itself out now, and was dying withprotests of reviving flame spurting here and there from the dark spots ofthe Court. The colossal figure rising from the lagoon in front of thePeristyle was still illuminated, --the light falling upon the gilded ballborne aloft, --solemnly presiding even in the ruins of the dream. And behindthis colossal figure of triumph the noble horseman still reined in hisfrightened chargers. The velvet shadows of the night were falling once moreover the distant Art Building, creeping over the little island, leaving thelagoons in murky silence. The throngs of curious people that had clusteredabout the western end of the fire were thinning out rapidly. A light nightbreeze from the empty spaces of prairie wafted the smoke wreaths northwardtoward the city of men whose plaything had been taken. At their feet awhite column of staff plunged into the water, hissed and was silent. Thepassion was well-nigh spent. 

Mrs. Preston sighed, like a child waking from a long revery, a journey intoanother land. 

"I never felt that the fierce things, the passions of life, could bringtheir happiness too. It seemed that happiness was something peaceful, likethe fields at night or this lake when it is still. But that is but_one_ kind. There are many others. "

Her low voice, powerful in its restraint, took up the mood of the place. 

"It dies, " Sommers replied. "Burnt out!"

"No, " she protested eagerly; "it remains in the heart, warming it in dull, cold times, and its great work comes after. It is not well to live withoutfierceness and passion. "

The last lights from the fire flickered over her dark hair and sombre face. She was breathing heavily close by his side, throwing into the soft night apassionate warmth of feeling. It set his pulses beating in response. 

"You are so insistent upon happiness, " the man cried. 

"Yes, " she nodded. "To die out without this"--her hand pointed to theblackened Court of Honor--"is to have lived unfulfilled. That is what Ifelt as a child in the rich fields of Wisconsin, as a girl at the chapel ofthe seminary. "

And she began, as if to explain herself, to tell the story of the Wisconsinfarm, sleeping heavily in the warm sun among the little lakes; of the crudefervor that went on under the trees of the quiet seminary hill; of thelittle chapel with its churchyard to the west, commanding the lakes, thewoods, the rising bosom of hills. The story was disconnected, lapsing intomere exclamations, rising to animated description as one memory wakenedanother in the chain of human associations. Bovine, heavy, and animal, yetpeaceful, was that picture of Wisconsin farm lands, saturated with a fewstrong impressions, --the scents of field and of cattle, the fertile soil, and the broad-shouldered men, like Holstein cattle. 

The excitement of the evening had set free the heart, and a torrent offeelings and memories surged up, --disordered, turbulent, yet strangelyunified by the simple nature, the few aims of the being that held them. Thewaters of the past had been gathering these past weeks, and now she foundpeace in their release, in the abandonment of herself through speech. Thenight crept on, cooler now and clouded, the heavens covered with filamentsof gray lace; the horse tied near by stamped and whinnied. But the twositting on the shore of the silent lake felt neither the passing of timenor the increasing cold of the night. 

At the end of her tale the dominant note sounded once more: "Eight orwrong, happiness! for if we make happiness in the world, we know God. Godlives upon our happiness. "

This belief, which seemed laboriously gathered from the tears of torturedexperience, had become an obsession. She was silent, brooding over it; butshe herself was there, larger, less puzzling and negative thanhitherto, --an awakening force. The man lost his anchor of convention andtraditional reasoning. He felt with her an excitement, a thirst for thisevanescent treasure of joy. 

"If you think that--if your whole story turns out that way--why did you--"But he paused, unwilling to force her by a brutal proof of illogicality. 

"How is _he_?" he asked at last, with effort. 

Her head had drooped forward, but with this question she moved quickly, asif suddenly lashed. 

"He is better, always better. "

"My God!" the man groaned. 

"But his mind is weaker--it wanders. Sometimes it is clear; then it isdreadful. "

"You must not endure it!"

She laid her hand lightly upon his arm, warning him of the inutility of hisprotest. 

"I think we must endure it now. If it had been done earlier, before--" sheanswered tranquilly; and added definitely, "it is too late now for anyrelief. "

It was on his lips to cry out, "Why, why?" but as his eyes looked into herface and met her warm, wistful glance, he acquiesced in the fate she hadordained. He took her hand, the one that had touched him, and for the timehe was content that things should be as they were. She was looking out intothe ruined buildings, where embers hissed; at last she lowered her eyes, and whispered:

"It is very good even as it is, now. "

But he rebelled, manlike, unwilling to be satisfied with mere feeling, desirous of retrieving the irretrievable. "Fool, " he muttered, "a weak foolI have been! _I_ have fastened this monstrous chain about you--about_us_. "

"Let us not think of it----to-night, " she murmured, her eyes burning intohis face. 

 * * * * *

The first gray of the morning was revealing the outlines of the scrub oaksin the field as the two came back to the cottage. Sommers tied his horse toa fence-post at the end of the lane, and went in to warm himself from thechill of the night air. Mrs. Preston prepared some coffee, while he built afire in the unused stove. Then she drew up her work-table before the fireand poured out the coffee into two thick cups. As there was no cream, sheremarked with a little smile, "It is very late for after-dinner coffee!"

She moved and spoke with extreme caution, not to disturb Mrs. Ducharme andPreston, who became excitable when awakened suddenly. They drank theircoffee in silence, and Sommers had stood up to leave. 

"I shall come very soon, " he was saying, and her face responded with alittle smile that lit up its sober corners and hard lines. Suddenly it grewrigid and white, and her eyes stared beyond the doctor into the gloom ofthe room. Sommers turned to follow her gaze. The door moved a little. Therewas some one outside, peering in. Sommers strode across the floor and threwthe door open. In the dim light of the dawn he could see Preston, halfdressed. He had slunk back from the door. 

"Come in, " the doctor ordered sternly. 

The man obeyed, shambling into the room with an air of bravado. 

"Oh, it's you, is it, doctor?" he remarked quite naturally, with an air ofself-possession. "Haven't seen you for a long time; you don't come this wayoften, at least to see _me_, " he added insinuatingly, looking at hiswife. "I heard voices, and I thought I would come down to see what my wifewas up to. Women always need a little watching, doctor, as you probablyknow. "

He walked toward the table. As he stood there talking in a sneering voice, in full flesh, shaved and clean, he certainly did not look like a manstricken with paresis. Yet the doctor knew that this fitful mood of sanitywas deceitful. The feeble brain had given a momentary spurt. 

"Coffee?" Preston continued, as the others remained silent. "Haven't yougot anything better than coffee? Where have you been, Mrs. Preston andDr. --?"

Mrs. Preston tremblingly poured out some coffee and handed it to him. Theact enraged the doctor. It seemed symbolical. Preston threw the cup to thefloor. 

"None of your rot, " he shouted. "I bet _you_ have had something morethan coffee, you--" he glared at his wife, his limbs trembling andtwitching as the nervous irritation gained on him. Sommers sprang forward. 

"Go upstairs, " he commanded sternly. "You are not fit to be here. "

"Who are you to give me orders in my own house before _my_ wife?" Theman balanced himself against the table. "You get out of this and never comeback. I am a gentleman, I want you to know, and I may be a drunkard and allthat, but I am not going to have any man hanging--"

Sommers seized Preston by the collar of his shirt and dragged him to thestairs. The man fought and bit and cursed. A black slime of words fell fromhis lips, covering them all with its defilement. Finally the strugglessubsided, and with one mighty effort the doctor threw him into the upperchamber and closed the door behind them. In a few moments he camedownstairs, bolting the door carefully. When he entered the room, he sawMrs. Preston staring at the door as if entranced, her face marble withhorror. 

"I gave him a hypodermic injection. He will sleep a few hours, " Sommersmuttered, throwing himself into a chair. 

Mrs. Preston sat down at the table and folded her arms about her face. Herfigure shook with her silent sobs. 

CHAPTER XX

"When the men confront bayonets, you know, they'll give in quick enough. Ihave reason to believe that the President has already ordered United Statestroops to protect lives and property in Chicago. The general managers willget an injunction restraining Debs and his crew. When the courts take ahand--"

"So it's to be made into a civil war, is it?" Sommers interposedsarcastically. "I saw that the bankrupt roads had appealed to thegovernment for protection. Like spendthrift sons, they run to theirguardian in time of trouble. "

"Oh! you know this thing can't go on. It's a disgrace. I was called to goto Detroit on an important case; it would mean two thousand dollars tome, --but I can't get out of the city. "

Dr. Lindsay was in an ill humor, having spent three early morning hours indriving into town from Lake Forest. Sommers listened to his growling, patiently if not respectfully, and when the eminent physician had finished, he spoke to him about a certain operation that was on the office docket forthe following week. 

"You haven't asked my opinion, doctor, " he said, in conclusion; "but I havebeen thinking over the case. I was present at General Horr's examination, and have seen a good deal of the case these last days while you were out oftown. " Lindsay stared, but the young man plunged on. "So I have ventured toremonstrate. It would do no good, and it might be serious. "

The day was so hot that any feeling sent beads of perspiration to the face. Sommers paused when Lindsay began to mop his head. 

"I may say to start with, " Lindsay answered, with an irascible air, as ifhe intended to take this time to finish the young man's case, "that I am inthe habit of consulting my attending physicians, and not having themdictate to me--"

"Who is dictating?" Sommers asked bluntly. "That old man can't possibly getany good from an operation--"

"It will do him no harm?" Lindsay retorted, with an interrogation in histone that made the younger surgeon stare. What he might have said when herealized the full meaning of Lindsay's remark was not clear in his ownmind. At that moment, however, one of the women employed in the officeknocked at the door. She had a telephone message. 

"Somebody, I think it was Mrs. Prestess or Preton, or something--"

"Preston, " suggested Sommers. 

"That's it. The message was she was in trouble and wanted you as soon aspossible. But some one is at the wire now. "

Sommers hastened out without making excuses. When he returned, Dr. Lindsayhad dried his face and was calmer. But his aspect was sufficiently ominous;he was both pompous and severe. 

"Sit down, doctor, will you. I have a few words--some things I have beenmeditating to say to you a long time, ever since our connection began, infact. "

Sommers did not sit down. He stood impatiently, twirling a stethoscope inhis hand. He had passed the schoolboy age and was a bit overbearinghimself. 

"As a young man of good promise, well introduced, and vouched for by someof our best people, I have naturally looked for great things from you. "

Sommers stopped the rotation of the stethoscope and squared about. His facewas no longer flushed with irritation. Some swift purpose seemed to steadyhim. As Sommers made no reply to this exordium, Lindsay began again, in hisdiagnostic manner:

"But I have been disappointed. Not that you haven't done your work wellenough, so far as I know. But you have more than a young man'sself-assurance and self-assertion. I have noticed also a note ofcondescension, of criticism in your bearing to those about you. Thecritical attitude to society and individuals is a bad one for a successfulpractitioner of medicine to fall into. It is more than that--it isilliberal; it comes from a continued residence in a highly exotic society, in a narrow intellectual circle. Breadth of mind--"

Sommers made an impatient gesture. Every sentence led the floridpractitioner farther and farther into the infinite. Another time the youngsurgeon would have derived a wicked satisfaction from driving the doctoraround the field in his argument. To-day the world, life, was amove, andmore important matters waited in the surcharged city. He must be gone. Hesaid nothing, however, for another five minutes, waiting for some goodopportunity to end the talk. But Lindsay had once lectured in a college; hedid not easily finish his exposition. He vaguely sketched a socialphilosophy, and he preached the young specialist successful as he preachedhim on graduating days of the medical school. He was shrewd, eloquent, kind, and boresome. At last came the clause:

"If you are to continue your connection with this office--"

"I should like to talk that over with you some other day, " Sommersinterposed positively, "when I have more time. I am sorry that I shall haveto leave at once. " After a moment, he added, "And if you have any one inmind for my place, don't bother--"

Lindsay waved his hand. 

"We never have to 'bother' about any member of our force. "

"Oh! very well. I didn't want to leave you in a hole. Perhaps I waspresumptuous to suppose I was of any importance in the office. "

Sommers stepped briskly to the door, while Lindsay wheeled to his desk. Before he opened the door, he paused and called back pleasantly:

"But really I shouldn't operate on the General. Poor old man! And he hasn'tmuch money--'the usual fee' would come hard on him. "

Lindsay paid no attention to the remark. Sommers had passed from his worldaltogether; there would be a long, hard road for this young man in thepractice of his profession in Chicago, if Dr. Lindsay, consulting surgeonat St. Isidore's, St. Martha's, the Home for Incurables, the Institute forPulmonary Diseases, etc. , could bring it about. 

Sommers hastily rifled certain pigeonholes of his desk, tossing the lettersinto his little black bag, and seizing his hat hurried out. He stopped atthe clerk's desk to leave a direction for forwarding his mail. 

"Going away for a vacation?" Miss Clark queried. 

"Yes, for a good long one, " the young surgeon answered. As the door slammedbehind him, the black-haired Miss Clark turned to the assistantstenographer with a yawn. 

"He's got his travelling papers. I knew there was a fuss when I called himto the 'phone. I guess he wasn't tony enough for this office. "

Sommers was now sinking down to the heated street, unmindful whether he was"tony" enough for the Athenian Building or not. Mrs. Ducharme had whisperedover the telephone: "He's gone. Come quick. Mrs. Preston wants you bad. "

For an instant he asked himself if he had made a mistake when he had givenPreston the injection of morphine two days before. A glance at the littleinstrument reassured him. Perhaps the woman meant merely that he had gotaway again from the cottage. Why, then, such agitation over the creature'sdisappearance? But _she_ wanted him "bad. " He hurried into the torridstreet out of the cool, marble-lined hall, like a factory hand dismissedfrom his job. It was the first break with the order of things he had growninto. But he had no time for regrets. 

He crossed the deserted streets where the women usually shop, and turnedinto the strip of park bordered by the Illinois Central tracks. Possibly atrain might be going out, under a heavy guard of deputy sheriffs, and inthat case he would save much time in reaching Ninety-first Street. Exhilarated by his new freedom, he walked briskly, threading his way amongthe groups of idle workmen who had gathered in the park. As he skirted alarge group, he recognized Dresser, who was shouting a declamatory speech. The men received it apathetically, and Dresser got off the bench on whichhe had stood and pushed his way through the crowd. 

"Well, " Sommers said, as Dresser came by him. "How does the good work move?You've got the courts down on you, and pretty soon there'll be the troopsto settle with. There's only one finish when the workingmen are led by aman like Debs, and the capitalists have an association of general managersas staff. Besides, your people have put the issue badly before the public. The public understands now that it is a question of whether it, every oneof them, shall do what he wants to or not. And the general public says itwon't be held up in this pistol-in-your-face fashion. So Pullman and theothers get in behind the great public opinion, and there you are!"

"All that newspaper talk about riot and destruction of property is a massof lies, " Dresser exclaimed bitterly. "Which, way are you going? I willwalk along with you. "

As the two men proceeded in the direction of the big station, Dressercontinued:

"I _know_ there isn't any violence from the strikers. It's the toughelement and the railroads. They're burning cars themselves so as to rousepublic opinion. "

Sommers laughed. 

"You don't believe it? I suppose you won't believe that the generalmanagers are offering us, the leaders, money, --money down and a lot of it, to call the strike off. "

"Yes, I'll believe that; but you won't get any one to believe the otherthing. And you'd better take the money!"

"We'll have every laboring man in Chicago out on a strike in a week, "Dresser added confidentially. "There hasn't been a car of beef shipped outof the stock yards, or of cattle shipped in. I guess when the countrybegins to feel hungry, it will know something's on here. The butchershaven't a three days' supply left for the city. We'll _starve_ 'emout!"

Sommers knew there was some truth in this. The huge slaughter-houses thatfed a good part of the world were silent and empty, for lack of animalmaterial. The stock yards had nothing to fill their bloody maw, whiletrains of cars of hogs and steers stood unswitched on the hundreds ofsidings about the city. The world would shortly feel this stoppage of itsChicago beef and Armour pork, and the world would grumble and know for oncethat Chicago fed it. Inside the city there was talk of a famine. Thecondition was like that of the beleaguered city of the Middle Ages, threatened with starvation while wheat and cattle rotted outside its grasp. But the enemy was within its walls, either rioting up and down the ironroadways, or sipping its cooling draughts and fanning itself with thegarish pages of the morning paper at some comfortable club. It was a war ofinjunctions and court decrees. But the passions were the same as those thatset Paris flaming a century before, and it was a war with but one end: thewell-fed, well-equipped legions must always win. 

"They're too strong for you, " Sommers said at last. "You will save a goodmany people from a lot of misery, if you will sell out now quietly, andprevent the shooting. "

"That's the cynicism of _your_ crowd. "

"You can't say my crowd any longer; they never were my crowd, I guess. "

"Have you been fired?" Dresser asked, with childish interest. 

"Not exactly, but I fancy Lindsay and I won't find each other's societyhealthy in the future. "

"It isn't the same thing, though. Professional men like you can never getvery far from the rich. It isn't like losing your bread and butter. "

"Pretty much that, at present. And I think I shall get some distance fromthe rich--perhaps go out farther west into some small town. "Dresser did not reply; he kept on with Sommers, as if to express hissympathy over a misfortune. The court that led to the Park Row station wasfull of people. Men wearing white ribbons were thickly sprinkled in thecrowd. The badge fluttered even from the broad breasts of the few apatheticpolicemen. 

The crowd was kept off the tracks and the station premises by an ironfence, defended by a few railway police and cowed deputy sheriffs. Everynow and then, however, a man climbed the ugly fence and dropped down on theother side. Then he ran for the shelter of the long lines of cars standingon the siding. A crew of men recruited from the office force of therailroad was trying to make up a train. The rabble that had gained entranceto the yards were blocking their movements by throwing switches at thecritical moment. As Sommers came up to the fence, the switching engine hadbeen thrown into the wrong siding, and had bunted up at full speed againsta milk car, sending the latter down the siding to the main track. It tookthe switch at a sharp pace, was derailed, and blocked the track. The crowdin the court gave a shout of delight. The switching engine had to beabandoned. 

At this moment Sommers was jostled against a stylishly dressed woman, whowas trying to work her way through the seething mass that swayed up anddown the narrow court. He turned to apologize, and was amazed to see thatthe young woman was Louise Hitchcock. She was frightened, but keeping herhead she was doing her best to gain the vestibule of a neighboring store. She recognized Sommers and smiled in joyful relief. Then her glance passedover Sommers to Dresser, who was sullenly standing with his hands in hispockets, and ended in a polite stare, as if to say, 'Well, is that aspecimen of the people you prefer to my friends?'

"You've got one of your crowd on your hands, " Dresser muttered, and edgedoff into the mob. 

"What are you doing here?" Sommers demanded, rather impatiently. 

"I drove down to meet papa. He was to come by the Michigan Central, andUncle Brome telephoned that the railroad people said the train would getthrough. But he didn't come. I waited and waited, and at last tried to getinto the station to find out what had happened. I couldn't get through. "

Sommers had edged her into a protected corner formed by a large telephonepost. The jostling people stared impudently at the prettily dressed youngwoman. To their eyes she betrayed herself at a glance as one of theprivileged, who used the banned Pullman cars. 

"Whar's your kerridge?" a woman called out over Sommers's shoulder. A manpushed him rudely into his companion. 

"Why don't you take your private kyar?"

"The road is good enough for _me_!"

"Come, " Sommers shouted in her ear, "we must get out of this at once. Takemy arm, --no, follow me, --that will attract less attention. "

The girl was quite at ease, now that this welcome friend had appearedopportunely. Another prolonged shout, almost a howl of derision, went up bythe fence at some new trick played upon the frantic railroad officials. 

"What people!" the girl exclaimed scornfully. "Where are the police?"

"Don't speak so loud, " Sommers answered impatiently, "if you wish to escapeinsult. There the police are, over there by the park. They don't seemespecially interested. "

The girl closed her lips tightly and followed Sommers. It was no easy taskto penetrate the hot, sweating mob that was packing into the court, andbearing down toward the tracks where the fun was going on. Sommers madethree feet, then lost two. The crowd seemed especially anxious to keep themback, and Miss Hitchcock was hustled and pushed roughly hither and thitheruntil she grasped Sommers's coat with trembling hands. A fleshy man, with adirty two weeks' beard on his tanned face, shoved Sommers back with abrutal laugh. Sommers pushed him off. In a moment fists were up, the youngdoctor's hat was knocked off, and some one threw a stone that he receivedon his cheek. 

Sommers turned, grasped the girl with one arm, and threw himself and herupon the more yielding corner of the press. Then he dragged his companionfor a few steps until the jam slackened at the open door of a saloon. Intothis the two were pushed by the eddying mob, and escaped. For a moment theystood against the bar that protected the window. The saloon was full ofmen, foul with tobacco smoke, and the floor was filthy. Flies sluggishlybuzzed about the pools of beer on the bar counter. The men were talkingexcitedly; a few thin, ragged hangers-on were looting the free-lunch dishessurreptitiously. Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disgust, but she saidnothing. She had learned her lesson. 

"Wait here, " Sommers ordered, "while I find out whether we can get out ofthis by a back door. "

He spoke to the barkeeper, who lethargically jerked a thumb over hisshoulder. They elbowed their way across the room, Miss Hitchcock ratherostentatiously drawing up her skirts and threading her way among the poolsof the dirty floor. The occupants of the bar-room, however, gave thestrangers only slight attention. The heavy atmosphere of smoke and beer, heated to the boiling point by the afternoon sun, seemed to have soddenedtheir senses. Behind the bar the two found a passage to the alley in therear, which led by a cross alley into a deserted street. Finally theyemerged on the placid boulevard. 

"Your face is bleeding!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed. "Are you hurt?"

"No, " Sommers answered, mopping his brow and settling his collar. "Theywere good enough to spare the eye. "

"Brutes!"

"I wouldn't say that, " her companion interrupted sharply. "We are allbrutes each in our way, " he added quietly. 

The girl's face reddened, and she dropped his arm, which was no longernecessary for protection. She raised her crushed and soiled skirt, andlooked at it ruefully. 

"I wonder what has become of poor papa!" she exclaimed. "This strike hascaused him so much worry. I came in from Lake Forest to open the house forhim and stay with him until the trains begin to run again. "

She seemed to expect sympathy for the disagreeable circumstances thatpersisted in upsetting the Hitchcock plans. But Sommers paid no attentionto this social demand, and they walked on briskly. Finally Miss Hitchcocksaid coldly:

"I can go home alone, now, if you have anything to do. Of course I shouldlike to have you come home and rest after this--"

"I shall have to return to my room for a hat, " Sommers replied, in amatter-of-fact way. "I will leave you at your house. "

Miss Hitchcock insensibly drew herself up and walked more quickly. Theboulevard, usually gay with carriages in the late afternoon, was absolutelydeserted except for an occasional shop-boy on a bicycle. Sommers, hatless, with a torn coat, walking beside a somewhat bedraggled young woman, couldarouse no comment from the darkened windows of the large houses. As theypassed Twenty-second Street, Miss Hitchcock slackened her pace and spokeagain. 

"You don't think _they_ are right, surely?"

"No, " the doctor replied absent-mindedly. He was thinking how he had beendelayed from going to Mrs. Preston's, and how strange was this promenadedown the fashionable boulevard where he had so often walked with MissHitchcock on bright Sundays, bowing at every step to the gayly dressedgroups of acquaintances. He was taking the stroll for the last time, something told him, on this hot, stifling July afternoon, between the rowsof deserted houses. In twenty-four hours he should be a part of _them_in all practical ways--a part of the struggling mob, that lived from day today, not knowing when the bread would give out, with no privileges, nopleasant vacations, no agreeable houses to frequent, no dinner parties atthe close of a busy day. He was not sorry for the change, so far as he hadthought of it. At least he should escape the feeling of irritation, ofcriticism, which Lindsay so much deplored, that had been growing ever sincehe had left hospital work. The body social was diseased, and he could notmake any satisfactory diagnosis of the evil; but at least he should feelbetter to have done with the privileged assertive classes, to have taken uphis part with the less Philistine, more pitiably blind mob. 

With the absolute character of his nature and the finality of youth, he sawin a very decisive manner the plunge he was about to make. He was to leaveone life and enter another, just as much as if he should leave Chicago andmove to Calcutta--more so, indeed. He was to leave one set of people, andall their ways, and start with life on the simplest, crudest base. Heshould not call on his Chicago friends, who for the most part belonged toone set, and after a word from Lindsay they would cease to bother him. Hewould be out of place among the successful, and they would realize it aswell as he. But he should be sorry to lose sight of certain parts of thislife, --of this girl, for example, whom he had liked so much from the veryfirst, who had been so good to him, who was so sincere and honest andpersonally attractive. 

Yet it was strange, the change in his feelings toward her brought about inthe few days that had elapsed since they had parted at Lake Forest. It wasso obvious today that they could never have come together. While he hadtried to do the things that she approved, he had been hot and restless, andhad never, for one moment, had the calm certainty, the exquisite fulness offeeling that he had now--that the other woman had given him without asingle outspoken word. 

If things had gone differently these past months, --no, from his birth andfrom hers, too, --if every circumstance of society had not conspired to putthem apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together andbeen happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well thattheir differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; thatshe should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as ifanswering her last remark, said:

"_They_, my dear Miss Hitchcock, are wrong, and you are wrong, if wecan use pronouns so loosely. But I have come to feel that I had rather bewrong with them than wrong with you. From to-day, when you speak of 'them, 'you can include me. "

And to correct any vagueness in his declaration, he added, --

"I have left Lindsay's shop, and shall never go back. "

He could feel that she caught her breath, but she said nothing. 

"I should never be successful in that way, though it wasn't for that reasonthat I left. "

"Do you think you can do more for people by putting yourself--away, holdingoff--"

Her voice sank. 

"That is a subterfuge, " Sommers answered hotly, "fit only for clergymen andbeggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for'people. I think no fine theories about social service and all thatsettlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start withthe crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too manyhandicaps in the crowd I have seen!"

