CHAPTER I
THE ROYAL PROGRESS OF MR. AND MRS. RAWN

I

So they were married. Graystone Hall at last had a mistress worthy of its architect and decorator when—love and affection and other good considerations moving thereto, as the law hath it—the new Mrs. Rawn moved into the place of the old Mrs. Rawn. Thereafter matters went at least as merry as most marriage bells celebrating the nuptials of middle age and youth, of wealth and beauty.

As Mr. Rawn had spent a million dollars to free himself from one wife, he seemed willing to spend much more in the process of taking on another. It became current rumor that the one great diamond show of the western city was Virginia Rawn. The sobriquet, "The Lady of the Lightnings," passed from New York to Chicago and became permanent there. Not that that lady delighted in display; but there were occasional operatic or theatrical events which demanded compliance with her husband's wishes, in which event she blazed almost better than the best.

But, gradually, she showed the tastes of the aristocrat, as alien to vulgar display as to crude manners. Gradually the tone, color, atmosphere, of Graystone Hall began to change. The porcelains which Virginia Rawn purchased were not large and gorgeous, but a connoisseur would have called them worthy. The vast and brilliantly framed paintings came down one by one, and one by one masterpieces went up, selected by one who knew. The walks, the grounds, took on simpler and cleaner lines. Rawn of the International got a new credit as a person of taste. He was accepted as a collector, a patron of the arts, a connoisseur, in fact, yet more a worthy and a rising citizen.

The hospitality of Mr. Rawn's mansion house also now increased perceptibly, and, delighted that at last numbers came to see him, Mr. Rawn at first did not analyze those numbers very closely. Even the fastidious, many of whom came to be amused, were unanimous in the feeling that Mr. Rawn's house, its furnishings, its decorations, its pictures, its works of art, its hospitality also, were beyond reproach. The trace of gaucherie was gone. The spirit of the place was delicately reserved, dignified, yet well assured. The seal of approval was placed upon Graystone Hall. Who, indeed, should smile at the man who had made so meteoric a rise, who had by a few years of labor become master of this mansion, its furnishings and its mistress? Who, upon the other hand, might smile at that mistress, whose appearance upon the front page of the leading journals of the city became now a matter of course—a lady of such reserved tastes as led her to forsake the larger marts, and to set the seal of fashionable approval upon a little florist, a little modiste, a little milliner all her own—even a little surgeon hither-to unknown, who honored a little hospital and made it fashionable, by taking there this distinguished patient for a little operation?

II

Rawn himself expanded in all this social success. He saw doors hitherto closed, opening before him, saw his future unrolling before him also like a scroll. A hundred times a week he walked to his young wife, caught her in his arms, uxoriously infatuated with her youth, her beauty, her aplomb, her fitness for this life which he had chosen. For once he almost forgot to regard himself as a collector of beautiful objects, although the truth was that his wife, Virginia, became more beautiful each day, more superb of line, more calmly easy in air, more nearly faultless of garb and demeanor. She took her place easily and surely among the young matrons of the wealthier circles of the western city. Whereas thousands of auto-cars had passed by Graystone Hall and only a dozen stopped, scores now, of the largest, drove up its winding walks and halted at its doors. The dearest dream of both seemed realized. The hunt in couple had won! They had gained what they desired; that is to say, self-indulgence, ease, idleness, adulation, freedom from care. What more is there to seek? And is not this America?

Gradually John Rawn had been losing the rusticity which had accompanied him well up to middle age. The city now began to leave its imprint. The waistcoat of Mr. Rawn gradually attained a curve unknown to it in earlier years, so that his watch fob now hung in free air when he stood erect. His face was perhaps more florid, his hair certainly more gray. His skin remained fresh and clean, and always he was well-groomed, having the able assistance of his wife now in the selection of his tailoring, as well as her coaching in social usage. They always looked their part. At morning, at noon, or at dewy eve, in any assemblage or any chance situation, they both played in the rÔle assigned to them in their own ambitions. Born of environment wholly unconventional, they now took on that of conventionality as though born to that instead. You could not have found a more perfect type of respectability than John Rawn, a more absolutely valid exemplar of good social form than his wife, Virginia. All things prospered under their magic touch, the genii of the lamp seemed theirs. No problems remained for them to solve. They had in their own belief attained what may be attained in American life, and they were happy. Or, that is to say, they should at least have been happy, if their theory of life and success, and of those like to theirs, be correct. At least they were what they were—products of a wonderful country which makes millionaires overnight and produces out of bakeries women of one generation fit to be the wives of princes born of forty kings.

III

We are, some of us at least, accustomed to worship such as these as they ride by upon the high car of success, accustomed to envy and to emulate them. If that vehicle be the car of Juggernaut, crushing under its wheels multitudes of those who worship, it is no concern of those who sit aloft. For a long time Mr. Rawn and his wife remained ignorant of the fact that one victim under the wheels of their success was none other than Mr. Rawn's daughter, Grace.

Alas! for that young lady. She unfortunately had been now for almost a year an aspirant in her own right to a seat upon the car of ease and luxury; yet here she saw herself swiftly supplanted, and worse than that, swiftly forgotten! Her year of quasi-place and power had left her unwilling to return to her own humble home. She remained on at Graystone Hall, now rarely visited by her husband. She found herself calmly accepted, yet calmly neglected as well. Very naturally she hated the new Mrs. Rawn with all her soul; a hatred which that lady repaid with nothing better than a straight look into Grace's dark eyes, a look innocent, calm, and wholly fearless. Grace must now see the very jewels her own mother should have worn, blazing at the neck and hands of her stepmother; must see that lady taking assuredly and as of right, what Grace could now never ask or expect for herself. With an unapproachable and wholly hateful air of distinction and good breeding which rankled most of all in crude Mrs. Halsey's heart, Virginia Rawn sat high on the car of Juggernaut; and the car of Juggernaut passed on. In pride and delight over his young wife, John Rawn really forgot his daughter. The young new wife did the same, or appeared to do so.

IV

John Rawn had told the truth to his wife when first he had declared his sentiments toward her—he never before that time really had known love, or at least had not known infatuated love such as that he felt for her. He exulted in the vistas of delight which he saw before them, fancying them endless. The very sight of his wife, cool, faultless, self-possessed, haughty, filled him with a sense of his own importance, making him feel that he was one of God's chosen. She was his, he had found her, discovered her, collected her. She was his to put upon a pedestal, to admire, to display, to worship, to load down with jewels. He had something now which other men coveted and envied. He flaunted his ownership of such a woman in their faces. What more can a rich man do than that same? Is that not the dream and test of power—to secure what others may not have, to secure special privileges in this life? And is not the quest of beauty the first business of him who has attained power? Of all these special privileges which had come to John Rawn so swiftly in these late rapid years, none so delicately and warmly filled his heart as that of being able to call Virginia Rawn his own. Why blame him? The sultans of thirty or forty generations have devised nothing better than this test of power.

John Rawn, with all properly aristocratic leanings toward sultanry, lacked certain elements of sultanhood in strength, but had others in weakness. He did not know that in reality he was in the hands of a stronger nature than his own. "She's got him jumping through hoops," was the comment of one young man. "He'll sit up and bark whenever she gives the word!" But Rawn did not know that he was barking and jumping, his tongue hanging out excitedly. In all his mental pictures of himself he fancied himself to be a figure of dignity, of strength, indeed of majesty.

CHAPTER II
FOUR BEING NO COMPANY

I

Happy in his newly-found domestic delights, Mr. Rawn was perhaps more careless than otherwise he would have been regarding business affairs, and that at a time when they needed care. The truth was that matters still lagged at the factory, as Rawn ought to have known. Indeed, he did know; but always his curious helplessness in regard to Halsey—who alone knew the last secrets of the most intricate devices of the company's property—continued to oppress him. And always here was his wife to console him and to interest him.

The distance between Graystone Hall and the factory apparently was becoming greater from month to month. Sometimes Halsey came to visit his wife, but these visits of late became fewer and fewer, as that lady became more and more discontented, less and less eager to receive the attentions of him who had so signally failed to place her where Virginia sat in power. This alone left Halsey none too happy himself at the prospect of any of his perfunctory calls; and moreover, he found himself expected now to be more careful in his attire, in his conduct about Graystone Hall, where full evening dress tacitly was desired at dinner, and where an aristocratic chill was habitual at any hour; things not customary in Ann Sullivan's household on the factory side of the city. Not that Halsey needed to excite social misgivings. He was a clean-faced, manly chap, lean, sinewy and strong, and might, save for his rather toil-marked hands, have passed for any of the throng of young men who at times came under one pretense or other to visit Mr.—and Mrs.—Rawn.

II

These, in company with Grace, he one evening found alone, seated on the wide gallery that overlooked the lake front. He did notice then, as he never before at any time had noticed, a singular truth—Virginia Rawn's eyes seemed almost reluctant to leave him. He was half her husband's age. Moreover, there was something in the somber glow of his eye, in the occasional look of his face—rapt, absorbed, remote, pondering on things not made patent to all about him—which held for her ever a stronger fascination. She wondered if things were known in his philosophy no longer reckoned in her own; but which once might have been germane to her as well. She often looked at him.

The evening was clear and cool, the lake stirred with no more than a gentle breeze. The silver ladder of the moon's light was flung down across the gently moving waters. The breath of flowers was all about. Calm, ease, assuredness were here. The voice of the hostess was delightfully low and sweet. All things seemed in keeping.

Rawn welcomed his son-in-law with his customary largeness of air. "Come on out, Charles," said he, "join us; the evening is pleasant. Won't you have a cigar?" He fetched with his own hands the box of weeds—"Take several, my boy, take as many as you like. I give two dollars apiece for these by the box at my club, and you can't beat them in the city or anywhere else."

Halsey listened almost absent-mindedly, and Rawn returned to his seat near his wife, a little apart on the gallery. The master of Graystone Hall was intoxicated more than usually this evening with her. She sat now in the dim light, a cool, dainty and beautiful picture, in blue and ivory Duchesse satin and filmy laces, gowned fit for a wedding or a ball, as she always was of an evening at home, with just a gem gleaming here and there in the occasional glimpse of light which broke through the windows at the back of the gallery as their curtains shifted in the breeze. At that moment John Rawn would have been glad to have the entire world share boxes of cigars with him. John Rawn, collector—what man on all the North Shore Drive at that moment could claim such surroundings as these?

"I thank you, Mr. Rawn," said Halsey, taking a single cigar from the box which his host had placed upon the near-by tabouret. "I think I'll be content with one. I mustn't get into bad habits; I'm afraid Jim Sullivan and I can't afford them at two dollars apiece just yet!"

III

He moved now quietly and dutifully apart toward the end of the gallery where sat a less resplendent figure, that of his wife, Grace. She had not risen to meet him.

"Well," said he, as he sank into a seat beside her.

"Well, then?" she answered, and turned upon him a face dour, inexpressive, pasty, almost frowning.

"Is that all you have to say to me?" she began later, as he sat smoking.

"I haven't had much chance yet," he commented.

"No, I should say not! This is the first time you've been here for four weeks! Have you stopped to think of that? You seem to care little enough how I get on!"

Halsey paused for a moment before replying. "That hardly seems fair to me."

"Why isn't it fair? It's the truth."

"Well, I've been busy all the time, as you know. Besides again, when it comes to that, it doesn't seem to me that you've been altogether anxious to have me come."

"You talk as though you worked day and night and had nothing else to do."

"Well, I suppose I could come over—every night after dinner—wash the soot and the cinders from me, get out my four-hundred-dollar go-cart, and come over here to call on my wife in my thirty-dollar evening togs, couldn't I? She lives in Graystone Hall. Where do I live? What do I get out of life, when it comes to that, Grace? When I do come here, you begin to nag me before I get settled down. I always used to say when I was a young man, that if I ever found myself married to a nagging woman, I'd just quit her!"

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded imperiously.

IV

Again Halsey was deliberate, although he half sighed as he replied: "Pretty much what I say, Mrs. Halsey, since you ask me. The truth is, you quit me when I needed you. I have had worry enough from this business at the factory. I don't particularly care to have all other kinds of worry on top of that. You had all this place to fall back on. Your father's taken care of you. But he hasn't taken care of me very well. The fact is, I've been scapegoat about long enough!"

"You seem to have learned the factory ways of talking!"

"Yes, I don't know but I am getting rather plain, and common, and vulgar. It's a little different here—even from Kelly Row, let alone our place on the West Side. I fancy you're getting the North Shore accent, along with other things.—It all only means that we're that much further apart, Grace. Did you ever stop to think of that?"

"I've had time to think of plenty of things," she answered bitterly.

"You had plenty of time to think of some of them before you came over here," he rejoined. "You didn't like what your husband could offer you, and you chose something better which your father did offer you. You've quit me, practically. You've not been in our home twice since you came to live here. I've seen that poor baby of ours only once in a while since you left our home for this. You've not been a wife to me. That's the truth about it—I might as well not be married! That comes mighty near being the situation, since you put it up to me to answer."

"Then what do you mean?"

"The courts would make it a case of desertion, if you force me to say that," answered Halsey. "Now, I don't want to live on this way for ever! I'm a young man, and my career's ahead of me! I've got to choose regarding my life before long! And I'm going to choose. I'm not going to let things run on in this way any further."

"That's what my father always said! Your career; your life! Where does your wife come in?"

"You come in precisely where you say you want to come in, Grace. We get what we earn in this world. If you leave me and take up a life which I can't share, if you leave my house and don't care for what I can give you—why there's not much left to talk about as to where you come in. You come in here. I belong over there."

"You're selfish! All men are, I think."

"I'm not going to argue about that in the least, Grace, except to say that it's the Rawn half of you that said that. The Rawn half of you can't see anything but its own part of the world. It wasn't the Rawn half of you that I married. You were different, then. You're not much like your mother, Grace! And I married the part of you that was like your mother. She was a good woman, and a good wife."

"You must not speak of her!"

"Oh, yes, I must, and I shall when I like. It's all in evidence. There's the record." He nodded toward the two dim figures at the other end of the gallery. "She's very beautiful, yes, very beautiful!" His eyes lingered on the figure of Virginia Rawn, faintly outlined, cool in satin and laces.

"She'd like to hear you say that!" sneered his wife.

"I perceive, my dear, that you two love each other very much. But as I was saying, you don't seem to me, Grace, to be much like your own mother—you're more like your stepmother, over there, in some ways. Your mother didn't change. She made good—if you'll let me use some more factory slang—on the old ways, on her own old lines. That's what I call class, breeding, blood, if you like—just plain North American sincerity and simplicity. She didn't pretend, she didn't try to climb where she knew she couldn't go. That's what I call blood!"

"Thank you! You're sincere also, at least."

V

He seemed not to hear her. He went on. "But you've changed. You dropped me. Your head was turned with all this sort of thing.... Since these things are true, are you coming back to me?" He found himself wrenching his eyes away from the cool dim figure far down the long gallery.

She straightened up suddenly, pale. "Back!—to that? To live in that hole—?"

"Yes, just back to that, Grace. It's all I have to offer you. Just that hole."

"I'm not happy here."

"Then why do you stay here? Why don't you come back to me?"

"Because I couldn't be happy over there any more, either! I know it. I admit it. It's got me—I couldn't go back to the old ways, the ways we'd have to live. Why can't you come here—why doesn't Pa give us money enough—"

He turned to her now gravely. "I suppose it's the pace—yes, it's got you, and a lot of others. But I'm not taking that sort of money just yet. And that doesn't answer my question. I've come over to-night to arrive at some understanding about us two. I want to know where I am. There are going to be changes, one way or another."

She turned to him suddenly again. "What's wrong over at that factory, Charley?" she asked. "Why haven't you made good before this? My father has been on the point of tearing up things a dozen times! He's sore at you—awfully sore."

"Yes? How do you know I haven't made good?"

"Then why has Pa talked so?"

"For the very good reason that he doesn't know any better than to talk that way. He hasn't got any more sense. He didn't talk that way to me."

"Then you have got it—you've made the discovery—it'll work?"

"Our machines not only will work, but have been working," said he calmly. "I haven't seen fit to tell your father. I'm going to tell you, however, that all this was my idea from the first. If I haven't been a competent manager, let him get some one more competent. I'll take what I know with me in my own head. I'm saying to you, his daughter, that I worked out this idea, myself, and all he did was to get the money in the first place for it. For that reason I call this discovery mine, to do with as I like. I haven't been bought and paid for, myself. I don't want money when it costs too much. I've just begun to understand things lately."

"Yes, I've worked it out into practical form," he concluded, as she sat silent. "Your father never did and never can. He's got to come to me, to me, right here. Since you drive me to it, I'll just tell you one thing. I've had this whole thing in my own hands for more than eight months! The company doesn't know it, he doesn't know it, no one knows it. I've been just waiting—to see whether I had a wife or not."

"You never told? Then you've been disloyal, you've been a coward! You took his money—"

"All right," said Halsey suddenly, grimly, "that's all I need. I see, now. I know what to do now."

"But you didn't tell father!" she went on fiercely. "And we all knew how much has been depending on that factory. Weren't we all in that—didn't we all help, from the very first? Didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, you and your mother," said Halsey. "You've had or will have all you earned. She got divorced from her husband, you may get divorced from me! It's a fine world, isn't it? We've all been chasing for more money. Well, here we are! There's a couple over there, here's another one here. Fine, isn't it?"

VI

"But, Charles!" She moved toward him and laid a hand on his arm. "You don't stop to reflect on what you are saying! If you have that secret in your hands, why, don't you see—don't you see—"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, even Pa will have to come to you! You won't be poor then."

"I should say he would have to come to me!" said Charles Halsey slowly. "Yes, I dare say. I dare say, also, I could make a lot of money whether he did or didn't."

