H.R. returned to his office feeling that the big battle was about to begin. The preliminary skirmishes he had won. He had captured fame and must now begin his real attack on fortune. He spent an hour dictating plans of campaign for his various companies. Shortly before noon he told the stenographer to call up Miss Goodchild and inform her that Mr. Rutgers would be there in half an hour.

He had promised not to call on Grace for a month after that day. He must not make love to her. He was determined to keep his promise; but she must not forget him. He had accustomed her to his impetuous wooing. In thirty days of inaction much might be undone if he did nothing.

He was punctual. He found Grace waiting for him, curious to know what had happened at H.R.'s conference with her father at the bank. Her curiosity made her forget many other things.

She expected a characteristic greeting from H.R., but his face was so full of adamantine resolution that her curiosity promptly turned into vague alarm. She had told herself she did not love him, but instinctively she now walked toward him quickly.

"What is it?" she asked.

He waved her back and said, hastily:

"Stop right where you are! Don't come any nearer. For the love of Mike, don't!"

She had been thinking of treating him coldly, to keep him at a distance.

"What is it?" she asked again, and again advanced.

"Don't!" said H.R., with a frown.

She now felt alarmed, without giving herself any reason for it.

"Wh-what's the m-matter?" she asked.

"You!" he answered. "You!"

She stared at him. He was looking at her so queerly that naturally she thought something had happened to her face. She looked into the mirror on her right. It was not so. Another look fully confirmed this. So she looked at him. His expression had lost some of its anxiety.

"I promised your dad," he explained, "that I would not see you after to-day, or call here, or try to make love to you by mail, or annoy you or him in any way until I had wiped the sandwich stain off your surname. I have a month in which to do it, and I promised all that! One month! Not to see you! But—"

He looked at her so hungrily that, born and bred in New York though she was, she blushed hotly and turned her face away. Then she felt the thrill by which victory is made plain to the defeated.

"But—but—" repeated H.R. through his clenched teeth, and took a step toward her.

Whatever she saw in his face made her smile and say, challengingly:

"But what?"

Being very wise, he caught his breath and said, sharply:

"Don't do that!"

"Do what?" she asked, innocently, and kept on smiling.

"I will not see you!"

"You won't?" She ceased to smile, in order to look skeptical.

"No, I won't; I'll keep my word, Grace." He was speaking very earnestly now. "I love you—all of you; the good and the bad, your wonderful woman's soul and your perennial childishness. You are so beautiful in so many ways that you yourself cannot know how completely beautiful you are. But I love more than your beauty. After it is all over you will realize that I can be trusted implicitly. Never has man been put to such a task. Don't you know—can't you see what I am doing?"

She knew; she saw. She felt herself mistress of the situation. She therefore said, softly:

"I shouldn't want you to commit suicide here."

Hearing no reply, she looked at him. He was ready for it. She saw his nostrils dilate and his fists clench and unclench.

"Then I won't see you. But—but you can see me," he said.

She frowned.

He went on: "I shall lunch every day at Jerry's—small table in the northeast corner. At one o'clock every day for a whole month."

Did he expect her to run after him? She said, very coldly:

"That wouldn't be fair."

"If you go to Jerry's for luncheon with one of your girl friends, and you see me eating alone, keeping bushels of wonderful news all to myself, is that making love to you?"

"Yes."

"No!" he contradicted, flatly. "But I'll do more— I'll let you tell Mrs. Vandergilt that you own the only engine of destruction available against man's stupidity."

Knowing that he was alluding to her beauty, she said:

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, I belong to you, don't I? And if women are to get the vote can't you tell dear Ethel's mother—"

"Do you mean old Mrs. Vandergilt?" she interrupted.

"Yes."

"Then say so."

"I will," he meekly promised. "You tell the old lady that you will insure success for the Cause by lending me to her. I've got a scheme that will do more in a month than all the suffragettes have accomplished in fifty years. You might get Ethel interested in my plan—"

"I won't!" She smiled the forgiving smile that infuriates. She lost her head. "You think I am jeal—that I'm—"

"I think not of you, but of myself, and of how I may keep my promise to your father and survive. If you see me, and can talk to me, I shall live honorably. Will you shake hands?" He held out his right hand. She ignored it. He deliberately took hers and led her to a chair. "Will you do what I ask, dear?" he entreated, humbly.

"No!" She stood there, cold, disdainful, refusing everything—even to sit down.

"Then," he said, tensely, "then I must—" He seized her in his arms and kissed her unresponsive lips. "I am not making love to you," he murmured. "I am not!" And he kissed her again. "I promised not to see you; and I won't—not even if you see me."

He released her and was silent. She looked up and saw that his eyes were tightly closed.

"I'll be there," she said, triumphantly, "at one o'clock."

"I am a man of my word!" he said, fiercely.

"Every day!" she added, with decision.

She did not know that this wifelike attitude thrilled him as not even the kisses had; but he said, earnestly:

"No. I'm going now. It's good-by for a month. For a whole month!"

"Northeast corner table," she said, audibly, as though to herself. "Northeast cor—"

"Play fair!" he urged. "Amuse yourself with Mrs. Vandergilt." He looked at her as though he desired her to occupy herself with some hobby for thirty days. The sight of her face, and nothing else that she could see, made him say, "Good-by!" And he almost ran out of the room.

She went up-stairs to get her gloves. On second thought she called Ethel on the telephone and invited her to luncheon at Jerry's.

