At the end of the afternoon, a few days later, a fierce battle was being waged in the basement room that was the Aldrich home, when a knock made David lower his defensive fists.

"Ah, don't stop, pard," Tom begged of his cornered enemy. "Let 'em pound. It's just somebody else kickin' about de heat."

"We'll only stop a second. Ask what they want, and say I'll attend to it at once."

Tom, grumbling fiercely, opened the door. "What's de matter?" he demanded. "Ain't you got no heat?"

But it was not an angry tenant who stepped in from the darkness of the hall. It was Helen Chambers. She was flushed, and excitement quivered in her eyes. She looked from one pillow-fisted belligerent to the other, and said, smiling tremulously:

"I had thought there was no heat, but after looking at you I've decided there's plenty. Is this the way you always receive complainants?"

Tom glanced guiltily at David, then darted behind Helen and through the door. David gazed at her, loose-jawed. Suddenly he remembered his shirt-sleeves.

"I beg your pardon," he said, and in his bewilderment he tried to thrust his huge fists into his coat.

"Perhaps you can do that"—again the tremulous smile—"but I really don't think you can."

"I should take the gloves off, of course," he stammered. He frantically unlaced them, slipped into his coat, and then looked at her, throbbing with wonderment as to why she had come.

She did not leave him in an instant's doubt. She stepped toward him with outstretched hand, her smile gone, on her face eager, appealing earnestness.

"I have come to ask your forgiveness," she said with her old, direct simplicity. "I believed that you and the boy were—pardon me!—were stealing together; that you were letting yourself slip downward. This afternoon the boy came to me at St. Christopher's and told me the real story. I could hardly wait till I was free so that I could hurry to you and ask you to forgive me."

"Forgive you!" David said slowly.

"Forgive me for my unjust judgment," she went on, a quaver in her voice. "I judged from mere appearance, mere guess-work. I was cold—horrid. I am ashamed. Forgive me."

Her never-expected coming, her never-expected words, rendered him for the moment speechless. He could only gaze into her fresh face, so full of earnestness, of appeal.

"You do not forgive me?" she asked.

David thrilled at the tremulous note in her voice. "I have nothing to forgive. You could not help judging as you did."

Her deep brown eyes, looking straight into his face, continued the appeal.

"I forgive you," he said in a low voice.

"Thank you," she said simply; and she pressed his hand.

"And I came for something else," she went on, "I came to assure you of my friendship, if it can mean anything to you—to tell you how much I admire your brave and bitter upward struggle. I'd be so happy if there was some way I could help you, and if you'd let me."

"You want to help me!" was all he could say.

"Yes. Won't you let me—please!"

He throbbed with exultation. "Then you believe I am now honest!"

"You have proved that you are—proved it by the way you have resisted temptation during these four terrible months."

His eyes suddenly sank from hers to the floor. Her words had brought back New Year's eve. She had come to him with friendship because she was certain of his unfallen determination to make his new life an honest life. If she knew of that night in Allen's house, would she be giving him this praise, this offer?

The temptation to say nothing rose, but he could not requite frankness and sincerity such as hers with the lie of silence—he could not accept her friendship under false pretenses. He looked up and gazed at her steadily.

"I am innocent where you thought me guilty, but"—he paused; the truth was hard—"but I am guilty where you think me innocent."

She paled. "What do you mean?" she asked in a fearing voice.

"I have not resisted temptation."

He saw that his words had hurt her, and there was a flash of wonder that a lapse of his should give her pain. An appeal, full of colour, of feeling, that would justify himself to her was rising to his lips, but before it passed them he suddenly felt himself so much the wronged that his confession came forth an abrupt outline of his acts, spoken with no shame.

"I had been starved, rebuffed, for over three months. I grew desperate. Temptation came. I yielded. I entered a house—entered it to steal. But I did not steal. I could not. I came away with nothing."

He paused. His guilt was out. He awaited her judgment, fearful of her condemnation, with resentment ready for it if it came.

"Is that all!" she cried.

Vast relief quivered through him. "You mean then that—" He hesitated.

"That you have been fiercely tempted, but you are not guilty."

"You see it so!"

"Yes. Had you conquered temptation on the outer side of the door, you would certainly have been guiltless. Since you conquered temptation on the inner side of the door, I cannot see that those few more steps are the difference between guilt and innocence."

They were both silent a moment.

"But don't you want to tell me something about yourself—about your plans?" she asked.

The friendship in her voice, in her frank face, warmed him through. "Certainly," he said. "But there's very little to tell."

He now became aware that all the while they had been standing. "Pardon my rudeness," he said, and set a chair for her beside the table, and himself took a chair opposite her.

"There is little to tell," he repeated. "I am what you see—the janitor of this house." As he spoke the word "janitor" it flashed upon him that there had been a time when, in his wild visions, he had thought of winning this woman to be his wife. He flushed.