"Listen, Charley. He's got everything, and he wants everything. He's my father, but he doesn't care. He—he sold me out. What do we owe to him and her? What did he do to my mother? I tell you, he thinks of no one but himself. Yet you and I—we who found that idea and worked it out, who have it in our own hands now, as you say—you and I have got the whip in our own hands now, it seems to me."

"You talk excellent business sense, Mrs. Halsey. I compliment you. It seems that you begin to discover something in your husband and his possibilities. It's a trifle late, but you delight me!"

"Well, I didn't know, you see," she murmured, pawing at him vaguely, in a fitful and inefficient essay at some coquettish art, grotesque in these conditions.

She was a woman of small feminine charm at best. She sat there now, angular, stiff, unbeautiful, the sort of woman no clothes can make well-dressed. Already she had disclosed somewhat of her soul. What appeal, then, physical, emotional, moral, could she make to him—a student, a visionary, an idealist—at such a moment? And did there not remain that same cool distant figure from whom he had so constantly to wrench his eyes—and his heart? Yes; and his heart! Halsey's face was dull red. He was unhappy. The world seemed to him only a hideous nightmare, full of disappointments, injustices, of wrongs that cried aloud for righting. Ah, the comparison now was here, fair and full and unavoidable!

VII

"No, you didn't know," said he slowly. "A lot of people don't. Now let me tell you a few things more. You didn't know that something like a year ago your father told me that he'd make me a present of fifty-thousand dollars the day I could run a car from the factory to this place on a charge taken from our own overhead receiver-motors."

"A start for a million dollars!" she murmured. "You get that—when you succeed?"

"Yes, that is to say, I could have had that any day in the week these past eight months—if he really has got that much left where he can realize on it. He's pretty well spread out."

"Then you have had it—what have you done with the money?"

"I presume I look as though I'd spent or could spend a mere fifty thousand dollars or so, don't I?" was his quiet answer. "No, I didn't have it, and I haven't got it. I'll say this much to you, however, that I ran my little old car over here to-night on a charge taken out of one of the overhead receiver-motors of the International Power Company—a motor completed on my own ideas, and by my own hands. It's mine, I tell you—mine!"

"Charley!" She caught him by the wrists, with both hands, eagerly. "You can give me the things I've got used to having! I'll go back—oh! I'll go back—we'll go on together! I hate her so—you don't know!"

"That's nice of you, Grace; but you've guessed wrong. I've not got that fifty thousand yet."

"But you can have."

"Yes, I can. What could I buy with it? For one thing, I could buy back my wife?"

"But Charley! We're rich! You've succeeded!"

"No, I am poor, I've failed. I'm just beginning to see how much I've failed!"

"If you don't tell me the truth about this I'll do it myself!" she exclaimed fiercely. "You've not been loyal—you've taken pay!"

"Your father took his pay from me," was his half-savage answer. "He's been paid enough! As for me, I don't want any more of this sort of pay."

"What are you going to do—you're not going to sell out to some one else?"

"No, my dear, I'm not going to do precisely what you suggested I should do just a moment ago. I'm not going to sell out. I could do that, too, and make more than any fifty thousand. The foreman in our factory, who knows very little, can sell out to-morrow morning for ten thousand dollars, maybe double or treble that now. The watchman on our door can sell out when he likes. We can all sell out, any of us sell out. But we haven't! If there has been any selling out it has been done by those who built this place here—the place which you found better than the best home I could offer you."

She sat back stiff, silent, somber. "You—you never mean that you are going to throw this away, then!" she asked at length. "What earthly good will that do? Pa'll have it out of you somehow! I'll—I'm going to tell him!"

"Try it," said Charles Halsey easily.

She had courage. "Father," she called out. "Pa! Come here—at once!"

VIII

Rawn rose suddenly up from his chair at the startling quality in her voice. "What's that, Grace?" he called across the long gallery.

"Come here, I want you! We've got something to say to you."

Halsey sat motionless.

Rawn approached slowly, obviously annoyed. "If it's important—" he began. He had found love-making to his young wife especially delicious this evening, although he mistook her strange silence and preoccupation merely for wifely coyness.

"It is important!" Grace exclaimed; and rising, clutched at his arm.

"Well, then, what's it all about, what's it about? Come, come!"

"Charley's done it, he's got it—he's got the machines finished—over there—!" Her voice was almost a scream, hoarse, croaking. She stood bent, tense.

"What's that?" demanded Rawn. "What do you mean? Is that the truth, boy?"

"He came over in his own car, under International overhead—he told me so, right now," she went on, half hysterically. "You owe him money—a lot, a pile of money—he told me so right now—it's worth more than any fifty thousand. Oh, we're going to have money too. You see!"

Rawn shook off her arm and half flung her back in her chair. "What's this about, Halsey?" he said. "Is it true?"

Halsey nodded calmly, but said nothing.

Rawn half-assailed him, his large hand on his shoulder. "Did you get the current?" he demanded. "Did you really come over under power out of one of our overheads?"

"Yes, to-night," said Halsey calmly. "Often before."

IX

"Why, my boy, my boy!" began John Rawn. At once he stood back, large, complaisant, jubilant. "My boy!" was all he could say. Not even his soul could at once figure out in full acceptance all the future which these quiet words implied.

"Come!" he explained after a moment, excitedly. "Let's get to the telephone! I want the wires right away! I'll make a million out of this before morning!"

"And write me a check for my fifty thousand to-night?" smiled Halsey.

"Surely I will—I've told you I would—I'll do more than that—I'll make it a twenty-five thousand extra for good measure. I'll have the check taken care of to-morrow at my bank, as soon as I can get down-town! Oh, things'll begin to happen now, I promise you!"

"I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to use the wire, Mr. Rawn," said Charles Halsey quietly. "And never mind about your check."

"What do you mean? You're going to try to hold me up?"

"No, I'm not going to try to hold you up at all. If there's any question about that possibility, I can get a million to-morrow as easily as I can any fraction of a million to-night, Mr. Rawn, and it's just as well you should know that, perhaps."

"A million?" croaked John Rawn. "You'd sell us out?"

"No, I said. I'm not going to sell you out, Mr. Rawn. And you're not going to buy me out."

"Of course not, of course not," laughed Rawn hoarsely. "You didn't understand me."

"You haven't understood me either, Mr. Rawn. Now, what would you do if I told you that after taking my charge for the little car yonder I turned about and dismantled every motor in the shop—destroyed them all—locked up the secret, ended the whole game now—to-night? What would you say to that?"

"By God! I'd kill you!" said John Rawn.

CHAPTER III
THE STEP-MOTHER-IN-LAW

I

On this very beautiful evening, in this very beautiful scene—as beautiful as any to be found in all that luxurious portion of a great city representing the flower of a great country's civilization—Graystone Hall was a double stage. At the back of the tall mansion house countless auto-cars passed in brilliant procession, carrying countless men and women, personal evidences of all the ease and luxury that wealth can bring; and of these who passed, the most part looked in with envy at the tall mansion house beyond the curving lines of shrubbery, brilliantly illuminated now, the picture of beauty and ease, of peace and content. More than one soft-voiced woman murmured, "Beautiful!" as she passed. More than one man, more than one woman, envied the owners of this palace.

"He's awfully gone on his wife, they say," commented one young matron, much as many did. "Not that I see much in her myself—although she seems to have a sort of way about her, after all."

"Lucky beggar!" growled her husband.

"Yes, they're both lucky."

That both Mr. and Mrs. Rawn were lucky seemed to be the consensus of opinion of the procession of those passing at this moment along the great driveway, and hence looking upon the rear stage of the drama then in progress. But they saw no drama. The evening was beautiful. The spot was one of great beauty. Apparently all was peace and content. There was no drama visible, only a stage set for a scene of happiness. Yet, two hundred yards from the point of this belief, on the stage of the dimly-lighted gallery facing the lake, the comedy of life and ambition, of success and sorrow, moved on briskly; moved, indeed, to its appointed and inevitable end.

II

Rawn's voice, harsh, half animal in its savagery, wakened some sudden kindred savagery in young Halsey's soul. In a flash the spark rose between steel and flint. The accumulated resentment of many days made tinder enough for Halsey now.

"All right, Mr. Rawn," said he, his head dropping, his chin extended. "Go on with the killing now, if you like. I'm going to tell you right here, that sort of talk will do you no good. If you kill me you kill my secret. It isn't yours, and neither you nor any other man is apt to set it going again."

"You hound, you cur!" half sobbed Rawn. His daughter stood, tense, silent, unnoticed at his elbow.

"Thank you! Now, I'll tell you. I dismantled every motor, and I'm never going to build them again for you. I meant every word of what I said. Also I mean this!"

As he spoke he rose and struck Rawn full in the face with his half-clenched hand. The sound of the blow could have been heard the whole length of the gallery—was so heard. An instant later, half roaring, John Rawn closed with the younger man....

The women, plucking at their arms, could do nothing to separate the two, indeed were not noticed in the struggle. As to that, the whole matter was over in an instant. Halsey was far the stronger of the two. He caught the right wrist of Rawn as he smote down clumsily, caught his other wrist in the next instant, and then slowly, by sheer strength, forced him back and down until at last he crowded him into the chair which Grace a moment earlier had vacated. The bony fingers of his hand worked havoc on John Rawn's wrist, on his twisted arm. Halsey was not so long from his college athletics, where he had been welcome on several teams. He was younger than Rawn, his body was harder from hard work and abstemiousness. He was the older man's master.

"Sit down!" he panted. "I don't think you'll do this killing very soon!"

III

Rawn, for the first time in his life, faced a situation which he could not dominate by arrogance and bluster. For the first time in his life he had met another man, body to body, in actual physical encounter; and that man was his master! All at once the consciousness of this flashed through every fiber of him, bodily and mental. He had met a man stronger than himself—yes, stronger both in body and in mind. The consciousness of that latter truth also sank deep into his heart. It was a moment of horror for him. He, John Rawn, master of this place, rich, happy, prosperous—he, John Rawn, beaten—subdued—it could not be! Heaven never would permit that!

They all remained tense, silent, motionless, for just half an instant; it seemed to them a long time. Halsey at length straightened and turned toward the door.

"I'm going," said he dully. "Good by, Grace."

Rawn turned, confused, distracted. He cared for no more of the physical testing of this difference. But he saw Success passing in the reviled figure of his son-in-law. "No, no!" he cried—"Jennie—he fouled me—but don't let him go—he'll ruin us, do you hear?"

Halsey was within the tall glass doors and passing toward the front entry. He heard the rustle of skirts back of him and felt a light hand upon his shoulder.

"Well," he began; and turning, faced young Mrs. Rawn!

IV

"I'm sorry," he stammered, "it's disgraceful. I beg your pardon with all my heart. But I couldn't help it. He struck me first with what he said. He threatened me. Let me go. I'll never come back here again. I'm sorry—on your account—"

"Charles," she said softly, "Charley, wait. Where are you going?"

"To the divorce courts, and then to hell."

"But you mustn't go away like this. I'm sorry, too. Wait!"

Suddenly moved by some swift, irresistible impulse, perhaps born of this unregulated scene where all seemly control seemed set aside, she put both her white bare arms about his neck and looked full into his eyes, her own eyes bright. He caught her white wrists in his hands; but did not put away her arms. He stood looking at her, frowning, uncertain. His blood flamed.

"It's disgrace," he said, "I admit it. I can't square it any way in the world. I'm sorry on your account—awfully sorry!" His blood flamed, flamed.

"Listen!" she said, panting, eager, her voice with some strange, new, compelling quality in it, foreign to her as to himself. "You mustn't go. You mustn't ruin the future of us all in just a minute of temper. Yen mustn't ruin yourself, or—me. Besides, there's Grace!"

"Oh, Grace!"

"But she's your wife."

"Not any longer. She's chosen for herself. She left me and would not come back. I'm going now. I'm on my own from this time."

"Why not?" she asked coolly. "But why wreak ruin on us all? You don't stop to think!"

"Yes, it will set him back pretty badly—" Halsey nodded toward the bowed frame of Rawn, dimly visible, in the gallery's shade, through the tall glass doors.

"Yes," she said slowly, "he's my husband, surely."

—"Who has given you everything."

She nodded, her arms still about his neck. "Let me think this out for all of us, Charley. Keep matters as they are until I have time to think—won't you do that much—just that little—for me?"

His hands were still upon her wrists as he looked down upon her from his height, his eyes angry, his face frowning, disturbed. Worn almost to gauntness, tall, sinewy, of a certain distinction in look, as he stood there before her now an ignorant observer might have thought the two lovers, he her lover, not her stepson, she at the least his younger sister, surely not his mother by mixed marriage.

V

As they stood thus, Rawn turning, saw them through the tall glass door. His face grew eager. "He's not gone," he whispered hoarsely to his daughter, who stood rigid, close at his arm. "She's got him! By Jove! She's a wonder—my wife, my wife—she'll land him yet—she will!"

"Do you see that?" hissed Grace at last, pointing at the door.

"Do I see it—didn't you hear me? Yes, of course I see it!"

"And you'll allow that, between your wife and my husband?"

"Allow it—wife!—why! damn you, girl, what are you talking about—wives and husbands?—what's that to do with this? There's many a million dollars up now, I tell you, on those two standing there. You make a move now—say a word—and I'll wring your neck, do you hear?" He caught her by the wrist. She sank into a chair, sobbing bleakly.

A moment later the two figures beyond the door stood a trifle apart. The arms of Virginia Rawn dropped from Halsey's neck. She laid a hand upon his arm and, side by side, neither looking out toward the gallery, they drew deeper into the room, behind the shelter of a heavy silken curtain which shut off the view.

It was a beautiful night. The long ladder of the moon still lay across the gently rippling lake, which murmured at the foot of Graystone Hall's retaining sea-wall. The scent of flowers was about. It was a scene of peace and beauty and content. John Rawn and his daughter remained upon the gallery for a time.

CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND CURRENT

I

"Charles," said Virginia Rawn, "Charley—" And always her white hand touched his shoulder, his arm, his hand—"You really mustn't go. Believe me, you'll both be sorry to-morrow. You don't know what you're doing! You're only angry now. You'll both be sorry." Her eyes glowed, evaded.

Halsey shook his head. "It's all over, so far as I'm concerned." His eyes, glowing, sought hers.

"Why, Charley, boy, that's all foolishness. Don't you know how wrong it is to talk in that way? What hasn't Mr. Rawn done for you? And she's your wife!"

"He has done little for me and much for himself," he answered hotly. "As for her, his daughter, she left me for him and what he could give her. She liked this sort of thing rather better than what I could do for her. She weighed it up, one side against the other, and she chose this. Most women would, I suppose."

"Charley, how you talk!" Her voice, reproving, none the less was very gentle, very soft. "One would think you were a regular misanthrope. The next thing, you'll be saying that I was that sort of a woman because I live here. Of course, other things being equal, any woman likes comfort. But you seem to think that we all would choose luxury to love."

"Don't you—don't you all?" demanded the unhappy youth. "Some do, of course. Would you? Haven't you?" He was reckless, brutal, now. The young woman before him started, shivered. She passed a hand gropingly across her bosom, across her brow.

II

There was a strained, very strong quality in the air of Graystone Hall that evening. Thought seemed to leap to thought, mind to mind, swiftly, without trouble for many words. These two at last looked at each other face to face, deliberately, she gazing beneath heavy, half-closed lids, a superb, a beautiful woman, a creature for any man's admiration. He was a manly young chap. He stood a victor, as she had seen but now. He gazed at her out of eyes open and direct. Reckless, brutal in his despair, he now allowed—for the first time in all their many meetings—his heart to show through his eyes. For the first time, their eyes met full.

"You must not ask that," said she quickly. "I wouldn't want to tell you anything but the truth about it." She was breathing faster now.

"What is the truth about it? I want to know if any woman is worth while. I'm down and out myself, and it doesn't matter for me. I just wondered."

"I used to see you often about the office," said she irrelevantly, "when you came in to see Mr. Rawn. I rather thought Grace was lucky, then! I was just a girl then, you know, Charley."

"What do you mean, Mrs. Rawn?"

"Nothing. What did you think I meant?"

"I didn't know. I've never dared think much. I supposed everything was going to come out right somehow. Now it's come out wrong. I don't know just where it began. Don't you see, Mrs. Rawn, it's all like a faulty conclusion in logic? It builds up fine for a long time. Then all at once things go wrong—it's absurd, and you wonder why. Well, it's because there's what you call a faulty premise somewhere down close to the start. If that's the case, there isn't anything in all the world is ever going to make a conclusion come out right. I reckon there's a wrong premise somewhere down in my life, or ours, or in this!"—He swept an arm, indicating Mr. Rawn's opulent surroundings.

"I'm only a woman, Charley. Maybe I don't understand you."

"Well, I'll tell you. There's wealth, luxury, everything here. Where did they get it? They took more than their share."

"Now you're talking like a Socialist. Mr. Rawn tells me you are a Socialist, Charley."

"I don't believe I am. But I believe a good many would be if they'd gone through what I have. Now, what those two took, they took from me—what you've got here you got from me. I don't mind that. The big trouble is—the wrong premise about it is—that what they took they took from this people, this country. And there are so many who even are hungry."

"Oh, we'd never get done if we began that way! All success does that way, you know that. Not all can be rich." Her eyes still came about to him.

"Yes, all success succeeds—until that wrong premise comes out. Then there's trouble!"

III

"Are you going to sell us out, Charley?" she demanded suddenly.

"I never sold out anybody. I'm the one that's been sold out."

"Aren't we your real friends?"

"No. You ought to be, but you aren't. The only friends I've got are over there in the factory—Jim and Ann Sullivan, Tim Carney—a few of the working-men that stuck it through. They've killed five men for us over there. Their sluggers are out all the time. As for me, I don't fit in, either there or here. Look here, Mrs. Rawn," he went on, turning upon her suddenly and placing his hand impulsively on hers. "Let me tell you something. I haven't sold out—I'm not going to. Where do you stand yourself?"

