In five minutes the long, heavy express was due to pull out of the station and go lunging westward through the night. Kate's and Rogers's hand luggage was piled in Kate's seat, and across the aisle and a little ahead, in Rogers's seat, were the two travellers, side by side. Facing them sat David and the Mayor, the latter just back from his brief honeymoon, and standing in the aisle was Tom.

"Well, got everything you need for the trip?" asked the Mayor, in tones that filled the sleeper.

"There's enough in our trunks and in those bags"—Rogers nodded backward towards Kate's seat—"for a trip to the moon. Aldrich tried to buy out New York."

"There's nothin' like havin' too much," declared the Mayor. "Oh, say there, captain," he cried to the porter who had just brushed by. "See here."

The porter turned back. "Yes suh." There was even more than the usual porterly deference in his manner, as he instantly measured the authority in the Mayor's florid person and took note of the silk hat and the imposing beflowered vest. "Yes suh."

"These here two people are friends o' mine. You want to see that they get everything that's comin' to 'em, and a few more besides. Understand?"

"Yes suh."

The Mayor, with some effort, got into and out of a trouser pocket, and held forth a dollar. "If you ain't bashful, take that. And stick it some place where your willingness'll know you've got it.

"There's nobody'll treat you as white as a well-tipped nigger," he remarked as the porter passed on. He leaned forward and laid a hand on Rogers's knee, his smiling face redly brilliant under the Pintsch light. "Just as soon as you get your bellows mended and some meat on your bones, I'm goin' to write you a letter handin' you some straight advice."

The edge of his glance slyly took in Kate. "No, I ain't goin' to wait. I'll tell you now and be in the price o' the stamp. Friend—get married!"

Kate rose abruptly, walked back to her seat and began to fumble about the baggage.

The Mayor nodded his head emphatically. "There's nothin' like it!"

The cry, "All aboard," sounded through the car, and they rose. The Mayor said good-bye, and after him Tom. Then David took Rogers's thin hand. The two men silently gazed at one another for a long moment; each realised he might never again look into the other's face.

"Good-bye, old man," breathed David, gripping his hand. "I hope it's going to be as you hope. God knows you deserve it!"

Rogers's large eyes clung to him. "I've never had a friend like you!" he said slowly. "Good-bye—and if it's to be the long good-bye, then ... well, good-bye!"

He broke off, then added: "You're going to try to help change some things we both know are wrong. Never forget one thing: the time to reform a criminal is before he becomes one. Save the kids.—God bless you!"

The car began slowly to move. They gripped hands again, and David hurried back to Kate, whom the Mayor had just left and who was kissing Tom good-bye. David took her hand, and on gazing into her dark eyes and restrained face, it rushed upon him anew how much joy she had brought him and how much misery he had given her; and suddenly he was without a single word to say farewell.

"Good-bye," she said with a forced calmness.

"Forgive me!" he burst out in a whisper. "Your heart will tell you what I'd like to tell you. Forgive me!"

Her head sank forward in affirmation. "But you've done nothing."

There was no time to reply to that. "God bless you, Kate!—Good-bye!" he cried in a low voice. He ran out of the rapidly moving car and swung himself to the platform—unconscious that Kate's eyes had followed him to the last.

He joined the Mayor, and together with Tom they walked out of the station and into the street, talking of the friends they had just left. But the Mayor, who had met the party at the station, and consequently had not had a confidential word with David, was bubbling with his own affairs, and he quickly left Kate and Rogers to travel their way alone.

"Friend," he said with joyful solemnity, slipping his arm through David's, "I'm the biggest fool that ever wore pants!"

"Why?"

"For not lettin' Carrie marry me before."

"Then you're happy?"

"Happy?" A great laugh rose from beneath the Mayor's vest, and he gave David a hearty slap upon the back. "Yes, sir! Happy!—that's me!

"Yes, sir," he went on, after they had boarded a car, "I've got only one thing agin Carrie, and that is that she didn't rope me in before. Say, she's all right—she's It. No siree, friend, there ain't nothin' like gettin' married!"