"Yes, I know. But you have other plans—other ambitions."

"A week ago my ambition was to find work that would keep me alive," he returned, smiling. "I have just attained that ambition. I have hardly had time to dream new dreams."

"But you will dream them again," she said confidently.

"I had them when—when I came back, and I suppose they will return."

"Yes. Go on!"

He had thought, in his most hopeful moments, that some day she might regard him with a distant friendliness, but he had never expected such an interest as was shown in her eager, peremptory tone. "There were two dreams. One was this: I wondered, if I were honest, if I worked hard, if I were of service to those about me, could I, after several years, win back the respect of the world, or its semi-respect? You know the world is so thoughtless, so careless, so slow to forgive. And I wondered if perhaps, after several years, I could win back the respect of some of my old friends?"

"I was sure that was one dream, one plan," she said, quietly. "For myself——" She gave him her hand.

"Thank you!" he said, his voice low and threaded with a quaver.

"And though the world is thoughtless, and slow to forgive, and though the struggle will be hard, I'm certain that you are going to succeed." Her rich voice was filled with quiet belief. "And the other dream?"

"It's presumptuous in me to speak of the other dream, for to work for its fulfilment would require all the things I've lost and many things I never had—a fair name, influence, some money, a personality, ability of the right sort. Besides, the dream is vague, unshaped—only a dream. It is not new, and it is not even my own dream. Thousands have dreamt it, and many are striving to turn it into a fact, a condition. Yes, it would be presumptuous for me to speak of it."

"But I'd like very much to hear about it—if you don't mind."

"Even though it will sound absurd from me? Well, if you wish me to."

He paused a moment to gather his thoughts. "One thing the last four months have taught me," he began, "is that the discharged criminal has little chance ever to be anything but a criminal. Many come out hardened; perhaps the prison hardened them—I've seen many a young fellow, who had his good points when he entered, hardened to irreclaimable criminality by prison associates and prison methods. These have no desire to live useful lives. Some come out with moderately strong resolutions to live honestly, and some come out with a fierce determination. If these last two classes could find work a large proportion of them would develop into useful men. But instead of a world willing to stretch to them a helping hand, what do they find? They find a world that refuses them the slightest chance.

"What can they do? They persist as long as their resolution lasts. If it is weak, they may give up in a few days. Then, since the upward road is closed against them, they turn into the road that is always open, always calling—the road of their old ways, of their old friends. They are lost.

"A week ago I was all bitterness, all rebellion, against the world for its uncaring destruction of these men. I said the world pushed these men back into crime, destroyed them, because it feared to risk its worshipped dollars. I feel bitter still, but I think I can see the world's excuse. The world says, 'For any vacancy there are usually at least two applicants; I choose the better, and let the other go.' It is a natural rule. So long as man thinks first of his own interest that rule will stand. Against such a rule that closes the road of honesty, what chance does the discharged convict have? None!—absolutely none!

"Since the world will not receive back the thief, since there is no saving the thief once he has become a thief, the only chance whatever for him is to save him before he has turned to thievery—while he is a child.

"Have you ever thought, Miss Chambers, how saving we are of all material things, and what squanders, oh, what criminal squanderers! we are of human lives? How far more rapidly the handling of iron, and hogs, and cotton, has developed than the handling of men! The pig comes out meat and soap and buttons and what not, and the same rigid economy is observed with all other materials. Nothing is too small, too poor, to be saved. It is all too precious!

"There is no waste! But can we say the same about the far more important business of producing citizens? Look at the men in our prisons. Wasted material. Had they been treated, when they were the raw material of childhood, with even a part of the intelligence and care that is devoted to turning the pig into use, into profit, they would have been manufactured into good citizens. And these men in prisons are but a fraction of the great human waste. Think of the uncaught criminals, of the stunted children, of the human wreckage floating about the city, of the women who live by their shame!—all wasted human material. And all the time more children are growing up to take the places of these when they are gone. Why, if any business man should run his factory as we conduct our business of producing citizens, he'd be bankrupt in a year!

"This waste can be saved. I do not mean the men now in prison, nor the women in the street, nor those on whom ill conditions have fastened disease—though even they need not be wholly lost. I mean their successors, the growing children. If the production of citizens were a business run for profit—which in a sense it is, for each good citizen is worth thousands of dollars to the country—and were placed in the hands of a modern business man, then you would see! Had he been packer, steel manufacturer, goldsmith, not a bristle, not an ounce of steel, not the infinitesimal filings of gold, escaped him. Do you think that he would let millions of human beings, worth, to put a sordid money value upon their heads, ten thousand dollars apiece, be wasted? Never! He would find the great business leak and stop it. He would save all.