Her eyelids fluttered. "Charley," said she, "you know better than to ask me that."

"Yes, I suppose I do," he answered slowly and bitterly. "You stand for this place, for everything that money can buy. Have they made you happy? I often wonder—does money really make people happy? Are you happy?" His eyes were very somber, very direct.

"I wonder if I am," said she suddenly; "and I wonder how you dare ask me. Oh, I'll admit to you I've been ambitious, and always will be. But do you know, some time I'd like to talk with your friend—with Ann Sullivan!"

"Then you'd begin to get at life. You'd be getting down to premises, then, that aren't wrong—with Ann Sullivan and her sort!"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, well, I reckon you'd only find a little sincerity and honesty, and, well—maybe—love, that's all. Just the things I didn't get myself. Have you?"

"Why didn't you?" She ignored his brutal query.

"Because I'm a theorist. Because I'm a visionary and a fool, I reckon. Because I like to see fair play even in a dog fight, and the people of this country aren't getting fair play. Because I'm the sort of fool that Mr. Rawn isn't. There's the difference!

"Are you happy, Mrs. Rawn?" again he demanded suddenly, since she still was silent. "Tell me the truth. I think you know I'm not going to talk. I'm going away somewhere—anyhow for the summer. I suppose, maybe, this is the last time I'll ever see you—in all my life."

She felt the candor of his speech and replied in like kind, smiling slowly. "No use my lying," she said. "You know I'm not happy. And, yes, I know you'll not talk. Who is happy? We all just get on just the best we can. I can take my joy in making other women envy me. Isn't that about what all women want? Isn't that the height and limit of their ambition? Isn't that success, so far as a woman is concerned? Don't they cling to it, all of them—till they get old? I suppose so, but I know it isn't happiness. Yes, I'll admit to you I do miss something." His eyes rested upon her, searching.

Unconsciously she looked down at her wrists. The red mark of his fingers still lingered there. "I'll have to ask Ann Sullivan some time," she laughed.

"One thing," answered Halsey. "She'd tell you that she isn't trying to get the envy of her neighbors. I don't believe she'd be happy in that!"

"Oh, but she's fresh over—she's not American yet, don't you see? She hasn't had a chance—you can't tell what she would do if she were rich."

IV

"There are two ways of looking at it," said Halsey musingly, his anger passing, now leaving him meditative, relaxed. They were talking now as though there were not two others, unhappy, waiting on the gallery near by. "I'll tell you something, if you'll let me talk about myself, Mrs. Rawn."

"Go on; I'm glad!"

"I don't suppose you care for things that interest me. You called me a Socialist. I'll admit that I studied a lot about that, attended their meetings, all that sort of thing. Maybe that made me think. It seems to me that money is rolling up too fast in this country now—we're all mad about money. It's like the big apple with no taste to it. I had it offered me to choose between those two, and I took the little apple that to me seemed sweeter.

"Now, I've perfected that invention. It'll make somebody rich any time I say the word—any time I like that big apple and not the little one—any time I like that success which comes from outside and not from inside. But I've figured that that doesn't mean happiness. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Somehow I believe that Abraham Lincoln, or John Ruskin, or Jim Sullivan, or Tim, or Ann, or Sir Isaac Newton—any thinking person—any philosopher—would come in with me about this. I broke up the machines."

"Why—where it meant ruin?"

"Because they'd tighten up the grip of a few men on the neck of the people! I don't know whether you call that being a Socialist or not, and I don't care. Change is coming. It's not the fault of the poor that it's coming. It's the fault of the rich. I broke them up—because things can't go on this way, money rolling Up all the time for a few, and life getting harder all the time for so many. God didn't make the rivers and the mountains and the forests for that purpose—to give them to a few. We've got to make changes, and big ones, in this government, or we're gone. I'm no Socialist at all. I don't want what some one else has won—if he's won it fair. But the wrong is in our government—the very one of all on earth that meant fair play. We don't get it—now. Some day we must. I don't see what difference it makes what name you give the new form of government. There must be change, that's all; or else we're gone!

"Well now, what they wanted me to do was to give that all to a few. I couldn't do it! By God! Mrs. Rawn, I faced it and I tried, and I couldn't do it! Maybe I was wrong. Anyhow, here I stand."

(Rawn and Virginia)
(Rawn and Virginia)

V

"Do you know," she said at length, slowly, "these are things that never came to my mind in all my life? I never in all my life thought of any of these things. I only wanted—"

"You wanted to win. You wanted what most American women do—money—station—power—to be envied; that's what you played for. Well, you've won! Look at all this about you. I don't suppose there's a woman in this town more admired by men or more envied by women than you. You've got what you craved, I reckon."

"I thought I had. But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!"

"You couldn't give it up," he sneered, "any more than Grace could, and she couldn't any more than a leopard could change its spots. It goes too deep. You couldn't expect anything different.

"I told you I was a student, Mrs. Rawn," he went on after a time. "I haven't got much mind. But somehow, while I don't suppose religion can change business very much, I think of those twelve disciples and their Master, trying to lift the load off of human beings, trying to lift the people of the world up above the day of tooth and claw. I don't reckon they can do it. But you see, each fellow has to choose for himself. I've had this put before me. I could have thrown in with Rawn—-I can do so yet, right here, now, as you know. I can hold him up, as he would hold me up, or any one else—I can take his money—fifty-thousand, a million—I don't think he's really got as much money as most people think. He's in debt, deep. That's all right so long as your credit is good. He has had all sorts of credit—and it depended on me—on my invention. It wasn't his. It isn't going to be. I've told you why.—But you see, I could make him divide even with me—make him take a third, a fourth, of what I'd won. He'd have to come to terms. He knows that. All right, I'm not going to do it! Failure as I am, I've got a few ideas which I think are right. Maybe I got them from Ann Sullivan—I don't know! Go ask her about things."

"And you won't put back the machines? Not even for me?"

"Not even for you," he smiled. "Not that I know what you mean by that." He looked at her keenly. His toil-stained hands twitched uneasily in his lap.

VI

"You're talking about things that never came into my thoughts in all my life," said she, with the same strange deliberation, the same strange direct look at him. "But you couldn't expect an ignorant woman to learn it all in one night, could you?"

"I'm not trying to convert you, Mrs. Rawn. I'm going to leave this place. You'll not see me again. But I'm not trying to change you. I wouldn't—"

"Listen!" she broke out sharply. "I'm set to do that for you—I'm expected by him, out there, to change you. Isn't that the truth? Didn't you see?"

"Yes, it's easy to see," he answered grimly. "It's up to you."

"It's up to you and me, Charley, yes. You can ruin me and all of us by walking out that door. You can break the lives of those two people out there, and mine, yes, of course you can, and your own.—You can do all that. You can make me come down from this place where you say everybody envies me, and you can have everybody laughing at me and forgetting me in less than six months' time. You can get me snubbed, if you like; you can make me wretched and miserable, if you like. Of course you can. Do you want to do that?"

"It isn't fair to put it before me in that way."

"I do put it before you in that way. But that isn't the worst of what you could do—you'd leave me unsettled and unhappy for ever if you went away to-night that way—Charley!—"

"What can you mean—?"

"Things are moving fast to-night, Charley, and we're discussing matters pretty openly—"

"Yes," he nodded. "I don't want to set a wife against her husband. Neither must you. But the truth is, Mr. Rawn is not what a good many think he is—"

VII

"Do you think that's news to me?" she asked of him, and looked full into his eyes.

"Good God, Mrs. Rawn! What do you mean?"

"Much what you do!"

"But you loved him—you married him!"

"Oh, yes, surely. That was some months ago. But you see, there's a distinction between master and superior."

"I'm very miserable," was his simple answer. "Things are getting too much confused for me. And now you say you'd never be happy if I left you now, to-night—"

"Then why go, so long as we are so confused? Why don't you wait? I've asked you to! Do you expect to settle all this in a half-hour's time, in a passion of anger? Now listen. Although he's my husband, and she's your wife, I don't blame you. I'm only asking you to wait a little. I'm making it personal, Charley!"

"How dare you do that, Mrs. Rawn?"

"Because I have the right to do it! I don't intend to have you make me more unhappy than I am. I've just told you I'm not happy. I don't know—" she laughed a little amused ripple of laughter—"but I'd have been happier if he had handled you as you did him! I'm not talking just the way I meant to when I came through those doors to stop you. I'm like you—it's all confusing—I'll have to wait, the same as you. There's a lot of things to be figured out! I'm covetous of everything in the world—that any woman ever had—from the Queen of England to Ann Sullivan! Yes, I'm ambitious, I'll admit that. And you've set me thinking—I'm wondering—wondering what really is the best a woman can get out of life."

"Mrs. Rawn, you've got success as you understand it, by marrying a middle-aged man. You're young."

She shook her head. "It isn't possible," said she frankly, catching his thought. "I'm far enough along to see that!"

"You know what Mr. Rawn did when he wished to change—he put away what he had, and reached out for that which he had not. For my own part, I don't see how any woman could be happy with him. He ruined the life of one woman, his wife; of another, his daughter. Now, you tell me he hasn't made an absolutely happy life for yet another woman—yourself. Oh, it's brutal for me to say it, but it's true, and you've just said it's true."

"If only it could come to the question of what a woman really wanted—" she resumed, pondering.

"That's for each woman to figure out for herself, Mrs. Rawn. I've only said what most American women want. We're living in a wholesome and beautiful age, Mrs. Rawn!"

"I thought I was right!" said she suddenly, looking up. "Now I believe I was wrong. Charley!—"

VIII

"It's in the air," she said, as though to herself, after a time, finding him silent, troubled, pale. "Don't you know, Charley—" She turned to him.

He leaned toward her now, his lined young face illuminated with sudden emotion. "I wish I could explain that to you, Mrs. Rawn," said he. "I feel it, too! Now maybe we can understand! How did I drive my car over here, charged from one of our overhead motors? Ah, that's my secret. But I took it out of the air! That motor of ours was in tune with it—the great power that's in the air, everywhere. Mrs. Rawn, it's getting in tune with the world that makes you happy. Nothing else is going to do it! Get in tune with the plan! All I've ever done in my receiving-motor has been to get in tune with the hills and the rivers and the forests—with life."

IX

She leaned toward him now, that on her face which he had never seen there before. He looked her fair in the eyes and went on, firmly, strongly.

"I've done that; and I've said to myself that I wasn't going to throw that away and give it to a few, when it belonged to everybody. I am unhappy as you are; more so. I'm not in tune with life as we live it. No, I certainly am not. But I know that to be perfectly happy we've got to get in tune with the purpose of the world. What is it? What is that second current? I don't know. What is it? You tell me—"

"I'll tell you what I believe," said Virginia Rawn slowly, her hands dropping in her lap, her face pale. "I shouldn't wonder if it was—love!"

"And that belongs to everybody, not just a few—to every one—not just to the rich men, with money to buy what they want?" He was looking at her keenly now.

"To everybody?" She shook her head. "Not always, Charley."

"Why not—Virginia?"

CHAPTER V
MEANS TO AN END

I

"Well, he's gone, then?"

Rawn turned toward his wife a face years older than it had been an hour ago, a face haggard and lined, pasty in color. His bitter agitation was evident in his voice, in his expression, in the stoop of his shoulders—in a score of signs not usual with him. Virginia was even more noncommittal than her wont as she faced him. Grace had disappeared.

"What did you do—how did you handle him, Jennie?" he began—"you were talking for over an hour there! Did you manage to hold things together—will he let up?"

She faced him full now, as he stood in the blaze of the electric lights in the interior of the house, where Halsey had left her, in the chair from which she had not moved since his departure. Every delicate, clear-cut feature was fully visible now. Her lips just parted to show the double row of her white teeth in a faint smile. Her chin was a trifle up, her head high.

"He will wait a little while," she answered quietly. "At least, I think so."

"Good! Fine! I knew you'd do it, Jennie! You're a wonder!—I don't think there's a woman in all the world like you!" He advanced toward her.

"Don't paw me over!" she exclaimed, drawing back.

"Well, now, then—I only meant—"

"I don't want to talk," she said. "He's gone, yes, and he'll not do anything for a little while, I think. It's enough for to-night—I'm tired. This has been a horrible evening for me. I never thought to see a time like this!"

"Horrible for all of us!" exclaimed John Rawn. "That man took advantage of me out there—I ought to have wrung his neck for him, and I would have done it if it hadn't been for you two women. Of course, we don't want scenes if they can be avoided, for there's no telling what talk might run into if it got out. But just the same, Jennie, don't you see—" and his face assumed a still more anxious look—"he can ruin us all whenever he gets ready, and he's wise enough to know that. I can't do anything with him now. Something's gone wrong with him, and I don't know what!"

II

"No, you don't know what," she said slowly. "I don't think you in the least imagine what!"

"Do you, then?" he demanded. "If you do, why don't you tell? Do you know that everything we've got in the world is up at stake on this? He can kill my credit, he can split this company wide open, he can break me in spite of all. See what he's done in return for what I've done for him! Sometimes I wonder if there's such a thing as honor left in the world!"

"So! Do you?" She rose now, and would have left him.

"Well, I want to talk this over with you. Please, Jennie. Sit down," he said. "Tell me what you said. I want to know where things are, so I can act to-morrow—or maybe even before to-morrow. You don't realize what a hole I'm in."

"What did I say to him?" she repeated, looking down at her wrists. "Nothing very much. I told him if he went on he'd ruin us all; that it wasn't right for him to do it. I told him we wanted him—I wanted him—to wait—for my sake."

"For your sake?"

"Yes, I did," she answered calmly. "I said that."

"It was best!" he cried, rising and walking up and down excitedly. "What a mind you have, Jennie—what a woman you are! Where'd I be without you, I wonder now? Why, of course, that was the way! Any man will do anything that you tell him to, especially a young man—of course, of course!"

"Thank you," she commented coldly; "thank you very much."

III

He sought to put a consoling or an explanatory hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off, shivering.

"I don't mean anything," he began confusedly. "Get me straight, now. I only wanted to say that when you work for me in this you are working for your own sake also. It's all up to you, Jennie, right now. If you can't land him, we're gone—it's no use my trying to do anything with him. Do you know, I'm going to send you out after him."

"Send me out?"

"Yes; things have to be done the best way they can be done. That fellow can say one word which'll ruin us in one day's time. He can break the values in International more than we can mend in months. Our men would begin to cover as soon as they caught a hint that anything was really wrong. As for me, I'm spread out for millions in the general market. If they began to hammer me I couldn't come through—I wouldn't last a week. The thing to do is to keep this news safe until I can protect myself—until I can protect us all. Now it's you, Jennie, that's got to do that—it's you! I'm sending you out after him."

"I always thought, Mr. Rawn," said she, "that you played a dangerous game, so long as you simply trusted that he'd do anything you told him."

"Yes, I see it now. But he always was odd—he always held something back. I tell you, he's crazy! Now, he's either just crazy over his fool Socialist ideas, or else he's going to hold out for a squeeze. In the first case you can handle him. In the second, I can.

"You see—I couldn't tell our directorate," he went on; "but there was always something lacking which I couldn't handle myself. We need him, and we've got to have him! You can get him, I know you can. You can do anything you like. You're wonderful!"

She sat and looked at him, her lips still parted in the same enigmatic smile which he did not like to see; but she made no answer.

"What's wrong with him?" he went on immediately. "What does he say is the trouble, anyway? And is it the truth that he's got the overhead current?"

She nodded. "Of course, I know something about it from my work in the office. Yes, he told me that he had done what you have all been trying to do so long. He said he came over under power from the overhead—just as he told you."

"He may be lying, for all we know. You can't look at a car and tell where its charge came from. Electricity is electricity, to all intents and purposes. What I want to know is, what he's got against us, anyhow, Jennie?"

"Well, for one thing, he seemed troubled because Grace would not go back with him. He seemed to think that you and the life you could give her had been the reason for her abandoning him."

"Why, what nonsense! Grace hasn't abandoned him! And I only got her over here because I needed her myself—before—well, before we were married. Who was to take care of me, I'd like to know? And you say he complains of that!"

"That was one of the things."

"But Grace would go back! She's none too well pleased now, since you and I have taken charge here. She'd go back to Charley to-morrow if he asked her—why, I'd make him take care of her, of course. The trouble with him is, he values his own personal affairs too much. That's no way to begin in the business world. A man has to bend everything to the one purpose of success. Look at me, for instance."

IV

She did look at him, calmly, coldly, without the tremor of an eyelid, without raising a hand to touch him as he stood close by, without indeed making any verbal answer. A slight shudder passed over her, visible in the twitch of her shoulders.

"It's getting cooler!" he exclaimed. "I'll fetch a wrap for you." And so hastened away, obsequious, uxorious, as he always was with her.

"But Charley never would take any counsel from anybody," resumed he presently. "He's always been tractable enough, that's true; never raised much of a disturbance until to-night—I don't see why he cut up so ugly now. He's not crazy over Grace, and if the truth be told, Grace isn't the sort of girl that a man would get crazy over. You're that sort."

"Perhaps not," she smiled faintly. "Just the same, Grace's attitude may have started him to thinking. When he began thinking he seemed to conclude that all the world was wrong."

"And he's starting in to set it right! He's going in for the uplift stunt, eh? That's the way with a lot of these reformers! They want to set the world right according to their own ideas. They don't pay any attention to the men who keep them from starving. I made that boy—what he's got he owes to me."

"Indeed! How singular! He says that it's just the other way about; that what you have you took from him! He says you want to take more—more than your share—from things that belong to everybody."

