Lillian Drew, as she had said, was not as high as she once was; so David, after making plain to her his poverty, managed to put her off with fifteen dollars—though for this amount she refused to turn over the letters. Before giving her the money he asked if she had kept secret her knowledge of Morton, and her answer was such as to leave him no fear. "This kind of thing is the same as money in the bank; telling it is simply throwing money away."

After he had paid her, and she had gone, he fell meditating upon this new phase of his situation. She would soon come again, he knew that—and his slender savings could not outlast many visits. When his money was gone and she still made demands, what then, if the ending of the deal was not fortunate?

And, now that he was quieter, the irony of this new phase of his situation began to thrust itself into him. Here he was, forced to pay money that the world might continue to believe him a thief! He laughed harshly, as the point struck home. He and Rogers were a pair, weren't they!—the great fear of one that he might be found out to be a thief, the great fear of the other that he might be found out not to be a thief. What would Helen Chambers think if she knew that not only was he trying to pay a debt he did not owe, but that he was paying to retain that debt?

Presently Rogers came in and they started for lunch, first leaving a note that would send Kate Morgan on a long errand so as to have the office clear for a conference with the Mayor in the afternoon. As they passed through the hall they brushed by Jimmie Morgan, who hastily slipped a bottle into his pocket. The experiment with Kate's father had not been successful. David had advised Rogers to discharge him, but Rogers, while admitting that to do so seemed a necessity, said that it would be as well to wait two or three weeks, when the end of the land deal would send them all away. David needed no one to tell him that what kept the father in his place was the fear of the daughter's disappointment.

An hour later David and Rogers, accompanied by the Mayor, re-entered the office, and the three plunged into a discussion of matters relating to the deal. After a time the Mayor asked:

"Chambers ain't showed his hand in this thing at all yet, has he?"

"No," said Rogers.

"I s'pose he's savin' himself for the finishin' touches. He's like this chap Dumas that wrote them stories I used to like to read. He's got so many things goin' on together, he's only got time to hand out the original order and then take the credit when it's done. But say—did you see the way the Reverend What-d'you-call-him jumped on him this mornin' in the papers? No? You didn't. Well, it was about that hundred and fifty thousand he's tryin' to give to help found a seminary for makin' missionaries. The preacher ordered his church not to cast even one longin' look at the coin. He said it was devil's money, and said it was diseased with dishonesty, and mentioned several deals that Chambers had got people into, and left 'em on the sandy beach with nothin' but the skin God'd give 'em. Oh, he gave Chambers what was comin' to him! Me, I ain't never seen a diseased dollar that when it come to buyin', wasn't about as able to be up and doin' as any other dollar—but, all the same, I say hurrah for the preacher."

The dozen or more times David had been with Mr. Chambers he had met him socially, and he remembered him as a man of broad reading and interest, and of unfailing courtesy. David could not adjust his picture of the man to the characterisations he sometimes saw in the papers and magazines, and to the occasional vituperative outbursts of which that morning's was a fair example. So he now said with considerable heat:

"I certainly do not believe in the centralisation of such vast wealth in one man's purse, but, the rules of the game being as they are, I can't say that I have much sympathy with those persons who call a man a thief merely because he has the genius to accumulate it!"

"And neither do I, friend," said the Mayor soothingly. "If there's any gent I don't press agin my bosom, it's a sorehead. But I know about Chambers!—you set that down!" He paused for a moment, then asked meditatively: "I suppose Miss Chambers don't believe any o' them stories?"

"She believes the stories spring either from jealousy, or vindictiveness, or from a totally mistaken impression of her father."

"I thought she must look at him about that way." The Mayor nodded thoughtfully. "D'you know, I've thought more'n once about her and her father. She's about as fine as they're turned out—that's the way I size her up. Conscience to burn. Mebbe some o' these days she'll find out just what her old man's really like. Well, when she finds out, what's she goin' to do? That's what I've wondered at. Somethin' may happen—but I don't know. Blood's mighty thick, and when it's thickened with money—well, sir, it certainly does hold people mighty close together!"

David quickly shifted the conversation back to business. They were all agreed that success seemed a certainty.

Rogers turned his large bright eyes from one to the other. "There's only one danger of failure I can see."

"And that?" said David.

"If they find out I'm Red Thorpe."