Miss Hitchcock pressed her lips together, as if to restrain a hot reply. She had grown white from the fatigue and excitement and heat. They werealmost at her father's house, walking along the steaming asphalt of thequiet avenue. A few old trees had been allowed to remain on these blocks, and they drooped over the street, giving a pleasant shade to the broadhouses and the little patches of sward. Just around the corner were somerickety wooden tenements, and a street so wretchedly paved that in thegreat holes where the blocks had rotted out stood pools of filthy, ranklysmelling water. 

"I have merely decided to move around the corner, " the young man remarkedgrimly. 

Miss Hitchcock's lips trembled. She walked more slowly, and she tried tosay something, to make some ill-defined appeal. As she had almost found thewords, a carriage approached the Hitchcock house and drew up. Out of itColonel Hitchcock stepped heavily. His silk hat was crushed, and hisclothes were covered with dust. 

"Papa!" his daughter exclaimed, running forward anxiously. "What hashappened? Where have you been? Are you hurt?"

"No, yes, I guess not, " the old man laughed good-naturedly. "Howdy do, doctor! They stopped the train out by Grand Crossing, and some fellowsbegan firing stones. It was pretty lively for a time. I thought you andyour mother would worry, so I got out of it the best way I could and camein on the street cars. "

"Poor papa!" the girl exclaimed, seizing his arm. She glanced at Sommersdefiantly. Here was her argument. Sommers looked on coolly, not acceptingthe challenge. 

"Won't you come in, doctor?" Colonel Hitchcock asked. "Do come in andrest, " his daughter added. 

But the young doctor shook his head. 

"I think I will go home and brush up--around the corner, " he added withslight irony. 

The girl turned to her father and took his arm, and they slowly walked upthe path to the big darkened house. 

CHAPTER XXI

Sommers did not go to his rooms, however. He could delay no longer reachingMrs. Preston. From the quiet decorous boulevard, with its clean asphaltpavement and pleasant trees, he turned at once into the dirty cross street. The oasis of the prosperous in the expanse of cheap houses and tawdryflat-buildings was so small! It was easy, indeed, to step at leastphysically from the one world to the other. 

At a little shop near the cable line he bought a hat and tie, and bathedhis face. Then he took the cable car, which connected with lines ofelectric cars that radiated far out into the distant prairie. Along theinterminable avenue the cable train slowly jerked its way, grinding, jarring, lurching, grating, shrieking--an infernal public chariot. Sommerswondered what influence years of using this hideous machine would have uponthe nerves of the people. This car-load seemed quiescent and dullenough--with the languor of unexpectant animals, who were accustomed tobeing hauled mile by mile through the dirty avenues of life. His attentionwas caught by the ever repeated phenomena of the squalid street. Blockafter block, mile after mile, it was the same thing. No other city on theglobe could present quite this combination of tawdriness, slackness, dirt, vulgarity, which was Cottage Grove Avenue. India, the Spanish-Americancountries, might show something fouler as far as mere filth, but nothing soincomparably mean and long. The brick blocks, of many shades of grimy redand fawn color, thin as paper, cheap as dishonest contractor and bad laborcould make them, were bulging and lopping at every angle. Built by the halfmile for a day's smartness, they were going to pieces rapidly. Here was nouniformity of cheapness, however, for every now and then little squatcottages with mouldy earth plots broke the line of more pretentiousugliness. The saloons, the shops, the sidewalks, were coated with soot andancient grime. From the cross streets savage gusts of the fierce west winddashed down the avenue and swirled the accumulated refuse into the car, choking the passengers, and covering every object with a cloud of filth. Once and again the car jolted across intersecting boulevards that presentedsome relief in the way of green grass and large, heavy-fronted houses. Except for these strips of parklike avenues, where the rich lived, --piecedinto the cheaper stuff of the city, as it were, --all was alike, flat-building and house and store and wooden shanty, --a city of booths, ofextemporized shifts. 

Sommers picked up a newspaper that some passenger had thrown aside andendeavored to distract his mind from the forlorn sight. The sheets weregritty to the touch, and left a smutch upon the fingers. His clothes weresifted over with dust and fine particles of manure. The seat grated beneathhis legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troopswere arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing the martial bearing of the officers, the fierceness of the"bronzed Indian fighters. " The city was under martial law. He read also thebickering telegrams exchanged between the state authorities and thefederal government, and interviews with leading citizens, praising themuch-vilified President for his firm act in upholding law and order. Thegeneral managers were clever fellows! Sommers threw the grimy sheet aside. It was right, this firm assertion of the law; but in what a cause, for whatpeople!

He turned to the street once more. 

This block, through which the car was grinding its way, had a freakishindividuality in sidewalks. Each builder had had his own idea of what theproper street level should be, and had laid his sidewalk accordingly. Therewere at least six different levels in this one block. The same bluntexpression of wilful individuality was evident in every line of everybuilding. It was the apotheosis of democratic independence. This was not asqualid district, nor a tough one. Goose Island, the stock yards, theBohemian district, the lumber yards, the factories, --all the aspects of thecity monstrous by right, were miles away. But Halsted Street, with itspicturesque mutations of poverty and its foreign air, was infinitelyworthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of CottageGrove Avenue and its like Chicago contained, --not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved andcleaned, it would be bearable. But the selfish rich and the ignorant poormake bad housekeepers. 

On, on they jolted and jarred, dropping along the cross streets a cargo ofindifferent souls, and taking in a new cargo of white-ribboned men, whotalked in loud voices or spat ruminatively over the floors. Sommers sankback listless. It was well that he had taken this way of entering the newlife. To have galloped south through the cool parks would have been absurd, like playing at charity. This was the life of the people, --not themiserably poor, but the mean and small, the mass in this, our prosperouscountry. Through the dirty, common avenues, without one touch of beauty, they were destined to travel all their days, and he with them. 

He shut his eyes and thought of the woman to whom he was journeying. Herswas the face he had seen in imagination in all his moods of revolt, ofdisgust with the privileged. She was the figure, paramount, of those whohad soul enough to thirst for beauty, happiness, life, and to whom theywere denied. The machine of society whirled some aloft--the woman he hadjust left--but it dragged her down. It was the machine that maddened him. He was taking himself away from those who governed the machine, who ran itand oiled it, and turned it to their own pleasures. He had chosen to be ofthe multitude whom the machine ground. The brutal axioms of the economistsurged men to climb, to dominate, and held out as the noblest ideal of thegreat commonwealth the right of every man to triumph over his brother. Ifthe world could not be run on any less brutal plan than this creed of_success, success_, then let there be anarchy--anything. 

With a final groan the cable train came to a halt, and the hypnotic sleepof the pilgrimage through Cottage Grove Avenue ended. Sommers startedup--alert, anxious, eager to see _her_ once more, the glow ofenchantment, of love renewed in his soul. Yet at the very end of hisjourney he was fearful for the first time. How could they meet, after thefoul scene with Preston?

Mrs. Ducharme opened the cottage door, and recognizing the young doctor inthe twilight sighed with relief. Her placid countenance was ruffled. 

"Where is Mrs. Preston?" he demanded hastily. 

"She's gone out for a moment. I made her take a turn. "

"How is Mr. Preston?"

Mrs. Ducharme's face assumed a frightened expression. She spoke in lowtones, as if the patient might still overhear. 

"He's rested for good, poor man! He won't want no more liquor this life, Iguess. " Then more solemnly she ended, "He's at peace. "

Without further words Sommers went upstairs. The outer door was unbarred, and the door into the room open. Preston was lying, clean and quiet, in aclean bed with a fresh counterpane. His face was turned to one side, as ifhe were sleeping. His eyes were suspiciously reddened under the lids, andhis cheeks had rather more bloat than the doctor remembered. He was dead, sure enough, at peace at last, and the special cause for the ending was oflittle importance. Sommers proceeded to make an examination, however; hewould have to sign a certificate for the health officers. As he bent overthe inert form, he had a feeling of commiseration rather than of relief. Worthless clay that the man was, it seemed petty now to have been sodisturbed over his living on, for such satisfactions as his poor fragmentof life gave him. Like the insignificant insect which preyed on its ownpetty world, he had, maybe, his rights to his prey. At all events, now thathe had ceased to trouble, it was foolish to have any feeling of disgust, ofreproach, of hatred. God and life had made him so, as God and life had madethe mighty.... 

Suddenly the doctor's eye detected something that arrested his attention, and he proceeded to look at the dead man more carefully. Then he startedback and called out to the woman below. When she came panting up thestairs, he asked sternly:

"Was he given anything?"

"What?" she asked, retreating from the room. 

"Any medicine?" the doctor pursued, eying her sharply. 

"He was took bad last night, and Mrs. Preston went to see what was thematter. She might have given him somethin' to rest him. I dunno. "

The doctor went back to the dead man and examined him again; the womancrawled away. Again Sommers abandoned his task, nervously twitching thebedclothes over the cold form. He went to the window and opened it, andstood breathing the night air. There was another step upon the stair, andSommers turned. It was Mrs. Preston. She started on seeing the doctor, andhe noticed how pale her face appeared, even in the darkening room. He wasalso conscious of the start she had given. 

"I have looked for you so long!" she exclaimed eagerly, hastening towardhim, and then stopping in embarrassment. 

"I was detained, hindered in every possible way, " the doctor replied. Histone was chilling, preoccupied. 

"He was ill last night, but I thought nothing of it. When I returned froman errand this noon, he had fallen into a kind of stupor--last night he wasso excited--and I was alarmed. I had Mrs. Ducharme telephone for you then. He did not come out of his stupor, " she added in a low tone. 

Sommers stepped back to the bedside. "Did you--" he began involuntarily, but he left his sentence unfinished, and turned away again. 

"I have completed my examination, " he said at last. "Let us go downstairs. "

When they had reached the sitting room, Mrs. Preston lighted a lamp andplaced it on the table beside the doctor. The strong light increased thepallor of her face. Sommers noticed that the eyes were sunken and had blackcircles. His glance rested on her hands, as she leaned with folded arms onthe table. They were white and wan like the face. The blood seemed to haveleft her body. 

Sommers raised his eyes and looked at her face. She returned his glance fora moment, then flushes of color spread over her face and died down, and shedropped her face. He laid his hand softly upon hers, and spoke her name forthe first time, "Alves. " A tear dropped on his hand beneath the lamp, thenanother and another. He started up from his seat and strode to the window, keeping his back turned to the quiescent woman. It was terrible! He knewthat he was a fool, but none the less something awesome, cruel, forbidding, tainted the atmosphere. 

At last he said in a dull voice:

"Mrs. Preston, will you get me pen and ink. I must fill out the usualcertificate, stating the disease that caused death, " he added meaningly, wheeling about. 

She started, stung by his formal words, and fetched writing materials. Ashe wrote out the certificate, she went into the next room. When shereturned, Sommers got up and crossed toward her, impelled by anirresistible desire _to know_. 

"I have said that death was due to congestion of the brain, indirectlyresulting from illness and operation for the removal of a bullet. "

Mrs. Preston stared at him, her face curiously blank, as though to say, 'Why are you so cruel?' He offered her the wisp of paper. 

"Put it there!" she cried, motioning to the mantelpiece. 

The doctor placed the certificate on the mantel, and then returned to hischair by the lamp. 

"Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked abruptly. 

"I have done--the necessary things--he will be buried to-morrow afternoon. "

Her words came with an effort, as if every voluntary act caused her pain. 

"I am sorry that I did not come earlier, to save you these tasks, " thedoctor answered more gently. "Isn't there some one you would like to sendfor, some relative or friend?"

She shook her head, looking at him with beseeching eyes. Then they weresilent, until the silence was too much to be borne. Sommers rose hastily totake leave. 

"I can do nothing more to-night, " he said hastily. "I shall cometo-morrow. "

She made no reply and did not rise. Outside, the place seemed so deadlystill! The house was dark; the neighboring avenue, unusually deserted. Sommers shivered. After he had reached the end of the lane, he turned back, and walked swiftly to the cottage. At the corner he looked into the roomwhere they had been sitting. She was still in the same place where he hadleft her, by the lamp, her white, almost stern face, with its large, severelines, staring fiercely into space. It made him uneasy, this long, tenselook that betrayed a mind fixed upon one idea, and that idea! He crept awayinto the lane to flee from it, and walked swiftly down the cross streettoward the lake. 

CHAPTER XXII

"It could not be!" he muttered, as he stumbled on in the dark. He wasoversuspicious. But how else could the facts be explained? Such deaths, heknew, did not occur to men in Preston's condition, --calm, easy deaths, without the agony of convulsion. _No_, it _must be_. Science wasstronger than desire, than character, than human imagination. To disbelievehis scientific knowledge would be to deny the axioms of life. 

And why should it not be? Was it not what he had reproached himself for notdoing, and reproached his medical brethren as cowards for not daring to doin so many cases? The horror of it, the uncanniness of it, thus stoppingthe human animal's course as one would stop an ill-regulated watch, hadnever appealed to him before. "Prejudice!" he cried aloud. His involuntarydrawing back was but an unconscious result of the false training ofcenturies. As a doctor, familiar with death, cherishing no illusions aboutthe value of the human body, he should not act like a nervous woman, andrun away! How brutal he had been to her!

His mind passed on, traversing vast areas of speculation by a kind ofcerebral shorthand. What would be the result upon humanity if all doctorstook this liberty of decision? Where could you draw the distinction betweenmurder and medicine? Was science advanced enough as yet to say any certainthing about the human body and mind? There were always mysteriousexceptions which might well make any doctor doubtful of drastic measures. And the value of human life, so cheap here in this thirsty million ofsouls, cheap in the hospitals; but really, essentially, at the bottom ofthings, who knew how cheap it was?

Thus for an hour or more his mind was let loose among the tenebra of life, while his feet pushed on mechanically over the dusty roads that skirted thelake. He had nowhere to go, now that he had broken with the routine oflife, and he gave himself up to the unaccustomed debauch of willessthinking. He was conscious at length of traversing the vacant waste wherethe service-buildings of the Fair had stood. Beyond were the shatteredwalls of the little convent, wrapped in the soft summer night. There theyhad sat together and watched the fire die out, while she told her story, and he listened in love. 

The real thing--was the woman. This thought stung him like a reproach ofcowardice. He had forgotten her! And she was but the instrument in thedeed, for he had taught her that this care of a worthless life wassentimental, hysterical. He had urged her to put it away in some easyfashion, to hide it at least, in some sort of an asylum. That she hadsteadfastly refused to do. Better death outright, she had said. And thatwhich he had feared to undertake, she had done, fearlessly. He hadrecoiled; it made him tremble to think of her in that act. What cowardice!These were the consequences of his teaching, of his belief. 

What had made her take this resolution so suddenly? There was time, all thetime in the world, and having once neglected the thing at the very start, it was curious that she should now, at this late date, make her desperateresolve. Preston had not been worse, more difficult to handle. In fact, when the two women had grown used to his case, the management had beensimple enough. He had thought she was inured to the disgust and thehorror--placid almost, and taking the thing like one accustomed to pain. What was the cause of her revolt from her burden? Those filthy words thenight they had come back late, when the fellow had stolen downstairs andspied upon them at their coffee. Had the shame of it before him stung herpast enduring? Had it eaten into her mind and inflamed her?

But his feverish imagination was not content with this illumination of thefacts. Something more lay behind it all. He sat down beside a prostratecolumn to penetrate the gloom. As he gazed before him into the darkheavens, the blast furnace winked like an evil eye, then silently belchedflame and smoke, then relapsed into its seething self. The monster's breathillumined the dusky sky for a few moments. Blackness then fell over all fortwo minutes, and again the beast reappeared. Far away to the west camethrough the night a faint roar, like the raving of men. There was a line oflight against the horizon: the mob was burning freight cars. Soon thebonfire died down. The cries sounded more and more faintly, and moredistinctly came the sharp reports of revolvers or military rifles. The lawhad taken a hand in the game. 

It was a night like this when the first glow of joy had suffused his life;and then had come that night, that wonderful night, which began, in thelurid fire, and ended foully with Preston's words. Here was the key: shetoo loved, as he had, and this feeling which had drawn them together fromthe very moment when he had looked from the helpless form on the hospitalchair to her had grown, surging up in her heart as in his--until, until shehad taken this last stern step, and had--

He had begun to walk once more, heading south, retracing his steps by themost direct line. To leave her thus, with all the horror; thus when she hadreached out to him--oh, the shame, the brutality of it! He hastened hissteps almost to a run. Perhaps it was already too late; his cold, hardmanner had killed her love, crushed her, and she had gone on to the nextstep. The night was cold now, but his hands were damp with a feverishsweat. How blind, not to have read at once, as she would have done, thewhole deed! What she had done, she had done for him, for both, and he hadleft her to carry the full burden alone. Like a boy, he had wavered at thesight of what she had accomplished so swiftly, so competently, for_their_ sake. To love shamefully, that was not in her, and she had putthe cause of shame away. As he hurried on southwards, his thoughts flew outon this new track. She had made the way clear; he must go to her, take her, accept her acts with her love. They were one now. 

It was late, past midnight, when he reached the long cross street that ledto the lane of the cottage, and the buzz of the passing cars no longerdisturbed the hoarse chorus of frogs. Sommers crept up the lane stealthilyto the dark cottage, afraid for what he might find, chilled by theforbidding aspect of the place. Instead of entering the door, he paused bythe open window and peered in. Within the gloom of the room he could makeout her bent figure, her head fallen forward over her arms. She was sittingwhere he had left her, but the spell of her tense gaze had broken. She hadlaid her head upon the table to weep, and had not raised it all thesehours. The night wind soughed into the room through the open window, drifting a piece of paper about the floor, poking into the gloom of theinterior beyond. 

Sommers noiselessly pushed open the door and entered the room. The bentfigure did not heed the tread of his steps. He stood over her, knelt down, and wrapped her in his arms. 

"Alves!" he whispered. 

She roused herself as from a dream and turned her face to his, wonderingly. 

"Alves, " he stammered, reading eagerly the sombre lines of her face, "Ihave come back--for always. "

Then she spoke, and her voice had a mechanical ring, as if for a long timeit had not been used. 

"But you left me--why did you come back?"

"You know, " he answered, his feverish face close to her white forehead. "You know!" The face was so cold, so large and sombre, that it seemed tochill his fever. 

"I have come to share--to have you, because I love, because we loved--fromthe first, all through. "

At his slow, trembling words, the woman's face filled with the warm bloodof returning life. Her flesh paled and flushed, and her eyes lit slowlywith passion; her arms that had rested limply on the table took life oncemore and grasped him. The feeling sweeping into her lifeless body thrilledhim like fire. She was another woman--he had never known her until thiscommunicating clasp. 

"You love me?" she asked, with a moan of inarticulate abandonment. 

"Love you, love you, love you, Alves, " he repeated in savage iteration. "Now, --" he kissed her lips. They were no longer cold. "You are mine, mine, do you understand? Nothing shall touch you. _That_ has passed!"

For a moment she looked at him in question. But instantly her face smiledin content, and she flashed back his passion. She kissed him, drawing himdown closer and closer into her warm self. 

With this long kiss a new love put forth its strength, not the palebeatitude of his dream, with its sweet wistfulness, its shy desires. Thatwas large and vague and insubstantial, permeating like an odor the humdrumpurlieus of the day. This was savage, triumphant, that leaped like flamefrom his heart to his mouth, that burned blood-red on the black night. Itswept away hesitation, a sick man's nicety and doubts, all the prejudicesof all times! This was love, unchained, that came like waters from themountains to quench the thirst of blazing deserts: parched, dry, in dust;now slaked and yet ever thirsty. 

"How could it have been otherwise, " he murmured, more to himself than toher. 

"What?" she asked, startled, withdrawing herself. 

"Don't think, don't think!" he exclaimed, in fear of the ebbing of thewaters. 

Her doubts were calmed, and she yielded to his insistence, slipping intohis arms with an unintelligible cry, the satisfied note of desire. For allthe waiting of the empty years came this rich payment--love that satisfied, that could never be satisfied. 

 * * * * *

In the first light of the morning the Ducharme woman, creeping from herroom in the rear, caught sight of them. Mrs. Preston's head was lying onthe doctor's arm, while he knelt beside the table, watching her pale facein its undisturbed sleep. At the footfall, he roused her gently. Mrs. Ducharme hastily drew back. She, too, did not seem to have passed apeaceful night. Her flabby fat face was sickly white, and she trembled asshe opened the side door to the hot morning sun. She threw some small thinginto the waste by the door; then looking around to see that she was notobserved, she hurled with all her strength a long bottle toward the swampacross the fence. The bottle fell short of the swamp, but it sank among thereeds and the fleurs-de-lys of the margin. Then the woman closed the doorsoftly. 

CHAPTER XXIII

That morning Sommers returned to the city. Mrs. Preston had asked him tonotify Dr. Leonard and Miss M'Gann, the only friends she had in Chicago, that the funeral would take place late in the afternoon. In the elevator ofthe Athenian Building, Sommers met Dr. Lindsay with Dr. Rupert, the oldestmember of the office staff. The two men bowed and edged their backs towardSommers. He was already being forgotten. When the elevator cage dischargedits load on the top floor, Rupert, who was popularly held to be a genialman, lingered behind his colleague, and tried to say something to the youngdoctor. 

"Private practice?" he asked sympathetically, "or will you try hospitalwork again?"

"I haven't thought anything about it, " Sommers replied truthfully. 

Rupert, a man of useful, mediocre ability, eyed the younger man withcuriosity, thinking that doubtless he had private means; that it was a pityhe and Lindsay had fallen out, for he was a good fellow and clever. 

"Well--glad to see you. Drop in occasionally--if you stay in Chicago. "

The last phrase stung Sommers. It seemed to take for granted that therecould be nothing professionally to keep him in Chicago after the fiasco ofhis introduction. He would have to learn how much a man's future dependedupon the opinion of men whose opinion he despised. 

Dr. Leonard came out of his den, where he was filling a tooth. Hisspectacles were pushed up over his shaggy brows, and little particles ofgold and of ground bone clung untidily to the folds of his crumpled linenjacket. His patients did not belong to the class that is exacting aboutsmall things. 

"So the feller has taken himself off for good, " he observed, afterlistening to the doctor's brief statement. "That's first-rate, couldn't bebetter for Alves. "

Sommers started at the familiar use of the first name. "She's never had ashow. Preston wasn't much except as a looker. The first time she came inhere I could see how things stood. But you couldn't budge her fromhim--jest like a woman--she loved him. "

Sommers must have shown some irritation, for Dr. Leonard, watching himclosely, repeated:

"Yes! she loved _him_, would have him back, though I argued with heragainst it. Well, I'm glad it's settled up now so clever. Of course I'll beout to the funeral. Alves ain't got any folks near connected, andPreston--well, it's no use harboring hard thoughts about dead folks. They'll have to settle with some one else, won't they?"

From the Athenian Building Sommers went to an ambitious boarding-house thatcalled itself a hotel, where Miss M'Gann boarded. A dirty negro boy openedthe door, and with his duster indicated the reception room. Miss M'Ganncame down, wearing a costume of early morning relaxation. She listened tothe news with the usual feminine feeling for decorum, compounded ofcuriosity, conventional respect for the dead, and speculation for thefuture. 

"Poor Mrs. Preston! I'll go right down and see her. I've been thinking fora week that I'd take a run on my bike down that way. But things have beenso queer, you know, that I didn't feel--you understand?"

The doctor nodded and rose to go. Miss M'Gann's note was more jarring thanthe kindly old dentist's. 

"Oh, you aren't going!" Miss M'Gann protested regretfully. "I want to askso many questions. I am _so_ glad to see you. I feel that I know you_very_ well. Mr. Dresser, your intimate friend, has spoken to me aboutyou. Such an interesting man, a little erratic, like a genius, you know. "

As Sommers remained stiffly mute, Miss M'Gann's remarks died away. 

"There is nothing more to tell, " he said, getting up. "Of course Mrs. Preston has had a very serious strain, and I, --her friends, --must see thatshe has rest. "

"Sure, " Miss M'Gann broke in warmly; "now a lot of us girls are going up toPlum Lake, Michigan, for four weeks. It would be good for her to be with anice party--"

"We will see, " the doctor said coldly. 

Later Miss M'Gann said to one of her friends: "Talkin' to him is likerubbing noses with an iceberg. He's one of your regular freeze-you-up, top-notchy eastern swells. "

"Perhaps it would be well if Mrs. Preston came here to stay with you for afew days. I will ask her, " Sommers suggested, as he shook hands. 

"Certainly, " Miss M'Gann replied warmly, "first-class house, good society, reasonable rates, and all that. "

But the doctor was bowing himself out. 

'He's taking some interest in the fair widow's welfare, ' Miss M'Ganncommented, as she watched him from behind the hall-door curtain. 'I hope hewon't get the d. T. 's like number one, and live off her. Think she'd havehad warning to wait a reasonable time. '

Meantime Sommers was musing over the "breezy" and "lively" Miss M'Gann, who, he judged, contributed much to the gayety of the Keystone Hotel. Hehad been hasty in suggesting that Alves might find a refuge in theKeystone. It would be for a few days, however, for he planned--he wasrather vague about what he had planned. He wondered if there would be muchof Miss M'Gann in the future, their future, and he longed to get away, totake Alves and fly. 

He was tired; the sun was relentless. But he must make arrangements to sellhis horse as soon as possible, and to give up his rooms. For the first timein his life he was conscious that he wanted to talk with a man, to see somefriend. But of all the young professional men he had met in Chicago, therewas not one he could think of approaching. On his way to his rooms hepassed the Lake Front Park, where some companies of troops were encamped. Tents were flapping in the breeze, a Gatling gun had been placed, andsentries mounted. The bronzed young soldiers brought in from the plainswere lounging about, watching the boulevard, and peering up at the massivewalls of the Auditorium. The street was choked with curious spectators, among whom were many strikers. The crowd gaped and commented. 

