THE ONE WOMAN

A STORY OF MODERN UTOPIA

BY

THOMAS DIXON, JR. 

ILLUSTRATED BY

B. WEST CLINEDINST

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

(1834-1902)

TO WHOSE SCOTCH LOVE OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE I OWE THE HERITAGE OFETERNAL YOUTH

CONTENTS

I. The Man and the WomanII. Visions in the NightIII. The Banker and His FadIV. The Shorthorn DeaconV. The Cry of the CityVI. The Puddle and the TadpoleVII. A Stolen KissVIII. Sweet DangerIX. The SpiderX. The Black CatXI. An Answer to PrayerXII. Out of the ShadowsXIII. A Broken Heart-StringXIV. The Voice of the SirenXV. Goest Thou to See a Woman?XVI. The PartingXVII. The Thought That Sweeps the CenturyXVIII. A Voice from the PastXIX. The Wedding of the AnnunciationXX. An Old SweetheartXXI. Freedom and FellowshipXXII. A Scarlet Flame in the SkyXXIII. The New HeavenXXIV. Courtier and QueenXXV. The Irony of FateXXVI. At Close QuartersXXVII. Venus VictrixXXVIII. The Growl of the AnimalXXIX. Bulldog and MastiffXXX. The Cloud's Silver LiningXXXI. A Lace HandkerchiefXXXII. A Lifetime in a DayXXXIII. The VerdictXXXIV. The AppealXXXV. Between Two FiresXXXVI. Swift and Beautiful FeetXXXVII. The Kiss of the Bride

List of Illustrations

"Her tapering fingers rested on his broad foot. "

"About her personality there was a haunting charm, the breath ofa soul capable of the highest heroism. "

"Little ringlets of hair curling about her face as though scorchedby the warmth of the red blood below. "

"Ripped it open, tore it from his arms, and threw it on the floor. "

"Her arms stole around his neck. "

"A faint cry came from the full lips. "

"Driving his great fingers into his throat. "

"A cheer suddenly burst from the crowd and echoed through thecourt-room. "

Leading Characters of the Story

Scene: New York-Time: The Present

RUTH GORDON . . . The One Woman

REV. FRANK GORDON . . A Social Dreamer

KATE RANSOM . . . The Other Woman

MARK OVERMAN . . . . A Banker

MORRIS KING . . Ruth's Old Sweetheart

ARNOLD VAN METER . . A Shorthorn Deacon

BARRINGER . . Assistant District Attorney

CHAPTER I

THE MAN AND THE WOMAN

"Quick--a glass of water!" A man sprang to his feet, beckoning toan usher. 

When he reached the seat, the woman had recovered by a supremeeffort of will and sat erect, her face flushed with anger at herown weakness. 

"Thank you, I am quite well now, " she said with dignity. 

The man settled back and the usher returned to his place and stoodwatching her out of the corners of his eyes, fascinated by herbeauty. 

The church was packed that night with more than two thousand people. The air was hot and foul. The old brick building, jammed in themiddle of a block, faced the street with its big bare gable. Theushers were so used to people fainting that they kept water andsmelling-salts handy in the anterooms. The Reverend Frank Gordonno longer paused or noticed these interruptions. He had acceptedthe truth that, while God builds the churches, the devil gets thejob to heat, light and ventilate them. 

The preacher had not noticed this excitement under the gallery, but had gone steadily on in an even monotone very unusual to hisfiery temperament. 

A half-dozen reporters yawned and drummed on their fingers with theirpencils. The rumour of a brewing church trouble had been published, but he had not referred to it in the morning, and evidently wasnot going to do so to-night. 

Toward the close of his sermon he recovered from the stupor withwhich he had been struggling and ended with something of his usualfervour. 

He was a man of powerful physique, wide chest and broad shoulders, a tall athlete, six feet four, of Viking mould, hair blond andwaving, steel-gray eyes, a strong aquiline nose and frank, seriousface. 

He had been called from a town in southern Indiana to the PilgrimCongregational Church in New York when, on its last legs, it wasabout to sell out and move uptown. He had created a sensation, andin six months the building could not hold the crowds which struggledto hear him. 

His voice was one of great range and its direct personal tone puthim in touch with every hearer. Before they knew it his accentsquivered with emotion that swept the heart. Emotional thinkingwas his trait. He could thrill his crowd with a sudden burst ofeloquence, but he loved to use the deep vibrant subtones of hisvoice so charged with feeling that he melted the people into tears. His face, flashing and trembling, smiling and clouding with hiddenfires of passion, held every eye riveted. His gestures were few andseemed the resistless burst of enormous reserve power--an impressionmade stronger by his great hairy blue-veined hands and the wayhe stood on his big, broad feet. He spoke in impassioned momentswith the rush of lightning, and yet each word fell clean-cut andpenetrating. 

An idealist and dreamer, in love with life, colour, form, music andbeauty, he had the dash and brilliancy, the warmth and enthusiasmof a born leader of men. The impulsive champion of the people, thefriend of the weak, he had become the patriot prophet of a largerdemocracy. 

A passion for music, and a fad for precious stones, especiallypearls and opals, which he carried in his pockets and handled withthe tenderness of a lover, were his hobbies. He had in a markeddegree the peculiar power of attracting children and animals, andall women liked him instinctively from the first. 

But to-night he was not himself. After a brief prayer at the closeof the sermon he dismissed the crowd with the announcement of anafter-meeting for those personally interested in religion. 

As the people poured out through the open doors the unceasing roarof the great city's life swept in drowning the soft strains ofthe organ--the jar and whir of wheels, the wheeze of brakes, thetremor of machinery, the rumble of cab, the clatter of hoof-beat, the cry of child and hackman, the haunting murmur of millions likethe moan of the sea borne on breezes winged with the odours ofsaloon and kitchen, stable and sewer--the crash of a storm of bruteforces on the senses, tearing the nerves, crushing the spirit, bruising the soul, and strangling the memory of a sane life. 

Gordon frowned and shivered as he sat waiting for the crowd to go, and a look of depression swept his face. 

These after-meetings for personal appeal were a regular featureof his ministry. He held them every Sunday evening, no matter howtired he was or how hopeless the effort might seem. When the doorswere closed about a hundred people had gathered in the centre ofthe church near the front. 

He rose from his chair behind the altar-rail with an evident effortto throw off his weariness. He had laid aside his pulpit robe, a tribute to ritualism that this church had dragooned him intoaccepting. 

"My friends, " he began slowly and softly, with his hands foldedbehind him, "first a few words of testimony from any who can witnessto the miracle of the Spirit in our daily life. We are crushedsometimes with the brutal weight of matter, and yet over all theSpirit broods and gives light and life. Who can bear witness tothis miracle?"

"I can!" cried a man, who rose trembling with deep feeling. 

His high, well-moulded forehead showed the heritage of intellectualpower. His eyes, soft and tender as a woman's, had in their depthsthe record of a great sorrow. 

Taking his watch out of his pocket, he looked at it a moment, and, as the tears began to steal down his face, spoke in a tremulousvoice. 

"Seven years, four months, three days and six hours ago the Spiritof God came to my poor lost soul and found it in a dirty saloon onthe East Side. I was dead--dead to shame, dead to honour, dead tolove, dead to the memory of life. I was so low I found scant welcomein hell's own port, the saloon. They knew me and dreaded to seeme. I had served time in prison, and when I drank I was an uglycustomer for the bravest policeman to meet alone. 

"Ragged, dirty, blear-eyed, besotted, I was seated on a whiskybarrel wondering how I could beat the barkeeper out of a drink, when a sweet-faced boy came up and handed me a card of this church'sservices. 

"I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden it came overme--where I was, and what I was, and what I once had been--a boywith a face like that, with a Christian father and mother who lovedme as their own life, and then how I had gone down, down in drinkfrom ditch to ditch and gutter to gutter to the bottomless pit. 

"I jumped down off that whisky barrel and washed my face. Thatnight I found this church, and the Spirit of God, here in one ofthese after-meetings, led my soul to the foot of the cross of JesusChrist. I looked up into His beautiful face--the fairest among tenthousand--the one altogether lovable, and I heard Him say, as tothe thief of old, 'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. '

"From that day, hour and minute I've been a living man, a miracleof grace and love. I have not touched a drop of liquor since, andthese hands, which had not earned an honest cent for years, havehandled thousands of dollars of other people's money and not onepenny has ever stuck to them. I am the living witness that God'sspirit can raise man from the dead, and Jesus Christ keep him untolife!"

He sat down, crying. 

Gordon lifted his hand and said, "Let us bow our heads a moment insilent prayer while every heart opens the door to the Spirit. "

At the close of the service he passed the man who had spoken andpressed his hand. 

"Ah, Edwards, old boy, you knew I needed that to-night. God blessyou!"

Jerry Edwards smiled and nodded. 

"A lady wishes to speak to you in the study, sir, " the sexton saidto him. 

He looked around for his wife to tell her to wait, but she hadgone. 

His study opened immediately into the auditorium at the foot ofthe pulpit stairs. As he entered, a young woman of extraordinarybeauty, elegantly and quietly dressed, advanced to meet him andshook his hand in a friendly, earnest way. 

"Doctor, I've waited patiently to-night to see you, " she said. "I'vebeen coming to hear you for six months, and yet I have never toldyou how much good you have done me; and I specially wish to tellyou how sorry I am that my stupid weakness to-night interruptedyou. I think I came near fainting. It was so close and hot--and, pardon me if I say it--I suddenly got the insane idea that you wereabout to faint in the pulpit. "

"Well, that is strange, " interrupted Gordon, looking at her withdeepening interest. "You have the gift of the sympathetic listener. I noticed no disturbance, but I did come near fainting. I have hada hard day--one of fierce nerve-strain. "

She looked at him curiously. 

"Then I don't feel so badly, now that I know my idea was not incipientinsanity, " she said, smiling. "I've quite made up my mind to sendback to Kentucky for my forgotten church-letter. I've seen allfashionable society in New York can offer and I am weary of itsvacuity. I've been disillusioned of a girl's silly dreams, butthere are some beautiful ones in my heart I've held. I can't tellyou how your church and work have thrilled and interested me. I have never heard such sermons and prayers as yours. You give tothe old faiths new and beautiful meaning. Every word you have spokenhas seemed to me a divine call. "

"And you cannot know how cheering such a message is to me to-night, "he thoughtfully replied, studying her carefully. 

"I never could summon courage to come up and speak to you before, but your sermon this morning swept me off my feet. It was so simple, so heartfelt, so sincere, and yet so close in its touch of life, I felt that you had opened your very soul for me to see my own inits experiences. It will be a turning point in my life. "

She spoke with a quiet seriousness, and Gordon felt that he hadnever seen a face of such exquisite grace. 

With a promise that he would call to see her within the week, sheleft. 

He stood for a moment gazing at her name, "Miss Kate Ransom, " onthe card she gave him, his mind aglow with the consciousness ofher remarkable beauty, the famous Kentucky type, and yet a distinctvariation. 

Her figure was full and magnificent in the ripe glory of youth, adelicate face, the blonde's colour, thick, waving auburn hair thatseemed brown till the light blazed through its deep red tints, violet-blue eyes, cordial and smiling, at once mysterious, magic, friendly, gravely candid. Her skin was smooth as a babe's, with thedelicate creamy satin of the blonde flashing the scarlet tints ofevery emotion. Her lips were cherry-red, and as she listened theyhalf parted with a lazy suggestion of tenderness and love; whilethe face was one of refined mentality, as unconscious as a child'sof its splendid beauty. 

Her gait was proud and careless, telling of perfect health andstores of untouched vital powers, a movement of the body at oncestrong, luxurious, insolently languid, rhythmic and full of dumbmusic. It was when she moved that she expressed the consciousnessof power, a gleam of cruelty, a challenge that was to man an addedcharm. 

"What a woman!" he exclaimed aloud, as he drew on his coat. "Thekind of a woman who enraptures the senses, drugs the brain andconscience of the man who responds to her call--the woman aboutwhom men have never been able to compromise, but have always killedone another!"

His wife opened the door for him in silence. 

"Who was that woman, Frank?" she asked at length, her long, darklashes blinking rapidly. 

"What woman, Ruth?"

"The beauty I saw glide softly into your study. "

Gordon smiled as he sank into a chair in the library. 

"Miss Kate Ransom, a stranger I never met before. "

"You seem a magnet for strange women, and your church their Mecca. "

"Yes, and strange men. God knows New York, with its dead and desertedchurches, needs such a Mecca. "

"You promised to call, of course?"

"Certainly; it's my business. The Church needs every friend andevery dollar to be had on Manhattan Island. "

"And the distinguished young pastor of the Pilgrim Church needsthe smiles of all beautiful women. His wife is a little faded withworry and care for his children, while crowds hang on his eloquenceand silly women sigh into his handsome face. Ah, Frank, before wecame to New York you had eyes only for me. The city, the crowd andthe flattery of fools have turned your head. You are letting go ofall things you once held. Now the Bible is 'literature. ' You aresighing for the freedom of a 'larger life. ' Where will it end? Iwonder if you have weighed marriage in the balances and found itwanting?"

Gordon rose with a sigh, walked slowly to the window and lookeddown on the city lying below. Their little home was perched on thecliffs of Washington Heights. 

The smile had died from his handsome face and his tall figure wasstooped with exhaustion. He raised one hand and brushed back a straylock from his forehead, across which a frown had slowly settled. 

"By all means keep your hair adjusted, " his wife continuedsarcastically. "The women are all in love with that blond hair. And it is so effective in the pulpit. If you were not six feet fourit might be effeminate, but I assure you it is the secret of yourstrength. I trust you will be wiser than Samson. "

Gordon smiled. 

"You have quit the old faiths, " she continued rapidly, "and goneto preaching Christian Socialism. You have driven the best membersof the church away, and made the press your enemy. That mob whichhails you a god will turn and curse you. You will never buildyour marble dream out of such stuff. Both your sermons to-day willmake your trustees more hostile. There was no Bible in them--onlypersonalities and rank Socialism. I saw that woman in front of medrinking it all in as the inspired gospel. "

Gordon winced and his brow clouded. 

"I gave up everything for you--home, talents, friends, " she wenton. "Now that I am thirty-one, it is the new face that charms. "

"You did give up a very particular friend for me, " Gordon remarkedteasingly. "I only learned recently that you were once engaged toMr. Morris King, your faithful attorney, and that you threw himover for an athletic parson with blond hair and a smile, yet Ihave never chided you about this little secret. Mr. King is stilla romantic bachelor. He has not been initiated into the joys of aSunday sermon at 10 P. M. , with his wife in the pulpit. He has muchto live for. "

Her lips quivered and her eyes grew dim. 

"Come, come, my dear; you know that I love you and that I amfaithful to you. But such words and scenes as these may destroythe tenderest love at last. Words, even, are deeds. "

"How philosophical! Quite like one of the epigrams of your chum, Mark Overman, of whose cruel tongue you're so fond. I wonder youdon't make Mr. Overman a deacon in the new order of your church. "

Gordon sank back into the chair and thoughtfully shaded his browwith his hand, his face drawn into deep lines of weariness. 

When she saw the look of pain in his face her eyes softened. 

"What I fear of you, Frank, is not your intention, but your performance. You mean well, but you never could resist a pretty woman. "

"In a sense, no. If I could, I never would have married. "

The faintest suggestion of a smile played about her eyes and thenfaded. 

"I wonder what pretty speeches you said to the stranger to-night?You have such charming manners with a woman. "

He looked at her appealingly and she stared at him without reply. 

"For God's sake, Ruth, end this scene. If you only knew how tiredI am to-night--tired in body, in heart and soul. I think the pastweek has been the most trying of my whole life. It opened with anewspaper attack on me inspired by Van Meter. You know how sensitiveI am to such criticism. 

"Saturday came without a moment for preparation for the great crowdsI knew would be present to-day after that attack on me. Insteadof work yesterday, a procession of people, hungry and suffering, were at the door from morning until night. All their burdens theypoured out to me; All their wrongs and grievances against God andman became mine. 

"On Saturday night the trustee meeting was held to discuss ourbuilding project. Van Meter led the opposition with skill. When Ipoured out my soul's dream to them of a great temple of marble, aflaming centre of Christian Democracy instead of the old brick barnwe call a church--a temple that would flash its glory from the skyabove the sordid materialism that is crushing the lives and heartsof men, telling in marble song of God, of immortality, of faith andhope and love--they stared at me in contempt until I felt the bloodfreeze in my veins. When I drew a picture of its great auditoriumthronged with thousands of eager faces, Van Meter coolly interruptedme with the remark:

"'We don't want such trash elbowing our old parishioners out oftheir pews. We've had too much of it already. With all your mob, the pew-rents have fallen off. '

"My first impulse was that of Christ when he took a whip in thetemple. I wanted to knock him down. Instead, I rushed out of thehouse and left him victorious. 

"I waked this morning with the burden of all this week's horrorchoking me, waked to the consciousness that in a few hours thousandsof faces would be looking up to me with hungry souls to be fed. Well, I had nothing to give them except my own heart's blood, andso to-day I tore my heart open for them to devour it. True, I didn'tpreach the Bible except as its truth had passed into my own soul'sexperiences. When I preach such sermons I always quit with the senseof utter helplessness, exhaustion and failure. Could my bitterestenemy read my heart in that hour he would cry out for pity. 

"I never so felt the crushing burden of all that crowd of peopleas to-day. I've heard so much of their sorrows and struggles thepast week. I felt that the city was a great beast in some vastarena of time, that I was alone, naked and unarmed, on the sands, struggling with it for the life of the people, while my enemieslooked on. As never before, I heard the rush of its half-crazedmillions, its crash and roar, saw its fierce brutality, its lust, its cruelty, its senseless scramble for pleasure, its indifferenceto truth, its millions of to-day but a symbol of the millionsgone before and the trampling millions to come, and I felt I wasa failure. I felt that I was pitching straws against a hurricane, only to find them blown back into my face. I came down out of thatpulpit with the weariness of a thousand years crushing my tiredbody and soul, feeling that I could never speak again, or struggleagainst the tide any more--that I was broken, bruised and done forall time, and I came home feeling so--"

He paused a moment and a sigh caught his voice. His wife's facehad softened and a tear was quivering on her long eyelashes. 

"I came home thus worn out to-night hoping for a word of cheer, yet knowing it would be days before I could recover from the sheernerve-agony I had endured. What a reception you have given me! Andfor what? A beautiful woman stopped to tell me my message had notbeen in vain, that it had made for her a light on life's way, andthat the prayers in which I had tried to realise as my own, thepeople's thoughts and hopes and fears had been a revelation to her, and because I smiled--"

His wife was again staring at him with the glitter of jealousy. Hesaw it and ceased to speak. 

He suddenly sprang to his feet and walked to the door. Taking downhis hat and light overcoat from the rack, he said, as though tohimself:

"We will spend the night under different roofs. "

As he passed toward the door there was a faint cry fiom withinscarcely louder than a whisper, tense with agony and pitiful inits pleading accents;

"Frank, dear, please come back!"

But when she summoned strength to rush to the door, crying withterror she had never known before "Frank! Frank!" he had turnedthe corner and disappeared. 

CHAPTER II

VISIONS IN THE NIGHT

Gordon walked rapidly with the quick stride of the trained athlete. Walking was a pet exercise. 

His mind was now in a whirl of fury. He had never before givenaway to passion in a quarrel with his wife. They had been marriedtwelve years, and, up to the birth of their boy, four years before, had lived as happily as possible for two people of strong wills. Discord had slowly grown as his fame increased. His wife was nowjealous of almost every woman who spoke to him. 

They had quarreled before, but he had always kept a clear headand laughed her out of countenance. These quarrels had ended withtears and kisses and were forgotten until the next. 

To-night somehow every thrust found his most sensitive spots. Hewondered why? Dimly conscious of a curious interest in the womanwho had spoken so sweetly to him at the close of his service, hewondered if his wife divined the fact by some subtle power theirlong association had developed and sharpened. 

His enthusiasm for the Socialistic ideal was fast becoming anabsorbing passion, and was destined to lead him into strange company. 

His wife felt this, resented it, and, becoming more and moreconservative, the gulf between them daily widened and deepened. 

He cared nothing for her ridicule of his blond locks. He wore themhalf in defiance of conventionality and half in whimsical love forthe picture of a beautiful mother from whom he had inherited them. 

"What could have possessed her to-night?" he slowly muttered as heemerged from Central Park and swung into Fifth Avenue. "Am I reallylosing my grasp of truth because I am giving up traditional dogmas?Has God given to her soul the power to look inside my heart andfind its secret thoughts? Why does she keep asking me if I havelost faith in marriage? Never in word or deed have I hinted at sucha thing. "

And yet the memory of that beautiful woman, with a voice likeliquid music, friendly, soothing, reassuring, kept echoing throughhis soul. 

As the tumult of passion died in the glow of the walk in the openair he became conscious of the life of the city again. The avenuewas a blaze of light. Its miles of electric torches flashed likestars in the milky way. 

He passed under dozens of awnings before palatial homes in front ofwhich stood lines of carriages. The old Dutch and English ancestorsof these people were once faithful observers of the Sabbath. Now theywent to church in the mornings as a form of good society and heldtheir receptions in the evenings. Some of them employed professionalvaudeville artists to enliven their Sunday social bouts. 

New York, proud imperial Queen of the Night, seemed just wakingto her real life, a strange new life in human history--a life thathad put darkness to flight, snuffed out the light of moon and star, laughed at sleep, twin sister of Death, and challenged the soul ofman to live without one refuge of silence or shadow. 

And yet the warmth and glow, the splendour and beauty of it allstirred his imagination and appealed to his love. 

At length he stood before the old church that had been the arena ofhis struggles and triumphs for the past ten years, and was destinedto be for him the scene of a drama more thrilling than any he hadknown or dreamed in the past. 

He passed into the auditorium, ascended the pulpit, and sat downin the armchair where but a few hours before he had held the gazeof thousands. The electric lights glimmering through the windowsof the gable showed the empty pews in sharp outline. 

"I wonder if they know when they go they sometimes leave my soulas empty and as lonely as those vacant pews? I give, give, giveforever of thought, sympathy and life and never receive, untilsometimes my heart cries to a passing dog for help!

"I'd build here to God a temple whose sheer beauty and glory wouldstop every huckster on the street, lift his eyes to heaven and melthis soul into tears. It must--it shall come to pass!"

He sat there for nearly two hours, dreaming of his plans of upliftingthe city, and through the city as a centre reaching the Nation andits millions with pen and tongue of fire. Gradually the sense ofisolation from self enveloped him, and the thought of human servicechallenged the highest reach of his powers. 

He opened the face of his watch and felt the hands, a habit he hadformed of telling the time in the dark. It was one o'clock. 

He thought of his wife and their quarrel. He had forgotten it inlarger thoughts, and his heart suddenly went out in pity to her. He had not meant what he said. He loved her in spite of all harshwords and bitter scenes. She was the mother of his two lovelychildren, a girl of ten and a boy of four. The idea of a nightapart from her, he, and theirs came with a painful shock. He felthis strength and was ashamed that he had left her so cruelly. Hehurried to the Twenty-third Street elevated station and boarded acar for his home. 

When his wife recovered from the first horror of his leaving, shewas angry. With a nervous laugh she went into the nursery, kissedthe sleeping chil-dren and went to bed. She tossed the first hour, thinking of the quarrel and many sharp thrusts she might havegiven him. Perhaps she would renew the attack when he came in andattempted to make up. The clock struck eleven and she sprang up, walked to her window and looked out. 

A great new fear began to brood over her soul. 

"No, no, he could not have meant it--he is not a brute!" she cried, as she began to nervously clasp her hands and turn her wedding ringover and over again on her tapering finger, until it seemed a bandof fire to her fevered nerves. 

As she stood by the window in her scarlet silk robe she made a sharpcontrast in person to the woman whose shadow had fallen to-nightacross her life. She was a petite brunette of distant Spanishancestry, a Spottswood from old Tidewater Virginia. To the tenderestmotherhood she combined a passionate temper with intense jealousy. The anxious face was crowned with raven hair. Her eyes were darkand stormy, and so large that in their shining surface the shadowsof the long lashes could be seen. 

Her nature, for all its fiery passions, was refined, shy andtremulous. A dimple in her chin and a small sensitive mouth gaveher an expression at once timid and childlike. Her footstep hadfeline grace, delicacy and distinction. She had a figure almostperfect, erect, lithe, with small hands and feet and tiny wrists. Her voice was a soft contralto, caress-ing and full of feeling, with a touch of the languor and delicate sensuousness of the OldSouth. About her personality there was a haunting charm, vivid andspiritual, the breath of a soul capable of the highest heroism ifonce aroused. 

At twelve o'clock she relighted the gas and went downstairs tostand at the parlour window to scan more clearly every face thatmight pass, and--yes, she would be honest with herself now--tospring into his arms the moment he entered, smother him with kissesand beg him to forgive the bitter words she had spoken in anger. 

She was sure he would come in a moment. He must have gone on oneof his long walks. She could see the elevated cars on their longtrestle, count the stations, and guess how many minutes it wouldtake him to climb the hill and rush up the steps. Over and overshe did this, and now it was one o'clock and he had not come. 

What if he had been stricken suddenly with mortal illness! His facehad looked so weary and drawn. She began to cry incoherently, andsank on her knees. 

"Lord, forgive me. I am weak and selfish, and I was wicked to-night. Hear the cry of my heart. Bring him to me quickly, or I shall die!"

As the sobs choked her into silence, she sprang to her feet, bothhands on her lips to keep back a scream of joy, for she had heardhis footstep on the stoop. 

The latch clicked, and he was in the hall. 

There was a flash of red silk and two white arms were around hisneck, her form convulsed with a joy she could not control or tryto conceal. 

He soothed her as a child, and, as he kissed her tenderly, felther lips swollen and wet with the salt tears of hours of weeping. 

"You will not remember the foolish things I said to-night, dear?"she pleaded. "There, there, I'll blot them out with kisses--one forevery harsh word, and one more for love's own sake. But you mustpromise me, Frank, never to leave me like that again. " A sob caughther voice, and her head drooped. 

"You may curse me, strike me, do anything but that. Oh, the loneliness, the agony and horror of those hours when I realised you were gonein anger and might not come back to-night--dear, it was too cruel. Such wild thoughts swept my heart! You do forgive me?"

He stooped and kissed her. 

"Why ask it, Ruth?"

"I know I am selfish and fretful and wilful, " she said, with a sigh. "I was only a spoiled child of nineteen when you took me by storm, body and soul. You remember, on our wedding day, when I looked upinto your handsome face and the sense of responsibility and joycrushed me for a moment, I cried and begged you, who were so braveand strong, to teach me if I should fail in the least thing? Andyou promised, dear, so sweetly and tenderly. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember, " he slowly answered. 

"And now, somehow, you seem to have drawn away from me as thoughthe task had wearied you. Come back closer! When I am foolish youmust be wise. You can make of me what you will. You know I am afraidof this Socialism. It seems to open gulfs between us. You read andread, while I can only wait and love. You cannot know the silentagony of that waiting for I know not what tragedy in our lives. Frank, teach and lead me--I will follow. I love you with a lovethat is deathless. If you will be a Socialist, make me one. Showme there is nothing to fear. I've thought marriage meant onlyself-sacrifice for one's beloved. I've tried to give my very lifeto you and the children. If I'm making a mistake, show me. "

"I will try, Ruth. "

She ran her tapering fingers through his hair, smiled and sighed. 

"How beautiful you are, my dear! I know it is a sin to love anyman so. One should only love God like this. "

CHAPTER III

THE BANKER AND HIS FAD

When Gordon woke next morning from a fitful sleep he was stupidand blue and had a headache. His wife had not slept at all, butwas cheerful, tender and solicitous. 

"Ruth, I can't go down to the ministers' meeting this morning, "he said wearily. "I must take a day off in the country. I'll loseboth soul and body if I don't take one day's rest in seven. I didn'ttell you last night that I came near fainting in the pulpit duringthe evening sermon. "

She slipped her hand in his, looking up reproachfully at him outof her dark eyes. 

"Why didn't you tell me that, Frank?"

"I thought you had enough troubles last night. I'll run out on LongIsland and spend the day with Overman. You needn't frown. You arestrangely mistaken in him. I know you hate his brutal frankness, and he is anything but a Christian, but we are old college chums, and he's the clearest-headed personal friend I have. I need hisadvice about my fight with Van Meter. Overman is a venomous criticof my Social dreams. I've often wondered at your dislike of him, when he so thoroughly echoes your feelings. "

She was silent a moment, and gravely said: "Take a good day's rest, then, and come back refreshed. I'll try to like even Mr. Overman, if he will help you. I'm going to turn over a new leaf this morning. "

He laughed, kissed her, and hurried to catch the train for Babylon, where Overman lived in his great country home. 

Mark Overman was a bacholer of forty, noted for the fact that hehad but one eye and was so homely it was a joke. His friends saidhe was so ugly it was fascinating, and he was constantly laughingabout it himself. He was a Wall Street banker, several timesa millionaire, famed for his wit, his wide reading, his brutallycynical views of society, and his ridicule of modern philanthropyand Socialistic dreams. 

He was a man of average height with the heavy-set, bulldog body, faceand neck, broad, powerful hands and big feet. He had an enormousnose, shaggy eyebrows and a bristling black moustache. But theone striking peculiarity about him was his missing right eye. Thelarge heavy eyelid was drooped and closed tightly over the sightlesssocket, which seemed to have sunk deep into his head. This cavernon one side of his face gave to the other eye a strange power. When he looked at you, it gleamed a fierce steady blaze like theelectric headlight of an engine. How he lost that eye was a secrethe guarded with grim silence, and no one was ever known to ask himtwice. 

Though five years older, he was Gordon's classmate at Wabash College. 

Overman had always scorned the suggestion of an artificial eye. Heswore he would never stick a piece of glass in his head to deceivefools. He used to tell Gordon that he was the only one-eyed man inNew York who had the money to buy a glass eye and didn't do it. 

"I prefer life's grim little joke to stand as it is, " he said, ashe snapped his big jaws together and twisted the muscles of hismouth into a sneer. He had a habit, when he closed an emphaticspeech, of twisting the muscles of his mouth in that way. Whenanimated in talk, he was the incarnation of disobedience, defiance, scorn, success. 

Two things he held in special pride--hatred for women and apassionate love for game-cocks. He allowed no woman on his placein any capacity, and, by the sounds day and night, he kept at leasta thousand roosters. He would drop the profoundest discussion ofphilosophy or economics at the mention of a chicken, and with atender smile plunge into an endless eulogy of his pets. 

Gordon found him in a chicken yard fitting gaffs on two cocks. 

"Caught in the act!" he cried. 

"Well, who cares? They've got to fight it out. It's in 'em. They'refull brothers, too. Hatched the same day. They never scrapped intheir lives till yesterday, when I brought a new pullet and puther in the neighbouring yard. They both tried to make love to herthrough the wire fence at the same time, and they were so busycrowing and strutting and showing off to this pullet they raninto each other and began to fight. Now one must die, and I'm justfixing these little steel points on for them so the function canbe performed decently. I'm a man of fine feelings. "

"You're a brute when you let them kill one another with gaffs. "

"Nonsense. The fighting instinct is elemental in all animallife--two-legged and four-legged. Animals fight as inevitably asthey breathe. You can trace the progress of man by the evolutionof his weapons--the stone, the spear, the bow and arrow, the sword, the gun. "

"Well, you're not going to have the fight this morning. Put upthose inventions of the devil and come into the house. "

"All right. You're a parson; I'll not allow them to fight. I'll justchop the head off of one and let you eat him for dinner. " Overmangrinned, and pierced Gordon with his gleaming eye. 

"It would be more sensible than the exhibition of brutality youwere preparing. "

"Not from the rooster's point of view, or mine. I love chickens. If I tried to eat one it would choke me. But I can see your mouthwatering now, looking at that fat young pullet over there, dreamingof the dinner hour when you expect to smash her beautiful whitebreast between your cannibal jaws. Funny men, preachers!"

Gordon laughed. "After all, you may be right. Our deepest cultureis about skin deep. Scratch any of us with the right tool and you'llfind a savage. "

They strolled into the library and sat down. It was the largest andbest-furnished room in the house. Its lofty ceiling was frescoed insectional panels by a great artist. Its walls were covered as highas the arm could reach with loaded bookshelves, and alcove doorsopened every ten feet into rooms stored with special treasures ofsubjects on which he was interested. Masterpieces of painting hungon the walls over the cases, while luxurious chairs and loungesin heavy leather were scattered about the room among the tables, desks and filing cabinets. At one end of the room blazed an openwood fire of cord wood full four feet in length. Beside the chimneywindows opened with entrancing views of the Great South Bay andthe distant beaches of Fire Island. Across the huge oak mantel hehad carved the sentence:

"I AM AN OLD MAN NOW; I'VE HAD LOTS OF TROUBLE, AND MOST OF ITNEVER HAPPENED. "

"Frank, old boy, you look as though you had been pulled through asmall-sized auger hole yesterday. How is the work going?"

"All right. But Van Meter puzzles me. I want your advice about him. You've come in contact with him in Wall Street and know him. He isthe one man power in my church--the senior deacon and chairman ofthe Board of Trustees of the Society. In spite of all my eloquenceand the crowds that throng the building, he has set the whole Boardagainst me. He is really trying to oust me from the pastorate ofthe church. Shall I take the bull by the horns now and throw him andhis Mammon-worshiping satellites out, or try to work such materialinto my future plans? Give me your advice as a cool-headed outsider. "

Overman was silent a moment. 

"Well, Frank, now you've put the question squarely, I'm goingto be candid. I'm alarmed about you. The strain on your nerves istoo great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing fromself-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it'brotherhood, ' the 'solidarity of the race. ' Sentimental mush. It'sa stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhoodhas been evolved. This idea is destroying your will, your brain, yourreligion, and will finally sap the moral fiber of your character. It is the greatest sentimentalist. "

Gordon grunted. 

"It's funny how you have the faculty of putting the opposition interms of its last absurdity. "

"Grunt if you like; I'm in dead earnest. You want to put on thebrakes. You've struck the down grade. Socialism takes the temperout of the steel fiber of character. It makes a man flabby. It isthe earmark of racial degeneracy. The man of letters who is poisonedby it never writes another line worth reading; the preacher whotampers with it ends a materialist or atheist; the philanthropistbitten by it, from just a plain fool, develops a madman; while thehome-builder turns free-lover and rake under its teachings. "

"You're a beauty to grieve over the loss to the world of home-builders!"Gordon cried, with scorn. 

"Maybe my grief is a little strained--but really, Frank, I hatewomen, not because I don't feel the need of their love--"

He drew the muscles of his big mouth together and looked thoughtfullyout of the window with his single piercing eye. 

"No; for the first time on that point I'll make an honest, cleanconfession to you. I hate women because I'm afraid of them. Ihave a face that can stop an eight-day clock if I look at it hardenough; and yet beneath this hideous mask there's a poor coward'ssoul that worships beauty and hungers for love! I don't allow womenin this house because I can't stand the rustle of their drapery. I don't want one of them to get her claws into me. They can seethrough me in a minute. Women have an X-ray in their eyes. Theycan look through a brick wall, without going to see what's onthe other side. A man learns a thing is true by a painful processof reasoning. A woman knows a thing is so--because! She knows itthoroughly, too, from top to bottom. Whenever a woman looks at me Ican feel her taking an X-ray photograph of the marrow of my bones. "

He wheeled suddenly and fixed his eye on Gordon. 

"I'll bet you had another quarrel with your wife last night?"

"How do you know?"

"Tell by your hangdog look. You look like an old Shanghai roosterthat a little game-cock has knocked down and trampled on for halfan hour before letting him up. "

"We did have some words. "

"Exactly; and I can tell you what about. Your wife is growing morenervous over the tendency of your religion and your thinking. Youcan't fool her about it. She knows you are drifting where she cannever follow. She knows instinctively that Socialism is the returnto the animal herd and that the family will be trampled to deathbeneath its hoofs. "

"Come, Mark, you're crazy. The Brotherhood of Man and the Solidarityof the Race can have such meaning only to a lunatic. "

"Don't you know that the triumph of Socialism will destroy themonogamic family?" Overman asked sharply. 

"Rubbish. "

"Strange, how you sentimentalists slop over things. You have allowedsecond-hand Socialistic catch words to change your methods of workand thought and revolutionize your character, and yet you have neverseriously tried to go to the bottom of it. Come into this room aminute. "

They went into an alcove room. 

"Here I have more than a thousand volumes of Socialistic literature. I've read it all with more or less thoroughness. When I look at thetitles of these books I feel as though I've eaten tons of sawdust. You are preaching this stuff as the gospel, and yet you don't knowwhat your masters are really trying to do. "

"I know that there can be no true home life until the shadow ofwant has been lifted, " said the preacher emphatically. "The aim ofSocialism is to bring to pass this dream of heaven on earth. "

"Just so. But you've never defined what the dream will be likewhen it comes. Your masters have. Let me read some choice bits toyou from these big-brained, clear-eyed men who created your movement. I like these men because they scorn humbug. Defiance, disobedience, contempt for thing that is, consumes them. "

He drew from the shelves a lot of books, threw them on a table, and took up a volume. 

"This from Fourier: 'Monogamy and private property are the maincharacteristics of Civilisation. They are the breastworks behindwhich the army of the rich crouch and from which they sally to robthe poor. The individual family is the unit of all faulty societiesdivided by opposing interests. '

"And this choice bit from William Morris: 'Marriage under existingconditions is absurd. The family, about which so much twaddle istalked, is hateful. A new development of the family will take place, as the basis not of a predetermined lifelong business arrangementto be formally held to irrespective of conditions, but on mutualinclination and affection, an association terminable at the willof either party. '"

Overman fixed his eye on Gordon for a moment, laid his hand on hisarm and asked:

"Now, honestly, Frank, confess to me you never read one of thosesentences in your life?"

"No, I never did. "

"I was sure of it. Listen again; this from Robert Owen: 'In the newMoral World the irrational names of husband, wife, parent and childwill be heard no more. Children will undoubtedly be the propertyof the whole community. '

"But perhaps the idea has been best expressed by Mr. Grant Allen. Hear his clean-cut statement: 'No man, indeed, is truly civilisedtill he can say in all sincerity to every woman of all the womenhe loves, to every woman of all the women who love him: "Give mewhat you can of your love and yourself; but never strive for mysake to deny any love, to strangle any impulse that pants for breathwithin you. Give me what you can, while you can, without grudging, but the moment you feel you love me no more, don't do injustice toyour own prospective children by giving them a father whom you nolonger respect, or admire, or yearn for. " When men and women canboth alike say this, the world will be civilised. Until they cansay it truly, the world will be as now, a jarring battle-field ofmonopolist instincts. '

"Then this gem from another of the frousy-headed--Karl Pearson:'In a Socialist form of government the sex relation would varyaccording to the feelings and wants of individuals. '

"Observe in all these long-haired philosophers how closely theidea of private property is linked with the family. That is why themoment you attack private property in your pulpit your wife knowsinstinctively that you are attacking the basis of her life and home. Private property had its origin in the family. The family is thesource of all monopolistic instincts, and your reign of moonshinebrotherhood can never be brought to pass until you destroy monogamicmarriage. "

"But my dream is of an ideal marriage and home life, " cried thepreacher. 

"Yes, and that is why you make me furious. You don't know the originor meaning of this Socialistic dream and yet you are preaching itevery Sunday, inflaming the minds of that crowd. I don't blame yourwife. She sees in her soul the rock on which you must wreck yourship sooner or later. The herd and the mating pair cannot co-existas dominant forces. This is why Socialism never converts a womanexcept through some--individual man. Woman's maternal instinctcreated monogamic marriage. The only women who become Socialistsdirectly are the sexless, the defectives and the oversexed, whocan always be depended on to make the herd a lively place for itsfighting male members. What have you to say to this?"

Overman turned his head sideways and pierced Gordon again with hissingle eye. 

"Well, I confess you've given me something to think about, and I'mgoing to the bottom of the subject. You've opened vistas of greatideas. It's the question of the century, the thought that is sweepinglife before it. While I've been listening to you, more and moreI've seen the need of consecration to the leading and teaching ofthe people who are being swept by millions into this movement. Butyou haven't told me what to do with Van Meter. "

"Yes, I have, The trouble, I tell you, is with you, not Van Meter. He's a little man, but he's just the size of a deacon in a modernchurch in New York. Win him over and work with him. He's your onlyhope. Van Meter knows his business as a deacon and trustee. Youare off the track. "

"But how can I ever reconcile Van Meter's commercialism with anyliving religion?"

Overman frowned and shrugged his shoulders. 

"Religion? Man, you haven't religion! Religion is the worship ofa Superior Being, fear of His power, submission to His commands, inability to discuss theoretically the formulas of faith, the desireto spread the faith, and the habit of considering as enemies allwho do not accept it. You can't pass examination on any of thesepoints. Your idea of God is the First Cause. You do not reallyworship or fear anything. You submit blindly to nothing. You havewritten an interrogation point before every dogma. You have ceasedto be missionary and become humanitarian. As a priest you're ajoke. Van Meter is a better deacon than you are a priest. I don'tblame him. He must put you out, or be put out of business sooner orlater. Your passion for reforming the world, your 'enthusiasm forhumanity, ' are things apart from worship and absolutely antagonisticto it. "

"But not antagonistic to the mission of Christ. "

"Granted. But the Christianity of Christ is one thing and modernChristianity another thing. The ancient Church, you must remember, absorbed Paganism. Van Meter's religion is, I grant you, a prettystiff mixture of Paganism and Christianity, but historically heis in line with the Church and you are out of line with it. I'd doone of two things--use Van Meter for all he is worth, or get outof his church and let him alone. It's his. He and his kind builtit. You are an interloper. "

"Perhaps so, " Gordon mused. 

