Stokely came rushing into his office the next morning. “Good God, old man,” he exclaimed, “What’s the meaning of this attack on the coal roads?”

Howard flushed with resentment, not at what Stokely said, but at his tone.

“Now, don’t get on your high horse. I don’t think you understand.” Stokely’s tone had moderated. “Don’t you know that the Delaware Valley road is in this?”

Howard started. He had just invested two hundred thousand dollars in that stock on Stokely’s advice “No, I didn’t know it.” He recovered himself. “And furthermore I don’t give a damn.” He struck his desk angrily. His simulation of incorruptible indignation for the moment half deceived himself.

“Why, man, if this infernal roast is kept up, you’ll lose a hundred thousand. Then there are my interests. I’m up to my neck in this deal.”

“My advice to you is to get out of it. I’m sorry, but you know as well as I do that the thing is infamous.”

“Infamous—nonsense! It will double our dividends and the consumers won’t feel it.”

“Let us not discuss it, Stokely. There—don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

“But—”

“Now, Stokely—don’t argue it with me.”

Stokely put on his hat, stood up and looked at Howard with sullen admiration. “You will drive away the last friend you’ve got on earth, if you keep this up. Good morning.”

Howard sent a smile of cynical amusement after him, then stared thoughtfully into the mass of papers on his desk for five, ten, fifteen minutes. When his plan was formed he touched the electric button.

“Please tell Mr. King I’d like to see him,” he said to the answering boy.

Mr. King entered with a bundle of legal documents. “I suppose it’s the injunction you want to discuss,” he said. “We’ve got the papers all ready. It’s simply great. Those fellows will be in a corner and will have to give up. They can’t get away from us. The price of coal will drop half a dollar within a week, I’ll bet.”

“I’m afraid you are over sanguine,” Howard said. “I’ve just been going over the matter with my lawyer. But leave the papers with me. And—about the news—be careful what you say. We’ve been going a little strong. I think a little less personal matter would be advisable.”

Mr. King was amazed and looked it. He slowly pulled himself together to say, “All right, Mr. Howard. I think I understand.” He laid the papers down and departed. Outside the door he laughed softly to himself. “Somebody’s been cutting his comb, I guess,” he murmured. “Well, I didn’t think he’d last. New York always gets ‘em when they’re worth while.”

As the door closed behind King, Howard drew out the lowest and deepest drawer of his desk. It was half-filled with long-undisturbed pamphlets and newspaper cuttings. He tossed in the injunction papers. A cloud of dust flew up and settled thickly upon them. He shut the drawer.

He went to the window and looked out over the city—that seductive, that overwhelming expression of wealth and power. “What was it my father wrote me when I told him I was going to New York?” and he recalled almost the exact words—“New York that lures young men from the towns and the farms, and prostitutes them, teaches them to sell themselves with unblushing cheeks for a fee, for an office, for riches, for power.” He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, drew himself up, returned to his desk and was soon absorbed in his work.

The next morning the News-Record’s double-leaded “leader” on the Coal Trust was a discharge of heavy artillery. But it was artillery in retreat. And in the succeeding days, the retreat continued—not precipitate but orderly, masterly.

Ten days after their talk on the “coal conspiracy” Marian greeted him late in the afternoon with “Oh, such a row with Mrs. Mercer!”

“Mrs. Mercer! Why, what was she angry about?”

“She wasn’t—at least, not at first. It was I. I went to see her and she asked me to thank you for stopping that fight on the coal conspiracy.”

“That was tactful of her,” Howard said, turning away to hide his nervousness.

“And I told her that you had not stopped, that you wouldn’t stop until you had broken it up. And she smiled in a superior way and said I was quite mistaken, that I didn’t read the paper, I haven’t read it for several days, but I knew you, dear, and I remembered what you had said. And so we just had it. We were polite but furious when I went. I shall never go near her again.”

“But, unfortunately, we have stopped. We had to do it. We could accomplish nothing.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. What angered me was her insinuation.”

“That was irritating. But, tell me, what if it had been true?” Howard’s voice was strained and he was looking at her eagerly, with fever in his eyes.

“But it couldn’t be. It isn’t worth while imagining. You could not be a coward and a traitor.” So complete was her confidence in him that suspicion of him was impossible.

“Would you sit in judgment on me?”

“Not if I could help it.”

“But you can—you could help it.” His manner was agitated, and he spoke almost fiercely. “I am free,” he went on, and as she watched his eyes she understood why men feared him. “I do what I will. I am not accountable to you, not even to you. I have never asked you to approve of me, to approve what I do, to love me. You are free also, free to love, free to withdraw your love. I follow the law of my own being. You must take me as you find me or not at all.”

She tried to stop him but could not. His words poured on. He leaned forward and took her hand and his eyes were brilliant and piercing. “I love you,” he said. “Ah, how I love you—not because you love me, not because you are an angel, not because you are a superior being. No, not for any reason in all this wide world but because you are you. Do what you will and I shall love you. Whether I had to look up among the stars or down in the mire to find you, I would look just as steadily, just as proudly.”

He drew along breath and his hand trembled. “If I were a traitor, then, if you loved me, you would say, ‘What! Is he to be found among traitors? How I love treason!’ If I were a coward, liar, thief, a sum of all the vices, then, if you ever had loved me you would love me still. I want no love with mental reservations, no love with ifs and buts and provided-thats. I want love, free and fearless, that adapts itself to changing human nature as the colour of the sea adapts itself to the colour of the sky; love that does not have to be cajoled and persuaded lest it be not there when I most need it. I want the love that loves.”

“You know you have it.” She had been compelled by his mood and was herself in a fever. She looked at him with the expression which used to make his nerves vibrate. “You know that no human being ever was more to another than I to you. But you can’t expect me to be just the same as you are. I love you—not the false, base creature you picture. I admire the way you love, but I could not love in that way. Thank God, my love, my dear—I shall never be put to that test. For my love for you is my—my all.”

“We are very serious about a mere supposition.”

Howard was laughing, but not naturally. “We take each the other far too seriously. I’m sorry you idealise me so. Who knows—you might find me out some day—and then—well, don’t blame me.”

Marian said no more, but late that evening she put her hands on his shoulders and said: “You’re not hiding something from me—something we ought to bear together?”

“Not I.” Howard smiled down into her eyes and kissed her.

His mood of reaction, of hysteria had passed. He was thinking how little in reality she had had to do with his outburst. He had not been addressing her at all, except as she seemed to him for the moment the embodiment of his self-respect—or rather, of an “absurd,” “extremely youthful” ideal of self-respect which he had “outgrown.”