Robert Lansdale, literary starveling and doomed victim of an incurable malady, was yet sufficiently unchastened to read Bartrow's telegram with the nerves of reluctance sharp set. For what he persuaded himself were good and defensible reasons, he had lived the life of an urban hermit in Denver, arguing that a poverty-smitten crumb-gatherer with one foot in the grave might properly refuse to be other than an onlooker in any scene of the human comedy.

The prompting was not altogether unselfish. In common with other craftsmen of his guild, Lansdale was blessed, or banned, with a moiety of the seer's gift. For him, as for all who can discern the masks and trappings and the sham stage-properties, the world-comedy had become pitifully tragic; and he was by nature compassionate and sympathetic. Wherefore he spared himself the personal point of view, cultivating an aloofness which his few friends were prone to miscall cynicism and exclusiveness.

Lansdale knew Miss Elliott by repute, and he shrewdly suspected that she knew all Bartrow could tell her about a certain literary pretender who had once been rude enough to send apologies to a hostess who had not invited him. None the less Bartrow was too good a friend to be ignored in the day of his asking; and Lansdale presented himself at the door of the house in Colfax Avenue at an unfashionably early hour, meaning to begin by making the tender of his services as nearly a matter of business as might be.

It was Connie herself who met him at the door and would hear no more than his name until he was established in her father's easy-chair before the cheerful fire in the library. Her welcome was hospitably cordial; and Lansdale, who had fondly imagined embarrassment to be one of the foibles most deeply buried under the dÉbris of the disillusioning years, found himself struggling with an attack of tongue-tied abashment which is like to be the penalty exacted of any hermit who refuses to mix and mingle with his kind.

"I came to see you at the request of a friend of yours, and of mine, Miss Elliott," he began formally, fumbling in his pocket for the telegram. "I have a message from Mr. Richard Bartrow which—will—explain"—

The search and the sentence raveled out together in the discovery that the telegram which was to have been his introduction had been left on the writing-table in his room. Connie saw consternation in his face and made haste to help him.

"From Mr. Bartrow? We have just returned from a visit to his mine up in Chaffee County. Did he forget something that he wanted to tell us, at the last moment?"

"Really, I—I can't say," stammered Lansdale, to whom the loss of the telegram was the dragging of the last anchor of equanimity. "It appears that I was thoughtless enough to leave the telegram in my room. Will you excuse me until I can go back and fetch it?"

"Is it necessary?" Connie queried. "Can't you tell me what he says?"

Lansdale pulled himself together and gave her the gist of Bartrow's mandate. Miss Elliott's laugh made him forget his embarrassment.

"That is just like Dick," she said. "He offered to come down with us last night, but I wouldn't let him. You know Mr. Bartrow quite well, do you not?"

"Very well, indeed."

"Then you know how anxious he always is to help his friends."

"No one has better cause to know; he is one of the finest fellows in the world," Lansdale rejoined warmly.

"Thank you, for Dick's sake," said Connie; "now we shall get on nicely. But to go back a little: a young woman whom I have been trying to help is in some trouble, and Dick thought he might be needed. It was out of the goodness of his heart. I really don't need any help—at least, not more than my father's check-book can answer for."

"Are you quite sure? You must remember that I am Richard Bartrow's substitute, and make use of me accordingly. May I know the circumstances?"

Constance related them, telling him Margaret Gannon's story as only a sister of mercy could tell it; without extenuation or censure, and also without embarrassment. Lansdale listened absorbedly, with the literary instinct dominant. It was Margaret Gannon's story, but Constance Elliott was the heroine; a heroine worthy the pen of a master craftsman, he thought, while the creative part of him was busy with the pulling and hauling and scene-shifting which the discovery of a Heaven-born central figure sets in motion. But in the midst of it the man got the better of the craftsman. He foresaw with sudden clarity of insight that Miss Elliott would presently be of the inner circle of those out of whom the most hardened votary of the pen cannot make copy; those whose personality is sacred because it is no longer a thing apart to be dispassionately analyzed.

When she made an end, he sat looking at her so intently and so long that she grew nervous. The light in his eyes made her feel as if she were focused under the object glass of a microscope. He saw the enthusiasm die out of her face and give place to discomposure, and made eager apologies.

"Forgive me, Miss Elliott; I didn't mean to be rude. But I have never looked upon your like before,—a woman in whom the quality of mercy is not strained; whose charity is compassionate enough to reach out to the unfortunate of her own sex."

Connie was too simple-hearted to be self-conscious under commendation.

"That is because your opportunities have been unkind, I fancy. A few years ago your criticism would have been very just; but nowadays much of the rescue work is done by women, as it should be."

"Much of the organized work, yes. But your own story proves that it has not become individualized."