The Mayor continued his praise of his present state till David and Tom bade him good night and left the car. As they walked through the cross street a sense of loneliness began to settle upon David; so that when Tom slipped a hand through his arm he drew the hand close against his side.

"You're not going to leave me, are you?"

"Me?" Tom hugged the arm he held. "Not till you turn me out!"

They walked in silence for a block. "Pard," Tom began in a low voice, "I don't know why you've been so good to me. I don't know nuttin', an' I'm a lot o' trouble. Mebbe sometimes you t'ink I don't appreciate all what you've done for me. But I do. When I t'ink about when I tried to steal your coat a year ago, an' den when I t'ink about now—I certainly do appreciate. I'm goin' to work hard—an' I'm goin' to study hard—an' I'm goin' to do what you tell me. If I do, d'you t'ink I'll ever make somebody?"

David pressed the arm closer. "My boy, you're going to make a splendid man!"

Tom looked up; tears were in his eyes. "Pard—I'd die tryin'—for you!" he said.

When they reached the apartment house that held their new home, David sent Tom upstairs and set out for St. Christopher's Mission. His sense of loneliness made his mind dwell upon Mr. Chambers's offer of millions; for earlier in the evening a messenger had brought a note from Helen which gave the substance of her talk with her father. He would not have returned an answer different from hers—yet in this moment he ached for those things which had been refused in his name, and the aching drew him to look upon that for which he had given them up.

He paused across the street from St. Christopher's and gazed at the brilliant windows of the club-house and at the great window in the chapel that glowed in memory of Morton. Then he crossed the street and entered the club-house. A few young men and women were coming down the stairway, and a few struggling late-comers were mounting to the floors above. He stood irresolute, then noticing that farther down the hall the door of the assembly room was open, he cautiously joined the little knot of people who stood about it.

The room was crowded with men and women, all in their best clothes. David quickly gathered from the talk of the officers on the platform, all women, that this was a meeting of the Women's Club, held for the double purpose of installing new officers and entertaining the members' husbands. He had been gazing in but a few minutes when the new president, a shapeless little woman, was sworn into office. The audience demanded a speech, and her homely face glowing with happiness and embarrassment, she responded in a few halting, grammarless phrases. "I hope I can do my duty," she ended, "so good that Dr. Morton, who got us to make this club, won't never be ashamed when he looks down on it."

Her other sentences had been applauded, but this last was received in that deep silence which is applause at its highest; and it came to David afresh that Morton was still the soul of St. Christopher's. All the while that other officers were being installed this closing sentence and its significance persisted in his mind, and so engrossed him that he was startled when the folding chairs began to be rattled shut and stacked in one corner of the room. A little later a piano and a violin started up, and part of the fathers and mothers began stumbling about in a two-step, and part crowded against the walls and made merry over the awkwardness and disasters of the dancers.

David slipped out of the building. Clearer than ever before had come to him a realisation of the responsibility of sacrifice: when one gives, the gift no longer belongs to one—it belongs to those who have builded their lives upon it.

Across the street, he looked back. Only once before had the Morton Memorial window seemed to him more significant, more warm and powerful in its inspiration—and that was on the day of his discharge from prison when it had first flashed upon his vision. Above the glowing window the chapel's short spire, softened by the round-hanging poetry of night, seemed to his imagination to be the uplifted, supplicatory hands of the neighbourhood.... Well, their Morton was safe.

When David reached home he found that Tom was in bed and fast asleep. He walked through the scantily furnished rooms. They were still strange to him, for this was his first night in them—and their strangeness, and the fresh loss of two of his best friends, and the sense, which grew heavier and darker, that he and Helen must remain apart, sharpened his loneliness to a racking pain. He tried to dissipate it by thinking of the ground he had gained—progress that a year ago, when all men refused him a chance, he would have thought impossible; by thinking of the greater achievements the future held. But he could not beget even an artificial glow of spirits; his success seemed but ashes. So he ceased to struggle, and gave himself over to his dejection.

