As Schmidt concluded his oratorical flourish in this astonishing fashion, the other occupants of the room turned amazedly, to behold Cicily herself, standing in the open doorway of the study.

The young wife was a very charming, radiant vision, as she rested there motionless. She was gowned for the street, wearing that ravishing hat which had been the cause of McMahon's undoing, a dainty and rather elaborate device in black and red, and a black cloth gown, short and closely cut, which showed to delightful advantage the lissome curves of her form. Beneath, a luxurious chaussure in black showed the inimitable grace of tiny feet and ankles. Now, as she regarded the company in some astonishment, the perfect oval of her cheeks was broken by the play of dimples as she smiled a general welcome on the men before her. But her attention was particularly arrested by Schmidt, who, after his first greeting in words, was now bowing stiffly from the hips, a feat of some difficulty by reason of his girth. Cicily watched the formal performance with mingled emotions of amusement and alarm. When, at last, it was successfully accomplished, however, and the pudgy figure straightened, she recognized the socialist, and came forward.

"Why, it's Mr. Schmidt!" she exclaimed, cordially. "I'm so glad to see you!" To this, the German murmured a guttural response, too much overcome by pleasure for coherent speech. The new-comer passed on, and made her greetings to Ferguson and McMahon with the like pleasant hospitality, shaking hands with each.

"This is, indeed, charming," she exclaimed heartily. "Did you bring your wives along?"

Schmidt, as usual, constituted himself the spokesman.

"Mrs. Hamilton," he stated, with somber impressiveness, "this is business."

"Good gracious!" Mrs. Hamilton exclaimed, with some trepidation. "I hope it's nothing that they would not approve of."

"Be easy," Ferguson, admonished, soothingly. "Sure, it's only that we're talking business. It's a matter of wages. The woman folk always approve of them."

Schmidt rolled his eyes heavenward in despair.

"But, when we tell them of the ten per cent. cut! Ach, Himmel!"

Cicily turned a startled glance on her husband.

"A ten per cent. cut!" she exclaimed, involuntarily. "Why, Charles!"

Hamilton was annoyed by this unexpected irruption of the feminine into the most serious of business discussions—the intrusion of the female on the financial. He spoke with distinct note of disapproval in his voice:

"Now, Cicily, you know nothing of this."

Delancy, too, added the weight of his accustomed authority.

"Don't bother with things that do not concern you, Cicily." There was a patronizing quality in the admonition that irritated the wife.

Ferguson spoke to the same effect, but with a radically different motive underlying his words:

"Of course, it don't concern you, Mrs. Hamilton. I guess you'll be glad to have some more money to put in bath-tubs and libraries and gymnasiums. No, ma'am, it don't concern you. But it'll make some difference to our wives and daughters, I'm thinking—ten per cent. out of the pay-envelope every week. It'll take the curl out of my Sadie's false hair, all right."

"There will be always some good in everything," Schmidt murmured cynically, but not loud enough for the Yankee to hear.

Cicily was aware of the tension about her, and deemed it the part of wisdom to create a diversion.

"What a coincidence!" she exclaimed, gayly. "Mrs. Schmidt and Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. McMahon are all coming around here this afternoon. I invited them to attend a meeting of our club."

The dignified face of Mr. Delancy, which was that of the old-school business man, clean-shaven save for the white tufts of side-whisker, was distorted by an emotion of genuine horror; his pink cheeks grew scarlet.

"Cicily!" he gasped.

Hamilton, too, was hardly less disconcerted, for all his familiarity with his wife's equalization whimsies.

"Invited them here?" he questioned, frowning.

The manner of both utterances was of a sort that must inevitably offend the husbands of the women. Cicily, with the sensitiveness of her sex, sought to cover the impression by speaking with a manner of increased enthusiasm.

"Oh, yes," she answered. "Isn't it good of them? They have promised to return my call this afternoon."

Ferguson yielded to a Yankee propensity for dry humour:

"I only hope that Mr. Delancy and Mr. Hamilton won't be too nice to them."

McMahon, too, would have made some comment; but Hamilton, who now perceived his blunder, which might have a disastrous effect on the attitude of these men toward him, hastened to make a diversion on his own account.