"You know my opinion of your dream of social salvation. I say letthe fit survive and the weak go to the wall. If you could save allthe floating trash that so moves your pity, you would only lowerthe standard of humanity. Hell is the furnace made to consume suchworthless rubbish. You are even apologising for hell because youcan't stand the odour of burning flesh. I like the old God of Israelbetter than the ghost you moderns have set up. Honestly, Frank, you have never treated Van Meter decently. He's a small man, buthe is in dead earnest, and he is historically a Christian. I don'tknow what the devil you are, and I don't believe you know yourself. Go to Van Meter, have a plain business talk with him, and see ifyou can't come to an understanding. "

"That's the only sensible thing you've said to me. "

"And the only immoral thing; for if you and Van Meter ever agreeyou will both do some tall lying. "

"I think I'll take your advice and see him, anyhow. "

CHAPTER IV

THE SHORTHORN DEACON

Gordon and Overman came into town on the four o'clock express. Theysat down in opposite seats near the centre of the car. 

Neither of them noticed Van Meter, who also lived at Babylon in thesummer, board the train as it pulled out of the station. He was apompous little man, short and red-faced, with gray side whiskersand bald head. His eyes were sharp and beady and shined likeshoe-buttons. Piety and thrift were written all over him. As adeacon he passed the bread and wine at the Lord's Table on Sunday, with his black eyes half closed, dreaming of cornering the breadmarket of the world on Monday. For him New York was the centre ofthe universe, and the Stock Exchange was the centre of New York. The rest of this earth was provincial, tributary soil. He had goneabroad, but rarely ventured beyond Philadelphia or Coney Island onthis side. He was the presiding officer of the Stock Exchange andthe President of the Metropolitan Bible and Tract Society. He tookhimself very seriously. 

As they got out of the car at Long Island City, Gordon said to him:

"Deacon, I wish to have a talk with you tomorrow. Shall I call atyour home or office?"

"Come down to the office at two o'clock; I'll be out at night, "Van Meter answered briskly. 

The next day Gordon walked from the church down Fourth Avenue toUnion Square and down Broadway to the Battery. It was a glorious dayin early spring. The air had in it yet the cool breath of winter, but the electric thrill of coming life was in the soft breezesthat came from the South, where flowers were already blooming andbirds singing. The hucksters were selling sweet violets and thecry of the strawberry man echoed along the side streets. 

Fourth Avenue was piled with builders' material. The old brickhomes were crumbling and steel-ribbed monsters climbing into thesky from their sites. 

"Progress everywhere but in the churches, " muttered Gordon. "TheChurch alone seems dead in New York. "

Broadway was one vast river of humanity. As far as the eye couldreach the throng engulfed the pavements and overflowed into thestreets between the curbs, mingling with the mass of cars, cabs, trucks and wagons. On either side towered the interminable milesof business houses whose nerves and arteries reach to the limitsof the known world, savage and civilised. Behind those fronts satthe engineers of industry with their hands on the throttles of theworld's machinery, their keen eyes and ears alert to every soundof danger in the ceaseless roar around them. 

Shadowy and far away seemed the Spirit world from those hurrying, rushing, cursing, struggling men. And yet the earth was quiveringbeneath them with the shock of spiritual forces. The age of miracleswas only dawning. 

He felt like climbing to the tower of one of those great templesof trade and shouting to the throng to lift up their heads fromthe stones below and beyond the line of towering steel and granitesee the Glory of God. And as he thought how little that crowd wouldheed it if he did, he felt himself in the grip of Titanic forcesof Nature sweeping through time and eternity, and that he was butan atom tossed by their fury. 

As he passed the City Hall his eye rested on the towering castlesof the metropolitan newspapers. He could feel in the air the throbof their presses, the whir of their wheels within wheels tellingthe story of a day's life, wet with tears of hope and love, orpoisoned with slander and falsehood, their minarets and domes theflaming signs in the sky of a new power in history, a menace tothe life of the ancient Church and its priesthood. Was this powera threat to human liberty, or the highest expression of its hope?Only the future would reveal. What silent forces crouched behindthose towers with their throbbing cylinders the world could onlyguess as yet. 

He walked past old Castle Garden where so many weary feet havelanded and found hope. 

His heart filled with patriotic pride. Far out in the harbour stoodLiberty Enlightening the World, lifting her torch among the stars, her face calm and majestic, gazing serenely out to sea. 

"Land of faith and hope--my country!" he exclaimed. "Here thecommonest man has risen from the dust and proved himself a king. Home of the broken-hearted, the tyrant-cursed, the bruised, theoppressed, within thy magic gates the miracle of life has beenrenewed!"

He looked out on the great emerald harbour gleaming in the sunlight, its sky-line white with clouds and penciled with the pennant-tippedmasts of a thousand ships flying the flags of every nation of theearth. His soul was flooded again with the sense of the city'simperial splendour, stretching out her hand to grasp the financialscepter of the world, already the second city of the earth, akingdom mightier than Caesar ruled and richer than Croesus dreamed. 

He came back to Wall Street, and, as he turned into the narrowlane, felt its power shadow his imagination. 

"After all, " he muttered, "Van Meter is not far wrong in his ideaof the omnipotence of this street. "

The Deacon's office was plainly furnished. He was seated at anold-fashioned mahogany desk, evidently a relic of his Knickerbockerpast. Born in New York sixty years before, he was popularly reckoneda multimillionaire, though his wealth was overestimated. Comparedto the big-brained, eagle-eyed men who had come from the West andmastered Wall Street, Van Meter was really a pygmy. 

He greeted Gordon politely. 

"Delighted to welcome you, Doctor, to my office. This is the firstcall you have ever honoured me with downtown. "

"I've been to your home often, Deacon. "

"But somehow you've always been shy of Wall Street, " said Van Meter, expansively. "I suppose you look on us down here somewhat as theold-time preacher regarded the saloon-keeper. You should know usbetter. This alley is the jugular vein of the nation, and the StockExchange its heart. We have a President and Congress at Washington, and some very handsome buildings there. It is supposed to be thecapital of the republic. A political myth! Here is the capital. Themoney centre is the seat of government. The Southern Confederacyfailed, not for lack of soldiers or generals of military genius, but because it had no money. "

Van Meter's stature grew taller and his eyes larger as Gordon feltthe truth of his words. 

"Well, Deacon, I wish to know you better. I'm afraid I've not alwaysbeen fair to you as the senior officer of the church and one ofits oldest members. "

"I haven't worried over it, " he replied quickly. 

"I know you in your home life, " Gordon continued. "You are a faithfuland tender husband and father. If you were to die to-morrow, yourservants would stand sobbing at the doorway when I entered. Youare one of the kindest men in your individual life. "

"Thanks. I hardly thought you would say so much. "

"Then you have misjudged me. The only criticism I've ever madeof you has been as a part of our social and economic order. Thisis a question, it seems to me, we might differ about and still befriends. Now, I wish you to tell me honestly, face to face, whyyou object to me as the pastor of your church?"

"You wish me to be perfectly frank?" he asked, with his black eyestwinkling. 

"Perfectly so. You couldn't say anything that would anger me. I amtoo much in earnest. "

"Well, to begin with, you don't preach the simple gospel. "

"No; but I do preach the gospel of Christ. "

"Your reference to the strike amongst the women shirt-makers inNew York drove one of the richest men out of our church. "

"Yes; I saw him jump up and go out during the service. The womenwere making shirts for his house at thirty-five cents a dozen, finding their own thread and using their own machines. I said if Ifound one of those shirts in my house I'd put it in the fire witha pair of tongs, and I would. I'd be afraid to touch a seam lestI felt the throb of a woman's bruised fingers in it. "

The Deacon softly stroked his whiskers. 

"It was an unfortunate remark. He contributed $500 a year to thechurch. He has gone where the simple gospel of Christ is preached. "

"Yes, so simple that he can sleep through it and know that it willnever touch his life, " Gordon said with a sneer. "What's the use totalk about mustard plaster? I say apply it to the place that hurts. "

"You preach Evolution. I don't like the idea that man is descendedfrom a monkey. "

"The weight of scholarship sustains the theory. "

"Well, my idea is, if it's true, the less said about it the better. And then you lack dignity out of the pulpit. "

"Even so, Deacon, the most dignified man I ever saw was a deadman--a dead New Yorker. What we need in the church is life. "

"But you have departed from the faith of our fathers. "

"Perhaps, " Gordon said, with a twinkle in his eye, "if you meanour famous fathers who 'landed first on their knees and then onthe aborigines. '"

Van Meter ignored the remark. 

"You said one day that in America we had but two classes, the massesand the asses. That sentence cost the church a thousand dollars inpew-rents. I think such assertions blasphemous. "

"Well, it's true. "

"I don't think so; and if it were, it don't pay to say such things. "

"Am I only to preach the truths that pay?"

"We hired you to preach the simple gospel of Christ. "

"Pardon me, Deacon; I am not your hired man. I chose this churchas the instrument through which I could best give my message tothe world. I answer to God, not to you. The salary you pay me isnot the wage of a hireling. My support comes from the free offeringslaid on God's altar. "

"We call them pew-rents. You are trying to abolish this system, as old as our life, and allow a mob of strangers to push and crowdour old members out of their pews. "

"I believe the system of renting pews un-Christian and immoral-amark of social caste. "

"And that's why I think you're a little crazy. Even your bestfriends say you're daft on some things. "

"So did Christ's. "

The Deacon's face clouded and his black eyes flashed. 

"From denouncing private pews you have begun to denounce privateproperty. Our church is becoming a Socialist rendezvous and youa firebrand. " "Deacon, you have allowed your commercial habits tomaster your thinking, your religion and your character. In yourhome, you are a good man. In Wall Street, " he smiled, "pardon me, you are a highwayman, and you carry the ideals and methods of theStreet into your duties as a churchman. "

"Pretty far apart for a pastor and deacon, then, don't you think?"

"You ran the preacher away who preceded me, too, " mused Gordon. 

The Deacon's eyes danced at this acknowledgment of his power. 

"He was a little slow for New York. You are rather swift. "

Gordon rose and looked down good-naturedly on the shining bald headas he took his leave. 

"I suppose we will have to fight it out?"

"It looks that way. My kindest regards to Mrs. Gordon. "

CHAPTER V

THE CRY OF THE CITY

Kate Ransom entered the church with enthusiasm. Even Van Meter, learning that she lived on Gramercy Park and was a woman of wealth, congratulated Gordon on the event. 

She organized a working-girls' club and became its presiding genius. Her beauty and genial ways won every girl with whom she came incontact. Her club became at once a force in Gordon's work, absolutelyloyal to his slightest wish. She formed a corps of visitors andasked to be allowed to help in his pastoral work. 

"Before we begin, " she said, "let me be your assistant for a day. I wish to see the city as you see it, that I can direct my girlswith intelligence. "

On the day fixed, she acted as usher for his callers at the church. 

The President of his boys' club was admitted first to tell hima saloon had been opened next door to their building in spite oftheir protest to the Board of Excise. 

Gordon frowned. 

"It's no use to waste breath on the Board. They know that saloonis within the forbidden number of feet from our church. But as theGovernor of New York has recently said, 'Give me the vote of thesaloons; I don't mind the churches, ' go down to this lawyer andtell him to insist on an indictment of Crook, the Chairman of theBoard, for the violation of his oath of office. "

"It's no use, sir, " said Anderson, his assistant. "I've been tosee him. He tells me there were three indictments for penitentiaryoffenses pending against Crook when the Mayor promoted him to beChairman of the Board. Three courts have pronounced him guilty, but the new Legislature is going to pass an ex-post facto law torelieve him of his term in prison. "

"Then try him with one more indictment and include the whole Boardof Excise this time. We will let them know we are alive. "

Kate ushered in a slatternly little woman, dirty, ugly, cross-eyedand her face red from weeping. "Please, Doctor, come quick. They'vegot Dan. They knocked him in the head, dragged him down the stairsand flung him in the wagon. He's in jail, and they say they'll havehim in Sing Sing in a week. He ain't done a thing. You're the onlyfriend we've got in the world. "

"On what charge did they arrest him, Mrs. Hogan?"

"Just a lot o' policemen charged on him with billies!"

"But why did they do it?"

"It's the policeman on the beat who's got a grudge agin him. Heswore he'd land him in Sing Sing. And if you can't stop him, he'lldo it. "

Gordon wrote a note to a lawyer and handed it to her. 

"Go to this lawyer and tell him to take the case. "

"Dan's a friend of mine, " he explained to Kate. "I've taken him outof the hospital three times from delirium tremens, and found workfor him a dozen times. But he can't hold his job. Everything seemsagainst him. 

"'It's me face, Doctor, ' he tells me in despair. 'When they seeme they won't stand me. Me wife's cross-eyed, or she'd 'a' nevermarried me. I was tin years prowlin' up an' down the earth seekin'a woman. But I couldn't catch one. She'd 'a' got away from me ifshe could 'a' seed straight. '"

Kate laughed and ushered in a young woman with blond hair and anill-fitting dress. She walked as in a dream, and there was a strangelook in her eye. 

"I hope you are feeling better to-day, Miss Alice. "

She made no reply, but seated herself wearily, while Gordon drewa cheque for fifty dollars and handed it to her. She placed itmechanically in her purse. 

"I hope you are making progress in your art now that you have acomfortable studio, " he said kindly. 

"I want to see him, " she replied in a low voice. 

"But I can't give you his address, When he came to me, consciencestricken, and told me that you were wandering about the streets ofNew York ill and half starved, and placed this fund at my disposal, he stipulated that he would pay it only so long as you let himalone. You promised me last month to stop writing letters to thegeneral post-office. "

"I can't help it. I love him. I don't want this money; I want him. "

"But you know he is married. "

"He said he'd get a divorce. I love him. I'll be his servant, hisdog--if he will only see me and speak to me. Tell me where to findhim. I believe all men are friends to one another. "

Kate, waiting behind the curtain which cut off Gordon's desk, couldhear distinctly. 

When the young woman emerged she led her into the adjoining room, and there was the sound of a kiss at the door as she left. 

An aged father and mother came, dressed in their best clothes, andvery timid. 

"We have a great sorrow, Doctor, " the father began tremulously. "We are strangers in New York. We hate to trouble you. But we heardyou preach, and you seemed to get so close to our hearts we feltwe had known you all our lives. "

He paused and the mother began to brush the tears from her eyes. 

"Our boy is a medical student here. We were proud of him--all wehad dreamed and never seen, all we had hoped to be and never beenin life, we expected to see in him. We skimped and saved and gavehim an education. Sometimes we didn't have much to eat at home, but we didn't care. Did we, Ma?"

The mother shook her head. 

"Then we mortgaged the farm and sent him here to study three yearsand be a great doctor. "

He paused, bent low and covered his face with his hands. 

"And now, sir, he's taken to drink, and they tell us at the collegehe won't get his diploma! And we thought, after we heard you, maybeyou could see him, get hold of him, and help us save him. He's allwe've got. The rest are dead. "

Gordon looked away and his lips quivered. 

"You'll help us, Doctor?"

"I'll do the best I can for you, my friends. It's such a sad oldstory in this town that one gets hardened to it till we see it insome fresh revelation of anguish like yours. "

He took the name and address and the old man and woman went out, softly crying. 

A widow came to tell him of an assault on her twelve-year-olddaughter. 

"And because the brute is a rich man on an avenue, " she sobbed, "they've turned him loose with a fine. I'm poor and ignorant, andI'm not a member of your church, but all the people are talkingabout you in our neighbourhood, and told me you were a friend ofthe weak, and I'm here. "

He called his assistant in. 

"Anderson, do you know anything of this case? How could such athing be?"

"I've looked into it. It's just as she tells you. The man wasarraigned before a police magistrate, who had no power to try sucha case. He was allowed to plead under an assumed name-John Stevens, of Newark, New Jersey, fined and discharged. I informed the cityeditor of the Herald of the case; he detailed a reporter, whowrote it up. He left out the man's real name. Nothing has come ofit. Our courts have become so debased, God only knows what theywill do next. We have a police judge now who is the owner of fivedisreputable dives, which he runs every day and Sunday. He sits downon the bench on Monday and discharges the cases against his saloons. We've another, who was drunk in the gutter, with two warrants outfor his arrest, when the Boss made him a judge. What can we expectfrom such courts?"

He sent her away with the premise to consult the best legal talent. 

A little frousle-headed woman, carrying a bag full of documents, then explained to him that she was the inventor of a process forpreserving dead bodies, meats and eggs by treating them with thepurifying ozone of the air, and wished him to organise a company, make her president, and act as her secretary. 

"It's the greatest invention ever conceived by the human mind, "she explained, as she spread out scores of letters and testimonialsfrom men who had tested it, and many who had signed anything toget rid of her. 

"Madam, if your process can only be applied to the city governmentof New York you will deserve a monument higher than the Statue ofLiberty. But I'm afraid there's not enough ozone in the atmosphere. "

He had to call help to get her out, and then she only went aftershe got the loan of five dollars to tide her over the week. 

A theological student with an open hatchet face, from the westernplains, on his way to Moody's school at Northfield, asked for moneyto get there. 

"I had a-plenty, " he explained, "but I met a man who asked me tochange a bill for him. He got the change, but I'm looking for himto get the bill. I don't know, to save my life, how he got away. I still have his umbrella that he asked me to hold. "

Gordon smiled and loaned him the money. 

"I don't ask you for any references. You are the real thing, myboy. "

A woman in mourning, whom he recognised immediately from herpublished pictures, asked him to champion the cause of her son, who was under sentence of death. 

Gordon readily recalled the case as a famous one. He had followedit with some care and was sure from the evidence that the youngman was guilty. 

For a half hour she poured out her mother's soul to him in piteousaccents. 

"My dear madam, " he said at last, "I cannot possibly undertake suchwork. "

"Then who will save him? I've tramped the streets of New York forsix months and appealed to every man of power. Your voice raised inprotest against this shameful and unjust death will turn the tideof public opinion and save him. You can't refuse me!"

"I must refuse, " he answered firmly. 

She turned pale, and her mouth twitched nervously. He looked intoher white face with a great pity and a feeling of horror swepthis heart. The pathos and the agony of the tragedy filled him withstrange foreboding. In his imagination he could hear the click ofhandcuffs on his own wrists and feel the steel of prison bars onhis own hands as he peered through the grating toward the gate ofDeath. 

But he was firm in his refusal, and she left with words of bitternessand reproach. 

After a long procession of people, sick, and most of them out ofwork, he was surprised to see one of his own deacons approach witha look of dejection. 

"Why, Ludlow, what ails you?"

"Sorry to trouble you, Pastor, but I've lost my place. You see, I'm more than fifty years old, and though I've worked for my firmtwenty years, they laid me off for a younger man. I'm ruined unlessI can get work. I've four people dependent on me. I've come to askyou to see the Manager of the new department store and get me aplace. I've been there three times, but I can't get to the Manager. "

"I'll do it to-day, Deacon. Let me know when you need anything. "

After two hours of this work, he left, with Kate Ransom, for hisround of visits. 

She looked at him as he started smilingly from the church. 

"And you have gone through with this every day for ten years?"

"Of course. "

"While I have been around the corner laughing and dancing witha lot of idiots. And you seem as cheerful as though you had beenlistening to ravishing music!"

"Yes, I must be cheerful. "

"How do you endure it? Yet it fascinates me, this life--in touchwith drama more thrilling than poets dream. It seems to me I'm justbeginning to live. I am very grateful to you. "

He looked into her face, smiling. 

"The gratitude is on my side. You are going to be more popular thanthe pastor. "

"I'm sure you will not be jealous. "

"Hardly, as long as I hear the extravagant things you are tellingyour girls about loyalty to the leader. "

She blushed and turned her violet eyes frankly on him. 

"I believe in loyalty. "

He answered with a look of gratitude. 

"We must go first to that store for Ludlow. He's the best deaconin the church, a staunch friend, a loyal, tireless worker. "

Gordon waited patiently at the store a half hour and succeeded inreaching the Manager. As they left, he said to Kate:

"Did you see that crowd of two hundred men waiting at his door?"

"Yes; what were they doing there?"

"Waiting their turn to see the Manager. They will come backto-morrow, and next day and next day, just like that. I felt meanto sneak in ahead of them by a private door because my card couldopen it. The Manager gave me a note to the head of the departmentLudlow wishes to enter and asked him to suspend the rule againstmen fifty years of age and give my man a trial. In return for thisfavour he coolly asked me to deliver a lecture before his employeesthat will cost me a week's work. I had to do it. The head of thedepartment who read the note told me to send Ludlow to see him, but he scowled at me as though he would like to tear my eyes out. He will put him on and discharge him in a month for some frivolousoffense. "

They boarded a Broadway car and got off at City Hall Park. 

"Where are you going down here?" she asked. 

"To a building that collapsed yesterday and killed thirty workingpeople. That house was condemned fifteen years ago by the Inspector. But its owner was a friend of the Boss, and it stood till it felland killed those people. "

The street was blocked by the fire department playing their streamson the smouldering ruins, while gangs of men worked cleaning awaythe rubbish and searching for dead bodies. 

A crowd of relatives and friends were pressing close to the ropes. Many of them had stood there all night, crazed with grief, wringingtheir hands, hoping and praying they might find some token of loveleft of those dear to them, and yet hoping against hope that theymight find nothing and that their beloved would appear, saved bysome miracle. 

Gordon had promised a mother whose daughter was missing to helpher in the search. She did not know where her own child worked. She only knew it was downtown near the City Hall. A building hadfallen in, and she had not come home. 

Just as they approached the ruins a body was found and brought tothe enclosure for identification. The mother recognized her daughterby an earring. She flung herself across the black-charred trunkwith a shriek that rang clear and soul-piercing above the roar andthunder of the city's life at high tide. Above the rumble of car, the rattle of wagon, the jar of machinery, the tramp and murmur ofmillions the awful cry pierced the sky. 

Kate put her hand on Gordon's arm and pressed her red lips together, shivering. "O dear! O dear! what a cry! I can't go any closer. I'llwait for you out at the edge of the crowd. "

He pushed into the throng, lifted the woman, spoke a few words oftenderness to her, and told her he would call at her home later. 

As he was about to leave, a tall, delicate man working among theruins reeled and sank in a faint. When he revived, he quit his joband went home without a word. 

"What was the matter with that man?" Gordon asked the foreman ofthe wrecking company. 

"Starved, to tell you the truth. He came here yesterday and beggedfor a job. He looked so pale and sick I couldn't refuse him. Hefainted the first hour and went home. He came back this morning andbegged me to try him again. I did, but you see he is too weak. Hetold me his family was starving. "

He joined Kate and they crossed the City Hall Square and walkeddown Centre Street to the Tombs prison. 

She was pale and quiet, glancing at him now and then. 

"I've an engagement at the Tombs, " he told her, "with a lady towhom I used to make innocent love in our youth in a college town. I got a note from her yesterday, written in the clear, beautifulhand I recognised from the memory of little perfumed things she usedto send me. You don't know what a queer sick feeling came over mewhen I recognised from the street number that she was in prison. I haven't seen her in fifteen years. She was the village belle andmade what was supposed to be a brilliant marriage. "

They entered the grim old prison, that looked like an Egyptiantemple, with its huge slanting walls of granite squatting low onCentre Street like a big pot-bellied spider, watching with one eyethe brilliant insects of wealth on Broadway and with the other thegray vermin swarming under the Bridge and along the river. 

Kate put her hand on Gordon's arm and drew closer as they passeddown its gloomy corridor to the warden's office. 

She tried to smile, but by the twitching at the corners of herfull lips he could see she was nearer to crying. Again, as her bodytouched his, he felt the warmth and glow of her beauty, her blueeyes, cordial and grave, her waving auburn hair with its glowingfires, her step luxurious and rhythmic, and. Now as her handtrembled, instead of the gleam of cruelty and conscious power, thetimid appeal to the strength of the man. 

She looked at him and lowered her eyes, and then flashed them upstraight into his face with a smile. 

"I'm not afraid!" she said impulsively. 

"Of course not. "

His steel-gray eyes looked into hers, and they both laughed. 

Gordon asked the warden's permission to see the woman whose letterhad brought him and also the young man who had returned from SingSing for a new trial. 

"What is the charge against the woman?" he asked. 

"Shoplifting, sir. She's been here before and begged off. But theyare going to send her up this time. I'll allow her to see you inthe reception room. "

She came in, with a poor attempt at dignity, and then collapsedinto whining but hopeful lying. She was dressed in an old sunburntfrock. Her hair was tousled, her shoes untied, and a corset-stringwas hanging outside her skirt. Her front teeth were out, and thered blotches on her face told the story of drink and drugs. 

"Doctor, it's all a mistake. I swear to you I am innocent. Youdon't know how it humiliates me for you to see me like this--you, who knew me in the old days at home, when I was rich and pettedand loved. And now I haven't a friend in the world. My husband leftme. If you will tell them to let me off, they will do it for yoursake. I swear to you I will leave New York, go back to my old homeand try to begin life over again. " She buried her face in her hands. 

"What shall I do?" he whispered to Kate. "She is lying. She willnever leave New York. "

"Promise her--promise her; I'll try to do something for her. "

They passed inside, along Murderers' Row, and stopped before thecell in which stood the man waiting his new trial. He poured outhis story again, and as Gordon looked sadly through the bars at hisface the certainty of his guilt gave the lie to every fair word. 

As his glib tongue rattled on, Gordon's mind was farther and fartheraway. He was thinking of that grim sentence from the old Bible, "Sin when it is full grown bringeth forth death. " And again thisproblem of sin, the wilful and persistent violation of known law, threw its shadow for a moment over his dream of social brotherhood. The voice of the man angered him. He frowned, bade him good-by andleft. 

And as he passed out, he felt, in spite of the charm of Kate'scompanionship, the shadow of that veiled mother by his side, andheard the bitter cries of her broken heart, until the sin and shameof the man seemed his own. The pity and pathos of it all hauntedand filled him with vague forebodings. --"Now for something morecheerful, " he said, as they passed out of the Tombs and boarded anuptown car. 

"A derrick at work in that wreck yesterday fell on a working-man. He has a wife and four children. We must see how he is getting on. "

They got off on the Bowery, turned down a cross street toward theEast River, threading their way through the masses of people jammingthe sidewalks, and dodging missiles from dirty children screamingand romping at play. 

"Mercy!" exclaimed Kate, "I thought Broadway and Fifth Avenue andthe shopping districts crowded--but this is beyond belief! I didn'tknow there were so many people in the world. "

"And what you see, just a drop in the ocean of humanity. There aremiles and miles of these tenements in New York--square mile aftersquare mile, packed from cellar to attic. We have a million and ahalf crowded behind these grim walls on this island alone. "

"Surely not all so ugly and wretched as these?"

"Many worse. But don't let the outside deceive you. Back ofthese nightmares of scorched mud, festooned with shabby clothes, are thousands of brave loving men and women, living their livescheerfully, not asking us for pity. Even in this squalor growbeautiful, innocent girls like flowers in a muck-heap. When I seethese children growing up thus into fair men and women with suchsur-roundings, I know that every babe is born a child of God, notof the devil. "

They climbed a dark stairway and knocked at the back door of adouble-decker tenement. 

A stout woman opened it, and they entered the tiny kitchen, sosmall that the table had to be pushed against the wall to pass itand the family of six could not all eat at one time because thetable could not be pulled out into the room. 

"How is John this afternoon, Mrs. McDonald?"

"We don't know, sir. The doctor's in there now. If he dies, Godknows what we will do; and if he lives, a cripple, it'll be worse. "

The doctor called them into the front room and whispered to Gordon:

"He's got to die, and I'm going to tell him. I'm glad you are here. "

He took the man by the hand. 

"Well, John, I'm sorry to say so to you, but you must know it. Youcan't live beyond the day. "

The man drew himself upon his elbow, looked at the doctor in adazed sort of way and then at his wife holding his crying baby inher arms, the other little ones clinging to her dress, and gasped:

"Did you say die? Here--now--to-day--die? And if I do, I leave myhelpless ones to starve. "

He paused, fingering the covering nervously, shut his jaws firmlyand looked at the doctor. 

"Almighty God! I can't die!" he growled through his teeth. "I willnot die!"

"No, no, you sha'n't die, John. We'll help you to live!" his wifecried. 

"Very well; if you keep on feeling that way you may live, " saidthe doctor cheerfully. "We will hope for the best. "

Kate's eyelids drooped as she stood watching this scene as in adream. She took the woman by the hand as she left:

"I do hope he will live for your sake. I believe he will. "

When they reached the street, the doctor said to her:

"Glad to welcome you, Miss Ransom, from the little world into thegreat one. "

"Thank you. I begin to feel I have not been in the world at allbefore. Will he live, do you think?"

"If he holds that iron will with the grip he has on it now he'llpull through--and be a hopeless invalid for life. He will jointhe great army of industrial cripples--a havoc that makes war seemharmless. The wrecking corporation have already sent their lawyerand settled his case for eighty-five dollars cash: not enough tobury him. He thought it better than nothing. "

The doctor hurried on to another patient. 

It had grown quite dark. Gordon took Kate by the arm after themodern fashion, and they threaded their way through the crowdsmade denser by the return of the working people. She had removedher right glove in the house and did not replace it immediately. His big hand clasped her rounded, beautiful arm, and a thrill ofemotion swept him at the consciousness of her nearness, her sympathy, her open admiration and sweet companionship in his work. 

Again, as she walked with the quick, sinuous and graceful swing ofher body, he was impressed with her perfect health and vital power. She had recovered her balance now, and when she spoke it was withcontagious enthusiasm. 

"I can never thank you enough for opening the door of a real worldto me, Doctor, " she declared, looking up at him soberly. 

"And you have no idea what inspiration you have given the church--justat a time I need it, too, " he answered warmly. 

"I've been wondering what I did here for nine years, unconsciousof this wonderful drama of love and shame, joy and sorrow aboutme. But what did he mean by an army of cripples greater than thehavoc of war?"

"Victims of machinery. It's incredible to those who do not comein contact with it. The railroads alone kill and wound thirty-fivethousand working-men every year: this is a small percentage ofthe grand total. More men are killed and wounded by machinery inAmerica than were killed and wounded any year in the great Civil War, the bloodiest and most fatal struggle in history. We pay billionsin pensions to our soldiers, but nothing is done about this. Thesocial order that permits such atrocity must go down before therising consciousness of human brotherhood. The employers ask, 'AmI my brother's keeper?' and forget that they are echoing the shriekof the first murderer over his victim's body. "

"And I never thought of it before. How strange that so many peopleare in the world and never a part of it. "

"You can begin to see the outlines of the problems before us. Itwill be years before you can realise the height and depth of needthat calls here to-day for deeds more heroic than knights of oldever dreamed. "

Again she looked at him with frank admiration. 

"But the most wonderful thing I have seen to-day has been a man, "she boldly said. "Your faith, your optimism, your dreams in the faceof the awful facts of life, and with it a tenderness of sympathyI never thought in you, have been a revelation to me. I feel moreand more ashamed of the years I have wasted. "

She said this very tenderly, while Gordon unconsciously tightenedthe grip of his big hand on her arm, and then went on as thoughshe had not spoken. 

"What a call to an earnest life! New York City furnishes two-thirdsof the convicts of the state. We have one murder and ten suicidesevery week. More than eighty thousand men and women are arrestedhere every year. Fifty thousand pass through that basilisk's den wesaw to-day. We have a hundred thousand child workers out of whosetender flesh we are coining gold. Three hundred thousand of ourwomen are hewers of wood and drawers of water, robbed of their divineright of love and motherhood. There are twenty thousand childrenand fifty thousand men and women homeless in our streets. I haveseen more than five hundred of them fighting for the chance ofsleeping on the bare planks of a dirty police lodging-house. "

He felt her nerves quiver with sympathy and surprise. 

"I never dreamed such things took place in New York. "

"Yes, and those homeless children are the saddest tragedy. We haven'torphanages for them. When a house burns down that has a coal shuteor an opening in it where a child can crawl, the firemen thrusttheir hooks in and pull out a bundle of charred rags and flesh--oneof these homeless waifs. No father or mother that ever bent overa cradle, looked into a baby's face and felt its warm breath canrealise that horror and not go mad. We don't realise it. We ignoreit. We have four hundred churches. We open them a few hours everyweek. We have nine thousand saloons opened all day, most of thenight, and Sunday too. We haven't orphanages, but we have thesenine thousand factories where orphans are made. When our countryfriends come to see us we take them to see the saloons! Our shameis our glory. You have to-day seen some of the fruits. "

"And yet you have faith?"

"Yes; I have eyes that see the invisible. In all this crash of bruteforces I see beauty in ugliness, innocence in filth. Here one isput to the test. Here the great powers of Nature have gathered fortheir last assault and have challenged man's soul to answer forits life. Dark spiritual forces shriek their battle-cries over thedin of matter. The swiftness of progress, crushing and enriching, the mad greed for gold, the worship of success--a success that sneersat duty, honour, love and patriotism--the filth and frivolity of ourupper strata, the growth of hate and envy below, the restlessnessof the masses, the waning of faith, the growth of despair, thetriumph of brute force, the reign of the liar and huckster--allthese are more real and threatening here, as beasts and reptilesincrease in size as we near the tropics. We are nearing the tropicsof civilisation. We must not forget that the flowers will be richer, wilder, more beautiful, and life capable of higher things. "

They had reached her door, and he released her arm, soft, roundand warm, with a sense of loss and regret. 

"Yet with all its shadows and sorrows, " he cried with enthusiasm, "I love this imperial city. It is the centre of our nationallife--its very beating heart. If we can make it clean, its brightblood will go back to the farthest village and country seat withlife. I shall live to see its black tenements swept away, and homesfor the people, clean, white and beautiful, rise in their places. I have a vision of its streets swept and garnished, of green parksfull of happy children, of working-men coming to their homes withsongs at night as men once sang because their work was glad. Ihaven't much to depend on just now in the church. But God lives. I have a growing group of loyal young dreamers, and you have comeas an omen of greater things. "

She smiled. 

"I'll do my best not to disappoint you. "

He shook hands with her, declining to go in, and, as she sprangswiftly and gracefully up the steps, his eyes lingered a moment onthe rhythm of her movement and the glory of her splendid figure insheer rapture for its perfect beauty. 

As he turned homeward, he thrust his hand, yet warm with the touchof her bare arm, into his pocket, drew out two pearls, lookedtenderly at them and felt their smooth, rounded forms. A longingfor such companionship in work with his wife swept his soul. 

CHAPTER VI

THE PUDDLE AND THE TADPOLE

When Gordon started home from his round of visits with Kate thewind had hauled to the north and it began to spit drops of snow. The cars were still crowded, the aisles full and the platformsjammed, though it was seven o'clock. He buttoned his coat about hisneck and paced the station, waiting for a train in which he couldfind a seat. 

"Bad omen for my trustee meeting to-night, " he muttered. "This airfeels like Van Meter's breath. "

He allowed four trains to pass, and at last boarded one worse crowdedthan the first. With a sigh for the end of chivalry, he pushed hisway through the dense mass packed at the doors, wedging his big formroughly among the women, to the centre of the car, and mechanicallyseized a strap. He was so used to this leather-strap habit that heheld on with one hand and, while reading, unfolded and folded hispaper with the other. 

He climbed the hill to his home in the face of a howling snow-storm. 

Ruth looked at him intently. 

"I am sorry I couldn't get home earlier, " he said, "I've had a hardday. "

"But such pleasant help that you didn't mind it, I'm sure. I heardMiss Ransom was assisting you. I went to the church and found youhad gone out with her. I hear she is becoming indispensable in yourwork. "

"Come, Ruth, let's not have another silly quarrel. "

"No; it's a waste of breath, " she replied bitterly. 

He slipped quietly out of the house after supper and hurried backto his study to collect his thoughts for the battle he knew he mustwage with Van Meter. This one man had ruled the church with hisrod of gold for twenty years. He had established a mission stationon the East Side and gathered into it the undesirable people. Hewas the watchdog of the Prudential Committee guarding the door tomembership. 

This trustee meeting had for him a double interest. A panic in WallStreet had all but ruined Van Meter. He had attempted to cornerthe bread market. The wheat crop had been ruined by a hard winter, and the little black eyes, watching, believed the coup could bemade. 

The attempt was in concerted action through his associate housesin Chicago and St. Louis, and he had plunged as never before. Thecorner had failed. It was reported that he had made an assignment. This had proved a mistake. His long-established credit and his highpersonal standing in Wall Street had rallied money to his supportand he had pulled out with the loss of three-fourths of his fortune. 

Gordon wondered what the effect of this blow would be on hischaracter and attitude toward the church's work. He was speciallyanxious to know the effect of the reverse on the imagination ofthe other members of the Board, who merely revolved in worshipfuladmiration around his millions. 

He asked Van Meter to come to his study for a personal interviewbefore the meeting. The Deacon was cool and polite, and his littleeyes were shining with a distant luster. 

"I was sorry, Deacon, to learn of your personal misfortunes. "

Van Meter wet his dry lips with his tongue, looked Gordon squarelyin the face and snapped:

"Were you the clergyman who made the statement concerning thatcorner reported yesterday in an evening paper?"

Gordon flushed, turned uneasily in his chair, and boldly replied:

"Yes, I was, and I repeat it to you. On every such attempt to coinmoney out of hunger and despair, I pray God's everlasting curse tofall. I am glad your corner failed. The world is larger than NewYork, and New York is larger than the Stock Exchange. Am I clear?"

"Quite so. With your permission I will return to the trusteemeeting. "

"Very well. I wish to make a statement to the Board when you areready. "

Gordon frowned, sat down and made some notes of the points he wishedto urge. 

He had often wondered at the impotence of the average preacher inNew York. But as he felt the forces of materialism closing abouthim, and their steel grip on his heart, he began to know why NewYork is the preacher's graveyard. He had won his great audience. His voice had not been drowned in the roar of the breakers of thisocean of flesh, but he had met bitter disillusioning. As he lookedinto the faces of his Board of Trustees, dominated by that littlebald-headed man, he felt the cruel force of Overman's sneer atthe modern church as the home of the mean and the crippled and thesick. The appeal to the ideal seemed to stick in his throat. 

He had thrilled at the struggle with the big city's rushing millions. Their stupendous indifference dared him to conquer or die, andhe had conquered. He had seen these indifferent millions swallowcabinets, presidents, princes and kings, and rush on their waywithout a thought whether they lived or died. He had made himselfheard. But this power that worshiped a dollar and called it God, that controlled the finances of the church and sought to controlits pastor and strangle his soul--this was the force slowly chokinghim to death unless he could conquer it. 

The average preacher, when he landed in New York and faced the roarof its advancing ocean of materialism, fluttered hopelessly aboutfor a year or two like a frightened sand-fiddler in the edge ofthe surf of a cyclone, was engulfed, and disappeared. 

To conquer this sea and lift his voice in power above its thunder, and then be strangled in a little yellow puddle full of tadpoles, was more than his soul could endure. 

"I'll not submit to it, " he growled, with clenched fist. 

When he entered the meeting, the dozen men were hanging on VanMeter's lips as on the inspired word of Moses. 

"I was just telling the Board, " he suavely explained, "that Mr. Wellford, on whom we must depend for such a building enterpriseinvolving millions, has declared his hostility to the scheme. He isout of sympathy with the sensational methods of the Pilgrim Church. "

"I'll inform the Board, " said Gordon, as he advanced toward VanMeter and thrust his hands in his pockets, "that it's not true. Ihave seen Mr. Wellford, by his invitation, this week at his home. I laid our great plan before him. I found him a big man, a man whothinks big thoughts, and does big things. He told me frankly he washeartily in favour of it and would do his part the moment we wereready and other men of wealth would join in the movement. He simplydeclares that we must act first. "

Van Meter pursed his lips and tried to lift his nose into a sneer. 

"May I ask, Doctor, if it is your intention to demand a vote to-nighton this building scheme?"

"It is. "

"Then I suggest that we vote first and hear your speech afterward. Some of us may wish to go before you're done. "

Gordon turned red with rage and started to sit down, but, wheeling, he again faced the chairman and glared at him. 

"Pardon my business methods, Doctor, " he went on, "but your visionsare rather tiresome. We are old New Yorkers. We know what you aregoing to tell us of the dark problem of the city's corruption, thepoverty of the poor, and so on. Every now and then we see such sacredfires burning in the heart of a country parson called to town. Yet, in spite of the splendour of these little fizzling pinwheels thatlight the cruelty and darkness of metropolitan life for a moment, New York has managed somehow to jog along. "

Gordon's anger melted into a laugh as he watched the Deacon's facegrow purple with fury as he fairly hissed the last sentence ofhis speech. He was not an impressive man in an attempted flight ofeloquence, and the preacher's laughter quite unhorsed him. 

"Gentlemen, " Gordon said with quiet dignity, "I came here to-nightto make an appeal. But, I'm no longer in the mood. I see in yourfaces the folly of it. I make an announcement to you. The Templewill be built, with or without you. I prefer your cooperation. Ican do it with your united opposition. God lives, and the age ofmiracles is not passed. "

"In behalf of the Board, I accept your challenge and await themiracle, " retorted Van Meter. "You can pray till you're blue inthe face and you will never get money enough to buy a lot on FifthAvenue big enough to bury yourself, to say nothing of rearing aSolomon's Temple on it. "

"We shall see, " the young giant replied. 

"This Board is tired of the circus business, " Van Meter went onangrily. "You have transformed the church already into a menagerie. We don't want any more of your Soup-House Sarahs, Hallelujah Johnsnor decorative bums testifying here to the power of miracles, while we wonder whether our overcoats will be on the rack when werecover from the spell of their eloquence. It's a big world, there'sroom for us all, but there's not room for any more new wrinkles inthis church. "

"Yes, it is a big world, Deacon, but there are some small potatoesin it. There's hope for a fool, he may be turned from his folly, but God Almighty can't put a gallon into a pint cup. "

"We'll see who the small potato is before the day is done, " VanMeter snorted. 