"They'll _shoot_, " one of the onlookers said almost proudly. "Thereain't no use in foolin' with the reg'lars. Those fellows'd pop you or me assoon as a jack-rabbit or a greasy Injun. "

The sinewy sentry shifted his gun and tramped off, his blue eyes marvellingat the unaccustomed sights of the great city, all the panoply of thecivilization that he was hired to protect. 

The city was under martial law, but it did not seem to mind it. Thesoldiers had had a few scuffles with rowdies at Blue Island and the stockyards. They had chased the toughs in and out among the long lines offreight cars, and fired a few shots. Even the newspapers couldn't magnifythe desultory lawlessness into organized rebellion. It was becoming amatter of the courts now. The general managers had imported workmen fromthe East. The leaders of the strike--especially Debs and Howard--weregiving out more and more incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmenwere to be called out on a general strike; every man that had a trade wasto take part in a "death struggle. " But Sommers could see the signs of aspeedy collapse. In a few days the strong would master the situation; thenwould follow a wrangle in the courts, and the fatal "black list" wouldappear. The revenge of the railroads would be long and sure. 

Sommers went to his rooms and sought to get some rest before the time setfor the funeral. The driving west wind, heated as by a furnace in its madrush over the parched prairies, fevered rather than cooled him. His mindbegan to revolve about the dead man, lying with heavy, red-lidded eyes inthe cottage. Was it, --was it murder? He put the thought aside laboriously, only to be besieged afresh, to wonder, to argue, to protest. After threehours of this he dressed and took the cable car for the cottage. He mightfind some pretext to examine the dead man again before the others came. 

At the cottage gate, however, he overtook the good dentist, bearing a largeflorist's box. Miss M'Gann was already within the little front room, andAlves was talking in low tones with a sallow youth in a clerical coat. Atthe sight of the newcomers the clergyman withdrew to put on his robes. Dr. Leonard, having surrendered the pasteboard box to Miss M'Gann, grasped Mrs. Preston's hand. 

"Alves, " he began, and stopped. Even he could feel that the commonplaces ofthe occasion were not in order. "Alves, you know how mighty fond of you Iam. "

She smiled tranquilly. Her air of calm reserve mystified the watchful youngdoctor. The clergyman returned, followed by Mrs. Ducharme and Anna Svenson. The Ducharme woman's black dress intensified the pallor of her flabby face. Her hands twitched nervously over the prayer-book that she held. Subject toapoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts passed over her as well as MissM'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs. Preston, and the grave old dentist standing at the foot of the coffin, and theclergyman whose young voice had not lost its thrill of awe in the presenceof death. He had no eyes for aught but the woman, who was bound to him byfirmer ties than those whose dissolution the clergyman was recording. Shestood serene, with head raised above theirs, revealing a face that sadnesshad made serious, grave, mature, but not sad. She displayed no affectedsorrow, no nervous tremor, no stress of a reproachful mind. Unconscious ofthe others, even of the minister's solemn phrases, she seemed to berevolving truths of her own, dismissing a problem private to her own heart. To the man who tried to pierce beneath that calm gaze, the woman's completecontrol was terrible. 

The minister's grave voice went on, pronouncing the grave sentences of theservice. The ceremonial words sounded all the more fateful said over thispoor body. The little of life that he had had, --the eating and drinking inrestaurants and hotels, the chaffing and trading with his own kind, thecrude appeasements of crude desires, --all these were taken away, and thusstripped it was easy to see how small was his responsibility in the matterof life. He had crushed and injured this other human being, his wife, towhom he had come nearest, just as a dirty hand might soil and crumple afine fabric. But she no longer reproached him, if she ever had; sheunderstood the sad complexity of a fate that had brought into the hand thefabric to be tarnished. And what she could accept, others must, the worldmust, to whom the Prestons are but annoyances and removable blemishes. 

Sommers felt the deaconlike attitude of the dentist, the conventionalsolemnity of the schoolteacher and of the immobile Swede, the shaking, quavering terror of Mrs. Ducharme, mumbling to herself the words of theservice. Why should the old woman be so upset, he wondered. But his vagrantthoughts always came back to the woman near the coffin, the woman he loved. How could she summon up such peace! Was hers one of those mighty souls thatnever doubted? That steadfast gaze chilled his heart. 

"The resurrection of the dead. " Her glance fell, and for one swift momentrested on the dead man. She was debating those noble words, and denyingtheir hope to _him_, to such as were dead in this life. Then once moreher glance rose and fell upon Sommers, and swiftly it effaced his doubts. 

She was so beautiful, a woman in the full tide of human experience! And thenight before she had been so simple and tender and passionate. He felt herarms about his heart, teaching him how to live. This moment, this carefulputting away of the past must be over soon, in a few hours; whereupon heand she would cast it out of their hearts as they would leave this gloomycottage and waste marshes. He would not think of the body there and itsdeath, of anything but her. How exquisite would be this triumph, over herbaulked, defeated past! 'Alves, Alves, ' he murmured in his heart, 'only youwho have suffered can love. ' It seemed that an answering wave of colorswept over her pale face. 

 * * * * *

There was a movement. The service was ended. The burial was the only thingthat remained to be done. Sommers went to the cemetery with the ministerand Dr. Leonard. He did not wish to be with Alves until they could bealone. The grave was in the half-finished cemetery beside the Cottage Grovecable line, among the newest lots. It was a fit place for Preston, this bitof sandy prairie in the incomplete city. The man who came and went fromtown to town, knowing chiefly the hotel and the railroad station, mightwell rest here, within call of the hoarse locomotives gliding restlessly toand fro. 

As the little company retraced their steps from the grave, Alves spoke toSommers for the first time. 

"You will come back with me?" she asked. 

"Not now, " he answered hastily, instinctively. "I must go back to town. Theothers will be there. Not to-day. "

CHAPTER XXIV

At the gate of the cemetery he fled from the little company. Dr. Leonardwanted to return to the city with him, but he shook off the talkativedentist. He must escape all sense of participation in the affair. So hemade the long journey in the cable train, thinking disconnectedly in unisonwith the banging, jolting, grinding of the car. The panorama of his oneshort year in Chicago rose bit by bit into his mind: the hospital, therich, bizarre town, the society of thirsty, struggling souls, alwaysrushing madly hither and thither, his love for the woman he had just left, and this final distracting event. 

What if she had doubled the dose of the anodyne? Probably the fellow wasabusive. It might have been some shameful extremity that had forced uponher this act in self-defence. But such a situation would have called forviolence, some swift blow. The man had died in insidious calm. He hadcounselled it, believed in it. But not that _she_--the woman heloved--should be brave with that desperate courage. Yet it was over now, beyond sight and thought, and he loved her--yes, loved her more than if ithad not been so. 

Once in town, he felt intolerably lonely, as a busy man who has had hisround of little duties in a busy world soon comes to feel when any jar hasput him out of his usual course. As he sauntered among the strange faces ofthe city streets, looking out for a familiar being, he began to realize howcompletely he had cut himself off from the ordinary routine of life. He wasas much a stranger as if he had been dropped into the bustling crowd forthe first time. He had sat in judgment, and the world would give a fig forhis judgments. A week ago he might have taken refuge in a dozen houses. To-night he stood upon street corners and wistfully eyed the passingstream. 

He walked to the river aimlessly, and then walked back, examining the blankfaces of the people. He spied through the lowered window of a carriageBrome Porter and Carson, going in the direction of the Northwesternstation. The carriage skirted the curb near him, but the occupants werelooking the other way. He recalled that Carson had been induced to leavethe famous portrait on exhibition at the Art Institute. Whenever in thefuture he might care to refresh his mind with the vision of this epitome ofsuccess, he had but to drop into the dusky building on the lake front andhave it all--with the comment of the great artist. 

As he moved on his restless course, he thought of Porter and Carson, ofPolot, and then of many others, whose faces came out of the memories of thepast year. How many of them were "good fellows, " human and kind and strong!They fought the world's fight, and fought it fairly. Could more be expectedof man? Could he be made to curb his passion for gain, to efface himself, to refuse to take what his strong right hand had the power to grasp?Perhaps the world was arranged merely to get the best out of stronganimals. 

He turned into a restaurant, where usually he could find a dozen people ofhis acquaintance in the prosperous world. The place was crowded, but hespied no one he had ever seen. Evidently the people who knew how to makethemselves comfortable had contrived to get out of this besieged city. Theywere at the various country clubs, at Wheaton, Lake Forest, Lake Geneva, Oconomowoc, keeping cool, while the general managers, the strikers, and thetroops fought out their differences. The menu was curtailed this evening. 

"'Twon't be long, sir, " the waiter explained, "'fore we'll have to killthem cab horses as they done in Paris. Game and fruit and milk can't behad. "

But for the present the food was not of the famine order, and the noisycrowd eat joyously, as if sure of enough, somehow, as long as they neededit and had the money to pay. As Sommers was idling over his coffee, Swift, a young fellow whom he had seen at the University Club, a college manconnected with one of the papers, sat down at his table, and chattedbusily. 

"They telephoned from the stock yards that there was a big mob down there, "he told Sommers. "I thought I'd go over and see if I couldn't get an extrastory out of it. Want to come along? It's about the last round of thefight. The managers have got five thousand new men here already or on theway. That will be the knock-out, " he chatted briskly. 

Sommers drifted along to the scene of the riot with the reporter, happierin finding himself with some one, no matter who he might be. Swift talkedabout the prospects of ending the strike. He regarded it as a reportorialfeast, and had natural regrets that such good material for lurid paragraphswas to be cut off. As they passed through the Levee, he nodded to theproprietors of the "places, " with ostentatious familiarity. From the Leveethey took an electric car, which was crowded with officers and deputiesbound for the stock yards. The long thoroughfare lined with rotting woodenhouses and squalid brick saloons was alive with people that swarmed overthe roadbed like insects. A sweltering, fetid air veiled the distances. Like a filthy kettle, the place stewed in its heat and dirt. Here lived themen who had engaged in the foolish fight!

At a cross street the officers dropped off the car, and Swift and Sommersfollowed them. 

"Where's the fun?" the reporter asked the sergeant. 

The officer pointed languidly toward a tangle of railroad tracks at one endof the vast enclosure of the stock yards. They trudged on among the linesof deserted cars in the fading glare of the July heat. The broad sides ofthe packing houses, the lofty chimneys surrounded by thin grayish clouds, the great warehouses of this slaughter yard of the world, drew nearer. Allat once a roar burst on their ears, and they came out from behind a line ofcars upon a stretch of track where a handful of soldiers were engaged inpressing back a rabble of boys, women, and men. The rabble were teasing thesoldiers, as a mob of boys might tease a cat. Suddenly, as the officers anddeputies appeared, some one hurled a stone. In a moment the air was thickwith missiles, revolver shots followed, and then the handful of soldiersformed in line with fixed bayonets. 

Sommers heard in the midst of all the roar the piteous bellowing of cattle, penned up in the cars. He saw a dark form stealing around the end of a car;in a moment a light spurted out as if a match had been touched to kerosene;there was a gleam of light, and the stock-car with its load of cattle waswrapped in flames. The dark figure disappeared among the cars; Sommersfollowed it. The chase was long and hot. From time to time the fleeing mandodged behind a car, applied his torch, and hurried on. At last Sommersovertook him, kneeling down beside a box car, and pouring oil upon a bunchof rags. Sommers kicked the can out of reach and seized the man by thecollar. They struggled in the dark for a few moments. Then the man put hishand to his pocket, saying, --

"I suppose you're a damned, sneaking deputy. "

"Hold on, you drunken fool!" Sommers exclaimed. "It's lucky for you I amnot a deputy. "

He could hear the mob as it came down the yards in the direction of theburning cars. 

"If you don't want to be locked up, come on with me. "

The fellow obeyed, and they walked down through the lane of cars until theyreached a fence. Sommers forced his companion through a gap, and followedhim. Then the man began to run, and at the corner ran into a file ofsoldiers, who were coming into the yards. Sommers turned up the street andwalked rapidly in the direction of the city. The first drops of athunder-shower that had been lowering over the city for hours were falling, and they brought a pleasant coolness into the sultry atmosphere. That wasthe end! The "riot" would be drowned out in half an hour. 

The sense of overwhelming loneliness came back, and instinctively he turnedsouth in the direction of the cottage. From the loneliness of life, thesultry squalor of the city, the abortive folly of the mob, he fled to theone place that was still sweet in all this wilderness of men. 

 * * * * *

The cottage windows were dark when he arrived an hour later, but Alves methim at the door. 

"I have been waiting for you, " she said calmly. "I knew you would come assoon as you could. "

"Didn't Miss M'Gann stay?" he asked remorsefully. 

"I sent her away with Dr. Leonard. And our old Ducharme has gone out to oneof her doctor's services. She is getting queerer and queerer, but such agood soul! What should I have done without her! You sent her to me, " sheadded tenderly. 

They sat down by the open window within sound of the gentle, healing rain. Sommers noticed that Alves had changed her dress from the black gown shehad worn in the afternoon to a colored summer dress. The room had beenrearranged, and all signs of the afternoon scene removed. It was as if shewilled to obliterate the past at once. How fast she lived!

Her manner was peaceful. She sat resting her head against a high-backedchair, and her arms, bare from the elbow, fell limply by her side. Sheseemed tired, merely, and content to rest in the sense of sweet relief. 

"Alves, " he cried, taking one of her hands and pressing the soft flesh inhis grip, "I could not stay away. I meant to--I did not mean to meet youagain here--but it was too lonely, too desolate everywhere. "

"Why not here and at once?" she asked, with a shade of wonder in her voice. "Haven't we had all the sorrow here? And why should we put off our joy? Itis so great to be happy to the full for once. "

The very words seemed to have a savor for her. 

"Are you happy?" he asked curiously. 

"Why not! It's as if all that I could ever dream while I walked the hotstreets had come to me. It has come so fast that I cannot quite feel itall. Some joy is standing outside, waiting its turn. "

Smilingly she turned her face to his for response. 

"What shall you do?" he asked. 

"Do? I can't think _now_. There is so much time to think of that. "

"But you can't stay here!" he exclaimed, with undue agitation. 

"Not if you dislike it. But I feel differently. I found this refuge, and itserved me well. I have no need to leave it. "

Sommers let her hand fall from his clasp, and rose to his feet. 

"You must! You cannot stay here after--"

"As you wish. We will go away. "

"But until we are married?"

"Married?" she repeated questioningly. "I hadn't thought of that. "

After a moment she said hesitatingly:

"Do we have to be married? I mean have the ceremony, the oath, the rest ofit? I have been married. Now I want--love. "

"Why, it is only natural--" the man protested. 

"No, no, it is not natural. It may kill all this precious love. You maycome to hate me as I hated him, and then, then? No, " she continuedpassionately. "Let us not make a ceremony of this. It would be like theother, and I should feel it so always. We will have love, just love, andlive so that it makes no difference. You cannot understand!"

Sommers knelt beside her chair. 

"Love, love, " he repeated. "You shall have it, Alves, as you will--thedelirium of love!"

"That is right, " she whispered, trembling at his touch. "Talk to me likethat. Only more, more. Make my ears ring with it. Your words are so weak!"

"There are no words. "

"No, there is not one perfect one in all the thousands!" she uttered, witha low cry. "And they are all alike--all used and common. But this, "--shekissed him, drawing him closer to her beating heart. "This is you and all!"

Thus she taught him the fire of love--so quickly, so surely! From the vagueboyish beatitude had sprung this passion, like the opulent blossom out ofthe infolding bosom of the plant. Her kiss had dissipated his horridsuspicions. Her lips were bond and oath and sacrament. 

That night they escaped the world with its fierce cross-purposes, itschecker-board scheme. The brutality of human success, the anguish ofstrife, --what is it when man is shut within the chamber of his joy! Outsidethe peaceful rain fell ceaselessly, quenching the flame and the smoke andthe passion of the city. 

PART II

CHAPTER I

"Next week Monday is the tenth, " Alves announced, glancing at the calendarthat hung beside the writing-table. 

"Well?" Sommers answered. He was preparing to make the daily trip to thepost-office on the other side of Perota Lake. 

"The Chicago schools open this year on the tenth, " Alves continued slowly. 

"What difference does that make?"

For reply Alves took from the drawer of the table the old leather pursethat was their bank. The mute action made Sommers smile, but he opened thepurse and counted the bills. Then he shoved them back into the purse, andreplaced it in the drawer. 

"I don't know why I haven't heard about my horse, " he mused. 

"That would only put the day off another month or two, " Alves answered. "Wehave had our day of play--eight long good weeks. The golden-rod has beenout for nearly a month, and the geese have started south. We saw a flockyesterday, you remember. "

"But you aren't going back to the school!" Sommers protested. "Not to theEverglade School. "

"I got the notices last week. They haven't discharged me! Why not?" sheadded sanely. "You know that it will be hard to build up a practice. AndMiss M'Gann wrote me that we could get a good room at the Keystone. Thatwon't be too far from the school. "

"I had thought of returning to Marion, where my father practised, " Sommerssuggested. "If we could only stay _here_, in this shanty three milesfrom a biscuit!"

Alves smiled, and did not argue the point. They went to the shore wheretheir little flat-bottomed boat was drawn up. Perota Lake, on which thetiny frame cottage stood, was a shallow, reedy pond, connecting by sluggishbrooks with a number of other lakes. The shore on this side of the lake wasa tangled thicket; the opposite shore rose in a gentle slope to fields ofsun-dried grain. The landscape was rich, peaceful, uneventful, with widespaces of sun and cloud and large broad Wisconsin fields. The fierce westwind came cool and damp from the water. Sommers pulled out of the reedyshore and headed for a neighboring lake. After rowing in silence for sometime, he rested on his oars. 

"Why couldn't we stay here? That is what I want to do--to keep out of thecity with its horrible clatter of ambitions, to return to the soil, andlive like the primitive peasant without ambition. "

The Wisconsin woman smiled sympathetically. She had grown strong andfirm-fleshed these summer weeks, sucking vitality from the warm soil. 

"The land is all owned around here!" she laughed. "And they use herbdoctors or homeopaths. No, we should starve in the midst of harvests. Thereis only one thing to do, to go back where we can earn a bit of bread. "

Sommers started to row, but put down the oars again. 

"Do _you_ want to go back?"

"I never think about it. It is so arranged, " she answered simply. "Perhapsit will not be always so. "

"Which means that we may be more fortunate than our neighbors?"

"I don't know--why think? We have until Monday, " and she leaned forward totouch his hand. 

Why think! That is what she had taught him. They had sloughed off Chicagoat the first, and from the day they arrived at Perota they had sunk into agentle, solitary routine. Sommers had been content to smoke his pipe, toruminate on nothings, to be idle with no strenuous summoning of his will. There had been no perplexity, no revolt, no decision. Even the storm oftheir love subdued itself to a settled warmth, like that of the insistentsummer sun. They had little enough to do with, but they were not aware oftheir poverty. Alves had had a long training in economy, and with theinnate capability of the Wisconsin farmer's daughter, adjusted their littleso neatly to their lives that they scarcely thought of unfulfilled wants. 

Now why, the man mused, must they break this? Why must they be forced backinto a world that they disliked, and that had no place for them? If he wereas capable as she, there would be no need. But society has discovered aclever way of binding each man to his bench! While he brooded, Alveswatched the gentle hills, straw-colored with grain, and her eyes grew moistat the pleasant sight. She glanced at him and smiled--the comprehendingsmile of the mothers of men. 

"You would not want it always. "

They landed at the end of the lake; from there it was a short walk over thedusty country road to the village. The cross-roads hamlet with its saloonsand post-office was still sleeping in midday lethargy. Alves pointed to theunpainted, stuffy-looking houses. 

"You would not like this. "

At the post-office they met a young fellow wearing a cassock, a strangelyincongruous figure in the Wisconsin village. "Are you coming to vespers?"the young priest asked. His brown, heavy face did not accord with theclerical habit or with the thin clerical voice. 

"I think so--for the last time, " Alves answered. 

"Guy Jones will be there. You remember Guy, Alves? He used to be quitesweet on you in the old days when your brother was at the seminary. "

"Yes, I remember Guy, " Alves answered hurriedly. She seemed conscious ofSommers's bored gaze. The young priest accompanied them along the dustyroad. 

"Guy'll be glad to see you again. He's become quite a man out in PaintedPost, Nebraska--owns pretty much the whole place--"

"We shall be at vespers, " Alves repeated, interrupting the talkative youngman. 

When his cassock had disappeared up the dusty road between the fields ofcorn, she added, "And that, too, you would not like, nor Guy Jones. "

After beaching the boat in front of the cottage they walked to the seminarychapel by a little path through the meadows along the lake, then across awooded hill where the birds were singing multitudinously. The buildings ofthe Perota Episcopal Seminary occupied the level plateau of a hill that laybetween two lakes. A broad avenue of elms and maples led to the rude stonecloisters, one end of which was closed by the chapel. To Sommers the cheapfactory finish of the chapel and the ostentatious display of ritualism werealike distasteful. The crude fervors of the boy priests were strangely outof harmony with the environment. But Alves, to whom the place was full ofassociations, liked the services. As they entered the cloisters, a tinybell was jangling, and the students were hurrying into the chapel, theirlong cassocks lending a foreign air to the Wisconsin fields. Only one otherperson was seated on the benches beneath the choir, a broad-faced youngAmerican, whose keen black eyes rested upon Alves. She was absorbed in theservice, which was loudly intoned by the young priest. The candles, theincense, the intoned familiar words, animated her. Sommers had oftenwondered at the powerful influence this service exerted over her. To thetraining received here as a child was due, perhaps, that blind wilfulnessof self-sacrifice which had first brought her to his notice. 

"The remission and absolution of sins--" Alves was breathing heavily, herlips murmuring the mighty words after the priest. Was there a sore hiddenin her soul? Did she crave some supernatural pardon for a desperate deed?The memory of miserable suspicions flashed over him, and gravely, sadly, hewatched the quivering face by his side. If she sought relief now in theexercise of her old faith, what would come as the years passed and heapedup the burden of remorse!

 * * * * *

The service ended, and the three lay participants sauntered into thegraveyard outside the west door. The setting sun flooded the aisle of thelittle chapel, even to the cross on the altar. The tones of the organrolled out into the warm afternoon. The young man approached Alves withextended hand. 

"The boys told me I could find you here. It's real good to see you again. Yes, I'm back to have a look at the old place. Wouldn't return to_stay_ for worlds. It's a great place out there, where a man countsfor what he is. Won't you make me acquainted with your husband?"

Sommers felt instinctively the hesitation in Alves's manner. She turned tohim, however. 

"Howard, this is my brother's old friend, Mr. Jones, --Dr. Sommers. "

The young man shook hands with great warmth, and joined them in their walkhome, talking rapidly all the way. When he left the cottage, he extended acordial invitation to Sommers to establish himself in Painted Post. "Wewant a good, live, hustling doctor, one that is up in all the modern schooltheories, " he explained. 

After he had gone, they sat in silence, watching the deepening twilight inthe cool woods. The day, the season, the fair passion of life, seemed towane. Like the intimations of autumn that come in unknown ways, even inAugust, surely in September, this accidental visitor brought the atmosphereof change. 

"The struggle begins, then, next Monday, " Sommers remarked at last. 

She kissed him for reply. 

To love, to forget unpleasant thoughts, to love again, to refrain from anignoble strife--alas! that it could not be thus for a lifetime. 

CHAPTER II

The Keystone Hotel was in full blast when the doctor and Alves returnedfrom Wisconsin. Miss M'Gann met them and introduced them to the large, parlor-floor room she had engaged for them. The newcomers joined thehousehold that was taking the air on the stone steps of the hotel. The stepbelow Miss M'Gann's was held by a young man who seemed to share with MissM'Gann the social leadership of the Keystone. He was with the Baking PowderTrust, he told Sommers. He was tall and fair, with reddish hair that masseditself above his forehead in a shiny curl, and was supplemented by a wavingauburn mustache. His scrupulous dress, in the fashion of the foppish clerk, gave an air of distinction to the circle on the steps. Most of this circlewere so average as scarcely to make an impression at first sight, --a fewyoung women who earned their livelihood in business offices, a few decayed, middle-aged bachelors, a group of widows whose incomes fitted the rates ofthe Keystone, and several families that had given up the struggle withmaids-of-all-work. One of these latter, --father, mother, and daughter--hadseats at table with Sommers and Alves. The father, a little, bald-headedman with the air of a furtive mouse, had nothing to say; the mother was afaded blond woman, who shopped every day with the daughter; the daughter, who was sixteen, had the figure of a woman of twenty, and the assuranceborn in hotels and boarding-houses. Her puffy rounded face, set in a thickroll of blond hair, had the expression of a precocious doll. When she hadsounded Alves on the subject of silk waists, she relapsed into silence andstared amiably at the doctor. 

Sommers arranged to hang his little celluloid sign, _Howard Sommers, M. D. , Physician and Surgeon_, beneath his window. The proprietor of theKeystone thought it gave a desirable, professional air to the house. ButWebber, the young man in the Baking Powder Trust, was sceptical of itscommercial value to the doctor. Certainly the results from its appearancewere not ascertainable. Sommers had no patients. The region about theKeystone was a part of the World's Fair territory, and had been greatlyoverbuilt. It had shrunk in these stagnant months to one-tenth of itspossible population. There was, besides, an army of doctors, at least onefor every five families Sommers judged from the signs. They were for themost part graduates of little, unknown medical schools or of drug stores. Lindsay had once said that this quarter of the city was a nest ofcharlatans. The two or three physicians of the regular school had privatehospitals, sanitariums, or other means of improving their business. Many ofthe doctors used the drug stores as offices and places of rendezvous. Theirsigns hung, one below another, from a long crane at the entrances of thestores. It was an impartial, hospitable method of advertising one'sservices. There was one such bulletin at the shop on the corner of theneighboring avenue; the names were unfamiliar and foreign, --Jelly, Zarnshi, Pasko, Lemenueville. Sommers suspected that their owners had taken tothemselves _noms de guerre_. 