"What's that! What's that! Well, now, of all the insane idiocy I ever heard! Good God, what next! Him, Charles Halsey, the man I brought up with me! Jennie, I never heard the like of that in all my time."

"But if that's the way he feels, now's not the time to argue that with him!"

"But, good God, the effrontery—"

"All the world is full of effrontery, Mr. Rawn," she said—continuing to address him formally, as she always did. "It's buy and sell. Everything we get we pay for in one way or another. Even if we took power out of the air by our overhead motors, we'd pay for that, one way or another—nothing comes from nothing—we pay, we pay all the time, Mr. Rawn!"

"You don't need to go into theories and generalizations," said he testily. "We've had enough of that from him. We are both practical. You simply get that man and bring him back into the fold, that's all! Do your share."

V

"My share? It's easy, isn't it?" She smiled at him again annoyingly.

"But you can do it?"

"Yes, I can do it. But I can't evade the truth I just told you. I'd have to pay. You'd have to pay."

"We're beggars, and can't choose," said John Rawn savagely. "Besides, there's no harm done—I'm not asking you to do anything improper, anything to compromise yourself—but get him, that's all! And when we've got him in hand—when I know what I want to know—I'll wring him dry and throw him on the scrap heap. That's what I'll do with him!"

"Yes, I think you would," she said.

"It's the only right thing to do," Rawn fumed. "He'll get what's coming to him. He's been throwing down his one best friend."

"Are there any best friends in business, Mr. Rawn?" she asked.

"Of course there are. Haven't I been a friend to him; haven't I got a lot of friends of my own?"

"What would they do for you to-morrow, Mr. Rawn?"

"Well, that's a different matter; they might take care of themselves—I would take care of myself. But this fool here that I'm asking you to handle isn't taking care of himself or any one else. He's crazy, that's all about him! Did he hand you out any of this talk about the rights of man? I more than half suspect him of sympathizing with these labor unions. He's a Socialist at heart, that's what he is!"

She nodded her head a little. "Names don't make much difference in such matters."

VI

"Isn't it a funny thing," he rejoined, turning to her in his walk, "that the very men who have failed, the very ones who most need help themselves, are the ones who are out to help everybody else! The blind always want to lead the blind! These labor unions depend on us for their daily bread and butter, yet they want to fight us all the time. There's no trust in this country so big as the labor trust, and there's no ingratitude in the world like that of the laboring man's.

"Why, look at me, Jennie—you know something of my plans. This very month I was going to put fifty thousand dollars more into my cooperative farm in the South, a thing I have been working out for the benefit of my laboring people. I'm going to do more than old Carnegie has done! You and I ought to have set up some kind of prizes, medals—start some sort of hero competition. Helping colleges is old, and so are libraries old. I don't place myself any station back of Rockefeller himself. The Rockefeller Foundation was a great idea. Just wait! I'll raise him out of the game! When I get all my plans made, they'll speak of John Rawn when they mention philanthropy!

"And just to think, Jennie," he went on excitedly, "that all such big plans as that, plans for the good of humanity, should come to nothing! To be held up and handicapped by the folly of a man who has never been able to do anything for himself or any one else! It makes me sick to think of it. He claims to be a friend of the laboring people, and here he's tying the hands of the greatest friend of the laboring men in this town to-day—myself, John Rawn, standing here! Why, if I'd hand this country the John Rawn Foundation for industrial assistance, all thought out, all financed, all ready to go to work to-morrow, that crazy fool there, with his Socialist ideas, would block it all. He's going to block it all.

"Now, it's up to you. You're the only one that can keep him from doing that very thing. Don't you see, it isn't just you and me he's ruining. It isn't himself he's ruining. He's going to hurt the whole country. Jennie, there's a considerable responsibility on you to-night. Where he is wrong is in thinking that the weak can help the weak. It's the other way about—it's the strong that can help—Power!—that's what counts! It's for you to show him that. Jennie, girl—it's not so much myself. But think of your country."

"Yes," she nodded, "that's precisely it!"

"But he didn't affect you in the least, Jennie—he didn't get you going with that kind of foolishness."

"I never heard any one talk just as he did, before," said she slowly. "You see, I hadn't thought of these things myself, for I'm only a woman. He said that all this power, taken from the hills and the forests and the air and the rivers, belongs to everybody—to all the world—"

"But he didn't impress you with that nonsense, Jennie?"

"He said things—I told him that I'd never thought of life just that way. And I haven't, Mr. Rawn. I told him, as I admit to you, that I hadn't thought of anybody much but myself—I just tried to climb. I think all women do."

"It's right they should, it's the only way. Selfishness is the one great cause of the world's progress, my dear."

"Well, I told him that his way of thinking was so new to me, that I needed time to think it over."

"But you didn't believe a word he said—you never would!"

VII

"Mr. Rawn," said she, looking him full in the face, "we've both of us climbed pretty fast. I always put my family out of memory all I could. But somehow I seem to recollect that my father used to talk of things a good deal as Mr. Halsey does. I begin to realize what I told you a while ago—no matter how or where we climb, we pay for what we get, sometime, somewhere, somehow!

"But listen," she leaned toward him with some sudden access of emotion. "I can do this much! I'll agree to bring in Charley Halsey, bound hand and foot! You can throw him and me, too, on the scrap heap when the time comes! It's a game. I'll play it. I'll take my chance." She half rose, thrilling, vibrant.

"I knew you would, Jennie."

"Yes, but you'll have to pay."

"Have I ever said I wouldn't? Didn't I just get done telling him I'd make him rich the minute he said the word?"

"It doesn't seem to be money he wants. I—don't—believe—that's what the pay would have to be."

"What do you mean? You're getting too deep for me now. I'm only a plain man, my girl!"

She smiled at him, still enigmatic, still cool and calm, still almost insolent, as she often was with him. "He's been talking all sorts of folly about getting things in tune—getting gravitation in tune with labor—all sorts of abstractions. Well, don't you see, if I got in tune with his notions, I might be able to influence him!"

Rawn grew cold and hard. "There's one thing we can't do, Jennie," said he. "We can't side in with any of his socialistic talk. What he wants to do is to give to the people of this country for nothing what this International Power Company is planning to sell them for ever. What we want is monopoly! I've been gambling everything I've got on the certainty of that monopoly. I'm in soak, in hock, up to my eyes on the market, this minute. I'm margined to the full extent of my credit. The biggest men of America are back of me. I'll be rich if this thing goes through—one of the richest men in America. But I'd almost rather lose it all than to see you side in with him, or listen for five minutes to his rotten talk about the 'rights of man.' There are no rights of man except what each man can take for himself! As for him, I'd kill him, or get him killed, if I knew first how he got that current through the receivers. Give me that, and I'll let the rights of man wait a while. I'll show them a thing or two!

"But of course," he added, frowning again in helpless perturbation, "we've got to get him in hand. Grace couldn't do it."

"No; on the contrary. I can—if I pay!"

"Then pay!" he snarled suddenly, his voice harsh, half choking. "What's the price—nothing worth mentioning. But it's got to be paid, no matter what it is. We're caught, and we're squeezed! We've got to pay, no matter what it is, Jennie!"

"Is it no matter to you, Mr. Rawn?"

"How can it be? I'm almost crazy to-night! Do it, that's all, and draw on me to the limit!"

"To the limit, Mr. Rawn?"

"To the limit!" He looked her straight in the eye, and she met his gaze fully. She shivered slightly again, but her delicately clean-cut face showed no further sign. Only she shivered, and pulled her wrap a trifle closer about her shoulders.

"Very well," she said. "I may have to draw on you—and myself, too."

"It's all in the game, Jennie—we've got to play it together—we're two of the same sort—we've got to climb, to succeed. We run well together. One must help the other's hand."

"Yes, it's a game," she answered; and so rose, and left him without further word.

VIII

John Rawn followed her up the stair, mumbling some sort of conjugal affection, but she left him at the landing and passed toward her own apartments down the hall, giving him hardly even a look of farewell. He followed her with his eyes, standing a little time, his hand resting on the lintel of his own door.

Alone, Rawn seated himself in the Elizabethan armchair devised by his most favored decorator as fitting for this Elizabethan room. A vast oak bed, heavily carved, with deep and heavy curtains, represented the decorator's idea of what the Virgin Queen preferred. The walls were deeply carved in wainscot and cornice. A rude attempt was made at strength and simplicity in this, the sanctum of the master of Graystone Hall. Granted the aid of a lively imagination, this might have been the apartment of some feudal lord of another day; as the designer and architect had not failed delicately to suggest to Mr. Rawn.

It is possible that in the time of Elizabeth pier glasses with heavily carved frames were not common in the size affected by Mr. Rawn in his private apartment. He stood before the great glass now and gazed at what he saw; a face haggard and lined, shoulders stooping a little forward, body a little stooped, a little heavy, a little soft; the watch charm hanging in free air—the figure of a man no longer athletic, if ever so.

Rawn stood engaged in his regular nightly devotions—he made no prayers of eventide beyond that to his mirror. But now something he saw caused him to fling himself into a seat at a smaller glass, where the light was better. He gazed into this also, intently. Something seemed strange about his eyes, about his mouth. He turned his face slightly sidewise and studied the deep triangular lines at the corner of the chin. He saw a roll of fat at the back of his neck, and observed a certain throatiness, a voluminousness of flesh below the chin. The latter stood out distinct, pushing forward;—the rich man's chin, the old man's chin. He lifted a finger and touched the arteries on his temples. They were firmer to the touch than once they had been. He looked at the veins on his hands, and realized that they stood fuller than was once the case. His nose, large, just a trifle bulbous, seemed to him to have gained somewhat in color in late years. He looked at his eyes in eager questioning. Yes, they belonged to him! But for some reason they lacked brilliance and fire. They were colder, less impressive, less responsive;—the rich man's eyes, the old man's eyes. He looked at his hair, now almost white at the temples. He hesitated for a moment, then picked up a hand glass and deliberately turned his back to the mirror. Yes, it was there, a shiny spot of naked epidermis. He knew that, but always he shunned the knowledge and the proof. For many years his thick mane of wiry hair had been his pride.

John Rawn turned and put the hand mirror on the dresser top again. He looked full into the glass at his image once more. His pendulous lower lip drooped, tremulously. He saw his eyes winking. He saw something else. Yes, to his wonder, to his gasping horror, he saw something strange and revolutionary! A tear was standing in the corner of his eye! It dropped, it trickled down his cheek.

John Rawn for the first time in his life was learning what the one game is—and learning that time is the one winner in that one game! He was old.

CHAPTER VI
AN INFORMAL MEETING

I

It must surprise those simple folk, Messieurs Washington, Jefferson, and their like, were they to return to life at this advanced day and gaze upon the admirable republic which they fancied to be founded on immutable principles. As in politics to-day those principles would seem proved to have been not quite immutable, so, in commerce, men and methods would appear wholly different from those known in that earlier day. For instance, in commercial matters, the men of that day would now find in daily application a fourth dimension of affairs once wholly unknown; the sixth sense of the modern business man, a delicately differentiated faculty evolved in the holy of holies where events cast their financial shadows far in advance of themselves. John Jay, or any financier of Revolutionary time, very likely lacked in that regard, and had but his five senses.

This keen sense of prophecy, property of modern leaders in finance, was not lacking in the case of the directors of the International Power Company, all and several; and more especially several. Capitalists hunt in packs—but only up to a certain point. The sauve qui peut has small chivalry about it even in the holy of holies.

Within a few days after the turbulent scenes which took place in the quiet surroundings of Graystone Hall, there was held, quite informally, indeed on a wholly impromptu basis, a meeting of the greater portion of the directors of the International Power Company. It was a meeting not called by the president, and the president knew nothing of it. It was not set for the usual headquarters in the East; on the contrary, by merest chance, these keen-witted men met by accident in the western city where were located the works and central operating offices of the International Power Company. They made their stopping place, as usual, at the National Union Club, where they were less certain to become the prey of prying reporters—a breed detested above all things by these and their like.

II

There was, this afternoon, casually present, a certain gray-haired, full-bodied man, of full beard and rather portly body. He was speaking with President Standley, of St. Louis, who also by merest chance happened to be in town. To them presently came the former general traffic manager of Mr. Standley's road, Ackerman, also present by merest accident. Two or three others, moreover, by mere accident, joined them, figures which were familiar at the long table in the New York headquarters. They looked at one another frankly, and laughed without much reservation.

"Well," said Ackerman, after a time, "let's sit down and have a little powwow—informally, you know."

The gray-haired man grinned pleasantly again and said nothing, but drew up a chair.

"Of course, you know," said Standley, as he seated himself, "that our dissatisfied friend, Van, is here in town to-day?"

The full-bearded man nodded, and an instant later jerked his head toward the door. "He's here in the club, too," said he, and smiled. "Just happened in, I suppose." Indeed, as they turned to look they saw advancing, talking animatedly, a rather slender, youngish man of brown eyes and pointed beard; none less than the disgruntled director who had long ago been so summarily handled by John Rawn, president of the International Power Company.

"Hasn't he got the nose for news, though?" commented Standley admiringly. "Now, who told him there was anything doing!"

"He didn't need to have anybody tell him," growled Ackerman. "He can take care of himself. And by Jove! I'm half inclined to think that he was the lucky one—to get out the way he did, and when he did."

"Yes, he's lucky," said Standley gravely. He turned to see the vast round belly of the gray-bearded man heaving in silent mirth. The railway magnate obviously was amused.

"I don't know!" remarked Ackerman suddenly. "Others, eh?"

III

"Well, boys, why not admit it?" rejoined the older man. "We all know the facts. We all know why we're here. As you said, Ack, let's hold a little informal meeting, and talk over what we had better do!"

"How much did you sell!" demanded Standley casually.

"Twenty thousand last week. You sold about double that."

"Yes, it's leaking out, no use denying that! You don't need to list this thing—it leaks!"

"Of course, Van's buying it," said Standley, nodding toward the slender figure of the ex-director. "First time I ever knew him to go out for revenge. It doesn't very often pay."

"Well, I can't figure it out," ventured Ackerman. "The stock won't do him any more good than it does us. He can't get the control over that old bonehead Rawn—I mean our respected president—anyhow, any more than we can. He's sitting tight, with the papers in his box. I admit that I let go a little, because I figured it was time we were doing something better than six per cent. with that stock, and all Rawn has done is to make one explanation on top of another. He can't keep on putting that across with me, anyhow. But he can sit there, as I say, with the control in his hands, looking at those nice pictures of the Lady of the Lightnings, which he had engraved as our trademark."

"He's awfully gone on her," spoke up one. "Not that I blame him, either. I hate to sell my stock, because I like the looks of our engraved goddess so much!"

"There's most always a lady standing around somewhere, with the lightning in her hands," ventured the gray-bearded man solemnly. They looked at one another again suggestively, but no one spoke more definite words than that.

IV

"Well, we've had high-sounding talk put up to us about long enough," commented Ackerman, at length. "I was one of the first to go in for this, and I believe in it yet, but I don't want this thing with Rawn in control. Why, look at him,—he was just a clerk when he came to us, and here he's putting on more side than any other man in the town. He's taken advantage of his situation to play the market in and out, all the time, which he couldn't have done if it hadn't been for friends like us. He squeezed us into backing him—after we gave him that first little flyer in Rubber, and some Oil—that hadn't cost us anything and didn't look worth anything. In return he's handed us promises and explanations and hot air, and nothing else. I've just got an idea that there's a man-sized nigger somewhere around this woodpile. For me, I prefer being hung as a little lamb rather than as a full-sized goat. Yes, I let go a little International—to Van—I'll admit. Time enough to get back into the game when we've put Rawn out!"

Standley nodded slowly. "That's a good deal the way I felt about it," he said. "It riles me to see the airs that fellow puts on. I remember him when he didn't have two suits of hand-me-down clothes to his name, and now he seems to have a hundred, all done by the best tailors in New York. He used to tie his drawers with white tape strings, and now he wears specially shaped silks. Where'd he get it? You talk about the Keeley motor—this thing has got it beat a mile for mystery. And we fellows have been standing for that! That is, unless we can stand from under, somehow."

"Yes, seemingly," ventured the last speaker. "But how is that somehow? There isn't any market for International."

The gray-bearded man laughed jubilantly at this. "Have you found that out?"

"Yes, I certainly have found it out. Of course, the market has been Van yonder. But he won't take on over a certain amount. He wants to break the control, of course. But he's going to wait until he gets up to the point and then do something quick. He's not going to hold our bag for us—oh, no! Not him!"

"Well, I've a suspicion," said the older man finally, "that that secret we've been after has been in the hands of our superintendent for a long time."

"Why didn't Rawn tell us, then?" demanded one of his companions. "Has he sold us out?"

"No, Rawn hasn't sold us out. At least I don't think so."

"Who has, then?"

"I don't know. The young man who made the wheels go for us whenever Rawn wanted him to—he's the real key to this situation, if I'm a good guesser. There's your contraband, and you can locate him somewhere in this particular woodpile, or I'm no judge."

"Rawn's pretty well spread out in the general market," quite irrelevantly suggested Standley.

"I should say he was!" growled Ackerman. "He's been in on all the good things in the last two or three years. He must have made millions—I don't know how much."

"In the general market—not International, of course. He's got all his holdings in that. He has been spending money, though!" Standley wagged his head.

"For instance, on the Lady of the Lightnings?" suggested Ackerman, grinning amiably.

"Yes, on his young wife, and his new house, and his boats, and his automobiles, and all the regular things. He can't have done it out of International dividends, that's sure!"

"All the better that he hasn't," ventured Standley. The old man nodded.

"Go over there and call Van," he said simply.

V

The slender man with pointed beard came up pleasantly, his eyes twinkling. "Well, my fellow sports and department heads!" he said. "What's the good word this morning?"