Gordon continued, meditatively, without noticing the interruption:

"Of all the little things on this earth a little New Yorker is thesmallest. I've met ignorance in the South, sullen pigheadednessin New England; I've measured the boundless cheek of the West, mynative heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness inthe world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it, quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains, or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being fromNew York, he assumes everything. Of God's big world, outside WallStreet, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Central Park and Coney Island, heknows nothing; for he neither reads nor travels; and yet pronouncesinstant judgment on world movements of human thought and society. "

And deliberately he put on his hat and left the room. 

The net result of the meeting was a vote to reduce the pastor'ssalary a thousand dollars and add it to the music fund; and VanMeter hired two detectives to watch the minister. 

CHAPTER VII

A STOLEN KISS

For several weeks after Gordon flung down the gauntlet to his Boardof Trustees and began his battle for supremacy, his wife maintaineda strange attitude of silence and reserve. 

She had hired a nurse and resumed her study of music. Her contraltovoice, one of great depth and sweetness, he had admired extravagantlyin the days of their courtship, but she had ceased to sing oflate years. He always listened to her lullaby to the children withfascination. The soft round notes from her delicate throat seemedfull of magic and held him in a spell. 

Before he left for his study one morning, she looked up into hisface with yearning in her dark eyes. 

"Come into the parlour, Frank; I will sing for you. "

She took her seat at the piano, and her white tapering fingers ranlightly over the keys with deft, sure touch. 

"What would you like to hear?" she asked timidly, from beneath herlong lashes, with the old haunting charm in her manner. 

"Tennyson's 'Break, break, break, on thy cold gray stones, O Sea!'No poet ever dreamed that song as you have sung it, Ruth. "

Never did he hear her sing with such feeling. Her Voice, low, softand caressing with the languid sensuousness of the South, quiveredwith tenderness, and then rose with the storm and broke in round, deep peals of passion until he could hear the roar of the surf andfeel its white spray in his face. Her erect lithe figure, with thesmall white hands and wrists flashing over the keys, the petiteanxious face with stormy eyes and raven hair, seemed the incarnatesoul of the storm. 

"Glorious, Ruth!" he cried, with boylike wonder. 

And then she bent over the piano and burst into tears. 

"Why, what ails you, my dear?"

"Oh, Frank, I'm selfish to leave the children to a nurse and studymusic. "

"Nonsense. Self-sacrifice is rational only as it is the highest formof self-development. It is your duty to develop yourself. Self isthe source of all knowledge and strength; books are its record;the world exists only through its eyes. "

"I'm afraid of it. I wish to give all to you and the children, notto myself. I want you all to myself, and you are growing away fromme. I know it, and it is breaking my heart. "

He laughed at her fears, kissed her and went to his study. 

Since his break with his Board, he had grown daily in power--powerin himself and over his people. Conflict was always to him thetrumpet call to heroic deeds. The knowledge that Van Meter wasnow his open enemy and that he was attempting to build a hostilefaction within the church roused his soul to its depths. Thrownback thus upon himself and his appeal to the greater tribunal ofthe people, he preached as never before in his life. His sermonshad the vigour and prophetic fire of the crusader. His crowdsincreased until it was necessary to ask for police aid to controlthe exits and entrances to the building. Long before the hourof service, a dense mass of men and women were packed against thedoors. 

Van Meter watched this growth of influence with wonder anddisgust. He determined to leave no stone unturned that might puta stumbling-block in his way. His detectives had failed as yet tofind any clue that might compromise him. Once they rushed to his officewith the information that they had tracked him to a questionablehouse. The Deacon called up his son-in-law and asked excitedly fora reporter to write a thrilling piece of news. The reporter foundthat Gordon had called at the house, but in answer to a summons tosee a dying girl. 

Van Meter insisted upon the item being printed, but the young cityeditor scowled and threw it in the waste basket. 

The Deacon at length discovered Ruth's jealousy and located thewoman who was its object. A costly bouquet of flowers was placedon Gordon's desk in the study every morning, and an enormous oneblossomed every Sunday morning and evening on the little tablebeside his chair in the pulpit. The sexton could not tell who paidthe bills. A florist sent them. 

The Deacon had been bitterly chagrined at the outcome of hismovement in reducing the salary. At first the people heard it withamazement, and then, when Gordon informed a reporter of the fightin progress and it was published, they laughed, and a cheque wassent him for two thousand dollars to make good the deficit and addone thousand more. 

The day after this advent he had a hard day's work. A processionof people drained him of every cent of money he could spare andevery ounce of sympathy and shred of nerve force in his body. 

He had tried the year before to establish a free employment bureauto relieve him of this strain. But the bureau added to his work. Hehad to close it. It had required the employment of five assistants, and even these could make little impression on the list of applicantswho crowded the rooms and blocked the pavements from morning untilnight. 

When the sick and hungry and out-of-works had been disposed ofafter a fashion, the miscellaneous crowd filed in. 

An old college mate came in shivering in a dirty suit. He fumbledat his hat nervously until he caught Gordon's eye and saw him smile. 

"Well, by the great hornspoon, Ned, you look like you've falleninto a well!"

"Worse'n that, Frank; I slipped clean into hell. I got with somefellows, went on a drunk, stayed a month and lost my place. I wantyou to loan me money to get to Baltimore, buy a decent suit ofclothes, and I'll get another position. Yes, and I'll lift my headup and be a man. "

Gordon sent out to the bank and got the money for him. 

Another seedy one softly explained to him that he was a fellowcountryman from Indiana. Gordon gave him a quarter. 

A sobbing woman closely veiled he recognised as a bride he hadmarried in the church after prayer meeting two weeks before. 

"Doctor, " she said in a whisper, "I've called to beg you please notto allow any one to know of my marriage. My husband turned out tobe a burglar. He stole ten thousand dollars from an old lady whois one of our boarders, and skipped. He married me to get the runof the house. He tried to marry her first, though she was seventy-fiveyears old, got in her room last night, stole the money, and nowhe's gone. I'm heartbroken!"

"What! because he's gone?"

"No; because I was a fool. I know he has a dozen wives. He was sohandsome. "

"Madam, I'm not very sorry for you. I tried to prevent you marryinghim that night. I begged you to go back to Jersey City to your ownchurch. "

"You will keep it secret, Doctor?" she begged. 

"I'll not publish it. But the certificate is on file in the Hallof Records. Any one can see it who wishes. It is beyond my control. "

An old woman with bedraggled skirt, reddened eyes and a fat, motherlyface timidly approached. She had been overlooked. 

"Doctor, you're my last chance. I come up to New York to see myson-in-law, as grand a rascal as ever lived. He owes me a thousanddollars and won't pay it. We lost our crop down in Old Virginia. So I scraped up the money and got here to squeeze what he owed outof that rascal. Now he's turned me out into the street and movedwhere I can't find him. I'm starvin' to death. I ain't got a centto go home; an' what's worse'n all, I got a letter this mornin'tellin' me my idiot boy's down sick an' cryin' for me. I'm the onlyone can do anything for him. He can't understand nobody else. "

Her voice broke and she bit her lips to keep back the tears. 

"I've begged all day. Everybody laughs at me. I heard you preachone Sunday. I knowed you wouldn't laugh at me. I want you to loanme twenty dollars to get home quick. I'll start the minute I canget to the train, an' I'll pay you back if I have to sell my featherbeds. Now, will you do it?"

"Well, a more improbable story was never told a New Yorker, butsomething whispers to me you're telling the truth. "

"You'll do it?"

"Yes. "

She drew a deep breath, and cried with streaming eyes:

"Oh, Lord, have mercy on my poor soul, that I doubted You, andthought You had forsaken me!"

Gordon handed her the cheque. 

"I'm going to kiss you!" she fairly screamed. 

Before he could lift his hand or protest, she threw her arms aroundhis neck and kissed him. 

As he took her hands down from his shoulders and drew his face awayfrom the mouldy-smelling old shawl, he looked toward the door, andRuth stood in the entrance. Her eyes blazed with wrath, but as shesaw the faded and bedraggled dress and moth-eaten shawl and lookedinto the tear-stained motherly old face she burst into hystericallaughter. 

Gordon rose and escorted the woman to the door with courtesy. 

"You will find the bank at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-thirdStreet--the Garfield National. Write me how your son is when youreach home, and send me the money when you are able. "

"I will. God bless you, sir, " she answered with fervour. 

When he returned to his study, Ruth was still hysterical, and hesat down without a word and began to write. 

"Frank, I'm sorry to have been so rude, " she said at length. 

"Is that all?"

"No; I'm sorry I humiliated myself by spying on you. "

She sat twisting her handkerchief, glancing at him timidly. 

"And you can't understand how deeply you have wounded me by such anact, Ruth. I hope you have heard all that passed here this morning. "

"It's strange how I always seem to be in the wrong. Frank, I amvery sorry. You must forgive me. And I have another confession. I've been receiving anonymous letters about you for the past threeweeks. I was too weak and cowardly to show them to you. It was oneof these letters which caused me to come here this morning. Andnow I've wounded you, and alienated your heart from me more thanever. I feel I shall die. "

She began to sob. 

"Come, Ruth, you must conquer this insanity. Naturally you arebright, witty, cheerful and altogether charming. Jealousy reducesyou to a lump of stupidity. "

"You do forgive me?"

"Yes; and don't, for heaven's sake, do such a thing again. Ask mewhat you wish to know. I am not a liar; I will tell you the truth. "

"But I don't want to hear it if it's cruel, " she protested. 

"The truth is best, gentle or cruel. "

She kissed him impulsively and left. 

He sat for an hour, tired, sore and brooding over this scene withhis wife. He caught the perfume of the flowers on his desk, and inthe tints of the roses saw the warm blushes of the woman who hadsent them. Her voice was friendly and caressing and her speech, words of sweetest flattery--flattery that cleared the stupor fromhis brain and gave life and new faith in himself and his work;flattery that had in it a mysterious personal flavour that piquedhis curiosity and fed his vanity. How clearly he recalled her--thesuperb figure, with rounded bust and arms full and magnificent, inthe ripe glory of youth, her waving auburn hair so thick and longit could envelop half her body. Often he had watched the lightblaze through its red tints while he talked to her of his dreams, her lips half parted with lazy tenderness and ready with gentlewords. He recalled the rhythmic music of her walk, strong andinsolent in its luxury of health. And he was grateful for the cheershe had brought into his life. 

CHAPTER VIII

SWEET DANGER

Kate Ransom had attempted no close analysis of her absorbinginterest in Gordon's work. The change in her life from wearinessto thrilling interest had been its own justification. Wealth hadrobbed her of the mystery and charm of accident. The future wasfixed; there could be no unknown. The men she had met in societywere mere fops, or expert butlers who wrote books on etiquette. Life was a problem for them of what the tailors could do. 

She had been isolated from humanity. Now she felt the red bloodtingling to her finger tips. Her days were full of sweet surprisesor sudden revelations of drama and tragedy, and her woman's soulresponded with eager interest. 

She had never loved. Such a woman could not love a tailor's dummy. Her nature was warm, rich and passionate, and she was consumed withlonging for the moment of bliss when her whole being would so burnwith sacrificial fire for her beloved that she could walk with himnaked in winter snows, unconscious of cold. 

Dress, the great mania of the empty minded, she had outgrown. Sheknew instinctively the colour and the style most becoming to herbeauty, and she used these with the ease and assurance of an expert. She was proud of her beautiful face and figure and held them asdivine gifts, the surest tokens of the fulfilment of her desires. 

Her heart, rich in the ripened treasures of unspent motherhood, brooded in tenderness over her new work--the tortures of half-starvedmothers, their doomed babes, their idle fathers, and the misery ofthe poor and the fallen. This yearning to help she knew to be thecry within her own soul for peace. How to express this fullnessof life Gordon was teaching her. Slowly and unconsciously shewas clothing this powerful, athletic man with every attribute ofher ideal. His steel-gray eyes seemed to pierce her very soul andsay, "I understand you; come with me. " His eloquence and emotionalthinking were more and more to her the voice of a prophet seer. Hisface, that flashed and trembled, smiled and clouded with fires ofsmouldering passion, held her as in a spell. She knew this powerwas slowly tightening about her heart, yet she rejoiced in its verypain. When she greeted him, and he unconsciously held her soft handin his big blue-veined grasp, a sense of restful joy came she knewnot whence nor why. 

Her enthusiasm in his work, her faith and cheering flattery weredrawing him with resistless magnetism. 

As the summer advanced the heat became so terrific and the sufferingin the city so great that Gordon determined to stay at his post andtake his vacation in the fall. Mrs. Ransom fussed and fumed overKate's determination to stay, but there was no help for it. 

July broke the record of forty years for heat. Scores wereprostrated daily and dead horses blocked traffic at almost everyhour. A drought threatened the water-supply, and night brought norelief to the millions who sweltered in the tenements. 

The babies began to die by thousands--more than two thousand aweek on Manhattan. Island alone. The city's wagons raked the littleblack coffins up and dumped them into the Potters' Field, one on topof the other, like so many dead flies. Down every tenement-walledstreet the white ribbons fluttered their tragic story from cellarto attic. At night tired mothers walked the pavements, hot andradiating heat, till the sun rose again, carrying their sick babies, or crowded the housetops, fanning them as they lay on their pallets, pale and still, fighting with Death the grim, silent battle. 

Kate Ransom finally gave her entire time to these children. Shefitted up a hotel in the mountains of Pennsylvania and kept it full. She chartered a steamer and took a thousand of them for a day upthe Hudson as an experiment, and asked Gordon to go with them. Theywould have music, and a dinner spread under the trees of the parkwhich stretched back from the water's edge into the towering hills. 

He met them at the ferry slip from which the steamer sailed. Katewas already there, and the throng filled every inch of the floorspace. She was moving about among them, while they gazed at herin admiration no words in their vocabulary could express. Her facewas flushed with excitement, and her violet eyes, wide open, weresparkling with pleasure. 

The man's eyes lingered on the scene, feeling that, for all hermagnificently human body, no angel ever made a fairer vision. 

He was struck with the silence of these children. As he lookedcloser it was only too plain they were not children. They were onlylittle wizen-faced men and women, who had never learned to laugh orsmile or play; little pinched faces with weak eyes that had neverseen God's green fields; little dirty ears that had been bruisedwith a thousand beastly noises, but had never heard the murmurof beautiful waters in the depths of a forest. His heart went outto them in a great yearning pity as he recalled his own enchantedchildhood. 

His voice was soft with tears as he greeted Kate. 

"A more pathetic sight than this crowd of silent children old earthnever saw. But the shining figure in the centre lights the shadowswith a touch of divine beauty. "

"It does break one's heart to see such children, doesn't it?" sheanswered, looking at them tenderly and ignoring his pointed tributeto her beauty. 

"Are we all ready?" Gordon cried. 

"If you are. Is Mrs. Gordon not coming?"

"No; I couldn't persuade her. She took our chicks to the seashore. "

As the boat moved swiftly up the great river in the fresh morningair and the breeze blowing down its channel strengthened, they sattogether on the after deck and watched the dead souls of the littleones stir with life under the kiss of the wind and the caress ofthe music. 

In the park they spread out in the whispering stillness of thewoods. Nature breathed the sweet breath of her life into theirhearts again and they began to twist their queer little faces andtry to laugh. They called to one another and listened with mutewonder at the echo among the rock-ribbed hills. Gordon watchedcuriously in their faces the flash of the inherited memory of foresthabits, choked and stunted and dormant in all city folks, and yetalive as long as the human heart beats. Within two hours they hadgrown noisy with play after a timid, clumsy fashion. 

"Give them a week and they would learn to laugh!" Kate exclaimed. 

But the man was now more interested in watching the woman thanthe children, as he saw her satin skin flush with pleasure and thecreamy lace on her full bosom rise and fall. 

They sat down on a rock beside a brook. 

"What an inspiration to see this old yet ever new miracle ofregeneration unfold under the magic touch of a woman's hand!"

"You mean a man's hand, " she replied. "This would never haveinterested me except that you led me to see it. "

"Then we've helped one another. I'm beginning to feel you areindispensable. I wonder if you, too, will leave us after awhile asso many pass on. "

"No; this has become my very life, " she soberly answered, lookingdown at the ground and then into his face with frank, open-eyedpleasure. 

He was silent for several minutes and then softly laughed. 

"What is it?" she cried. 

"You could never guess. "

She lifted her superb arms, showing bare to the elbow, and felt ofthe mass of auburn hair. "That load of red hay about to fall?"

"Don't be sacrilegious. No. "

"Harness broken anywhere?" She felt of her belt, and ran her handsdown the lines of her beautiful figure, eyeing him laughingly. 

"I'll tell you, " he said, sinking his voice to its lowest noteof expressive feeling, while a whimsical smile played round thecorners of his eyes. "Sitting here in the woods by your side onthis glorious summer day, your eyes looked so blue in the creamysatin of your face, I suddenly thought I smelled the violets withwhich God mixed their colours. "

"You think of such silly things, " she said with mock severity. 

"There's nothing silly about it. Beauty is an attribute of thedivine. I worship it for its own sweet sake wherever I find it, inpearl or opal, dewdrop or flower, the stars, or a woman's face orform or eyes. "

She lowered her head. 

"Do you know the old legend of the opal?" he asked. 

He took some stones from his pocket and held in the light an opalof rare luster. 

"Isn't it beautiful?" she cried. 

"And its story is as beautiful as its face. Listen: A sunbeamlingered under a leaf in the forest at sunset, loath to leaveso fair a spot, until the moon suddenly rose. Enraptured with theshimmering beauty of a moonbeam, he stood entranced and tremblingand could not go. In ecstasy they met, embraced and kissed. Thesun sank and left him in her arms. The opal is the child of theirlove. In its fair face is forever mingled the silver of the risingmoon and the golden glory of the sunset. "

"I believe you made that up, " she laughed. 

"I wish I were poet enough. "

"I had no idea you dreamed of such romantic nonsense. "

"Yes, I dream many things. I had a funny dream about you the othernight. "

"Tell me what it was, " she begged. 

"I dare not. "

"I thought you would dare anything. "

"No; you see, dreams are such intimate, unconventional mysteries. Dreams have no regard for law or custom The soul and the body seemequally free and without sin or shame. I have a curious feelingof awe about sleep and dreams. It's the surest evidence I have ofimmortality and the reality of a spiritual life. It is to me theprophecy of the ideal world, too, in which we will dare to livesome day what we really are, without pretence or hypocrisy--livethat deep secret inner life we try sometimes to hide from the eyeof God. "

"And you will not even give me a hint of this dream?"

"No. It was very foolish, but very charming and beautiful. It wasin part a picture from that dream which made me laugh awhile agoabout your eyes. "

"I think it mean in you to tell me that much and no more. "

"I would tell you if I dared. I may dare some day. "

She was afraid to ask him after that, and yet something withincried for joy. 

They rose, gathered the children for dinner, ands after three hoursin the woods, returned to the city as the twilight softly fell overits ragged steel and granite sky-line. 

"You must take tea with us to-night, " she said, as they steppedfrom the boat. 

His wife would not return for supper and he consented. 

It was not the first time he had spent an hour at the table ofthe Ransom household. Mrs. Ransom deemed herself honoured by hisvisits, and his chats with the invalid father about books werebright spots in his life. 

Kate had sent the stringed band from the boat to the house andstationed them in the conservatory opening into the dining-room. The tender strains of the music, the splash of a fountain mingledwith the songs of birds in their cages, the gleam of silver anddiamond flash of cut glass, gave Gordon's senses a soothing contrastto the wild beauty of the woods. His nature responded to art andluxury as quickly as to the sensuous voice of Nature in the gloryof her summer's splendour. 

There was something in this glittering beauty, cold and cruel, that appealed to him. He always felt at home in such surroundings. Beneath his idealism and love of humanity there was still hiddensomewhere the nerve of an Epicurean. 

When Kate appeared, dressed for tea, simply but richly, with hersplendid neck and shoulders bare and little ringlets of hair curlingabout her face as though scorched by the warmth of the red bloodbelow, he felt the picture complete. 

She chatted with him before entering the dining-room. 

Her manner was always flattering and frankly gracious, but to-nightthere was an added note of warmth and familiar comradeship. Neverhad he seen her so charming and so resistless. Always intenselyconscious of her sex, she seemed to have the power to-night ofcommunicating to the man before her that consciousness so intimately, so directly and yet so delicately that he was led captive. 

With scarcely a spoken word their relationship leaped the space ofyears. The quiver of her eyelid, the dilation of a nostril, littleinarticulate exclamations, the turn of her head, the rising andfalling of her bosom, the flash of her violet eyes, the subtleperfume of her hair or the graceful movement of her magnificentform spoke the language of life deep and rhythmic which no wordshave ever expressed. 

He went home, on fire with the dream of an ideal life and work withsuch a woman of supreme beauty. 

CHAPTER IX

THE SPIDER

The passing of a year added immensely to the fame of the pastorof the Pilgrim Church. His sermons now reached twenty millions ofpeople through the daily press every Monday morning. It had becomenecessary to issue tickets of admission to the members and admitthem by a small door that was cut beside the large ones. 

Van Meter had ceased to be of sufficient importance for seriousnotice. The growth of Gordon's influence within the year had beenso rapid, he found he had set out to fight a flea with artillery. 

The old man felt his eclipse with bitterness. He had quit talkingmuch, but writhed in silent fury at the sight of this tall athletewith his conquering gray eyes and smooth, serious face. Yet he wasa regular attendant. The preacher's eloquence, the vibrant tonesof his voice, full of passion, or trembling with prophetic zeal, and the whole drama of a living militant church with this daringrevolutionist at its head, risen from the grave of the old, fascinatedhim in spite of his hatred. 

In the local development of the church Kate Ransom had become, next to the pastor, the most important factor. She had shown strongadministrative talent, had organized kindergartens, night-schoolsfor teaching domestic science to girls, established a reading-room, and opened a coffee house on the corner near the church, fittingit up with the magnificence of a saloon, with free lunch counter, music and singing. It was crowded with working-men and women everynight. 

Her work had brought her in daily contact with Gordon, and theircomradeship had become so constant and so sweet that neither ofthem dared face the problem of its meaning. 

To the woman the man had become little less than her God. Theirdaily life, its hopes, its poetry, its dreams of social and civicsalvation, were enough in themselves: she did not analyse orquestion. 

For the man, this fair woman, beautiful in face and form beyond theflight of his fancy, and loyal in the worship of his strength, asthe soul of the strong man ever desires of his ideal woman, she hadbecome a daily inspiration. And yet he had not acknowledged thiseven in a whisper of his soul. 

In the meanwhile, his wife's interest in music had ceased, and shewas rarely seen at the church on Sundays or at its weekday functions. She had withdrawn from its life and had settled into a state ofsomber resentment. 

She would frequently sit through a meal eating little, speaking inmonosyllables, her black eyes staring, wide open, and yet seeingnothing, looking past the things that bound her, back into thesunlit years of girlhood, or forward into the future whose shadow'schill she felt already on her soul. Often he found her at nightseated by the window in the dark alone, looking down on the citybelow. 

She had ceased to ask him of his work or plans and he no longertroubled her with their discussion. Their lives were separated byan ever-widening gulf. 

Stimulated by a sermon he had preached in August of the previoussummer, when the death-rate was at its highest, a wave of reformhad swept over New York. In his sermon he had arraigned the citygovernment in terms so trenchant and terrible the people had ralliedas to a trumpet call to battle. 

A resistless movement for the overthrow of a corrupt administrationtook the city by storm. Day and night with voice and pen, with allthe fire and passion of his magnetic personality, he had led theseassaults. 

Complete success crowned the movement. The reform Mayor was electedby a large majority. 

Ten months had passed and the net results were discouraging. Policescandals ran riot as of yore; gambling, drinking and the socialevil flourished as before; and the press, that had valiantly andalmost unanimously championed Reform, now exhausted upon it thevocabulary of abuse. 

Gordon was disgusted and sickened and felt that one of his fairestdreams had been shattered forever. 

The reaction from this reform programme had thrown him more thanever back upon his ideas of a Socialistic revolution which shoulddestroy Commercialism itself, and he had become its enthusiasticchampion. 

Kate Ransom had followed his change of views with keenest sympathy. She had read every book after him and had responded to his everymood. 

"No; we're on the wrong tack, with our half-way measures and ourfitful charities, " he said to her. 

"We must go deeper. We must make the Fatherhood of God and theBrotherhood of Man our daily life, not merely a poetic theory. 

"We have hundreds of beautiful-souled men and women giving theirlives in sacrifice for the city's poor and fallen. They seem tomake little impression on its ocean of misery. We are bailing outthe sea with teaspoons. "

"I feel you are right, as you always are, " she responded, unconsciousof the contradiction. 

"The Brotherhood of Man and the Solidarity of the Race we mustmake vital realities. Greed, commercialism, competition and themonopolistic instincts are the cause of all this crime and miseryand confusion. Love, not force, must rule the world. "

"And you are the prophet to lead humanity into this Kingdom ofLove, " she said, her eyes enfolding him with their soft blue light. 

"I fear I'm too great a coward for such a task. The man who doesit must break with the past, become accursed for the truth's sake, defy social law and convention, breast the storm of the world'shate, die despised, and wait for a nobler generation to place hisname on the roll of the world's heroes. "

"It is your work, " she cried with elation. 

"It's a lonely way for the soul to travel. "

"You will have one loyal follower the blackest hour of the darkestnight that comes. "

A curious smile played around her full lips, and he looked away, afraid to say anything. 

"Yes, I know that, " he softly answered. "And I'm more afraid forthat very reason. "

"I'm not afraid. " Her voice rang clear and thrilling. 

"I wonder if you know the meaning of such words; or if you arethinking of one thing and I of another?" he slowly asked. 

"I dare to think many things I've never dared to say, " she replied. 

"A break must come sooner or later, " he went on. "No man of mytemperament and brain can live under the conditions here, feel thegrip of this cruelty on the throat of humanity, read and think, and endure it. "

"It seems to me a social revolution must come quickly. "

"I wondered if you had felt that?" Gordon asked, as he leaned backin his chair and locked his powerful hands behind his head. "Thispresentiment of overwhelming change haunts me day and night andmakes many things seem childish and futile. 

"Ill and feverish from overwork one day last week, I stood by mywindow, looking down on the city, dreaming and listening to itscries for help, watching the sweep of the elevated trains comingand going, and I was overwhelmed with the immensity of its complexlife. Our hurrying cars carry within the corporate limits dailymore passengers than all the railroads of the western hemisphere. I thought of the rivers of human flesh that flow unceasingly throughits streets and flood its market places. And these millions arebut one wave of the ocean forever breaking on the shores of time, its tides everlasting, insistent, resistless, never pausing, behindthem the pressure of the heaped centuries, and over them the loweringclouds of fresh storms soon to burst and add their tons. "

He paused and closed his eyes as though to shut out the roar, whileshe listened with half-parted lips. 

"And as I looked out the window I had a startling experience. Isaw a huge dragon-like beast begin to crawl slowly down from thehills and stretch his big claws over the housetops of the city below. I was not asleep or in a trance, but wide awake, only a littlefeverish. With increasing horror I watched this monster stretch hisenormous body, covered with scales, and short hair growing betweenthe scales, on and on, until he covered the city and gathered itsthousands of houses within his huge paws. His eyes were enormousand blood-red, his breath hot. 

"I moved back, gasping with surprise and horror, to find it wasonly a spider crawling down his slender thread on the window closeto my eye. It was a fevered delusion, but it haunted me for days, and haunts me still. 

"I am growing in the conviction that the very foundations of moralsare shifting, and that Religion, Society and Civilisation mustreadjust themselves or humanity sink into unspeakable degradation. 

"Belief in the old religious authority is gone. Our church is throngedbecause of a peculiar personal power with which I am endowed. Icould wield that power without a church, society, creed or Bible. Esthetic forces now draw people to non-ritualistic churches thatonce came for prayer and preaching. The preacher must secularisehis sermon or talk to vacant pews. Historic Christianity has beendestroyed by Criticism. A thousand wild Isms nourish in the twilightof this eclipse of Faith, while Materialism and the Pursuit ofPleasure strangle out spiritual hopes. "

"And you are the seer called to lead out of this chaos, " the womanwhispered. "I know this from my own life. But for you I would belistening to idiotic platitudes, cultivating sham, my very soul'crucified between a whimper and a smile. ' I owe it to you that Iam a woman--not a cross between an angel and an idiot. "

The passion with which she said this, bending her beautiful face, flushed with emotion, so close to his that he caught the perfumeof her mass of waving hair, went to the man's head like wine. 

"Why not spring our building scheme on the people at once, withoutauthority from the Board of Trustees, and make it the rallying cryof the new Humanity?" he cried eagerly. 

"I believe it will succeed, " she answered, her heart glowing withthe consciousness of the intimacy of that little word "our" he hadused. 

She got pad and pencil, and Gordon dictated to her a plan forengaging every force of the church and its congregation and varioussocieties in the project. 

He fixed the Sunday on which to make the effort of his lifein his appeal to the people of his congregation and the world forthe million-dollar fund needed. It was eleven o'clock before theyfinished the discussion of the scheme, and aglow with enthusiasmhe left for his home. 

As he sat down in the car and lived over again his happiness of thepast hours in this woman's companionship the paradox of his returnin a few minutes to the arms of his wife struck him squarely inthe face for the first time. 

He could not plead a mistake in his first love. His romance wasgenuine. He had loved with all the fire of his youth. The passionwhich drew him to Ruth was mutual and resistless. Yet its ardourhad cooled. He could not say it was his fault, not altogether hers. It seemed as inevitable in its decline as its onrush was resistless. Yet at the thought of this new woman he felt his heart beat withquicker stroke. He was older and stronger than the youth of thepast, and the woman more mature in the ripened glory of beauty. 

Yet he began to recall with infinite tenderness the love life withRuth. Its memories were very real and very sweet. And the faces ofhis children haunted him with strange power. The idea of a divorcefrom Ruth and the loss of these children cut him with sharp pain. 

Had he outgrown his first love? Could he continue to live with onewoman if he loved another? Was not this the one unpardonable sinand shame? And yet to break that bond and form the other if he couldmeant the end of associations in which the fibers of his very lifewere wrought. 

But was not this one of the burning problems of the new humanity, this freedom of the soul and body, this new birth into the libertyand love of a great Brotherhood? Was not sham and hypocrisy nowthe law of life, and was not Society perishing because of it?

Thus wrestling with the tragic dilemma he felt closing about him, he went past his station to the end of the line and had to takethe down train back. It was past midnight when he reached his home. 

CHAPTER X

THE BLACK CAT

When Van Meter heard of the scheme to appeal directly to the peopleto build the temple in defiance of the Board of Trustees, who werethe legal managers of the church's property, he was thunderstruck. 

When the Sunday arrived he came half an hour earlier than usualto watch every incident of the day with his little black eyes opentheir widest. 

It was a crisp November morning. Recent rains had washed the streetsclean, the wind was blowing fresh, the sky was cloudless and thesun lit in cool gleaming splendour every avenue and park of thegreat city. 

The people had returned from their country places and the hotelswere thronged with merchants and visitors from the four quartersof the earth. 

An enormous crowd squeezed into every inch of space the policewould allow to be filled in the church, and hundreds were turnedaway, unable to gain admission. 

Gordon had spent the entire day and night before in an agony ofpreparation, and he had not left his study until two o'clock Sundaymorning. He took his seat in the pulpit trembling with anxiety. Theorgan burst into the strains of the Doxology and the crowd rose. He stood with folded hands looking over the sea of faces, and hisheart began to ache with an agony of suspense and fear of failure. 

The singing ceased, and every head bent as he lifted his big hand, with its blue veins standing out like a net of steel wires, andpronounced a brief invocation. 

When he read the hymn, the people felt in his voice the shock of astorm of pent-up emotion. He read it slowly, beautifully, and withexquisite tenderness. 

While they sang he sat with his elbow on the little table on whichstood a vase of roses, his face resting thoughtfully on his lefthand, studying the people, his soul on fire with the sense of theirinfinite needs. 

Crouching low in his seat under the left gallery, he saw a man whohad confessed a great wrong and was searching for peace. 

At a post on the right, in a seat where he had been accustomedto see a working-girl for the past two years, a stranger sat. Thegirl was found dead in her room the week before. She had lost herplace because she wore shabby clothes, and she wore shabby clothesbecause she had been sending her earnings to her home in Connecticut, supporting an aged father, mother and a worthless brother. 

The rich, the poor, the old, the young, the outcast, the publicanand sinner, the strange woman and the sweet face of innocent girlhoodwere there looking up at him for guidance and help. 

But outnumbering all were massed rows of clean-faced young men whomhis enthusiasm had drawn resistlessly. His heart went out to themin yearning sympathy, fighting their battles in the morning of lifewith the powers and princes of the spirit world for the mastery ofthe soul. 

He felt the sledge-hammer blow of their united heart-beat strikehis brain with the pain of a bludgeon. 

The agony of fear was now upon him. He saw Van Meter sitting inthe central tier of seats watching him sharply out of his littlehalf-closed eyes, the incarnate sign of the mortal enmity oforganised wealth, and he must appeal for money. 

His great crowd had infinite needs, but much money they did nothave. He thought with hope of the twenty millions of people whoread his sermons on Monday morning, and of a dozen big-hearted menof wealth he knew in the city, and he was cheered. 

He had prepared a most powerful sermon on the text, "The commonpeople heard Him gladly. " He felt they could not resist his appeal. And yet in spite of himself his gaze would wander back to Van Meter, drawn by his black eyes as by the charm of an adder. 

The Deacon was wondering, as he watched him, what could possibly bethe outcome of this daring insanity. He had been fooled so often bythe power of this athletic dreamer, he feared to predict the end, though he felt certain what it would be. 

The services were unusually impressive. Special music had beenprepared by the choir and rendered magnificently. Gordon readthe hymns and Scripture with a feeling so intense the people werethrilled. His prayer had been simple and heartfelt, and had meltedscores of people to tears. 

He rose and faced the crowd with the keenest sense of solemnity. The hour was propitious; he could feel the hearts of the peoplebeat responsive to his slightest tone, word or gesture. 

As he swept rapidly through his introduction and into his themehe knew he was holding these thousands of breathless listeners inthe hollow of his hand. He could feel their heartstrings quiveras he touched them with tenderness or struck them with some mightythought. 

His soul was singing with triumph, when suddenly a ripple of laughterran along the front tier of the gallery, and a hundred heads wereturned upward to see what the disturbance meant. 

Had a bolt of lightning struck his spinal column he could not havebeen more shocked. 

He repeated mechanically the last sentence in a dazed sort ofway, and a louder ripple of laughter ran the entire length of bothgalleries and echoed through the main floor. 

He stopped, fumbled at his notes, and turned red. The peoplebefore him were smiling and craning their necks to see more plainlysomething on the wide platform of the pulpit. 

He suddenly got the insane idea that a fiend had thrust his headin the door behind him and was mocking and grinning. 

He turned and looked, and there sat an impudent little black catwith big yellow eyes. 

She had been sitting on her haunches blinking at him when he raisedhis voice or gestured, and the crowd has never yet gathered onthis earth in the temple of Baal or Jehovah that can resist a cataccompaniment to the functions of a priest. 

When Gordon looked the little cat full in the face, she liked himat once, and in the softest, friendliest treble said:

"Meow!"

And the crowd burst into incontrollable laughter. 

At first the full import of the situation did not reach his mind, he was so stunned with surprise. He stood looking at the cat inhelpless stupor, and blushing red. And then the sickening certaintycrushed him that the day was lost; that it was beyond the powerof human genius, or the reach of the spirit of God, to remove thatcat and regain control of his audience. 

He turned sick with anger and humiliation, and his big bear-likehands clasped his sheet of notes and slowly crushed them. 

He continued to look at the cat and she cocked her head to one side, opened her yellow eyes wider and, slowly, in grieved accents said:

"M-e-o-w!"

Which unmistakably meant, "I'm very sorry you don't like me as wellas I do you. "

Again the crowd laughed. 

Gordon stepped backward and bent slowly over the cat. She did notlook very bright, but she was too shrewd for that movement. 

The crowd watched breathlessly. He grasped at her. 

She sprang quickly to one side, bowed her back, bushed her tail, and scampered across the platform crying:

"Pist! pist!" and ran up the column that supported the end of thegallery. 

The preacher's empty hand struck the bare floor, and the crowd wasconvulsed. 

A young man sitting in the gallery near the column caught the catas she climbed over the rail, ran to a window and was about tothrow her down to the pavement twenty feet below. 

Gordon lifted his hand and cried:

"Don't do that, young man--don't hurt her; bring her here. "

It had, suddenly occurred to the preacher as he watched Van Meterbending low in his pew overcome with laughter, that he had stoopedto this contemptible trick to defeat him and make the solemnesthour of life ridiculous. He knew the Deacon had come to the churchearlier than usual. He was sure he had done it. 

A curious smile began to play about his lips, and a cold glittercame into his steel-gray eyes. 

He took the cat in his arms and stroked her gently. She purredand rubbed her face against his and moved her feet up and down, sheathing and unsheathing her claws in his robe with evident delight. 

The crowd grew still. Instinctively they knew that something bigwas happening in the soul of the man they were watching. 

"This little cat, my friends, " he said, "is an innocent actorin a tragedy this morning, but she is the agent of one who is notinnocent. "

He fixed his gaze on Van Meter, who stirred with uneasy amazement. 

"They say that cats sometimes incarnate the souls of dead men. Thisone is the soul of a living man, my good friend, Deacon Arnold VanMeter, who had her brought here this morning. "

The Deacon turned red, drew his head down as though he would pullit within his shoulders, and shrank from the gaze of the crowd. 

Gordon handed the cat back to the young man, whispered somethingto him, and he disappeared. 

Then, walking up to the pulpit, he snatched off its crimson clothand threw it behind him. He ran his big muscular hands into thethroat of his robe, ripped it open, tore it from his arms, crushedit into a shapeless mass and threw it on the floor. 

He snatched up the golden lectern pulpit, hurled it back into thecomer, and moved the little table with its vase of roses into itsplace. He did this quickly, without a word or an exclamation tobreak the awful stillness with which the crowd watched him. 

They knew that a tremendous drama was being enacted before them. So intense was the excitement the people on the back tiers of thegalleries sprang impulsively to their feet and stood on the pews. 

Van Meter's eyes danced with wild amazement as he straightenedhimself up, sure Gordon had gone mad. But when he advanced to theedge of the platform, looking a foot taller in his long black PrinceAlbert coat, folded his giant arms across his breast, the nostrilsof his great aquiline nose dilated, his lips quivering, and lookedstraight into Van Meter's face, the Deacon saw there was dangerousmethod in his madness. 

His eyes blazing with pent-up passion, he began in deliberate tonesan extempore address. 

In a moment the air was charged with the thrill of his powerfulpersonality wrought to the highest tension of emotional power. 

[Illustration: "Ripped it open, tore it from his arms, and threwit on the floor. "]

"My friends, " he began, "there are moments in our experience whenwe live a lifetime--moments when the hair of our heads turns gray, a soul dies within a laving body, or a dead one rises, shakes offits grave clothes, and lifts its head in the sunlight. 

"From this hour I am a free man. I will live what I am, and speakwhat I feel to be the truth. The truth shall be its own justification. I will wear no robes, mumble no ceremonies, call no man Rabbi, andpermit no man to call me Rabbi. I proclaim the universal priesthoodof believers. 

"While I am your pastor the Kitchen Mission in which we have gatheredthe poor on the East Side will be closed at the hour of service, and all God's children shall enter this house because it is theirFather's!"

Van Meter shrank back in his pew as a ripple of applause ran roundthe galleries. 

"If men ask a sign to-day whether the Church of the living Godexists in New York, what is our answer?

"Look about you. New York is the centre of the commerce, society, art, literature and politics of the Western World. Her port, inwhich fly the flags of every nation, is the gateway of two worlds. The feet of four millions daily press her pavements. Her walls framethe furnace in which are being tried by fire the faiths, hopes anddreams of the centuries past and to come. In mere volume of populationshe is the equal of three great Atlantic states: Virginia, Northand South Carolina. One man alone of her millions of citizenspossesses wealth greater than the valuation of all the propertyof the State of North Carolina, the cradle of American democracy, containing fifty thousand square miles and supporting a populationof a million six hundred thousand. 

"In the roar of this modern Babylon beats the fevered heart ofmodern civilisation. He who wins that heart holds the key to thecentury. Imperial Rome, mistress of the world, was a pygmy comparedto this. 

"And what are we doing?

"Our Protestant churches have thirty-five thousand men and onehundred thousand women enrolled out of two millions on ManhattanIsland. Our invested capital is one hundred million dollars, ourannual gifts four millions, and we fail to hold one-half the childrenborn in our own homes. 

"As a remedy for this the Trustees proposed to me to sell out andmove uptown to vacant lots! They say the people have gone. Theyhave come--come in such numbers and with such problems, churcheshave fled before the avalanche of humanity. 

"Within a stone's throw of this church are districts in which tenmen and women sleep in one room twelve feet square. New York isthe most crowded city in the world. London has seven people to ahouse; we have sixteen. In two houses were found the other day onehundred and thirty-six children. Death stalks through these crowdedalleys with scythe ever swinging. 

"Shall we, too, desert?

"I hear the tread of coming thousands from these shadows who willlaugh at your flag, who know not the name of your President, oryour God, whose heavy hands upon your doors will summon you beforethe tribunal of the knife, the torch, the bomb to make good yourright to live. 

"When your population shall number ten millions, and the gulf betweenthe rich and poor shall have become impassable, some gigantic cornershall have doubled the price of bread, starvation spread her blackwings, and idle thousands sullen and desperate begin to look withdarkening brows on your unprotected wealth, then will come the testof modern society. 