"Now, men," he said, as affably as he could contrive, "I've made you acquainted with the difficulties and the necessities of the situation. As I said before, I depend on your loyalty.... Will you let me hear from you later in the afternoon to-day?"

"You'll hear from us, all right," the Yankee assured his employer, with significant emphasis, before Schmidt had a chance to speak; and McMahon nodded agreement.

Once again, Cicily strove to lighten the mood of the men.

"If you're going away to think something over, be sure you come back in time to take your wives home, after they've joined the club. It's the Civitas Society, you know, for the up-lift of women."

No sooner were the members of the committee out of the room than Cicily turned anxiously to her husband.

"Oh, Charles," she exclaimed, "tell me! It's not true, is it, that there's to be a cut in wages at the factory?"

Hamilton turned away impatiently from the appealing face.

"Cicily," he said shortly, "Uncle Jim and I are very busy. We have business of the highest importance to discuss."

Delancy, who from long experience knew much concerning his niece's wilfulness, now read aright the resolute expression on her face. He tugged nervously at his tufts of whisker, and spoke in a tone of resignation:

"Oh, tell her, Charles, and have done with it.... Or, listen, Cicily. It's this way: These men are getting more money than they ought to get. Charles can't make a penny profit, running his business this way. That's all there is to it—he's got to cut them ten per cent. I've advised it, myself."

Cicily's charming nose was now distinctly tip-tilted, whatever might be its normal line.

"Yes, I'd expect you to advise it, Uncle Jim," she remarked, dryly. She turned to her husband, accusingly. "But, Charles, there is no reason why you should follow his advice. Why didn't you ask me? I'm your partner. I don't think you have treated me fairly in this."

Hamilton, overwrought and exasperated by the multiplication of his worries, began a sharp answer; but it was interrupted by the decisiveness with which his wife went on speaking:

"Charles, you have treated me like a child, like a fool.... And you said that you'd let me help you!"

This reproach appealed to Hamilton as grossly unfair.

"Why, Cicily," he exclaimed, "I did let you help. I've let you do everything that you wanted to do—no matter how—" In a sudden access of discretion, he choked back the "foolish."

Delancy, presuming on the right of criticism that had been his during the years of guardianship, spoke with a candor that was not flattering.

"He let you do more than I'd have let you do. He let you waste your money on bath-tubs and libraries, and such foolishness, to make the men dissatisfied. I wish somebody would tell me what a man working for two dollars a day can do with a bath-tub and a library at the works."

"If anybody were to tell you, you wouldn't listen," was Cicily's pert retort.

Delancy tugged at his wisp of whisker, and wagged his head dolefully.

"I don't know what young women these days are coming to," was his melancholy comment.

"What you men are driving us to, you mean!" Cicily fairly snapped. It was difficult enough to manage her husband, without having her position jeopardized by the interference of this meddlesome old man, who stood for that exclusion of her sex against which she was fighting. She went to the chair in which Ferguson had been sitting, and reclined there in a posture of graceful ease that was far from expressing the turmoil of her spirit. As he watched her movements, and studied the loveliness of her, with her delicate face aglow and her amber eyes brilliant in this mood of excitement, Hamilton forgot his worriment for the moment in uxorious admiration. He was smiling fondly on his wife, even as Delancy uttered an exclamation of rebuke to him:

"And you're her husband!" His emphasis made it clear that a husband like himself would have suppressed such insubordination long ago.

"Well," Hamilton replied placidly, and with a hint of amusement in his voice, "you brought her up, you know."

"I did not—no such thing!" the old man spluttered. In his indignation, he pulled so viciously on a whisker that he winced from the pain, which by no means tended to soothe his ruffled temper.

"You're quite right, Uncle Jim," Cicily agreed, with dangerous sweetness in the musical voice. "Of course, you never had any time to pay attention to me, or to Aunt Emma either, for that matter. Oh, no, you were too much absorbed in that horrid business of yours. You drove Aunt Emma into working for the heathen, and incidentally, you did teach me one thing: you taught me what sort of a wife not to be. I learned from you never to be married after the fashion in which you and Aunt Emma are married."