"Sit down," said the gray-bearded man. "We know why you're here, and why you've been hanging around here for the last six months. It's foolish of you, son, to be out for revenge—nothing in that!"

"I'm not after revenge," smiled the other, his eyes still twinkling. "I've made my peace!"

"Yes," commented Ackerman. "The friendship of some of you gladiators is surely a wonderful thing! Rawn hates you, and you hate Rawn. Don't your ears burn?"

"No, my heart!" He laid a hand on that organ with mock gravity.

"What could you do with the Lady of the Lightnings, Van?" asked Standley discreetly.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing."

"Hasn't she any social instincts?"

"Plenty, but all gratified; that's the trouble. There isn't anything those people want that they haven't got. No, I must say his position is pretty strong."

"But it's not impregnable, Standley," cut in the gray-bearded man, stopping the twiddling of his fingers above his round-paunched body. "Now, look here, we're all friends together, when it comes to that. You belong with us a lot more than you do with that Jasper from the country. Of course, you split with us, got mad, took your dolls and all that sort of thing—we're all used to that—and we all sat tight because it looked good. It looked better than it does now. So, we're friends again."

"Of course," nodded the slight man. "I understand that."

"Sure you do! Now, it's plain that when it comes to being on the inside, you're there as an ex-director just as much as we are as real directors—maybe more so, for all I know."

"Maybe more, yes, that's so," smiled the slender man, his brown eyes twinkling yet more.

"How much more, then?"

"Why, a whole lot more!"

"What do you know?"

"I know what I've learned for myself and by myself. Gentlemen, it's on the table! Play the game! I did. I've had some of those college professors at work for me—they're the people that first got us locoed, anyhow. Rawn, or rather his son-in-law, got his first notion from his own professor in his college."

VI

"The real trouble with business to-day," interrupted the gray-bearded man, reverting to his universal and invariable grievance, "is that things are all going wrong with the American people. These Progressives down there at Washington have set this whole country by the ears—not even the Supreme Court can square things any more. The suspiciousness of the average man is getting to be almost criminal, that's what it is. The public thinks every man with money is a rascal. The public is damnably ungrateful. Look what we have done for this country, this little set of men sitting right here—what we've built for them, what we've paid out to them for wages! What are we getting in return? They envy us our daily bread, and by the Eternal! they'll come near putting us where we can't get that much longer! Look at the railway rate cases—it's robbery of the railways. Capital hasn't any chance any more! The public seems to be getting ready for anarchy; that's all."

"Isn't it the truth?" remarked the slender man sympathetically. "Still, we have to handle men as we find them, my friends. In my own case, I've been fighting the devil with a little of his own fire."

"How's that?"

"Well, for instance, I went out to see if I couldn't land that little secret of the receiving motor myself, as I just told you. If International doesn't want to take me in, or if I can't break in, maybe there can be another company formed—there's considerable corporation room left in New Jersey. You folks on the International have been having your own troubles with labor, haven't you?"

"Well, rather!" growled Ackerman. "We put that up to old Colonel J. R. Bonehead, our president! He seems to have got in about as nearly wrong as any one could with our esteemed friends of the labor unions!"

"Naturally; well, I'll make a confession, since we're all friends together—I've had men conferring with your horny-handed citizens and suggesting that the International Power Company was 'unfair,' and a bad outfit to work for!"

"That was nice of you!" growled Ackerman, getting red in the face. "Fine business, for you to come snooping around our works."

The slender man smiled at him pleasantly. "How else could I get information?" he inquired. "You must remember that I'm no longer on the board! But you must remember, also, that of late I have picked up an occasional dollar's worth of International. I wanted to know how about certain things!"

"Well, how about them, then?" demanded Standley fiercely. "Where do we stand?"

"You want me to incriminate myself!"

"Oh, fiddlesticks about incrimination! Cut out that part of it!"

"All right, I will," said the other grimly. "Well, then, I've tried my best to bribe your people, and I've got little out of it. I've tried the foreman, the night watchman, and everybody else. I've had a dozen of your workmen slugged for scabbing, and four or five of them shot, one or two at least, for a good, permanent funeral. And I paid the funeral expenses! You didn't know that? Well, that's the truth of it!"

"Well, what do you know about that!" gasped Standley, aghast.

"I know a good deal about it, my Christian friend," said the slender man relentlessly. "I can tell you what you already know, that your motors are dismantled to-day. I can tell you also that there's a very good chance that the secret we've been after is in the hands of one man, and he's holding it up for some reason best known to himself. We've got nothing on him! I can also tell you that if he won't give up—though why he won't, I can't imagine—it's possible we can work out a receiver of our own elsewhere, without him."

VII

"Well, what does he want?" This from the old man.

"That's the everlasting mystery and puzzle of it. He doesn't want anything, so far as I can learn. There's some factor in him that I can't get my hands on, try the best that I can. Not that I don't expect to break you wide open eventually, my friends."

"Now why do you want to do that?" asked the older financier. "Why not join in with us and break the bonehead?"

"Fine! But how can we do that? He's sitting pretty tight. The man's played in fine luck. I admit I rather admire him."

"Bah, that's the way with all the new ones; they all play in luck for a time. Each Napoleon has his boom, but after a time boom values shrink—they always do. This chap'll find his level when we get ready to tell him."

"For instance?"

"Well, for instance, then! He's sitting there with a small margin of control in the International. That gave him his start, and he's wise enough to hang on to that. But it didn't give him his money—he's only made dividend money out of that; and who cares for dividend money? He doesn't own control in the Guatemala Oil Company, does he? He's made a lot out of Arizona and Utah coppers, but he doesn't own control in a single company there, does he? He's in with the L.P., but he borrowed to get in. He's made a big killing in Rubber, but he doesn't own any Rubber control of his own, does he? Now, you follow him out in every deal he's made—-iron, copper, steel, oil, rails, timber, irrigation, utilities, industrials—and you'll find he's simply been banking on his inside information and his outside credit. Who gave him both of those things?—Why, we did, didn't we? All right! Suppose we withdraw our credit. What happens?"

VIII

They went silent now, and grouped a little closer about the tabouret which stood between them. The old man's voice went on evenly, with no excitement. Their conversation attracted the attention of none in the wide lounging room, where large affairs more than once had been discussed—even the making of Senators to order.

"I'll tell you what happens," the old man resumed. "He quits using us for a stalking horse, and he comes down to his own system. He's spread out. Banks are all polite, but—well, he has to put up collateral; and then some more. If he doesn't want to put up International, he's apt to find that a bunch of automobiles is poor property when sold at twenty per cent. their cost. He turns off two or three butlers, but still that doesn't serve for margins. The market doesn't suit his book any more.

"He's discovering now the great truth of something any old friend Emory Storrs used to say—Emory always was in debt, or wanted to be, and says he: 'There's no trouble about prosperity in this country; there's plenty of money—the only trouble is in the confounded scarcity in collateral.' Well, he goes over to this young man, who is standing out for some reason best known to himself, and he tries to get him to come through, and he doesn't come through. What's left? Why, the diamond lightnings of the Lady of the Lightnings—and his International Power stock.

"Meantime, all this thing can't be kept entirely secret; that is to say, the market part of it can't be. But we sit tight, all of us. We hold our regular directors' meetings of the International board, and we smile, and look pleasant. We don't know a thing about his hot water experiences in the open market. He explains to us why this and that happens, or doesn't happen, in International; and we smile and look pleasant, and we don't know a thing. After a time it's up to him and the Lady of the Lightnings. Something pops! He's up against it, all except his International Power. Then Van, and you, Standley, and you, Ack, and you, and you and I, and all of us—why we're still pleasant as pie to him and we say, 'Well, Mr. John Rawn, if you'd only sell us two or three shares of International, we'd pay you twenty times what it's worth—but it's very much cheaper now—by reason of Van's competing company!'

"That's about all, I think!"

The others nodded silently. The game was not new to them, and even in its most complicated features might have been called simple, with resources such as theirs. If these resources had made Rawn, they could unmake him. It was all in the day's work for them.

"So I'll tell you what we'll do," concluded the old financier after a time. "We'll just let you and Van look around here a little bit and see what more you can learn. You're one of the real directors of International Power to-day, Van. Mr. Rawn is on the minority and the toboggan list, or is going to be there. We'll take the first steps when we see the boys down East. The country's getting right now for a little speculation—things have been dead long enough. There'll be a market. When the market starts, I think you know which way it will go for a certain person I needn't name."

IX

They rose, stood about loungingly for a time, and at length slowly separated, the older man and the ex-director with the pointed beard falling back of the others for just an instant.

"What's the truth about the row, Van?" demanded the old man, laying a large, pudgy hand on the other's shoulder.

"I don't know, honestly, what it is. I can tell you this much—your factory is closed. Your superintendent, Halsey, has quit his work and left his old residence. Didn't Rawn tell you that?"

"No! What's up now—some trouble with a woman? Wasn't he married to Rawn's daughter?"

"Yes, and she went to live with Papa. Papa had the coin."

"And the superintendent is going the chorus girl route here or in New York?"

"No, sir, not in the least,—nothing of the sort. You can't guess where he's gone."

The other shook his head.

"Well, I'll tell you then, since you are one of the directors of the International and I'm not! He's gone and taken his other pair of pants and his celluloid collar, and moved over to the North Shore! He's living in the same house with Papa J. Rawn right now;—that is to say, he has been for two or three weeks."

"Well, what do you know about that, too!" commented his friend.

"I don't know much about it. As I told you, there's something in here I don't understand. I can't for the life of me figure out that chap Halsey's motives or his moves. But I don't care about him. It's Rawn I'm after—and I'm going to get him!"

CHAPTER VII
THEY WHO SOW THE WIND

I

The information given by the ex-director in regard to the whereabouts of Charles Halsey was substantially, if not circumstantially, correct. He had, indeed, done the most unlikely thing. He had taken up his abode, for the time at least, at the very place to which he might have seemed least apt to return; that is to say, the home of his father-in-law, John Rawn.

Many things moved Halsey to this action. In the first place, having ended his labors, he found no reason for any pretense of continuing them. Again, although he fully intended to bring divorce proceedings, and fully intended to leave the city, he was unwilling to depart without seeing once more his wife and their child, because news came to him of the little cripple's serious and continued illness. In point of fact, Grace Halsey, unhappy, morose, and now jealously suspicious, had brooded over her unfortunate situation in life until she also really was ill. Halsey grieved over this, in spite of all. As to the little hunchback, Laura, she had known only illness all her life; and Halsey, father after all, felt some foreboding which made him unready to leave for yet a time.

Halsey, in spite of his own bitterness of soul, realized that Rawn himself was well-nigh crazed by the business situation, and his conscience misgave him when he reflected upon the sudden consequences of his own acts. His sense of business honor and of personal justice told him he owed even so unreasonable a man as Rawn some sort of definite accounting for his own stewardship, unwelcome as another meeting between them must be to both.

Lastly, it may be added, Virginia Rawn had sent for him.

When he received her message he spent a night resolving that he would not go, that he would never again see either her or Grace; never again would set foot on ground belonging to John Rawn, come what could, let be lost what any of them all might lose. In the morning he changed his resolution. By evening of the next day he was at Graystone Hall.

To his surprise, he found it not immediately necessary to patch a peace with the master of Graystone Hall, for Rawn was absent. The great mansion seemed strangely and suddenly changed. An air of anxiety hung over all, the place was oddly silent. The servants went slipshod about their duties, and their mistress did not chide them. Swift disintegration of the domestic machine seemed to threaten; mysterious danger seemed to menace the very structure itself, long of so bold and indomitable front. Halsey still hesitated—and still remained.

II

Rawn customarily divided his time between the operating headquarters in the western city and the general offices in the eastern capital, but now he had found it needful immediately to transfer all his activities to the latter scene. He did not know of his wife's invitation to Halsey, for he had started from his office, without even advising her of his intention, and even without conversation with her by telephone. He telegraphed from the train, stating that he had been called East on urgent matters. After that, no word at all came from him. It was not known when he would return. Halsey could only wait. In truth, he was little better than a man gone mad himself, and Rawn was worse than such.

Gradually, day by day, hour by hour, the terrible strain of this suddenly developed situation began to show its effects upon Rawn. He slept but little after his arrival in the East, showed himself more and more untidy in personal habits; and lastly, began to seek the false strength of intoxicating drink. His demeanor in his relations with his urbane associates daily lost its usual arrogance. John Rawn, late dictator, became explanatory, conciliatory—a change of mind which had visible physical tokens. His eye became weaker and more watery, his shoulders more drooped, his voice more quavering, his address less abrupt and domineering.

John Rawn was a broken man, and began to show it. Wherefore his late friends exulted. The wolves, ranged in circle, lick their chops when the wounded bull totters upon his uncertain legs. Certain large financial figures in the eastern city licked their chops, and smiled grimly, wolfishly, in contemplation of John Rawn as he tottered.

III

Yet Rawn himself could get no direct proof of the identity of those now secretly assailing him. At the directors' meetings of the International he was received politely and respectfully—with too much politeness and respect, as he felt, although himself unlike the man once wont to rule there with an iron hand. He did not dare tell them of Halsey's defection, could not doubt that they already knew of it; but he met no queries regarding that or anything else in the conduct of the western factory's business. No one seemed to know that the most important of all their factories was closed, after a tedious term spent in incompletion. His associates all were as polite as himself, indeed, more so; as ready as himself to discuss gravely and earnestly any detail of the business which now, as all politely agreed, seemed "somewhat involved," or "somewhat delayed." No one offered any criticism of the executive.

But, what was far more deadly to him, the market seemed most onerously and cruelly oppressive upon the outside investments of John Rawn. International Power was not hammered, for the reason that there was little of it out to hammer. The Rawn stock in International, of course, did not come upon the market. Rawn intended to hold on to that grimly, fighting for it to the last gasp, trusting to chance to mend matters for him at the eleventh hour. But ruin in the general market faced him; and he knew that, with credit gone, the courts would take for his former creditors whatever property he could be shown to have. He saw the shadowy circle of the wolves of high finance. Almost he felt their fangs snapping at his hamstrings.

IV

In these savage hours the mind of John Rawn cast about for rescue, for hope. No rescue, no hope, appeared except one last desperate alternative, purchasable not now with cash or power or influence—since these were gone—but with what other and dearer things remain to a man—things some men, not rotted with the love of self, keep through any or all disaster, prize, even above life and all a life's business success. Halsey! Ah! Halsey was the savior of Rawn—Halsey, the man who had humiliated him in his own home. How could Halsey be secured? There might be brought to bear upon him one influence—that of a beautiful and fascinating woman! What matter if the one woman, was his wife, Virginia Rawn? He had already hinted to her of her duty. He wondered now continually whether she had really and fully understood. He wondered what she was doing with Halsey.

As to Halsey, who knew little or nothing of all these turbulent emotions, all these crowding incidents, he found his situation in the great house of John Rawn one wholly to his dislike. He saw little of his wife Grace after the first conventional greeting on his arrival, and as to the young mistress of Graystone Hall, she seemed so regularly to have matters demanding her own presence elsewhere, was so busy with other matters, as to have small time for him. The disturbed condition of the stock market was creating a furor in the business world, reflected, of course, in the daily markets of the western city; but Halsey had never had many investments, had watched the markets little; and now, isolated at Graystone Hall almost as much as though upon a desert island, and too much disturbed and distracted in his own mind to find any definite interest in business matters, was hardly conscious of the storm that raged. He simply waited on, unhappily. It seemed to him there was no place for him in all the world. Why did Virginia remain aloof?

Rawn, absent in New York, imagined his wife engaged continuously in the struggle of persuading Charles Halsey to see the light of reason, although he did not know Halsey was living under the same roof with her. As a matter of fact, Halsey and she met but rarely. Virginia breakfasted for the most part in her own rooms, and found, or pretended to find, something to occupy her for the most part of the day. Not once did she ask his attendance, not once did she speak with him, when by chance she saw him, upon any but casual or conventional matters. She seemed always to evade him; and because she did this, he, rebelling, sought her out all the more, even while continually resolving to take his departure, and never again to see this place, or her, again. He wondered at her reticence, her avoidance of him. He wondered why she was so pale. He loitered about, unhappily, in this or that common meeting ground of the great mansion house, waiting to hear the rustle of a gown upon the stair, the sound of a light foot on a floor, the touch of a white hand, the sound of a voice—all things belonging, not to his wife, but to his young stepmother by law.

V

Yes. Without his wish, in spite of her wish, these had become things desired, the only things desirable any more in his distracted life. He lived under the same roof with two women, saw either rarely, and rarely thought of but one—the wrong one. To atone, Halsey lavished all his time and care on his little hunchback daughter, and had her with him as much as the nurse and doctor would allow. The child, undersized, pale, deformed, silent and wistful, and pathetic always, now was listless and weak, obviously very seriously ill. It wrung her father's heart to see her. But Charles Halsey wanted it wrung. He wanted to do bitterest penance for what he now knew was his secret sin. So the ways of inordinate power, the consequences, for this one or that one, which follow on inordinate greed, worked themselves on out toward their sure and logical ending, the mill of fate grinding those primarily, secondarily, even incidentally guilty.

At this time, had Virginia Rawn asked of him to recant, to relent, to change, there is likelihood he would have done so. John Rawn, cuckold, was right in his despicable reasoning. There are many prices which purchase principles. The weakness which had prompted Halsey to remain at Graystone Hall on such a tenure—which held him there now, waiting for a voice, listening for a footfall—was the ancient weakness of youth before youth, of strength before beauty, of the empty heart before one offering love, of the mind finding perfect echo in another mind.

With all his starved heart, all his repressed soul, all his mutinous body, Charles Halsey loved Virginia Rawn.