"This growth of the city is as resistless and inevitable as themovement of time. Why people continue to turn their backs upon theopen fields and crowd into this great foul, rattling, crawling, smoking, stinking, ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, oozingpoison at every pore, is beyond my ken, but they come. They comeeach year in hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands, crowdingthe crowded trades, crowding closer the crowded dens in which humanbeings whelp and stable as beasts. They leave friends and neighbourswho love them, leave earth for hell, and still they come. Thetenement, huge monster of modern greed, engulfs them, and the wordhome is stricken from their tongue. 

"They tell us that yesterday a man in a fit of insanity murderedhis wife and two daughters. Insanity? Love has its hours whendeath becomes beautiful. Poets sing of old Virginius who slew hisdaughter to save her from dishonour. May it not be better to diea man than live a beast?

"There are conditions about us where suicide is a luxury and thedeath of a child a joy. They are gathered to the Potters' Field, but they rest. We pile them one on top of the other in big blacktrenches, but the dawn does not call them to beastly toil. Theirlittle forms moulder, but they no longer cry for bread and theirpinched faces no longer try to smile. They are safe in Death'sland-locked harbour. 

"Last year the deaths on this island numbered forty thousand. Tenthousand--one in four--were buried from hospitals, jails, almshouses, asylums and workhouses. I have been assailed by a deacon of thischurch because I no longer preach hell. Why preach hell to peoplewho expect to better their condition in the next world whether theygo up or down?

"I am here henceforth to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the healing of the bruised, the release of the captive, and topreach the Gospel to the poor. 

"Let snobs and apes hear me. Democracy is the goal of the race, the destiny of the world. American Democracy is but a hundred yearsold, yet not one crowned head is left on the western hemisphere. Crowns, thrones, scepters, titles, privileges belong to the past;they are doomed. The people already rule the world. Emperors, kingsand presidents exist, not by the grace of God, but by the consentof the people, to whom they give account of their stewardship. Empires are the dungheaps out of which democracies grow. 

"The historian writes of the common people. Once of kingsand princes were their stories. The eyes of the world are on themasses. Science toils to make Nature their servant. Art portraystheir life. Literature, once a clown at the feet of Fortune'sfools, now writes of the people. Wealth lays its tribute at theirfeet. The millionaire, who dies to-day grasping his millions as hisown, is hissed while he lives, openly cursed while he lies cold indeath, and forgotten in contempt. 

"Outside the history of the common people there is nothing worthrecording. They are mankind. As a half-million miles make nodifference in the vast distance to the sun in figuring an eclipse, so the classes may be disregarded. 

"Jesus Christ was the carpenter's son. His home was humble, Hisbirth lowly. He was born poor, lived and died poor. The foxes hadholes, the birds of the air nests, but He had not where to lay Hishead. Our robes and altar cloths, our tin and tinsel, were not His. 

"When John Wesley raised his voice for the people the Church ofEngland had the opportunity to become the Church of the Anglo-Saxonrace, that is now conquering the world. They called him a liar, a hypocrite, a Jesuit, a devil, cast him out, and the opportunitypassed forever. 

"I see a man before me who hates this big crowd and yet expects togo to heaven. Heaven is the home of millions--'a great multitudewhich no man could number, ' says the seer. Hell is the home ofswell society. "

The words leaped from Gordon's lips a rushing torrent and swept thecrowd. Growing each moment more and more conscious of his strength, he attained the heights of eloquence. Intoxicated with the reflexaction from the sea of eager listeners, he outdid himself with eachsucceeding climax of feeling. Never had his voice been so deep, so full, so clear, so penetrating, so thrilling, and never had hebeen so conscious of its control. Not once did it break. Its loudesttrumpet note echoed with sure roundness. 

When he turned his eyes from Van Meter after his first assault theyrested on the face of Kate Ransom, her magnificent figure tense, rigid, her cheeks scarlet, her blue eyes flashing with tears ofexcitement. She was stirred to her soul's depths, and no figure inall the throbbing crowd gave to the speaker such inspiring response. Her face flashed back as from a mirror every throb of thought andstroke of his heart. 

Van Meter gazed on him hypnotised by the violence of his onrush. When Gordon would suddenly lift his enormous blue-veined handhigh over his head in an impassioned gesture the Deacon coweredunconsciously beneath his towering figure. 

Pausing a moment, while the crowd held its' breath, watching everymovement and every twitch of a muscle of his face, he pointed hislong finger at the Deacon and continued:

"And, as if to mock intelligence, Tradition raises the feeble cryof reminiscent senility, 'Back to the old paths!'

"Protestantism is the rebellion of reason against the shackles ofauthority. Our conscience fettered by tradition stultifies its ownlife. We must go forward or die. 

"Theology is a science, religion a life. The one is a fact, theother an analysis after the fact. The stage-coach yielded to thelimited, the sailing craft to the ocean greyhound, but we are toldthat the only age that ever knew the truth, or had the right toexpress it, was the age which burned witches, executed dumb animalsas criminals, whipped church bells for heresy, held chemistry a blackart and electricity a manifestation of the devil or the Shekina ofGod. 

"The men to whom I speak have seen New York grow from a town ofthree hundred thousand on the lower end of Manhattan Island to bethe imperial metropolis of the New World with four millions withinher golden gates. 

"Within a generation, the Brooklyn Bridge, a dream in the brainof a man, has spun its spider web of steel across the river, ourbuildings grown from four stories to towering castles of steel withtheir flag-staffs in the clouds. 

"Our nation has been baptised in blood and a new Constitutionestablished. 

"The German Empire has been created, and a new map of the worldmade. 

"Steam and electricity have been applied to travel and speech, and the earth transformed into a whispering gallery. The cylinderpress has proclaimed universal education, and the dynamo crownedthe brow of humanity with a coronet of light. 

"But our churches in New York have merely moved uptown! Their methodsare the methods of their fathers--a solecism, stupid, irrational, immoral. 

"The superstition that seeks to limit the horizon of the soul tothe bounds of ancestral tradition has ever been the deadliest foeof human hope. Doubt is the vestibule of knowledge. They who doubt, rebel and disobey have ever led the shining way of progress and oflife. 

"Your Traditionalists crucified the Christ. They declared him tobe the friend of publicans and harlots. 

"Since then they have covered the Church with the infamy of crueltyand blood, flame, sword, thumb-screw, rack and torch. The blackestpages in the story of the martyrdom of man have been written bytheir hands. They sent Alva into the Netherlands to sweep it withfire. They revoked the edict of Nantes until the soil of France wasdrunk with the blood of her children. They led the trembling sonsand daughters of faith, barefoot and blindfolded, over burningplowshares, stretched them on wheel and rack, tore them limb fromlimb, sparing not for the groan of age, the lisp of childhood, orthe piteous cry of expectant motherhood. 

"The Bible they made a bludgeon with which to brain heretics, forgedits word into chains, and with its leaves kindled martyr fires. 

"They have arraigned the reason, the heart and the knowledge of therace against Jesus Christ and His religion. They stretched Galileoon the rack for inventing a telescope which gave new beauty tothe psalm, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmamentshoweth His handiwork. '

"They are driving manhood from the modern Church. Your New Yorkcongregations average four women to one man. Of forty-three Governorsof our states, only seventeen are members of any church; yet allprofess allegiance to the religion of Jesus. The men have formedsecret societies outside the Church. 

"The Church triumphant will be a social power. Man to-day is morethan an individual. The individual has played his role in the growthof the centuries. This is the age of federation, organisation, society, humanity. Man can no longer live to himself or die tohimself. 

"I proclaim again the universal priesthood of believers. I callfor those mighty forces among the unordained which thrilled theWaldenses, the Franciscans, the Puritan and early Methodists andsent them on their glorious careers. I preach a holy crusade forman as man, in the name of God, whose image he bears. I ask youto join with me as man, not as priest, and build here a 'Temple ofHumanity' that shall be for a sign of hope and faith and freedom. "

As he closed, a spontaneous burst of applause shook the building, and instead of the usual prayer which ended his sermons he liftedboth his big hands high above his head and the audience rose. 

"Let us sing the national hymn, 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee, SweetLand of Liberty, '" he cried, his voice still throbbing with emotion. "And while we sing the ushers will pass the subscription cards thatyou may join with us in our enterprise. "

He dismissed the crowd with the Benediction, and the whole masslingered, discussing with flushed faces the extraordinary scenethey had witnessed and speculating on its outcome. It was evidenthis action and speech had produced a moral earthquake in the church. 

The older and more conservative members slipped out one by one andwent home dazed. 

The younger and more sensitive crowded about Gordon in hundreds, wrung his hand and pledged their support. For half an hour he couldnot move, so dense was this struggling mass around him. 

He did not see Kate among them. He knew the scene had cut too deeplyinto her life for such poor expression. The ushers at last handedhim a bundle of subscription cards and he hurried to his study toread their verdict. 

CHAPTER XI

AN ANSWER TO PRAYER

When Gordon reached his study and locked the door, he turned thebundle of cards over nervously, afraid to look at them. 

He untied the package, read the first, and ran rapidly through thepile. The total subscriptions reached only twenty thousand dollars. He had asked for a million. 

A sickening sense of failure crushed him. How weak and puerilethe eloquence of words or the beat of the human heart against thatmysterious force gleaming at him through Van Meter's black eyes!

He sat brooding over the power wielded by a dozen men whose nameswere linked with the Deacon's in Wall Street. This group of men hadpersonal fortunes of more than eight hundred millions and controlledas much more. He believed that they dictated the policy of railroads, banks, trade, the State, the Nation, and that no king or emperorof the world wielded such despotism over men as these uncrownedmonarchs of money. He felt as though he had collided with the starsin their courses and been crushed to dust. 

An Answer to Prayer 129

In the middle of the pile of cards he found one signed by KateRansom. She had written across the printed form in her smooth, flowing hand:

"Please call after the service and let me know the result. I willsend you my subscription to-morrow. "

He knew that she would make a liberal gift, but her fortune couldnot be more than a million, perhaps not half so large. Her generositycould not save the day even if she gave half of all she possessed, a supposition of course preposterous. 

He could not summon courage to go in the bitterness of his defeat. He scrawled a note and sent it by the sexton. 

"Feeling too blue to call. Failure complete and pitiful. Thesubscriptions reach only twenty thousand dollars. GORDON. "

There was but one forlorn hope left. He had written personal lettersto several millionaires he knew in town. They might respond. 

He sat in his study in the afternoon, dull, stupid and sick, feelingan iron band around his brain. He could not think. Ho gave up thework on his evening sermon and determined to repeat an old one. 

As he sat in an aching stupor the sexton announced a gentleman whoinsisted on seeing him on important business. 

"I told him you would see no one at this hour, but he says he mustsee you. "

"Show him in, " Gordon said, with a frown. 

The man entered, gazed at the preacher with curious interest, andstood with his silk hat in hand, smiling. 

"This is Doctor Gordon?"

"Leave off the doctor and you have it right. "

"I am the bearer of good news. A client of mine has instructed meto call and say that the sum of one million dollars will be placedto your credit in the Garfield National Bank within two years, andthat you will be its sole trustee for the building of your projectedTemple. One-third of it will be available within three months. Iam sorry, I am forbidden to disclose the name. "

Gordon sprang to his feet, pale as death, overwhelmed with awe. Tohave the answer of his prayers, the agonising of his soul for years, answered in the hour of utter defeat thrilled him with a senseof solemnity he had never felt. The man was not a man. He was themessenger swift and beautiful from the courts of heaven, for whosecoming his eyes had long strained and his ears listened. Not adoubt of its truth shadowed his mind. He knew it was true. It wasthe fulfilment of life. It had been ordained from eternity. He hadseen it always. Now he saw with his eyes. A paean of exaltationwelled within him. 

With dimmed eyes he grasped the lawyer's hand and fairly crushedit in his iron grip. 

"My friend, your face will always be beautiful to me, and your namea song of joy. You have come to lift me from the gulf of despairand renew my faith. "

"With all my heart I congratulate you, " he warmly responded. 

He left his card, and Gordon locked his door, walked back to hisdesk and fell on his knees. In transports of childlike gratitude hepoured out his soul. All the old faith in prayer was in him again, the breath he breathed. He talked to God as to a loving father, promising in broken accents to cleanse his heart of every selfishthought and consecrate anew every energy to his work. 

And then he caught the perfume of flowers, and saw the face of awoman, and she was not the wife of his youth or the mother of hischildren. 

"God forgive me for the drifting of the past, " he cried. "I willtear this madness out of my heart and love only Thee. I will be trueto the vows taken at Thy altar. I have been wayward and sinned inThy sight in heart and thought. Wash me in Thy love and I shall beclean, and though my sins be as scarlet they shall be like wool. "

He rose from his knees determined to go immediately to Kate Ransom, tell her the news, make a clean breast of his love for her, beg herto put the ocean between them, and for all time end their dangerousrelationship. 

She greeted him with reserve, and seemed embarrassed. 

With impetuous rush he told her the tidings. 

"I've been lifted from the depths of Sheol to the highest heaven. Every hope and dream of my struggle is a living reality. An unknownmillionaire has given the whole sum needed--a million dollars--andour Temple will rise in grandeur!"

She smiled timidly, and said: "I knew it would be so. You wereglorious this morning. "

He felt her embarrassment and wondered if she could have divinedhis grim purpose of separation. 

"You do not seem so glad as I thought you would be, " he said, withsomething of reproach in his voice. 

"Some joys are too intense for speech. The scene this morning andyour burning message went too deep for words. "

"I understand, " he said softly. 

"I wonder if you do?" she asked, dropping her eyes. 

"Yes, and I have come to the hardest task of my life, one of thebitterest and one of the sweetest, " he said, with deliberation. 

She glanced at him quickly and began to tremble. 

"Not another hour must pass without a confession to you. "

He moved across the room and sat down as if by an effort to putdistance between them. 

"What is it?" she asked, colouring. 

He was silent a moment and then said with low, deliberate tenderness:

"I love you. "

She sobbed, and he looked steadily out of the window. 

"I dare not sit by your side when I tell you this, " he continuedpassionately. "I have felt it growing in spite of reason or will. I know it's tragedy and sealed my lips with bolts of steel. I havebeen too weak to keep away from you, strong enough to keep silent. But God has sent his messenger to-day to recall me to duty. Thereis truth in the old faith. He has heard and answered the prayerof my heart. Somewhere in this Mammon-cursed city there is onebeautiful disinterested soul that gives and asks nothing. I haveseen, as in a flash of lightning, my danger. I must tear thispassion out of my life, though it kill me. I must be true to myvows. I must live without scandal or shame. And you, " he paused andhis voice sank to a tense whisper--"my beautiful darling, gloriouslove of my manhood--you must help me!"

He buried his face in his great hands, convulsed with emotion. 

"I will, my dearest, " she tenderly answered. 

"If I had failed to-day, " he went on tremblingly, "perhaps inreckless fury I might have forgotten duty, dashed the cup of thismartyrdom from my lips, and drowned conscience in the sweetness ofyour kiss. But God sent success, not failure. And I must be worthy. I have sinned a thousand times as I have gloated over your beauty, heard the music of your voice, touched your soft hand and lookedinto your soul through those dear blue eyes. It must end. One hourthus face to face we will speak, and never again by word or deedrecall that we are aught to one another. I have not asked if youlove me. How well I know the tragic truth! But you will tell meonce, that my ears may never forget the words on your lips. "

"I love you, I love you, I-love-you!" she sobbed in anguish. 

"We must never be together alone again, " he sighed. 

"No. "

"We must not see each other any more. "

"It is best, " she said, with despair. 

"I dare not touch your hand--good-by!" he cried, staggering to hisfeet. 

"Good-by, Frank, my hero, my love--my God!"

He took one step toward the door, but his feet carried him to herside. 

He trembled, hesitated, and then slowly drew her to his heart. Her arms stole around his neck and her head drooped on his breast, the perfume of her hair was in his nostrils, and their lips met inburning kisses. 

"God forgive us! It was more than mortal flesh could bear to gowithout one moment of love's sweet life!" he cried. "And now wemust part. "

He took her hands in his and gently kissed them, while she lookedaway seeing only his face, for it had long since filled the world. 

He turned abruptly into the hall, and, moving to the door withswift step, he saw lying on the silver tray the card of the lawyerhe had met an hour ago. In a moment it flashed over him that Katewas the unknown messenger. He had not dreamed her fortune of suchmagnitude. 

He seized the card and rushed back into the room. 

"Is that your lawyer's name?" he gasped. 

She smiled and nodded her head in assent. 

"And I never dreamed it possible!"

He looked at her as though in a trance. 

"Yes, I will confess now. You have confessed to me. My fortunecame direct from my grandmother, who willed me her farm on whichthe oil was discovered. My father's fortune is worth perhaps fivehundred thousand dollars. Mine was worth about two million dollars. I have given one to you. I may give you the other if you ask it. One was all you asked. "

Again he took her to his heart. 

"I have misread the message. Such love is in itself divine, andits own defense. You are mine by the higher law of life. I will notgive you up--you are mine, mine! I will defy the world. I loved mychild-wife. I was honest then. I will be honest now. I loved as aboy loves. Now I am a man, with a man's fierce passions, and youare the answer--strength calling to strength, deep answering untodeep! Your eyes, my darling, flash the beauty of every flower thatblooms and every star of the sky; in your hair is the rose's breathand the golden glory of the sun! I will not live with one womanand love another. "

And the twilight deepened into night while they held each other'shands and smiled into each other's faces. 

CHAPTER XII

OUT OF THE SHADOWS

When Gordon announced at the evening service that a million dollarshad been subscribed to the new "Temple of Man, " and that he hadbeen constituted its sole trustee, the crowd burst into a storm ofapplause. 

In vain he raised his big muscular hand over the tumult. 

Troops of young men and women with flushed faces, some laughing, some crying, sprang from their seats, rushed to the platform andseized his hand. 

The strains of the national hymn suddenly burst from the crowd, and they rose en masse singing it with triumphant peal. As its lastnote died away a woman's voice started "Nearer, My God, to Thee, "the people caught it instantly and its mighty chorus rolledheavenward. The singing had in it the spontaneous rhythm of heartstransported by resistless feeling. For half an hour they stoodand sang the old familiar hymns whose sentences were wet with thetears and winged with the hopes and mysteries of their lives. 

Instead of a sermon, Gordon read his resignation as pastor of thePilgrim Church. 

And then, folding his hands behind him, in trumpet tones he cried:

"Next Sunday morning will be the last service I will ever conductin this church; the Sunday morning following, at eleven o'clock, the first services of the 'Church of the Son of Man' will be heldin the old Grand Opera House. It will seat four thousand people. All who wish to join this independent society are cordially invitedto be present and bring your friends. The work of building the'Temple of Man' will begin at once. Within six months we hope tolay its corner-stone. "

The meeting was closed at once with the Doxology and Benediction. 

The reporters crowded around him for fuller details. He refusedto give any further information. They interviewed every officer ofthe church and congregation from whom any news might be secured, and it was nine o'clock before the excitement had subsided and thecrowd left. 

The organist and quartet choir lingered to rehearse their musicfor the following Sunday. 

Gordon retired to his study, where he had asked Kate to meet himfor an important conference. 

The church opened on the cross street and stretched its barn shapethrough the entire block. The study was beside the pulpit platform, a little beyond the centre of the building. Behind it was theSunday-school and reading-room, opening on the rear. 

Kate had the keys to the reading-room, which was under her direction, and Gordon asked her to come to his study from the rear entrancethrough the Sunday-school room that she might avoid the suspicionof the reporters. For the same reason he did not wish to be seenat her house. He had left the door of his study unlocked for her, and she entered before the crowd had left the church. 

Within a few moments from the time she unlocked the door of thereading-room, Van Meter's detectives informed him that she was inthe pastor's study and that he had left the rear door open for herto secretly enter. 

The Deacon despatched one of his men with an anonymous note toRuth informing her that Gordon was in his study alone by secretappointment with Kate Ransom, and giving to her duplicate keys toevery door in the church building. 

The detective did not see Ruth, but the maid said she was at home, and he handed her the package. 

Gordon had telephoned to her briefly the facts of the excitementof the morning, and told her he was so exhausted that he would notreturn for dinner, but would take his meals at a hotel and comehome after the evening service. 

When Ruth received the note and keys she was brooding over his absenceand peering in the depths of the widening gulf which separated themin such a crisis of his life. 

The note threw her into the wildest excitement. All the old fierytemper and jealousy which she had kept smouldering in restraintnow burst its bounds. 

Flushed and trembling she rushed from the house and soon reachedthe church. 

She opened the door gently, and with soft feline step was about toenter the Sunday-school room to reach his study, when through theglass sliding partition she heard the voice of Van Meter talkingin the dark to a detective and a reporter. 

She listened intently. 

"I wish you had a flashlight camera, " he was saying. "His wifewill be here in a few minutes and the scene in that room would beworth ten thousand dollars. I have a good photograph of the womanyou can use. You can get his anywhere. "

"It will be a great scoop on the other fellows who will write upthe Temple without the Priestess!" the reporter whispered. 

"I'd give a thousand dollars to see his face in the morning when hepicks up your paper and reads its headlines, " chuckled the Deacon. "His eloquence, his bullfrog voice, his curling locks, his splendideyes, will all be needed, and will all of them be inadequate tothe occasion. "

"It will be tough on that beautiful woman, the scandal--by George, it's a pity, " the reporter sighed. 

"But it will be a great day for the little black-eyed spitfire wifeof his he's been neglecting for the past year. Her revenge will besweet. I've been sorry enough for her. "

"I wonder if she will promptly sue for a divorce?"

"Yes; you can write that down without an interview, " the Deaconreplied. 

Ruth had come raging in anger against her husband. But the cold wordsof these men, whispering in the dark their joy over his downfall, stopped the beat of her heart. 

She could see the big cruel headlines in the morning paper, holdingher beloved up to shame in the hour of his triumph. Surely thiswould be what he deserved. But she loved him--yes, good or bad, she loved him. He was the hero of her girl's soul, the father ofher beautiful children, and in spite of all his coldness and neglecthe was her heart's desire. 

And the feeling came crushing down upon her that perhaps shehad failed somehow to do her whole duty. She had been wilful andfretful and had not kept in touch and sympathy with his work. Shehad demanded a perfect love and loyalty, and in agony she askedherself if she had given as much as she had demanded. Had she notthought too much of her own rights and wrongs and too little ofhis hopes and burdens? And perhaps because of this he was to becrushed at a blow, and his enemies laugh at his calamity and giveto her their maudlin pity. 

She could hear the sweet strains of the organ in the church andthe soprano singing the Gloria. 

She held her hand on her heart for a moment, as though it werebreaking, and suddenly her soul was born anew. 

Out of the shadows of self and self-seeking she lifted up her headinto the sunlight of a perfect love, a love that suffereth longand is kind, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, seeketh notits own, believeth all things, endureth all things--love that neverfaileth. 

"Lord, have mercy on me, and help me--I must save him!" she criedin agony. 

Rapidly retracing her steps, she passed back into the street andaround the block to the front of the church. 

To her joy she encountered no one. The Deacon was so sure of histriumph he had withdrawn his detectives from the street and hadthem massed as witnesses in the Sunday-school room. He was surethey would emerge by that way, for it was Gordon's usual way ofexit, and the choir was still singing in the church. 

With feverish haste she applied the key to the spring lock of thedoor for the members' entrance and passed noiselessly down theaisle in the shadows under the gallery, unobserved by the choir. Only the lights about the organ were burning. 

When she reached the door of the study she paused. 

What if she found him with his arms about her and his lips on hers?Could she control herself? Would she not spring on the woman, withall the tiger of her hot Southern blood from centuries of proudancestry tingling in her tapering fingers, and tear those blueeyes from her head? She must be sure. No; it was over now. She hadconquered self. She would save him. 

Slipping the key softly into the lock, she entered and stood amoment, her stormy eyes burning a deep, steady fire. 

They were studying a map of the city with eager interest in thelocation of the Temple and did not see or hear her. 

As she saw them thus, a sense of gratitude soothed her excitementand gave perfect control of her voice. 

"Frank, " she said quietly. 

"Ruth!" he exclaimed in amazement, striding toward her, while Kateblushed and, with dilated eyes, stared at her, dumb with fear ofa scene of violence. 

"Yes, " she continued in even, rapid tones, "I have come, in love, not anger, to save you both from shame and disgrace. That roombehind you is full of detectives and reporters. They are waitingfor the choir to leave to find you here alone. They sent for meto give a fitting climax to the scene. They have your photographalready, Miss Ransom, and the reporter is preparing his article onthe hidden Priestess of the new Temple. "

"Oh, I thank you!" Kate cried, trembling. 

"Keep your thanks. I do this from no regard for you. Frankly, Ihate you--hate and envy yoi your terrible beauty that has robbedme of that which I hold dearer than life. "

"But I do not hate you, Mrs. Gordon. I have for you only thekindliest feelings, " Kate protested. 

"I prefer your hatred. But we have no time for talk. "

Ruth quickly removed her hat and cloak and handed them to Kate. 

"Exchange with me and pass quickly out of the church by the littlefront door. Keep under the shadows of the gallery and the choircannot see you. "

In a moment it was done, and Gordon faced his wife alone. 

"My dear, that was a beautiful deed you have just done. "

"Don't say 'my dear' to me again until we have come to an understandingof this meeting, " his wife said, closing her lips firmly. 

"As you will, " he gravely answered. 

"When we are at home to-night alone I will hear your explanation. "

"What you have told me is of such importance I cannot go hometo-night. I must see friends who will reach that newspaper in timeto know what Van Meter can have printed. It may keep me the wholenight. "

"Very well; it will not be the first night I have spent alone, "she answered bitterly. 

"I will go with you to the elevated station, and will be homecertainly early in the morning. "

They stepped from the study, and Gordon turned the electric switch, filling the room with a blaze of light. 

Van Meter and his men blinked in amazement at the sight of thepreacher and his wife quietly walking toward them. 

"You contemptible old sneak!" he hissed. "How dare you crawl intothis room to spy on me?"

"I thought I had good reasons for being here, " he spluttered, nervously clearing his throat. 

"Well, you thought a lie as your father, the devil, did beforeyou. "

"Apparently a mistake somewhere, " stammered the Deacon, lookingsheepishly at Mrs. Gordon. "And I'd like to explain to you, sir, that I didn't bring that cat. "

"Well, cat or no cat, I give you a parting warning. We will notmeet again in this church, and if I ever catch you sneaking aroundme I'll take a whip and thrash you as I would a cur, you littleferret-eyed imp of hell!"

The Deacon cowered beneath the furious giant figure and beckonedto the detectives. 

Gordon and his wife passed by them and out into the night. 

CHAPTER XIII

A BROKEN HEART-STRING

The press next morning devoted entire pages to the sensation inthe Pilgrim Church. Portraits of Gordon, his life and theories, sketches of the extraordinary scene in his pulpit, a full stenographicreport of his address which he had carefully corrected at midnight, portraits of his wife and children, pictures of the old church, its reading-rooms, clubhouses and coffee-house, were exploited. 

His letter of resignation and the gift of a millon dollars forbuilding a vast Temple of Humanity, that would be a forum of freethought in the heart of the metropolis, were the subject of separateeditorials in every paper. 

Speculation as to the identity of this mysterious millionaire, whohad apparently deserted the army of entrenched wealth to supportthis daring young revolutionist, filled columns. But it was allthe wildest guessing. Many of the greater magnates hastened to denywith emphasis that they were in any way connected with the scheme. Several of them denounced the preacher as a dangerous man whosewild theories threatened social order. Gordon breathed a sigh ofrelief when he found not a line hinting at Kate Ransom's part inthe drama or linking his name with hers. 

After two o'clock, when he finished his last conference with thereporters and his friends, he went to a hotel where he was notknown. He spent the rest of the night pacing the floor fightingto a finish the battle between the memory of Ruth and his childrenand his fierce new passion. 

Just before dawn he lay down and fell asleep, dreaming of Kate. The battle between the flesh and the spirit had ended. 

He slept until noon, ate a hasty breakfast, called at the Ransomhouse a moment, and hurried to his home. 

His wife had read the morning papers with increasing amazement atthe sensation created, and a sense of impending tragedy began tocrush her. For hours she had been walking back and forth from herwindow watching for his approach, until now she dreaded to see him. 

At the sound of his footstep she recalled the fact that she wasthe judge and he the culprit in the scene to be enacted. She haddemanded an explanation of the meaning of the meeting with thiswoman, and she would have it. If his excuse were good she wouldbe generous in her love and beg him to begin once more their oldlife, even if she threw the last shred of pride to the winds andmade herself his veriest slave. And yet her heart misgave her. Shefelt herself lost and ruined before the battle began, but determinedto play her part bravely. 

She watched him over the banisters as he stepped into the hall andgreeted the children with unusual tenderness. 

He took Lucy's little form up and placed her arms around his neck. 

"Now hug me long, and hard, and kiss me sweet, " he whispered. 

The child squeezed his neck and, placing her hands on his cheeks, softly kissed his lips and eyes as she had often seen her motherdo. He ran his hand gently through her brown curls that seemed aperfect mixture of her mother's and his own, and Ruth thought hishand trembled as he kissed her again. 

"I never saw you quite so beautiful, my baby, as this morning, " hesaid, as he placed her on the floor. 

When he entered the room upstairs Ruth had recovered her composureand stood waiting, her petite figure drawn to its full height, heranxious face unusually thin, her eyes, set in the dark rings ofa sleepless night, looking blacker and stormier than ever in theshadows of her disheveled hair. 

"Sorry I could not come sooner, Ruth, " he began, with evidentembarrassment. "But I did not get to sleep until just before day, and I was so exhausted I slept until noon. "

"Let us waste no words, " said the soft, round voice. "I have waitedlong; I am waiting still for ycur explanation. Why was that womanin your study alone with you last night at half-past ten o'clock?"

"You wish to know the whole truth?"

"I demand it. "

"Very well, " he replied deliberately. "The immediate reason is asecret of great importance, I must ask you to guard it sacredly. "

"I've kept a dark one in my soul. You have had no cause to complain. "

"The morning papers are full of wild speculation as to the millionairewho gave that immense sum to build the Temple. Miss Ransom gavethe money. "

"Impossible!" she gasped. 

"So I thought at first. A lawyer came in the afternoon and told meof the gift without a hint of its author. In answer to a requeston a card asking that I inform her of the results of my appeal, Icalled at her house---"

"Before you called at your own or informed your wife, " she interruptedwith bitterness. 

"Yes; you have ceased to care about rny work. But there was anotherand more urgent reason why I called, "

"Doubtless!" she cried impatiently. 

"When the import of this gift fully dawned on me, the fulfilmentof my grandest hopes in the very moment of defeat (for the popularsubscription was a failure), I was overwhelmed with gratitude toGod. I fell on my knees and thanked Him. And then, Ruth--"

He paused and looked at her wistfully in pity for the little weakfigure that would reel beneath the blow of his words. 

"And then what?" she asked quickly. 

Gordon lowered his chin and rested it on his hand, while a dreamytone came into his voice, softening it to its lowest notes, and atrance-like look overspread his face. 

"And then I recalled that I had been deceiving you and myself andanother. I faced for the first time honestly the fact that I wasmadly in love with a woman not my wife--"

Ruth went white, gave an inarticulate groan, staggered and sankinto a chair near him, sobbing in agony. 

"Oh! Frank, for the sake of Jesus, the friend of the weak, wholoved little children, whose name you have so often spoken, havemercy on me! Do not tell me any more. I am only a woman--I cannotbear it!"

"But the truth is best, Ruth. You must hear it, " he went on rapidly. "I asked God to forgive me for the wrong I had done you and her. I said I would tear that love out of my soul if it killed me, andbe true to my marriage vow. I went there to tell her this and askher to put the ocean between us. I found that she loved me evenas I loved her, and she promised. As I started to leave the house, never to enter it again, I saw the card of the lawyer on her table, and the truth flashed over me that she had made this sacrifice ofher fortune--greater than I had dreamed--for me and my work, andthat because of this I was leaving her forever. It was more thanI could bear or ask her to bear. I faced anew the facts. Our lovehas grown cold. We are no longer congenial. Your ways have ceasedto be mine. It is wrong to love one woman and live with another. We must separate. "

"No, no, no, no, Frank, dear, my husband, my love, my own. Notthis. You do not mean it!" she groaned, as she sank to the floor, buried her face in her arms and stretched out her hand until hertapering fingers rested on his broad foot. 

He bent and took her hand as though to lift her. 

Suddenly the fever of her hot fingers trembling with overpoweringpassion, the moisture of her hand, and the tremor of her convulsedbody swept his memory with the pain and rapture of his hour withKate. 

Still holding her fingers, he slipped his watch from his pocketwith the other hand and glanced quickly at its face to see if itwere time for his return to the Ransom house. 

"Come, Ruth, this is very painful to me. You must not humiliateyourself so. You have pride and the heritage of noble blood. "

She sprang to her feet and stared at him, with infinite yearning inher eyes, gave a faint cry, half anguish, half despair, and threwherself into his arms, holding him with passionate violence whileshe smothered his lips and eyes with kisses. 

He attempted gently to draw her arms from his neck. 

"No, you shall not, " she cried, holding him convulsively. "I willnot let you go. You are my husband--my own, my love, the hero ofmy girl's dreams, the father of my babies. I have no pride. I willdo anything for you if you will only love me. "

"But, Ruth, if I have ceased to love you--"

"Don't, don't say it!" she shrieked, placing her hand on his lips. "I will not hear it. You do love me. This woman has lured you withher devil's beauty, and thrown her spell over your baser nature. Ah, Frank, dear, tell me that you love me! Lie to me as meanermen lie to their women. Such a lie I'll hold an honour before theawful shame of desertion. You cannot humiliate me so. See, dear, Iam at your feet. Have mercy on me. Do not ask me to bear more thanI can endure. Am I not the mother of your children?"

Gordon frowned and withdrew her arms from his neck. 

"All this is very painful, Ruth. You cannot mean it. You know Ihave tried to be honest. I hate a lie. I could not tell one if Itried. You cannot love me and ask this infamy. I could never liftup my head again as a leader and teacher of men and know I was awilful liar. "

The little figure shivered. 

"But, Frank, I can't give you up. It was the touch of your hand, the music of your voice that first awoke my woman's soul. You aremy mate. You cannot know the young mother-wonder, pain and joythat thrilled my heart as I first bent over Lucy's face, your deareyes in hers smiling at me. Our very flesh became one in Nature'smiracle of love. "

"And yet our lives have somehow drifted apart, Ruth. "

"But not so far, dear, as this woman has made you believe, " sheanswered tenderly. "I have been selfish and resentful, but I willmake it all up. I will lift up my head and be cheerful--live foryou, work for you, think only of you, ask nothing for myself butonly your presence and your love. "

"But if I have given it to another--"

Again she put her hand on his lips. 

"But you have not. It is madness. You could not forget our life. Last night I lay alone in silence, with wide-open eyes, dreaming itall over again. This woman I know is more beautiful than I--threeyears younger; her hair is gold, mine the raven's. She is fair andfull and tall, and I am dark and small; but, Frank, dear, love ismore than eyes and hair and lips and form. We have been made onein our flesh and blood and inmost soul. There is no other man thanyou for me. There is no music save your voice. "

"Yet, if you feel this for me, and I thus wait in love on another, how can I live the lie?"

"Can you forget the sunlit days of our past?" she pleaded wistfully. "When you lay on the sands of the beach in old Virginia and heldmy hand while I read to you, idly dreaming through that wonderfulsummer before our first-born came sailing into port from God'sblue sea! You said I was beautiful then. And you were so tender andgracious in your strength. No other woman can ever be to you thisfirst girl-mother. "

Her voice melted into a sob. She tried to go on and bit her swollenlips. 

Then she rose quietly, and walked to the window and looked down atthe city below, whose roar had drowned the music of her life. 

He sat silent, waiting for her to regain her strength. He knewthat he had the power of hypnotic suggestion over her in his ironwill, and that she was beginning to recognise the inevitable. 

She turned and faced him again, the hungry fires in her eyesburning with mystic radiance. A tiny stream of blood ran down fromher lip and stood in the dimple of her chin. She drew a delicatelace handkerchief from her bosom and wiped the blood away until itceased to flow. And then in low accents she said:

"You are going to leave me, my love. I feel the cold chill on myheart. It is God's will; I bow to it. One look into your dear eyes, one last embrace, one farewell kiss, and you will be gone. A littlegift I will make you in this, the saddest, lowliest hour my soulhas ever known. This handkerchief, stained with blood from lipsyou have kissed so tenderly in the past--that bled to-day becauseI tried to keep back the cries of a broken heart. I ask that youkeep this as a token of my love. "

She handed it to him and Gordon placed it in his pocket with asigh, brushing a tear from his own eyes. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE VOICE OF THE SIREN

Gordon left the house with a lingering look at Ruth's windowand turned his face toward Gramercy Park, where another woman waswaiting for his footstep. 

He had suffered intensely in the scene with his wife. He did notbelieve it possible that she retained such power over him. He drewa deep breath of relief that it was over. Her pride would cometo the rescue; for he knew that with her tenderness she combinedstrength, and with her delicacy, supreme energy. 

The exaltation of his great victory of yesterday welled within himand drowned the sense of pain. It had been the most momentous dayof his life. Visions of his Temple with gorgeous dome of gold--risingin the sky from its pile of gleaming marble rose before his fancy. He could hear the peal of the grand organ, the swell of the choruschoir, and the response from five thousand eager faces before him. He was speaking with inspiration as never before. He was leadingnot a forlorn hope against overwhelming odds, but a triumphant hostof free, godlike men and women to certain victory. 

He thought of the love that filled the heart of the woman to whomhe was hurrying, that she should do this unheard of thing whileyet breathing the breath of the capital of Mammon. 

And then there stole over him, as oil on slumbering fires, thememory of her kisses, the melting languor of her eyes, the odourof her hair, the fever of her creamy flesh, until his senses reeledas drunk with wine. A smile played about his lips; he quickened hispace, lifted his head high, his nostrils dilated wide; he lookeddreamily over the housetops into the sky and saw only the face ofa woman. 

He was in the grip of superhuman impulses. In the quickened throbof his heart and the rush of his blood was the sweep of subconsciousforces of nature playing their role in the cosmic drama of allsentient life, laughing at man's laws, making and unmaking thehistory of races and worlds. 

He was justifying his desires now in his new-found Social philosophy, which he had studied closely since Overman's suggestion of itsscope. 

He knew instinctively that between these elemental impulses andthe Moral Law there was war. He would reconcile them by leading arevolution that should decree a new basis for the Moral Law itself. He would make these very subconscious forces the expression of thehighest Moral Law. It suddenly flashed over him that this was thekey to the paradox of life. He would be the prophet of the new era, and this beautiful woman his comrade in leadership in the SocialRevolution it must bring. 

His face flushed with the new enthusiasm, and the glorious autumnday about him seemed one with his spirit. The sky was cloudlesswith fresh breezes sweeping over the seas from the south. 

When he stepped to the downtown platform his eye wandered up anddown Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue and lingered on riversof women, below. 

His own drama, his million-dollar gift, the enormous sensation ithad made in the morning press, had not produced a ripple on thisswirling tide of flesh. They crowded the windows filled with feathersand hats, elbowed and jostled one another on the pavements, pushedand squeezed and trampled each other's feet and skirts fightingfor standing room around the Monday bargain counters, oblivious ofthe existence of the spiritual world, church, God, or devil. 

Again the ceaseless roar of the city, calm and fierce as the sea, one with its eternity of life, stunned him with its immensity andits indifference. He felt himself once more but an atom lost inthe surging tides that beat on these stone pavements, worn by thesurge of myriads dead and waiting for the throb of hosts unborn. What did they care? If he were to drop dead that moment, in themorning of his manhood, with the shout of victory on his lips, theywould not lift an eye from their gaze on hat or ribbon to watchhis funeral cortege trot to the cemetery. A brief obituary and hewould be forgotten. 

"After all, " he mused, "Nature will have her way about this oldworld and its destiny. Self-development is the first law of life, not self-effacement. "

His brow clouded for a moment as he recalled Kate's strange reserveand shrinking at his morning visit. Would she, womanlike, at thelast moment contradict herself and withhold the full surrender oflife? It was impossible, and yet he felt a vague fear. At any rate, he had burned the bridges behind. His way was clear. He would bringto bear every power he possessed to win her, and in the vanity ofhis powerful manhood he laughed with the certainty of victory. 

When he greeted Kate and bent to kiss her she drew back, blushedand firmly said:

"No; we have had our moments of madness. "

And the man smiled. 

"I mean it, " she said, shaking her head. 

"You will change your mind. It's a woman's way. Those moments ofbliss, so intense it was pain, when our souls and bodies met in akiss, have made a new world for you and me. "

"But we will keep ourselves pure and unspotted, " she answeredslowly. "All night I fought this battle alone. Our love is a hopelesstragedy. "

"It shall not be so for you, my shining one. "

"There are others, " she said, nervously clasping her hands, "whoselives are linked with ours. The face of your wife I saw last nightwill forever haunt me with its pathos. I've seen your childrenonce--so like you, and yet so like her. "

"Even so. Life has no meaning now except that you are mine and Iam yours. "

"But may you not be mine in a nobler way than the cheap surrenderto our senses? We can love and suffer and wait. You love me. It isenough. "

"But, Kate, my dear, there can be no middle course between rightand wrong, a lie and the truth. "

She fixed on him an intense look. 

"Have you told her?"

"Yes, and we have separated as man and wife. She leaves for Floridafor the winter. She has agreed at my request to secure a divorce, and you and I will marry under the new forms of Social freedom. Our union will be a prophecy of the revolution that shall redeemsociety. "

"You are doing a great wrong, " she protested, her full red lipsdrawn with pain. "When I think of your wife and children, of hertears and reproaches, I am sick with fear. "

"Perfect love will cast out fear. The world is large. The soul islarge. Lift up your head and be yourself. You said to me in thisroom once you were not afraid. "

"Yes; I had not kissed you then, or felt the bliss and agony of yourstrong arms about me. Now, I am afraid of you"--her voice sank toa tense whisper--"and I am afraid of myself!"