Delancy was not blest with an overabundant sense of humor. Now, he forgot the general charge against him in shocked surprise over the final statement, which he took literally.

"Look here, Cicily," he remonstrated. "It took twenty-two minutes in the old First Presbyterian Church to marry your Aunt Emma and me. You couldn't possibly get a more binding ceremony."

Cicily laughed disdainfully.

"Well, it's my opinion that you've never been married at all, really," she persisted, with a bantering seriousness. "You wouldn't have been really married if you had spent two whole days in the church." Then, in answer to the pained amazement expressed on her uncle's face, she continued succinctly: "Yes, I mean it, Uncle Jim. Aunt Emma has been second wife ever since those twenty-two minutes in the old First Presbyterian Church, to which you referred so feelingly.... And she has my sympathy. You married business first, and Aunt Emma afterward. Business had the first claim, and has always kept first place. That's why Aunt Emma has my sympathy."

Delancy rose from his chair, greatly offended, now that he perceived the manner in which he had been bamboozled by the wayward humor of his niece. He moved toward the door at a pace as hurried as dignity would permit. There, he turned to address his disrespectful former ward.

"Charles has my sympathy!" he growled; and stalked from the room.

"Don't forget that you are coming to dinner on Sunday—with your second wife!" the irrepressible Cicily called after him impertinently. But, if the reminder was heard, it was not answered; and husband and wife were left alone together.

Hamilton would have remonstrated with his bride over her wholly unnecessary irritating of her uncle, but he was not given an opportunity. Before the door was fairly shut behind her offended relation, Cicily took the war into the enemy's camp by a curt question:

"Now, Charles, why do you cut wages?"

"Because I have to," was the prompt response.

"And why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you? Nonsense!" The man's tone was expressive of extreme annoyance.

"But I'm your partner," Cicily persisted bravely, although her heart sank under the rebuff. "You yourself said that I was."

"Well, and so you are, since you want it so," Hamilton admitted; "and you're attending to your end, aren't you?"

"Yes, the little end," Cicily agreed, disparagingly.

At that, Hamilton was plainly exasperated.

"What end did you expect?" he demanded. "I tell you, Cicily," he continued, in the tone of one arguing with labored patience to convince a child of some truism, "that business is too big, too serious, too strong for a woman like you, my dear."

"Yes, that's just the fear that grips my heart sometimes, Charles," the wife admitted. With an ingenuity characteristic of her active intelligence, she had perceived a method whereby to twist his words to her own purpose. "Look here!" she went on in a caressing voice, utterly unlike the emphatic one in which she had spoken hitherto. "Do you for a moment imagine that I really like business? Well, then, I don't—not a little bit! For that matter, hardly any woman does, I fancy. As to myself, Charles, I'm afraid of it—that's the whole truth. I'm only in it to watch it—and you!"

The change in her manner had immediate effect on the husband. Again, he was surveying her with eyes in which admiration shone. For the ten-thousandth time, he was reveling in the beauty of that oval contour, in the tender curves of the scarlet lips.... But he forgot to voice his thoughts. Indeed, what need? He had told her so many times already!

"You talk as if business were a woman," he said, with a smile of conscious sex superiority, "and as if you were jealous."

Cicily concealed her resentment of the patronizing manner, and replied with no apparent diminution in her amiability:

"That's just it: I am jealous!"

"Good heavens!" Hamilton cried, indignantly. "Surely, you know that I never think twice of any woman I meet in business."

The wife smiled in high disdain.

"Woman!" she ejaculated, with scornful emphasis. "I'm not in the least afraid of any woman being more to you than I am, Charles. Just let one try!"

"Why, what would you do?" Hamilton inquired, curiously.

The answer was swift and vigorous, pregnant with the insolent consciousness of power that is the prerogative of a lovely woman. Cicily leaned forward in her chair, and the golden eyes darkened and flashed.

"Why, I'd beat her! I'd be everything to you that she was—and more. I'd outdress her, I'd out-talk her, I'd outwit her, I'd out-think her. I'd play on your love and on your masculine jealousy. Oh, there'd be plenty of men to play the play with me. I'd be more alluring, more fascinating, more difficult, until I held you safe again in the hollow of my hand, and then—why, then, I'd be very much tempted to throw you away!"