CHAPTER VIII
THEY WHO WATER WITH TEARS

I

As at last the news of John Rawn's collapse broke full and fair—disastrous enough to please even his late warmest friends. The stock markets, East and West, became scenes of riot. The truth, of course, had leaked out regarding Rawn's fight in the last ditch. The newspapers swarmed upon Graystone Hall, besieging any who could be found. Halsey refused to talk, and moreover, Rawn could not be found. This threw them upon their own resources, and what they did not know they imagined. Even thus, the wildest of them all could not imagine half; the shrewdest of the journalists could not get their hands on the "inside story" here. No one in or around or back of the stock exchanges could be found possessed of secret information which he was willing to impart. Throughout wild hours of hurrying, telegraphing, investigating, the papers kept up their frenzied search for the truth, and found it not, and knew they had not found it.

Halsey, one morning after a sleepless night, more than a week after Rawn's departure to New York, secured copies of each of the morning papers. He stood uncertain, in the great central room of Graystone Hall, with these black and frowning messengers of fate in his hands, scarce daring to look at them. He felt some sense of definite disaster at hand. He glanced at last at one, and started as though struck. Calling a servant, he sent word to Mrs. Rawn inquiring if he might meet her at once.

She joined him presently, smiling faintly, giving him her hand, then leading him to a breakfast table on the long gallery facing the lake front, a favorite spot with her. She gave the butler orders to serve them breakfast here at once; for she now learned Halsey had neither slept nor eaten. Halsey did not learn that the same also was true of her.

II

They seated themselves and for the time said nothing, each gazing out over the lake. The morning was calm and beautiful. The blue lake, just dotted with little whitecap rolling waves, seemed in amiable mood, and purred gently along the sea-wall, below the green and curving terrace which ran down from the gallery front. A bird chirped here and there.

Little enough the peaceful scene reflected the feelings of these, its only human figures. Virginia Rawn was pale. Dark rings showed below her eyes. Her mouth drooped just a trifle, plaintively, in a way not usual with her. She was pale, paler than her usual clean and clear ivory. Yet she was coolly beautiful in her morning gown of light figured lawn, with its wide, flowing sleeves, showing her round white arms. Halsey, frowningly serious, felt the charm of her rise about him, overwhelm him. He knew that the hour had come for him in more ways than one; that hers, for ever, was the one face and figure and voice and presence for him, hopeless and unhappy, and doomed for ever so to remain. She was not his wife. She was the wife of another man—of his enemy; the man in all the world least like himself; the man who, by virtue of that unlikeness, had won this woman for his own. What hope for him, Charles Halsey, for whom was no place in the world?

III

Without much comment he placed before her the morning papers, with their glaring head-lines.

"Well," said he, "it is the end."

"Yes?" said she, smiling; "I suppose now we can learn all about our earlier life and career?"

"Quite so. Here is the entire history of Mr. Rawn's career—what he did when he was a young man, where he came from, how he rose to power, how he failed and fell—it's all here. Here's the story of the International Power Company—they claim it was intended as a merger of all the traction companies of the eight leading cities of the country! Bond issue one to eight billion dollars, capitalization one to two hundred billion in stocks—you can take your choice in crazed figures. Here are biographical histories of all the known and unknown stock-holders. Here, Mrs. Rawn, is a picture of yourself, as well as one of Mr. Rawn and one more of the house here—a new view, I think. The photographer must have made a flashlight of the grounds."

She smiled as he tried to jest, following his pointing finger along the blurred, brutal head-lines, shrieking their discordant, impossible and inconsistent tales. The first paper, the Forum, declared the ruin of John Rawn's fortune to be now beyond all hope of repair. Rawn himself—really at that time often in a helpless stupor in a New York hotel room—was reported to have fled the country. Halsey, his son-in-law, and Halsey's wife, who really had only denied themselves to visitors and reporters—were declared to be in hiding in some secret apartments of the great castle on the North Shore, a place actually but little known to any member of the select North Side society in which Rawn had been, more or less on sufferance, received. Rawn's wife was also located here, in a condition verging on insanity; according to the imagination of the writers, which, after all, was fatefully near to the truth.

Virginia Rawn smiled, and turned the pages. The next journal had little else but detailed discussion of the Rawn collapse. It also asserted the scheme of the International Power Company was the most bold and rapacious fraud of the day. With journalistic vaticination it insouciantly declared that the intention of the company was to establish central distributing points for power stolen from the public's great water powers, and the retail of what the journal in the argot of the day called canned power, in cheap and portable small motors applicable to countless semi-mechanical uses, all with an end of abolishing the need for horse power and for man power alike. The result, it pointed out, would be the throwing out of work of countless thousands of laboring men by the use of electricity stolen from the people themselves. The gigantic combination already was covering the main water powers. The people's present openly had been disregarded, the people's future openly and patently had been put in the gravest of peril. The entire system of government had been laid by the heels. The name of the republic had been made a mockery. Above all, it was asserted, the most intimate intent of the International Power Company had been the throttling of the labor unions—against which John Rawn was known to be personally bitterly opposed—the very essence and soul of the conspiracy having been this device whose aim was to wipe out the need of unskilled labor, and to make useless and unpaid the power of human brawn.

IV

Following these assertions—which after all were not in the least bad journalism, however good or bad had been the design of International Power—the same journal exultantly declared that labor need not yet despair, for that the gigantic conspiracy now had fallen in ruins; its leader had abdicated and fled, and his ill-gotten gains had been dissipated in his last desperate attempt to save his holdings in other stocks. In his ultimate fight he had surrendered the control of the International, so long and desperately held in his ownership, and now was ousted from the presidency, other managers being left in charge of the wreck of a desperate marauder's attempt to throttle a republic and to rule a country. And so forth, to many extra pages, all deliciously explicit, and wondrous welcome alike to those who purchase and those who purvey the news.

The chronicle of all this was accompanied in this journal not only with pictures of Graystone Hall, but of the abandoned factory of the International Power Company; also with portraits of Rawn and his wife and of Charles Halsey, late superintendent of the company; as well as those of Jim Sullivan, the foreman, Ann Sullivan, his wife, and other labor leaders sometimes concerned about the mysterious factory which had housed the desperate secret of International Power. As it chanced, the portraits of Ann Sullivan and Virginia Rawn had been exchanged, so that the beautiful Mrs. Rawn appeared as a hard-featured Irish woman of more than middle age; whereas Mrs. Sullivan, wife of the well-known labor leader, presented a somewhat distinguished figure in her eminently handsome gown and obviously valuable jewels.

V

Virginia Rawn looked calmly, smilingly, over these and many other varying details of these closing scenes in her career. "Very well," said she, pointing to the likeness accredited to her name, "this is the last time my portrait will appear in print, I suppose. What difference does it make? The older and uglier I am, the better the story! Perhaps for once Mrs. Sullivan, when she sees her picture—young, rich, with plenty of jewels—will think her dreams have come true! Maybe she's dreamed—I know I did; and I know what I am. The names and pictures are right, just as they are. She wins, not I.

"But yes, I suppose this is the end of it all, as you say," she added wearily, almost indifferently. "Of course, we've known it was coming. I suppose there was nothing else could come of it all."

Halsey at first could make no answer except to drop his face in his hands. A half groan escaped him, in spite of his attempt to rival her courage or her indifference, whichever it might be.

"I've done this," he said at last; "I've brought all this on you. It's all my fault, and it's too late now for me to help it. We couldn't straighten out things in the business now, even if I went back to work. It's too late. I've ruined you, Mrs. Rawn."

"Yes, that's plain," she answered quietly. "But isn't this just what you wanted? Haven't you always resented the success of others, deprecated the wish of some men to get money at any cost? Aren't you a Socialist at heart? Didn't you want this—just this?"

"Want it? No! How could I want anything which meant harm for you? If only you had come to me and asked me to go back—asked me to get into line!"

"You'd have done it, wouldn't you, Charley—for me?" She smiled at him, her small, white teeth showing. But back of her smile he felt the pulse of a mind.

"I don't know—how could I have helped it?"

"Then you'd have forgotten all your loyalty to those people over there? You'd have forgotten all about the rights of man of which you told me, and your devotion to the principles of this republic of which you talked—is that true? You'd have forgotten all, everything, for me?"

VI

"Yes, I would!" He looked her fair in the eye, truthfully. "I know that, now—I didn't know it then, but I do now. Yes, I would. Just as I told him—Mr. Rawn."

"You told him, what?"

"Why, that we all have our price. I suppose I had mine."

"So you'd have done that if I had asked you?"

"Then in God's name why did you not ask me? At least, I'd have saved you this!" He smote on the paper with his clenched fist. "Why didn't you ask me to save you this humiliation?"

"I did not, because I knew all along what you'd do if I did ask you."

Silence fell between them now. "Why didn't you?" he once more demanded, half-whispering. "You'd already won. You'd have won me—my principles—my honor."

"Because I did not want to win!" she answered sharply.

"Win what?"

"I was sent to bring you into camp, to 'get' you, Charley. I did not want to—I did not! I was afraid I would!"

"I don't think I quite understand."

His face was white, his voice low and clear, his eye full on hers.

"I was sent out for you, Charley—by my own husband! You know it, we both knew it. I suppose he's been waiting somewhere for me to get word to him that I had done what I was told to do—that I had got you in hand, willing to renounce everything that you held good in your own life. Well, it's too late, now! I'm glad!"

"He sent you out after me!—With what restrictions—?"

"None. He didn't care how. He told me he didn't. That's why I've been keeping away from you. I was afraid I'd win—I was afraid I'd save all this."

She nodded her head, including the splendors of the mansion house, its view of the lake, all the gracious, delicate ministries of Wealth.

VII

"Good God!" Halsey broke out. "The man who would do that is not worth a woman's second thought."

"Of course not. And the woman who would do that—?"

"Don't ask me about that; I can't think. All I know is that if you had asked me to do anything in the world, I think I'd have said yes."

"For me?"

"Yes, for you. It's the truth. It's all out, at last! There's the whole story now of John Rawn—all of it, in black and white! Here's all my story—to you. You must have known—"

"Yes," she nodded; "of course. That was why, I said, that I've evaded you so long. It was very hard to do, Charley; a hundred times I've been on the point of sending for you. But I didn't."

"I'm glad, too," he said simply, seeing it was to be soul facing soul, between them now. "I've missed you. I've never passed such days in my life as I have here. There's Grace hating me, you ought to hate me—I ought to hate you! Oh, Rawn, man! Where would you have stopped, to get money, to get power? Oh, excellent!—to set your wife as a trap for another man! But it worked! It could have been done!" He looked her frankly in the face as he finished. "I love you, Virginia," he said simply. "I suppose I have all along. It's cheap, after all—at this price. But for all this, I never could have told you.

"But one thing I will say,"—the unhappy young man added, after a long time; "it's the one thing I can claim for an excuse. My price was love for you, and good love. It was the whole love of man for woman—I never knew before what that meant! It wasn't for money, but for you. That great, mysterious second current—what you yourself said was the one vast power of all the universe—that belonged to everybody—love—love—I thought that belonged to me, too. I can't see even now where that is wrong. I can't think, I don't know. If it is wrong, then I've been wrong. We're down in the mire together! I dragged you there. And once I dreamed of doing something to lift people up—that was why I mutinied and tore up the motors. And I had my own selfish price.... I can never lift up my head again. But I love you!"

VIII

She looked at him, her lips parted, her bosom agitated now, her eyes large, her color slowly increasing. "You must not!—Stop, we must think! Charley—"

"But why didn't you?" he demanded fiercely. "Why didn't you finish your work as you promised?"

"I never promised. I didn't finish it—because I knew I could. I told you—it was—Charley—yes—it was—love!"

"For me?"

He half started up now, but she raised a hand to restrain him.

"The servants!" she whispered. Indeed, even as she spoke she saw the livery of the butler disappearing at the tall glass doors letting out to the gallery. She did not know that the butler had seen much and heard somewhat; that being a butler he was wise.

"But it's got to be—we've got to go through now!" he went on savagely. "Why did you start this, then? Why did you let me know?"

"It was he who started it in me—ambition! No, I always had it. From the day I was born I wanted to climb, to win, to be rich, to have things in my hands. All girls want that, I suppose, till they know how little it is. So I married him—I tried to, and I did. I knew he had money.... But then there was more I wanted, after all. I only wanted that something else, too, that any woman wants—what she's got to have, once in her life, rich or poor, because she's a woman—some one who truly loves her for herself as she is, because she is what she is—because she's a woman!

"Oh, I looked all around me here, a long time after I came here, for what I'd missed. I've never been happy here. I didn't have it. I wanted it. At last I saw it. I wanted it. Its price is ruin—for two, you and me. I'm like you. If it's wrong, I don't know where the wrong began! I didn't mind, so far as I was concerned. Let a woman love you, and she'll do anything, no matter how it hurts—herself. But not you—not the man she loves and wants to respect, Charley."

"But—me? I am not good enough for you!"

"Oh, boy! How sweet that sounds to me! Say it over again to me! You make me think I might some day be worth a man's love. It's got away from us now. It's all too late. Everything's too late. When he—Mr. Rawn—comes back, we've got to tell him. I've done what I was set to do—but not the way he thought, not the way any of us thought!"

IX

"Yes, he must know!" Halsey nodded. He held her hand now in his own. They swept on, as upon some vast wave, helpless, clinging to each other, he doing what he could to save her.

"I don't know how to tell him," she wailed. "There was something Pagan in me and I didn't know it. I thought I was in hand, but I wasn't! I started low, and I wanted to climb up—and up—and up! Oh, Charley, look!" She leaned toward him across the table, pleading. "I was just ambitions, just like any American girl—like every woman in the world, I suppose. If I sold out, I didn't know it. I didn't want you to care for me. But you did, you do! I kept away from you, so that you wouldn't, so that we couldn't—so that I'd always feel that you, at least—"

"Where can it end?" he asked quietly.

"I don't care where it ends, that's the worst of it; I don't care! One thing only is to my credit. I've kept my bargain—with him. I've paid the price I agreed to give. There is no scandal about me—yet. And there might have been!"

"Yes."

"But some way, when he sent me out for you, talked to me as he did, treated me like a piece of merchandise as he did—for once I wavered. For once, Charley, it seemed to me that I was released from all obligations to him, that I was where I ought to have a chance for my own hand, to see life as life could be for itself, to have the love that's life for a woman. I wanted to be wooed and won by some one who loved me, just as any woman wants to be, Charley, some time! And I wasn't—I wasn't.... It was horrible.... It was horrible.... I wanted to give love for love. I wanted what I couldn't get, and saw it was too late to get it fair. And when I saw that you—that even you'd sell out for me—why, where was the good, clean thing left in all the world? I couldn't tell. I didn't know what to do. I don't know now. But you put these papers before me now, and you expect me to shed tears over them. I can't. I don't care. The worst was over for me before now. It came when I knew you'd love me if I'd raise a finger to you. Why didn't you make me love you first—long ago? Then all would have come right. Back there—at first—"

"They'll say that when your husband lost his fortune he lost his wife. Yes—" he nodded. "They'll say that and believe it! That isn't true!"

"No, that isn't true. I was done with him the moment he set this errand for me. No woman can love a man who will do that. But I was done with him—from the first I never loved him, I never did—I only married him! I sold out—what I had to sell, myself, my fitness for a place like this. That was what I called success! I wanted to be some one in the world! Look at me now—"

X

They sat, two figures in an inexorable drama that swept relentlessly forward; tasting of a part of ambition's ripened fruit; yet hungering with the vast, pitiful, merciless human hunger for that other fruit that hung in a garden once not lost.

"If it costs my soul, I'll stand by you," he said at last; and he reached out a hand to her suddenly.

"No, no!" she cried. "Wait! Wait! I want to think!"

A discreet cough sounded. The butler approached bearing coffee. He wore a half sneer on his face now, the sneer of the unpaid mercenary. He doubted, and had cause to doubt, whether the last month's salary would be forthcoming; for butlers read morning papers. "Ah, er, Mrs. Rawn—" he began.

"What do you want? How dare you speak to me!" she rejoined. "I do not care to be disturbed! You may go!"

He did go; and this was on an errand of his own, an errand which ended in Grace Halsey's chambers. For butlers sometimes take ingenious revenge.

XI

Halsey and Virginia Rawn sat on for a time at the table, the almost untasted breakfast before them. The sun grew warmer. After a time she rose, and they passed from the gallery toward the interior of the house. The tray upon the hall table held a scanty morning load for it—one letter and a telegram; the former addressed to Mrs. Charles Halsey, the latter to herself.

"Shall I?" she asked, and tore the envelope across.

"It must be from him," he said. She tossed it to him.

"Home to-night. JOHN RAWN."

CHAPTER IX
WHAT CHEER OF THE HARVEST?

I

The blood of youth is hot. He followed her, in spite of all, forgetting all. They had advanced across the hall toward the gold room, or library.

"Oh, Charley, Charley! Don't begin, wait a little," she wailed. "At least till to-night, till afternoon. I don't know what to say yet. I don't know what to do! Let us see him first, and tell him."

"Look about you," he commented grimly. "You're going to lose all this—all these splendid, beautiful things."

"I don't mind losing them. I want to be poor. Oh, my God! Just to be loved, and clean! Charley, can we?"

"But why choose me? There are so many others!"

"All like Mr. Rawn himself—men crazed of money, power, selfishness. I wanted something different. Do you think it could have been my father's old ideas coming out in me, so late? He came of a family of revolutionists—independents; 'Progressives,' they call them now. Something of his beliefs—I don't know what it was—"

"But you'll have to leave him in any case. Divorce is simple enough. You know what I would have done, and done, also, in any case. Grace and I—"

"Yes, I know all about everything. Everything's past," she said despairingly. "We're dead. It's all over!"

"I ought to go?" he asked vaguely.

"Yes, pretty soon. But I suppose you'll have to see Grace, and—to-night I'll have to see—"

He bowed his head. "Yes, we've got to pay that part first. The best we can do and all we can give ought to be enough for him."