At first Sommers avoided these places, and got the few drugs he needed at awell-known pharmacy in the city. He had an idea that matters would improvewhen people returned from the country or the seashore. But these people didnot take long vacations. He had had but one case, the wife of a Swedishjanitor in a flat-building, and he had reason to believe that his serviceshad not pleased. Every morning, as Alves hurried to reach the EvergladeSchool, his self-reproach increased. He hated to think that she was in thesame treadmill in which he had found her. His failure was a matter ofpride, also; he began to suspect that the people in the house talked aboutit. When Webber spoke to him of Dr. Jelly's success, he felt that theKeystone people had been making comparisons. They were walking to therailroad station after breakfast--the clerk on his way south to the bakingpowder works; he, for a daily paper. The young clerk nodded to ablack-whiskered, sallow man, and said:

"He's Doc. Jelly, and has the biggest practice around here. He's thick withthe drug-store people, --has an interest in it, I have heard. I haven't seenyour sign over there. Why don't you hang it out?"

Sommers did not like to say that it was in bad professional form. After hehad left the friendly clerk, however, he walked over to the drug store andmade some inquiries in a general way. The place was a shameful pretence ofa prescription pharmacy. Cigars, toilet articles, and an immense soda-waterfountain took up three-fourths of the floor space. A few dusty bottles wereranged on some varnished oak shelves; there was also a little closet at oneside, where the blotchy-faced young clerk retired to compoundprescriptions. The clerk hailed him affably, calling him by his name. Heseemed to know that Sommers used up-town pharmacies and had no practice;and he, too, good-naturedly offered his advice. 

"Goin' to settle in the neighborhood? Shall be glad to have your slab toadd to the collection. " He pointed jocularly to the filigree-work of signsthat were pendent above the door. 

"Well, I am not settled yet, " Sommers replied, as easily as he could. 

"Mostly homeopaths hereabouts, " the clerk went on, rolling out a handful ofcigars for a purchaser to make his selection. "Makes no difference, I say;any one with a diploma is welcome to hang out and try his chances with therest. But all these"--he waved the hand which held the cigars at thesigns--"are fine men. They do a rushin' business. "

Sommers left the shop; he was not quite ready to do a "rushin' business"and to advertise for it from the corner drug store. As he retreated theclerk looked at him with a cynical smile. In the clerk's vernacular, hewasn't "in the push, " not "the popular choice. "

These days Sommers had so little to do that he could meet Alves at theclose of the afternoon session. At first he had gone to the EvergladeSchool and waited while the pupils bustled out. He disliked seeing her inthe performance of her petty duties, giving commands and reproofs. Theprincipal and the teachers stared at them when they walked away from theschool, and he gathered that his appearance there was embarrassing toAlves. So they came to have a rendezvous at the rear of a vacant lot notfar from the deserted cottage, which lifted its ill-favored roof above thescrub oaks. Then they would traverse the familiar walks in and out of thedeserted streets. 

When he told her of his conversation with Webber and the drug clerk'sremarks, she counselled unexpectedly:

"Why don't you do it? Miss M'Gann says they all do it in Chicago, --that is, the doctors who aren't swells. "

He smiled sadly at the idea that his holding aloof from this advertisingcustom might be set down to his ambition of being a "swell doctor. " Themethod, however, seemed entirely proper to Alves, who hadn't theprofessional prejudices, and whose experience with the world had taught herto make the fight in any possible way, in any vulgar way that custom hadpointed out. 

"Well, if you want me to, " he conceded drearily. 

"It isn't a great matter, " she replied. "I don't _want_ you to doanything that you don't feel like doing. Only, " she sighed, "there's somuch opposition to married women's teaching, and we must live somehow. "

"I'll do it to-morrow, " Sommers replied quickly, stung by the unintentionalimplication of the speech. 

They walked to their favorite haunt on the lake shore, beneath thecrumbling walls of the little convent. During these hot September days thisspot had become the brightest place in their lives. They had come there tofind themselves, to avoid the world. They had talked and planned, had beensilent, had loved, and had rested. Today they watched the fiery sun sinkingin its bed of shining dust, and did not speak. Alves was unusually weary, and he was sad over the decision he had just made, weakly, it seemed tohim. A good deal of the importance of his revolt against commercialmedicine disappeared. Lindsay tried oily, obsequious means of attractingattention. He was to hang his sign from a corner store. Some dim idea ofthe terrible spectre that haunts the days and nights of those withoutcapital or position confronted him. If he had never been rich, he hadalways the means to give him time to look about, to select from a number ofopportunities. If he could manage to wait, even six months, some hospitalplace might turn up. His old associates at Philadelphia would have him inmind. He did not dare to write them of his necessity; even his friendswould be suspicious of his failure to gain a foothold in this hospitable, liberal metropolis. 

He rose at last to escape these gloomy thoughts. Alves followed him withouta word. He did not offer her his arm, as he was wont to do when they walkedout here beyond the paths where people came. She respected his mood, andfalling a step behind, followed the winding road that led around the ruinedCourt of Honor to the esplanade. As they gained the road by a littlefootpath in the sandy bank, a victoria approached them. The young woman whooccupied it glanced hastily at Sommers and half bowed, but he had turnedback to give Alves his hand. The carriage drove on past them, then stopped. 

"That lady wishes to speak to you, " Alves said. 

"I think not, " Sommers replied quickly, turning in the opposite direction. As they walked away the carriage started, and when Alves looked around ithad already passed over the rough wooden bridge that crossed the lagoon. 

"Was it some one you knew?" she asked indifferently. 

"It was Miss Hitchcock, " Sommers replied shortly. He told her somethingabout the Hitchcocks. "She was the first woman I knew in Chicago, " heconcluded musingly. Alves looked at him with troubled eyes, and then wassilent. Territories unknown in her experience were beginning to revealthemselves in the world of this man. 

CHAPTER III

The next day Sommers applied at the drug store for permission to hang hissign beneath the others. The question was referred to Jelly, who seemed tobe the silent partner in the business, and in a few days consent was given. The little iron sign with gilt letters shone with startling freshnessbeneath the larger ones above. But no immediate results were visible. Sommers dropped into the store as nonchalantly as he could almost daily, but there were no calls for him. He met Jelly, who looked him over coldly, while he lopped over the glass show-case and smoked a bad cigar. Sommersthought he detected a malicious grin on the clerk's face when Jellyquestioned him one day about his practice. The successful physician seemedto sum him up in a final speech. 

"What people want hereabouts is a practical, smart man. They don't takemuch stock in schools or training; it's the _man_ they want. "

Leaving the clear impression that the young doctor was not the man fortheir money, he grasped his black bag and lounged out of the door, puffingat his cigar and spitting as he went. The Keystone, also, did not findSommers the man they could rely upon. When the overfed daughter of thefamily at his table was taken ill with a gastric fever, the anxious mammasent for Jelly. Webber took this occasion to give him advice. Apparentlyhis case was exciting sympathy in the hotel, --at least Miss M'Gann and theclerk had consulted about it. 

"You don't get acquainted with the folks, " Webber explained. "You go andshut yourself up in your room after every meal, instead of talking topeople and being sociable like the rest of us. And you haven't formed anychurch connection. That helps a man, especially in your profession. Youought to get connected with a good church, and go to the meetings andchurch sociables. Join the young people's clubs and make yourselfagreeable. It don't make any difference how much you know in this world. What people want is a good, open-hearted fellow, who meets 'em easily andkeeps in sight. "

'In different circles, different customs, ' thought Sommers. 'Lindsayfrequents dinners, and I must attend church sociables!'

"You and Mrs. Sommers hold yourselves apart, " Webber went on with friendlywarmth, "as if you were too good for ordinary company. Now I know you don'treally think so at all. As soon as you break the ice, you will be allright. There was Lemenueville. He started in here the right way, took tothe Presbyterian church, the fashionable one on Parkside Avenue, and madehimself agreeable. He's built up a splendid practice, right there in thatcongregation!"

"Are there any good churches left?" Sommers inquired. 

"Well, I shouldn't be bashful about cutting into the Presbyterian. You'reas good as Lemenueville. "

Decidedly, Sommers thought, this simple society had its own social habits. If he did not take this well-meant advice, he must justify himself by hisown method. He made up his mind to go to the next meeting of the medicalsociety. His clothes were a trifle shabby, but as the meeting was in theevening, he could go in his evening dress--drop in casually, as it were, from an evening entertainment. That silly bit of pride, however, angeredhim with himself. He went in his shabby everyday suit. The experience wasthe most uncomfortable one he had had. The little groups of young doctorsdid not open to him. They had almost forgotten him. Even his old colleaguesat the hospital scarcely recognized him, and when they did stop to chatafter the meeting, they examined him indifferently, as if they were makingnotes. Lindsay had probably spread his story, with some imaginativedetails. According to the popular tale Sommers had been "thrown down" byMiss Hitchcock because he had mixed himself up with a married woman. Thenhe had been discharged by Lindsay for the same reason, and had sunk, hadrun away with the woman, and had come back to Chicago penniless. The womanwas supporting him, some one said. Enough of this pretty tale could be readin the bearing of the men to make Sommers sorry that he had come, andsorrier that he had come in the hope of bettering his condition. He slippedout unobserved and walked the six miles back to the Keystone. 

The fight was on; he was placed, as he had wished, without handicap; heclosed his jaws and summoned all his will to take the consequences. Thepity was that he had brought himself to make any concessions to theobsequiousness of the world. As he passed down Michigan Avenue he overtooka shabby laboring man, who begged of him. Sommers found out that he was astriker, a fireman on the Illinois Central, who had lost his job by beingblacklisted after the strike. He had walked the streets since the middle ofJuly. 

"You were a fool, " Sommers remarked calmly, "to think that you and yourscould make any impression on the General Managers' Association. You havehad your lesson, and the next time you find yourself hanging on to theworld, no matter how, don't kick over the traces. There's a quarter. It'smore than I can afford to give, and I think you're a fool. "

The man hesitated. 

"I don't want none of your money, " he growled at last. "If you had to workfor a living, you silk stocking--"

"Come, don't call me names. I am a fool, too. I am in the same boat. I'dgive a good deal for a job, any job to earn my living. I didn't say itwasn't natural what you did, but it's against the facts, against thefacts. "

The man stared, took the quarter, and dived into a cross street. 

"I have lost twenty cents by walking home, " Sommers reported to Alves, "butI have realized--a few facts. "

The following day, as Sommers was passing the drug store, the clerkbeckoned to him. A messenger had just come, asking for immediate help. Awoman was very ill--third house north on Parkside Avenue. 

"There's your chance, " the clerk grinned. "They're rich and Jelly's people. He won't be back before two. Just show Dr. Sommers the way, " he added, tothe servant who had brought the message. 

Sommers had his doubts about going, for Jelly was an "eclectic" andprobably would refuse to consult with him. The matter seemed urgent, however, and he followed the servant. The case, he found on examination, was serious and at a critical stage. It was an affair of mismanagedconfinement. Jelly, Sommers could see, was brutally ignorant. The woman, ifshe survived, would probably be an invalid for life. He did what he couldand remained in the house, waiting for Jelly, who would be sure to come. About three the black-whiskered doctor arrived and hurried upstairs, hissallow face scowling. Sommers explained what he had done, and suggestedthat a certain operation was necessary at once to save matters at all. Jelly interrupted him. 

"See here, young feller, this is my case, and you're not wanted, nor youradvice. You can send your bill to me. "

Sommers knew that he should bow and withdraw. Jelly was within hisprofessional rights, but the man's brutal ignorance maddened him, and hespoke recklessly. 

"A first-year interne could tell you the same thing. The woman has beennearly killed, if you want to know the truth. And I don't know that I shallleave you to complete the job. "

"What are you going to do about it?" Jelly asked insolently. 

Sommers paused. He was clearly in the wrong, professionally. There was nota well-trained doctor in Chicago who would abet him in his act. But itmattered little; his own desperate situation gave him a kind of freedom. 

"I shall present the facts to her husband. " He found the husband in theroom below and stated the case. 

"What I am doing, " he concluded, "is entirely unprofessional, but it's thething I should want any man to do for me. You needn't take my word, butcall up either Dr. Fitz or Dr. Sloper by telephone, and ask one of them tocome out at once. They are the best surgeons in the city. As to Dr. Jelly, I prefer not to say anything, and I don't expect you to take my advice. "

The husband was anxious and worried. All doctors seemed to him a game ofchance. 

"She's always hankered after the Science people; but she kind of took toJelly, and our friends think an awful sight of him, " he remarkeddoubtfully. 

"You are taking tremendous risks, " Sommers urged. 

"Well, I'll see Jelly. "

Sommers waited until the man returned. 

"Well, I guess it isn't so bad as you think. We'll wait a day or two, Iguess. I am obliged to you for your kindness. "

Sommers made no reply and left the house. The only result of this affairwas that he found it disagreeable to call at the drug store. Besides, itwas useless; no practice had come from his assiduous attendance. Finally, he saw one morning that his modest sign no longer waved from the pendentladder. He did not take the trouble to inquire why it had been removed. 

 * * * * *

The winter was wearing on, --the slow, penurious winter of exhaustion afterthe acute fury of the spring and summer. These were hard times in earnest, not with the excitement of failures and bankruptcies, but with the steadygrind of low wages, no employment, and general depression. The papers saidthings would be better in the fall, when the republican candidates would beelected. But it was a long time to wait for activity. Meanwhile the streetsdown town were filled with hungry forms, the remnant of the World's Fairmob swelled by the unemployed strikers. The city was poor, too. The schoolfunds were inadequate. The usual increase in salary could not be paid. Instead, the board resolved to reduce the pay of the grade teachers, whohad the lowest wages. Alves received but forty dollars a month now, and hadbeen refused a night school for which she had applied. 

When Alves timidly suggested that it would be cheaper for them to rent oneof the many empty cottages in the vast region south of the parks, he puther off. That would be too much like the experience in the Ninety-firstStreet cottage, and he fought against the idea. There were a few dollarsstill left from the sale of his horse, his microscope, and otherpossessions. A few dollars each week came in from some work he had found inpreparing plates for a professor of anatomy in the new university. Someweeks he could almost pay his board without drawing from his capital. Theywould hang on in this way. 

Not that the Keystone Hotel was in itself very attractive. In spite ofWebber's advice, he and Alves found it hard to mix with the other "guests. "After they had been in the house several months, he fancied that the peopleavoided them. The harmless trio left their table, and in place of them camea succession of transient boarders. For a time he thought he wasoversensitive, inclined to suspect his neighbors of avoiding him. But oneevening Alves came into their room, where he was working at the anatomyplates, her face flushed with an unusual distress. 

"What reason have they?" Sommers asked, going directly to the heart of thematter. 

"None--unless Miss M'Gann has been talking carelessly. And she knowsnothing--"

"No, she knows nothing, " the doctor replied, looking at Alves intently. "And there is nothing to be known. "

"We think not!" she exclaimed. "I am not so sure that an unpleasant storycouldn't be made. "

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply. 

"Why, the--my husband's condition--the death, our going away so quicklyafterward. There are elements there of a good-sized boarding-housescandal. "

"Yes, there are elements!" Sommers admitted, putting away his work. "We mayas well leave as soon as we can. You are right; we had better fight it outalone. "

"Yes, _alone_, " she responded, with a glad note in her voice. 

The next afternoon they looked at the cheap, flimsy cottages they passed intheir walk with more interest than ever. The only places they could affordwere far removed from the populous districts where patients live. Theywould have to pay for heat, too, and though they could starve the body, they could not freeze. So the matter was put off for the present, and theydrew into themselves more and more, leaving the Keystone people to chatteras they willed. 

CHAPTER IV

The great strike was fast being forgotten, as a cause argued and lost orwon as you looked at it. A commission was holding many meetings thesemonths, and going over the debris, taking voluminous testimony. It was saidto be prejudiced in favor of the strikers, but the victors cared little. Its findings in the shape of a report would lie on the table in the hallsof Congress, neither house being so constituted that it could make anypolitical capital by taking the matter up. The Association of GeneralManagers had lapsed. It had been the banded association of power againstthe banded association of labor. It had fought successfully. The issue wasproved: the strike was crushed, with the help of marshals, city police, andtroops. And with it the victors prophesied was crushed the sympatheticstrike forever. It had cost, to be sure, many millions in all, but it paid. It was such a tremendous example!

The statistical side of passion was interesting and ironical. It gave thematter the air of a family row: the next day the heads of the factions weresitting down to make the inventory of broken glass, ruined furniture andprovisions. A principle had been preserved, people said, talking largelyand superficially, but the principle seemed elusive. The laborers, too, hadlost, more heavily in proportion to their ability to bear--millions inwages, not to reckon the loss of manhood to those who were blacklisted forparticipation in the fracas. 

The Commission went into the Pullman affair, quite unwarrantedly, accordingto the corporation, which was comfortably out of the mess. And there wereminor disputes over the injunctions against Debs, and a languid stirring ofdead bones in the newspapers. Every one was tired of the affair and willingto let it drop, with its lesson for this party or that. Sommers, havingnothing more urgent to do, attended the meetings of the Commission andlistened eagerly to get some final truth about the matter. But it seemed tohim that both sides merely scratched the surface of the argument, and werecontent with the superficial "lessons" thereby gained. What good could comeof the hearings? The country would get out of its doldrums sooner or later;employment would be easy to find; wages would rise, a little; every onewould have his bellyful; and then, some years later, another wave ofdepression would set in, the bitter strife would be repeated, both partiesunlessoned by this or any other experience. The world, at least thiscivilization, belonged to the strong; the poor would remain weak andfoolish and treacherous. 

It was whispered about on the first days of the hearing that an official ofthe American Railway Union would take the stand and make disclosures. Hewould show how the strike was finally ended, not by the law and the sword, but by money. The official's name was Dresser, Sommers heard, and every dayhe looked for him to take the stand. But the rumor passed away, and no"revelations" by Dresser or any one else who knew the inner facts appeared. Sommers learned them unexpectedly after the Commission had taken itself toWashington to prepare its report. 

It happened one evening at the Keystone Hotel. He had come in after dinnerand found Miss M'Gann in his room, calling upon Alves. She had broughtDresser with her. He was well dressed, his hair was cut to a conventionallength, and he carried a silk hat--altogether a different person from theslouchy, beery man who had grumbled at McNamara and Hills. Sommers's glancemust have said something of this, for Dresser began to explain, "I've given up agitating--doesn't go, what with the courts grantinginjunctions and the railroads throwing money about. "

"Do you mean _that_ was why the strike collapsed?" Sommers askedeagerly. 

"Sure!" Dresser thundered heartily. "_I_ KNOW IT. Do you know wherethe leaders are? Well, one of 'em has got the finest little ranch you eversaw out in Montana. And another, " he winked slowly and put his hand to hispocket. "They were poor men when the strike began, and they aren't workingnow for any dollar and a half a day. "

"I don't believe it, " Sommers replied promptly. "The managers had theaffair in hand, anyway. "

Dresser protested loudly, and irritated by the doctor's scepticism began toleak, to tell things he had seen, to show a little of the inside of thelabor counsels. He had evidently seen more than Sommers had believedpossible, and his active, ferreting mind had imagined still more. The twowomen listened open-mouthed to his story of the strike, and feeling wherethe sympathy lay Dresser spoke largely to them. 

"You seem to have found something to do?" Sommers remarked significantly atthe close. 

"I'm assistant editor of a paper, " Dresser explained. 

Sommers laughed. "Herr Most's old sheet?"

"_The Investor's Monthly_. "

Sommers shrieked with laughter, and patted Dresser on the back. "Sammy, you're a great man! I have never done you justice. "

"The management has been changed, " Dresser said gruffly. "They wanted a manof education, not a mere reporter. "

"Who owns it?"

"R. G. Carson has the controlling interest. "

Sommers relapsed into laughter. "So this is your ranch in Montana?"

Dresser rose with an offended air. 

"Oh! sit down, man. I am complimenting you. Haven't you a place as officeboy, compositor, or something for a needy friend?"

"I don't see what you're so funny about, doctor, " Miss M'Gann expostulated. 

"Spoiling the Philistines, you see, " Dresser added, making an effort tochime in with Sommers's irony. 

They talked late. Webber, the stylish young clerk, dropped in, and theconversation roamed over the universal topics of the day, --the hard times, the position of the employee in a corporation, etc. The clerk in the BakingPowder Trust was inclined to philosophical acceptance of presentconditions. Abstractly there might not be much justice for the poor, buthere in the new part of the country every man had his chance to be on top, to become a capitalist. There was the manager of the B. P. T. He had begunon ten dollars a week, but he had bided his time, bought stock in thelittle mill where he started, and now that the consolidation was arranged, he was in a fair way to become a rich man. To be rich, to have put yourselfoutside the ranks of the precarious classes--that was the clerk's ambition. Dresser was doubtful whether the good, energetic young clerk could repeatin these days the experience of the manager of the B. P. T. The two womentook part in the argument, and finally Alves summed the matter up:

"If we could, all of us would be rich, and then we should feel like therich, and want to keep what we could. But as we have to labor hard for alittle joy, it's best to get the joy, as much as you can, and not fret overthe work. "

 * * * * *

Dresser found the Keystone so agreeable that he came there to live. Thedoctor and Alves and Miss M'Gann with Webber and Dresser had a table tothemselves in the stuffy basement dining room. Miss M'Gann acceptedimpartially the advances of both young men, attending church with one andthe theatre with the other. The five spent many evenings in Sommers's room, discussing aimlessly social questions, while the doctor worked at theanatomy slides. Dresser's debauch of revolt seemed to have sobered him. Hebought himself many new clothes, and as time went on, picked up socialrelations in different parts of the city. He still talked sentimentalsocialism, chiefly for the benefit of Alves, who regarded him as anauthority on economic questions, and whose instinctive sympathies weretouched by his theories. As the clothes became more numerous and better inquality, he talked less about socialism and more about society. _TheInvestor's Monthly_ interested him: he spoke of becoming its managingeditor, hinting at his influence with Carson; and when the doctor jeered, Dresser offered him a position on the paper. Webber was openly envious ofDresser's prosperity, which he set down to the account of a superioreducation that had been denied him. When Dresser began to mention casuallythe names of people whom the Baking Powder clerk had read about in thenewspapers, this envy increased. Dresser's evolution impressed Miss M'Gannalso; Sommers noticed that she was readier to accept Dresser'scondescending attentions than the devotion of the plodding clerk. Webberwas simple and vulgar, but he was sincere and good-hearted. He was strivingto get together a little money for a home. Sommers told Alves that sheshould influence Miss M'Gann to accept the clerk, instead of beguilingherself with the words of a talker. 

"You are unfair to Sammy, " Alves had replied, with some warmth. "She woulddo very well to marry him; he is her superior. "

Sommers gave Alves a look that troubled her, and said:

"Because the fellow is settling into an amiable Philistine? He will nevermarry Jane M'Gann; it would hurt his prospects. "

A few days later Dresser mentioned that he had met Miss Laura Lindsay, "thedaughter of your former partner, I believe. "

"My former boss, " Sommers corrected, looking at Alves with an amused smile. He listened in ironical glee to Dresser's description of little LauraLindsay. Dresser thought her "a very advanced young woman, who had ideas, awide reader. " She had asked him about Dr. Sommers and Alves. 

"You had better not appear too intimate with us, " Sommers advised. "Herpapa doesn't exactly approve of me. "

When he had left the room, Sommers added: "He will marry Laura Lindsay. Anideal match. He won't remain long in the Keystone, and I am glad of it. Theconverted Philistine is the worst type!"

Alves held her own opinion. She should be sorry to lose Dresser from theirlittle circle. She permitted herself one remark, --"He is so much of agentleman. "

"A gentleman!" Sommers exclaimed scornfully. "Are any of us gentlemen inthe American sense?"

It seemed probable, however, that Sommers and Alves would be the first toleave the Keystone. Although the sultry June weather made them thinklongingly of the idyllic days at Perota Lake, the journey to Wisconsin wasout of the question. Struggle as he might, Sommers was being forced torealize that they must give up their modest position in the Keystone. Andone day the proprietor hinted broadly that she had other uses for theirroom. They had been tolerated up to this point; but society, even theKeystone form of society, found them too irregular for permanentacceptance. And now it was impossible to move away from Chicago. They hadno money for the venture. 

CHAPTER V

A change, even so small a change as from one boarding-house to another, iscaused by some definite force, some shock that overcomes the power ofinertia. The eleventh of June Sommers had gone to meet Alves at their usualrendezvous in the thicket at the rear of Blue Grass Avenue. The sultryafternoon had made him drowse, and when he awoke Alves was standing overhim, her hands tightening nervously. 

"They have dropped you, " he said, reading the news in her face. 

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, until they had plodded down theavenue for several blocks. 

"Why did they do it!" she murmured rebelliously. "They gave me no reason. It isn't because I teach badly. It isn't because of the married teachers'talk: there are hundreds of married women in the schools who haven't beendismissed. "

"Well, " Sommers responded soothingly, "I shouldn't hunt for a rationalreason for their act. They have merely hastened the step we were going totake some day. "

"What shall we do!" she gasped, overpowered by the visions her practicalmind conjured up. "We could just get along with my forty dollars, andnow--Oh! I've been like a weight about your neck. I have cut you off fromyour world, the big world where successes are made!"

Her large eyes filled with pleading tears. She was generously minded totake the burden of their fate upon herself. 

"You seem to have been making most of the success, " he responded lightly. "The big world where Dresser is succeeding doesn't call me very hard. Andit's a pretty bad thing if a sound-bodied, well-educated doctor can'tsupport himself and a woman in this world, " he added more gloomily. "I_will_, if I have to get a job over there. "

He jerked his head in the direction of the South Chicago steel works. Butthe heavens seemed to repel his boast, for the usual cloud of smoke andflame that hung night and day above the blast furnaces was replaced by abrilliant, hard blue sky. The works were shut down. They had reached theend of Blue Grass Avenue at the south line of the park. It was a spot ofsemi-sylvan wildness that they were fond of. The carefully platted avenuesand streets were mere lines in the rough turf. A little runnel of water, half ditch, half sewer, flowed beside the old plank walk. 