"And how save? I am a believer in heredity, yes; but I believe far more in the influence of surroundings. Let a child be cradled in the gutter and nursed by wickedness; let wickedness be its bedfellow, playfellow, workfellow, its teacher, its friend—and what do you get? The prisons tell you. Let the same child grow up surrounded by decency, and you have a decent child and later a decent man. Could the thousands and thousands of children who are developing towards criminality, towards profligacy, towards a stunted maturity, be set amid good conditions, the leak would be stopped, or almost—the great human waste would be brought to an end. They would be saved to themselves, and saved to their country.

"Nothing of all this is new to you, Miss Chambers. I have said so much because I wanted to make clear what has become my great dream—the great dream of so many. I should like to do my little part towards rousing the negligent, indifferent world to the awfulness of this waste—towards making it as economical of its people as it is of its pigs and its pig-iron. That is my dream."

He had begun quietly, but as his thought mastered him his face had flushed, his eyes had glowed, and he had stood up and his words had come out with all the passion of his soul. Helen's eyes had not for an instant shifted from his; her's too were aglow, and glow was in her cheeks.

For several moments after he had stopped she gazed at him with something that was very like awe; then she said, barely above a whisper: "You are going to do it!"

"No, no," David returned quickly, bitterly. "I have merely builded out of words the shape of an impossible dream. Look at what I dream; and then look at me, a janitor!—look at my record!"

"You are going to do it!" she repeated, her voice vibrant with belief. "The dream is not impossible. You are doing something towards its fulfilment now—the boy, you know. You are going to grow above your record, and above this position—far above! You are going to grow into great things. What you have been saying has been to me a prophecy of that."

He grew warmer and warmer under her words—under the gaze of her brown eyes glowing into his—under the disclosure made by her left hand, on which he had seen there was no engagement ring. Her praise, her sympathy, her belief, thrilled him; and his purpose, set free in words, had given him courage, had lifted him up. As from a swift, dizzy growth, he felt strong, big.

A burning impulse swept into him to tell her his innocence. For a moment his innocence trembled on his lips. But the old compelling reasons for silence rushed forward and joined battle with the desire of his love. His hands clenched, his body tightened, he stared at her tensely.

At length he drew a deep breath, swallowed with difficulty. "May the prophecy come true!" his dry lips said.

"It will!"

She studied him thoughtfully for a minute or more. "Something has been occurring to me and I'd like to talk to you about it." She rose. "But I must be going. Won't you walk with me to the car, and let me talk on the way?"

A minute later they were in the street, from which the day had all but faded and into which the shop-windows and above them the tier on tier of home-windows, were stretching their meagre substitute. David's blood was leaping through him, and in him were the lightness and the all-conquering strength of youth. The crisp winter air that thrust its sting into many of the stream of home-coming workers, tinglingly pricked him with the joy of living.

"Have you thought again of writing?" she asked.

"About as much as a man who has leaped from a house-top to try his wings, thinks again of flying."

"I am speaking seriously. If the impulse to write should return, would you have time for writing?"

"I think I could manage three or four hours a day."

"Then why not try?"

"The ground where one alights is so hard, Miss Chambers!"

"But perhaps you did not soar the other time because you had over-worn your wings. Perhaps they have grown strong and developed during their rest. Many of us used to believe they would carry you far up. Why not try? You have nothing to lose. And if you succeed—then the dream you have told me of will begin to come true."

For several paces David was silent. "I, too, have thought of this. As you say, there is nothing to lose. I shall try."

"Why not take an idea in the field of your dream?" she pursued eagerly. "Why not write a story illustrating how the criminal is to be saved?—say, the story of a boy amid evil surroundings that urged him toward a criminal life; the boy to come under good influence, and to develop into a splendid citizen."

"That may be just the idea," said David.

They discussed the suggestion warmly the remainder of their walk to the car. A little farther on, as they were coming out upon the Bowery, the Mayor of Avenue A swayed into view. Astonishment leaped into his pink face when he saw who David's companion was. His silk hat performed a wide arc, and David had a sense that backward glances over the Mayor's shoulders were following them.

"And you really believe in me?" David asked, as Helen's car drew to a stop.

"I do—and I believe all the other things I have said." She gave the answer with a steady look into his eyes and with a firm pressure of her hand.

"I hope you'll not be disappointed!" he breathed fiercely, exultantly.

He retreated to the sidewalk and standing there, the clanging of the elevated trains beating his ears, he watched the slow passage of her car through the press of jostling, vituperating trucks, volleying over the cobble-stones, till it disappeared beyond Cooper Union. Then he turned away, and strode the streets—chin up, shoulders back, eyes straightforward—powered with such a hope, such a determination to do, as he had not known since his first post-college days. Perhaps he would conquer the future. He would try.

Yes ... he would conquer it!