II

She turned, left him, passing through the great doors to the central rooms within. Following her still, he found her at the stair and joined her. There approached them now, with hasty tread and face somewhat excited, the medical man who had been for so many days now in attendance upon Grace Rawn and her child. He had come on his morning visit unnoticed by them.

"Ah," he began, "I'm glad to find you, Mrs. Rawn—and you, Mr. Halsey—I've been looking for you—Come! Come quickly!" His face showed plainly his agitation.

"Is there anything wrong?" demanded Halsey sharply. "What's the trouble?"

"It is my duty to tell you the truth," began the doctor. "Your wife is a very sick woman, indeed."

"I know that, yes."

"But not the worst until this morning, until just now. Something—"

(Virginia and Halsey)
(Virginia and Halsey)

"I've been here in the house waiting—why did you not call me?" began Halsey clumsily.

"You must not wait!" the doctor interrupted him, taking him by the arm and hastening toward the stairway.

They followed him up the stair, down the upper hall, to the rooms which had been set apart of late days for Grace and her child, quarters all too unfamiliar to Halsey himself.

They found Grace Halsey, faint and gasping, half sitting in her bed, clasping the child in her arms, herself too weak now longer to hold it up. Halsey, stricken with sudden horror, ran to take the child in his own arms.

The truth was obvious. Even as he lifted the poor crippled form in his arms, the head fell back, helpless. The eyes glazed, turned back uncovered. Halsey cried out aloud. He turned about, dazed; horror and helplessness were on his face. It was to Virginia Rawn he turned, as to the other part of himself.

It was Virginia Rawn who took from him the feeble, misshapen body, gathering it into her own arms. She gazed intently, frowning, grieving a woman's grief over suffering, bending over its face; her own face held back over it when she saw the truth. Then she passed him and placed the body of the child upon its cot near-by, covering it gently.

III

"Grace, Grace!" sobbed Halsey. He fell upon his knees at his wife's bedside. She did not see him, did not recognize him, although she turned a questioning face toward him. "Me, too!" he cried. "I want to go! I want to die and end it! Everything's wrong..."

"Come," said the doctor presently; "it's too late now. I'll call for you after a time." He took Halsey by the arm and led him from the room. Returning, he signed for Virginia Rawn also to leave the sick chamber. Left alone, the medical man turned to the professional nurse in attendance. "Keep it quiet," he said. "It would hurt my practice—do you hear?"

He kicked beneath the bed a small broken vial, and wiped away the stain from the lips of the dying woman.

The doctor, of course, had his guess, the public its guess, the daily papers theirs. The truth was, Grace Halsey, by butler route, had learned of the tÊte-À-tÊte of her husband and her stepmother a half hour before this time.

CHAPTER X
THOSE WHO REAP THE WHIRLWIND

I

Grace Halsey, dead, her crippled child dead beside her, never knew the contents of the letter which had been received for her that morning. It still laid on the hall table unnoticed. There was almost none to pay attention to the many duties of the household. The last servants had begun to pass, scenting disaster even as had others. The magic which had builded this mansion house now lacked strength to hold its tenantry. There remained now only one man—the butler, lingering for his pay. Only two persons might still be said to be actuated by any sense of loyalty or duty to Graystone Hall and its owner—Halsey and Virginia Rawn.

Of duty—to what and to whom? They dared not ask, dared not think. They waited, they knew not for what. The master of this mansion house was forth upon his business. Somewhere, he was hastening toward his home. When he might be expected they did not know. Nor did the master know what news awaited him upon his coming.

II

The evening dailies came out upon the streets, reeling and reeking with the last accumulating sensations of the Rawn disasters. The business world continued to rub its eyes, the social world continued to exult. Many and many a woman smiled that evening as she contemplated proofs of the downfall of one whom once she had envied. The Rawns, it now seemed, had all along been known, by everybody who was anybody, to have been nobody at all. They who had sown the wind, had the whirlwind for their reaping. This was the general day of harvest for Graystone Hall.

But the day passed on. Shadows lengthened beyond the tall towers and softened as they fell toward the east. The soft airs of evening, turning, came in across the open gallery front. Night came, night unbroken by more than a few lights in all the myriad windows of this stately monument which John Rawn had builded as proof of his personal success. Vehicles, passing slowly, held occupants staring in curiosity at this vast, vacant pile. Human sympathy lacked, human aid there was not.

III

Thus it chanced easily that there passed up the long driveway of Graystone Hall, almost unnoticed, a vehicle carrying one who seemed a stranger there; an elderly, rather tall woman of gray hair and unfashionable garb, who made such insistence with the servant at the door that at length she won her way through.

Her errand seemed not one of curiosity, nor did she lack in decision. She left upon the table an old-fashioned reticule, and following the advice given her, in reply to her question, passed up the stair and down the upper hall, to the room where lay Grace Halsey and her child. There, unknown by any of the household and accepted by those whose professional duties took them thither, she remained for many hours. Halsey and Virginia Rawn did not know of her coming.

It was a cold home-coming, also, which awaited John Rawn. But he came at last, to meet that which was for him to encounter. It was night. The lights were few and dim. None greeted him at his own gate, none even at his own door, which was left unguarded. At length he found the solitary footman-butler, asleep in a chair, the worse for wine.

"Where is she?" he demanded. "Where is Mrs. Rawn?"

He turned before he could be coherently answered, and passed down the hall toward the library, through whose closed doors he saw a faint light gleaming.

IV

Something impelled John Rawn to hesitate. He stood, himself the very picture of despair, his face drawn, haggard, unshaven, his hair disordered, his hands twitching. He must find his wife, he said to himself; he must ask her what success she had had with their last hope. Yes, yes, it must be true! With Halsey's aid he would yet win! If she had won—Halsey would yet be on his side—Halsey would tell him—Halsey would go back to the factory—

But John Rawn hesitated at this door. He felt, rather than knew, believed rather than was advised, that his wife was beyond that door. He waited, apprehensive, but kept up with himself the pitiful pretense of self-deception. Ah, power, control, command!—those were the great things of the world, he reasoned. True, he knew his daughter lay dead in her room on the floor above—the paper he held in his hand told him that; for at last the doctor had prepared his statement regarding Mrs. Halsey's death by "heart failure"—the rich and all akin to them always die respectably, in a house so large as Graystone Hall. But it was too late to save her, Rawn reasoned. Let the dead bury the dead. The larger things must outweigh the small. He first must know what his wife had done with Halsey.

To the tense, strained nerves of John Rawn the truth was now as apparent as it had been to the sensibilities of all these others, late friends, servants, sycophants. Ruin was here, in his citadel, his castle of pride. Only one thing could save him.... He hesitated at the door, held back from that which he knew he was about to face.... But no, he reasoned, she was there alone, he must see her!

He flung open the folding doors and stood holding them apart.

V

Yes, she was there! John Rawn's face drew into a ghastly smile. Yes, she had won! She, the wonderful woman, had triumphed as he had planned for her to triumph. She had won! ...

They stood before him, those two, silent, face to face, embraced; their arms about each other even as he flung wide the door. They turned to him now, stupefied, so weary, so overstrained, that their arms still hung, embraced. The face of each was white, desolate, unhappy; more hopeless and desperate than terrified, but horrible. They were lovers. They loved, but what could love do for them, so late? They had paid—but what right had they to love, so late?

John Rawn, the man who had wrought all this, stood and gazed, ghastly, smiling distortedly, at his wife's face. Why, then, should she be unhappy? What was to be lost save that which he, John Rawn, was losing—or had been about to lose?

But he was startled, stupefied, himself, for one moment. He turned back, hesitating; and so tiptoed away, leaving them, although the joint knowledge of all was obvious. They had not spoken a word, had not started apart, had only gazed at him like dead persons, white, silent, motionless—not lovers; no, not lovers.

For one-half instant, alone in the wide and darkened hall, Rawn straightened himself up, threw his chest out. Yes, she had won—she had done her task! She held Charles Halsey fast—there—in her embrace. He, John Rawn, multimillionaire, collector of rare objects, one of God's anointed rich, had the shrewdest wife the world had ever seen, the most beautiful, the most successful!

Had he not seen—was it not there before his eyes? She had his one enemy netted, in her power—there—had he not seen? She brought him, bound hand and foot, to him, John Rawn! Could a man doubt his eyes? They had hunted well in couple, he and his wife, and now she had pulled down their latest victim! ...

What mattered the means?—there was but one great thing. And the great things must outweigh the small. He was a man of power. He had been born for success. He was—

VI

He stood, half in the shadow, hesitant. Then he heard other feet approaching him slowly. His wife, Virginia, came and took him by the arm and had him within the door; closed it back of him; and, leaving him, advanced to where Halsey stood. She took Halsey by the hand.... It seemed a singular thing to Rawn, this performance; in fact, almost improper, if the truth were known.... So it seemed to John Rawn's mind, a trifle clouded with distress and drink.

"Well," said she apathetically; and held her peace as he frowned and looked at her dumbly.

"Well!" he broke out at last; "I'm back again!— You're here, I see." This last to Halsey.

They two stood and regarded him without comment. Halsey kept his eye on Rawn's hand, expecting some sudden movement for a weapon. He was incredulous that any man could sustain Rawn's attitude toward him. War, and nothing but war, seemed inevitable between himself and Rawn, the man whom he had wronged, the man who had wronged him.

"I suppose—I see—" began Rawn clumsily, after a while. "Of course, you have probably been here all the time, Charley. I came back as soon as I could. I've been having all kinds of trouble in St. Louis and New York. Everything's all gone to pieces."

They did not answer him, and he shuffled.

"Have you anything to say?" he demanded of his wife; "Has Mr. Halsey—Charley—agreed?—Have you persuaded him to—"

"You wish to know, whether I have done what I was told to do—is that it?" she demanded of him coldly.

"Yes; have you?"

"I have. Here is Mr. Halsey. I have kept my word. You have seen. I told you I could bring him in, bound hand and foot. Kiss me, Charley," she cried. "Oh! kiss me!" And he did kiss her. Cold, white, hand in hand, dead, they then faced him again.

VII

"Is it true?" began Rawn. His eyes lighted up suddenly. "He has agreed?"

Halsey broke in now. "It is true, Mr. Rawn," said he. "I love her. I love your wife; I can't help it. I have told her so. You see."

"You love her!" John Rawn burst out into a great, croaking-laugh. "You love her? I say, that's good! That's good news to tell me, isn't it? Why—I sent her—I used her, to make you love her! You see reason now at last, do you?—every man does at last—every man has his price. You'll go back to work to-morrow? There's a lot to do, but we can save it all yet. We can whip them, I tell you—we'll get everything back in our own hands before to-morrow night!"

"—But, Mr. Rawn! Listen! You do not know! Surely you do not understand—"

"Understand? What is there left to understand? Didn't I see you both just now? Didn't you—right now—haven't you got to come across now? Hasn't she done what I told her to do; what she said she'd do? I told her to bring you back to us again, and she's done it, hasn't she?

"But come on, now," he resumed, as though reluctantly—"I suppose we've got to go up there—Grace—? Too bad.... But I wanted to see Jennie first."

"My God!" whispered Virginia Rawn, shuddering. "Oh, my God!"

VIII

"Rawn," said Halsey directly, abandoning even any pretense at courtesy; "the end of the world has come for you, for us all. My wife is dead—she's lucky! My child is dead, too, and that's lucky. It had no life to live, crippled as it was. She killed herself and the baby. I don't seem to care as I ought to care. And now your wife has told me that she loves me. It's true! She doesn't love you; she never has. She has not taken me a prisoner any more than I have her. We're both in this to-night. We're both to blame. But, at the bottom, you are to blame—for all of this."

"Of course! Of course!" smiled John Rawn sardonically. "What would you expect? I am sorry. But I'll never tell any one about it, you can depend on that!"

"You'll never tell!" went on Charles Halsey slowly. "You'll never need to tell. But here's what I want to tell you, once more. Whatever this is—and it's about bad enough—it's come because of you. You—you were the cause of this!"

"You blame me—why, what do you mean!" burst out John Rawn. "Where have I been to blame, I'd like to know! What do you mean, young man?"

"Every word I have told you, and more than I can tell you. You'll not think—you don't dare to face the truth; but there's the real truth. If you can't understand that, take what you can understand. Your wife isn't to blame—I'm to blame. Love is to blame. I love her. I've done this."

"You have done—what?"

"I've taken your wife away from you, can't you understand, you fool? She's going to marry me as soon—"

"Jennie!—what's this fellow talking about?" The veins on John Rawn's forehead stood high and full.

IX

"He is only telling you the truth," she said calmly, wearily. "I don't care one picayune whether or not you know it, whether or not the world knows it! I'm tired! I'm done with all this sort of thing! Yes, I'm going to marry him as soon as we can get away. As soon as it's decent, if anything's decent any more!"

"And you love him, you'll rob me, you'll leave me—you'll—why, are you all crazy? What are you talking about? When I've given you everything you've got—when you were so much to me! Jennie!"

"No, no!" she raised a hand. "Don't talk about that! It's all over now."

She tore at her throat, at her fingers, heaped up in his hands the gems she wore even then, the gems she had put upon her person to protect them from uncertain servants, gems which left her blazing like some waxen queen in her tomb—white, dead, enjeweled.

"Take them!" she cried. "I don't want them." She went on, piling his hands full of glittering, flashing things. He stood gazing at her, stupefied. Then, slowly, the burden of years, the burden of business failure, and lastly this—the burden of the worst of man's discomfiture, the worst of a man's possible losses—began to weigh down upon him. He shortened visibly; shriveled; drooped.

X

They had no pity for him. Youth has no pity for age, love no pity for a mate's inefficiency; but after all some sort of contempt, at least, seemed due him.

"Rawn," said Halsey, "it's pretty hard. We're all of us paying a hard, heavy price for what we thought we had. But we can't evade it, any part of it. It was your fault that Grace left me. We were going to part. You sent your wife after me, as you call it. I suppose Grace found that out. You know what she did then. I said I blame you, and so I do. But I was going to get a divorce—"

"Divorce!—you divorce my daughter! John Rawn's daughter!"

"Did you not divorce her mother—you, yourself?"

"But I loved—my wife—I mean, this woman—Jennie, here!"

"So do I love her; more than you do or ever will know how to do! What you have done we'll do. Is it worse for us than it was for you? What's the difference?"

"But she's my wife! Why, Jennie!" He held out a hand to her.

"So was Laura Rawn your wife, my wife's mother," went on Halsey. "What's the difference?"

Virginia Rawn stepped between the two. "I'm as much to blame as any one of us all," she said quietly. "I sold out to you, didn't I, Mr. Rawn—down there in New York? I married you, didn't I? Very well, what you did, I have done. No more, and not without equal cause. I love him. I'm going to marry him. You and I are going to be divorced—if we were not I'd go to him anyhow. I hate you, I loathe you! My God! how I detest and loathe the sight of you! Go away—go away from us! You're not any part of a man!"

XI

"It's true!" gasped John Rawn to himself; "My God, it's true! She said that—I heard her—to me? What have I done to deserve this? ... I ought to kill you," said he to Halsey slowly.

"Of course you ought," said Halsey. "If you were any portion of a man you would. But you've tried that, and you know where you ended."

"But Halsey—Charley!—you don't stop to think!" began Rawn pitifully. "You will go back—you will go back to the factory, in the morning? You will help me pull it together, won't you?"

"No, not one step back to the factory—never in the world! I'm done with that. I'm going away somewhere, and she's going with me, I don't know where. Let some one else work out what you thought we could do, and let some one else take the consequences—it's not for me. You've got what you earned—I suppose I'll get what I've earned, too. I don't care about that any more."

Rawn could not answer the young man as he went on, slowly, dully, bitterly. "If I've been traitor to any of my own creed I reckon God'll punish me. Very well; I will take my punishment on my shoulders. I've no apologies to make in a place like this.

"Haven't you gone up—oughtn't we to go up now—up-stairs?" he added at last. He put down Virginia's arms from his shoulders; for once more she had come to him.

Rawn sighed. "I suppose I must go up there," he said vaguely.

He turned and walked away, heavy, stumbling.

I

Halsey turned toward Virginia. They did not again embrace, but stood silent, almost apathetic now. Passion was far away from them, indeed had never fully seized them. The despair in human love was theirs; and love is half despair. She might have been some beautiful statue in white marble, so cold was she; and as for the man who faced her, his anger gone, he himself might have been the image of hopelessness. Central figures of an irreparable ruin, and seeing no avenue to happiness, for the time neither had word for the other.

At last Halsey raised his head, as some sound caught his ear. "What's that?" he said.

"I heard it," said she. "I think it's some one coming up the walk."

"Yes," he answered. "Listen! Why, it sounds like a crowd. What can that mean, now? Wait."

He left her and hastened out to the front door. He stood there, outlined fully by the hall lights behind him. Those who approached recognized him. He was greeted by a derisive shout, half-maudlin, scarce human in its quality. The solitary servant rushed up, excited. "What is it, Mr. Halsey?" he quavered. "Is there going to be any trouble? Oh, I ought to have gone away with the others!"

"Get out of the way," replied Halsey calmly. "Get back behind the door. I'll go out and meet them."

"Here, you men!" he called out in sudden anger to the visitors. "What do you mean, coming here this way?" He was advancing toward them now, down the steps, into the curving walk, almost to the rim of the circle of light cast by the house lights.

"Don't you know any better than to come here at this time, you people? There's trouble in this house. There's death in here. Go on away, at once!"

II

The leader of the scattered group of ill-dressed men stepped forward. "No, we'll not go on away at once. We know who you are, all right, Mr. Halsey. Trouble! We're in trouble, too! We're lookin' for some more trouble, now."