They sat down to plan, to contrive in some way to get a shelter over theirheads. From the plank walk where they sat nothing was visible for blocksaround except a little stucco Grecian temple, one of those decorativecontrivances that served as ticket booths or soda-water booths at theWorld's Fair. This one, larger and more pretentious than its fellows, hadbeen bought by some speculator, wheeled outside the park, and dumped on asandy knoll in this empty lot. It had an ambitious little portico with acluster of columns. One of them was torn open, revealing the simple anatomyof its construction. The temple looked as if it might contain two rooms ofgenerous size. Strange little product of some western architect'sremembering pencil, it brought an air of distant shores and times, standinghere in the waste of the prairie, above the bright blue waters of the lake!

"That's the place for us!" Sommers exclaimed, gazing intently at thetime-stained temple. Alves looked at the building sceptically, forwoman-wise she conceived of only conventional abiding-places. But shefollowed him submissively into the little stucco portico, and when he spokebuoyantly of the possibilities of the place, of the superb view of park andlake, her worn face gained color once more. The imitation bronze doors wereajar, and they made a thorough examination of the interior. With a fewlaths, some canvas, and a good cleaning, the place could be madepossible--for the summer. 

"That's four months, " Sommers remarked. "And that is a long time for poorpeople to look ahead. "

The same evening they hunted up the owner and made their terms, and thenext day prepared to move from the Keystone. They had some regrets overleaving the Keystone Hotel. The last month Sommers had had one or twocases. The episode with Dr. Jelly had finally redounded to his credit, forthe woman had died at Jelly's private hospital, and the nurse who hadoverheard the dispute between the two doctors had gossiped. The firstswallow of success, however, was not enough to warrant any expenditure foroffice rent. He must make some arrangement with a drug store near thetemple, where he could receive calls. 

They invited Miss M'Gann, Webber, and Dresser to take supper with themtheir first Sunday in the temple. Alves had arranged a little kitchen inone corner of the smaller of the two rooms. This room received the pompousname of "the laboratory"; the other room--a kind of hall into which theportico opened--was bedroom and general living room. 

"We will throw open the temple doors, " she explained to Sommers, "and havesupper on the portico between the pillars. "

From that point the lake could be seen, a steely blue line on the horizon. But it rained on Sunday, and the visitors arrived so bedraggled by thestorm that their feast seemed doomed. Sommers produced a bottle of Scotchwhiskey, and they warmed and cheered themselves. The Baking Powder clerkgrew loquacious first. The Baking Powder Trust was to be reorganized, hetold them, as soon as good times came. There was to be a new trust, twiceas big as the present one, capitalized for millions and millions. Thechemist of the concern had told him that Carson was engineering the affair. The stock of the present company would be worth double, perhaps three timesas much as at present. He confided the fact that he had put all his savingsinto the stock of the present company at its greatly depressed presentvalue. The company was not paying dividends; he had bought at forty. Hisair of financial success, of shrewd speculative insight impressed them all. Miss M'Gann evidently knew all about this; she smiled as if the world werea pretty good place. 

Dresser, too, had his boast. He had finally been given charge of _TheInvestor's Monthly_, which had absorbed the _La Salle StreetIndicator_. The policy of the papers was to be changed: they were to beconservative, but not critical, and conducted in the interests of capitalwhich was building up the country after its financial panic. 

"In the prospective return of good times many new interests will seekpublic patronage, " he explained to the company. "A new era will dawn--theera of business combinations, of gigantic cooperative enterprises. "

"Vulgarly known as trusts, " Sommers interjected. "And your paper is goingto boom Carson's companies. Well, well, that's pretty good for Debs'sex-secretary!"

"You must understand that people of education change their views, " Dresserretorted uncomfortably. "I have had a long talk with Mr. Carson about thepolicy of the paper. He doesn't wish to interfere, not in the least, merelyadvises on a general line of policy agreeable to him and his associates, who, I may say, are very heavily engaged in Chicago enterprises. We areinterested at present in the traction companies which are seekingextensions of their franchises. "

"He's joined the silk-hat brigade, " Webber scoffed. "The Keystone ain'tgood enough for him any longer. He's going north to be within call of hisfriends. "

"How is Laura Lindsay?" Sommers asked. 

"I saw her last night, and I met Mr. Brome Porter and young Polot, too. "

"Did you tell 'em where you were going to-night?" Sommers asked, ratherbitterly. 

"Say, Howard, " Dresser replied, pushing back his chair and resting one armconfidentially on the table, "you must have been a great chump. You had asoft thing of it at Lindsay's--"

"I suppose Miss Laura has discussed it with you. I didn't like the setquite as well as you seem to. "

"Well, it's no use making enemies, when you can have 'em for friends justas easily as not, " Dresser retorted, with an air of superior worldlywisdom. 

 * * * * *

Miss M'Gann had drawn Alves out of the talk among the men, and they sat bythemselves on the lower step of the temple. 

"I saw Dr. Leonard the other day at a meeting of the Cymbals Society, " MissM'Gann told Alves. "He asked where you were. "

"I hope he'll come to see us. "

Miss M'Gann looked at the men and lowered her voice. 

"I think he knows what was the reason for dismissing you. He wouldn't tellme; but if I see him again, I am going to get it out of him. "

"Why, what did he say?" Alves asked. 

"Nothing much. Only he asked very particularly about you and the doctor;about what kind of man the doctor was, and just when you were married andwhere. "

Alves moved nervously. 

"Where were you married, Alves?" Miss M'Gann pursued anxiously. "Here or inWisconsin? You were so dreadfully queer about it all. "

"We were not married, " Alves replied, in a quiet voice, "at least not in achurch, with a ceremony and all that. I didn't want it, and we didn't thinkit necessary. "

The younger woman gasped. 

"Alves! I'd never think it of you--you two so quiet and so like ordinaryfolks!"

"We are like other people, only we aren't tied to each other by a halter. He can go when he likes, " Alves retorted. "I want him to go, " she addedfiercely, "just as soon as he finds he doesn't love me enough. "

"Um, " Miss M'Gann answered. "Lucky you haven't any children. That's wherethe rub comes. "

Alves straightened herself with a little haughtiness. 

"It wouldn't make any difference to _him_. He would do right by themif he had them. "

"I don't see how he could, at present, " Miss M'Gann proceeded, with severelogic. "It's all very well so long as things go easily. _But_ I hadrather have the ring. "

After a little silence, she continued: "It must have had something to dowith that, I guess, your being dropped. Did any one know?"

"I never said anything about it, " Alves replied coldly. She would haveliked to add an entreaty, for his sake, that Miss M'Gann keep this secret. But her pride prevented her. 

"That Ducharme woman must have been talking, " Miss M'Gann proceededacutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, as if she drank. "

"Possibly, " Alves assented, "though she didn't know anything. "

"Well, my advice to you is to make that right just as soon as ever you can. He's willing?"

"I should never let him, " Alves exclaimed vehemently; "least of all now!"

"Well, I suppose folks must live their own way. But you don't catch metaking a man in that easy fashion, so that he can get out when he wantsto. "

Alves tried to change the subject, but her admission had so startled herfriend that the usual gossip was impossible. When the visitors rose to go, Sommers proposed showing them the way back by a wagon road that led to theimproved part of the park, across the deserted Court of Honor. He and Alvesaccompanied them as far as the northern limits of the park. The rain cloudswere gone, and a cold, clear sky had taken their place. On their returnalong the esplanade beside the lake Sommers chatted in an easy frame ofmind. 

"I guess Webber will get Miss M'Gann, and I am glad of it. Dresser wouldn'tdo anything more than fool with her. He will get on now; those promotersand capitalists are finding him a clever tool. They will keep him steady. It isn't the fear of the Lord that will keep men like Dresser in line; it'sthe fear of their neighbors' opinions and of an empty stomach!"

"Don't you--wish you had a chance like his?" Alves asked timidly. 

The young doctor laughed aloud. 

"You don't know me yet. It isn't that I don't want to. It's because I_can't_--no glory to me. But, Alves, we are all right. I can getenough in one way or another to keep the temple over our heads, and I canwork now. I have something in view; it won't be just chasing about thestreets. "

This reference to his own work both pleased and saddened her. Thebiologist, who had befriended him before, had given him some work in hislaboratory. The work was not well paid, but the association with thestudents, which aroused his intellectual appetites, had given him a newspur. What saddened her was that it was all entirely beyond her sphere ofinfluence, of usefulness to him. Living, as they should, in an almostsavage isolation, she dreaded his absorption in anything apart from her. There were other reliefs, consolations, and hopes than those she held. Hewas slipping away into a silent region--man's peculiar world--of thoughtand dream and speculation, an intangible, ideal, remote, unloving world. Some day she would knock at his heart and find it occupied. 

She leaned heavily upon his arm, loath to have his footsteps so firm, hishead so erect, his eyes so far away, his voice so silent. 

"You are not sorry, " she murmured, ashamed of iterating this foolishquestion, that demanded one answer--an answer never wholly satisfying. 

"For what?" he asked, interrupting his thought and glancing out into theblack waters. 

"For me--for all this fight for life alone away from the people who aresucceeding, for grinding along unrecognized--"

He stopped and kissed her gently, striving to quiet her excited mood. 

"For if you did, I would put myself _there_, in the water beside thepiers, " she cried. 

He smiled at her passionate threat, as at the words of an emotional child. Underneath his gentleness, his kindness, his loving ways, she felt thistrace of scepticism. He did not bother his head with what was beginning towring her soul. In a few minutes she spoke again:

"Miss M'Gann thinks Dr. Leonard knows why I was dismissed. Mrs. Ducharme, she said, had been hanging about the Everglade School district. I rememberhaving seen her several times. "

Sommers dropped her arm and strode forward. 

"What did _she_ know?" he asked harshly. 

"I don't see how she could know anything except suspicions. You know shewas queer and a great talker. "

Sommers's face worked. He was about to speak when Alves went on. 

"I told Jane we had never been married; she asked me _where_ we weremarried. I suppose I ought not to have told her. I didn't want to. "

"It is of no importance, " Sommers answered. "It's our own business, anyway;but it makes no difference as we live now whether she knows it or not. "

"I am glad you feel so, " Alves replied with relief. Then in a few momentsshe added, "I was afraid she might tell people; it might get to your oldfriends. "

Sommers replied in the same even tone, "Well? and what can they do about it?"

"I wonder what a woman like Miss Hitchcock thinks about suchmatters, --about us, if she knew. "

"She would not think. She would avoid the matter as she would a case ofdrunkenness. "

The arm within his trembled. She said nothing more until they reached thelittle portico. She paused there, leaning against one of the crumblingcolumns, looking out into the night. From the distance beyond the greatpier that stretched into the lake came the red glare of the lighthouse. 

Sommers had gone in and was preparing the room for the night. She couldhear him whistle as he walked to and fro, carrying out dishes, arrangingthe chairs and tables. He maintained an even mood, took the accidents ofhis fate as calmly as one could, and was always gentle. He had some well ofhappiness hidden to her. She went in, took off her cloak, and prepared toundress. His clothes, the nicety he preserved about personal matters, hadtaught her much of him. Her clothes had always been common, of thewholesale world; he had had his luxuries, his refinements, his individualtastes. Gradually, as his more expensive clothes had worn out, he hadreplaced them with machine-made articles of cheap manufacture. Hisbelongings were like hers now. She was bringing him a little closer to herin such ways, --food and lodging and raiment. But not in thought and being. Behind those deep-set eyes passed a world of thought, of conjecture andtheory and belief, that rarely expressed itself outwardly. 

She let down her hair and began to take off her plain, unlovely clothes. Thus she approached the common human basis, the nakedness and simplicity oflife. Her eyes lingered thoughtfully on her body; she touched herself asshe unbuttoned, unlaced, cast aside the armor of convention and daily life. 

"Howard!" she cried imperiously. He stopped his whistling and looked at herand smiled. 

"Do you like me, Howard?" She blushed at the childishness of her eagerquestion. But she demanded the expected answer with the insistence ofunsatisfied love. And when he failed to reply at the moment, surprised byher mood, she knelt by his chair and grasped his knees. 

"Isn't it _all_ that you want, just the temple and me? Am I not enoughto make up for the world and success and pleasure? I can make you love, andwhen you love you do not think. "

She rose and faced him with gleaming eyes, stretching out her bare arms, deploying her whole woman's strength and beauty in mute appeal. 

"Why do you ask?" he demanded, troubled. 

"O Howard, you do not feel the mist that creeps in between us, though weare close together. Sometimes I think you are farther away than even in theold times, when I first saw you at the hospital. You think, think, and Ican't get at your thought. Why is it so?"

He yielded to her entreating arms and eyes, as he had so often before inlike moments, when the need to put aside the consciousness of existence, ofthe world as it appears, had come to one of them or both. Yet it seemedthat this love was like some potent spirit, whose irresistible power waned, sank, each time demanding a larger draught of joy, a more delirious tensionof the nerves. 

"Nothing makes any difference, " he answered. "I was born and lived forthis. "

She had charmed the evil mood, and for the time her heart was satisfied. 

But when she lay by his side at night her arm stole about his, as if toclutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape, lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usualavenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night, she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering with passion and defeat. Even in these limits of life, when the whole world was banned, it seemedimpossible to hold undisturbed one's joy. In the loneliest island of thehuman sea it would be thus--division and ultimate isolation. 

CHAPTER VI

The summer burned itself out, and the autumn winds pierced the rotten staffwalls of the temple. They were no nearer to moving into better quartersthan they had been in the spring. The days had come when there was littlefood, and the last precarious dollar had been spent. They lived on the edgeof defeat, and such an existence to earnest people is sombre. 

Finally the tide turned. The manager of a large manufacturing plant inBurnside, one of the little factory hamlets south of the city, askedSommers to take charge of an epidemic of typhoid that had broken out amongthe operatives. The regular physician of the corporation had provedincompetent, and the annual visitation of the disease threatened to beunprecedented. Sommers spent his days and nights in Burnside for severalweeks. When he had time to think, he wondered why the manager employed him. If the Hitchcocks had been in the city, he should have suspected that theyhad a hand in the matter. But he remembered having seen in a newspaper somemonths before that the Hitchcocks were leaving for Europe. He did nottrouble himself greatly, however, over the source of the gift, thankfulenough for the respite, and for the chance of renewed activity. When thetime for settlement came, the manager liberally increased the amount of thedoctor's modest bill. The check for three hundred dollars seemed a verysubstantial bulwark against distress, and the promise of the company'smedical work after the new year was even more hopeful. Alves was eager tomove from the dilapidated temple to an apartment where Sommers could have asuitable office. But Sommers objected, partly from prudential reasons, partly from fear that unpleasant things might happen to Alves, should theycome again where people could talk. And then, to Alves's perplexity, hedeveloped strange ideas about money getting. 

"The physician should receive the very minimum of pay possible for hisexistence, " he told her once, when she talked of the increase in hisincome. "He works in the dark, and he is in luck if he happens to do anygood. In waging his battle with mysterious nature, he only unfits himselfby seeking gain. In the same way, to a lesser degree, the law and theministry should not be gainful professions. When the question of personalgain and advancement comes in, the frail human being succumbs toselfishness, and then to error. Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, the teacher should be content to minister to human needs. The professions should be great monastic orders, reserved for those whohave the strength to renounce ease and luxury and power. "

The only tangible comfort that Alves derived from this unusually didacticspeech was the assurance that he would not be drawn away from her. Shebowed to his conception, and sought to help him. While he was attending thecases in Burnside, she did some work as nurse. Beginning casually to helpon an urgent case, she went on to other cases, training herself, learningto take his place wherever she could. She thought to come closer to him inthis way, but she suspected that he understood her motive, that her workdid not seem quite sincere to him. She was looking for payment in love. 

When she was not engaged in nursing, she was more often alone than she hadbeen the year before. The Keystone people visited the temple rarely. MissM'Gann seemed always a little constrained, when Alves met her, and Dresserwas living on the North Side. One December morning, when Alves was alone, she noticed a carriage coming slowly down the unfinished avenue. It stoppeda little distance from the temple, and a woman got out. After giving thecoachman an order, she took the foot-path that Alves and Sommers had worn. Alves came out to the portico to meet the stranger, who hastened herleisurely pace on catching sight of a person in the temple. At the foot ofthe rickety steps the stranger stopped. 

"You are Miss Hitchcock, " Alves said quickly. "Won't you come in?"

"How did you know!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed, and added without waiting fora reply: "Let's sit here on the steps--the sun is so warm and nice. I'vebeen a long time in coming to see you, " her voice rippled on cordially, while Alves watched her. "But we've been out of the city so much of thetime, --California, North Carolina, and abroad. "

Alves nodded. The young woman's ease of manner and luxurious dressintimidated her. She sat down on the step above Miss Hitchcock, and she hadthe air of examining the other woman without committing herself. 

"But, how did you know me?" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed, with a little laughof satisfaction. 

"Dr. Sommers has told me about you. "

"Did he! He didn't tell any one of his marriage. " The bluntness of thespeech was relieved by the confidential manner in which Miss Hitchcockleaned forward to the other woman. 

"It was sudden, " Alves replied coolly. 

"I know! But _we_, my father and I, had a right to feel hurt. We knewhim so well, and we should have liked to know you. "

"Thank you. "

"But we had no cards--you disappeared--hid yourselves--and you turn up inthis unique place! It's only by chance that I've found you now. "

"We didn't send out cards. We are such simple people that we don'texpect--"

Miss Hitchcock blushed at the challenge, and interrupted to save the speechfrom its final ungraciousness. 

"Of course, but we are different. We have always been so interested in Dr. Sommers. He was such a promising man. "

Alves made no effort to reply. She resented Miss Hitchcock's efforts toreach her, and withdrew into her shell. This young woman with her attendantbrougham belonged to the world that she liked to feel Sommers had renouncedfor her sake. She disliked the world for that reason. 

"Is he doing well?" Miss Hitchcock asked bluntly. "He was so brilliant inhis studies and at the hospital! I was sorry that he left, that he felt heought to start for himself. He had a good many theories and ideals. Wedidn't agree, "--she smiled winningly at the grave woman, "but I have hadtime to understand somewhat--only I couldn't, I can't believe that myfather and his friends are _all_ wrong. " Miss Hitchcock rushed onheedlessly, to Alves's perplexity; she seemed desperately eager toestablish some kind of possible understanding between them. But this cold, mature woman, in her plain dress, repelled her. She could not preventherself from thinking thoughts that were unworthy of her. 

Why had he done it! What had this woman to give that the women of her setcould not equal and more than equal? The atmosphere of her brougham, of hercostly gown and pretty hat contrasted harshly with the dingy temple anddead weeds of the waste land. Dr. Lindsay had said much, and insinuatedmore, about the entanglement that had ruined the promising young surgeon. Was it this woman's sensual power--she rejected the idea on the instant. Dr. Sommers was not that kind, in spite of anything that Lindsay might say. She could not understand it--his devotion to this woman, his giving up hischances. It was all a part of some scheme beyond her power to grasp fully. 

"I want to know you, " she said at last, after an awkward silence. "Won'tyou let me?"

Alves leaned slightly forward, and spoke slowly. 

"You are very kind, but I don't see any good in it. We don't belong to yourworld, and you would show him all the time what he has to get alongwithout. Not that he wouldn't do it again, " she added proudly, noticing thegirl's lowered gaze. "I don't think that he would like to have me say thathe had given up anything. But he's got his way to make, _here_, and itis harder work than you imagine. "

"I don't see, then, why you refuse to let me--his old friends--help him. "Miss Hitchcock spoke impatiently. She was beginning to feel angry with thisimpassive woman, who was probably ignorant of the havoc she had done. 

"He doesn't want any help!" Alves retorted. "We are not starving now. _I_ can help him. I will help him and be enough for him. He gave it upfor me. "

"Can you get him friends and practice?" Miss Hitchcock asked sharply. "Canyou make it possible for him to do the best work, and stand high in hisprofession? Will you help him to the place where he can make the most ofhimself, and not sell his soul for bread?"

These questions fell like taunts upon the silent woman. She seemed to feelbeneath them the boast, 'I could have done all that, and much more!' Thesewords were like the rest of this fashionable young woman--her carriage, herclothes, her big house, her freshness of person--all that she did not have. Alves retorted:

"He won't let any one push him, I know. What he wants, he will be glad toget by himself. And, " she added passionately, "I will help him. If I standin his way, --and he can't do what he wants to do, --I will take myself outof his life. "

Boast for boast, and the older woman's passionate words seemed to ring thestronger. They looked at each other defiantly. At last Miss Hitchcockpulled her wrap about her, and rose to go. A final wave of regret, ofyearning not to be thrust out in this way from these lives made her say:

"I am sorry you couldn't have let me be a little friendly. I wanted to haveyou to dinner, "--she smiled at the dull practicality of her idea; "but Isuppose you won't come. "

"He may do as he likes, " Alves said, in a more conciliatory manner. 

"But he can't!" the girl smiled back good-humoredly. "One doesn't go todinner without one's wife, especially when one's wife doesn't like thehostess. "

Alves laughed at the frank speech. She might have liked this eager, freshyoung woman, who took things with such dash and buoyancy, if she could haveknown her on even terms. As they stood facing each other, a challenge onMiss Hitchcock's face, Alves noticed the doctor's figure in the roadbeyond. 

"I think that is Dr. Sommers coming. He can answer your question forhimself. "

Sommers was approaching from Blue Grass Avenue; his eyes were turned in thedirection of the lake, so that he did not see the women on the steps of thetemple until Miss Hitchcock turned and held out her hand. Then he started, perceptibly enough to make Alves's lips tighten once more. 

"I have been calling on your wife, " Miss Hitchcock explained, talking fast. "But she doesn't like me, won't ask me to come again. "

"We shall be very glad to see you, " Alves interposed quickly. "But I makeno calls. "

Miss Hitchcock declined to sit down, and Sommers accompanied her to thewaiting carriage. Alves watched them. Miss Hitchcock seemed to be talkingvery fast, and her head was turned toward his face. 

Miss Hitchcock was answering Sommers's inquiries about Colonel and Mrs. Hitchcock. The latter had died over a year ago, and Colonel Hitchcock hadbeen in poor health. 

"He has some bitter disappointments, " Miss Hitchcock said gravely. "Hisuseful, honorable, unselfish life is closing sadly. We have travelled agood deal; we have just come back from Algiers. It is good to be back inChicago!"

"I have noticed that the Chicagoan repeats that formula, no matter how muchhe roams. He seems to travel merely to experience the bliss of returning tothe human factory. "

"It isn't a factory to me. It is home, " she replied simply. 

"So it is to us, now. We are earning our right to stay within its gates. "

"Are things--going better?" Miss Hitchcock asked hesitatingly. She scannedthe doctor's face, as if to read in the grave lines the record of the year. 

"We are alive and clothed, " he replied tranquilly. 

"What a frightful way to put it!"

"The lowest terms--and not very different from others. " His eye rested uponthe glossy horses and the spotless victoria. 

"No!" Miss Hitchcock answered dispiritedly. "But I _won't_ think of itthat way. I am coming to see you again, if I may?"

"You were very good to look us up, " he answered evasively. 

They lingered, speaking slowly, as if loath to part in this superficialmanner. He told her of his employment in Burnside, and remarked slowly, "I wonder who could have put the manager on my track. "

"I wonder, " she repeated, looking past him. 

"You see I didn't start quite at the scratch, " he added, his face relaxinginto a smile. 

"I shouldn't quarrel about _that_ handicap. "

"No, I am not as ready to quarrel as I once was. "

Her face had the eager expression of interest and vitality that heremembered. She seemed to have something more that she wanted to say, butshe simply held out her hand, with a warm "good-by, " and stepped into thecarriage. 

When he returned to the temple, Alves was busy getting their dinner. Shepaused, and glancing at Sommers remarked, "How beautiful she is!"

"She is a good woman. She ought to marry, " he responded. 

"Why?"

"Because she is so sound and fine at bottom. "

"You were glad to see her again. "

"Did I show it unduly?"

"I knew you were, and she knows it. "

When he looked at her a few moments later, her eyes were moist. 

CHAPTER VII

"Pshaw! pshaw!" Dr. Leonard exclaimed, in a coaxing tone. "I'mdisappointed, Alves. 'Tain't natural. I mean to see _him_ and show himwhat harm it is. "

"No, no, don't speak of it again, at least to _him_, " Alves pleadedanxiously. "He would do that, or anything, if he thought I wanted it. I_don't_ want it, I tell you; I'm happier as it is. "

"S'pose there are children?" the old dentist asked, in a convincing tone. 

"I hope there never will be. "

"Now, that shows how wrong you are, how fussed up--why, what's marriage forif it ain't for children? I guess I've had as hard a struggle as most tokeep head to the tide, but I couldn't spare the children. Now, I'll get ourminister to do the job. You and the doctor come out next Sunday to myhouse, and after the evening service we'll slip over to the church and makeit all right. "

Alves smiled at the earnest kindness of the old dentist, but shook her headfirmly. Dr. Leonard gathered up his overcoat and silk hat, but seemed loathto go. He peered out of the windows that Sommers had put into the big doorsof the temple. 

"It's like your living out here in this ramshackle old chicken-coop, whenyou might have a tidy flat on Paulina Street; and the doctor could have adesk in my office next door to his old boss. " Dr. Leonard spoke testily, and Alves laid her hand soothingly on his arm. 

"I guess we aren't made to be like other people. "

"You won't have any happiness so long as you defy God's law. "

"Did I have any when I lived according to it?"

The dentist, at the end of his arguments, turned the door-knob. 