He turned down the gas in his little sitting-room, and raising the shade of a window he sat down and gazed into the street. It was always a quiet street—and now, at half past ten, only an occasional figure moved darkly along its sidewalks. Far above the line of opposite housetops, in a moonless sky, gleamed thousands of white stars. Leaning back in his easy chair, and gazing up at the remote points of light, he went over anew the problem of his relations with Helen, and he asked himself again if he had decided rightly. Yes, he had done right to save her.... And yet, how he longed for the thing she was willing to give! How empty his life seemed without it—what a far, far stretch of loneliness!

His gloom was pressing heavier and heavier upon him, when suddenly there came a ring of his bell. Wondering who could be calling on him at that hour, he crossed the room and opened the door. A tall figure, heavily veiled and wearing a long coat, stepped in. Despite the veil and the dusk of the room, he knew her instantly.

"Helen!" he exclaimed in an awed whisper.

She did not speak. He closed the door and turned up the gas, and he saw she carried a small travelling bag in one hand.

"Helen!" he said.

She set the bag on a chair, and drew her veil up over the front of her hat. Her face was pale, determined.

"I've come to stay," she said slowly.

He could only stare at her.

"I've come to stay," she repeated.

"Helen!" he breathed.

"I've left home—for good. I belong with you. I shall not go away."

"Helen!"

"We shall be married to-night."

He gazed wordless at her white face, and he vaguely realised what her mind had passed through since he had left her five hours before. A wild joy sprang ablaze within him—yet he held fast to his old decision. "But Helen——"

"I've thought it all over," she broke in. "Everything. Heretofore you've been the rock. Now I'm the rock—I can't be changed.... I understand that you've refused me because you want to save me, and I love you for it. But I have searched my soul—I know what I want, I know what I can bear, I know what is best for us both. I know, David!—I know! Since you would not take me, I have come here to force you to take me. You cannot avoid it. I shall not go away."

His heart thrilled at her words, at the steadfastness of her erect figure. "But Helen!—when I think of the disgrace that will fall upon you—oh, I can't let you!"

"The truth is not known about either of us," she returned, steadily. "If the truth were known and if justice were done, my father would be disgraced and I would share his disgrace, and you would be exalted. It would be I who would dishonour you. If I do get a part of your false disgrace, I only get what is due me.

"You have borne this disgrace for years," she went on. "Don't you think I have the strength to bear, supported by you and love, what you have borne alone?"

His heart drew him toward her with all its tremendous strength.

"I've come to stay!" she repeated.

He wavered. But his old decision had still another word. "There's one more thing, Helen. We can speak of it—we are no longer children."

"No," she said. Her mind fluttered back a month to when they had stood together at the window of the Mission, and she smiled tremulously. "I'm twenty-eight."

He remembered the day, too, and smiled. "And I'm thirty-one—and see, the gray hairs!"

His face sobered. "There's another thing—children. Would it be fair to them?—to be born into disgrace?"

A faint colour tinged her cheeks. "I have thought of everything—that too," she returned steadily. "In a few years you will have won the respect of all; it will be an honour, not a disgrace, to be your child."

Suddenly she stretched out her hands to him. "Oh, I want to share your sorrows, David! I want to share your sorrows! And there will be glories! I want to help in the good you are going to do. My life will count for most with you ... I've come to stay, David! I belong with you! I'm not going away! Take me!"

He sprang forward. "Oh, Helen!" his soul cried out; and he gathered her into his arms.

A few minutes later, when he returned from telephoning an old clergyman whom she knew well, she met him with a glowing smile. "I've been all through it—I shall love it, our home!"

He thought of the home she had just left. He caught her hands and gazed into her deep eyes. "Darling—you'll never regret this?" he asked slowly.

"I never shall."

"God grant it!"

"I never shall. This is the day when my life begins."

"And mine, too!" He drew her to him, and kissed her. "But we must go. He said he'd be waiting for us. Come."

She lowered her veil, and they stepped into the hall. In the darkness they reached for each other, their hands touched and clasped; and so, hand in hand, they went down the stairs and forth into the night—and forth into the beginning of life.