He seized her hand. 

"You will take the risk. You are cast in such a mould, " he said, with ringing assurance. "You are the chosen one, my dauntlesscomrade in a holy crusade. We will call womanhood from enslavementto form, ceremony and tradition, in which the brute nature of manhas bound her, out and up into her larger self, the mate and equalof man. "

She shook her head, and her hair began to fall in waving ringletsabout her forehead, temples and neck. 

"I am afraid. I cannot permit this sacrifice on your part. You mustbreak with society, your friends, your father, your past, your wifeand children. I must brave the sneers of gossip and the tongue ofslander. It will destroy your work and end your career. "

"It will give it grander scope. Back of the dead forms of the age, the living heart of a new life is beating. It will burst its boundsas surely as the dead limbs in that park will in spring put on theirshimmering satin which Nature is now weaving in her mills beneaththe sod. You and I will open the doors of the soul and body to anew and wider life. And, after all, the body is the soul. I knowit as I drink the madness of your beauty. "

"I do not fear the world so much, I shrink from striking a womana mortal blow. I know what it is to love now, " she insisted sadly. 

"Ruth and I have grown out of each other's life. Besides, you donot know her. Beneath her little form are caged powers you have notguessed, " he replied, with a curious smile. "I groan and bellow inpain until you can hear me a mile. It is my way. She can take herplace on the cold slab of a surgeon's table, feel the crash ofsteel through nerve and muscle and artery without a groan. I mightrave, commit suicide or murder in a tempest of passion, but markmy word, she will lift her lithe figure erect and, with soft, evenfootstep, go her way. "

He said this with a ring of tender pride, as though she were hischild about whom he was boasting. 

"I believe you love her still, " Kate said, flushing with a look ofsurprise. 

"You know her love could not live in the fires with which my eyesare consuming you, " he said with intensity. 

She lowered her gaze and glanced uneasily about as though afraidof him. 

"Must the strength of manhood be forever throttled by the impulsesand mistakes of youth? Great changes in society are impending. Youhave felt it. The whole world is trembling at their coming. Changesin the forms of marriage must come that shall give scope for ourhighest development. I ask you to enter with me into this new worldas a comrade pioneer and priestess. We will enter into a marriageso free, so spontaneous no chains shall gall it; and yet in thebreadth of its freedom so sweet, so strong, so harmonious it willbe a sublime revelation to the world. "

"And you think me fit for such priesthood?" she asked. "There arehidden fires beneath this form you deem so fair. I have never knownrestraint except in the willing slavery of your love. You do notknow me--I warn you. I did not know myself until I felt the madrush of blood from my heart in your arms yesterday. I am afraid ofthis woman I met for the first time in the wild joy of your kiss. "

"I'm not afraid of you, " he laughed, springing to his feet andstriding toward her. 

She trembled at his approach, but did not protest except with ahelpless look in her violet eyes. 

He stood for a moment towering over her, his feet braced apart, hisbig hands fiercely locked, his wide chest heaving with the exultantjoy of the mastery of her life, his steel-gray eyes sparkling withthe insolence of strength. 

"We were born for one another, " he said, in low, burning tones. "It was for me you were waiting. Lo! I am here, and you are mine. In you I have seen the ideal that haunts every full-grown man'ssoul, of comradeship in every work, sympathy with every hope, theglory of a perfect body, and perfect faith with perfect freedom. "

"And you see all this in me?" she asked earnestly. 

"Yes. You are my affinity, nerve answering nerve, thought echoingthought. In our union I see a love so strong, of such utter surrender, of such devotion of intellect, such mystic enthusiasm and physicaljoy, its waves must break in ecstasy on our souls forever. "

She arose with a sigh, looked appealingly at him, and her lipsmechanically said:

"It is wrong. "

But the man saw the flash of unutterable love in her eyes and thetender smile about her full lips; and laughing aloud, he took herdeliberately in his arms. 

He kissed a tear from her lashes. A tremor shook her splendid form, she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, slipped her arms around hisneck and sighed:

"My darling!"

CHAPTER XV

GOEST THOU TO SEE A WOMAN?

Again Gordon was seated in Overman's library and his single eyewas asking some uncomfortable questions. 

"I sent for you, Frank, because I discovered by accident, inthe office of a newspaper of which I am a stockholder, that somecurious things are going on between you and a young woman of yourcongregation. I put two and two together, and I've guessed thesecret of your Temple. There's more behind all this than religiousenthusiasm. That gift was not laid on God's altar, but on the altarof one of his little images here below. Out with it. You can't foolme. "

"Well, your guess is correct. She gave the money. I love herand she loves me. Ruth will go South for the winter, and we haveseparated. A divorce will be obtained in due time, and I will marryMiss Ransom under the new forms of Social Freedom, and you will bemy best man. "

"Not on your life, " Overman slowly growled, bringing his enormousjaws together and twisting the muscles of his mouth upward as thoughhe smelled something. 

"Can't stand the rustle of a woman's dress?"

"Oh, I might survive. You know they say the only really happy peopleat a wedding are the old bachelors. "

"Then why not?"

"I draw the line at the progressive harem idea. "

"And a bachelor?" Gordon sneered. 

Overman nodded. "Many things may be forgiven sinners, but a bishopmust be the husband of one wife. "

"I'm not a bishop. I'm a man. I ask no quarter of my enemies. "

"You have but one enemy. You can see him in the mirror any time. "

"It's funny to hear you preach!"

The banker bent forward. 

"Frank, you're joking. You don't mean to tell me that your Socialistpoppy plant has borne its opium fruit so soon? That you are goingto desert that charming little woman, shy, timid and tremulous, with her great soulful eyes, the bride of your youth, the motherof your babes, and take up with another woman, just as any ordinarycur has done now and then for the past four thousand years?"

Gordon winced. 

"No. I am going to form a union with this beautiful woman whichshall be a prophecy and a propaganda of the freedom of the race, when comrade life shall forget the ancient fears, each shall befree to find and love his own, love be loosed from tragedy, doubtor moan, each life be its own, original and masterful, each man agod, arrayed and beautiful!"

Overman laughed softly. 

"So fine as that? You're great on the frills. You have dressed itup nicely. But when two of your man-gods, arrayed and beautiful, get their eyes, set on the same woman-god, still more beautiful, arrayed or unarrayed, you'll hear the rattle of the police wagonin the streets of Heaven, with the ambulance close behind. "

The banker grinned and fixed his eye on his friend with a quizzicallook. 

"Don't be a monkey, " Gordon scowled. 

"Why not? You propose to go back to forest life. "

"I propose to make human society a vast brotherhood, " the preachercried, with a wave of his arm. 

"Well, don't forget that Cain killed his brother Abel for less thana woman's smile. "

"Society is lost unless some great upheaval shall clear the rubbishand we build new foundations on truth and fellowship and freedom. "

Overman put his hand on Gordon's knee. 

"Frank, I'm a godless, crusty bachelor, but I read history. Destroythe integrity of the family and the salt of the earth is lost. Thewhole thing will rot. "

"But I propose to purify and glorify the home its life by buildingit on love. "

"Your dream's a fake and its world peopled with fools. "

"Love must conquer all, " the dreamer insisted. 

"And to do it, Frank, it must begin at home. You are blinded by awoman's beauty. "

"No; I love her with the one master passion of manhood. Such loveis itself the highest expression of life. "

"Confound you, " snapped Overman, "love as many women as youplease, but don't desert your wife and children. It's too vulgar. I'm ashamed of you. "

"I will not live a lie, " Gordon said, with emphasis. 

"Strange madness. I urge you to tell a tiny little polite lie andsave your wife and children. You're too good to lie, so you kill yourwife, proclaim an insane crusade of lust, and call it a religion!"

"We can't control the beat of our hearts, " was the dreamy reply. 

"No, you can't; but you can control the stroke of your big, blue-veinedfist! You have struck the mother of your children with your bruteclaws. It's a mean, low thing to do, call it by as many high namesas you please. Love as many women as you like, but for decency'ssake--can't you honour your wife with a polite lie?"

"It's not in me to lie, or to love but one woman. "

The banker's massive shoulders went up and his bushy brows lifted. 

"You'll end with a dozen, and it's such a stupid old story. Youthink the performance an original drama in which you are playinga star role. It's as old as the brute beneath the skin of your bighairy hand. Alexander could conquer the world, but he died in drunkenrevelry with a worthless woman. Caesar and Mark Antony forgot theRoman Empire for the smile of Cleopatra. Frederick the Great becamea puppet in the hands of a ballet dancer. She spoke and he obeyed. Conde, in the meridian of his splendid manhood, the pride and gloryof France, sacrificed his family, his fortune and his friends foran adventuress, who murdered him. Charles Stewart Parnell, theuncrowned king of Ireland, forgot his people and stumbled intodeath and oblivion over the form of a woman. The hills and valleysof the centuries are white with the bones of these fools. "

"There was never a case just like mine. "

"So every fool thought. "

"But you have not seen this woman. You do not know her, " Gordonprotested, hotly. 

"No; and I don't want to know her. 'Goest thou to see a woman? Takethy whip!' Women, savages and children are inferior and immatureforms of evolution. But they are going to prove more than a matchfor you, my boy. "

"Yes; I've heard you talk such rubbish before, " Gordon replied, dreamily. "Mark, I'm sorry for the poverty of your life. The manwho has not loved is not a man. He is a monstrosity out of touchof sympathy with the race. You cannot understand me when I tellyou that our love is so pure, so wonderful, so perfect, it is itsown defense. "

"Indeed! Which love? For Ruth or Kate? Frank, I marvel at thechildlike simplicity of your folly and your mental antics to justifyit. It's enough to make that cat laugh that broke up your sermon. "

"We are going to bear in our union and life the flaming standardof a revolution that will yet redeem society. "

"I admire your ingenuity. Just a plain rooster-fighting sinner likeme would never have thought of making his sin a holy religion. Youhaven't studied theology for nothing. I'll bet you could argue thedevil or the Archangel Michael to a standstill on any propositionyou'd set your heart on. "

The preacher smiled. 

"I never saw my course with greater clearness. "

"Yes; but a nail in the pilot-house will draw the needle and drivethe mightiest ocean greyhound on the rocks with the captain at thewheel dead sure of his course. "

"Mark, it's utterly useless to talk. You and I are miles apart atour starting-point and we get farther with every step. You look atit from the vulgar point of view of the world. What I am doing isa great act of the soul, a breaking of bonds and chains. You seeonly the body. I am going to lead a crusade that shall so purifyand exalt the body that it shall become one with the soul. Thefreedom of man can only be attained in unfettered fellowship, andthis beautiful woman will be with me a comrade priestess to teachthe world this sublime truth. "

"And will you be the only priest with her in the Temple of Humanity?"asked the banker, quizzically. 

Gordon laughed with insolent assurance. 

"In her eyes, yes. "

"But other men have eyes. "

"Their gaze will not disturb the serenity of our love, because itwill be built on oneness of ideal, hope, faith, taste and work. "

"And yet dark hair loves the blond, and blue eyes hunger for thebrown. It's an old trick Nature has played before, Frank. "

"Well, we are going to show you a miracle, and you are coming withus by and by and be a deacon in this Church of the Son of Man. "

Overman drew his straight bushy brow down over his one eye untilit looked like the gleam of a lighthouse through the woods, turnedhis head sideways, peered at his friend and growled:

"Well, you are a fool!"

"I have faith that will remove mountains. "

"You'll need it. I've been waiting for a church in New York broadenough to invite the devil to join. I'll come when it's ready. "

"Good. We'll give you a welcome. "

Overman grunted, and gazed into the fire with his single eye, frowning and twisting the muscles of his mouth into a sneer. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE PARTING

The night before the day Gordon had fixed for their final partingRuth slept but little. The task of gathering his things scatteredabout the house was harder than she had hoped. 

Over each little trinket that spoke its message of the tenderintimacy of married life she had lingered and cried. She wished tokeep everything. 

At last she placed the clothes in his trunk, his collars, cuffs, cravats and such odds and ends as he would need at once, and therest she packed away carefully in bureau drawers and locked themup. 

His slippers and dressing-gowns she knew he would want, but she madeup her mind she would keep them. The slippers were an old-fashionedpattern with quaint Spanish embroidery worked around the edges. Shehad made the first pair before they were married, with her girl'sheart fluttering with new-found happiness. She had allowed himno other kind since their marriage. This bit of sentiment she hadguarded even in the darkest days of the past year's estrangement. She had worked each pair with her own hand. 

His dressing-gowns, in which he often studied at home in her roomlate on Saturday nights, she had always made for him, changingtheir designs from time to time as her fancy had led her. 

Around these two articles of his wardrobe her very heart-stringsseemed woven. 

She placed them in his trunk once, telling herself through hertears:

"He may think of me when he sees them. "

Then the lightning flashed across the clouds in her eyes. 

"She might touch them! Let her make them for him after her owndevil's fancy!"

She took them out, kissed them and packed them away. His pictureshe took down carefully from the walls, his photographs from hermantel and bureau and dresser. The life-sized one she locked in acloset and packed the others with his belongings she meant to keep. 

On a wedding certificate, set in a quaint old gold frame, she lookedlong and tenderly. She took it down from its place over her bureau, where it had hung for years, and brushed the dust from the back. Onits broad white margins he had written a poem to her on the birthof their first baby. He had sent her yards of rhymes during theircourtship, but this was a poem. Every line was wet with his tears, and every thought throbbed with the sweetest music of his soulwrought to its highest tension of feeling. 

She read it over and over again and cried as though her heart wouldbreak as a thousand tender memories came stealing back from theirearly married life. 

"Oh, dear God!" she sobbed. "How could he have felt that--and hedid feel it--and now desert me!"

She sat for an hour with this framed emblem of her happiness andher sorrow in her hands, dreaming of their past. 

She was a girl again in old Hampton, Virginia, her heart alla-quiver over a ball at the Hygeia, where she was to meet a guest, a distinguished young preacher resting for the summer just fromhis divinity course. He had seen her in the crowd at the hoteland begged a friend to introduce him. She was going to meet him inthe parlours, dressed in the splendour of her ballroom dress thatnight, and conquer this handsome young giant. And from the momentthey met, she was the conquered, and he the conqueror. 

The incense of their honeymoon in a village of southern Indianaduring his first pastorate, when the wonder of love made stormdays bright with splendour and clothed in beauty the meanest clodof earth, stole over her soul--each memory added to her pain, andyet they were sweet. She hugged them to her heart. 

"They are all mine at least!" she sighed. "And I am glad I havelived them. "

At two o'clock she went into the nursery and looked at the sleepingchildren. She bent over the cradle of the boy. He was dreaming, and a smile was playing about the corners of his lips. 

He was so like Gordon, with his little mouth twitching in dreamylaughter, she fell on her knees, and buried her face in her delicatetapering hands, crying:

"How can I bear it!"

She placed her arms on the rail of the cradle and gazed at himtenderly. 

"Lord, keep him clean and pure, and whatever he may do in life, may he never break a woman's heart!" she softly prayed. 

Into her first-born's face she looked long and in silence. Howlike her, and how like him, and how marvelous the miracle of thisunion of flesh and blood and spirit in a living soul! Lucy wasgrowing more like her every day. She could see and hear herself inher ways and voice, until she would laugh aloud sometimes at thememory of her own childhood. And yet to see her very self growinginto the startling image of her lover who was deserting her cutanew with stinging power. 

Again she was softly praying: "Dear Lord, whatever shall come toher, poverty or riches, joy or pain, honour or shame, sunshine orshadow, save her from this. My feet will climb this Calvary, andmy lips drink its gall, but may the cup pass from her!"

After a few hours of fitful sleep, she rose and looked out herwindow on another radiant November morning. So clear was the sky shecould see the flag-staffs of the great downtown buildings and backof them in the distant bay the pennant masts of ships at anchor. The trees in Central Park seemed to glow with the splendour of thedying autumn's sun. The glory of the day mocked her sorrow. 

"What does Nature care?" she sighed. "And yet who knows, it may bea token! I must bravely play my part and leave the rest with God. "

Watching at the window she saw Gordon coming, his broad feetmeasuring a giant's stride, his wide shoulders and magnificent headhigh with unconscious strength. 

She wondered if he would stop in the parlour as a visitor or cometo her room as was his custom, and a sharp pain cut her with thethought of their changed relationship. 

He stopped in the hall, asked the maid to send the children downat once, and stepped into the parlour. 

He felt a strange embarrassment in his own home. This house he hadbought for Ruth soon after their arrival in New York. It had justbeen built in the wide-open space of the cliffs on Washington Heights. The Pilgrim Church's members were long since scattered over everyquarter of the city, and, by arranging his study in the church, he was able to have his home so far removed from the noise of thedowntown district. He had thus fulfilled Ruth's passionate desirefor a home of her own within their moderate means. He recallednow with tender melancholy how happy they had been decorating thislittle nest, and how far from his wildest dream had been such anending of it all. 

But he had come with important news, and he hoped her pain wouldbe softened by its announcement. 

The children entered with shouts of delight. First one would hughim, and then the other, and then both would try at the same time. 

Lucy put her hands on his smooth ruddy cheeks and kissed his lipsand eyes with the quaintest imitation of her mother's trick ofgesture. 

"Where have you been, Papa? We thought you were never coming? Mamasaid you were gone for a trip and would come to-day, but"--her voicesank--"she's been crying, and crying, and we don't know what's thematter. I'm so glad you've come. "

"Well, you and brother run upstairs to play and tell her Papa wishesto see her. "

The children left and Ruth came down at once. 

As she entered the room, he was struck by the change in her faceand manner. She seemed transfigured by a strange, spiritual elation. She was gracious, natural and friendly. The anxiety had passedfrom her face, and the storm in her dark eyes seemed stilled by asteady radiance from the soul. 

"I'm glad to see you looking better, Ruth, " he said, with feeling. 

"Yes, I have a new standard now of measuring life, its pain andits joy. The soul can only pass once through such a moment as thatI lived, prostrate on the floor at your feet last Monday. I havelooked Death in the face. I am no longer afraid. "

"I am very, very sorry to give you such pain. I did not think youcared so deeply, " he said, gently. 

"Yes, I know I have seemed indifferent and resentful for the pastyear. I thought you would come back to your old self by and by. In my poor proud soul I thought I was punishing you. How little, dear, I dreamed of this! The thought of really losing you neveronce entered my heart. It was unthinkable. I do not believe it yet. Such love as ours, such tenderness and devotion as you gave to meonce, the delirium of love's joy that found itself in my motherhoodand wrought itself in the forms of our babies--no, Frank, it cannotdie, unless God dies! And I shall not lose you at last, unless Godforgets me, and He will not. "

Her face, even through her tears, was illumined by an assurance sostrong, so prophetic, the man was startled. 

"I need not tell you, Ruth, that I desire your happiness. And, strangeas it may seem to you, Miss Ransom regards you with tenderness. "

The dark eyes flashed a gleam of lightning from their depths. 

"Thanks. I can live without her maudlin pity. "

"You misjudge her, " he cried, raising his hand. 

"Perhaps; but I'll ask you, Frank, not to dishonour me, or thislittle home you were once good enough to give to me, by mentioningthat woman's name within its doors again. "

The sensitive mouth closed with an emphasis he could not mistake. 

"But I am the bearer from her to-day of a token of her regard. She has determined to turn over to you as quickly as possible ahalf-million dollars of her remaining fortune. "

Ruth sprang to her feet, her face scarlet, her breast heaving, herlithe figure erect and trembling. 

"And you dare bring this message to me? This offer to sell myhusband and my love!"

"Come, come, Ruth, a woman has no need to sacrifice a great fortunein New York for a husband. They are cheaper than that. "

"They do seem cheap, " she answered, bitterly. 

"You should have common sense. The spirit of sacrifice in this greatgift to you and the children is too deep and honest to be met witha sneer. It is my desire and hers that you shall be forever beyondwant. "

Ruth's face softened and a tender smile lit it once more. 

"Frank, my darling, you cannot think me so base? You know there isnot a drop of mean blood in me. Can gold pay for my heart's desire?The price for my beloved? Pile the earth with diamonds to the stars, I'd hold it trash for the touch of your hand!"

The man moved nervously. 

"You must have some sense, Ruth. Surely, I'm not worth all this ifI leave you so. You must take this money. "

She moved closer to him and held up her delicate hands, with thesunlight gleaming through the red blood of her tapering fingers. 

"You see these hands? They have only known the gentle tasks of love. Well, I'll scrub, sew and wash the clothes of working-men beforeone dollar of her gold shall stain them!"

"You cannot be so foolish, " he protested, impatiently. "Besides, she has given me this money to give to you. "

"Ah, my love, " she went on, as though she had not heard his lastwords, "if you were frankly evil as other men, I might bear thisshame with better grace. Others before me, as good as I, haveborne its burden. But when I think that you are making your sin areligion, and that you are going to preach with the zeal of a prophetthis gospel of the brute and call it freedom, how can I bear it?"

They were both silent for a moment. 

"Let us change this disgusting subject, Frank, " she said at length. "I wish you to leave with something kindlier to remember in my facethan this shadow. You see, I have taken your pictures all down andlocked them up. I have placed your clothes, all I could spare, inyour trunk--for even these little things to me are heart treasuresnow. I could not let you take the slippers I have made for youwith my own hands, or your dressing-gowns. That woman shall nevertouch them. The marriage certificate, with the little poem writtento me on the birth of Lucy, I've packed up, too, with your pictures. I've put them away, because, just now, it would break my heart tolook at them after this parting with you. When I come back fromthe South I will be stronger, and I will bring them out again. Yourring is mine until God's hand shall take it. I'll teach our babiesalways to love you. "

Her voice broke, and he looked away. 

"I will tell them that you have gone on a long journey into a strangecountry, and that you will come back again because you love them. "

He stirred uneasily in his chair, crossed his legs and frowned. 

"And I wish you to leave me to-day with the certainty--you canread it in my eyes, if you doubt my lips--that I will love you tothe end, though you kill me. You can go on no journey so long, inno world so strange, that I shall not follow. My soul will envelopyou. For better, for worse, through evil report and good report, I am yours. "

Again a convulsive sob shook her, and she was silent. 

Gordon felt an almost resistless impulse to take her in his armsand kiss and soothe her. 

Through her tears she smiled at him. 

"How beautiful you are, my dear! You will not forget that I love you?The spring, the summer, the autumn, the winter will only bring tome messages from our past. The way will be lonely, but the memory ofthe touch of your hand, our hours of perfect peace and trustfulness, the sweetness of your kisses on my lips, the living pictures ofyour face in our children, I will cherish. "

He stooped to kiss her as he left, but she drew back trembling. 

"No, Frank, not while your lips are warm with the touch of anotherand your flesh on fire with desire for her. It will be sweet toremember that you wished it--for I know, what you do not, that deepdown in your soul of souls you love me. I will abide God's time. "

He left her with a smile playing around her sensitive mouth andlighting the shadows of her great dark eyes. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE THOUGHT THAT SWEEPS THE CENTURY

On the Saturday following Gordon's drama with Kate and his wife, his dream of secrecy was rudely shattered. Van Meter's ferret eyes, by the aid of his detectives, had fathomed the mystery of KateRansom's appearance in the study and her more mysterious disappearance. 

They found that Gordon had separated from his wife, after a terrificscene; that he was a daily visitor to the Ransom house; and thathis great patron was none other than the young mistress of theGramercy Park mansion. 

All day long he was beseiged by reporters. Ruth was compelled tohire a man to stand on the doorstep to keep them out. The Ransomhouse was barred, but Gordon could not escape. 

He saw at once that they knew so much it was useless to make denials, and he prepared a statement for the press, giving the facts and hisplans for the future in a ringing address. He submitted it to Katefor her approval, and at three o'clock gave it out for publication. 

Their love secret had not been fathomed, but it had been guessed. He feared the reports would be so written that it would be readbetween the lines and a great deal more implied. 

His revolutionary views on marriage and divorce and the fact thathe was from Indiana, a state that had granted the year before nearlyfive thousand divorces, one for every five marriages celebrated, --weremade the subject of special treatment by one paper. They submittedto him proofs of a six-column article on the subject, and askedfor his comments. He was compelled to either deny or repeat hisutterances advocating freedom of divorce, and finally was badgeredinto admitting that this feature was one of the fundamental tenetsof Socialism. 

He was not ready for the full public avowal of this principle, but he was driven to the wall and was forced to own it or lie. Heboldly gave his position, and declared that marriage was a fetish, andthat its basis on a union for life without regard to the feelingsof the parties was a fountain of corruption, and was the source ofthe monopolistic instincts that now cursed the human race. 

"Yes, and you can say, " he cried, "that I propose to lead a crusadefor the emancipation of women from the degradation of its slavery. Love bound by chains is not love. Love can only be a reality inFreedom and Fellowship. "

This single sentence had changed the colouring of the whole storyas it appeared in the press on Sunday morning, and was the key tothe tremendous sensation it produced. 

The next day long before the hour of service the street in frontof the Pilgrim Church was packed with a dense crowd. 

The police could scarcely clear the way for the members' entrance. Within ten minutes from the time the large doors were opened everyseat was filled and hundreds stood on the pavements outside, waitingdevelopments, unable to gain admission. 

So many statements had been made, and so many vicious insinuationshinted, Gordon was compelled to lay aside his sermon and devotethe entire hour to a defense of his position. 

The crowd listened in breathless stillness, but he knew from thefirst he had lost their sympathies and that he was on trial. Unableto tell the whole truth, his address was as lame and ineffectiveas his outburst the Sunday before had been resistless. When hedismissed the crowd he noticed that some of his warmest friendswere crying. 

As he came down from the pulpit, Ludlow took him by the hand and, with trembling voice, said:

"Pastor, you know how I love you?"

What he did not say was more eloquent than a thousand words, andit cut Gordon to his inmost soul. He knew his failure had beenpathetic, and that his enemies were laughing over the certainty ofhis ruin. 

It angered him for a moment as he looked over the silent crowdfiling out of his presence and out of his life. 

He cursed their stolid conservatism. 

"The average man does not aspire to liberty of thought, " he musedwith bitterness, "but slavery of thought. The mob must have itsfixed formulas easy to read, requiring no thought. Well, let themgo. "

Suddenly a confused murmur, with loud voices mingled, came throughthe doors of the vestibules. The exits were blocked, and the movingcrowd halted and recoiled on itself as if hurled back by the chargeof an opposing army, and a cheer echoed over their heads. 

The people inside, who had been halted, stretched their necks tosee over the heads of those in front, crying:

"What is it?"

"What's the matter?"

"It sounds like a riot, " some one answered near doors. 

Gordon wedged himself through the mass that had been thrown backon the advancing stream and reached the doorway. He was astonishedto find packed in the street more than five thousand men, evidentlyworking-men and Socialists. They had been quick to recognise hisposition in the vigorous statement he had given to the press. 

When Gordon's giant figure appeared between the two opposing forcesa wild cheer rent the air. 

A Socialist leaped on the steps beside him and, lifting his hatabove his head, cried:

"Now again, men, three times three for a dauntless leader, a freeman in the image of God, who dares to think and speak the truth!"

Three times the storm rolled over the sea of faces, and every hatwas in the air. 

Gordon lifted his big hand and the tumult hushed. 

"My friends, I thank you for this mark of your fellowship. At theold Grand Opera House, next Sunday morning, the seats will be yours. You will get a comrade's welcome. I will have something to say toyou that may be worth your while to hear. "

The crowd, who had never seen or heard him, were impressed by hismagnificent presence and his trumpet voice. They liked its clearringing tones and its consciousness of power. 

The unexpected demonstration restored his self-respect and blottedout the aching sense of failure. 

His few words were greeted with tumultuous applause, renewed againand again. The air was charged with the electric thrill of theirenthusiasm. 

Gordon looked over the seething mass of excited men with exultantresponse. 

He flushed and his big fists involuntarily closed. He had felt inhis face the breath of the spirit that is driving the century beforeit. 

CHAPTER XVIII

A VOICE FROM THE PAST

From a college town in Indiana the aged father, William Gordon, Professor Emeritus of History and Belles Lettres, hurried to NewYork to see his son. 

When he read the Sunday morning papers, which reached him aboutthree o'clock, he pooh-poohed the wild reports the Associated Presshad sent out from New York announcing the separation from Ruth andlinking his son's name in vulgar insinuations with another woman. 

He hastened to find the telegraph operator, and got him to openthe office. He sent a long telegram to Frank, urging on him theimportance of correcting these slanderous reports immediately. 

He walked about the town to see his friends and explain to them. 

"It's all a base slander, " he said, drawing himself up proudly. "Myson's success has been so phenomenal, he has made bitter enemies. The press has published these lies out of malice. His popularityis the cause of it. I have wired him. He will correct it immediately. "

But when he failed to receive a denial, and the Monday's pressconfirmed the facts with embellishments, he quietly left home andhastened to New York. 

He was a man of striking personality, a little taller than hisdistinguished son, six feet four and a half inches in height. Now, in his eighty-fifth year, he still walked with quick, nervous step, and held himself erect with military bearing. His face was smoothand ruddy, and his voice, in contrast with his enormous body, waskeen and penetrating. When he rose in a church assembly his commandingfigure, with its high nervous voice, caught every eye and ear andheld them to the last word. 

He was the most popular man that had ever occupied a chair in thefaculty of Wabash College. He taught his classes regularly untilhe was eighty years old, and when he quit his active work he wasstill the youngest man in spirit in the institution. He read withavidity every new book on serious themes, and he was not only thebest read man in the college town--he was the best informed manon history and philosophy in the state, if not in the entire West. He had the gift of sympathy with the mind of youth that fascinatedevery boy who came in contact with him. His genial and beautifulmanners, his high sense of honour, the knightly deference he paidhis students, his enthusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge, hisquenchless thirst for truth, were to them a source of boundlessadmiration and loyalty. 

The one supreme passion of his age was love for his handsome sonand pride in his achievements. He had married late in life, andFrank's mother had died in giving him birth. The tragedy had crushedhim for a year and he went abroad, leaving the child with a nurse. But on his return he gave to the laughing baby, with the blondcurling hair of his mother, all the tenderness of his love for thedead, and his sorrow tinged his whole after life with sweetnessand romance. 

The only evidence of advancing age was his absentmindedness fromboylike brooding over the days of his courtship and marriage andhis day dreams about his long-lost love. He recognised it at onceand laid down his class work. 

Gordon met him at the Grand Central Depot with keenest dread andembarrassment. Hurrying out of the crowd, they boarded a downtowncar on Fourth Avenue. 

The old man glanced uneasily about and said:

"Son, isn't this car going down the avenue?"

"Yes, father. We are going to my hotel. "

"Hotel? I don't want to go to a hotel. I want to go to your house. I want to see Ruth and the children at once. "

"We'll go to my study at the church first, then, and I'll explainto you. "

The old man's brow wrinkled, and he pressed his lips tightly togetherto keep them from trembling. 

Gordon was glad he had not yet given orders for the removal of hisstudy, and when they entered he drew the lid of his roll-top deskdown quickly, that his father might not see Kate's picture wherehe had once seen Ruth's. 

"Of course, my boy, " the old man began, "I know there is someterrible mistake about this. I told my friends so at the College. But I couldn't wait for a letter, and I couldn't somehow understandyour telegram. I'm getting a little old now, so I hurried on tosee you. I'm sure if you and Ruth have quarreled you can make upand begin over again. Lovers' quarrels are not so serious. "

"No, father, our separation is final. "

The old man raised his hand in protest. 

"Nonsense, boy, you have an iron will and Ruth a fiery temper, buta more lovable and beautiful spirit was never born than your wife. I was so proud of her when you brought her home! Of all the womenin the world, I felt she was The One Woman God had meant for themother of your children. In every way, mentally and physically, sheis your complement and mate. Your differences only make the neededcontrast for perfect happiness. "

"But we have drifted hopelessly apart, father, "

"My son, the man and woman whom God hath made one in the beat ofa child's heart cannot get hopelessly apart. It's a physical andmoral impossibility. Do you mean to tell me that if your motherhad lived after your birth, and we had bowed together over yourcradle, height or depth, things past, present or to come, or anyother creature, could have torn us asunder? You must make up thisfoolish quarrel. You must be patient with her little jealousies. It's natural she should feel them when you are the centre of somany flattering eyes. "

Gordon saw it was useless to avoid the heart of the difficulty. So with all the earnestness and eloquence he could command he toldhis father the history of Kate Ransom's work in the church, thegrowth of their love, the drifting apart from Ruth, and the finaldramatic climax of the day that she gave the money to build theTemple. 

The old man with fine courtesy listened attentively, now and thenbrushing away a tear, and sighing. 

"And so, father, " he concluded, "a divorce is the only possibleend of it all. "

"And what has Ruth to say?" he asked, pathetically. 

"She has accepted the situation, and at my request will bring thesuit. "

"And you will marry this other woman while Ruth lives?"

"Yes, father, and our union will be a prophecy of a redeemed societyin which love, fellowship, Comradeship and brotherhood shall becomethe laws of life. "

The old man's brow wrinkled in pain. 

"But the family at which you aim this blow, my son, is the basisof all law, state, national, and international. It is the unitof society, the basis of civilisation itself. To destroy it is toreturn to the beast of the field. "

"It must be modified in the evolution of human freedom, father. "

"But, my son, it is the law of the Lord, and the law of the Lord isperfect!" the old man cried, with his voice quivering with anguishand yet in it the triumphant ring of the prophet and seer. 

"Yes, father, your view of the law, " the younger man quietlyanswered. 

"My boy, since man has written the story of his life, saint andseer, statesman and chieftain, philosopher and poet have all agreedon this. There can be nothing more certain than that my view istrue. "

"Just as men have agreed on delusions and traditions in theology, but you now see as clearly as I how foolish many of these thingsare. "

"But, my son, new theology or old theology, Bible or no Bible, Heaven or no Heaven, Hell or no Hell, God or no God, it is right todo right!" Again his high nervous voice rang like a silver trumpet. 

"I am trying to do right. "

"Yet greater wrong than this can no man do on earth--lead, captivatethe soul and body of a gracious and innocent girl, teach her themiracle of love in motherhood, and then desert her for a fairerand younger face. "

"But, father, I cannot live a lie. "

"Then you will cherish, honour, love and protect your wife untildeath; and the old marriage ceremony read, 'until death us depart. 'Your vow is eternal and goes beyond the physical incident of deathitself. "

"Yet how can I control the beat of my heart? We must go back tothe reality of Nature and her eternal laws, in spite of illusionsand theories, " maintained the younger man. 

"Ah, my boy, these things you call illusions I call the greatfaiths of our fathers, the revelation of God. Call them what youwill, even if we say they are illusions, they are blessed illusions. They are the steel bars behind which we have caged the crouching, blind and silent forces of nature, fierce, savage and cruel asdeath. "

His voice sank to a whisper, he leaned over and placed his tremblinghand on Gordon's arm and added:

"I once felt the impulse to kill a man. It was natural, elementaland all but overpowering. Remember that civilisation itself isimpossible without tradition. I know that progress is made onlyby its modification in growth. But growth is not destruction, andprogress is never backward to beast or savage. Marriage is not amere convention between a man and a woman, subject to the whim ofeither party. It is a divine social ordinance on which the structureof human civilisation has been reared. It cannot be broken withouttwo people's consent and the consent of society, and then only forgreat causes which have destroyed its meaning. "

"But I have begun to question, father, whether our civilisation iscivilised and worth preserving?"

"And would you civilise it by giving free rein to impulses of naturethat are subconscious, that lead direct to the reign of lust andmurder? Is not man more than brute? Has he not a soul? Is the spirita delusion? Ah, my boy, do you doubt my love?"

"I know that you love me. "

"Yes, with a love you cannot understand. You can touch no depths towhich I will not follow with that love. But I'd rather a thousandtimes see you cold in death than hear from your lips the awfulwords you have spoken in this room here this morning with the faceof Jesus looking down upon us from your walls. "

He seemed to sink into a stupor for several moments, and was silentas he gazed into the glowing grate. 

At length he said:

"You must take me to your house. I will spend a few days with Ruthand the children. "

Gordon could not face the meeting between his father and Ruth. Heaccompanied him to the door and gently bade him good-by, promisingto call the next day. 

A singularly beautiful love the old man had bestowed on Ruth, andshe on him; for he was resistless to all the young. When he kissedher as Frank's bride he seemed to have first fully recovered hisspirits from the shadows of his own tragedy. In her great softeyes with the lashes mirrored in their depths, her dimpled chinand sensitive mouth, her refined and timid nature, the grace anddelicacy of her footsteps, he saw come back into life his own lostlove. Above all, he was fascinated by her spiritual charm, hauntingand vivid. He had never tired of boasting of his son's charminglittle wife, and he loved her with a devotion as deep as that hegave his own flesh and blood. 

When she entered the room, in spite of his efforts at control, he burst into tears as he kissed her tenderly and slipped his armsoftly around her. 

"Ruth, my sweet daughter!" he sobbed. 

"Father, dear!"

"You must cheer up, my little one; I've come to help you. "

"You must not take it so hard, father. It will all come out forthe best. God is not dead; He will not forget me. I'm a tiny mitein body, but you know I've a valiant soul. You must cheer up. "

She led him gently to a seat. 

"I'll bring the children now; they'll be wild with joy when I tellthem grandfather is here. "

But at the sight of the children the old man broke completely downand sat with his great head sunk on his breast. 

He drew Ruth down and whispered:

"Take them away, dear. It's too much. I--can't see them now. "

When she returned from the nursery, he said:

"Come, Ruth, sit beside me and tell me about it, and I'll see myway clearer how to help you. "

She drew a stool beside his chair, leaned her head against hisknee, took one of his hands in hers, and, while his other strokedher raven hair, she gently and without reproach told him all. 

When she had finished, his eyes were heavy with grief beyond thepower of tears. 

"And my boy told you to--take--this--money, Ruth?" he slowly andsorrowfully asked. 

"Yes, father. "

"Do you know an honest lawyer, dear?"

"Yes; an old friend of mine, Morris King. "

"Call him over your telephone immediately, and take me to yourdesk. My fortune is not large, as the world reckons wealth--perhapsfifty thousand dollars carefully saved during the past thirty yearsof frugal living. It shall be yours, my dear. "

"But, father, you must not take it from yourself in your age!"

"Are you not my beloved daughter? And do not your babies call megrandfather? It's such a poor little thing I can do. I've enough inbank to last me to the journey's end, and I'll stay near to watchover you. I can have no other home now. "

The lawyer came within an hour, and the will was duly witnessed. 

He handed it to Ruth and she kissed and thanked him. 

He wandered about the house in a helpless sort of way for half anhour, sighing. His great shoulders for the first time in his longlife lost their military bearing and drooped heavily. 

Ruth watched him pace slowly back and forth with his hands foldedbehind him, his head sunk in a stupor of dull pain, wondering whatshe could do or say to cheer him, when he suddenly stopped and sankinto a heap on the floor. 

The doctor came and shook his head. 

"He may regain consciousness, Mrs. Gordon, but he cannot live. "

Ruth called the hotel and summoned Frank. He was out and did notget the message until five o'clock. When he reached the house, shewas by the bedside. The old man was holding her hand and talkingin a half-delirious way to his friends, explaining to them howimpossible that these wild reports could be true about his son. 

Soon after Gordon came he regained consciousness. Taking him bythe hand he said:

"Well, my boy, my work is done. I have fought a good fight. I havekept the faith. I love you always. You will not forget--right orwrong, you are my heart's blood and your mother's, dearer to me thanlife. When I go from this lump of clay, if you will open my breastyou will find an old man's broken heart, and across the rent yourname will be written in the ragged edges. How handsome you areto-night! How fair a lad you were! Such face and form and high-strungsoul, the heart of an ancient knight come back to earth, I used toboast! God's grace is wonderful, His ways past finding out. Whenwe seem forsaken, He is but preparing larger blessings on somegrander plan whose end we do not see. He is my shepherd; I shallnot want. He leadeth me--I rest in Him. "

As the twilight wrapped the great city in its gray shadows, slowlydeepening into night, he fell asleep. 

CHAPTER XIX

THE WEDDING OF THE ANNUNCIATION

At the end of a year from the death of Gordon's father the divorcewas granted, and Ruth elected to retain her married name. 

The Temple of Man was rapidly rising. The building fronted threehundred feet on each cross street. Its great steel-ribbed dome, modeled on the capitol at Washington, was slowly climbing into thesky from the centre to dominate the architecture of the Metropolitandistrict. 

The success of Gordon's meetings in the old Grand Opera House hadbeen enormous. Its four thousand seats were filled and every inchof standing-room the police would allow. The religious elementin Socialism had found in him its high priest. His eloquence, hismagnetism, his daring, his aggressive and radical instinct forleadership made him at once their idol. 

The prestige given him by the rapid building of his magnificentTemple in the heart of the wealth and splendour of the Metropolis, and the crush for admission by strangers who had read of him andhis work, were adding daily to his power. 

His bold avowal of love for Kate Ransom, and his determination towin and marry her by a new ceremony of "announcement, " which shouldchallenge the forms of civilisation, had stilled the tongue ofgossip and made him the hero of the sentimental. 

At the same time it had made him the object of bitter attack by theconservative forces of society, and the violence of these attacksdaily added importance to his every act. 

His triumphant appeal to the masses against the classes was makinghim a master spirit of the modern mob that has humbled king, emperor and pope, at whose breath statesmen tremble, and at whosefeet coward and sycophant of every cult cringe and fawn. 

With fierce enthusiasm he proclaimed, "Now is Eternity. To reachHeaven we must build a new earth, and lo! we are in Heaven. "

The response from sullen working-men who had hitherto held alooffrom Socialism and its leaders was remarkable. With the fiery zealof the pioneer of a religious movement he preached in season andout of season his new faith, and proselyted with success even amongthose who scoffed. 