"Some day, Alves, _he_ will reproach you justly for what you've done. "

"I shall be dead before that day. "

"I've no patience with you, talking of death and hoping you'll never havechildren. "

The old dentist stumbled out into the portico, and, without further words, trudged down the road. Alves lingered in the open door in spite of theintense cold, and watched him, with an unwonted feeling of loneliness. Thefew people that touched her solitary life seemed to draw back, repelled bysomething unusual, unsafe in her and her situation. Why was she soobstinate about this trivial matter of a ceremony that counted for so muchwith most people? At first her refusal had been a sentiment, merely, aninstinctive, unreasoned decision. Now, however, there were stronger causes:she would not consent to tie his hands, to make him realize theirrevocableness of his step. Time might come when... 

And why had she so stoutly denied a wish for children? These days herthoughts went back often to her dead child--the child of the man she hadmarried. Preston's share in the child was so unimportant now! To the motherbelonged the child. Perhaps it was meant to be so in order that somethingmight come to fill the empty places of a woman's heart. If she hadchildren, what difference would that ignorance of the man she loved, thatdivision from him, make? The man had his work, his ideas--the children ofhis soul; and the woman had the children of her body. Each went his way andworked his life into the fabric of the world. Love! Love was but anepisode, an accident of the few blossoming years of life. To woman therewas the gift of children, and to man the gift of labor. She wondered ifthis feeling would increase as the years passed. Would she think more andmore of the child she had had, the other man's child? And less of him whomshe loved?

"Trying to make an icicle of yourself?" a jovial voice called out; the nextmoment Dresser came up the steps. The portico shook as he stamped his feet. He wore a fur-lined coat, and carried a pair of skates. His face, which hadgrown perceptibly fuller since his connection with _The Investor'sMonthly_, was red with cold. 

"The ice on the lake is first-rate, Alves, and I skated up the shore to seeif I could get you for a spin. "

"I am glad you came, " Alves said, with new life. "I was kind of lonely andblue, and the doctor is off on a case the other side of nowhere. "

"Just the time, " responded Dresser, who seemed to have the good luck atpresent of making "right connections. "

They skated down the lagoon to the blackened Court of Honor, through thislittle pond, around the dismantled figure of Chicago, out into the openlake beside the long pier. The ice was black and without a scratch. Theydashed on toward the centre of the lake, Alves laughing in pure exultationover the sport. They had left far behind the few skaters that had venturedbeyond the lagoon, and taking hands they flew for a mile down the shore. Then Alves proposed that they should go back to the temple for a cup oftea. The wind was up, beating around the long, black pier behind them, andwhen they turned, they caught it full in the face. Alves, excited by thetussle, bent to the task with a powerful swing; Dresser skated fast behindher. As they neared the long pier, instead of turning in toward theesplanade, Alves struck out into the lake to round the obstruction andenter the yacht pool beyond. Dresser kept the pace with difficulty. As sheneared the end of the pier, she gave a little cry; Dresser saw her leap, then heard a warning shout, "Look out--the pool!" As he scuttled away from the oily water where thedrifts opened, he saw Alves clinging to the rim of ice on the piles. 

"Don't be afraid, " she called back. "I can crawl under the pier and get upon the cross-bars. Go on to the shore. "

While he protested she vanished, and in a minute he saw her reappear above, waving her hand to him. She took off her skates leisurely, wrung out herskirt, and walked along the pier. He skated up as close as he could, stammering his admiration and fears. When he reached the shore, she wasalready running down the path to the temple. He followed more leisurely, and found her, in a dry skirt, stirring up the fire in the stove. 

"That was a close call, " he gasped admiringly, throwing his skates into thecorner. 

"Wasn't it fine?" she laughed. "I'd like days and days of that--flyingahead, with a hurricane behind. "

She shovelled some coal into the ugly little stove, and gayly set aboutpreparing tea. Dresser had never seen her so strong and light-hearted asshe was this afternoon. They made tea and toasted crackers, chaffing eachother and chattering like boy and girl. After their meal Dresser lit hispipe and crouched down by the warm stove. 

"I wish you were like this oftener, " he murmured admiringly. "Gay and readyfor anything!"

"I don't believe I shall be as happy as this for weeks. It comes over mesometimes. "

She leaned forward, her face already subdued with thought. 

"It makes you beautiful to be happy, " Dresser said, with clumsyself-consciousness. 

Alves's eyes responded quickly, and she leaned a little farther forward, pondering the words. Suddenly Dresser took her hand, and then locked her inhis arms. Even in the roughness of his passion, he could not fail to seeher white face. She struggled in his grasp without speaking, as if knowingthat words would be useless. And Dresser, too embarrassed by his act tospeak, dragged her closer to him. 

"Don't touch me, " she gasped; "what have I done!"

"I _will_ kiss you, " the man cried. "What difference is it, anyway?"

He wrested her from the low chair, and she fell without power to saveherself, to struggle further. The room was swimming before her eyes, andDresser had his arms about her. Then the door opened, and she saw Sommersenter. Her eyes filled with tears. 

"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, looking sharply about at the upsetchair, the prostrate form, and Dresser's red face. 

"She has fallen--fainted, " Dresser stammered. Alves seemed to acquiesce for a moment, and her head sank back; then sheopened her eyes and looked at Sommers pitifully. 

"No, Howard. Help me. "

Sommers raised her, his face much troubled. While he held her, she spokebrokenly, trying to hide her face. 

"You must know. He kissed me. I don't know why. Make him go away. O Howard, what am I?"

Sommers dropped his arm from Alves and started toward Dresser, who wasedging away. 

"What is this?"

His dictatorial tone made Dresser pause. 

"She told you. I was a fool. I tried to kiss her. "

Sommers took him by the arm without a word. 

"Yes, I am going. Don't make a row about it. You needn't get into a stateabout it. She isn't Mrs. Sommers, you know!"

"Oh!" Alves groaned, closing her eyes again. "How can he say that!"

Sommers dropped his arm. 

"Who told you that Alves was not my wife?" he asked drearily. 

"Every one knows it. Lindsay has the whole story. You--"

"Don't say anything more, " Sommers interrupted sternly. "You are too nastyto kill. "

His tone was quiet. He seemed to be questioning himself what he should do. Finally, opening the door, he grasped Dresser by the neck and flung himinto the sand outside. Then he closed the door and turned to Alves. She wascrouching before the fire, sobbing to herself. He stroked her hairsoothingly. 

"We must conform, " he said at last. 

She shook her head. "It is too late to stop that talk. I was wrong to careabout not having the ceremony, and it was foolish to tell Jane. But--tohave him think, his touch--how can you ever kiss me again! You let him go, "she added, her passion flaming up; "I would have killed him. Why didn't youlet me kill him?"

"That is savage, " he replied sadly. "What good is it to answer brutality bycrime? You cannot save your skirts from the dirt, " he concluded softly tohimself. "I knew the fellow was bad; I knew it eight years ago, when hetook a Swiss girl to Augsburg and left her there. But I said to myself thenthat, like many men, he had his moods of the beast which he could notcontrol, and thought no more about it. Now his mood of the beast touchesme. Society keeps such men in check; he will marry Laura Lindsay and makean excellent, cringing husband, waiting for Lindsay's savings. You see, " heended, turning to his work-table, "I suppose he felt released from thebonds of society by the way we live, by--it all. "

Alves rose and walked to and fro. 

"Do you think, " she asked at last, "that anything I could have done--hecould have felt that I--encouraged him?"

"I don't think anything more about it, " Sommers answered, closing his lipsfirmly. "It is part of the mire; we must avert our eyes, Alves. "

But in spite of his mild, even gentle way of dealing with the affair, hecould not fall into his routine of work. He got up from the table and, finding the room too warm, threw open a window to let the clear, coldwinter air rush over his face. He stood there a long time, plunged inthought, while Alves waited for him to come back to her. At last she couldbear it no longer. She crept over to his side and placed her head close tohis. 

"I wish you would even hate me, would be angry, would _feel_ it, " shewhispered. "Will you ever care to kiss me again?"

"Foolish woman!" Sommers answered, taking her face in his hands. "Whyshould _that_ make any difference to me, any more than if a drunkenbrute had struck you?"

"But it does, " she asserted sadly. "Everything does, Howard--all the past:that I let my husband touch me; that I had to live with him; that you hadto know it, him--it all makes, oh, such a difference!"

"No, " he responded, in a high voice. "By God, it makes no difference--onlyone thing. " He paused. Then with a wrench he went on, "Alves, did you--didyou--" But he could not make himself utter the words, and before he hadmastered his hesitation she had broken in impetuously:

"No, I am right; the great happiness that I wanted to give you must comefrom the spirit and body of a woman untouched by the evil of living in theworld. The soiled people like me should not--"

He closed her lips with a kiss. 

"Don't blaspheme our life, " he answered tenderly. "One cannot liveunspotted except in the heart. "

He kissed her again, tenderly, lovingly. But the kiss did not assuage herburning shame; it savored of pity, of magnificent charity. 

CHAPTER VIII

One still, frozen winter day succeeded another in changeless iteration. Thelake was a solid floor of gray ice as far as one could see. Along the shorebetween the breakwaters the ice lay piled in high waves, with circles ofclear, shining glass beyond. A persistent drift from the north and east, day after day, lifted the sheets of surface ice and slid them over theinner ledges. At night the lake cracked and boomed like a battery ofpowerful guns, one report starting another until the shore resounded withthe noise. The perpetual groaning of the laboring ice, the rending andriving of the great fields, could be heard as far inshore as the temple allthrough the still night. 

Early every morning Sommers with Alves would start for the lake. At thishour only an occasional fisherman could be seen, cutting fresh holes in theice and setting his lines. Sommers preferred to skate in the mornings, forlater in the day the smooth patches of inshore ice were frequented bypeople from the city. He loved solitude, it seemed to Alves, more and more. In the Keystone days he had been indifferent to the people of the house;now he avoided people except as they needed him professionally. Sheattributed it, wrongly, to a feeling of pride. In reality, the habit ofself-dependence was gaining, and the man was thrusting the world into thebackground. For hours Sommers never spoke. Always sparing of words, counting them little, despising voluble people, he was beginning to losethe power of ready speech. Thus, living in one of the most jostling of theworld's taverns, they lived as in the heart of the Arizona desert. 

They skated in these long silences, enjoying the exhilaration of theexercise, the bitter air, the views of the huge, silent city. Now and thenthey paused instinctively to watch the scene, without speaking, like greatlovers that are mute. Starting from the sheltered pool, where the yachtslay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around whichthe black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was asnakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more openfields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, andthen they sped away toward the little island made by the "intake" of thewater works. 

These windless mornings the bank of city smoke northward was like graypowder, out of which the skyscrapers stretched their lofty heads. Thebuildings along the shore, etched in the transparent air, breathingsilently white mists of steam, lay like a mirage wonderfully touched withpurplish shadows. The great steel works rose to the south, visibly near, mysteriously remote. The ribbons of fiery smoke from their furnaces werethe first signs of the city's awakening from its lethargic industrialsleep. The beast was beginning to move along its score of miles of length. But out here in the vacancies of the lake it seemed still torpid. 

Eastward, beyond the dot which the "intake" made, the lake was a stillarctic field, furrowed by ice-floes, snowy here, with an open pool of waterthere, ribbed all over with dark crevasses of oozing water. In the far eastlay the horizon line of shimmering, gauzy light, as if from beyond theearth's rim was flooding in the brilliance of a perpetual morning. Northand south, east and west, along the crevasses the lake smoked in themorning sun, as the vapor from the water beneath rose into the icy air. Savage, tranquil, immense, the vast field of ice was like the indifferentface of nature, like unto death. 

One morning, as they waited breathlessly listening to the silence of theice sea, the lake groaned close beside them, and suddenly the floe on whichthey stood parted from the field nearer shore. In a few minutes the lane ofopen water was six feet in width. Sommers pointed to it, and without a wordthey struck out to the north, weaving their way in and out of the floes, now clambering over heaved-up barriers of ice, now flying along anunscarred field, again making their way cautiously across sheets ofshivered surface ice that lay like broken glass beside a crevasse. Finally, they reached the inner field. Sommers looked at his watch, and said:

"We might as well go ashore here. That was rather a narrow chance. I mustlook in at the Keystone to see how Webber is. I shouldn't wonder if he hadtyphoid. "

"I wish we could go on, " Alves replied regretfully. "I was hoping the laneran on and on for miles. "

She put her hands under his coat and leaned against him, looking wistfullyinto the arctic sea. 

"Let me go back!" she pleaded. "I should like to skate on, on, for days!"

"You can't go back without me. Some day, if this weather keeps up, we'lltry for the Michigan shore. "

"I should like to end things in this way, " she continued musingly; "just ustwo, to plunge on and on and on into that quiet ice-field, until, at last, some pool shot up ahead--and then! To go out like that, quenched right inthe heat of our lives; not chilled, piece by piece. "

Sommers moved impatiently. 

"It isn't time for that. "

"No?" she asked rather than assented, and turned her face to the city. "Iam not sure; sometimes I think it is the ripe time. There can be nothingmore. "

Sommers did not answer, but began to skate slowly. Half an hour later theyclimbed over the hills of shore ice, and he hurried away to the Keystone. Alves walked slowly south on the esplanade. The gray sea of ice was coverednow with the winter sun. The pools and crevasses sent up sheets of steam. Her eyes followed the ice lingeringly. Once she turned back to the lake, but finally she started across the frozen grass plots in the direction ofthe temple. She could see from a distance a black figure seated on theportico, and she hastened her steps. She recognized the familiar squat, black-clothed person of Mrs. Ducharme. There, in the sunlight between thebroken pillars, this gloomy figure seemed of ill omen. Alves regretted thatshe had turned back from the ice. 

Mrs. Ducharme showed no sign of life until Alves reached the steps. She wasworn and unkempt. A ragged straw hat but partly disguised her rumpled hair. Alves recalled what Miss M'Gann had said about her drinking. 

"I've been to see you two, three times, " Mrs. Ducharme said, in a hoarse, grumbling tone; "but you'se always out. This time I was a-going to wait ifI'd stayed all night. "

"Come in, " Alves answered, unlocking the door. The woman dragged herselfinto the temple. 

"Not so tidy a place as you and the other one had, " she remarkedmournfully. 

Alves waited for her to declare her errand; but as she seemed in no hasteto speak, she asked, "Did you ever find Ducharme?"

The Duchesse nodded sombrely, closing her eyes. 

"The woman shook him time of the strikes, when his money was gone. "

"Well, isn't that what you wanted?"

Mrs. Ducharme nodded her head slowly. 

"She made him bad. He drinks, awful sometimes, and whenever I say anything, he says he's going back to Peory, to that woman. "

Alves waited for the expected request for money. "They'se awful, these men;but a woman can't get on without _'em_, no more than the men without_us_. Only the men don't care much which one. Any one will do for atime. Do you find the new one any better?"

"I am very happy, " Alves replied with a flush; "but I don't care to talkabout my affairs. "

"You needn't be so close, " the woman exclaimed irritably. "I know all about_you_. The _real_ one was a fine gentleman, even if he did liquorbad. "

"I told you, " Alves repeated, "that I didn't care to talk of my affairs. What do you want?"

"I've come here to talk of your affairs, " Mrs Ducharme answered insolently. "And I guess you'll listen. He, --I don't mean the doctor, --the real 'un, came of rich, respectable folks. He told me all about it, and got me towrite 'em for money, and his sister sent him some. "

"So that was where he obtained the money to drink with when he got out ofthe cottage!" Alves exclaimed. 

The woman nodded, and added, "He gave me some, too. "

Alves rose and opened the door. 

"I don't see why you came here, " she said briefly, pointing to the door. 

But Mrs. Ducharme merely laughed and kept her seat. 

"Did he, the doctor feller, ever ask you anything about his death?" sheasked. 

Alves looked at her blankly. 

"When he signed that paper you gave the undertaker?" continued theDuchesse. 

"I don't know what you mean!" Alves exclaimed, closing the door and walkingaway from the woman. 

"How did _he_ die?" Mrs. Ducharme whispered. 

"You know as well as I, " Alves cried, terrified now by the mysterious airthe woman assumed. 

"Yes!" Mrs. Ducharme whispered again. "I know as well as you. I know, and Ican tell. I know how the wife gave him powders, --sleeping powders thedoctor ordered, --the doctor who was hanging around, and ran off with herjust after the funeral. "

The woman's scheme of extracting blackmail flashed instantly into Alves'smind. 

"You foul creature, " she gasped, "you know it is an abominable lie--"

"Think so? Well, Ducharme didn't think so when I told him, and there areothers that 'ud believe it, if I should testify to it!"

Alves walked to and fro, overwhelmed by the thoughts of the evil which wasaround her. At last she faced Mrs. Ducharme, who was watching her closely. 

"I see what it means. You want money--blackmail, and you think you've got agood chance. But I will not give you a cent. I will tell Dr. Sommers first, and let him deal with you. "

"The doctor! What does he say about his dying quiet and nice as he did? Iguess the doctor'll see the point. "

Alves started. What did Sommers think? What were his half-completedinquiries? What did his conduct the night of Preston's death mean? Thiswretched affair was like a curse left to injure her by the miserablecreature she had once been tied to. But Sommers would believe her! She hadgiven Preston but _one_ powder, and he had said two were safe. Shemust tell him exactly what she had done. 

"You had better go now, " she said to the woman more calmly. "I shall letDr. Sommers know what your story is. He will answer you. "

"Better not tell him, " the woman replied, with a laugh. "He _knows_all he wants to--or I'd 'a' gone to him at once. When he hears about thescrape, he'll run and leave you. You ain't married, anyway!"

"Go, " Alves implored. 

Mrs. Ducharme rose and stood irresolutely. 

"I don't want much, not to trouble you. I'll give you a day to think thisover, and to-morrer morning I'll be here at nine sharp to get your answer. "

When the woman had gone, Alves tried to reason the matter out calmly. Shehad been too excited. The charge was simply preposterous, and, inexperienced as she was, she felt that nothing could be made of it in anycourt. But the mere suggestion of a court, of a public inquiry, alarmedher, not for herself but for Sommers, who would suffer grievously. And itdid not seem easy to discuss the matter with him as she must now; it wouldbring up distressing scenes. Her face burned at the thought. The woman'stale was plausible. Had Sommers wondered about the death? Gradually it cameover her that Sommers had always suspected this thing. She was sure of it. He had not spoken of it because he wished to protect her from her own deed. But, now, he would not believe her. The Ducharme woman's tale would fit inwith his surmises. No! he _must_ believe her. And beside this lastfear, the idea of publicity, of ventilating the old scandal, thus damninghim finally and hounding him out of his little practice, faded intoinconsequence. The terrible thing was that for eighteen months he hadcarried this belief about her in his heart. 

She tried to divert her excited mind from the throng of suspicions andfears by preparing dinner. One o'clock came, then two, and Sommers did notarrive. Mrs. Ducharme might have waited for him at the entrance to theavenue, and he might have turned back to debate with himself what he shoulddo. But she acquitted him of that cowardice. 

 * * * * *

As the afternoon wore on, her mind turned to the larger thoughts of theirunion. She saw with sudden clearness what she had done to this man sheloved. She had taken him from his proper position in the world; she hadforced him to push his theories of revolt beyond sane limits. She hadisolated him, tied him, and his powers would never be tested. A man likehim could never be happy, standing outside the fight with his equals. Worseyet, she had soiled the reverences of his nature. What was she but a soiledthing! The tenderness of his first passion had sprung amid the rank growthof her past with its sordid little drama. And the soil in her fate hadtarnished their lives ever since, until this grievous... 

And what had she given him? Love, --every throb of her passionate body, every desire and thought. Was this enough? There sounded the sad note ofdefeat: it was not, could not be, would never be enough! No man ever livedfrom love alone. Passion was a torrid desert. Already she had felt himfading out of her life, withdrawing into the mysterious recesses of hissoul. He did not know it; he did not willingly put her away. But as eachplant of the field was destined to grow its own way, side by side with itsfellows, so human souls grew singly by themselves from some irresistibleinner force. And she was but the parasite that fed upon this soul. 

The room stifled her. She fetched her cape and hat. They were lying uponhis table, and as she took them she could see the sheets of an unfinishedletter. The writing was firm and fine, with the regular alignment andspacing of one who is deft about handwork. Her eye glanced over the page;the letter was in answer to a doctor in Baltimore, who had asked him tocooperate in preparing a surgical monograph. "I should like extremely to bewith you in this, " ran the lines, like the voice of the speaking man, "but--and the refusal pains me more than you know--I cannot in honestyundertake the work. I have not suitable conditions. It is eighteen monthssince I entered a hospital, and I am behind the times. And, for thepresent, I see no prospect of being in a condition to undertake the work. Iadvise you to try Muller, or--" There the letter broke off, unfinished. Sheraised it to her lips and kissed it. This was another sign, and she wouldheed it. To be a full man he must return to the poor average world, or beless than the trivial people he had always despised. 

When she opened the door, the level rays of the western sun blinded her. There was no wind. Eastward the purple shadows had thickened, effacing theline of light along the horizon. The frozen lake stretched, ridged andfurrowed, into the gloom. Toward it she walked, --slowly, irresistibly drawnby its limitless bosom. 

She had boasted to Miss Hitchcock, "I will take myself out of his life, ifneed be. " It was not an empty, woman's boast. She was strong enough to dowhat she willed. The time had come. She would not see him again. To breakwith words the ties between them would but dishonor them both. They mustnot discuss this thing. At the shore of the pool where they had put ontheir skates in the morning she paused, shaken with a new thought. Thewoman would come back on the morrow, and, without one word of denial fromher, would tell him that terrible lie, confirming his old suspicions. Shemust see him, --she could not leave him with that foul memory, --and shereturned to the temple in the hope that he was already there. The littlebuilding, however, was empty and desolate, and she sat down by the fire towait. 

The story, the denial of it, no longer seemed important. She would writehim what she had to say, and go away. She would tell him that she had notpoisoned her husband like a sick dog, and he would believe the solemn lastwords. She took a sheet of paper from his table and wrote hesitatingly:

"Dear Howard: I am leaving you----forever. " Then she began again and again, but at last she came back to the first words and wrote on desperately: "Icannot make you understand it all. But one thing I must tell you, and youmust believe it. That horrible woman, Mrs. Ducharme, was here this morningand told me that I had given opiates to my husband when he was ill in thecottage, and had killed him, _and that you knew it_. Somehow Iremembered things that made me know you thought so, had always thought so. Perhaps you will still think it must have been so, her story is so terriblyprobable. 

"O Howard, you used to think that it would be right--but I couldn't. Imight have in time, but I couldn't then. I did nothing to hasten his death. Believe this, if you love me the least. 

"That isn't the sole reason why I leave you. But it is all like that. Iruin the world for you. Love is not all, --at least for a man, --and somehowwith me you cannot have the rest and love. We were wrong to rebel--I waswrong to take my happiness. I longed so! I have been so happy!

"Alves. "

It seemed pitifully inadequate--a few wavering lines--to tell the tale ofthe volumes in her heart. But with a sigh she pushed back the chair andgathered her hat and cape. Once more she hesitated, and seeing that thefire in the stove was low, replenished it. Then she turned swiftly away, locked the door, --putting the key where they hid it, in the hollow of apillar, --and walked rapidly in the direction of the lake. 

It was already nearly dusk. Little groups of skaters were saunteringhomeward from the lagoons and the patches of inshore ice. The lake was grayand stern. She gained the esplanade, with a vague purpose of walking intothe city, of taking the train for Wisconsin. But as she passed the longpier, the desire to walk out on the ice seized her once more. With somedifficulty she gained the black ice after scrambling over the debris piledhigh against the beach. When she reached the clear spaces she walked slowlytoward the open lake. The gloom of the winter night was already gathering;as she passed the head of the pier, a park-guard hailed her, with somewarning cry. She paid no attention, but walked on, slowly picking her wayamong the familiar ice hills, in and out of the floes. 

Once beyond the head of the pier she was absolutely alone in the darkeningsea of ice. The cracks and crevasses were no longer steaming; instead, athin shell of ice was coating over the open surfaces. But she knew allthese spots and picked her way carefully. The darkness had alreadyenveloped the shore. Beyond, on all sides, rose small white hills ofdrifted ice, making a little arctic ocean, with its own strange solitude, its majestic distances, its titanic noises; for the fields of ice weremoving in obedience to the undercurrents, the impact from distant northerlywinds. And as they moved, they shrieked and groaned, the thunderous voiceshailing from far up the lake and pealing past the solitary figure to theblack wastes beyond. This tumult of the lake increased in fury, yet withsolemn pauses of absolute silence between the reports. At first Alves stoodstill and listened, fearful, but as she became used to the noise, shewalked on calm, courageous, and strangely at peace in the clamor. Once shefaced the land, where the arc lights along the esplanade made blue holes inthe black night. Eastward the radiant line of illumined horizon reappeared, creating a kind of false daybreak. 

So this was the end as she had wished it--alone in the immensity of thefrozen lake. This was like the true conception of life--one vast, everdarkening sphere filled with threatening voices, where she and otherswandered in sorrow, in regret, in disappointment, and, also, in joy. Oh!that redeemed it. Her joy had been so beautiful, so true to the promise ofGod in the pitiful heart of man. She said to herself that she had tasted itwithout sin, and now had the courage to put it away from her before itturned to a draught bitter to her and to others. There were more joys inthis life than the fierce love for man: the joy over a child, which hadbeen given to her and taken away; the joy of triumph, the joy--but whyshould she remember the others? Her joy had its own perfection. For all thetears and waste of living, this one passion had been given--a joy thatwarmed her body in the cold gloom of the night. 

There loomed in her path a black wall of broken ice. She drew herselfslowly over the crest of the massed blocks. Beyond lay a pleasant blacknessof clear water, into which she plunged, --still warm with the glow of herperfect happiness. 