He was waiting for her at the northeast corner table when she and Ethel went in. Grace, who had been looking toward the southwest corner, where the exit to the kitchen was, turned casually and saw him.

"There's Hendrik!" she said to Ethel.

He had not risen. He looked up casually now and approached them.

"I was born lucky," he told them, and shook hands with Grace. To Miss Vandergilt he said, very seriously, "Are you Grace's friend?"

"I'm more than that," answered Ethel; "I am the best friend she's got."

"Then I am doubly lucky. I have a table, Ethel. I want you to be a witness to the miracle." There was no reason why he should call Miss Vandergilt by her first name. Even Ethel looked it. But H.R. merely said: "Take this chair, Grace. Ethel—here."

"It seems to me—" began Grace, coldly.

"Your friends are my friends. The miracle, Ethel, is that I've promised not to make love to Grace for a whole month—thirty days; forty-three thousand two hundred precious wasted minutes!"

"Don't you sleep?" interjected Ethel, curiously.

"My poor carcass does, but not my thoughts of her. Now let us eat and be miserable."

It was a wonderful luncheon. H.R. let them do all the talking. He was at his coffee when Ethel mentioned her mother.

"Ah, yes!" said H.R. "By the way, has Grace told her?"

"Told her what?"

Grace caught his eye and shook her head with a frown.

"Very well, dear girl," he said to her. To Ethel he explained, "She doesn't wish me to tell you of her plan."

"Oh, do! Please!" said Ethel, eagerly.

"I'm in training for the position of her husband, Ethel," H.R. told her. "She says no—that's all; plain no!"

"Grace, tell him to tell me!" said Ethel.

"Shall I, Grace?" smiled H.R.

Ethel looked at her and smiled. It made Grace so furious that she said:

"I have no control over his speech."

"Then, Ethel, it is only that Grace has a plan for a suffrage campaign that—well, it isn't for me to boast of her strategy; but it's a sure winner. I thought she would tell your mother."

"It doesn't interest me," said Grace, very coldly, being hot within.

"It will after you're married," observed Ethel, sagely.

"That depends on whom I marry," said Grace, casually.

"So it does," assented H.R., calmly.

"I agree with Hendrik," said Ethel, more subtly personal than Grace thought necessary; so she pushed back her chair and took up her gloves.

"Same table, same time—to-morrow?" H.R. said this to Grace so that Ethel could hear it.

"No," said Grace.

"Very well," he said, meekly. "I'll be here just the same—in case."

She shook her head. Ethel, who was carefully not looking, saw her do it.

Grace did not appear the next day, but Ethel did, properly accompanied by her own mother. They walked toward the northeast corner, on their way to a near-by table. H.R. rose and approached them.

"Just in time," he said to them. "Thursday always was my lucky day."

They sat down. To the waiter he said:

"Tell the chef—for three; for me."

"Yes, Mr. Rutgers," said the waiter, very deferentially.

"What have you up your sleeve, Mrs. Vandergilt? And how near is victory?"

"You mean—"

"The Cause!" said H.R., reverently.

"I never heard you express an opinion," said Mrs. Vandergilt, suspiciously.

"You have expressed them for me far better than I could. Mine isn't a deep or philosophical mind," he apologized to the mind that was. "I merely understand publicity and how sheeplike men are."

"If you understand that, you understand a great deal," remarked Mrs. Vandergilt, sententiously.

"Grace thought—" began H.R., and caught himself in time. "You haven't talked to her about it?"

"Grace?"

"Miss Goodchild."

"No. Why should I?"

"No reason—only that she has what I, as a practical man, in my low-brow way, think is a winner. Of course the suffrage has long since passed the polemical stage. The question does not admit of argument. The right is admitted by all men. But what all men don't admit is the wrong. And all men don't admit it, because all women don't."

"That is true," said Mrs. Vandergilt, vindictively.

"Any woman," pursued H.R., earnestly, "can make any man give her anything she wants. Therefore, if all the women wanted all the men to give them anything, the men would give it. A woman can't always take something from a man; but she can always get it. To put it on the high plane of taking it as a right may be noble; but what I want is results. So long as I get results, nothing short of murder, lying, or ignoble wheedling can stop me. Grace and I went all over that; but she seems to have lost interest—"

"Yes, she has," confirmed Ethel, so amiably that H.R. smiled gratefully; and that annoyed Ethel.

"You have asked for justice," pursued H.R., addressing himself to Mrs. Vandergilt; "but it is at the ignoble side of man that you must shoot. It is a larger target—easier to hit."

"But—" began Mrs. Vandergilt.

"If I were a woman my dream should be to serve under you and implicitly obey all orders. I'd distribute dynamite as cheerfully as handbills. Without competent marshals do you imagine Napoleon could have done what he did?

"Don't I know it?" said Mrs. Vandergilt, bitterly.

"How would you go about it?" interjected Ethel, who had grown weary of her own silence.

"I'd get the marshals. I'd get subordinates that, when your mother said 'Do thus and so!' she could feel sure would obey orders. The general strategy must come from her."

"I've said that until I was black in the face," said Mrs. Vandergilt. "I've told them—" And the great leader talked and talked, while H.R. stopped eating to listen with his very soul. With such a listener Mrs. Vandergilt was at her best.

"Mother, the squab is getting cold," said Ethel.

"The next time it will be cold in advance," said H.R., impatiently. "Go on, Mrs. Vandergilt!"

But Mrs. Vandergilt, knowing she could not finish at one luncheon, shook her head graciously and invited H.R. to dinner the next evening.

"I can hardly wait!" murmured H.R.

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