The verve with which this girl-woman thus vaunted her skill in the use of those charms that dominate the opposite sex thrilled and fascinated the lover, pierced the reserve that possession had overcast on ardor. His cheeks flushed, under the provocation of the glances with which she marked the allurements of which she was the mistress. As she finished speaking, he sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew her passionately to his breast. But Cicily avoided the kiss he would have pressed on her lips. With her mouth at his ear, she whispered, plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a timid, fearing, jealous woman:

"Yes, I can fight a rival who is a woman, Charles, and I can win. But this other rival, this fascinating monstrous, evil goddess—ah!"

Hamilton held his wife away from him by the shoulders, mid regarded her in bewilderment.

"Evil goddess!" he repeated, half in doubt as to her meaning.

"Surely, she must be that," Cicily declared, firmly; "this spirit who is the goddess of modern business, whom I feel absorbing you day by day, taking from me more and ever more of your thoughts, of your heart, of your soul, changing you in every vital way, and doing it in spite of all that I can do, though I fight against her with all my strength! Oh, it's terrible, the hopelessness of it all! Some day all of you will be gone, forever!"

"Swallowed up by the evil spirit?" Hamilton asked, quizzically, with a smile.

"Yes!" The answer was given with a seriousness that rebuked his levity in the presence of possible catastrophe.

The husband repeated his threadbare argument.

"But, dear," he urged gently, "you know that I love you just the same."

There was a curious, cynical sadness in the wife's voice as she replied:

"Probably, a man under ether loves one just the same. But who wants to be loved by a man under ether?"

"Cicily, you exaggerate!" Hamilton exclaimed. He dropped his hands from her shoulders, and reseated himself, while she remained standing before him. There was petulance in his inflection when he spoke again: "I have you, and I have my business."

Cicily made a mouÉ that sufficiently expressed her weariness of this time-worn fact.

"Your two loves!" she said, bitterly. "Now, at this moment, you think that they're equal. Well, perhaps they are—at this moment. Some day, the crisis will come. Then, you'll have to choose. It's a new triangle, Charles—the twentieth-century triangle in America: the wife, the husband and the business. But remember: when the choice comes for us, I shall not be an Aunt Emma!"

The manner of his wife, as well as her words, disturbed the husband strangely. Never had she seemed more appealing in her loveliness, never more daintily alluring to the eye of a man; yet, never had she seemed to hold herself so coldly aloof, to be so impersonally remote. He felt a longing to draw her again into the gentle trustfulness of the maiden who had gloried in his love.

"What do you want me to do, dear?" he questioned. "I told you that you could help me. I let you help."

Cicily seated herself again before she replied. When, at last, she spoke, her voice was listless:

"Yes; you let me spend some of my own money for luxuries. It seems that I could have used it to better advantage in helping to pay the men their wages, and thus save you from a possible strike."

"No," was the serious response. "At best, that would have been only a makeshift—putting off the evil day. No; this thing must be fought out, once for all. We are running at a loss. To take money from you would be merely to waste it. Let me tell you, too, that there isn't a chance in the world for the Hamilton factory in the event of a strike."

Cicily seized on the admission as favoring her side of the argument.

"Then, you must not cut the wages," she declared, with spirit. "You must fight Morton and Carrington."

"How can one man fight the trust?" Hamilton questioned, in return. "No, I'm caught between the two millstones: Morton, Carrington, the trust, above; the men, labor, below. To live, I must cut into the men. That's business."

"Now, I know it isn't right," Cicily exclaimed. "Tell me," she continued, bending forward in her eagerness, until he could watch the beating pulse of her round throat, "if I were to give you all my money, couldn't you fight, and yet keep up the wages? I have quite a lot, you know. It was accumulating, uncle said, all the time while I was growing up." She refused to be convinced by her husband's shake of the head in negation. "I've met a lot of their women and children, in these last few weeks, while I have been—playing at being in business. None of the families have any more than enough for their needs—I know! Some of them have barely that. A cut in wages will be something awful in its effects. Why, Charles, some of the families have six or seven children."