He gave a new emphasis to the dogma of the Immanence of God, thecharming Pantheism of which appealed to the childlike minds of thepeople. With mystic fervour he proclaimed the unity of life, and inall and over all and working through all--God! In bud and flower, in sun and storm, in dewdrop and star, in man and beast, in souland body, the divine everywhere. As never before he glorified thebody and its beauty as the incarnation of God, His veritable image. The advent of every child he hailed as great a miracle as the birthof the Babe of Bethlehem. 

Life itself became an ever-growing wonder, and existence an infinitejoy. Gradually he began to ridicule the theology of "Sin. " "Sin" hedeclared a figment of the human mind. The sin which is the wilfuland persistent violation of known law he ignored. 

He proclaimed the advent of the Kingdom of Love universal, allembracing, all conquering. 

His marriage to Kate Ransom by the new ceremony he had devisedcommanded the attention of the world. Its romance, and the tragedyof a broken heart behind it, at once interested the average mind;and its social and religious challenge appealed to the thoughtful. 

It was announced to be a marriage without form or ceremony. Itwas celebrated on a Saturday evening, that his friends among theworking-men might attend. 

It was early in May. The grass was green behind the high iron barsof Gramercy Park, and the trees were putting on their new satinrobes. The air was warm with the sensuous languor of spring. Therain poured in torrents, but the Ransom mansion was a blaze of light, and a canopy with rubber roof stretched down the high brownstonesteps across the sidewalk to the curbing. 

It was past the appointed time, the last carriage had long sincesnapped its silver lock beside the awning, and still the bride andgroom tarried. The guests were assembled in the great parlours, and a band in the conservatory, from which floated the perfume offlowers in full bloom, was softly playing primitive love melodies, simple, tender and full of. Mysterious beauty. 

Besides the personal friends of the bride, the. Guests assembledwere a remarkable group. 

A churchless clergyman who had become a Socialist, and whose churchbuilding was for sale, was on hand to make the "Announcement. " Ahandsome poet, a disciple of William Morris and a man of internationalfame, was there. Socialists, Anarchists, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Buddhists, Communists, Single-Taxers, Walking Delegates, Presidentsof Labour-Unions, editors of Radical papers, Ethical gymnasts, andlecturers mingled in the throng. 

Kate refused to allow Gordon to see or speak to her before herentrance. They had agreed to make no elaborate preparations. Shewas to prepare no traditional wedding trousseau. They were simplyto stand by each other's side before their friends, greet themwith the announcement of their love and unity of life, and receivetheir congratulations. 

When she at length summoned Gordon, he was amazed to see her arrayedin the most magnificent conventional bridal dress he had ever seen. 

A frown clouded his brow for an instant, and then melted into asmile as his eyes feasted on the barbaric splendour of her beauty. 

She stood silent and thoughtful, with her arms folded in frontacross the lines of her voluptuous form, her head poised high, erect as an arrow. Her mass of dark red hair rolled upward in agreat curling wave from her face. From its crest a bunch of orangeblossoms gleamed, clasping the filmy veil which fell, a whitecascade, over the wilderness of delicate lace forming her train. She had turned half around, and this great train of shimmeringstuff enveloped her feet and swept out in graceful curve into theroom. The collar, which completely covered her rounded neck, wasmade of rows of linked opals, and a necklace of pearls rested onher beautiful breast, spreading out in heart shape, with a singlestrand encircling the neck. 

Her face was tragic in its seriousness. A new and charming melancholyshadowed her violet eyes, causing the heavy lashes to droop tilltheir shadows showed on the creamy velvet of her cheek. Her mouth, with scarlet lips drawn close, was earnest and solemn as he hadnever seen it. 

With the regal bearing of a queen she looked at him thoughtfullywithout a word. She was giving him his first lesson in perfectfreedom and perfect equality of will. She had changed her mind atthe last moment and determined to be the bride her girlhood dreamshad pictured. 

But the man saw only the ripened, luscious woman in the hour ofsupreme surrender, and gazed in rapture. So superb was her health, so rich and vital the splendid figure, no conventional art of bridalcostumer could confine or conceal the glory of its beauty. 

"You see, my beloved, " she said. "I am not going to promise toobey, so I have chosen with this old conceit to disobey your firstexpressed wish. Do you like me thus?"

"You are glorious!" he answered, smiling. 

"And my father will give me away, and you will place a ring on myhand when you make your little speech, before I respond. "

He bowed gracefully. "As you will, my dear. "

He would have promised anything. 

As they entered the hall leading to the crowded parlours, the organin the music-room suddenly burst into the strains of the WeddingMarch, and again she looked seriously into his face, and he laughed. 

"My beautiful rebel, I'll tame you in due time, never fear!"

"And you're not angry?"

"Angry? I am more madly in love than ever. "

And she flushed in triumph. 

When they had entered the room, the invalid father rose, pale andtrembling, and, in accordance with Kate's wishes, declared:

"My friends, I announce to you that I have given my daughter to bemarried unto this man. "

Gordon took her hot hand in his massive grasp and said:

"We believe, friends, in fellowship. We have asked you to-nightto share with us the sacrament of the unity of our lives which wethus announce. For years this unity has made us one. We thus makeit manifest unto the world. In the woman I have chosen as my comrade, behold the living soul of serene-browed Grecian goddess and Germanseeress of old, whose untamed eyes of primeval womanhood, theequal and the mate of man, proclaim the end of slave-marriage andthe dawn of perfect love. "

He placed the ring on her hand, and Kate responded:

"This is the day and the hour that we have chosen to announce toyou our union. "

The Socialist preacher said:

"We are here to-day, called by a sacrament, not in the conventionalsense, but in the elemental meaning of the word which reflects themind and the being of the Eternal. Human life incarnates God. Weare not met here to inaugurate a marriage. Words can add nothingto the sublime fact of the union of two souls. This is the supremesacrament of human experience. It proclaims its inherent divinity. This oneness no more begins to-day than God does. Time loses itsmeaning, but there is no yesterday or to-morrow in the harmony andrhythm of two such souls. Love holds all the years that have beenand are to be. 

"This is a day of joy--overflowing, unsullied, serene, a day ofhope, a day of faith. It is a day of courage and of cheer, and tothe world it speaks a gospel of freedom and fellowship. It proclaimsthe dawn of a higher life for all, the sanctity and omnipotenceof love. It asserts the elemental rights of man. These friends ofours announce to-day their marriage. 

"Inasmuch as Frank Gordon and Kate Ransom are thus united in love, I announce that they are husband and wife by every law of rightand truth, and pray for them the abiding gladness that dwells inthe heart of God forever. "

Kate's mother kissed her and cried in the old-fashioned way, andthey sailed next day for a bridal tour abroad. 

CHAPTER XX

AN OLD SWEETHEART

Ruth had fulfilled Gordon's prediction. She had lifted up her headand serenely entered her new and trying life. 

The year had brought many bitter days, but she had bravely met eachcrisis. She had hoped to maintain her membership in the PilgrimChurch, and with humility and earnestness returned to her duties. The new pastor had given her a hearty greeting, but the task wasbeyond her strength. She found that she no longer held her formersocial position--in fact, that she had no social status. The bestpeople of the church were coolly polite and clumsily sympathetic. She preferred their coolness. The poorer people were frankly afraidof her. The innocent victim of a tragedy, the world held that shewas somehow to blame--perhaps was equally guilty with the man. Shesuddenly found herself outside the pale of polite society. 

She was stunned at first by this brutal attitude of the world. Towomen of weaker character such a blow had often proved fatal inthis defenseless hour. To her it was a stimulus to higher things. She fled to the solitude of her home and found refuge in the laughterof her children. She cried an hour or two over it, and then sweptthe thought from her heart, lifted up her proud little head andmoved on the even tenor of her way. 

But greater troubles awaited. She had no business training and metwith misfortune in the management of her property. 

Morris King had been her attorney, since she first came to New York, in the management of a small trust estate. He had always refusedany fee, and she had accepted this mark of his faithfulness totheir youthful romance simply and graciously. Secure in Gordon'slove, she had long since ceased to consider the existence of anyother man as a being capable of love. Marriage had engulfed herwhole being and life, past, present, future. 

But the tender light in King's eyes when he called to see her onher arrival from the South was unmistakable. 

She was startled and annoyed, curtly dismissed him as her attorneyand undertook the management of her own business affairs. 

Within six months she had invested her estate in stocks that hadceased to pay an income and were daily depreciating. 

When her support failed, she advertised for pupils to teach inher home, obtained two scholars, and they were from parents whoseability to pay was a matter of doubt. But she had bravely begunand hoped to succeed. 

When King saw her pathetic little advertisement he threw aside hispride and called promptly to see her. 

He was a muscular young bachelor of thirty-seven. A heavy shockof black hair covered his head, and his upper lip was adorned bya handsome black moustache. 

He was a leader of the Tammany Democracy, a member of a firm oflawyers, and had served one term in Congress. 

He had made himself famous in a speech in the National Conventionin which he had attacked the reform element of his own party seekingadmission with such violence, such insolent and fierce invective, he had captured the imagination of his party in New York. He wasslated as the machine candidate for Governor of the Empire Stateand was almost certain of election. Visions of the White House, ghosts which ever haunt the Executive Mansion at Albany, werealready keeping him awake at night. 

He was a man of strong will, of boundless personal ambitions, and in politics he was regarded as the most astute, powerful andunscrupulous leader in the state. His personal habits were simpleand clean to the point of aceticism. His political enemies declaredin disgust that he had no redeeming vices. He was a teetotaler, andyet the champion of the saloon and the idol of the saloon-keepers'association. He did not smoke or gamble, and was never known tocall on a woman except as a business duty. 

In his profession he was honest, dignified, purposeful and successful. He had landed in New York fourteen years before with ten cents inhis pocket, and his income now was never less than twenty thousanddollars a year. He had received a single fee of fifty thousanddollars in a celebrated case. 

Before coming to New York he was a poor young lawyer in the villageof Hampton, Virginia, just admitted to the bar. But the law did notseriously disturb his mind. His real occupation was making loveto Ruth Spottswood, who lived across the street in a quaint oldColonial cottage. If any client ever attempted to get into hisoffice, it was more than he knew. He was too busy with Ruth to allowother people's troubles to interfere with the work of his life. 

He had taken her to the ball at the Hygeia the night she met Gordon, little dreaming that this long-legged Yankee parson from the West, who did not even know how to dance, would hang around the edgesof the ballroom and take her from him. They were engaged after thechild fashion of Southern girls and boys--always with the tacitunderstanding that if they saw anybody they liked better it couldbe broken at an hour's notice. 

The next day when he called Ruth said with a laugh:

"Well, Morris, our engagement ends at three o'clock this afternoon. A handsomer man is going to call. You must clear out and attend toyour business. "

"Oh, hang the law, Ruth. I'll sit out under the trees and writeyou a poem till this Yankee goes. "

"No, I don't propose to be handicapped. We are not engaged anymore, and you can't come till I tell you. "

He put up a brave fight, selling his law books to buy candy andpay the livery bill for buggy rides, but it was all in vain. 

At last, when she told him she was going to marry Gordon and theday had been fixed, he turned pale, looked at her long and tenderlyand stammered:

"I hope you will be very happy, Ruth. But you've killed me. "

"Don't be silly, " she cried. "Go to work and be a great man. "

He closed his law office and went over to Norfolk, debating thequestion of suicide or murder. He walked along the river-front topick out a place to jump overboard, but the water looked too blackand filthy and cold. He saw a steamer loading, boarded her, andlanded in New York with ten cents in his pocket and not a friendon earth that he knew. 

He had never spoken a word of love to a woman since. Ambition washis god, and yet, mingled with its fierce cult, its conflicts andturmoil, he had cherished a boyish loyalty to Ruth's last words asshe dismissed him. 

"Be a great man, " she had said. He would--and he had dreamed thatsome day, perhaps, he might say to her: "Behold, I am your knight ofyouthful chivalry. Your command has been my law. It is all yours. "

The day she had curtly dismissed him as her attorney he was elatedwith the first assurance his associates had given him that hewould be the next Governor of New York. Her unexpected rebuff hadcut his pride to the quick. The old hurt was bruised again, and bya woman who had been deserted by a cavalier husband. He had swornin the wrath of a strong man he would go this time and never return. And now he was hurrying back to her side and cursing himself forbeing a fool. 

She greeted him cordially. 

"I'm glad to see you, Morris, " she frankly said--she had alwayscalled him by his first name. "I've gotten into deep waters sinceI sent you away so foolishly. I would have sent for you, but I wasafraid you were angry and would not come. I've had about as manyhumiliations as I can bear for awhile. "

He looked at her reproachfully. 

"You did treat me shamefully, Ruth, after years of faithful service. I don't know why. I might guess if I tried. When I saw that pitifulcard this morning, I knew what it meant. So I've come back to takecharge of your business. And you can't run me away with a stick. Iam going to look after your property and make it earn you a living. "

"It is very good of you, and I am grateful, " she replied, gently. 

"How much are your stocks worth?"

"About forty thousand dollars, I'm told. But I can't sell them. They are not listed on the Exchange. "

"I'll sell them for you, and by the end of the week have your moneypaying you an income of two hundred dollars a month. Send thosetwo children home. You were not made for a school-teacher. "

He looked at her with intensity, and she lowered her eyes inembarrassment. 

He sprang to his feet and walked swiftly to the window, and thencame back and sat down beside her. 

"Ruth, " he said, impulsively, "it's no use in my trying to lie toyou. We might as well understand one another at once. Of course, I know why you sent me away. "

"Please, Morris, don't say any more, " she pleaded. 

"Yes, I will, " he cried. "I love you. How could I keep you fromseeing it in my eyes, when you were free at last, and I knew youmight be mine?"

"You must not say this to me!" she protested. 

He scowled and pursed his lips. 

"I will. I am coming to this house when I please. I am goingto give you the protection of my life. Every dollar I have, everymoment of my time shall be yours if you need it. Ah, Ruth, how Ihave loved you through the desolate years since you sent me away!Men have called me cold and selfish and ambitious, when I was lyingawake at night eating my heart out dreaming of you. Every hour ofwork, every step I've climbed in the struggle of life, was withyour face smiling on me from the past. All my hopes and ambitionsI owe to you. The last message you spoke to me has been my guidingstar. And when this man threw you from him as a cast-off garment--you, the beautiful queen of my soul--I would have killed him but forthe fierce joy that now I could win you!"

She shook her head and a look of pain overspread her face. 

"I know what you will say, " he went on rapidly. "You need notprotest. I will be patient. I will wait, but I will win you. I'vesworn it by every oath that can bind the soul. I have no otherpurpose in life. I'm going to be the Governor of New York simplybecause I'm going to lift you from the shame this man has heapedupon you and make you the mistress of the Governor's mansion ofthis mighty state. Washington is but one step from Albany. My dreamis for you. I will be to you the soul of deference and of tenderhonour. Your slightest wish will be my law, I will be silent ifyou command. But you cannot keep me away. If you leave me, I willfollow you to the ends of the earth. "

Ruth was softly crying. 

"You must not cry, my love. I will make your life glorious, andlight every shadow with the tenderness of a strong man's worship. "

"And you love me like this when another has robbed my soul and bodyof their treasures and cast me aside?" she asked, wistfully. 

His mouth suddenly tightened and his eyes flashed. 

"Yes, and I'd love you so if you were broken and every trace ofbeauty gone. My love would be so warm and tender and true it wouldbring back the light into your eyes, the roses to your cheeks, andlife even to your dead soul. "

"How strange the ways of God!" she exclaimed, through her tears. 

He looked at her with yearning tenderness. 

"But you are not old or broken, Ruth. You have grown more beautiful. This great sorrow has smoothed from your face every line offretfulness and worry, and lighted it with the mystery and pathosof an unearthly beauty. It shines from your heroic soul until yourwhole being has come into harmony with it. I loved you in the past;I worship you now. "

She turned on him a look of gratitude. 

"Worry and jealousy did exhaust me. I am glad you see in my faceand form the change reflected from within. It is very sweet to me, this flattery you pour on my broken heart. I thank you, Morris. You have restored my self-respect and given me strength. It is anhonour to receive such love from an honest man. You must not thinkill of me if I tell you I cannot love you. "

"I'll make you!" he cried, fiercely. "You cannot cling to the memoryof a man so base and false. "

"He is my husband. I love him. "

King flushed with anger. 

"He is not your husband. He has deserted you, lured by the beautyof another woman. "

A gleam of fire flashed from her eyes, melting into a soft light. 

"Yes, I know, marriage is an ideal, the noblest, most beautiful. We have not yet attained its purity in life. Man is only strugglingtoward its perfection. We will not attain it by lowering the ideal, but by lifting up those who are struggling toward it. Anothermarriage while Frank lives would be possible for me only when Iceased to feel the meaning of sin and shame. I will never regretmy life. I have cast all bitterness out of my heart. Better thehappiness and pain of a glorious love than never to have known itsjoy. I have lived. "

"And I will yet teach you to live more deeply, " he firmly said. 

She shook her head and looked at him sadly out of her dark eyesfrom which the storm had cleared at last. They beamed now with thesteady light of a deep spiritual tenderness. 

CHAPTER XXI

FREEDOM AND FELLOWSHIP

The six months abroad which Gordon and Kate had spent in love'sdreaming and drifting had been the fulfilment to the man of thelong-felt yearnings of his fierce subconscious nature. 

To the woman it had been the revelation of a new heaven and a newearth. She had found herself, the real self, at whose first meetingin the kiss of a man she had trembled. She was no longer afraid. The elemental clear-eyed goddess had taken possession. She hadclaimed her own, the throne of a queen, and the man who had dreamedof kingship was her courtier. 

She was smiling at him in conscious power, her violet eyes flashingwith mystery and magic, the sunlight of Italy gleaming through herdark red hair, her full lips half parted with dreamy tenderness, and her sinuous body moving with indolent grace. 

"To be your slave is crown enough for man, " he cried. 

"And I am in heaven, " she answered, proudly. 

"Only, thus, in perfect freedom, " he said, in rapture, "is thefulness of life. Beauty and harmony and love are of God. Surely thisis communion with Him--the joy of embraces, the touch of sunlight, the glory of form and colour, the magic of music, the poetry oflove, the ecstacy of passion, the kiss of the senses--He is in alland over all. "

"Can such happiness be eternal?" she asked, under her breath. 

He kissed her softly. 

"If God be infinite. "

They reached New York the first week in November, and Gordon returnedto his work with renewed zeal. 

The success of his movement was a source of continued surprise andfear to the more thoughtful students of social and religious life. 

But Gordon had found on his return an increasing amount of frictionbetween opposing groups in his church which was a source of intensesurprise and annoyance. Two factions had broken into an openquarrel in his absence. He found it necessary to devote a largepart of his time to smoothing out these quarrels between men whohad come together with the principles of unity and fellowship asthe foundation of their association. He saw with disgust that hewas gathering a crowd of cranks, conceited and stupid, vain andambitious for fame and leadership. It was all he could do to preventa battle of Kilkenny cats. 

He discovered that many things glittered at a banquet to celebrateuniversal brotherhood which did not pan out pure gold in the experimentof life. He had heard at such a love feast an aristocratic poetextoll in harangue the unwashed Democracy, a Walking Delegate reada poem, a Jew quote the Koran with unction, a Mohammedan eulogiseMonogamy, a Single-Taxer declare himself a Democrat, a Socialistglorify Individualism, and an Anarchist express his love for Order. 

But he found next day that as a rule the Egyptian resumed the useof garlic and the hog went back to his wallow. 

He found to his chagrin that mental freedom could be made a cloak forthe basest mental slavery, and that the most hide-bound dogmatiston earth is the modern crank who boasts his freedom from all dogmas. He found the Liberal to be the most illiberal and narrow man hehad ever met. 

The absurdity of allowing this mob of Kilkenny cats any authorityin his church he saw at once. His dream of triumphant Democracyfaded. 

He seized the helm at once. 

Without a moment's hesitation he threw out twenty ringleaders ofas many factions and restored order. Under such conditions he darednot even incorporate his society under the laws of the state as areligious body lest these incongruous elements control its propertyand wreck its work. He continued to expend the vast funds needed forhis Temple in his wife's name, leaving its legal ownership vestedin her as before. 

Within a few months the extraordinary beauty and vivacity of hiswife made their house on Gramercy Park the rendezvous of a brilliantgroup of free-lances and Bohemians. Her mother and father hadmoved to a house on the opposite side of the park. Men and womenof genius in the world of Art and Letters who cared nought forconventions had crowded her receptions. She was nattered with thepleasant fiction that she had restored the ancient Salon of Franceon a nobler basis. 

The increase of her social duties required more and more of her timeat the dressmaker's, and left less and less for work in Gordon'scongregation. 

At first he had watched this social success with surprise and pride, and then with an increasing sense of uneasiness for its significancein the development of her character. 

The sight of half a dozen handsome men bending over her, enchantedby her beauty, and the ring of her laughter at their wit, irritatedhim. He had not been actor enough to conceal from her the gleamof, worry in his eyes and the accent of fret in his voice at thesefunctions. She observed, too, that he attended them with regularity, however important might be the work which called him outside. 

He was anxious for her to cultivate a few of his intimate friends, but this crowd of strange men and women bored him. 

He was especially anxious that she should meet Overman, and byher magnetism and beauty crush him into the acknowledgment of thesanity and right of his course. 

But Overman had promised without coming. 

Gordon was at his bank on Wall Street again urging him to call. 

"It's no use to talk, Frank, " he said, testily. "All I ask of womenis to be let alone. "

"But, you fool, I want you to meet my wife. She's not a womanmerely. She's the wife of an old college chum, the better half byfar. "

Overman pulled his moustache, a humorous twinkle in his eye. 

"Well, how many halves are there to you? I've met the other halfonce before. This makes one and a half, " he said, peering at hisfriend with his single eye. 

Gordon laughed. 

"Yes, I am large. "

"I've my doubts whether you're quite large enough for the job you'veundertaken. "

"You're a pessimist. "

Overman's face brightened and his mouth twisted. 

"Yes, the more I see of men, the more stock I take in chickens. I've a rooster at home now that can whip anything that ever worefeathers, and he's so ugly I love him like a brother. "

"Shut up about roosters, " Gordon growled. "Will you come to see meand meet my wife?"

Overman turned his eye on his friend, frowning. 

"Frank, I'm afraid of the atmosphere. There's enough dynamite in'Freedom and Fellowship' to blow up several houses. I don't like toget mixed up with women in any sort of fellowship--to say nothingabout freedom and fellowship. "

"Well, I've asked my wife to call by the bank here for me to-dayand I'm going to introduce you. "

Overman did not hear this statement, for his head was turned toone side and he was peering out of his window on Broad Street withexcited interest. 

He sprang to his feet, suddenly exclaiming:

"Well, what the devil is the matter?"

"What is it?" Gordon asked, stepping to the window. 

It had begun to snow on an inch of ice which was still clinging tothe stone pavements. At the corner of Broad and Wall Streets theground dips sharply, forming a difficult crossing. 

Gordon saw his wife approaching the bank, laughing. She was dressedin a sealskin cloak which reached to the ground. Its great rollingcollar of ermine covered her full breast and stretched upward almostto her hat, rearing its snowy background about her heavy auburnhair, which seemed about to fall and envelop her form. She wore anenormous hat of white fur bent in graceful curves. 

She was close to the building now, and her blue eyes were dancingand her cheeks flushed with laughter. The perfect grace and rhythmof movement could be seen even through the heavy seal cloak, whosesheen changed with each touch of her figure. 

"Look at the idiots!" cried Overman, excitedly. "So busy stretchingtheir necks to see a woman, there's five piled up on the ice. They'reringing for the ambulance. She's fractured one man's skull, brokenanother's leg, and, by the pale-faced moon, I believe she's killedone. And you're after me to meet another woman--great Scott, look, she's coming in here!"

"Well, she won't hurt you. "

"I don't know!"

Overman made a break to reach his inner office when Gordon seizedhis arm. 

"Stop, you fool, " he thundered; "it's my wife. She's calling byfor me, and you're going to meet her, if I have to knock you downand sit on you. "

There was no help for it. He heard the rustle of the silk liningof her cloak and she was at the door. 

She shook Overman's hand heartily, her violet eyes smiling in sucha friendly candid way he was at once put at ease. 

"I am so glad to see you, " she said, earnestly. "I've heard Frankspeak of you so often and laugh over your college ups and downs. I feel I've known you all my life. And then he says you're such awoman-hater--"

"He's a grand liar, Mrs. Gordon, " he interrupted, suddenly colouring. "I never said anything of the kind in my life. I'm a great admirerof the fair sex!"

"Then you must prove it by coming to dinner with us to-night andadmiring me the whole evening. "

"Nothing could give me greater pleasure, " he answered, bowing hisbig neck with an ease and grace Gordon noted with amazement. 

When they left, Overman walked to the window and watched them threadtheir way through the crowd. 

"Holy Moses and the angels--what a woman!" he said, softly whistling. "By the beard of the prophet, no wonder!"

Long after they disappeared he stood, looking without seeing, asif in a dream. 

CHAPTER XXII

A SCARLET FLAME IN THE SKY

From the night Overman had taken dinner at the Gramercy Park househe became a constant visitor. 

For six months he had usually spent two or three evenings each weekin his friend's library, rehearsing their boyhood days, discussingnew books, art and politics, Socialism and religion. 

Overman's cynicism had piqued Kate's curiosity and opened new viewsof things she had accepted as moral finalities. 

At these battles of wit she was always a charmed listener. Sheseemed never to tire watching the sparks fly in the rapier thrustof mind in these two men of steel and listening with a shiver tothe deep growl of the animal behind their words. The one, so homelyhe was fascinating, with massive neck, and enormous mouth pursingand twisting under excitement into a sneer that pushed his big noseupward, the incarnation of a battle-scarred bulldog; the other, with his giant figure, hands and feet, his leonine face and locks, his deep voice, handsome and insolent in his conscious strength, the picture of a thoroughbred mastiff. 

With the grace of a goddess she would sit and watch this battleto the death in the arena of thought. 

Overman had keenly interested her from the first, and she stimulatedhim to unusual brilliancy. His remorseless logic, his thoroughscholarship, his grasp of history, his savage common sense presentedso sharp a contrast to the idealism of Gordon, she was shocked andstartled. 

He fell into the habit of calling on Sunday mornings and walkingwith them to the Opera House. They would leave Gordon at the stageentrance and sit together during the services. 

He would comment softly to her on many of the little absurdities ofthe preacher's flights of sentiment, and often convulsed her withlaughter by a single word or phrase which made ridiculous hismysticism. He did this with his single eye fixed on Gordon withoutthe quiver of a nerve or the movement of a muscle to indicate oughtbut profound rapture in the speaker and his message. 

Overman's business ability had been of great service in the Templeenterprise, which had involved difficulties with contractors, andGordon had opened an account in Kate's name with his banking house. Her signature to legal documents had made her a frequent visitorto the bank, and she often took lunch with him. 

Alone with her at these impromptu lunches, without the restraintof Gordon's presence, he had revealed to her a new phase of hischaracter which had interested her still more deeply. It was herethat she discovered the secret of his real attitude toward women, his deep hunger for love, tenderness and sympathy, and his terrorlest his ugliness and the loss of his eye might entrap him intohopeless suffering. 

She laughed at his fears. 

"Ridiculous, " she cried, closing her red lips. "You ought to havesense enough to know that a woman of character past the schoolgirlage is often fascinated by the ruggedness of such a man. Savagestrength is sometimes resistless to women of rare beauty. "

"You think so?" he asked, pathetically. 

"Certainly; I know it, " she answered, her lips twitching playfully. 

Overman looked at her steadily. 

"Sort of beauty-and-beast idea, I suppose. There may be somethingin it. It never struck me before. "

"I'll put you in training for a handsome woman I know, " she said, with a curious smile playing about her eyes. 

"No, thank you, " he quickly replied. "I'm just beginning to feelat home with you. I am content. "

The opening of the Temple was an event which commanded the attentionof the world. Leaders of Socialism from every quarter of the globepoured into New York. 

The building was one of imposing grandeur. The auditorium filledthe entire space of the first-four stories. It seated five thousandpeople within easy reach of the speaker's voice. The line of itsceiling was marked outside by the serried capitals of Greek columnsspringing from their massive bases on the ground. The grand stairwaywas of polished marble, its wainscoting and walls of onyx. 

Resting on the capitals of the columns, the outer walls of roughmarble rose twenty stories to the first offset. Dropping backfifty feet, another structure, crowned by Greek facades, sprang tenstories higher, forming the base of the central dome. From eachcorner rose a tower of bronze supporting the figures of Faith, Hope, Love and Truth, while scores of minarets flamed upward, flying theflags of every nation. 

From the centre of this pile of marble, the huge dome, finished ingold, solemnly loomed among the clouds, higher than its model inWashington, dominating the city from every point of the compass. The magnificent sweep of Jefferson Avenue, stretching through milesof palatial homes, terminating at its base, seemed a tiny pathwayleading through its grand arched and pillared entrance. 

The dome was crowned by a statue of Liberty holding aloft a steelstaff, from which flew the solid red battle-flag of Socialism, flinging into the heavens its challenge to civilisation, rising, falling, waving, fluttering, quivering, rippling in the wind, ascarlet blaze sweeping a hundred feet across the sky far above thecross on the Cathedral spire. 

The cost of the building had exceeded the estimate, and it had beenfinished by a loan of two million dollars secured by a mortgage heldby the banking house of Overman & Company. It could have commandeda larger loan, as the entire structure, except the two storiesbelow ground and the auditorium, was devoted to business officesoccupied by the best class of tenants. The auditorium was for rentat a nominal sum during the week, and was designed to be the forumof free thought for the nation. 

The dedication programme began on Monday, lasting through an entireweek, day and night, and culminated on Sunday with Gordon's addressat eleven o'clock. The elaborate ceremonials and speeches had wornout Kate's body by Saturday, and the praise of pygmies had longbefore worn out her soul. 

Ruth had read with interest the accounts of these meetings, andMorris King tried in vain to dissuade her from attending the Sundayexercises at which Gordon was to speak. 

"It's useless to talk, Morris, " she said, firmly. "I am going. I'das well tell you I've been slipping into the gallery of the OperaHouse the past six months. I've tried to keep away, but I had togo. I am going to-day. I've heard him talk and dream and plan somuch of this, it seems my own. "

"Well, I'm going with you. You shall not enter that den of Anarchistsalone again. "

She hesitated. 

"You may go if you'll agree to sit behind a pillar in the gallerywhere we will not be seen. "

When they were seated he whispered to Ruth: "But for you, I wouldn'tbe caught dead in this place. I'll soon be the Governor, and itwill be my duty to see that some of these gentlemen are carefullypacked in quicklime at Sing Sing. "

She started suddenly, her brow clouded, and she placed a tremblinghand on his arm. 

"Hush, Morris. "

"It'll be so, mark my word. "

"Hush!" she repeated, with such a shudder of pain he hastened towhisper. 

"I beg your pardon, Ruth. You know I was joking. "

Gordon rose and gazed for a moment over the sea of faces. His quicksympathies and brilliant imagination were stirred to their depths. 

When the beautifully modulated voice first filled the room, Ruthfelt with quick sympathy, beneath the tremor of his tones, thestorm of suppressed feeling. Her eyes filled, and she bent forward, following him breathlessly. 

He held the crowd spellbound. 

Even the foreign Socialists, unable to understand a word of English, hung on every gesture, held by the magnetism of his powerfulpersonality. 

As he reached an impassioned climax, Ruth was startled to hear anote of suppressed laughter from a woman sitting in the same rowbehind the next pillar. 

She looked quickly, and saw Overman's massive head cocked to oneside, his face an immovable mask, and his single gleaming eye fixedon Gordon, with Kate beside him. 

Overman stayed to dinner and congratulated his friend on his effort. 

"Frank, you surpassed yourself, " he said. "You made the grandestdefense of an indefensible absurdity I ever heard. "

"H'm, that's saying a good deal for you. "

Overman pulled his moustache thoughtfully. 

"But I couldn't help wishing I were an orator to jaw back at you. A preacher has such an easy thing, with no back talk except thesonorous echo of his own voice. "

"Think you could have talked back to-day?"

There was a moment's silence. Overman leaned back and locked hishands behind his massive neck. 

"If you hit a man with a brick, he may hurt you. Drop a millstoneon him, he'll not even reply. If I could have gotten at you to-day, your wife would have lost her insurance policy, because therewouldn't have been anything to identify. "

"Nothing like a good opinion of oneself, " Gordon replied, good-naturedly. 

Overman nodded. 

"I never heard you explain so beautifully that 'Back to Nature'idea. I went West once and lived a year with some red folks whohave been so fortunate as to never get away from Nature. They havebeen doing business at the same stand for several thousand years. Their women are old hags at your wife's age, and their men die atmine--forty-five. Their social institutions are an exact reflectionof their personal attainments. "

"But we propose, " Gordon flashed, "to make institutions an advanceon man's attainments and so lead him onward and upward. "

"Exactly, " he answered, dryly. "Make human nature divine by writingit on paper that it is so, pile water into a pyramid upside down, and repeal the law of gravitation by the vote of a mob. I don'tlike the law of gravitation myself, but I haven't time to repealit. "

"You are a hopeless materialist. "

"Yet you, who preach the Spirit, propose to build a heaven hereout of mud. "

"Socialism may be the great delusion, but it's coming. It sweepsthe imagination of the world, " Gordon cried, with enthusiasm. 

"There you go! Every time I pin you down, you sail off into spacewith prophecy or poetry. If it does conquer the world, the worldwill not be worth conquering. The one thing worth while is character, and your Socialistic pig-pen cannot produce it. In this herd ofswine to which you hope to reduce society an Edison or a Darwin isrewarded with the pay of a hod-carrier. The hod-carrier gets allhe's worth now. This instinct for the herd, which you call Solidarityand Brotherhood, is not a prophecy of progress; it is a memory--amemory of the dirt out of which humanity has slowly grown. "

Gordon grunted contemptuously. 

"Yet only a brute can be content with the cruelty and infamy ofour present society. "

"All our ills can be met by careful legislation. You propose topull the tree up by the roots because you see bugs crawling on alimb. "

Kate rose and left the room, saying she would return in a moment, and Overman leaned back in his chair again, gazing at the ceiling. 

Suddenly straightening himself, he drew his brow down close overhis eye, half closing its lid, bent toward Gordon, and in a lowtone slowly asked:

"But I would like to know, Frank, what in the devil you reallymeant by that 'Freedom and Fellowship' in marriage?"

"Just what I said. "

"Bah! You don't mean to apply such tommyrot to your own wife nowthat she's yours?"

"Certainly. "

"It's beyond belief that you're such a fool. You say to your wifeand to the world, 'This peerless woman is my comrade, but she isfree; take her if you can. '"

Gordon laughed. 

"Yes; but, Mark, old boy, God has not yet made the man who can takeher from me. "

The one eye dreamily closed, the banker whistled softly, and said:

"I see. "

CHAPTER XXIII

THE NEW HEAVEN

Overman had appeared on the scene of Kate's life in a peculiarcrisis. Married two years, she had passed through the period oflove's ecstacy which woman finds first in self-surrender. She hadjust reached the point of sex growth when a revolt against man'sdominion became inevitable. 

This mood of revolt was made stronger by Gordon's fret over her socialgatherings. In the dim light of the pulpit, preaching with mysticelation, he had seemed to her a god. Now, in the full blaze ofphysical possession, the divine glow had paled about his brow. Shehad found him only a man, self-conscious, egotistic and domineering. He had many personal habits she did not like. He was overfastidiousin his dress, and critical and fussy about her lack of order inhousekeeping. He was finicky about his food. He hated tea, declaringthe odour made him sick. She felt this a covert thrust at herfive-o'clocks. 

To his criticisms she at last coolly replied:

"I claim the perfect freedom you preach. I will do as I please. You can do the same. "

He laughed in a weak sort of way and declared he liked herindependence. 

At this moment of reaction, satiety, and the beginning of frictionhe had introduced her to Overman. His candour, his brutal realism, his defiance and scorn for poetic theories, presented to herthe sharp contrast which made him doubly fascinating. Just at themoment Gordon was growing peevishly dogmatic in the reiteration ofhis ideals, she had suffered a physical disillusioning and begunto tire of poetry. 

The sheer brute power of the other man, the incarnation of thething that is, with a cynic's contempt for dreams and dreamers, had given voice to her own rebellion and drawn her resistlessly. 

The boyish tenderness underlying Overman's nature, which shediscovered later, had made his ugliness and brute strength addedcharms. 

He had a pathetic way of looking at her with a doglike worship, as though conscious of his defects, which pleased and nattered herown sense of the perfection of beauty. 

They were seated in his box at the Metropolitan Opera House whileGordon was at the farewell banquet to his foreign delegates. 

"I feel, " he said, bitterly, "every time I see this play of 'Faust, 'and hear Edouard De Reszke's deep bass speak for His Majesty theDevil, that His Majesty really made this world. I'd know it but forthe paradox of such divine perfection before my eyes in the livingreality of a woman like you. "

His voice throbbed with earnestness. 

"I'm growing to love the world. It's a beautiful old place, " sheanswered, with a lazy smile. 

"Well, it's the only one I'm likely to travel in, so I'm going tomake the best of it, work with its mighty forces, dare and defy thefools who cross my purposes. If the future has for me only pain, I'll not complain. I'll grin and bear it, but I'll confess to youI get a little lonely sometimes. "

Her eyes lifted with surprise. 

"I never heard you admit that before. "

"No; and what's more, no one else ever did or ever will. "

He looked at her pathetically, and a deeper colour flooded hercheeks. 

When they reached home Gordon had just returned from the banquetand was bubbling over with enthusiasm. 

"Mark, we have had a grand time to-night--organised a movement thatwill put out a sign 'To Let' on every den of thieves in Wall Street. "

"What? Founded another church already?"

"A new Brotherhood within the Church Universal. "

Overman shrugged his shoulders. 

"Talk plain English. What will be its name at Police Headquarters?"

Gordon smilingly and proudly replied, "The Federated Democracy ofthe World. "

"H'm; what are you going to do? Federate the hobos of all tonguesand demand better straw in empty freight cars and shorter stops atsidings for express trains to pass?"

"Our purpose will be to inaugurate the Cooperative Commonwealth ofMan. The movement will bring into harmonious action the insurgentforces of the world. Within ten years an earthquake will shake thesocial fabric. Within twenty years profound political and socialrevolutions will lift the human race over centuries of ploddinginto a new world of real liberty, equality, and fraternity. "

Overman growled cynically. 

"That has a French accent. I hear there are fifty thousand activeSocialists in France divided into exactly fifty thousand factions. Which division of this grand army will lead the movement in Gaul?"

Gordon ignored his interruption, and his voice thrilled withpassionate eloquence. 

"We have abolished crowns and scepters. It is a moral and physicalabsurdity that, in a democracy, a whiskered babe, whose labour valueto society is just ten dollars a week, should inherit millions ofdollars that give him the power over men more terrible, absoluteand irresponsible than a Caesar ever wielded over the empire ofthe world. No wonder our papers shiver when these babes sneeze, and report their daily life with servile pride. "

"And would the oil of anointment of your new king, the walkingdelegate, be strong enough to temper the onion in his breath? I'dlike to know that before drawing too near the throne. " The banker'smouth twisted into a sneer with the last word. 

"This new Democracy will itself be the highest nobility, an ethicalaristocracy, and when it comes the Kingdom of Heaven will be athand. "

The one eye glanced quickly at the speaker and blinked. 

"Let me know before it gets here, " said Overman, a reminiscentlook overspreading his rugged face, while Kate leaned closer witheager interest. 

"Why?"

"Because I'm going somewhere. When I was a boy I had to go tochurch. Our old preacher faithfully urged us for hours at a time toget ready for heaven, a glorious place away up in space where allwore crowns and there wasn't a Democrat in town, everybody playedpsalms on big gold harps, and every day was Sunday. I early learnedto hate heaven and look on hell as my only home. Now you come along, rub hell off the map, and threaten me with a heaven here on earthworse than the old one. Hell would be a summer resort to this thingyou've conjured up. If it comes, I'll get off the earth. "

"Get your flying machine ready. "

"Oh, ten cents' worth of 'rough on rats' will do me. "

Gordon shook his head thoughtfully. 

"It's a strange thing to me you conservatives are blind to thecoming of this revolution. It will be the grimmest joke Fate everplayed on the pride of man. Within the generation now living aCooperative Commonwealth will supplant the whole system of slavewages. "

The banker suddenly straightened his massive neck and his eyeflashed. 

"You mean establish a system of universal slavery. Suppose underyour maudlin cry of brotherhood you set up your fool's paradise, where would reside the authority of your Commonwealth?"

"In the State, of course. "

"And who would be the State? You talk about the State as though itwere some mysterious Ark of the Covenant of God, let down out ofheaven and enshrined in capitals of marble. The State is simplymade out of common dirt called Tom, Dick and Harry, whom a lot ofother plain Toms, Dicks and Harrys set up in power. Will not yourpig-pen you call the Cooperative Commonwealth have men in chargewith authority to call the pigs to dinner and drive them to thefields to root?"

"Certainly, there must be authority, " Gordon snapped. 

Overman mused a moment. 

"Yet your patron saint, William Morris, proclaims a heaven herebelow without law, where man kills his fellow man and answers onlyto his own conscience; where we will tear up the railroads andwalk, blow up our steamships and use rowboats, in our harvest fieldsthe whetstone on the old hand-scythe will still the music of theMcCormick reaper. With his delicate tastes he fears the hoof-beatof your herd. But you all agree that to go backward means to goforward, and that the way to save civilisation is to lapse intobarbarism. Whether you call yourselves Socialist or Anarchist--thatis, whether you long for the herd or the solitude of the forest, you mean the same thing and don't know it, that your mind has notbeen able to adjust itself to the speed of modern progress, and hasbroken down under the strain. You preach 'Fellowship, ' herd-life, as the cure. You believe in law and authority. "

"Yes, " Gordon cried, with pride. "Our ideal is constructive in thelargest and noblest sense. "

"And if a man can work and will not work?"