"How'll they learn you're Red Thorpe?" The Mayor dismissed the matter with a wave of a great hand. "No danger at all."

"I suppose not. But I've been fearing this for ten years, and now that my work is coming to its climax I can't help fearing it more than ever."

"Two more weeks and you'll be on your way to Colorado," the Mayor assured him. "By-the-bye, have you had an answer yet from that sanitarium at Colorado Springs?"

"Yes. This morning. I want to show it to you; it's in the other room."

Rogers walked over the strip of carpet through the open door into the living room. The next instant David and the Mayor heard his strained voice demand:

"What're you doing here?"

They both hurried to the door. On Rogers's couch lay Jimmie Morgan. The half-swept floor, the broom leaning against a chair, and the breath of the bottle, combined to tell the story of Morgan's presence.

"What're you doing here?" Rogers demanded, his thin fingers clutching the old man's shoulder.

Morgan rose blinking to his elbows, then slipped to his feet.

"Sweepin'," he said with a grin.

"Why weren't you doing it then?"

"I must 'a' had failure o' the heart and just keeled over," explained Morgan, still grinning amiably.

The Mayor sniffed the air. "Yes, smells exactly like heart failure."

"Yes, it was my heart," said old Jimmie, more firmly, and he began to sweep with unsteady energy.

Rogers, rigidly erect, watched him in fearing suspicion for a space, then said, "Finish a little later," and led him through the other door of the room into the hall. When the door had closed Rogers leaned weakly against it.

"What's the matter?" cried David.

"D'you think he heard what we said about Red Thorpe?"

"Him!" said the Mayor. "Didn't you bump your nose agin his breath? Hear?—nothin'! He was dead to the world!"

"He didn't hear me come up," returned Rogers with tense quiet. "When I saw him first his eyes were open."

"Are you sure?" asked David.

"Wide open. He snapped them shut when he saw me."

They looked at each other in apprehension, which the Mayor was first to throw off. "He probably didn't hear nothin'. And if he did, I bet he didn't understand. And if he did understand, what's he likely to do? Nothin'. You've been a friend to him and his girl, and he ain't goin' to do you no dirt. Anyhow, in a week or two it'll all be over and you'll be pointed toward Colorado."

They heard Kate enter the office and they broke off. The Mayor, remarking that he had to go, drew David out into the hall.

"He dreams o' troubles—I've got 'em," the Mayor whispered. "I asked her to fix the weddin' day last night. She'd been leadin' up to it so much I couldn't put off askin' any longer. And o' course I had to ask it to be soon—oh, I've got to play the part, you know! Did she put it away off in the comfortable distance? Not her! She said she could get ready in a month. Now what d'you think o' that? Who ever heard of a woman gettin' ready in a month! She said since I seemed so anxious she'd make it four weeks from yesterday. Only twenty-seven more days!

"And say, you remember all them lies I told her about myself when I was tryin' to scare her off. Well, she's already begun to throw my past in my face! Rogers there, he dreams o' troubles—but, oh Lord, wouldn't I like to trade!"

With a dolorous sigh the Mayor departed and David went into the office. As he sat down at his desk Kate Morgan looked sharp questions at him—questions concerning Lillian Drew. She did not speak her questions that afternoon, but they had planned a walk for the evening and they were hardly in the street when the questions began to come. David was instantly aware that the Kate Morgan beside him was the Kate Morgan of a year ago, whose impulses were instantly actions and whose emotions were instantly words.

"Who was that woman this morning?" she demanded.

"Her name is Lillian Drew."

He offered her his arm, but she roughly refused it.

"Who is she?"

"I know little of her; I have spoken to her but once before," he answered evasively.

But in thinking he could parry her with evasion, he had forgotten her old persistent directness. "I know better—you know a great deal about her! And she has something to do with you. Do you suppose I didn't see that in a second this morning?"

David looked with dismay down on the tense face the light from shop-windows revealed to him. He saw that she had to be answered with facts or blank refusals, and he studied for a moment how much of the first he could give her.

"Except for one glimpse of her in the street I haven't seen her for five years—" he was beginning guardedly, when she broke in with,

"That was just before you were sent away?"

"Yes."

Like a flash came her next question. "And it was for her you stole the money? She got the five thousand dollars?"