"I know," the harassed employer acknowledged, with a sigh that was almost a groan. "But, Cicily, my dear, unless there is a cut, I shall be ruined. That is the long and the short of the matter. Unless I make the men suffer a little now, the factory must be closed down; all Dad's work must go for nothing. It's either I or them. If they don't take the cut for the time being, they'll soon be without any wages at all. Now, if you really want to help me, in a way to count, just do all you possibly can to prevent a strike. Then, you'll be helping me, and, too, you'll be helping them as well. Of course, you understand that I shall put back the wages as soon as ever I can."

"Good!" the wife cried, happily. "I'll help." Despite her distress over the situation as it affected both the workmen and her husband, she was elated by the fact that, at last, she was wholly within her husband's confidence; that, at last, she was actually to coÖperate with him in his business concerns: a practical, no longer merely a theoretical, partner! Hamilton himself gave the cap to the climax of her delight.

"Now," he said, with a tender smile, "you're positively in business, according to your heart's desire. You're on the inside, all ready to fight the what-do-you-call-it."

But a new thought had changed the mood of the impulsive bride. Of a sudden, she sobered, and her eyes widened in fear.

"Yes," she said slowly, tremulously; "I'll help you, Charles, in any way that I can, for a strike would be too terrible. It would come between you and me."

Small wonder that, Hamilton was astounded by this declaration on the part of his wife. His usually firm jaw relaxed, dropped; he sat staring at the fair woman opposite him with unrestrained amazement.

"How under heaven could a strike at the factory come between you and me?" he queried, at last.

The answer was slow in coming; but it came, none the less—came firmly, unhesitatingly, unequivocally.

"If there were to be a strike, I could not let those women and those children suffer without doing something to help them."

At this candid statement as to what her course would be, the husband stiffened in his chair. His expression grew severe, minatory.

"What?" he ejaculated, harshly. "You'd use your money to help them? My wife use her money to fight me?" His frown was savage.

Cicily preserved her appearance of calm confidence, although she was woefully minded to cower back, and to cover her eyes from the menace in his. She was a woman of strongly fixed principles, however chimerical her ideas in some directions, and now her conscience drove her on, when love would have bade her retreat.

"I'd use my money to keep women and children from starving to death," she said, in a low voice, which trembled despite her will.

Hamilton smothered an angry imprecation. He strove to master his wrath as he spoke again, very sternly:

"Cicily, you are my wife. You have said that you were my partner. As either, as both, you have responsibilities toward my welfare that must be respected."

"I'm a woman, with responsibilities as a human being first of all," was the undaunted retort. "I wouldn't be fit to be a wife, if I were to let women and children starve without trying to help."

"Nonsense, Cicily!" Hamilton's anger was controlled now; but he remained greatly incensed over this stubborn folly on his wife's part, as he esteemed it. "Strikers don't starve to death, nowadays. They have benefits and funds, and all sorts of things, to help them. They don't even go hungry."

"Then, why do they ever give in?" was the pertinent query. "I tell you they do go hungry—often, even at the best of times. I've been down among those people. I've seen them with three, six, children to feed and clothe, and rent to pay, on two to four dollars a day. What chance have they to save? I tell you, if there's a strike, some of them will starve, and, if you let them starve, Charles, you won't be my husband!"

"Cicily!"

"I mean it." The wife rose from her chair, went to her husband, and kissed him, tenderly, sorrowfully. Then, she turned to leave the room.

But, before she reached the door, Hamilton spoke again, gravely, quite without anger:

"Cicily, my dear," he said, "I give you credit for being as sincere and honest as you are foolish. So, the only chance for all of us is that you should do your best now, at once, to prevent an issue that may spell catastrophe for all of us. It's up to you now, my dear partner, to do your best to win them, to keep them from striking."

The young wife paused in the doorway, and faced her husband. There was a trace of tears veiling the radiance of the golden eyes. Her voice quivered, but the low music of it was very earnest:

"I will, Charles—I will fight hard—my hardest—for my happiness and for yours!"