"Well, I'm not to blame for that. What do you mean? Who are you, anyway?"

"You ought to know us! We've done up some of your damned sneaks. You cut your workmen down to the last copper in wages, and you didn't pay them that. Then when the pinch came, you shut the doors and slunk off, like the coward you was! Then they came over to us, at last! Your scabs is in the unions now."

"I haven't done anything of the kind!" retorted Halsey hotly. "I haven't been to the factory for days. When I left there, every cent was paid up. That wasn't any of my business anyhow—I was not cashier, but factory superintendent."

"It's a lie, you know it's a lie! We've come to show you up. We've come to take old man Rawn and you out of this place. We ought to ride him on a rail, and you with him! That's what we ought to do! We want that money." The leader advanced toward him menacingly.

"Why, men, I have not got your money—" expostulated Halsey. "If I had, this isn't the way to get it from me! I've always used you fellows square! You've got to act that way with me. I'm in trouble now, I tell you. My wife's dead, and my baby—to-day—in here. You are accusing the best friend you have got! Where's Jim Sullivan? Where's Tim Carney? Where's any of you men that used to work with me there in the factory? Any one of you ought to know better."

"They ain't here; but don't talk that to us! We know what you was doing with them machines. We know what you was up to. You wanted to take the bread out of our mouths! We seen it all in the papers, the whole thing, plain enough. No wonder you kept it all blind as you could—you wanted to put us off the earth."

"It's a lie!" cried Halsey sternly. "I broke them up. I threw up my job. I quit because I didn't want to see the bread taken out of your mouths. I stood between the company and just what you say. I wouldn't allow them to make it harder for you than it was. I never lost you a cent of wages—I stood for you all the time, I'm with you now. Why, men, I've been at your meetings, I'm one of you! Don't you know? Don't you remember? You've never asked a thing of me I haven't tried to do, that was in reason. You know me! What difference about the union if I'm your sort?"

"Yes, ve do know you!" broke in a squat and pallid Jew, forcing himself through the thick to the front, and usurping the place of the wavering leader. "By Gott, ve do know you, Mister Halsey! You'fe lied to us, that's vat you'fe done! You'fe been to our meetings, yess, but you'fe betrayed us! I seen you there, yess!"

"That's not true!" answered Halsey hotly. "There isn't a word of truth in it! I've lost everything in the world I've got just because that isn't true. My wife's lying dead in that house back there—just because of that! My child's dead there too—just because of that—I've lost everything in the world I have got—just because that isn't true!"

III

The Jew shrieked aloud, half-insane. "To hell vith this country!" he said. "To hell vith the rich that rob us. If your vife's dead, it iss vat's right. My vife, she'll die too, she's starring. To hell vith Rawn and all like him!"

"Look here, my men, that's about enough of that!" rejoined Halsey. "You're drunk or crazy, and we're not going to stand for that here. It's no place for this kind of talk. I tell you, I've done all I could for you. I haven't sided with Rawn. If I had, I could be rich to-day."

"You are rich!" cried the Jew; "and ve are poor. You eat fat, you sleep soft. You are rich! But vat do ve get? I'm hungry! My folks—they are starfing! Ve haf no money. Ve get no money for vork ve did so long. It buys us nothing now. Meat is no more for us; breat, hardly. This iss no country for the people. This iss no land vere laws are just. This iss no republic of man. Jehovah, send Thy power! Smite and spare not, this so wrong a land!"

"You damned fanatic, shut up!" began Halsey savagely. "Get on out of here. You don't know your own friends! Who's to blame for your troubles? Haven't you got heads of your own? Haven't you got votes of your own? Can't you right your own wrongs, the first minute you get ready to do it, I'd like to know? I'm for you, do you understand; but you make it hard for any one to help you. You've had sluggers after our men all the time over there, and now you come and want us to pay you for that. You're over here to make trouble to-night, maybe slug me—perhaps that's what you are trying to do to me—and you want us to pay you for that. You talk about monopolies and trusts—what you're trying to do is to make the worst trust in the country—a monopoly in ignorance and savagery. Go on home and let me alone! I tell you, my wife is dead. I am going back to her!"

"He's lying to us!" cried out a voice in the crowd. "He's trying to get us sorry for him!"

"That's it!" screamed the Jew, who had edged to the front and who now stood crouched, menacing, not far from Halsey's erect and irate frame. "That's vhat he iss. He'ss only trying to fool us. Kill him! Ve've vaited long enough! Gif it to him!" He sprang to one side, crouching.

IV

Those back of them, at the gallery, in the rear of the entry, heard some sort of scuffle, a snarling of voices, curses. There were sounds of blows. Then came a flash, a shocking report; after that, a half-instant of silence, and the sound of scattering and departing footsteps.

There remained only one figure, lying outstretched on the gravel. To render succor to this, to offer aid, there was now only one human being left in all that place—she who now came hurrying forward.

Virginia Rawn half raised Halsey as he lay. "Charley!" she said quietly. "Can you talk?"

He gasped and nodded. "Through here!" He touched his chest. "I guess I'll not—be able—"

She called out, to any back of her, for aid. The frightened servant came, and between them they got him somehow into the house, dragging him to the gold-room library which they had but lately left. They placed him there upon a couch. Virginia Rawn rose and waved the man away. He hurried after help.

"Charley!" she said, turning to him; "can you talk?"

"A little. What is it, Jennie?"

"You're hurt bad—very bad."

"Through here," he said again, and touched his chest. His breath was hard. His garments were soaked with blood. His face was bluish-gray.

V

She looked into his soul the query of her own. Perhaps there was something not wholly unworthy in the bond between them, since now it enabled them to talk, one soul with the other, almost without words.... The great, secret, all-powerful, world current, interstellar, not international, the one great power—of love, as she once said—was theirs.... Yes, it was theirs, if only for a little while.

"They've killed me," he began after a time—"I tried to do something for them. He—Rawn—would have used it for himself. I didn't want to....

"Jennie," he said, after a time; "I beg pardon, Mrs. Rawn—I forgot—would you take the doll, the little rubber one on the table there, up to the baby? Poor little thing! Oh, well! ..."

He sighed. She quietly laid him back upon the couch. She heard the blood drip, drip, through and across the brocaded couch, falling at the edge of the silken rug, on the polished floor, eddying there; thickening there.

CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT JOHN RAWN

I

Far off, deep in the underground regions of the city at the focus of the republic's vast industrialism, the presses were reeling and clanging again, heavy with their story of disaster. The civilization of the day went on.

Somewhere out upon the mountain tops, somewhere in the forests, the forces of nature gathered, marched on toward the sea. Somewhere dumbly, mutely, uncomplaining, the great river and its mate the great power, inter-stellar, not international—they two, as he but now vauntingly had dreamed, erstwhile silent partners of John Rawn—did their work.... For whom? For what? Answer that, my brothers. The answer is your own. As you and I shall speak in that answer, so shall our children eat well sleep well, in days yet to come, in this country which we still call our own, now all too little ours.

II

It was far past midnight when John Rawn again came down the stair, sobered and whitened by what he had seen in the death chamber. He tiptoed now back to the library door, through which and beneath whose silken curtains still there pierced a little shaft of light. He opened the door, peered in.

He saw Virginia sitting there silent, white, unagitated, her features cameo-sharp, her skin waxen, indeed marble white, a woman as motionless, as silent, apparently as little animate as the one he had left behind him in the death chamber beyond the stair. She turned her eyes, not her face, toward him, but did not speak. The edge of her gown was moist, stained.

John Rawn looked in turn at the long figure upon the couch, motionless, silent, its hands folded. Neither did it speak to him. Suddenly oppressed, suddenly afraid, he turned once more away. Irresolution was in his soul, uncertainty.

Rawn was hardly sure that he still lived, that he still was the same John Rawn he once had known. It seemed impossible that all these things could have fallen upon him, who had not deserved them! He pitied himself with a vast pity, revolting at the many injustices of fortune now crowding upon him, a wholly blameless man. Why, a day before, he had held in his hand power such as few men could equal; had had, presently before him, power none other ever could hope to equal. That opportunity still existed. But how now could he avail himself of that opportunity, how could he go on to be the great John Rawn, if this figure on the couch could not arise, could not speak to him, could not perform the obvious duty of rendering needful assistance to him, John Rawn? The cruelty of it all rankled in the great and justice-loving soul of Mr. Rawn. Why, he was penniless—he—John Rawn! He was not even sure about his wife, yonder. She had said things to him he could not understand, could not believe.

He left the room, and walked still farther down the hall, his head sagging, his lower lip pendulous, his face warped into a pucker of self-pity—so absorbed, that at first he did not heed an approaching footfall. He paused almost in touch of some one who approached him in the half-lighted hall; some one who was coming down the stair and along the hall with steady tread.

III

There stood before him now the same tall, gray-haired, unfashionably dressed woman whom so recently he vaguely had noted at a distance in the hall above; some woman apparently busy with duties connected with the death chamber, as he had reflected when he saw her; some neighbor, he presumed, and certainly useful! It was kind of her to come at this time. He could not, at the time, recollect that he had seen her before. Yes, he would reward her—he would express his thanks.

He looked up at her now sharply, and gasped.

"Laura!" he exclaimed. "Is it you?"

"Why, yes, John," answered the tall, gaunt woman gently. "Didn't you see me, up there? I suppose you were too much troubled to notice me, John. Yes, I'm here. I thought maybe I ought to come.

"But you see—this—" she held out to him the letter she had picked up from the hall table. "This didn't get to her—Grace—not in time. She died this morning, before noon, they tell me. She never knew her mother was coming to her when she was in trouble. She hadn't seen my letter to her, telling I was coming. I knew she was in trouble—and I saw all the stories in the papers. I thought I'd tell her I was coming to her—and you, John. She was my girl, after all! I knew she was in trouble."

"How did you know?"

"Why, she wrote to me, of course. A girl always writes to her mother when she's in trouble. She wrote to me right often. She wasn't—well, she wasn't happy, John, and she often told me that. Something wrong was going on between her and Charley, I don't know what."

He stood looking at her, stupefied, as she went on, simply.

IV

"John, married folks oughtn't to be apart too much. They sort of get weaned from each other. Grace was too ambitious. She'd got, here, what she thought her husband couldn't get, what she'd come to think she had to have. I might have told her better, but I wasn't here. Not that I'm reproving you, John, not at all. Besides, we have all got to go, some day. But I loved her.... And the baby."

"So did I love her, and the baby," he began. Tears were in his eyes. "Laura, I have had nothing but trouble. And now you have come here—"

"Yes, I know; it must seem a little queer to you, John; so I'm going right away again, to-night—before morning, if there's any way I can get down-town."

"Yes, yes!"

"—Because, I know if I was seen around here, and people found out who I am, who I—was—there might be some sort of talk which would be hard for you, John. I reckon you have trouble enough without that. I didn't want to bother you. I came mostly because of Grace. But—John, I always did like to tell the truth, and I have got to tell it now—I came a little, too, because of you!"

"Of me? Why Laura!"

"Yes, I did. I read the papers, of course, all the time. I have known about you, although you haven't heard of me. You have moved up in the world, John, and as for me—well, I have just gone back to Kelly Row, where we used to live. Of course, I'm glad you have been lucky. But then, lately, the papers all began to say you were in trouble. I've read all kinds of things about you. I heard you were ruined—that you hadn't a dollar left in all the world!"

"It's true," he growled; "as near as I know, it's true. There is no hope for me now. It's all up!"

"But, John, you had so much money!"

"Yes, but it's gone now. It doesn't take it long to go when it starts the other way. The market makes a man, and it breaks him just as quick, and a lot quicker. It's done me, Laura. I'm ruined. I haven't a thing left in the world; not even my wife. Have you come here to twit me with it? What do I owe you, that I have to listen to you?"

"Why, nothing, John, that's true; nothing at all, not in the least. I have no right here at all, I know that. I understood that, when I—when—I went away from here. But that wasn't why I came back to-night."

"Then why did you come? You always had the faculty, Laura, of doing the wrong thing. You've been a curse to me all my life!"

"Some of that's true, John," she answered simply, "and a good deal of it isn't. Maybe I said the wrong thing sometimes, or did the wrong thing. I never had much training. I was meant for Kelly Row, I reckon—I'd never have fitted in here. We tried it! But I didn't come to glorify myself because you've lost this place, and everything you had. I just thought—"

"Well, Laura, what was it that you just thought? I can't stand here talking all the time. It isn't right, it isn't proper. I'm worn out!"

"Of course it isn't, John. I'm going right away. But you see, when I came away I just thought this way—here am I, an old woman that don't need much money any more. And there's Grace;—and maybe now John has need for money when everybody's turned against him. And if he does need money, why—"

V

"What do you mean, Laura?" gasped John Rawn. "What's that you said about money?"

"How much would do you any good, John?" she asked, fumbling in her bulging hand-bag.

"I might as well wish for the moon as for a dollar," he said bitterly. "If I had a million, or a half million, to-morrow, I'd pull it all together, even yet."

"A half million, John?" she said, taking out of her bag a little, wrinkled, flat porte-monnaie such as women sometimes use for carrying change in their marketing; but still continuing her fumbling at the portly bag.

"Yes, if I had a half million I could put this company on its feet, even yet—the secret's out that Halsey had,—but I'd get it somewhere. I more than half believe those fellows have got it, somewhere else, somehow—that fellow Van's deep. You see, they've been fighting me, Laura—made up a gang against me! I know who it was. If I had a half million I'd throw in with Van—he's got this secret somehow—he knows something about it. I'd throw in with him, and we'd whip the others, even yet! I'd get it all back in my hands even yet, I tell you!

"But my God! Why do I stand talking about such things? What's the use? I'm down and out! I'd just as well be dead!"

"Well, John, what I always said of you was, that you seemed to know how to get things around the way you wanted them. I said to myself, what a shame it was he should have no money, when he needed it, and I should have so much when I didn't need it. I've got enough set aside to keep me, I reckon, for my few years. And here's what you gave me;—although, Grace—of course, John, I want enough used to put Grace and the baby away. The rest is yours."

He stood looking at her dumbly, as at last she extricated from the bag a thick bundle of folded papers, green, brown, pale pink.

"I got the bank to keep them for me," she said simply. "It is what you gave me—when—when I left here—"

He still stood looking at her, choking.

"Laura!" said he. "Has God come to my aid? This—I can't believe it! It's a million dollars! It's a million dollars!" His voice rose, breaking almost to a shriek. "It's a— It's—a—million—dollars!"

"Well, take it, John, it's yours; you're welcome to it. I don't want it. It's done me no good. It's done none of us any good. All I want is, that you should take care of Grace's funeral, for that's only right, John. She was my girl, my baby, my baby! Take care of her. John, I have got to go back—home!"

VI

In the next ensuing moment or so, what swift changes now were wrought in the late despair of our friend and hero, Mr. John Rawn, master of the International Power Company, already in imagination controlling in good part the destinies of a people—the great John Rawn, philanthropist, kindly employer, wise friend of the less favored ones of earth; the beneficent, kindly, omnipotent John Rawn? Why had he despaired, why had he ever doubted, why had he ever set himself even momentarily apart from that original destiny which always he had accorded to him-self? Was he not a leader—had he not been devised to be so in the plans of the immortal gods, ages ago? Was he not one of the few select ones assigned to rule his fellow-men?

John Rawn stood before the old, gray woman, and scarcely heard her last words. He sighed deeply. His self-respect was coming back to him in waves, great, recurrent waves. At last a smile crossed his face. The imperious glance of the born ruler, of one better than his fellow-men, the look of the man set apart and licensed to rob and rule—returned once more to his eye.

VII

"It's a million dollars!" he cried aloud, exultantly, once more. "It's God has sent it to me! I'll take it as a sign. Watch me in the morning! I'll make them hunt their holes yet. By God! I will!"

"John, John, you mustn't swear, it isn't right! John!"

"I beg your pardon—er—er—Laura," he rejoined, with fine condescension, every instant now becoming more himself. "In fact, I want to thank you—it's clever of you, I must say. It isn't every woman who'd have done what you have done, I'm sure."

"Why wouldn't they, John? It isn't money a woman wants to make her happy. I've tried that. Grace tried it. It doesn't work. It takes something else besides money, I reckon. We're lucky when we find that, any of us, I reckon. If we don't, we've got to take just what God gives us. But money doesn't buy everything in the world. John, sometimes I think it buys about as little as anything you can think of!" She gulped just a little in her thin throat.

"All the same," said he firmly and generously, by this time almost fully the great John Rawn once more, "it was very decent of you, Laura."

"Well, never mind about that, John. It was you who made it. I never did understand how you earned it so fast. I'm glad if it will do you any good—if you're sure it will do you any good. And see, John," she added shyly, fumbling again in her bag, "I brought you a little present, John. I've been doing these, you see. I make quite a lot out of it. I never used any of that money you gave me, at all—I did these things—the way I did before, when we were getting our start together, John, you know. I thought—maybe—you'd like a pair."

VIII

She held out to him a pair of braces, embroidered carefully in silks. He took them in his hand. She also looked at them closely, in professional scrutiny, her steel bowed spectacles on nose. She pronounced them good.

"But, John," she added curiously—"you know, while I was up there, doing what I could for Grace and the baby—it seemed to me like as if I heard some funny sort of noise down here—something like a shot. What was it?"

"It was some of those confounded laboring people," said John Rawn, frowning. "Yes—they came here after Halsey."

"Yes? But was anybody hurt?"

"Well," said John Rawn, "Halsey—Charley Halsey—you remember him, I believe? Well, they shot him.

—"Good-night, Laura," he added suddenly, and held out his hand to her, generously, nobly. "I'm very sleepy. I've been up so long—and I've a lot to do to-morrow. After all, there's no use in our having hard feelings. Good-by."

THE END