Andrew Barrett was made office-manager as well as business-getter. He was ordered to pay for the two additional clerks and the bookkeeper out of his own commissions or resign. He paid. This was real business because even then young Mr. Barrett was overpaid for his work. But his real acumen was in recognizing a great man.

Since the pay-roll was a matter of Mr. Andrew Barrett's personally selected statistics, H.R. was certainly a wonder.

On Tuesday morning H.R., feeling that his own greatness had already become merely a matter of greater greatness, turned, manlike, to thoughts of love: he would share his greatness!

He would make Grace Goodchild marry him. He was sure he would succeed. He saw very clearly, indeed, how Mr. Goodchild, being a conservative banker, could be compelled to say yes.

In addition he would make Grace love him.

The strongest love is that love which is stronger than hatred or fear. Therefore the love that begins by hating or fearing is best. To overcome the inertia of non-loving is not so difficult as to stop the backward motion and turn it into forward.

He sat down and wrote a note:

Yours,
H.R.

With the note he sent her eighty-three inches of clippings and fourteen pictures. If that wasn't fame, what was? He also sent flowers.

That afternoon before the thÉ dansant hour he called at the Goodchild residence.

"Miss Goodchild!" he said to the man, instead of asking for her. He pulled out his watch, looked at it, and before the man could say he would see if she were at home to H.R., added, "Yes!"

He was punctual, as the man could see. The man therefore held out a silver card-tray.

"Say it's Mr. Rutgers," H.R. told him. "And straighten out that rug. You've walked over it a dozen times!"

It was plain to see that it was H.R. who really owned this house. He must, since he wasn't afraid of the servants. And the worst of it was that the footman could not resent it: the gentleman was so obviously accustomed to regarding servants as domestic furniture. He dehumanized footmen, deprived them of souls, left them merely arms and legs to obey, machine-like. They call such "well-ordered households." Certainly not. It isn't a matter of the orders, but of the soul-excision.

Grace Goodchild walked in—behind her mother. The footman stood by the door, evidently by request.

Everything in civilized communities is by request.

"How do you do?" said H.R., pleasantly. "Is this mother?" He bowed to Mrs. Goodchild—the bow of a social equal—his eyes full of a highly intelligent appreciation of physical charm. Then he asked Grace, "Did you read them?"

Mrs. Goodchild had intended to be stern, but the young man's undisguised admiration softened her wrath to pleasant sarcasm.

"I wished to see for myself," she said, not very hostilely, "if you were insane. I see you are—"

"I am," agreed H.R., amicably, "and have been since I saw her. And the worst of it is, I am very proud of it."

"Will you oblige me by leaving this house quietly?"

"Certainly," H.R. assured her. "I didn't come to stay—this time. I'm glad to have seen you. Has Grace told you I'm to be your son-in-law?"

He looked at her proudly, yet meekly. It was wonderful how well he managed to express the conflict. Then he apologized contritely. "I was too busy to call before. My grandmother has never met you, has she?" He looked at her anxiously, eager to clear Mrs. Goodchild's name before the court of his family.

At one fell swoop H.R. had deleted the name of Goodchild from the society columns.

Mrs. Goodchild said, huskily, "Frederick, ring for a policeman."

"I'll break his damned neck if he does," said H.R., with patrician calmness. "Don't you ever again dare to listen while I am here, Frederick. You may go."

H.R. looked so much as if he meant what he said that Grace was pleasantly thrilled by his masterfulness. But not for worlds would she show it facially. When a woman can't lie to the man who loves her she lies to herself by looking as she does not feel.

"Do you wish me to go? For the sake of peace?" he asked Grace, anxiously.

There was nothing he would not do, no torture too great to endure, for her sake—not even the exquisite agony of absence. That there might be no misunderstanding, he added, softly, "Do you?"

"Don't you talk to my daughter!" said Mrs. Goodchild, furious at being excluded from the supreme command. Hearing no assent, she was compelled by the law of nature to repeat herself: "Don't you talk to my daughter!"

H.R. looked at her in grieved perplexity. "Do you mean that you are deliberately going to be a comic-weekly mother-in-law and make me the laughing-stock of my set?"

Feeling the inadequacy of mere words to express the thought she had not tried to express, Mrs. Goodchild called on her right hand for aid; she pointed. Being concerned with gesture rather than intent on direction, she, alas! pointed to a window.