CHAPTER IX

Webber had a well-developed case of typhoid, and Sommers had him moved toSt. Isidore's. The doctor accompanied him to the hospital, and once withinthe doors of his old home, he lingered chatting with the house physician, who had graduated from the Philadelphia school shortly after Sommers hadleft. The come and go of the place, the air of excitement about thehospital, stirred Sommers as nothing in months had done. Then the attentionpaid him by the internes and the older nurses, who had kept alive in theirbusy little world the tradition of his brilliant work, aroused all thevanity in his nature. When he was about to tear himself away from thepleasant antiseptic odor and orderly bustle, the house physician pressedhim to stay to luncheon. He yielded, longing to hear the talk about cases, and remembering with pleasure the unconventional manners and bad food ofthe St. Isidore mess-table. After luncheon he was urged to attend anoperation by a well-known surgeon, whose honest work he had always admired. It was late in the afternoon when he finally started to leave, and then anurse brought word that Webber was anxious to see him about some business. He found Webber greatly excited and worried over money matters. To hissurprise he learned that the foppish, quiet-mannered clerk had beendabbling in the market. He held some Distillery common stock, and, also, Northern Iron--two of the new "industrials" that were beginning to sproutin Chicago. 

"You must ask the brokers to sell if the market is going against me, " theclerk exclaimed feverishly. "Perhaps, if I am to be tied up here a longtime, they'd better sell, anyway. "

"Yes, " Sommers assented; "you must get it off your mind. "

So, with a promise to see White and Einstein, the brokers, at once, andlook after the stock, he soothed the sick man. 

"You're a good fellow, " Webber sighed. "It's about all I have. I'll tellyou some time why I went in--I had very direct information. "

Sommers cut him short and hastened away. By the time he had found White andEinstein's office, a little room about as large as a cigar shop in thebasement of a large building on La Salle Street, the place was deserted. Astenographer told him, with contempt in her voice, that the Exchange hadbeen closed for two hours. Resolving to return the first thing in themorning, he started for the temple. He had two visits to make that he hadneglected for Webber's case, but he would wait until the evening and takeAlves with him. He had not seen her for hours. For the first time in monthshe indulged himself in a few petty extravagances as he crossed the city toget his train. The day had excited him, had destroyed the calm of his usualcontrolled, plodding habits. The feverish buoyancy of his mood made itpleasant to thread the chaotic streams of the city streets. It wasintoxicating to rub shoulders with men once more. 

At Sixtieth Street he left the train and strode across the park, hisimagination playing happy, visionary tunes. He would drop in to-morrow atSt. Isidore's on his way back from White and Einstein's. He must see moreof those fellows at Henry's clinic; they seemed a good set. And he was notsure that he should answer the Baltimore man so flatly. He would write forfurther details. When he reached the temple, he found the place closed, andhe thought that Alves had gone to see one of his cases for him. The key wasin its usual hiding-place, and the fire looked as if it had been madefreshly. He had just missed her. So he filled a pipe, and hunted along thetable for the unfinished letter to the Baltimore man. It was blotted, henoticed, and he would have to copy it in any case. As he laid it aside, hiseyes fell upon a loose sheet of note-paper covered with Alves's unfamiliarwriting. He took it up and read it, and then looked around him to see her, to find her there in the next room. The letter was so unreal!

"Alves!" he called out, the pleasant glow of hope fading in his heart. Howhe had forgotten her! She must be suffering so much! Mechanically he put onhis hat and coat and left the temple, hiding the key in the pillar. Shecould not have been gone long, --the room had the air of her having justleft it. He should surely find her nearby; he must find her. Whipped by theintolerable imagination of her suffering, he passed swiftly down the sandypath toward the electric lights, that were already lamping silently alongthe park esplanade. He chose this road, unconsciously feeling that shewould plunge out that way. What had the Ducharme woman said? What had madeher take this harsh step, macerating herself and him just as they werebeginning to breathe without fear? He sped on, into the gullies by thefoundations of the burnt buildings, up to the new boulevard. After onemoment of irresolution he turned to the right, to the lake. That icy seahad fascinated her so strongly! He shivered at the memory of her words. Once abreast of the pier he did not pause, but swiftly clambered out overthe ice hills and groped his way along the black piles of the pier. Thevastness of the field he had to search! But he would go, even across thefloes of ice to the Michigan shore. He was certain that she was out there, beyond in the black night, in the gloom of the rending ice. 

Suddenly, as he neared the end of the pier, the big form of a man, bearing, dragging a burden, loomed up out of the dark expanse. It came nearer, andSommers could make out the uniform of a park-guard. He was half-carrying, half-dragging the limp form of a woman. Sommers tried to hail him, but hecould not cry. At last the guard called out when he was within a few feet:

"Give me a hand, will you. It's a woman, --suicide, I guess, " he added moregently. 

Sommers walked forward and took the limp form. The drenched garments werealready frosting in the cold. He turned the flap of the cape back from theface. 

"It is my wife, " he said quietly. 

"I saw her from the pier goin' out, and I called to her, " the guardreplied, "but she kept on all the faster. Then I went back to the shore andgot on the ice and followed her as fast as I could, but--"

Together they lifted her and carried her in over the rough shore ice up tothe esplanade. 

"We live over there. " Sommers pointed in the direction of the temple. Theman nodded; he seemed to know the young doctor. 

"I shall not need your help, " Sommers continued, wrapping the stiff capeabout the yielding form. He took her gently in his arms, staggered underthe weight, then started slowly along the esplanade. The guard followed fora few steps; but as the doctor seemed able to carry his burden alone, heturned back toward the city. 

Sommers walked on slowly. The stiff cape slipped back from Alves's head, revealing in the blue electric light the marble-white pallor of the flesh, the closed eyes. Sommers stopped to kiss the cold face, and with themovement Alves's head nestled forward against his hot neck. Tears rose tohis eyes and fell against her cheek; he started on once more, tracingcarefully the windings of the path. 

 * * * * *

So this was the end! The little warmth and love of his cherishing armsabout her cold body completed the pittance of happiness she had craved. 

The story was too dark for him to comprehend now--from that firstunderstanding moment in St. Isidore's receiving room to this. Here was hisrevolt, in one cold burden of dead love. She had left him in some delusionthat it would be better thus, that by this means he would find his way, free and unshackled, back to the world of his fellows. And, perhaps, like acreature of love, she had blindly felt love's slow, creeping paralysis, love's ultimate death. Even now, as he staggered along the lighted avenueof the park, in the silence of death and of night, that pregnant reproachoppressed his heart. He had not loved her enough! She had felt a wall thatwas building impalpably between them, a division of thought and of feeling. She had put her arms against his man's world of secret ambition and desireand had found it cold. 

She had struggled for her bit of happiness, poor, loving woman! She hadsuffered under her past error, her marriage with Preston, and had endured, until, suddenly relieved, she had embraced her happiness, only to find itslowly vanishing in her warm hands. He had suspected her of grasping thishappiness without scruple, clamorously; but her sweet white lips spoke outthe falseness of this accusation. It was bitter to know that he had coveredher with this secret suspicion. He owed her a sea of pardons!

So he labored on into the dark stretches of the park, among the debris ofthe devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to thelonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how littlehis concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe. That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was alltoo swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road andrested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him inthe unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said, --someaverage marriage with children and home would have given her more fully thehuman modicum of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In noother circumstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made forjoy--so strong to love, to endure; so true to the eternal passions. But notmere household love, the calm minutes of interlude in the fragments of abusy day! They would not satisfy the deep thirst for love in her heart. Hehad given the best he had--all, nearly all, as few men could give, as mostmen never give. He must content himself there. 

He started again and strode on to the end of the journey. Within the templehe placed her on their bed, taking off her stiff clothes and preparing herfor sleep. Then he remade the fire, and opening a window for the low nightwind to draw across her face as she liked to have it, he sat down for hisvigil. 

Yes, it was the end! It was the end of his little personal battle with theworld, the end of judging and striving, the end of revolt. He should liveon, strangely enough, into many years, but not as they had tried to live inself-made isolation. He should return to that web of life from which theyhad striven to extricate themselves. She bade him go back to that fretwork, unsolvable world of little and great, of domineering and incompetent wills, of the powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poorstruggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds andblind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of hisself-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their willsto themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. Theycould never have known each other in the world; they had to withdrawthemselves apart. He looked at her afresh, lying on the pillow by his side, her hair twining carelessly about the white arm. She was infinitely greaterthan he, --so undivided and complete a soul! She had left him for thecommoner uses of life. And all the stains of their experience had beenremoved, washed out by the pure accomplishment of her end. 

Already so cold, so sweetly distant, that face, --so done with life and withhim! He leaned over it and burst into tears. The dream of the summer nighthad passed away. 

CHAPTER X

Mrs. Ducharme returned to the temple at an early hour the next morning. Sommers saw her mumbling to herself as she came across the park. Before sheknocked, he opened the door; she started back in fear of the sombre, bearded face with the blood-shot eyes that seemed lying in wait for her. 

"Is the missus at home?" she murmured, drawing back from the door. 

"Come in, " the doctor ordered. 

As soon as she entered, Sommers locked the door. 

"Now, " he said quietly, pointing to a chair, "the whole story and no lies. "

The woman looked at the doctor and trembled; then she edged toward theinner door. Sommers locked this, flung the key on the table, and pointedagain to the chair. 

"What did you tell her yesterday?" he demanded. 

Mrs. Ducharme began an incoherent tale about her head hurting her, aboutthe sin which the "healer" commanded her to rid her conscience of. Sommersinterrupted her. 

"Answer my questions. Did you threaten _her_?"

The woman nodded her head. 

"Did you accuse her of drugging her husband?"

She nodded her head again reluctantly; then cried out, --"Let me go! I'llhave the police on you two. "

Sommers stood over the woman as if he were about to lay hands on her. 

"You know the facts. Tell them. What happened to Preston that day?"

"He'd been drinking. "

"You got him the liquor?"

She nodded. 

"Then you gave him a powder from that box in Mrs. Preston's room?"

The woman looked terrified, and did not answer. 

"If you don't tell me every word of truth, " Sommers said, slowly drawing alittle syringe from his pocket, "you will never see anything again. "

"Yes, I gave him a powder. "

"One?"

She nodded, her hands shaking. 

"Two?"

"Yes, " she gasped. "I was afraid Mrs. Preston would find out what I haddone, and one powder wasn't enough, didn't keep him quiet. So I put twomore in--thought it wouldn't do no harm. Then I guess Mrs. Preston gave himsome, when she came in. But you can't touch me, " she added impudently. "Thehealer said you had done a criminal act in signing that certificate. Youand she better look out. "

Sommers stepped across the room and opened the inner door. Mrs. Ducharmegave one glance at the silent figure and shrieked:

"You killed her! You killed her! Let me out!"

Sommers closed the door softly and returned to the shrieking creature. 

"Keep quiet, " Sommers ordered sternly, "while I think what to do with you. "

She held her tongue and sat as still as her quaking nerves permitted. Sommers reviewed rapidly the story as he had made it out. At first itoccurred to him, as it had to Alves, that the woman had been drinking. Buthis practised eyes saw more surely than Alves, and he judged that herconduct had been the result of mental derangement. Probably the blow overthe eye, from which she was suffering when she came to Lindsay's office, had hurt the brain. Otherwise, she would not have been silly enough to goto Alves with her foolish story. It was possible, also, that the night ofPreston's death she had not known what she was doing. His resentment gaveplace to disgust. The sole question was what to do with her. She wouldtalk, probably, and in some way he must avoid that danger for a few days, at least. Then it would not matter to Alves or to him what she said. 

Finally he turned to the miserable, shaking figure, and said sternly:

"You have committed one murder, and, perhaps, two. But I will not kill you_now_, or put out your eyes, unless you get troublesome. Have you anymoney? I thought not. You are going with me to the railroad station, whereI shall buy you a ticket. "

He unlocked the door and motioned to the woman. She followed him to thestation without protest, fascinated by his strong will. Sommers bought aticket to St. Louis and handed it to her with a dollar. 

"Remember, if I see or hear of you again, "--he put his finger in hiswaistcoat pocket, significantly. "And there are other powders, " he addedgrimly. 

"Ducharme has gone back to Peory. I s'pose I can stop off there?" she askedtimidly, as the express arrived. 

"You can stop off anywhere on your way to hell, " the doctor repliedindifferently. "But keep away from Chicago. There is no quicker way ofmaking that journey to hell than to come back here. "

Mrs. Ducharme trembled afresh and bundled herself on board the train. 

Sommers returned to the temple, feeling assured that the next few hourswould not be disturbed by the ill-omened creature. This vulgar, brutal acthad to be performed; he had been preparing himself for it since daylight, when his mind had resumed the round of cause and effect that answers forlife. It was over now, and he could return to Alves. There were other pettythings to be done, but not yet. As he came across the park he noticed thatthe door of the temple was open. Some one had entered while he was away. Athis step on the portico a figure rose from the inner room and came to meethim. It was Louise Hitchcock. The traces of tears lay on her face. 

"I knew this morning, " she said gently. "I thought you might be alone--andso I came. "

"Sit down, " Sommers replied wearily. In a few moments he added, "I supposeyou saw it in the papers--the guard must have told. Strange! that even indeath the world must meddle with her, the world that cared nothing forher. "

"I am sorry. " Miss Hitchcock blushed as she spoke. "I will go away--Ididn't mean to intrude--I thought--"

"No, don't go! I didn't mean you. I wanted to be alone, all alone for alittle while, but I am glad now that you came, that you cared to come. Youdidn't know Alves. "

"She wouldn't let me know her, " Miss Hitchcock protested gently. 

"Yes, I remember. You see, our life was peculiar. I think Alves was afraidof you, of all the world. "

"I knew how you loved her, " Miss Hitchcock exclaimed irrelevantly. 

Sommers tried to answer. He felt like talking to this warm-hearted woman;he wanted to talk, but he could not phrase the complex feeling in hisheart. Everything about Alves had something in it he could not makeanother, even the most sympathetic soul in the world, understand. It waslike trying to explain an impression of a whole life. 

"There is so much I can't tell any one, " he said at last, with a wan smile. "Don't misunderstand--you'd have to know the whole, and I couldn't begin tomake you know it. "

"Don't try, " she said, tears coming to her eyes. "I know that it has beennoble and generous--on both sides, " she added. 

"It has ended, " he answered drearily. "I don't know where to begin. "

"Can't I send for some one, some friend?" she suggested. 

"I haven't any friend, " he replied absently. "And Alves wouldn't want anyone. She would have done everything for me. I will do everything for her. "

"Then I will stay here, while you are away, " Miss Hitchcock repliedquickly. "Don't hurry. I will wait here in this room. "

Sommers thought a moment and then answered gently:"I think not. I think Alves would rather be alone. Let me go back to thecity with you. I have some errands there. "

Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disappointment. She had triumphedimpulsively over so many conventions in coming to him unasked that she feltdoubly hurt. 

"Very well. Only you will not always put me outside, in this way?" sheimplored, bravely stifling her pride. "It will not be so easy to say itlater, and it will hurt if you refuse to have anything to do with my fatherand me. "

"_I_ shall not refuse, " Sommers responded warmly. "I am grateful forwhat you want to do. "

"You know--" She completed the sentence with a sigh and prepared toaccompany him. Sommers locked the door, putting the key in the usualhiding-place, and together they crossed the park to the railroad station. There they separated. 

"I shall not come out to-morrow, " Miss Hitchcock said, as if she hadarrived at the decision after some wavering. 

He did not urge her to come, and they shook hands. 

"Remember, " she said hesitatingly, "that ideas don't separate people. Youmust _trust_ people, those who understand and care. "

"I shan't forget, " he answered humbly. 

On the train he remembered Webber's business, and as soon as he reached thecity he went to the brokers' office. The morning session of the Exchangehad just closed, and Einstein was fluttering in and out of his privateoffice, sending telegrams and telephone messages. Sommers got his ear for amoment and explained his errand. 

"I don't know anything about the stocks, " he concluded. "But I think youhad best close his account, as it will be some weeks before he should betroubled with such things. "

"Damn shame!" Einstein remarked irritably, removing his cigar from hismouth. "I could have got him out even this morning. Now, it's too late. "

As Sommers seemed ignorant of the market, the broker went on to explain, meanwhile sending a telegram:

"Most of his is Consolidated Iron--one of Carson's new promotions. Porteris in it, and a lot of big men. Splendid thing, but these new industrialsare skittish as colts, and the war talk is like an early frost. Yesterdayit was up to ninety, but to-day, after that Venezuelan business in theSenate, it backed down ten points. That about cleans our friend out. "

"He doesn't own the stock, then?" Sommers asked. 

Einstein looked at the doctor pityingly. 

"He's taken a block of two hundred on margins. We hold some Baking Powdercommon for him, too. But he owns that. "

Sommers lingered about, irresolute. He didn't like to take theresponsibility of selling out Webber, nor the equal responsibility of doingnothing. Miss M'Gann's hopes, he reflected, hung on this stock trade. 

"What is the prospect to-morrow?" Sommers asked timidly. He felt out ofplace in all the skurry of the brokers' office, where men were drinking inthe last quotations as the office boy scratched them on the board. 

"Dunno. Can't tell. Good, if the Senate doesn't shoot off its mouth anymore. "

"How much is Webber margined for?"

"Say, Phil, " Einstein sang out to his partner, who came out from anothercubbyhole, "how much has Webber on Iron?"

"Six points, " White replied. He nodded to Sommers. The doctor rememberedWhite as one of the negative figures of his early months in Chicago, --asmiling, slim, youthful college boy. Evidently he was the genteel member ofthe firm. Sommers thought again. He could not wait. "Will you carry himfive points more?" he asked. 

"Can you put up the money?" White replied indifferently. 

"No, " the doctor admitted. "But I will try to get it at once. "

Einstein shook his head. But White asked, good-naturedly, "Are you sure?"

"I think so, " the doctor replied. 

"Well, that'll tide him over; the market is sure to go back next week. "

Sommers escaped from the heated room with its noise and jostling men. Herealized vaguely that he had made himself responsible for a thousanddollars--foolishly, he thought now. He had done it on the spur of themoment, with the idea that he would save Webber from a total loss, andthereby save Miss M'Gann. He felt partly responsible, too; for if he hadnot lingered at St. Isidore's yesterday, he could have delivered the orderbefore the reaction had set in. He wondered, however, at his ready promiseto find the thousand dollars for the extra margin. As he had told MissHitchcock, he had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply forhelp. Even the last duties to Alves he must perform alone, and to those heturned himself now. 

As he passed the Athenian Building, he remembered Dr. Leonard and went upto his office. The old dentist was the one friend in Chicago whom Alveswould want near her to-morrow. Dr. Leonard came frowning out of his office, and without asking Sommers to sit down listened to what he had to say. 

"Yes, " he replied, without unwrinkling his old face, "I saw it in thepapers. I'll come, of course I'll come. I set an awful store by Alves, poorgirl! There weren't nothing right for her in this world. Maybe there willbe in the next. "

Sommers made no reply. He felt the kind old dentist's reproach. 

"Young feller, " the dentist exclaimed sharply as Sommers turned to go, "Imistrust you have much to answer for in that poor girl's case. Does yourheart satisfy you that you have treated her right?"

Sommers bowed his head humbly before this blunt speech. In the sense thatDr. Leonard meant, perhaps, he was not guilty, but in other ways he was notsure. It was a difficult thing to treat any human soul justly and tenderly. The doctor took his silence for confession. 

"Well, " he added, turning away and adjusting his spectacles that werelodged above his watery blue eyes, "I ain't no call to blame you. It'senough blame anyway to have hurt _her_--there wasn't a nicer womanever born. "

As Sommers left the Athenian Building, his mind reverted to the talk withthe brokers. He was glad that he had undertaken to save Webber from hisloss. Alves would have liked it. Miss M'Gann had been kind to her when shewas learning how to teach. Probably Webber would lose the money in someother venture, but he would do what he could to save the clerk's littlecapital now. Where could he get the money? There was but one person on whomhe could call, and overcoming his dislike of the errand he went at once toMiss Hitchcock. 

The house was pleasantly familiar. As he waited for Miss Hitchcock in thelittle library that belonged especially to her, he could detect no changesin the conglomerate furnishing of the house. He had half expected to findthat it had yielded to the younger generation, but something had arrestedthe march of innovation. The steel engravings still hung in the hall, andthe ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchcock came into thehouse, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started tointercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss Hitchcockappeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as ifit were the most natural thing to meet him there. 

"I have come to ask you to do something for me, " Sommers began at once, still standing, "because, as I told you, I have no one else to ask forhelp. "

"You take the bloom off kindnesses in a dreadfully harsh way, " MissHitchcock responded sadly. 

"But it's something one doesn't usually ask of a young woman, " Sommersadded. He told her briefly the circumstances that led to his visit. "Ihaven't literally any friend of whom I could properly ask five cents. "

"Don't say that. It sounds so forlorn!"

"Does it? I never thought about it before. I suppose it is a reflectionupon a man that at thirty-three he hasn't any one in the world to ask afavor of. It looks as if he had lived a pretty narrow life. "

"Hard, not narrow, " Miss Hitchcock interposed quickly. "I will send themoney to-morrow. John will take it to the brokers, if you will write them anote. "

As he still stood, she went on, to avoid the awkward silence: "Those horridindustrials! I am sure Uncle Brome will lose everything in them. He's aborn gambler. Mr. Carson has got him interested in these new things. "

"Is his picture still on exhibition?" Sommers inquired, with a faint smile. 

"I don't know. I haven't seen much of them lately. " She spoke as if Carsonand his kind were completely indifferent to her. Her next remark surprisedSommers. 

"I think I can see now why you felt as you did about--well, Mr. Carson. Heis a sort of shameless ideal held up before such people as this young manwho is speculating. Isn't that it?"

Sommers nodded. 

"Uncle Brome, too? When he makes several hundred thousand dollars inConsolidated Iron, every clerk, every little man who knows anything aboutit has all his bad, greedy, envious passions aroused. "

The doctor smiled at the serious manner in which the young woman exploredthe old ground of their differences. 

"But, " she concluded, "they aren't _all_ like Mr. Carson and UncleBrome. You mustn't make that mistake. And Uncle Brome is so generous, too. It is hard to understand. "

"No, " Sommers said, preparing to leave. "Of course they are not all alike, and it is hard to judge. No man knows what he is doing--to any greatextent. "

"What will you do?" Miss Hitchcock asked abruptly. 

As Sommers's careworn face flushed, she added hurriedly, --"How cruel of me!Of course you don't know. That will settle itself. "

"I have had some notion of trying for a hospital again. It doesn't takemuch to live. And I don't believe in a doctor's making money. If it isn'tthe hospital--well, there's enough to do. "

Miss Hitchcock thought a moment, and then remarked unexpectedly, "I likethat idea!"

"About all my kick over things has come to that point. There are somepeople who should be willing to--no, not willing, who should _want_ todo things without any pay. The world needs them. Most people are best offin the struggle for bread, but the few who see how--unsatisfying that endis, should be willing to work without profits. Good-by. "

As they shook hands, Sommers added casually: "I shouldn't wonder if I wentaway from Chicago--for a time. I don't know now, but I'll let you know, ifyou care to have me. "

"Of course I shall care to know!"

Miss Hitchcock's voice trembled, and then steadied itself, as sheadded, --"And I am glad you are thinking of it. "

 * * * * *

With a sense of relief Sommers found himself alone, and free to return tothe temple, to Alves, for the last time. The day had been crowded withinsistent, petty details, and he marvelled that he had submitted to thempatiently. In the chamber where the dead woman lay it was strangely still--deserted by all things human. He locked the doors and sat down forhis second night of watch, reproaching himself for the hours he had lostthis day. But when he looked at the cold, white face upon the pillow, thatalready seemed the face of one who had travelled far from this life, hefelt that it had been best as it was. He kissed the silent lips and coveredthe face; he would not look at it again. Alves had gone. To-morrow he wouldlay this body in the little burial plot of the seminary above the Wisconsinlakes. 

Already Alves had bequeathed him something of herself. She had returned himto his fellow-laborers with a new feeling toward them, a humbleness he hadnever known, a desire to adjust himself with them. He was sensitive to thekindness of the day, --White's friendly trust, Leonard's just words, MissHitchcock's generosity. As the sense of this life faded from the woman heloved, the dawn of a fairer day came to him. And his heart ached becauseshe for whom he had desired every happiness might never respond to humanjoy. 

CHAPTER XI

During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling theblood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonderat its own folly. Some said the spirit of hope was due to the gold basis;some said it was the good crops; some said it was the prospect of nationalexpansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks;trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened--acurrent of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their businesswith renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares andto enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the farotables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. Newindustrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunnedby the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothousegrowth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "littlepeople, " and all worked to the glory of the great god. In the breast ofevery man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mightycountry, and I am going to get something out of it. ' The stock market mightbob up and down; the gamblers might gain or lose their millions; the littlepoliticians of the hour might talk blood and iron by the pound of_Congressional Record_; but the great fact stared you in theface--every one was hopeful; for every one there was much good moneysomewhere. It was a rich time in which to live. 

Remote echoes of this optimism reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly throughthe newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity ofChicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "thesuccessful flotation of several specialties. " Mr. Brome Porter, he gatheredfrom the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogethershaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers passed him occasionallyin the unconsolidated air of Fifth Avenue, but the young doctor had longsince sunk out of Brome Porter's sphere of consciousness. Sommers thoughtPorter betrayed his need of Carlsbad more than ever, and he wondered if thefamous gambler had beguiled Colonel Hitchcock into any of his ventures. ButSommers did not trouble himself seriously with the new manifestations ofgigantic greed. Unconscious of the fact that from collar-button toshoe-leather he was assisting Mr. Carson's industries to yield revenues ontheir water-logged stocks, he went his way in his profession and labored. For the larger part of the time he was an assistant in a large New Yorkhospital, where he found enough hard work to keep his thoughts fromwandering to Carson, Brome Porter, and Company. In the feverish days thatpreceded the outbreak of the Cuban war, he heard rumors that Porter hadbeen caught in the last big "flotation, " and was heavily involved. But theexcitement of those days destroyed the importance of the news to the publicand to him. 

Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals thatbefore long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived atTampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the livesof raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal governmentcould select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorantphysicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved. Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight withdisease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted, partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, andpartly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had comedown with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been leftin Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with awelcome he had never given it in Chicago. 

"Am I going to die in this sink, doctor?" he asked, when Sommers came backto him in the evening. 

"I can't say, " the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good dealbetter off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, andwe will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?"

"No, " the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring torestrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place--Uncle Brome, youknow--and I guess if it hadn't been for my damn foolishness in New York--"

He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommersstopped to telegraph Miss Hitchcock. A few days later he met her at therailroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from herhurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancyand capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to herwhat Parker had said about not letting his people know. 

"It's the first time he ever thought of poor papa, " she said bluntly. 

"I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But lonelinesskills some of these fellows. "

"Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "Hethought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors ofthe season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him, and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance forall his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down withtyphoid--due to pure carelessness, I am afraid. "

"That is a familiar story, " the doctor observed, with a grim smile, "especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match--andit is just as well they did. "

"You are the ones that really know what it means--the doctors and thenurses, " Miss Hitchcock said warmly. 

"Here is our San Juan, " Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle oftents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp. 

After they had visited Parker Hitchcock, Sommers conducted her over thecamp. Some of the cots were occupied by gaunt figures of men whom she hadknown, and at the end of their inspection, she remarked thoughtfully:

"I see that there is something to do here. It makes me feel alive oncemore. "

The next month, while Parker dragged slowly through the stages of thedisease, Miss Hitchcock worked energetically with the nurses. Sommers mether here and there about the camp and at their hurried meals. The heat andthe excitement told upon her, but her spirited, good-humored mood, whichwas always at play, carried her on. Finally, the convalescents were sentnorth to cooler spots, and the camp was closed. Parker Hitchcock was wellenough to be moved to Chicago, and Sommers, who had been relieved, tookcharge of him and a number of other convalescents, who were to return tothe West. 

The last hours of the journey Sommers and Miss Hitchcock spent together. The train was slowly traversing the dreary stretches of swamp andsand-hills of northern Indiana. 

"I remember how forlorn this seemed the other time--four years ago!"Sommers exclaimed. "And how excited I was as the city came into view aroundthe curve of the lake. That was to be my world. "

"And you didn't find it to your liking, " Miss Hitchcock replied, with alittle smile. 

"I couldn't understand it; the thing was like raw spirits. It choked you. "

"I think I understand now what the matter has always been, " she resumedafter a little interval. "You thought we were all exceptionally selfish, but we were all just like every one else, --running after the obvious, common pleasures. What could you expect! Every boy and girl in this countryis told from the first lesson of the cradle, over and over, that success isthe one great and good thing in life. The people here are young and strong, and you can't blame them if they interpret that text a little crudely. ButI am beginning to understand what you feel. "

"We can't escape the fact, though, " Sommers responded. "Life must be based, to a large extent, on gain, on mere living. Nature has ordered it. "

"Only in cases like yours, " she murmured. "_I_ can never free myselffrom the order of nature. I shall always be the holder of power accumulatedby some one else. "

As Sommers refrained from making the platitudinous reply that such a remarkseemed to demand, they were silent for several minutes. Then she asked, with an air of constraint:

"What will you do? I mean after your visit to us, for, of course, you mustrest. "

Sommers smiled ironically. 

"That is the question every one asks. 'What will you do? what will you do?'Suppose I should say _'Nothing'_? We are always planning. No one isready to wait and turn his hand to the nearest job. To-morrow, next month, in good time, I shall know what that is. "

"It puts out of the question a career, personal ambition. "

"Yes, " he answered quickly. "And could you do that? Could you care for aman who will have no career, who has no 'future'?"

Sommers's voice had taken a new tone of earnestness, unlike the soberspeculation in which they had been indulging. Miss Hitchcock turned herface to the faded landscape of the suburban fields, and failed to reply. 

"I have lived out my egotism, " he continued earnestly. "What you would callambition has been dead for long months. I haven't any lofty ambition evenfor scientific work. Good results, even there, it seems to me, are not bornof personal desire, of pride. I am content to be a failure--an honestfailure, " he ended sharply. 

"Don't say that!" she protested, looking at him frankly. "I shall neveragree to that. "

The people around them began to bestir themselves with the nervousrestlessness of pent-up energy. Parker Hitchcock came into the car from thesmoking-room. 

"We can get off at Twenty-second Street, " he called out eagerly. "You'recoming, doctor?"

Sommers shook his head negatively, and Miss Hitchcock, who was putting onher veil, did not urge him to join them. The Hitchcock carriage was waitingoutside the Twenty-second Street station, and, as the train moved on, Sommers could see Colonel Hitchcock's bent figure through the open window. 

When Sommers left the train at the central station, the September twilighthad already fallen; and as he crossed the strip of park where the troopshad bivouacked during the strike, the encircling buildings were brilliantlyoutlined in the evening mist by countless points of light. The scene fromTwelfth Street north to the river, flanked by railroad yards and grimbuildings, was an animated circle of a modern inferno. The cross streetsintersecting the lofty buildings were dim, canon-like abysses, in whichpurple fog floated lethargically. The air was foul with the gas fromcountless locomotives, and thick with smoke and the mist of the lake. Andthrough this earthy steam, the myriad lights from the facades of the bigbuildings shone with suffused splendor. It was large and vague and, aboveall, gay, with the grim vivacity of a city of shades. Streams of peoplewere flowing toward the railroad, up and down the boulevard, in and out ofthe large hotels. A murmur of living, striving humanity rose into the murkyair; and from a distance, through the abysses of the cross streets, soundedthe deeper roar of the city. 

The half-forgotten note of the place struck sharply upon the doctor's ear. It excited him in some strange way. Two years had dropped from his life, and again he was turning, turning, with the beat of the great machine. 

CHAPTER XII

"Yes, he lost that--what was left when you sold for him, " Miss M'Gannadmitted dejectedly. "And so we had to start over again. Part of it wasmine, too. "

"Did he put your savings in?" Sommers asked incredulously. 

"It was that Dresser man. I wish we'd never laid eyes on him--he keptgetting tips from Carson, the man who owned most of his paper. I guessCarson didn't take much interest in giving _him_ the right tip, orperhaps Dresser didn't give _us_ what he knew straight out. Anyway, Jack's been losing!"

"So you aren't married?" Sommers asked. 

"Jack's pride is up. You see he wanted to begin with a nice flat, not liveon here in this boarding-house. And I was to leave the school. But I guessthere isn't much chance _now_. You've been away a long time--to thewar?"

They were sitting on the steps of the Keystone, which at this hour in themorning they had to themselves. Miss M'Gann's glory of dress had faded, together with the volubility of her talk, and the schoolroom air hadblanched her high color. 

"Jack wanted to go off to Cuba, " she continued. "But he got sick again, worrying over stocks, and I guess it was just as well. If he don't keepstraight now, and brace up, I'll let him go. I'm not the one to hang aroundall my life for a silly. "

"Perhaps that's what made him try the market again, " Sommers suggested. 

"No, it was Dresser. He was sporting a lot of money and going withhigh-toned folks, and it made Jack envious. "

"You had better marry him, hadn't you?"

Miss M'Gann moved uneasily on the stone seat. 

"He's down there again to-day, I just know. He's given up the Baking Powderplace, --they crowded him out in the reorganization, --and Dresser got him aplace down town. "

"Do you mean he's at the broker's?"

Miss M'Gann nodded and then added:

"Do you remember Dr. Leonard? Well, he made a pile out of a trust, somedentist-tools combine, I think. "

"I am glad of it, " Sommers said heartily, "and I hope he'll keep it. "

"Are you going to stay in Chicago?" Miss M'Gann asked, with renewedcuriosity. "We shall be glad to see you at the Keystone. "

Sommers got up to leave, and asked for Webber's address in the city. "I maylook him up, " he explained. "I wish you could keep him away from Dresser. The converted socialist is likely to be a bad lot. "

"Socialist!" Miss M'Gann exclaimed disdainfully. "He isn't any socialist. He's after a rich girl. "

 * * * * *

Sommers left Miss M'Gann with a half-defined purpose of finding Webber andinducing him to give up the vain hope of rivalling the editor of _TheInvestor's Monthly_. He had always liked the clerk, and when he hadhelped to pull him out of the market without loss before, he had thoughtall would go well. But the optimism of the hour had proved too much forWebber's will. Carson's cheap and plentiful stocks had made it dangerouslyeasy for every office boy to "invest. " If Webber had been making moneythese last months, it would be useless to advise him; but if the erraticmarket had gone against him, he might be saved. 

On the way to the city he called at St. Isidore's to see if any one in thathive would remember him. The little nurse, whom he recalled as one of theassistants at Preston's operation, had now attained the dignity of the"black band. " There was hardly any one else who knew him, except theelevator boy; and he was leaving when he met Dr. Knowles, an old physician, who had a large, old-fashioned family practice in an unfashionable quarterof the city. Dr. Knowles had once been kind to the younger doctor, and nowhe seemed glad to meet him again. From him Sommers learned that Lindsay hadabout given up his practice. The "other things, " thanks to his intimacywith Porter, and more lately with Carson, had put him outside the pettyneeds of professional earnings. Dr. Knowles himself was thinking ofretiring, he told Sommers, not with his coffers full of trust certificates, but with a few thousand dollars, enough to keep him beyond want. Theytalked for a long time, and at the end Dr. Knowles asked Sommers toconsider taking over his practice. "It isn't very swell, " he explainedgood-humoredly. "And I don't want you to kill off my poor patients. Butthere are enough pickings for a reasonable man who doesn't practise formoney. " Sommers promised to see him in a few days, and started for theoffice where Webber worked. 

Lindsay's final success amused him. He had heard a good deal about Porterand Carson; their operations, reported vaguely by the public, interestedhim. They formed a kind of partnership, evidently. Porter "financed" theschemes that Carson concocted and talked into being. And a following ofsmall people gleaned in their train. Lindsay probably had gleaned more thanthe others. It was all the better, Sommers reflected, for the state of themedical profession. 

As he sauntered down La Salle Street, the air of the pavement breathed theoptimism of the hour. Sommers was amazed at the number of brokers' offices, at the streams of men going and coming around these busy booths. The warwas over, or practically over, and speculation was brisker than ever. To besure, the bills for the war were not paid, but success was in the air, andevery one was striving to exploit that success in his own behalf. Sommerspassed the blazing sign of WHITE AND EINSTEIN; the firm had taken largeroffices this year. Sommers stopped and looked at the broad windows, andthen, reflecting that he had nothing to do before dining with theHitchcocks except to see Webber, he went in with a file of other men. 

White and Einstein's offices were much more resplendent than the littleroom in the basement, where they had started two years before. There weremany glass partitions and much mahogany-stained furniture. In the largeroom, where the quotations were posted, little rows of chairs were rangedbefore the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch thegame. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this wascovered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag, --the names ofthe "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemedthe favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line ofquotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group ofspectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation under therapid chalk of the office boy. 

The place was feverish with excitement, which Sommers could feel ratherthan read in the dull faces of the men. From time to time White or Einsteinbobbed out of an inner office, or a telephone booth, and joined thewatchers before the blackboards. Their detached air and genial smiles gavethem the appearance of successful hosts. White recognized Sommers andnodded, with one eye on the board. "Rag's acting queer, " he said casuallyin the doctor's ear. "Are you in the market? Rag is Carson's latest--ain'tgone through yet, and there are signs the market's glutted. Look at thatthing slide, waltz! Gee, there'll be sore heads to-morrow!"

Sommers leaned forward and touched Webber, who, with open mouth, wasfollowing the figures. Webber turned round, but his head went back to theboard. The glance he had given was empty--the glance of the drunkard. 

"Your young friend's got hit, " White remarked apathetically. "He shouldn'ttry to play marbles with _this_ crowd. Carson is just chucking newstocks at the public. But he has a clique with him that can do anything. "

In spite of this opinion "Rag" tottered and wavered. Rumors rapidly spreadamong the onlookers that Carson had failed to put "Rag" through; that theconsolidated companies would fall asunder on the morrow, like badly gluedveneer; that Porter "had gone back on Carson" and was selling the stock. The quotations fell: common stock 60, 59, 56, 50, 45, 48, 50, 52, 45, 40--so ran the dazzling line of figures across the blackboard, again andagain. 

"There'll be fun to-morrow, " White remarked, moving away. "Better come inand see Vinegar and Oil and the rest of Carson's list get a black eye. "

Sommers touched Webber, then shook him gently, asking, "What is it this time? Iron and Distillery?"

"Rag, " Webber snapped, recognizing the doctor. "And I'm done for this timesure thing--_every red copper_. I made two thousand last week on Tin, and this morning I chucked the whole pile into Rag. "

"You'd better come with me, " Sommers urged. "The Exchange is closing forto-day, anyway. "

The clerk laughed, and replied: "Let's have a drink. I've just got enoughto get drunk on. "

"You're drunk already, " the doctor answered gruffly. 

"I'll be drunker before the morning, " the clerk remarked, with a feeblelaugh. "I wish I had Dresser here; I'd like to pound him once. "

That desire was repeated in the looks of many men, who were still gloweringat the afternoon's quotations. Carson, the idol of the new "promotions, "seemed to be the man most in demand for pounding. Einstein was explainingto a savage customer why he had advised him to buy "Rag. "

"I got it over the telephone this morning from a man very close to Carsonthat Rag was the thing, the peach of the whole lot. He said it was slatedto cross Biscuit to-day. "

The man growled and ground a cigar stub into the floor. 

"Come, we'll have a drink, " a white-faced young fellow called out to an oldman, an acquaintance of the hour. "Somebody's got my money!" The two passedout arm in arm. 

Webber had his drink, and then another. Then he leaned back in theembrasure of the bar-room window and looked at Sommers. 

"I guess it's the lake this time. I can't go back to her and tell her it'sall up. "

Sommers watched the man closely, trying to determine how far the diseasehad gone. Webber's vain, rather weak face was disguised with a beard, whichmade him look older than he was, and the arm that rested on the tabletrembled nervously from the flaccid fingers to the shoulder-blades. 

"They've put up some trick between them, " Webber continued, in a grumblingtone. "Carson or Porter is making something by selling Rag. They'd ought tobe in the penitentiary. "

"What rot!" Sommers remarked deliberately. "They've beaten you at yourgame, and they will every time, because they have more nerve than you, andbecause they know more. There's no use in damning them. You'd do the samething if you knew when to do it. "

"They're nothing but sharps!" the clerk protested feebly, insistent like achild on his idea that some one had done him a personal injury. 

Sommers shrugged his shoulders in despair. "I must be going, " he said atlast. "I don't suppose you'll take my advice, and perhaps the lake would bethe best thing for you. But you'd better try it again--it's just as wellthat everything has gone this time. There won't be any chance of going backto the game. Tell her, and if she'll take you, marry her at once, and startwith the little people. Or stay here and have a few more drinks, " he added, as he read the irresolute look upon Webber's face. 

The clerk rose wearily and followed the doctor into the street, as ifafraid of being alone. 

"You needn't be so rough, " he muttered. "There are lots of the big fellowswho started the same way--in the market, wheat or stocks. And I had alittle ambition to be something better than a clerk. I wanted her to havesomething different. She's as good as those girls Dresser is always talkingto her about. "

Sommers made no reply to his defence, but walked slowly, accommodating hispace to Webber's weary steps. When they reached Michigan Avenue, he stoppedand said, "I should put the lake off, this time, and make up my mind to be a littlefellow. "

Webber shook hands listlessly and started toward the railroad station withhis drooping, irresolute gait. Sommers watched him until his figure mergedwith the hurrying crowd. Habit was taking the clerk to the suburban train, and habit would take him to the Keystone and Miss M'Gann instead of to thelake. Habit and Miss M'Gann would probably take him back to his desk. Butthe disease had gone pretty far, and if he recovered, Sommers judged, hewould never regain his elasticity, his hope. He would be haunted by amemory of hot desires, of feeble defeat. 

The wavering clerk had succumbed to the mood of the hour. And the mood ofthe hour in this corner of the universe was hopeful for weak and strongalike. Cheap optimism, Sommers would have called it once, but now it seemedto him the natural temper of the world. With this hope suffused over theirlives, men struggled on--for what? No one knew. Not merely for plunder, norfor power, nor for enjoyment. Each one might believe these to be the giftsof the gods, while he kept his eyes solely on himself. But when he turnedhis gaze outward, he knew that these were not the spur of human energy. Instriving restlessly to get plunder and power and joy, men wove themysterious web of life for ends no human mind could know. Carson built hisrickety companies and played his knavish tricks upon the gullible public, of whom Webber was one. Brome Porter rooted here and there in theindustrial world, and fattened himself upon all spoils. These had to be;they were the tools of the hour. But indifferent alike to them and toWebber, the affairs of men ebbed and flowed in the resistless tide of fate. 

CHAPTER XIII

The dinner at the Hitchcocks' was very simple. Parker had gone out "toenjoy his success in not getting to Cuba, " as Colonel Hitchcock expressedit grimly. The old merchant's manner toward the doctor was cordial, butconstrained. At times during the dinner Sommers found Colonel Hitchcock'seyes resting upon him, as if he were trying to understand him. Sommers wasconscious of the fact that Lindsay had probably done his best to paint hischaracter in an unflattering light; and though he knew that the oldcolonel's shrewdness and kindliness would not permit him to accept bittergossip at its face value, yet there must have been enough in his career tolead to speculation. While they were smoking, Colonel Hitchcock remarked:

"So you're back in Chicago. Do you think you'll stay?"

Sommers described the offer Dr. Knowles had made. 

"I used to see Knowles, --a West Side man, --not very able as a money-getter, I guess, but a good fellow, " Colonel Hitchcock emitted meditatively. 

"He has a very commonplace practice, " Sommers replied. "An old-fashionedkind of practice. "

"Do you think you'll like Chicago any better?" Colonel Hitchcock askedbluntly. 

"I haven't thought much about that, " the doctor admitted, uncomfortably. Hefelt that the kind old merchant had lost whatever interest he might havehad in him. Any man who played ducks and drakes with his chances in lifewas not to be depended upon, according to Colonel Hitchcock's philosophy. And a man who could not be depended upon to do the rational thing was moreor less dangerous. It was easier for him to understand Parker's defectsthan Sommers's wilfulness. They were both lamentable eccentricities. 

"Chicago isn't what it was, " the old man resumed reminiscently. "It's toobig, and there is too much speculation. A man is rich to-day and poorto-morrow. That sort of thing used to be confined to the Board of Trade, but now it's everywhere, in legitimate business. People don't seem to bewilling to work hard for success. " He relapsed into silence, and shortlyafter went upstairs, saying as he excused himself, --"Hope we shall see youagain, Dr. Sommers. "

When Colonel Hitchcock had left the room, Miss Hitchcock said, as if toremove the sting of her father's indifference:

"Uncle Brome's transactions worry papa, --for a time papa was deeplyinvolved in one of his schemes, --and he worries over Parker, too. Hedoesn't like to think of--what will happen when he is dead. Parker willhave a good deal of money, more than he will know what to do with. It'ssad, don't you think so? To be ending one's life with a feeling that youhave failed to make permanent your ideals, to leave things stable in yourfamily at least?"

Instead of replying Sommers left his chair and walked aimlessly about theroom. At last he came back to the large table near which Miss Hitchcock wasseated. 

"You know why I came to-night, " he began nervously. 

Miss Hitchcock put down the book she held in her hands and turned her faceto him. 

"Will you help me--to live?" he said bluntly. 

She rose from her seat, and, with a slight smile of irony, replied, "Can I?"

"The past, --" Sommers stammered. "You know it all better than any oneelse. "

"I would not have it different, not one thing changed, " she protested withwarmth. "What I cannot understand in it, I will believe was best for youand for me. "

"And the lack of success, the failure?" Sommers questioned eagerly; a touchof fear in his voice. "I am asking much and giving very little. "

"You understand so badly!" The smile this time was sad. "I shall never knowthat it is failure. "

CHAPTER XIV

Miss Hitchcock's wedding was extremely quiet. It was regarded by all butthe two persons immediately concerned as an eccentric mistake. Even ColonelHitchcock, to whom Louise was almost infallible, could not trust himself todiscuss with her, her decision to marry Dr. Sommers. It was all a sign ofthe irrational drift of things that seemed to thwart his energetic, honorable life. Even Sommers's attitude in the frank talk the two men hadabout the marriage offended the old merchant. Sommers had met his distantreferences to money matters by saying bluntly that he and Louise haddecided it would be best for them not to be the beneficiaries of ColonelHitchcock's wealth to any large extent. He wished it distinctly understoodthat little was to be done for them now, or in the future by bequest. Louise had agreed with him that for many reasons their lives would behappier without the expectation of unearned wealth. He did not explain thatone potent reason for their decision in this matter was the hope they hadthat Colonel Hitchcock would realize the futility of leaving anyconsiderable sum of money to Parker, and would finally place his moneywhere it could be useful to the community in which he had earned it. Colonel Hitchcock rather resented the doctor's independence, and, at thesame time, disliked the direct reference to his fortune. Those mattersarranged themselves discreetly in families, and if Louise had children, why.... 

It did not take Louise and Sommers long, however, to convince ColonelHitchcock that they were absolutely sincere in their decision, and tointerest him in methods of returning his wealth, at his death, to theworld. As the months wore on, and Sommers settled into the peaceful routineof Dr. Knowles's mediocre practice, Colonel Hitchcock revised, to a certainextent, his judgment of the marriage. It must always remain a mystery tohim, however, that the able young surgeon neglected the brilliantopportunities he had on coming to Chicago, and had, apparently, thrown awayfour years of his life. Probably he attributed this mistake to the youngdoctor's ignorance of the world, due to the regrettable fact that Dr. IsaacSommers had remained in Marion, Ohio, instead of courting cosmopolitanexperiences in Chicago. When his grandchild came, he saw that Louise wasentirely happy, and he was content. Neither Louise nor Sommers looked backinto the past, or troubled themselves about the future. The practice whichDr. Knowles had left, if not lucrative, was sufficiently large and variedto satisfy Sommers. 

Brome Porter had transferred all his interests to New York. He had recoupedhimself by selling "Rag" short before it was really launched and by someother clever strokes of stock manipulation, and had undertaken at lengththe much-needed trip to Carlsbad. The suspicion that Porter had won backthe money he owed to Colonel Hitchcock by a trick upon the small fry ofspeculators, such as Webber, had its influence in the feeling which Sommersand his wife had about the Hitchcock money. The last move of the "operator"had made something of a scandal in Chicago, for many of Porter's friendsand acquaintances lost heavily in "Rag, " and felt sore because "they hadbeen left on the outside. " If Porter was not in good odor in Chicago, Carson's name was anathema, not only to a host of little speculators, whohad followed this ingenious promoter's star, but to substantial men ofwealth as well. After the first flush of optimism, people began to examineCarson's specialties, and found them very rotten. Carson, and those whowere near him in these companies, it turned out, had got their holdings atlow figures and made money when those not equally favored lost. When "Rag"went to pieces, it was rumored that Carson had been caught in his own leakytub; but, later, it turned out that Carson and Porter had had anunderstanding in this affair. "Rag" was never meant to "go. " So Carsonbetook himself to Europe, and the great Sargent was removed from publicexhibition to a storage warehouse. In some future generation, on thedisintegration of the Carson family, the portrait may come back to theworld again, labelled "A Soldier of Fortune. "

Sommers met Dr. Lindsay at rare intervals; the great specialist treated himwith a nice discrimination of values, adjusting the contempt he felt forthe successor of Dr. Knowles to the respect he felt for the son-in-law ofColonel Alexander Hitchcock. Report had it that Lindsay had been forced toreturn to office practice after virtually retiring from the profession. And, in the fickle world of Chicago, the offices on the top floor of theAthenian Building did not "take in" what they once had gathered. For thisas well as other reasons Sommers was not surprised when his wife openedMiss Laura Lindsay's wedding cards one morning, and read out the name ofthe intended bridegroom, _Mr. Samuel Thompson Dresser_. 

"Shall we go?" Louise asked, scrutinizing the cards with feminine keenness. 

"I have reasons for not going, " Sommers answered hesitatingly. "But youused to know Laura Lindsay, and--"

"I think she will not miss me, " Louise answered quickly. "It was queer, though, " she continued, idly waving the invitation to and fro, "that a girllike Laura should marry a man like Dresser. "

"Did I ever hear you say that it was to be expected that Miss Blank shouldmarry Mr. Blank?" her husband asked. "In this case I think it isbeautifully appropriate. "

"But he was not exactly in our set, and you once said he was given totheories, was turned out of a place on account of the ideas he held, didn'tyou?"

"He has seen the folly of those ideas, " Sommers responded dryly. "He hasbecome a bond broker, and has a neat little office in the building whereWhite and Einstein had their trade. "

"Well, " Mrs. Sommers insisted, "Laura never was what you might callserious. "

"She has taught him a good deal, though, I have no doubt. "

Mrs. Sommers looked puzzled. 

"As other excellent women have taught other men, " the doctor added, with alaugh. 

"What shall we send them?" his wife asked, disregarding the flippancy ofthe remark. 

"A handsomely bound copy of the 'Report of the Commission to Examine intothe Chicago Strike, June-July, 1894. '"

As Louise failed to see the point, he remarked:

"I think I hear your son talking about something more important. Shall wego upstairs to see him? I must be off in a few minutes. "

They watched the little child without speaking, while he cautiouslymanipulated his arms and interested himself in the puzzle of his ownanatomy. 

"What tremendous faith!" Sommers exclaimed at last. 

"In what?"

"In the good of it all--in life. "