"What, you were there! You heard!" he said, astounded.

She nodded her head, incapable of speech, her finger still on her lips, drawing him by the hand into the little sitting-room where they were in a measure free from other eyes.

"Now for a torrent of reproaches," he thought grimly.

But instead the next moment tears were on her cheeks, her arms about him, and her head on his shoulder. Seeing her thus shaken, he thought bitterly that all this grief was but for the material loss, the blow to her ambitions. All at once she raised her head, took him firmly by the shoulder, and said:

"Bojo, I've never loved you before—but I do now, oh, yes, now I know!"

He shook his head, unable to believe her capable of great emotions.

"Doris, you are carried away—this is not what you'll say to-morrow!"

"Yes, yes, it is!" she cried fervently. "I'll sacrifice anything now—nothing will ever make me give you up!"

"Luckily for you," he said, his look darkening, "you'll have time enough to come to your senses. If you heard all, you know what this means—starting at the beginning."

"I heard— I understand," she said, close to him, her eyes shining with a light that blotted out the world in confused shadow. He looked at her, thrilled by her feeling, by the thought that it belonged to him, that he was the master of it, and yet unconvinced.

"It's just your imagination," he said quietly, "that's all. Doris, I know you too well—what you've lived with and what you must have." He added, with a doubting smile: "You remember what you said to me that day on our ride, when we passed through that factory village—'ask me anything but to be poor.'"

"Bojo," she said, desperately, "you don't understand what a woman is. That was true—then. There's all that you say in me, but there's something else which you've never called out before, which can come when I love, when I really love." She clung to him, fighting for him, feeling how close she had been to losing him. "Bojo, believe in me, give me one more chance!"

"To-morrow you'll come to me with some new scheme for making money!"

"No, no."

"You'll try to persuade me that I should marry you on your money, take the opportunities your father can shove in my way. Oh, Doris, I know you too well!"

"No, no, I won't. I don't want—don't you see I don't want to make you do anything? I want to follow you!"

"That has been the trouble," he said, abruptly.

He turned, walked away, and sat down, gazing out through the window, feeling something dark and enveloping closing about him without his being able to slip away. She came impulsively to his side, flinging herself on the floor at his knees, carried away with the intensity of her emotion.

"What does all the rest amount to!" she said breathlessly. "I want you! I want a man, not a dummy, in my life. I want some one to look up to, bigger, stronger than I am, that can make me do things."

He put his hand on hers, thrilling as he bent quickly and kissed it.

"The trouble has been," he said slowly, "all this time I've been trying to come to your ways of living, to reach you. Doris, I can't promise; I'm not sure of myself, of what I think—"

"Oh, it would be such a dreadful thing if you were to let me go now," she said suddenly, covering her face. "Now, when I know what I could do!"

"Yes," he assented, feeling too the power he had suddenly acquired to make or mar a life, and with that power the responsibility.

"You can do anything with me," she said in a whisper.

He felt a lump in his throat, a sense of being blocked at every turn, a horror of doing harm, and a wild pride in the thought that at the last this girl, whom he had rebelled against so often for being without emotion or passion, was at his feet, without reserve, a warm, adoring woman.

"Doris, you have got to come to me on my footing," he said firmly at last.

She accepted it as the answer she had longed for, raising her face suffused with joy, pressing his hand to her heart, her eyes swimming with tears, inarticulate.

"Try me—anything! I'm happy—so happy—so afraid— I was so afraid— Oh, Bojo, to think I might never have known you—lost you!"

When a little calm had been reestablished, she wished to marry him at once, to live in one room in a boarding-house, if necessary, to prove her sincerity. He answered her evasively, pretending to laugh at her, feeling the while the leaden load of what by a trick of fate he had assumed at the moment when he had expected the completest freedom. Yet there was something so genuine, so uncalculated in her contrition, something so helpless and appealing to his strength in her surrender to his will and decision, that he felt stirred to a poignant pity, and shrank before the brutality of inflicting pain.

When he left, quiet and brooding, turning the corner of the Avenue his glance happened to go to a window on the second floor, and he saw Patsie looking down. He stopped, stumbling in his progress, and then, recovering himself, lifted his hat solemnly. She did not move nor make an answering gesture. He saw her only immobile, looking down at him.

When he returned to the Court and stopped mechanically at the desk for his mail, Della, with her welcoming smile, chided him.

"My, but you look awful serious, Mr. Crocker!"

"Am I?— Yes, I suppose so," he said absent-mindedly.

He went through into the inner court that yesterday had seemed to him such a constricted little spot in the great city which had responded to his fortunate touch. Now, in the falling dusk, with the lights blossoming out, the court seemed very big, crowded with human beings in the battle of life, and he himself small and without significance.

"Well, I've gone and done it," he said to himself with a half laugh. "I wonder—"

He wondered, now that it was all over, now that the curtain had dropped on the drama of it, whether after all Drake had been right—whether he was seeing life through his emotions, and what the point of view of thirty-five and forty would be in retrospection.

"Well, I've chucked it all," he said, lingering in the quiet and the suffused half lights. "I took the bit in my teeth. There's no turning back now." He remembered his father and the old battling look of defiance in his eyes as he had exhorted his son.

"Guess, after all," he said grimly, feeling all at once drawn closer to his own, "I must be a chip of the old block."

Granning alone was in the study as he came in, spinning his hat on to the sofa.

"Well, Granning, I've up and done it," he said shortly.

"Eh, what?" said Granning, looking up rather alarmed.

He told him.

"And so, Granning, I'm a horny-handed son of labor from this time forth," he said in conclusion. "You'll have to find me a job!" The laugh failed. It seemed out of place at that moment with Granning staring at him. He added quietly: "Guess self-respect is worth more than I thought!"

"God, I'm glad!" said Granning, bringing down his great fist.

He had never in all the long friendship seen Granning so stirred!