He shook his head at her and then at the window, and told her: "To jump out of that one would be as bad as having me arrested. Do you want the infernal reporters to make you ridiculous? Do you realize that I am the most-talked-about man in all New York? Don't you know what newspaper ridicule is? Don't you? Say no!"

To make sure of her own grasp of the situation Mrs. Goodchild, who was dying to shriek at the top of her voice, compressed her lips. H.R. instantly perceived the state of affairs and double-turned the key by fiendishly placing his right forefinger to his own lips. This would give to his mother-in-law the two excellent habits of obedience and silence.

He turned to the girl and said: "Grace, don't hide behind your mother. Let me look my fill. It's got to last me a whole week!"

Grace saw in his face and knew from his voice that he was neither acting nor raving. His words were as the gospel, the oldest of all gospels, which, unlike all others, is particularly persuasive in the springtime. He was a fine-looking chap, and the newspapers were full of him, and he was in love with her. He interested her. But of course he was impossible. But also she was New York, and, to prove it, she must be epigrammatic. All her life she had listened to high-class vaudeville. She said, icily, yet with a subtle consciousness of her own humor, "If you wish to worship, why don't you try a church?"

"Which?" he retorted so promptly and meaningly that she almost felt the wedding-ring on her finger. He pursued: "And when? I have the license all ready. See?"

He pulled out of his pocket a long envelope containing a communication from Valiquet's lawyer. "Here it is!" and he held it toward her.

Being young and healthy, she laughed approvingly.

"Has it come to this, in my own house?" exclaimed Mrs. Goodchild in dismay. Being rich and living in New York, she did not know her daughter's affairs.

"Why not?" asked H.R., with rebuking coldness. "In whose house should our marriage be discussed?" Then he spoke to Grace with a fervor that impressed both women: "I love you as men used to love when they were willing to murder for the sake of their love. Look at me!"

He spoke so commandingly that Grace looked, wonder and doubt in her eyes.

In some women incertitude expresses itself in silence. Her mother was of a different larynx. She wailed: "What shall I do? What shall I do?" And sank back in her arm-chair. After one second's hesitation Mrs. Goodchild decided to clasp her own hands with a gesture of helplessness such as Pilate would have used had he been Mrs. Pontius. She did so, turning the big emerald en cabochon, so that she could plaintively gaze at it. Eight thousand dollars. Then she turned the gem accusingly in the direction of this man who might, for all she knew, be penniless. He was good-looking. Hendrik was Dutch. So was Rutgers. Could he belong?

"I beg your pardon, moth—Mrs. Goodchild," said H.R. so very courteously and contritely that he looked old-fashioned. "You must forgive me. But she is beautiful! She will grow, God willing, to look more like you every day. By making me regard the future with pleasurable anticipation, you yourself give me one more reason why I must marry Grace."

Grace looked at her mother and smiled—at the effect. Mrs. Goodchild confessed to forty-six.

"I am making Grace Goodchild famous," H.R. pursued, briskly, and paused that they might listen attentively to what was to follow.

Mother and daughter looked at him with irrepressible curiosity. Their own lives had so few red-blooded thrills for them that they enjoyed theatricals as being "real life." This man was an Experience!

He shook his head and explained, mournfully: "It is very strange, this thing of not belonging to yourself but to the world. It is a sacrifice Grace must make!"

His voice rang with a subtle regret. But suddenly he raised his head proudly and looked straight at her.

"It is a sacrifice worth making—for the sake of the downtrodden whom you will uplift with your beauty. Au revoir, Grace. I am needed!"

He approached her. She tried to draw back. He halted before her, took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it.

"I am the dirt under your feet," he murmured, and left the room.

His was the gait of the Invincibles. He had cast a bewitching spell of unreality over the entire drawing-room that made Grace feel like both actress and audience.

She heard him in the hall calling, "Frederick!" And, after a brief pause, "My hat and cane!"

There was another pause. Then she heard Frederick say, infinitely more respectfully than Frederick had ever spoken to Mr. Goodchild, "Thank you very much, sir."

Mrs. Goodchild paid Frederick by the month for working. H.R. had given Frederick twenty dollars for being an utterly useless menial. Hence Frederick's logical gratitude and respect.

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