"He will be made to work. "

"Very well. Suppose your pig heaven established and the herd dulypenned. The Labour Master of your local pen would naturally be a manafter the heart of the herd. He would be a greasy Labour agitator. No other man could be elected. Suppose he should become interestedin the extraordinary beauty of your wife. Suppose you were presumptuousenough to resent this, and, in revenge for your insolence, yourMaster transferred you, the scholar, idealist and orator, to thetask of cleaning the spittoons in the City Hall, and ordered yourwife to scrub the floor of his office. You both refuse, you whowalk with your head among the stars, What then? The dirty-fingeredone, your Labour Master, sends you to prison for the first offense. For the second, you would be stripped, placed in the public stocksand flogged, man and woman alike in this kingdom of equality. For, mark you, enforced labour is the only possible foundation of sucha society. "

Gordon listened with dreamy disgust. 

"You've set up a man of straw. In this new world each would choosehis work and labour would be a joy, " he answered, with lofty scorn. 

The banker chuckled. 

"No doubt they would all choose joyous jobs. But there would be asurplus of joyous labourers hunting for joyful tasks, and a dearthof fools looking for disagreeable work. In your pig paradiseeverything must be fixed. There could be no uncertainty about thefuture--no worry, or fret, or anxiety--hence no hopes or fears. Man would be guaranteed food, clothes, shelter and children, justas the chattel slave. There could be no inducement to work unlesscompelled to, and no man except an idiot would do a disagreeabletask unless forced to do it. You must remember there could beno lawyers or bankers, preachers or orators. The chief occupationof your Labour Master would be the assignment of people he didn'tlike to the hard, dirty jobs, and the granting of favourite tasksto such people as made themselves agreeable to His Majesty. Witnessthe master of the Russian Commune, who is notoriously the lord ofall the wives of the village. "

Overman was still a moment, and then growled from the depths ofhis being:

"I call this the lowest, the most degrading, the most bestialnightmare the human mind ever dreamed!"

Gordon waved him off with an eloquent gesture. 

"You have assumed that a free commonwealth of godlike men and womenwould choose their worst units for their leaders. "

"Nothing of the sort, " he snapped. "I've supposed they would do theinevitable--choose the strongest man who looks like the majorityand smells like the majority. "

"A bad man would be removed, " the dreamer quickly replied. 

"What difference if your master be changed by an election now andthen? All the worse. If I am to be a slave, I prefer the old chattelsystem with a master whose favour I could win and hold for life byfaithful service. The old slaves often loved their masters. Couldyou love the Executive Officer of a Bureau for the Enforcementof Labour? Do convicts become infatuated with their keepers? Toassassinate such a man would become a positive joy. How many yearsof such life would it take to crush out of the human soul the lastspark of hope and aspiration and reduce man to a beast?"

"But we affirm the inherent divinity of man. You assume him to bea child of the devil. "

There was another silence, and then the banker's brow wrinkled. 

"Affirm. Yes, you fellows are all orators. You must affirm else thecrowd will leave you. You never have doubts and fears. You alwaysknow. Only affirm a thing enough and never try to prove it, andthousands of fools will accept it at last as the word of God. Thatis the secret of the power of all demagogues and emotional orators. The slickest horse-thief that ever operated in the West was arevivalist who migrated there with a tent. While he held the crowdspellbound with his eloquence, his confederates loosed the horsesin the woods and got them to a safe place. Oratory is one of thecheapest tricks ever played on man, but an everlastingly effectiveone, because it is based on affirmation. Any man who is toohard-headed and honest to affirm a thing he don't know and can'tknow never leads a mob. They will only follow a man who speaks withthe sublime authority of knowledge he does not possess. "

While Overman was talking Gordon's brow clouded as he watched Kate'sface flash with interest and a smile now and then play between hereyes and lips. 

"We seem to be developing another orator, " he slowly answered. 

Overman pursed his lips. 

"I haven't wasted so much breath in a long time. Your Frenchprogramme stirred me. I wonder if you recalled the decline of theFrench nation in modern times, and its causes, in arranging foryour conquest of France? A little while ago the Anglo-Saxon racenumbered but a few millions, and the Latin ruled the world. Nowthe flag of the Anglo-Saxon flies over one-fourth the inhabitantsof the globe, his army can withstand the combined armies of theworld, his navy rules the sea, and his wealth is so great he couldbuy the entire possessions of the rest of mankind. Why? Because hedeveloped the most powerful individual man in history, while otherraces have sought refuge in the herd idea of communal interests. I noticed you never preach now from the old text, 'What shall itprofit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' Whysave the world if you destroy man?"

But Gordon had ceased to listen to Overman. With his greatblue-veined fist clenched on his chin and a new gleam of light inhis steel-gray eyes he was watching his wife's face. 

CHAPTER XXIV

COURTIER AND QUEEN

Overman was quick to detect the hostility of his friend's unusualsilence, and hastily rose. 

"Excuse me, old boy, " he said, apologetically, "if I've hit toohard. I think the world of you in spite of your fool theories. Youknow that. "

"Don't worry, Mark, " he answered, carelessly. "I haven't beenlistening to you at all. I've been thinking of something else. Life's too short to pay any attention to your big Philistine jaw. "

The banker smiled. 

"Well, you have the instrument handy with which Samson slew thePhilistine. "

"Yes, if you would only loan it to me. Goodnight. "

When he had gone, Kate leaned back on the lounge and said withevident amusement:

"You forgot something in parting with your old schoolmate. "

"Yes, I thought it quite unnecessary to tell him to drop in anytime, unless you wish to let the front room. "

A tremor of catlike fun slyly played about her mouth. 

"And yet women have been called fickle. Mr. Overman was no collegechum of mine. "

"No; but he is evidently trying to make up for it now. "

A low musical laugh seemed to come from the depth of Kate's spirit. 

"And I thought I was pleasing you by neglecting my Bohemians andcultivating your powerful friend. "

"Still it is not necessary to hang on his words with such meltinginterest, " he said, with quiet emphasis. 

She looked up sharply and a gleam of cruelty flashed from her blueeyes and struck the steel-gray in his. Beneath the quiet wordsof the man and woman there was raging the mortal struggle of willand personality, the woman in fierce rebellion, his iron egotismdemanding submission. 

"'Oh, I see, " she purred, softly. "There is to be but one man-god, arrayed and beautiful, if I may quote your formula. There may bemany women-gods in paradise. I saw Ruth in the Temple the firstSunday you spoke, hanging on your words as the voice of the Lord. "

Gordon flushed and turned uneasily in his chair. 

"I'd as well be frank with you, Kate. Overman is coming to thishouse too often. I was shocked beyond measure when I failed to findyou in your accastomed seat on the Sunday of the dedication of theTemple. I was told you were in the gallery with him. "

She straightened herself up suddenly. 

"You took the pains to find that out?"

"Yes. "

She fixed on him a look of scorn. 

"And stooped to ask an usher instead of asking me? You, who boldlysay to the world that I am your free comrade, the mate and equalof man?"

"An odd way you took to show comradeship in such an hour, " heanswered, doggedly. 

"Am I a slave, to sit in solemn rapture at your feet and await yournod?"

"You seemed to eagerly await the nod of another man to-night. "

She laughed. 

"Am I not your serene-browed Grecian goddess whose untamed eyes ofprimeval womanhood proclaim the end of slave marriage?"

Gorden winced, scowled and was silent. 

"I like the beautiful ceremony you invented. I've memorised everyword of it, " she said, teasingly. 

He sat for several minutes sullenly looking at her with a strangefire in his eyes, now and then moistening his lips as though theyburned. 

At length he said: "It will be necessary for you to go to his officeto-morrow to sign papers in the transfer of the deed of the Templeto me. The lawyers informed me to-day that everything was inreadiness for your signature. After this event there will be nobusiness requiring your further attendance at his bank. "

She closed her eyes lazily. 

"I am not going to sign any such deed, " came the firm answer. 

Gordon turned pale, nervously fumbled at his watch-chain andstammered:

"Kate, you don't mean this?"

"I do. "

The man hesitated, as though stunned. 

"After your announcement to the world, and all that has passedbetween us, would you humiliate me by the withdrawal of your gift?"

She lifted her beautiful brows. 

"Humiliate you? Surely I have honoured you with the richest giftwoman can bestow on man: myself. The ownership of property canhave no meaning after this. I claim my rights as your equal. Youreloquence and genius give you power. This money is scarcely itsequivalent. You have your Temple, and I still have my fortune. Itsinvestment in this building has enhanced its value. What more canyou ask?"

"The fulfilment of your word of honour to the cause of truth, " hefirmly answered. 

She smiled. 

"Nonsense! You were my cause, my truth--the god I worshiped. Idesired you. Now at closer range the aureole has slightly faded, though you are as handsome as ever, Frank, dear. What is money betweenus? We are equals. I will take the worry of financial details offyour shoulders and leave you free for your inspiring work. "

Gordon's eyes grew soft; he went over to the lounge on which shewas resting, sat down and slipped his arm about her. 

The full lips smiled with conscious cruelty. 

He bent and kissed her passionately. 

"You are my priceless treasure, my dear. I am honoured in yourbeauty and love. Money is nothing to me, so long as you are mine. "

She drew his head down and kissed him in a sudden burst of intensity. 

"You know I love you, Frank!"

"And we must not quarrel, " he said, wistfully, slipping to hisknees with one arm still encircling her waist. "You and I havegone through too much for harsh words or thoughts to ever shadowour life. But you must give me more of your time, and other menless. A growing uneasiness and the loss of the sense of finalityin life are robbing me of my capacity for thought and work. "

"Not so bad as that surely, " she cried, with teasing laughter. "You're not afraid of losing me?"

"No; but you will promise?" he asked, tenderly. 

She placed one of her arms about his neck, a soft warm hand underhis chin, and, still laughing, slowly kissed him and murmured:

"I'll do just what I please, and you may do the same. "

CHAPTER XXV

THE IRONY OF FATE

Morris King had ended a brilliant campaign for the Governorshipof New York with victory. The entire ticket was elected by largepluralities. 

The campaign had given scope to his ability, and he more thanfulfilled the hopes of his friends. From the moment of his election, he became the leader of the party in the nation, and began at oncethe work of strengthening his position as a Presidential possibility. 

Yet in the din and clash of this battle in which his personalfortunes, his future career, and perhaps the destiny of a greatnational party hung, he had not forgotten Ruth. 

He made it a point every day, wherever he was, or whatever the taskor excitement of the hour, to write her a love letter. Sometimesit was only a few lines hastily scrawled while on the train betweenstations where he addressed the crowds at each stop. Sometimes hesent a dainty box of flowers. 

She never replied to his letters or little gifts. But it madeno difference. He kept steadily on the course he had mapped out, dogged, purposeful, persistent. 

The night of the election, when he received the first assurance ofhis success, before he spoke to any of his lieutenants or receiveda single congratulation, he closed his door, locked it, and calledRuth over his telephone, which he had connected with her house byspecial secret arrangement that afternoon. 

He recognised her soft contralto voice, and his hand trembled withthe joy of the triumph which he felt brought him nearer to hisheart's desire. 

He was so excited he could not speak for a moment, and again thelow soft voice called, "What is it? Who is it?"

"This is Morris, Ruth. My door is locked, and this is a privatewire connected with your house; I am alone with you and God. I amthe Governor-elect of New York. I have spoken to no one until Itell you. One word from you I will prize more than all the shoutsof the world with which the streets will ring in a moment. "

There was a movement of the phone at the other end. 

"With all my heart I congratulate you, Morris. You are a great man. I can never tell you how deeply I feel the delicate honour you payme. "

The man sighed and his voice was husky with emotion. 

"Ah! Ruth, if you only meant that conventional phrase, 'with all myheart, ' I'd be the happiest man in the world to-night. But I mustgo; the boys are trying to beat the door down. My success I lay atyour feet, my love. When you hear the shouts of hosts and see thesky red to-night with illuminations, remember that it is all foryou. I am yours. --Good-by. "

She sat at her window long past the hour of midnight and watchedthe blaze of rockets from end to end of Manhattan, over Brooklyn, and from the farthest sand-beaches of Coney Island, dreaming withopen eyes, soft with tears, of the mystery of love and life. 

The unterrified Democracy of the great city had gone mad with joyover their daring young leader's success. She could hear the distantmurmur of the tumult of thousands of shouting, screaming men packedaround Tammany Hall, filling Fourteenth Street in solid mass, jammingUnion Square and Madison Square and surging round the Madison SquareGarden, where a jollification meeting of twenty thousand cheering, excited men was in progress. It sounded like the boom and roar ofsome far-off sea breaking on the rocks and echoing among the cliffs. All Harlem was ablaze with bonfires now, and the tumult of hornsand shouting boys filled the streets on Washington Heights. 

She sighed and rested her dimpled chin in her hand. 

"Surely, I must be a foolish woman to cling to Frank and rejectthe glory and strength of this old sweetheart's chivalrous love!I cannot help it. He is my husband. I love him. Perhaps he mayneed me some dark night in life. Who knows? If he calls, I will beready. "

The year had proved a trying one to Ruth. The sensation ofthe completion of the Temple and the stir made by its dedicationhad increased Gordon's fame, and the story of her sorrow had beenrepeated again and again. A hundred petty details, utterly false, had been added as the story had passed from paper to paper, untilshe was afraid to look in a public print lest she find her ownname staring her in the face. From the Socialist point of view, shewas attacked as a blatant scold who had made her husband's lifeintolerable, until he had been rescued by the beautiful womanwho was now his wife. By the conservative press, she was timidlydefended, damned by faint praise and humiliated by pity. 

The children, growing rapidly, were beginning to feel the mother'sposition. In the public schools, the story of her life and desertionby her husband had tipped the tongues of the spiteful with poison, and Lucy had come home more than once trying to conceal from hermother the hurt of her sensitive child's soul. 

Morris King, now the distinguished Governor-elect, hastened topress his suit. 

Her faithful knight, he was now laying lovingly at her feet thetribute of a powerful man's life. 

To every worldly view of her position and future his suit wasa temptation well nigh resistless. His love had stood the test ofyears. He would worship her as his wife as he had worshiped heras his ideal. She knew this by an intuition as unerring as that bywhich she knew she could never love him as she loved Gordon. Andyet she felt a singular dependence on him, and a tender gratitudefor the protection he had given her life. 

He knew his position was strong, and pressed it with quiet intensity. He was careful that his attentions should not become the subjectof public comment, and the tongue of gossip cause her pain. Notfor one moment did he doubt that he would win. 

The Sunday before his inauguration he spent with her, and, much tohis disgust, she insisted on going to the Pilgrim Church. 

"Of all churches, Ruth, for heaven's sake don't go there, " hepleaded, with impatience. 

"Yes, " she quietly answered. "I've tried the others. I don'tseem at home. I've ceased to mind what any one there thinks. Thecongregation has changed completely in the past two years, DeaconVan Meter tells me. He called to see us the other day to ask afterthe children and my financial welfare, offering to help me in anyway his experience could serve me. He has aged very much lately, and the death of his wife seems to have completely broken the oldman's heart. He has withdrawn from business entirely. My sorrow seemsto have touched him in a very tender spot. He begged me in such anearnest way to come back to the church and join in its work, I'vemade up my mind to go. "

King rubbed his hand over his head hopelessly. 

"Well, if you've made up your mind, you will go. Ruth, you are thehardest-headed woman to have such a beautiful spirit I ever knew. "

The dark eyes smiled into his face. 

"You may go with me, Morris. "

He took up his cane and coat. 

"I'll grudge the minutes I can't talk, but I'll sit and look atyou. You are growing more beautiful every day, Ruth. I am gratefulfor the honour you are going to do me in attending the inauguration. I'll agree to anything you say to-day. "

They slipped into a seat under the gallery unobserved. The newusher did not recognise either Ruth or her distinguished escort. 

The services moved her with a strange power. In every hymn sheheard the deep rich voice of Gordon as she had seen him so oftenstand in that pulpit. The swell of the organ's full notes throbbedwith his memory. The man she heard was no longer the new pastor, but her beloved, and she was living over again the sweet days ofthe past when he was her own and she had filled his life. 

The preacher was reading the most beautiful psalm in the languageof man: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me tolie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. "

A strange peace came over her as the music of these grand oldsentences, throbbing with the passionate faith of centuries, swepther heart. 

He was reading from the old Bible that rested on the same goldenlectern pulpit Gordon had hurled behind him that awful day in theirhistory. The same crimson cloth he had twisted into a shapelessmass and thrown aside once more hung from its front. She could seea ragged break in the gold of the cross where his enormous handhad crushed it that day. 

The thought of God's eternal life and unchanging purpose, bindingall time within His mighty plan, soothed her spirit. Men mightcome and go behind that pulpit and from its pews, but the Churchof God, symbol of the eternal, would go on forever. In the deeprhythm of the psalm to which she listened she felt the heart-beatof its continuous unbroken life stretching back to creation's dawnand on until Time shall roll into the ocean of Eternity. 

Suddenly the red blood leaped from her heart with a thought, "WhatGod hath joined together man cannot put asunder!"

King's face grew somber as he saw her elation. 

He knew that some mysterious spirit had suddenly dropped a veilbetween them. 

When they returned home she was very quiet and her dark eyes shonewith unusual brilliance. 

"Ruth, you are thinking of that man, " he said, with a scowl. 

She nodded gently. 

King trembled and his fists clenched. 

"I could kill him, the great egotistical brute! How strange themadness that binds a woman to the man to whom she first surrenders!I sometimes think it is the most blind, pathetic and tragic instinctthat ever shadowed the soul of a human being. It is degrading. Youare a woman of character and intelligence. You must shake off thispeasant's mania. "

She shook her head with a yearning, mystic look. 

"I believe God had a great purpose when He made a woman's heartlike that. I love him. My very soul and body have become in somemysterious way one with him. "

King's eyes blazed. 

"Yet he flaunts his love for another woman in your face. "

She flinched as from a blow, but answered tenderly. 

"Yes; he is mad now. The flesh has mastered the spirit in its strugglefor the moment. She holds his body"--a pause and a smile--"but hissoul is mine. He may not know it now. He will some day. I know it, and I abide God's time. "

"How long can you hold such a delusion, I wonder?" he asked, withangry amazement. 

"Forever. " she softly whispered. 

He drew himself up with grim force. 

"I am going to win you, Ruth, " he said, slowly lingering with hislips over her name as though he could taste its sweetness. 

He looked at her beautiful face and figure tenderly and with anintensity that gave to his eyes a strange glitter. 

She turned from him with a sigh and gazed on Gordon's portraithanging over the mantel. 

"No, Morris. I have made up my mind to play my part in harmony withLove's eternal law. If the world is full of discord, I will stillmake the sweetest music my soul can sing. I will not try to drownthe din, but in my own way sing in perfect time with the beat ofGod's heart. Perhaps some soul beside me on life's way will catchthe note, and it will not be in vain. This may be a blind instinct, but it is not degrading. He who counts the beat of a sparrow'swing, teaches the stork her appointed time, and whispers his callto the swallow in the autumn wind, will not lead me astray. "

The man shaded his eyes with his hand as though to hide theirmisery. 

"You are throwing your sweet life away, " he said, reproachfully. 

"But I shall find it again. When I see the fury of murder in youreyes, and gaze into the gulf of fierce passions into which Frank hasdescended, I cannot seek my own happiness. The sense of motherhood, the feeling of kinship to all women, brings to me again the certaintythat I am right, that one great love unto death can alone give thesoul peace and strength, and give to man and the world happiness. "

He bent forward quickly. 

"But if he were dead you might love me?"

"Not as I love him. "

"He is dead a thousand times to you and your life, " he cried, bitterly. "He is your wilful murderer. You will see this by andby, and I will win you. I will be content with such love as youcan give me. Mine will be so full, so tender, so warm it will beresistless. "

She shook his hand kindly and bade him good-by. 

"I will send a carriage for you and the children to-morrow. Youwill go to the capital with me in my private car. "

"I'd rather not, Morris, but I have promised you, and it shall beso. "

The ceremony of the inauguration was the most elaborate seen atAlbany in years. 

Tammany came to the capital thirty thousand strong, and thirtythousand strong they marched through the streets, with their shiningsilk hats glistening in the sun and their lusty throats shouting fortheir leader. They had voted the ticket faithfully, and sometimestoo often the same day, unkind critics had said, in the years ofthe past, but for the first time in generations they had placed afull-fledged Grand Sachem of their own Great Wigwam in the Governor'schair, and they made the welkin ring. In the joy of their faces, the steady hoof-beat of their big feet on the pavement and thestalwart pride with which they marched, one saw the secret of theirvictory. They were in dead earnest. Politics was the breath theybreathed and the blood that fed their hearts. 

King felt the contagion of their loyalty and enthusiasm, and hisinaugural address was inspired and inspiring. 

He placed Ruth and the children in choice seats near the speaker'sstand, and in every movement of his body, every word and accent, from the moment he appeared till the last shout of his victorioushenchmen died away, he was conscious of her presence. 

She could feel the intensity of his powerful will pressing uponher in this triumph he was deliberately laying at her feet. 

When the ceremonies were over, and his address was being flashedover a thousand wires, he sent the children for a drive, andshowed Ruth over the stately executive mansion. He knew the hourwas propitious, and he had planned to make a desperate attempt towin some sort of promise from her for their future. 

"Now, Ruth, " he said, softly, "sit here on this sofa by the openfire. We will be alone for awhile. I've something to show you. "

His face was still aglow from the excitement of his triumph. Hedrew from his inner pocket an official envelope tied with a pieceof ribbon. 

She leaned over with interest, thinking he was going to read toher some scheme of legislation on which he had been at work. 

Instead he drew out a package of her old letters and a lot of fadedflowers--every scrap of paper and trinket she had ever given himin her life. He showed her each one, and gave the history of everyflower, when she had given it to him, and what she had said. 

Ruth buried her face in her hands, and he silently watched her. 

"This one, " he cried, with a tremor in his voice and a tighteningabout his eyes, "you gave me the night I took you to that ballat the Hygeia. How soft and delicate your hand felt as you placedit in the lapel of my coat! I could see myself, as in a mirror, in your great dark laughing eyes. I never saw that picture again, Ruth, and the laughter went out of them forever. They were alwaysfull of storm and shadows for me after that night. "

Her lips were trembling as she turned these leaves from the storyof the sunlit days of her girlhood. 

The man went on steadily and passionately. "I could show youmessages to-day from scores of national leaders offering me theirsupport for the Presidency. This token I am going to show you nowhas no value to the world or at a bank, but there is not moneyenough on this earth to buy it. "

He drew from his pocketbook a little pink-covered tintype of a boyand girl. 

The tapering fingers shook as she held it. 

"This is the one priceless treasure I own--this little old tintypewe had taken together in fun one day in the tent of the strollingphotograph man. You remember he guessed we were sweethearts, andgrouped us by the old rules he knew so well. You see, he placed mesolemnly in his single chair, with my legs crossed, and made youstand close beside and put your beautiful hand with its slenderfingers on my shoulder. You laughed and took it down. He scowled, and put it back, and told you to behave. It was your birthday. Youwere just seventeen. I was not half as proud to-day, when thosethousands who love me shouted and hailed me as their chief, asI was that moment with your dear soft hand on my shoulder. I havefelt it there every hour since. You see, I have kissed it untilI've worn your face almost away, but the smile is still there. "

He took her hand gently. 

"Ruth, dear, let me bring the smile back to your living face. Thesegreat rooms will be empty and lonely. I wish to hear the patter ofyour children's feet in them, and the echo of your soft footstepsbehind them. You are just thirty-five, in the full glory of perfectwomanhood, far more beautiful than this girl of seventeen. Promiseme that at the end of a year you will be mine, and let me make yourlife as glorious to the world as the beauty of your soul and bodyis to me--you, the forsaken, whom fools pity or blame. "

Looking away through her tears, she gently withdrew her hand, bentlow and burst into sobs. 

"No, no, no! I love him. He is my husband!"

CHAPTER XXVI

AT CLOSE QUARTERS

Ruth had been deeply shaken by the events of the inauguration. She returned to New York in the Governor's private car in a dazedstupor, from which she did not recover for several days. 

Morris King's appeal had stirred elements of her character she hadlong ignored or suppressed. The old pride of blood from races whohad been the conquerors and rulers of the world began to beat itswings against the bars of love. 

The special swept along the banks of the majestic Hudson, roaringthrough cities where she saw crowded express trains held on theside tracks for her to pass. 

She drew herself up proudly, and a wave of fierce resentment againstthe man who had deserted her came like a blast of icy wind fromthe snow-tipped mountains beyond the western shore of the river. 

The splendour of the stately mansion on the hill, the enthusiasm ofthe people for her old lover, his tenderness and deathless loyalty, and the memories that linked him to her in a cloudless girlhood, began to draw her with terrible fascination. 

There was something so old-fashioned and chival-rous about Kingand his love, she felt a strange melting within her heart. Thiselement of romance she knew he had inherited from her own medieval, home-loving South which she loved. It appealed to her now witha peculiar force--this old-fashioned people and their ways, anda sense of alienation and hostility to Gordon and his radicalismswept once more the storm-clouds across her dark eyes. 

She began to question her position and the sanity of her course. Shefelt the stirrings of social instincts from the high-bred women ofold Virginia, the Mother of Presidents and the home of the greatconstructive minds which had created the Republic. She knew instinctivelythat she could preside over the White House at Washington with theease and distinction of the proudest woman who had ever graced it. 

Her old lover seemed certain to be the nominee of his party, andhis chance of election was one in two. Whatever the outcome, he wasyoung and already a figure of national importance. He was sure toplay a greater role in the future than he had ever played in thepast. 

The idea that she ruled his life and made him what he was, and mightbe, brought a smile to her lips and the red blood to her cheeks. His fame as a man of cold and selfish ambitions made her knowledgeof the secret of his inner life the more sacred and charming. 

For two months this battle of pride and blood with the one greatpassion silently raged in her soul, until she became afraid to hearthe ring of her doorbell lest it should be the Governor. 

She determined to go to Florida for two weeks on a visit to an oldschoolmate in Tampa. There, amid the sunshine and the soft breezesfrom the gulf, she hoped to see her life and duty in clearer outline. 

It was the first week in March which found her seated in the centreof a Pullman car of the Florida Limited of the Atlantic Coast Line. 

The train had passed Richmond and was sweeping through the desolatebroom-sedge fields still furrowed by those mortal trenches aroundPetersburg. 

Her father had been killed in one of those trenches, a gallantcolonel cheering a ragged handful of half-starved men in gray, unmindful of the order of retreat until engulfed by the grand armythat swept over them like a tidal wave. 

She took the children into the dining-car and found every tablefull except one, and two seats at that one already reserved. Lucywas placed next to the window, Frank next to the aisle, and themother crowded between them with an arm encircling each. 

She had given the order to the waiter, and was pointing out to Lucythe lines of the battle-field on which her father had died. 

"There, dear, it is, " she said, with a tremor in her voice, pointingto an angle in the trench on the crest of a ridge. "There is wheregrandfather was killed. "

While Lucy looked and Frank climbed into her lap and was peeringout the window, the conductor placed a beautiful woman and tall, distinguished-looking man in the reserved seats at the same table, opposite. 

The boy turned, still on his knees, in his mother's lap, and facedthe newcomers, whom Ruth had not been able to see for the child'smovements. 

He stared for a moment at the man with wide-dilated eyes, his bodysuddenly stiffened, and with a half sob, half cry, he sprang tothe floor. 

"Look! Mama, dear--look! It's Papa!"

He threw himself on Gordon, and his little arms held his neckconvulsively. 

The man blushed like a girl as his great trembling fingers smoothedthe boy's hair. 

Kate's face was scarlet, Ruth turned pink and white, and Lucy, trembling and sobbing, began to scramble across her mother's lap. 

The boy's hands tenderly framed his father's crimson cheeks, hekissed him, and again and again his arms clung in passionate claspabout his neck. 

"Oh, Papa, we've got you at last! Why didn't you come? We've beenpraying, Lucy and me, every night for you, and we thought you'dnever come back. Mama said you'd gone a long, long way--"

Ruth was choking with emotion, and yet she smiled through hertears. She knew those tiny hands were deep down in the man's soulsweeping his heart-strings with wild, sweet music. 

The brunette looked across the table into the trembling face ofthe fair one. The dark eyes were now tranquil, whatever the stormwithin. A faint sinile suffused her face with mantling blushes. 

Lucy pulled the boy's arms from around her father's neck andslipped her own softer, slender ones there. She kissed him, andlaid her brown curls on his breast. Her little hands patted hisbroad shoulder, and she murmured:

"Papa, dear, I love you!"

Kate attempted to rise, bit her lip, and fairly hissed in Gordon'sear:

"End this scene! Find another table!"

Gordon drew Lucy's arm from his neck and whispered:

"They are all filled, my dear. "

The blue eyes blazed with fury as she cried under her breath:

"Get up and let me out!"

Gordon gently drew the children's arms away, placed them back intheir seats, rose, still blushing, and accompanied Kate back intotheir car. 

At first the boy was too astonished to speak or protest. When hefound his voice he whispered in wonder:

"Mama, who is she?"

Ruth placed a finger on her trembling lips and shook her head. 

"Will she let him come back?" he asked, anxiously. 

"Hush, dear, " the mother said, softly. 

The boy put his arms on the table and burst into tears. 

Lucy sat very quiet, glancing into her mother's face wistfully. Andthen she felt under the table, found one of her hands and began tostroke it gently. 

When Gordon returned to his car, immediately behind the one inwhich Ruth was riding, Kate sat for half an hour in furious silence, refusing to speak or answer a question. He had never seen her sobeside herself with anger. 

She turned on him in a sudden flash and asked with frowning emphasis:

"I wonder why you dragged me off on this idiotic trip?"

"I was worn out and needed the rest, " he answered, quietly. 

She looked at him with defiance. 

"I don't believe a word of it, " she said, indignantly. "You wishto get me out of New York. You were too much of a coward to tellOverman your suspicions that he was trying to win your wife. "

Gordon looked out of the window in silence. 

"We will stop at the next station and go back. I don't care forany more free vaudeville shows in the dining-car. "

"Don't be absurd, my dear; you need not meet again. "

Gordon smiled in spite of himself. 

Tears of vexation filled the violet eyes. "For all of your loudtalk of freedom, I believe you still love that first wife of yours!And I am beginning to despise you. "

"Come, Kate, this is too absurd. How could I help the accident ofsuch a meeting? I had not seen the children since our separation. She has always taught them to love me. How could I prevent it ifI wished?"

"Yes; and you love her, too, " she insisted stubbornly, and the fullred lips trembled and parted, and then softened into a--smile. 

"But don't flatter yourself I care, or am jealous, because thisscene has humiliated and angered me. You're not worth a moment'sjealousy, you great hulking baby!"

Gordon pressed the button and ordered a lunch served in their seat, and smilingly refused to continue the quarrel. 

When the train crossed the North Carolina line it ran into thebelt of the advancing spring rains from the South. At Wilson, itwas pouring in torrents and had been raining steadily for two days. At Fayetteville, the train was an hour late, delayed by a washout. 

Lucy had gone to sleep with her arm around her mother's neck andone hand resting softly on her cheek. Ruth's heart had been deeplytouched by this gentle and silent sympathy of the dawning sexconsciousness of her daughter's soul. The quick little eyes hadseen the tragedy, and a voice within whispered its soft words ofnew, mysterious kinship. 

Soon after the train pulled out of Fayetteville it struck thelong, straight run of the South Carolina low country. For thirtymiles the track is as straight as an arrow, and before the gleamingheadlight of the engine shows on the track the watchers at thestations can see the trembling light in the distant sky beyond thesixteen-mile line of the horizon. 

The dark eyes were dozing in fitful sleep with the old spell of loveonce more enveloping the soul. She was dreaming of him, laughingat some boyish prank. 

Over the straight track, down grade, the Limited was sweeping atfull speed through the black storm. 

Suddenly Ruth was awakened by a sickening crash as though the earthhad collided with a star and been crushed as an egg-shell. The carseemed to leap a hundred feet into the air, plunge through space, and strike the ground with a dull smash that sent dust and splintersflying through every inch of space. 

She instinctively seized the children, trembling and dazed, andhugged them close. Merciful God, would it never stop! Now the carwas plowing through the earth--now falling end over end, straining, grinding, roaring, smashing into death and eternity!

At last--it had seemed an hour--it stopped with a shivering crash. 

And then the blackness of night, the swash of gusts of rain overhead, and the moan of the wind. Not another sound. Not a groan or a cryor a human voice. 

Was she dead or alive? Ruth felt she must scream this awful questionor faint. The children began to sob and she gasped in gratitude:

"Thank God, they are not dead!"

She attempted to get out of her berth and found she must climb. Thecar was lying on its side. She looked out into the aisle throughher curtains and everything was dark. The air choked her withdust, and she caught the odour of burning wool. Deep down belowsomewhere she could hear, in the lull of the wind, the roar ofwaters, and feel the car sway as though it were hanging on the edgeof an embankment or trestle and about to topple into a torrent. 

She pulled the children out into the aisle and tried to crawl towardthe end of the car, only to find it crushed into a shapeless massand the way piled with debris. 

A light suddenly flashed up and the steady crackle of flames began. From the debris below came the scream of a woman for help. 

She drew back her slender fist and tried to smash the double plateglass windows and only bruised her tapering fingers. 

She found a step-ladder and broke the windows out. 

Lifting herself on the seat, and peering through, she saw by theglare of the buring wreck the swirling waters of the river twentyfeet below. 

She rushed back to her berth, on the lower side, smashed the windows, and found the car resting on another sleeper. The blow had brokenthrough both sets of windows. 

She lightly sprang through and drew the children after her. A stifledgroan, as from one straining the last muscle in some desperateeffort, came from a berth. Rushing forward, still dragging thechildren, she found Kate pinned on her back, with the flames leapingcloser each moment. 

The violet eyes turned pitifully on Ruth, staring wide with the setagony of speechless fear and searched her face for the verdict oflife. 

A faint cry came from the full lips, white at the thought of death:

"Help me, for God's sake; I'll be burning in a moment!"

Did the dark eyes waver with an instant's hesitation as she thoughtof her children imperiled by the delay and of the shame this woman'slife meant to her? If so, she who cried did not see it. Swiftlythe lithe form sprang to the rescue. She ran her hands over Kate'smagnificent figure and tore her robe loose where it was pinionedbetween the timbers, loosed the wealth of auburn hair caught inthe snap of the folding rack of the berth, and she was free. 

She took Ruth's hand and kissed it impulsively. 

"Thank you. You are an angel. "

"Come, we will be burned to death if we don't get out of here ina minute, " Ruth cried, excitedly. 

She found the berth ladder she had thrown through the window andbroke the windows out on the lower side of the car, and called:

"Is any one down there?"

Only the roar of the water and crackling flames answered. 

She looked and saw a strip of ground on the bank of the river someeight feet below. They might slide down the trestle if no one couldhelp. 

The black eyes flashed into the blue for a moment and the littlebrunette face went white. 

"Where is Frank?" she gasped. 

Kate shivered and glanced at the flames. 

"I don't know. He was in the berth in front of mine. I hope he isgone for help. "

Ruth handed her the children and leaped back to the berth. It wassmashed upward and a great hole torn through the roof. 

She hurried back and again peered down through the broken window atthe narrow strip of ground on the river's brink lit by the risingflames. 

And then she gave a cry of joy at the sound of a voice somewhereamid the mass beneath, "Ruth! Ruth! Is that you and the children in that car?"

"Yes, Frank, " came back the steady answer. 

"Are you hurt?" he cried, with breathless intensity. 

"I think not, " she replied, cheerfully. 

"Thank God!" she heard his deep voice burst out with tremblingfervour. 

"Have you seen Kate?" he called. 

"Yes; she is here. "

"Come, get out of there quick. You will be burned to death!" heshouted. "Hand the children to me and then swing down--I can catchyou, one at a time. "

She held the boy's hands and dropped him in his father's arms, then swung Lucy through and saw her clasp his neck and kiss him. She helped Kate hold and swing down into his arms. And when shefelt him tremble at the touch of her own petite figure her armstightened about his neck, she kissed him and whispered:

"My own dear love!"

They climbed up the river bank and walked around in the pouringrain, barefoot and treading on broken glass at every step. 

Neither the conductor of the train or Pullman cars were anywhereto be seen. Only one porter appeared to have survived, and he satmoaning on a piece of debris. 

The great engine, like a huge living monster that had seen withits single eye the abyss of the broken bridge in time, had leapedthe chasm and gone plunging and faring over the ties and rails ahalf mile beyond the wreck, with the engineer and fireman clingingto it. 

The lighter portion of the train had struck the embankment of thenarrow river. The day cars were piled across the track beyond; thethrees Pullmans, smashed and heaped on top of one another, hung onthe edge of the broken bridge. 

Gordon, with the two women and children, finally found a man whohad some sense--a fat drummer seated on his sample-cases calmlyputting on his shoes by the light of the burning cars. 

He was talking to a younger drummer sitting near, who fidgeted andkept looking about nervously. 

"Take it easy, sonny. Put on your shoes, " he said, soothingly. 

"This is awful!" the young one sighed. 

"Well, we're all right, top side up, marked 'with care. ' Don'tworry. Put on your shoes. You can't walk in this glass barefoot. "

When he saw Gordon and his party he stopped tying his shoes andlaughed. 

"Well, partner, you look like a patriarch who's lost his way. Ain'tnone of your family got shoes?"

He looked at Gordon's bleeding feet and at Kate and Ruth shiveringbehind him in the rain. 

Gordon smiled and shook his head. 

The fat man hastily pulled off his own shoes, snatched off thoseof the younger man beside him and offered them to the ladies. 

"They won't be what you might call a stylish fit, madam, " he saidgallantly to Ruth, "but they'll beat broken glass for comfort. "

Paying no attention to their protests, he made them sit down onthe sample-cases and put them on. 

Turning to Gordon and his companion, he called cheerfully:

"Come, men, that Pullman's full of blankets; we must get them outfor the women and children before it's too late. It's too dark tofind our umbrellas. I believe that fool conductor's got mine anyhowand gone home with it. I haven't seen him anywhere. "

In a few minutes, he had blankets for all the passengers who hadlost their clothes. By daybreak he had found the conductor, countedhis tickets, and discovered that out of fifty passengers on the traintwenty had been wounded, none fatally, and that thirty had escapedwithout a scratch. The train had dropped most of its passengersduring the day and had only an average of ten people to a coach, and they were seated and sleeping near the centres of each car. Bywhat seemed a miracle, none were killed. 

Just as the sun rose, the drummer formed the passengers in line, with the conductor bringing up the rear, and marched them to acabin where he saw smoke curling up from the edge of a field. 

The relief train from Florence, four miles away, arrived at eight, just four hours from the time the accident occurred, bringing thesurgeons and new officers to take charge, and the drummer resignedhis command. 

The new conductor took the name and address of each passenger asthey sat in grim array swathed in blankets in the cabin. 

Gordon gave the name of "Mr. And Mrs. Frank Gordon, New York, " forhimself and Kate, who sat beside him. Ruth, not hearing him, withan absent look gave the address, "Mrs. Frank Gordon, New York. "

The conductor looked from one to the other, puzzled, and the drummergrinned. 

"A Mormon Elder, by the Lord--and he lives in Gotham!" he whisperedto the youngster he had in tow. 

Lucy lay in her mother's lap suffering from an ugly gash acrossher forehead. Gordon had bathed her forehead as soon as he haddiscovered it, and carried her to the cabin, with her soft armsclinging around his neck. 

He was watching her lips twitch. 

She had grown in the three years out of all resemblance to the childhe had left. Her eyes now looked at him with the timid light of amaiden. 

As she had clung to him while he carried her to the house, he hadfelt her lips soft and warm with the dawn of sex when she kissedhim and murmured:

"Papa, dear, it's so good to have you carry me. I love you. "

For the first time there came into his soul the sweet and terriblerealisation that his own flesh and blood had become one with Ruth'sin the greatest miracle of earth, the heart of a woman--a womanwho could live and suffer and whose heart could break even as hermother's! Her eyes were all his, her hair a perfect mixture of thepigments with which theirs had been coloured. The strength of theman trembled with tender pride and wonder as he looked at her--hisliving marriage vow, written out before his eyes in a beautifulpoem of flesh and blood. In the gentle beauty of her face he sawreflected himself blended with the young vision of Ruth as he hadfirst met her a laughing girl--the little stranger a growing woman, himself and his first love dream in one. Her face held him fascinated. 

Kate watched him furtively. 

The doctor examined and dressed Lucy's wound, and told Ruth it mustbe sewed up at once if the child were saved from an ugly scar thatwould disfigure her for life. He pronounced the heart action tooweak from the shock to use an anesthetic. 

"It can only be done, madam, " he gravely said to her, "if you canget her consent to endure the pain. "

"Will you bear it, dear?" the mother asked. 

She raised herself up and beckoned to her father. 

Gordon had heard the doctor's remark, came at once and bent overher. 

"I can if Papa will hold me in his arms and you take one hand andhe the other, " she said, eagerly. 

Gordon took her and told the surgeon to take the stitches withoutdelay. 

The first one she bore bravely. But when the steel needle cut theflesh the second time, and the sharp pain sent its chill to herheart, the little face went white and she gasped:

"Kiss me, Papa--Mama, quick--"

They both bent at once, and the blond locks of the man mingled withthe dark hair of the woman as their lips touched her face. 

The doctor paused, and Lucy smiled faintly. 

"I'm better now. I can stand it. "

Gordon felt a strange thrill to the last depths of his soul as hesat there holding one of his daughter's hands while Ruth held theother. A sense of mysterious unity with their life came over him. 