He was fairly staggered. "I cannot say," he returned.

She quickly moved a step ahead, and looked straight up into his face. "A-a-h!" she breathed. "So that's it!"

"I tell you that, except for a mere glimpse the other day, I never saw her but once before in my life; and that before that time I had never even heard the name; and that, since then, I had never heard of her or seen her till to-day."

Her gaze fairly pierced to his inner self. "You wouldn't lie to me—I know that," she said abruptly. "But she's got some hold on you; she means something in your life—don't she?"

"I've told you all I can tell you," David answered firmly.

She exploded. "I hate her! You hear me?—I hate her!"

He did not answer, and they walked on to the eastward in silence, through streets effervescent with playing children. In Tompkin's Square they sat down on one of the benches which edged both sides of the curving walks and which were filled with husbands, wives, lovers, German and Jewish and Magyar, who had come out for an hour or two of the soft October air. David tried to draw Kate into casual conversation, but she remained silent, and soon they rose and walked on. After several blocks the window of a delicatessen store showed him she was more composed, and he again offered her his arm. She now took it.

Presently they saw the gleam of water at the end of the street, and continuing they came out upon a dock. It was crowded with trucks, and against its one side creakingly rubbed a scow loaded with ashes and against its other a scow ridged high with empty tin cans. Sitting in the tails of some of the trucks were parlourless lovers—their courtship flanked by garbage, presided over by the odour of stables. They did not break their embraces as David and Kate brushed by them and passed on to the end of the dock.

Kate sank upon the heavy end timber and gazed at the surging tide-river that swept along under the moonlight. It came to David, who leaned against a snubbing-post at her side, that this was the very dock on which he had stood on New Year's eve; and half his mind was thinking of the hopelessness of that night and of the bitter days preceding it, when a whispered "David" reached up to him.

He glanced down. The moon, which dropped full into her face, revealed no hardness—showed appealing eyes and a mouth that rippled at its corners.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I hate her—yes." Her voice flamed slightly up with its old fire, but it immediately subsided into tremulous appeal. "But I had no right to talk to you like I did. I can't brag about what I've been, you know."

"There, let's say no more about it," he said gently.

"Yes, I must. I've been thinking about myself while we were walking along. Thinking of your past isn't always pleasant, is it, when there's so much of it that don't suit you. But I've wanted to improve, and I've tried. Do you think I've improved, a little—David?"

The wistful voice drew his hand upon her shoulder.

"I wish I had grown as much!" he breathed.

She pressed his hand an instant to her cheek, then rose and peered up into his face. "Do you say that!" she said eagerly. "If I've tried to improve—you know why."

He looked quickly from her tremulous face, out upon the million-faceted river. He writhed at the pain she must be feeling now, or would some day feel, and was abased that he was its cause.

"Oh, why did things have to happen so!" he exclaimed in a whisper.

"What happen?"

"That you should want—to please me."

She did not speak at once, but her hand locked tightly upon his arm and he felt her eyes burning into him. At length she whispered, in a voice taut with emotion:

"Then you still care—for her?"

He nodded.

She was again silent, but the locked grip told him of her tensity.

"But she's impossible to you. She lives in another world. You still believe this?"

"Yes."

Silence. "And I'm still next?"

"Yes."

"And do you like me any less than you did at first?"

He looked back upon her impulsively, and caught her hands.

"This is a miserable affair, Kate!" he cried. "Can't we forget it—wipe it out—and be just friends?"

"Do you like me any less than you did at first?" she repeated.

"More!"

Her next words tumbled out breathlessly. "I'll keep on improving—you'll like me more and more—and then—!"

Her impetuous force fairly dazed him.

"Ah, David!" she whispered almost fiercely, gripping his hands, "you can't guess how I love you!"

He could not bear her passionate eyes, they pained him so—and he looked back across the river to where a blast furnace was thrusting its red fangs upward into the night. There was a silence, broken only by the monotonous chatter of the ripples among the piles below. Then she went on, still tense, but quieter, and slightly meditative.

"Nor how differently I love you. Sometimes there is a tiger in me, and I could kill anyone that stood between us. And then again I'm not the same person; I want first of all what is the best thing for you. When I feel this way I would do almost anything for you, David. I think"—her voice dwindled to the barest whisper—"I think I could almost give you up."