"That may well be the fault of the advocate in Margaret's case," returned Connie, whose charity was not circumscribed. "If any one of the many good women I have tried to enlist in this young woman's cause had been the one to discover her, I should doubtless have the same story to tell, and quite possibly with a better sequel. But now you understand why I don't need help. Tommie—he's my newsboy henchman, you know—has been here this morning to make his report. It seems that when Margaret was taken sick she was in debt to this man Grim for costumes, or railway fare, or something, and he has taken her sewing-machine to satisfy the claim."

The hectic flush in Lansdale's thin cheek began to define itself, with a little pulse throbbing in the centre of it.

"He is an iniquitous scoundrel, and he ought to be prosecuted," he declared. "Don't you see?—but of course you don't; you are too charitable to suspect his real object, which is to drive the young woman back into the service of his master, the devil. He had no more legal right to take her sewing-machine than he would have to attach the tools of a mechanic. Is there any law in Colorado?"

"Plenty of it," Connie rejoined; adding, with unconscious sarcasm, "but I think it is chiefly concerned with disputes about mining claims."

"Let us hope there is a statute or two over and above, for the protection of ordinary mortals," said Lansdale, rising and finding his hat. "I presume you meant to buy Margaret another sewing-machine. You mustn't encourage buccaneering in any such way. Let me go and try my powers of persuasion on Mr. Peter Grim."

But Connie was not unmindful of what Bartrow had told them about Lansdale's ill health, and she promptly disapproved.

"No, indeed, you mustn't, Mr. Lansdale; you mustn't think of doing any such thing. You don't know the man. He is a 'hold-over' desperado from the stage-line days. Even Dick admits that he is a person to be feared and avoided. And, besides, you're not strong, you know."

Lansdale smiled down upon her from his gaunt height, and his heart warmed to her in a way which was not to be accounted for by the simple rule of the humanities.

"Dick told you that, too, did he? I am sorry."

"Why?"

"Because it involves your sympathy, and sympathy is much too precious to be wasted upon such flotsam as I. But I am quite robust enough to see justice done in this young woman's case. You must promise me not to move in it until you hear from me."

Connie promised and let him go. But in the stronger light of the hall she saw how really ill he looked, and was remorsefully repentant, after her kind.

Lansdale left the house in Colfax Avenue with an unanalyzed sense of levitation, which made him feel as though he were walking upon air; but when he had accounted for the phenomenon he came to earth again with disheartening celerity. What had a man in whose daily walk death was a visible presence to do with the tumult of gladsome suggestion evoked by a few words of sympathy from a compassionate young woman with a winsome face and innocent eyes? Nothing; clearly, nothing whatever. Lansdale set his teeth upon the word, and drove the suggestion forth with sudden bitterness. His part in the little drama growing out of Miss Elliott's deed of mercy was at best but that of a supernumerary. When he should have made his entrance and exit, he must go the way of other supernumeraries, and be presently forgotten of the real actors.

So ran the wise conclusion; but the event leagued itself with unwisdom, and the prudent forecasting gave place to the apparent necessities. The preliminary interview with Grim was wholly abortive. The man of vice not only refused point blank to make restitution, but evinced a readiness to take the matter into the courts which was most disconcerting to Margaret Gannon's moneyless advocate. Thereupon ensued other visits to the house in Colfax Avenue, and a growing and confidential intimacy with Constance, and the enlisting of Stephen Elliott in the cause of justice, and many other things not prefigured in Lansdale's itinerary.

And at the end of it all it was Stephen Elliott's check-book, and not an appeal to the majesty of the law, which rescued Margaret Gannon's sewing-machine; and the man of vice pocketed the amount of his extortionate claim, and gave a receipt in full therefor, biding his time, and bidding an obsequious Son of Ahriman—the same whom Jeffard had smitten aforetime—keep an eye on Margaret Gannon against the day when she should be sufficiently unbefriended to warrant a recasting of the net.

And when these things had come to pass, Robert Lansdale was of all men the most miserable. From much dabbling in the trickling rill of fictional sentiment, he had come to disbelieve the existence of any deep river of passion; but now he found himself upon the brink of such a river and was forbidden to plunge therein. Nay, more; he must turn away from it, parched and thirsty as any wayworn pilgrim of the world-desert, without so much as lifting a palmful of its healing waters to his lips.

He postponed the turning away from day to day, weakly promising himself that each visit to the house in Colfax Avenue should be the last, and as weakly yielding when a day or two of abstinence had enhanced his soul-hunger until it became a restless agony, mocking his most strenuous effort to drown it in a sea of work.

Failing himself utterly, he fell to watching Connie's face for some token of the hopelessness of his passion, telling himself that he should find strength to stay away when he should read his sentence in the calm gray eyes. But Connie's eyes were as yet no more than frankly sympathetic. And because he was far from home, and seemingly friendless, and fighting the last grim battle with an incurable malady, she made him welcome and yet more welcome, until finally, the optimistic insanity of the consumptive came upon him, assuring him that he should live and not die, and pointing him hopefully down a dim vista of years,—a shining way wherein they two might walk hand in hand till they should come to the gate of the House Beautiful whose chatelaine is Fame.