The little woman saw his emotion and knew its meaning. 

She bent close and, while a smile played around her eyes, whisperedsoftly and triumphantly:

"Frank, I'd go through another wreck for this. "

And the man was silent. 

At Florence, clothes were brought to the train, and those who hadnone were rigged out after a fashion for the return home. 

Not a passenger on the train wished to continue his journey exceptthe fat drummer. He went on to the next station where he had intendedto stop, as though nothing worth talking about had happened, andsold a bill of goods before dinner. 

Ruth and the children returned to New York on the first train, andGordon and Kate followed on the next. 

Kate had scarcely spoken a word since he had lifted her from thewreck. She was in a deep reverie, but from the occasional gleamof her eyes Gordon knew she was passing through some great crisis. He wondered what the effects of this hour face to face with deathwould be on her character. 

He was amazed at the changes in Ruth since he had last seen her. She had blossomed into the perfect beauty of womanhood. Not a traceof anxiety was left on her face. Her great dark eyes were calmand soft. Her lips were fuller, and her complexion white and pink, wreathed in its raven hair. Her figure was now the perfection of thepetite Spanish type, in full, voluptuous lines, yet erect, lithe, with small hands and feet and tiny wrists, her whole being breathinga spiritual charm. Grace, delicacy, and distinction were in everymovement of her body, and over it all, an unconscious and winningdignity. 

After several hours of silence, as they sped back toward New York, Kate looked at him curiously and laughed. 

"You're not quite so handsome, Frank, in those trousers that stopat the top of your shoes and that coat that pauses just below yourelbow. "

He held up his long, powerful arms and said, meditatively:

"No. Gestures arrayed like that could hardly move an audience. "

The shadows fell across the blue eyes again and they swept him witha critical expression. 

"I didn't tell you that Ruth saved my life. "

Gordon turned suddenly. 

"Yes, and it was a shock to me I'll never get over. I don't knowwhether I could have done as much for her under similar circumstances, with two children clinging to me and life depending on a moment'stime perhaps. But she did it, swiftly and beautifully. To tell youthe truth, I've quite fallen in love with her. She is a wonderfullittle woman. I've been sitting here for hours wondering at themeanness of a man who could desert her. Those great soulful eyesof hers! When I looked up into them, crying like a poor coward forlife--I, who had robbed her of what she held dearer than life--Isaw only a tender mother's soul looking down at me. Frank, I fearyour spell over me is broken. You're a poor piece of clay. The blazein that car lit up some corners of my soul I never saw before. Ithink I'll despise all men and love all women after to-day. Whatfools and puppets we are!"

The man made no reply. He only looked out the window at the flyinglandscape and saw the sweet face of a little girl. 

CHAPTER XXVII

VENUS VICTRIX

The flames of those burning cars, leaping into the skies above thetops of the storm-tossed trees, had lighted some dark places inGordon's soul, and he was sobered by the revelation. 

The clasp of Ruth's arms about his neck, the warm touch of herplump figure, the pressure of her lips on his, and the passionatemurmur of the low contralto voice in his ears, "My own dear love!"thrilled him with tenderest memories. 

He sat by Kate's side brooding over the days and nights of theirmarried life. Baffled and puzzled, his mind would come back witheverlasting persistence to the strange feeling that held him toRuth--a subtle and sweet mystery, the most intimate relation thesoul and body can ever bear on earth, the union in love in themorning of life and its tender blossoming into a living babe. 

He began to ask himself had not their being mingled somehowin essence? Had they not been really united by that vital processwhich sometimes makes married people grow to look alike, and oftento die on the same day?

Intimately he knew this little woman, to her deepest soul secrets, and yet she had still eluded him, and now revealed subtle spiritualand physical charms he had never seen nor felt before. 

He was conscious at the same time of a new feeling of repulsion onKate's part, and the thought filled him with nervous foreboding. Whatever change her disillusion had brought, his own physicalinfatuation for her was, if possible, deeper and more unreasonable. 

She could not make him quarrel, but he would sit doggedly gloatingover her beauty, his gray eyes flashing and gleaming with the feverfor possession that is the soul of murder. 

He was not long left in doubt as to the turn her thoughts had takenfrom the crisis through which she had passed. Her drawing-room wascrowded. These receptions were protracted until long past midnight, and he had never seen her so gay or reckless in manner. 

She dressed with a splendour never affected before, and received theattentions of Overman with a favour so marked it could not escapethe eye of the most casual observer. She made not the slightesteffort to conceal it, and her manner was so plain a challenge toGordon he was stunned by its audacity. 

Overman felt this challenge in her mood, and, alarmed, withdrew fromthe scene. He did not return to the house during the week, and onSaturday he received a dainty perfumed note from her by messenger. It was the first missive he had ever received from a woman. 

He turned it over in his broad hand, touched it nervously, andopened it with his fingers trembling as he recognised her handwriting. 

"My Dear Mr. Overman: I have been sorely disappointed in not seeingyou again this week. I write to command your presence Sunday morningat ten o'clock to accompany me to the Temple, if I choose to go, and to dine with me. Sincerely, KATE RANSOM GORDON. "

He wrote an answer accepting and then sat holding this note in hishand as though it were something alive. For an hour he paced backand forth in his office alone, screening his eye behind his bushybrows, wrinkling his forehead, twisting his mouth, and now and thenthrusting his hand into his collar and tugging at it, as though hewere choking. 

Gordon's new study was in the dome of the Temple commanding awonderful view of the great city, its rivers and bays, and the longdim line of the open sea beyond the towers of Coney Island. It washis habit to take an early breakfast on Sunday mornings and spendthe three hours before his services there. 

When Overman reached the house at ten o'clock, clouds had obscuredthe sun, The air was wet and penetrating, and charged with thepremonition of storm. He felt nervous, excited and irritable. 

The maid showed him into the spacious library, where a cheerfulfire of red-hot coals glowed, and his spirits rose. 

He stood before the fire without removing his top coat, and themaid said:

"Mrs. Gordon says to make yourself comfortable. The day is so rawshe will not go out. She will be down in a moment. "

He removed his coat, sank into an easy chair, and began to wonderwhat could be the meaning of that note. He knew intuitively thathe was approaching a crisis in his life. 

He felt a sense of anxiety and discomfort at the idea of spendingthe morning alone with his friend's wife. Yet he told himself hehad no choice--it was fate. A woman had arranged it. 

When Kate entered the room, he sprang to his feet with a cry ofamazement at the vision of radiant beauty sweeping with sinuousstep to meet him. He had never seen her so conscious of power orwith better reason for it. 

She was dressed in a gown of pink-and-white filmy stuff, whichclung to her form, revealing its beautiful lines from the roundedshoulders to the tips of her dainty slippers. The sleeves were opento the elbow, showing the magnificent bare arms. From the shoulders, soft diaphanous draperies hung straight down the length of herfigure, revealing by contrast more sharply the graceful curves ofthe body. The throat was bare, and her smooth ivory neck glowed inround fulness against the background of her hair falling in wavesof fiery splendour. 

Around her shapely waist hung a double cord of silver, knotted lowin front and drawn below the knee by heavy tassels. 

The effect of the dress was simplicity itself. There was not asuperfluous ruffle or ribbon. Its sole design was not to attractattention to itself, but to reveal the superb charms of the womanwho wore it, with every breath she breathed, every step, and everygesture. 

The rhythmic music of her walk--quick, strong, luxurious--breathedan excess of vitality. The full lips were smiling and her cheeksaflame with pleasure at his admiration. 

Her eyes spoke straight into his with a candour that was unmistakable. They knew what they desired and said so aloud. They had thrownscruples to the winds, and in untamed, primeval strength gazed onlife with daring freedom. 

Overman stammered and cleared his throat, bowed, and blushed. 

She took both his hands cordially and smiled into his face. 

"Why didn't you come back to see me this week?"

He hesitated, disconcerted. 

"I know, " she went on rapidly, leading him to a lounge by the fire. 

"You saw the jealousy in Frank's big baby face and you stayedaway--now, honestly!"

He pulled nervously at his moustache and his eye twinkled. 

"That's about the size of it. "

"Well, I'm not a child and you are not. We are both full grown. I am thirty-one years old. I am not Frank Gordon's slave, nor hisproperty. I am a free woman by his own words. And I am going to befree. "

Overman glanced at the door. 

"Oh! You needn't try to run, " she laughed. "I've got you to-day. You can't get away, and I'm going to tell you something. Can youguess what it is?"

The banker began to tremble. 

Kate paused, leaned back in the easy chair she had drawn close infront of him, placed both of her dazzling arms behind her head, burying them in the mass of auburn hair, a picture of lazy tendernessand dreamy languor. 

"Can't you guess?" she repeated. 

"I'm not so bold as to dare, " he answered, gravely. 

"I will dare, " she said, eagerly leaning forward and bending soclose he caught the perfume of her hair. 

The blood rushed in surging tumult to his face. 

"When I found myself caught in that wreck, " she began in slow, mellow tones, "it flashed over me that I had been leading a shamlife. I, who profess freedom, had been living a slave to form. Onedesire, the most intense, the most passionate, the most wilful Ihad ever known was ungratified. Do you know the one thing I askedwhen the past and present and future flashed before me in a moment?"

She paused, caught her breath, and gave him a look of passionateintensity. 

"I only asked for one hour face to face with a great masterfulman I know, that I might say the unsaid things, dare, and live theutmost reach of my heart's desire. "

Her voice wavered and hesitated. Then, with calm, laughing audacity, she said in sweet, sensuous tones:

"I love you, and you love me--loved me from the first moment youlooked into my eyes! Is it not so?"

Overman rose awkwardly, pale as death, his great breast heavingwith emotion, and looked again helplessly toward the door. 

Kate leaped forward with a laugh, seized his hand, and felt ittremble in her grasp. 

"Is it not so?" she repeated, beneath her breath. 

He looked down into her shining eyes, sighed, and suddenly swepther to his heart. Her arms circled his massive neck and their lipsmet. 

"Kiss me again, " she whispered. "Again! Crush me--kill me if youlike! I could die in your arms! Tell me that you love me!"

"I've loved you always, " he said slowly. "But why did you do thisthing? Frank is my best friend. I would have died sooner than betrayhim. "

"Yes, I know, " she cried, impetuously; "that's why I told you. Ihave no scruples. I am free. It is our compact. I'm done with hismaudlin sentiment. I have chosen you. You are my master, my king. I am yours. "

"Tragedy to me as it is, " he said, with a smile, "it seems toosweet and wonderful to be true, that the most beautiful woman onthis earth should love a gnarled brute like me. How is it possible?"

She smoothed his rugged face with her soft hand, drew his head downand kissed tenderly the sightless eye that had caused him so manybitter hours of anguish in life. 

The strong man's body for the first time shook with sobs. And thewoman soothed him as a child. 

"You are my soul's mate, " she cried, in a transport of tenderness. "Frank Gordon is no longer my husband. You are my beloved, my chosenone. I will never recognise him again. We will separate from thishour. I am yours and you are mine. "

Overman took her hand and, still trembling, said:

"Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, " she answered, eagerly. "I know you will be my lord andmaster, and I desire it. I am sick of sentimentalism. "

"It means exactly that, " he said, with emphasis. "Out of this bogof fool's dreams I will lift you forever, my own, the one pricelesstreasure around which I will draw the circle of life and death. "

"Yes, yes, I know, " she cried, in a glow of ecstatic feeling. "I desire it so. I wish you to be my master. Your service will besweet; your savage strength will be my joy. "

And while they sat planning their future life, Gordon's footstepechoed in the hall. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GROWL OF THE ANIMAL

When Gordon entered the library he glanced uneasily at his wifeand she smiled in insolent composure. 

Overman rose hastily. 

"Sorry the weather was so threatening I couldn't persuade your wifeto go to the Temple, Frank. "

"Yes, the rain is pouring in torrents and it's getting colder, " heanswered, rubbing his hands before the fire. 

"I'll not stay to dinner; I've an engagement at my club, " the bankersaid, briskly. 

The one eye ran from the man to the woman in embarrassment at thethreatening silence. Kate walked with him to the door. 

"You will return at seven o'clock, " she said, in even tones. 

"If you command it, " he coolly answered. 

"I do. We will have our parting this afternoon. He can remove tohis old quarters at the hotel. I will receive you alone, and wewill arrange for the divorce and our marriage. "

"Promptly at seven, " he said, crushing her hand in his partinggrasp. 

Gordon ate his dinner in obstinate quiet, now and then looking athis wife's dazzling beauty with fevered yearning in his eyes. 

When she rose from the table he said:

"I wish to speak with you in the library, my dear. "

"Very well, I'll be down directly, " she carelessly replied. 

He paced the floor for half an hour, and rang for the maid. 

"Tell your mistress I am waiting, " he said, abruptly. 

The maid did not return, and his anger grew with each lengtheningminute. 

At the end of an hour, Kate appeared. 

He fixed her with a look of angry amazement. 

"Well, what is it?" she asked, impatiently. 

"Why did you keep your maid and send no answer to me?"

"I was writing a letter. Are you a king? What is it?" she repeated, coldly. 

"I wish to say something of the utmost importance both to you andto me, and to another man, " he said slowly, in a voice pulsing witha storm of emotion. 

The violet eyes danced and laughed in his face. 

"So tragic?" she asked, mockingly. 

He locked his big hands nervously behind him, stood before thefire, and a scowl settled over his face. 

"Yes, " he said, with quiet force. "More than you understand, Ifear. I have had enough of Mark Overman in this house. "

The fair face flushed with excitement. She walked quickly up tohim, paused, and slowly pointed to the door. 

"Very well. This is my house. You know the way to the hotel, orshall I ring for my maid to show you?"

He stared at her in a stupor, and a sense of sickening terror chokedhim. 

"Kate, are you crazy?" he stammered. 

"Never was more myself than in this moment of perfect freedom, "she replied, defiantly. 

His great jaws snapped in silent ferocity, and his hairy handsclosed slowly like the claws of a bear. He planted his big feetapart, and the sparks flew from the gray eyes that seemed to crouchnow behind his brows. 

"What do you mean?" he sullenly asked. 

The woman drew back with uncertainty, chilled by the tone of hisvoice. 

"Just what I said, " she answered, with returning courage. "Thisis my house. I am a free woman. I mean to do what I please. Permitme to repeat your own words from the ceremony of Emancipation, andlest I shock you later, announce that I love Mr. Overman--"

"Kate!" he cried, in bitter reproach. 

"Yes, and he loves me. I announce to you this unity of our Eves. For months it has made us one. May I repeat your ceremony? I havememorised it perfectly. 'Human life incarnates God. Words can addnothing to the sublime fact of the union of two souls. This is thesupreme sacrament of human experience. It proclaims its inherentdivinity. There is no yesterday or to-day in the harmony and rhythmof two such souls. Love holds all the years that have been and areto be. '"

She paused, smiled, and went on:

"'This is a day of joy--overflowing, unsullied, serene; a day ofhope, a day of faith. It is a day of courage and of cheer, and tothe world it speaks a gospel of freedom and fellowship. It proclaimsthe dawn of a higher life for all, the sanctity and omnipotence oflove. It asserts the elemental rights of man, ' With joy I announceto you my approaching marriage to your friend and schoolmate, MarkOverman, a man in whose strength I glory, whom I shall delight tocall my lord and master. "

Trembling from head to foot, the veins on his neck and hands standingout like steel cords, Gordon said in a hoarse whisper:

"Kate, darling, this is a cruel joke! You are teasing me. "

Again she laughed, sat down lazily, and threw her arms behind herhead. 

"I never was more serious in my life, " she quietly replied. 

He hesitated a moment, his eyes devouring her beauty, steppedquickly to her side, knelt and took her hand. 

She snatched it roughly, pushed him from her, and cried angrily:

"Don't touch me!"

He attempted to take her hand and place his arm about her. 

She sprang up, repulsing him with rage. 

"It is all over between us. You are not my husband. I love another. "

He arose, walked back to the fireplace and leaned his elbow onthe mantel. A wave of agony and blind rage swept him. And then thememory of the hour he spent in such a scene with Ruth caught himby the throat. He could feel the soft touch of her tapering fingerson his big foot as she lay prostrate on the floor before him. 

He turned with a shiver toward Kate, who was still gazing at himwith insolent languor. 

Again his eyes swept the lines of her superb form with the wildthirst for possession that means murder. Two bright red spotsappeared on his cheeks. 

With slow vehemence he said:

"And do you think the man lives who will dare to take you from me?"

"Dare? I will dare to turn you out of this house. I have chosenthe man, and made love to him as his equal. His scruples as yourfriend bound him. They do not bind me. Thank yourself if this meansa tragedy. You challenged the world in your strength. You proclaimedfreedom in comradeship. Under the old laws of life, this man wouldhave cut his right arm off rather than betray you. You invited himhere. Has he no rights--have I no rights you must respect undersuch conditions?"

He ignored her question and continued to look at her in stubborn, curious silence. 

"Do you know what you are saying?" he asked, brusquely. 

"Certainly. Repeating to you the secrets you have taught me. "

"Well, I'll teach you something more before this drama has ended, young woman, " he said, with a touch of ice in his tones. 

She gave an angry toss of her head and cried with sneering emphasis:

"Indeed!"

"Yes. I'll show you, if you push me to it, what a return to thefreedom of nature really means. I, too, have had some illuminationsin the past months. "

She laughed again. 

"Ah, Frank, you are a born preacher, and your threats are scarcelymelodramatic; they are merely idiotic. "

The gray eyes grew somber. He drew his right arm up until itsmuscles stood a huge twisted knot, fairly bursting through hissleeve, seized her hand roughly and held it with iron violence onhis arm. 

"It's worth your while to take note of that, " he said, steadilydisregarding her angry effort to withdraw her hand. "It's madeout of threads of steel--that muscle. Few men are my equal. I amtalking to you in the insolence of physical strength that proclaimsme a king--a savage viking, if you like, but none the less a king. "

She attempted again to free her arm from his brutal grip. 

"Be still, " he growled. "I feel throbbing in my veins to-day theblood of a thousand savage ancestors who made love to their womenwith a club and dragged them to their caves by the hair--yes, andmore, the beat of impulses that surged there with wild power beforeman became a man. "

With a sob of rage, she tore herself from his grasp. 

"Oh, you brute!" she cried, stiffening her figure to its fullheight, her dark-red hair falling in ruffling ringlets about herears and neck, as she rubbed her arm where his hand had left theblue finger-prints. 

"I warn you, " he said, his voice sinking lower and lower into amere growl. "I am your husband. You are my wife. Whatever may havebeen my dreams, I'm awake now. Man once aroused is an animal withteeth and claws and Titanic impulses, huge and fateful forcesthat crush and kill all that comes between him and his two fierceelemental desires, hunger and love. "

The splendid form of the woman shook with anger. Her eyes ablaze, her cheeks scarlet, her voice sobbing and breaking with wrath, shesaid:

"And did you call it that when you threw your little wife intothe street for me? Is this your boasted freedom--freedom for man'sdesires alone?"

"I warn you, " he repeated, ignoring her question. "You will bringthat man into this house again at the peril of his life and yours. "

"Yes, you are talking to a woman now, " she hissed. "Babbler, preacher, parson, coward! Why did you not say this to him?"

"I'll say it in due time, " he answered, deliberately folding hisarms. "In the meantime, I will inform you, as you are in search ofa master, that I am your master and the master of this house. "

With a stamp of her foot, she swept from the room, throwing overher shoulder the challenge:

"We shall see!"

CHAPTER XXIX

BULLDOG AND MASTIFF

Gordon remained in the house during the entire afternoon. 

Kate called a boy and sent two messages. One of them summoned herlawyer, the same polite gentleman who had brought the wonderfulmessage from that house a few years before. 

At 6:30 Gordon went to his study. The wind had risen steadily andwas blowing now a gale from the northwest, and he could feel thecut of hail mixed with the raindrops. It was fearful under foot, and he knew his crowd would be small. 

His mind was in a whirl of nervous rage. 

"Bah! It's this infernal storm in the air, " he cried, in disgust. 

A feeling of suffocation at last mastered him. He turned the serviceover to an assistant, left the Temple, and returned to GramercyPark with feverish step. 

Overman was in the library in earnest consultation with Kate. 

They both sprang to their feet as he hurriedly entered, and hecould see that Kate was trembling with excitement and dread. 

The banker was cool and insolent. 

Gordon walked quickly to Kate's side and spoke in icy tones ofcommand. 

"Go to your room. I have something to say to this gentleman it willnot be necessary for you to hear. "

She hesitated and glanced inquiringly at Overman. 

"Certainly; it's best, " came his low, quick answer. 

The hesitation and appeal to the new master were not lost on Gordon. He squared his gigantic shoulders, and wet his lips as if to coolthem. 

"Very well, " she said, facing Gordon. "Before I go I wish toannounce to you that it will not be convenient for you to spendanother night in this house. If you do not go, I will. "

He bowed politely and waved her away with a graceful gesture. 

"That will do. I do not care to hear any more. "

Kate turned and quickly left the room. 

"Won't you sit down?" Gordon said, offering Overman a chair withexcessive courtesy. 

"Thanks; I prefer to stand, " he answered, gruffly. 

The single eye was fixed on the man opposite in a steady blaze, following every step and every movement in silence. 

Gordon took his place by Overman's side, thrust his big thumbs intohis vest at the armpits, and looked off into space. 

"It's no use, Mark, for us to mince words, " he began, in even, clear tones. "I understand the situation perfectly. "

"Then the solution should be easy under your code, " the bankerdryly remarked. 

"All I ask of you now, " Gordon continued, quietly, "as my bestfriend, is to let my wife alone. Is that a reasonable request?"

"No, " was the emphatic answer. "Did I seek your wife? Yet nothingcould have wrung from me the secret of my love had you not flungthe challenge in my face again and again; and even then my lovefor you sealed my lips until she broke the spell to-day with wordsthat cannot be unsaid. "

Gordon's face and voice softened. 

"Granted, Mark, I've been a fool. I know better now. I appeal toyour sense of honour and our long friendship. Let this scene endit. Let us return to the old life and its standards. "

The big neck straightened. 

"Then go back, " he flashed, in tones that cut like steel, "to thewife of your youth and the mother of your children!"

Gordon's fist clenched; he was still a moment, and when he spokehis voice was like velvet. 

"It's useless to bandy epithets, or to argue, Mark. I don't reasonabout this thing. I only feel. My passion is very simple, veryelemental. It flouts logic and reason. This woman is mine. I havepaid the price, and I will kill the man who dares to take her. Doyou understand?"

The banker gave a sneering laugh, and twisted the muscles of hismouth. 

"Yes, I understand, and I'm not fainting with alarm. You will bea preacher and a poser to the end. "

"I have appealed to your principles and your sense of honour first, "Gordon repeated, in a subdued voice. 

The one eye was closed with a smile. 

"Principles! Sense of honour! What principles? What sense of honour?I agree that, under the old view of marriage as a divine sacramentand a great social ordinance, sacrifice of one's desires for thesake of humanity might be noble. But in this paradise into whichyou have thrust me, with an invitation on your own door for allthe world to enter and contest your position, and with you yourselfshouting from the housetop freedom and fellowship---Sense of honour?Rubbish!"

"I can see, " snapped Gordon, "that one such beast as you is enoughto transform heaven into hell. "

Overman slowly pulled his moustache, and a grin pushed his noseupward. 

"Exactly. I am the one odd individual your scheme overlooked--anormal human being with the simplest rational instincts, a clearbrain and the muscle big enough to enforce a desire. "

"The muscle test is yet to come, " Gordon coldly interrupted. 

The banker shrugged his shoulders. 

"I suppose so. And you know, Frank, the fear of man is an emotionI have never experienced. "

Gordon bent quickly toward him, his face quiet and pale, and saidin muffled accents:

"Well, you who have never feared man, listen. Get out of thishouse to-night, give up my wife, never speak to her again or crossmy path, or else--" a pause--"I am going to disarm you, bend yourbulldog's body across my knee by an art of which I am master, closeyour jaw with this fist on your throat, and break your back inchby inch. Will you go?"

Overman surveyed the questioner with scorn. 

"When the woman who loves me tells me to go. This is her house!"he coolly sneered. 

Again the voice opposite sank to velvet tones. 

"Very well, we are face to face without disguise, beast to beast. You haven't the muscle to take her. She is mine. I gave for her thedeathless love of a wife, two beautiful children, a name, a career, a character, and the life of the man who gave me being, who diedwith a broken heart. For her I turned my back upon the poor wholooked to me for help, forgot the great city I loved, overturnedGod's altars, scorned heaven and dared the terrors of hell. Do youthink that I will give her up? I own her, body and soul. I've paidthe price. "

[Illustration: "Driving his great fingers into his throat. "]

He paused a moment, quivering with passion. "I know, " he went on, "I was a fool floundering in a bog of sentiment. But you--one-eyedbrute--you were never deceived about anything. You set your lecherouseye on her from the first and determined to poison her mind andtake her from me. "

"And I will take her, " came the fierce growl from the depths ofhis throat, "and lift her from the mire into which you have draggedher peerless being. "

The man opposite gave a quick, nervous laugh. 

"Well, I, who have dreamed the salvation of the world and lost myown soul, may sink to-night, but, old boy"--he paused and laughedhysterically--"I'll pull down with me into hell as I go one WallStreet banker!"

"Talk is cheap, " Overman hissed. "Make the experiment. You'rekeeping a lady waiting. "

Gordon stepped quickly to the desk and picked up two ivory-handleddaggers with keen ten-inch blades, used as paper knives, and handedone to Overman. 

"These little toys, " he said, playfully, "were a wedding presentfrom my wife on our second anniversary. "

"Which wife?" snarled the big, sneering mouth. 

Gordon went on meditatively. 

"They are the finest Italian steel--sharp medicine for friends totake and give, but it will cure our ills. I never quite understoodbefore what you meant by the fighting instinct when I used to watchyou fasten those little devilish points on your Game chickens. Iknow now. I feel it throb in every nerve and muscle. The impulseto kill you is so simple and so sweet, it would be a crime againstnature to deny it. "

Overman threw his head to one side, frowned and peered at the manbefore him curiously. 

"Do you ever get tired of preaching? The articulation of wind isa strange mania!"

"Pardon me if I've tired you, " came the answer in mellow tones. "You'll need a long rest after to-night, and you'll get it. "

Gordon locked the doors, placed the blower over the flickeringembers in the grate, and put his hand on the electric switch. 

"I am going to put this light out for the sake of the comradeshipand chivalry we once held in common. I could kill you at one blowfrom that blind side of your head. I'll fight you fair. That is abow to the higher law in the preliminary ritual of nature. But downbelow, in these muscles, throb forces older than the soul, thatlink us in kinship to the tiger and the wolf"--his voice sank toa dreamy monotone. "You sneaked into my home in the dark to robme of my own. In the dark, we will settle on the price. I paid forthis treasure an immortal soul. It's worth as much to you. "

He turned the switch, and then darkness and silence that could befelt and tasted--only the thrash of the storm against the blindswithout. 

With catlike tread they began to move around the room on the velvetcarpet. They made the circuit twice, and found they were followingeach other. They both stopped, apparently at the same moment, wheeled, and again made the round in a circle without meeting, nowand then stumbling against a piece of furniture. 

Gordon suddenly stopped, held his breath, and waited for his enemyto overtake him. He could hear Overman's heavy breathing at eachmuffled step. When he approached so close he could feel the movementof his body in the air, he suddenly sprang on him, plunging thedagger in his body, and bore him to the floor, knocking the blowerfrom the grate in the struggle. 

Over and over on the velvet carpet, dimly lighted now from theglowing coals, they rolled, growling, snarling, cursing in low, half-articulate gasps, thrusting the steel into flesh and bone, nerve and vein and artery. 

Gordon suddenly plunged his dagger with a crash in Overman'sshoulder, snatched at it, and broke it smooth at the hilt. 

Throwing his opponent to one side by a quick movement, he sprangto his feet, and as Overman rose, fastened his enormous hairy lefthand on his throat and closed it with the clutch of a bear. Hisenemy writhed and plunged the steel twice to the hilt in Gordon'sbreast before his big right hand found the knife and wrenched itfrom his grasp. 

Then slowly, silently, inch by inch, he bent the banker's bodyover his knee, driving his great fingers into his throat, untilthe spinal column snapped with a dull crack. 

The limp form sank to the floor, and the two big hands clutchedthe throat until every finger left its black print as if brandedred hot into the massive neck. 

A quick knock, and Kate's excited voice called:

"Open this door!"

Throwing the body behind the desk in the centre of the room, hefelt for the switch, turned on the light, unlocked the door, steppedback and said:

"Come in. "

Kate quickly opened the door and rushed into the room. He lockedit and put the key in his pocket without a word. 

She turned on him a face blanched with speechless horror as he slowlyadvanced on her in silence, his eyes wide open, cold and set. 

The blood was running down across his cheek in a stream from awound in the upper edge of his high forehead. 

She stood dumb with physical fear. 

He came close, in laboured breath, his face still sick and whitewith the desire to kill. 

The voice was hard and metallic with the vibrant ring of steel. 

"Say your prayers, young woman, " he said, slowly. "You are goingon a long journey from whence no traveler has yet returned. "

She staggered and caught a chair, trembling and shivering. 

"Frank, dear, have you gone mad?" she gasped. 

"Yes, I went mad in this house one day at the sight of your devil'sbeauty, and I have been mad from that hour. Now we have come tothe end. "

"You will not kill me?" she begged, in piteous fear. "I cannot die;I am afraid. Surely you love me; you cannot--"

He seized her wrists and she cowered with a scream. He held them inone hand and with the other swept her magnificent hair around herthroat, grasped it in his iron fist, and thus choking her, thrustthe shivering figure backward into the chair. 

She managed to free her hands, threw her arms around his neck, andtried to smother him with kisses. 

"Frank, dear, I'll love you. Surely you will not kill me. Have pityfor all that I have been to you in the past--"

"Hush, " he said softly, putting his big hand over her full lips. "Why such childish terror? Love has its moments of sublime cruelty. This impulse to kill is only the awful desire for utter possession, the climax of love. I'll go with you. Neither life nor death shalltake you from me. "

With a tremulous moan, she sank into a swoon in his arms. 

He loosed the hair from her throat, paused, and looked tenderly atthe still white face. 

Then he sighed, groaned and kissed her. 

"No, no, no, no; not that!" he cried, beneath his breath. "Howbeautiful she is! I brought her to this. Yes, I was the master ofher heart and life. I could have made her anything, angel or devil. I have made her what she is--One last kiss"--he bent and gentlytouched her lips--"and this the end. "

With tenderness he laid her on the lounge, loosed her corsage, smoothed gently the tangled hair from her white face, closed thedoor, and went to his room. 

He bathed the blood from his forehead and bound it with a pieceof plaster. His head began to swim. A sharp pang shot through hisbreast, and he felt he was suffocating. 

He began to shiver with the instinctive desire to escape, threwsome things into a bag he usually carried, stopped and scowled withuncertainty. 

"What's the use? What is there to live for?"

Yet the big muscular hands kept on at their task. 

An hour later he struggled and staggered up the hill through theblack, roaring storm and rang Ruth's doorbell. 

CHAPTER XXX

THE CLOUD'S SILVER LINING

Ruth had spent the Sunday in a desperate struggle with the Governor. Long and tenderly he had pleaded for a pledge that would bind her. He had been sure of the note of hesitation and uncertainty in hervoice when she left Albany on the day of his inauguration. 

He finally left her with the firm avowal:

"I am going to win, Ruth. You might as well make up your mind toit. "

She smiled and said "Good-night. "

When she went upstairs a low sob came from the nursery and shetipped into the room. 

For the past year Lucy would often sit for an hour at a timein reverie, and then lift her little face to her mother with thequestion:

"Where is Papa?"

Since their return from the railway accident she had never askedagain. She only sat now and looked into her mother's face with dumbpain. 

Ruth soothed her to sleep, and was standing by her window tryingto look out into the storm, which was lashing great sheets of wetsnow against the glass. 

The bell in the kitchen rang feebly. 

She listened. Some one was fumbling at the front door, but the roarof the wind drowned the noise. 

The bell rang loud and clear. She sprang to the stairs and wentdown with quick, nervous step. She fastened the chain-latch, openedthe door an inch, and the dim light of the hall flashed on Gordon'shaggard, blood-stained face. 

She flung the door open, drew him quickly within, slammed and boltedit. 

Throwing her arms around his dripping form, she drew him down andkissed his cold lips. 

"Frank, my darling, what is it?" she cried, in breathless amazement. 

"You must help me, Ruth, dear, " he gasped. "We had a fight. I havekilled Overman. If you can hide me for a few days, I can escape. I don't deserve it--but I know that you love me--"

"Yes, yes, " she sobbed, kissing his hand, "through life and death, through evil report and good report!"

She put him to bed, washed and dressed his wounds. One of them, an ugly hole over his left lung, kept spouting bruised blood as hebreathed. The dark eyes grew dim as she watched it. 

"Oh! Frank, I must have a doctor, " she said, tremulously. 

"No, Ruth; I can sleep now. I'll be better in the morning. A doctorwill know me. "

"But I have one I can trust, " she replied, pressing his hand. 

He shook his head, closing his eyes. 

"You can't stand up against the wind and sleet. It's awful. Youcan't walk a block. Don't try it. "

She watched his mouth twitch with pain. 

"I will try it, " she answered, firmly. "Lucy will watch with youtill I get back. "

When Ruth called and told her, the little hands clasped, a cryburst from her heart, and she kissed her mother impulsively. 

While his daughter sat by the bedside gently stroking his bigblue-veined hand, Gordon dozed in sleep and Ruth crept out intothe wild night on her mission of love. 

She was half an hour going and coming four blocks. Three times thewind threw her on the freezing pavements. When she climbed up herown steps her clothing was shrouded in an inch of snow and ice, her cheeks were red and swollen, and her hands were bleeding, buta smile played about her lips. The doctor was coming. 

He assured her that the wounds were not fatal, and left instructionsfor dressing them. A few days of rest and all danger would be past. 

Through the night, while the wind howled and moaned and roared, the mother and daughter sat by the bedside and smiled into eachother's faces. 

The meaning of the tragedy had not yet dawned on Ruth. She only knewthat her beloved had come, that she was soothing and ministeringto him, and her heart was singing its song of triumphant love. Thelong night of the soul was over. The morning had come. The stormwithout was on another planet. 

As they watched he began to talk in fevered half-dream, half-deliriumwords, phrases and broken sentences that revealed the inner yearningsand conflicts of his soul. 

"Silly fool, " he muttered. "Beauty-marvelous--Ruth-dear darkeyes-I-love-her. "

As day approached, Ruth began to dread its message. Already shecould see the officers at the door. 

When day broke she tried to look out of the window, and could onlysee across the street. The park and the city below were blottedout. The whole world seemed one white, swirling, howling smotherof snow. The wind came in long gusts of shrieking fury. She couldcount its pulse-beats in the lulls which were growing shorter. And, child of the sea that she was, she knew that the advancing cyclonehad not reached its climax. She breathed a prayer of relief. Theycould not find him to-day. 

The cook did not come. Not a milk-wagon or bread-cart echoed throughthe street. Not a call of newsboy, whistle of postman, or cry ofa schoolboy. The house-girl had not come. Ruth descended to thekitchen, made a fire, and cooked breakfasts. With her own handsshe was serving her Love, and her heart was singing. 

At ten o'clock, she looked out of her window, and the snow was piledto the second story of the houses opposite, which were receivingthe full fury of the blast. 

The wind was visible. It blew in white, roaring sheets of snow, howling, whistling, screaming, shrieking. Tin roofs, signs, batteredchimney-tops, blinds, awnings, brackets, flagpoles, sheet-ironeaves and every odd and end began to crash and rain in the streetsand bury themselves in the drifts. 

The woman's heart rode on the wings of the storm. Her beloved washiding safe beneath its white feathers. She wondered if any oneelse in all the world were singing for joy with its wild music. 

For three hours of the morning, struggling men had braved the stormand fought to reach their places of business. Shouts, curses, calls, laughter, the screams of boys, at first; and then defeat, silenceand the roar of the wind. 

Street-cars were piled on their sides, and the tracks jammed withdebris and mountains of snow. 

At eleven o'clock, from Manhattan there was no Jersey or Brooklyn. The ferries were still. The great dead Bridge hung swaying in thedark sky, a white festoon of ice and snow, like a jeweled garlandswung from heaven to soften the terrible beauty of a frozen world. The waters below were lashed into a white smother of spray. Theair cut like a knife with the sand blown from the flying waves ofthe distant beaches. 

Policemen crouched and shivered in barred doorways. The storm hadcaged every thief, burglar and murderer, as it had sheathed theclaws of every bear and wolf on the distant mountain-side. 

The snow was piled over the tops of the doors of the City Hall andCourt House. There was no Mayor, no court, no jury. 

The Stock Exchange was closed, the Custom House and Sub-Treasurysilent, and every school without teacher or scholar. Every depotwas placarded, and not a wheel was moving. Not a newspaper foundits way to a home, or a single piece of mail arrived in New York, or was sent from it, or delivered within its gates. Every telegraphand telephone office was silent and the fire department was paralysed. 

The elevated trains crawled and slipped and stalled and fought ontheir steel trestles till ten o'clock, and the last wheel stoppedand froze. 

At three o'clock a Staten Island ferry-boat ventured her nose outof her slip. The wind snapped off both flag-staffs and smokestack, hurled them into space, caught her in its mighty claws, dragged herhelpless across the bay and flung her on the Staten Island shore. 

Wherever men could gather they talked in low, helpless and bewilderedtones. 

The storm signal, set by the Weather Bureau, was torn to shredsand the wind-gage hurled into the sky as it registered eighty-twomiles an hour. 

On the mountains of Colorado and over the plains of Dakota it hadbegun, a fine, misty rain sweeping eastward, throwing out its softskirmish-line of breezes, drawn by the summons of the Storm Kingfar out on the waste of the sea. And then the king had blown hisfrozen breath on the earth and the mighty city had been blottedfrom the map and its tumult stilled in soft white death. 

Ruth drew Gordon to the window against which the sparrows crouchedand shivered, that he might watch the storm's wild pranks. 

"After all, " the wounded man cried, "it has been conquered, therushing, tumultuous city! Beyond the rim of man's map of the worldbroods in silence the One to whom its noise is the rustle of a leafand this wind but a sigh of His breath! What can endure?"

His eyes rested on the smiling, lovelit face of Ruth, and he forgotthe storm in the deeper wonder of a pure woman's love. 

CHAPTER XXXI

A LACE HANDKERCHIEF

The next morning the lulls between the gusts of wind grew longerand the wind-waves shorter. The snow ceased to fall and the shadowson the clouds began to brighten with the glow of the sun behindthem. 

The city stirred and shook off its white robe of death. The womanlooked at the wounded man with a stifled moan. 

"It's no use, Ruth, " he said, feebly. "I can't escape. I've got toface it. "

"What will they do to you, Frank?" she asked, in misery. 

"I don't know, " he answered, brokenly. "I killed him in the heatof passion in a fight. But I'll be tried for murder. "

The officers came and read the warrant of arrest. The dark, tensefigure, erect, with defiant face wreathed in midnight hair, stoodby his bedside and held his hand. 

Her great eyes glowed and gleamed as though a young lioness stoodguard over a wounded cub. 

Behind the bars in murderers' row the weeks and months were draggingslowly to the day of trial. The rush and roar and fever of the citywere now a memory as he sat in brooding silence. 

The press was hostile, and reporters worked daily with an army ofdetectives to find every scrap of evidence against him, and as theday fixed for his arraignment drew near, story after story appearedin the more sensational journals, written with the clearest purposeof influencing the mind of every possible juryman. 

Ruth's heart sank with anguish as she read these stories, butthey stirred her to more vigorous action. She read every newspapercarefully and followed every clue of reporter and detective toanticipate its influence. 

Not a day passed but that she carried to the man behind the barsa message of courage and cheer. 

Gordon would sit and watch for that one face whose light was hopeuntil it became the only reality in a universe of silence anddarkness. His whole life seemed to focus now on the little face withits dimpled chin and shy, tremulous lips smiling into his cell. 

The soft contralto voice, even when it sank to the lowest notes ofmelancholy, was full of tenderness and caressing feeling. As hetouched her tapering fingers on the steel bars and watched the redblood mount until her delicate ears shone like transparent shellsin the dark mass of her hair, visions of their life together wouldrise until the past few years seemed the memory of a delirium. 

He studied her with increasing fascination. The illuminatingpower of restraint had developed new forces in his sensitive mind. How marvelous she seemed, walking toward his cell with gentle yettriumphant footfall, her face aglow with tenderness and love, andhow his soul leaped those bars and embraced her!

Many friends on whom he had counted had failed. She had neverfailed. Her resources were endless, her energy infinite. She wouldhave fought all earth combined without a tremor. And yet those whocame in contact with her felt a gentleness that touched with thesoftness of a caress. 

The day before the trial her face glowed with hope. 

"Frank, our lawyers are sure we will win!" she cried, with joy. "Barringer has determined to rest the case on the charge of wilfulmurder. And if he does the jury will acquit you. There is only oneshadow of uncertainty. "

The dark eyes clouded and a gleam of fire flashed from their depths. 

"I know, " he said, sorrowfully. 

"We can't find whether that woman is going on the witness standagainst you. I've tried in vain to get one word from her lips. "

She brushed a tear from her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The mansaw it was the mate to the one she had given him stained with herblood the day he had deserted her. 

When, she turned to go, he felt for the cot behind him as thoughblind, fell on his face and burst into sobs. 

CHAPTER XXXII

A LIFETIME IN A DAY

The court-room was crowded to suffocation. The corridors were jammed, the pavements, park and street outside a solid mass of humanity. 

The prison van plowed its way through the throng. Gordon steppedout, with handcuffs jingling on his wrists, and straightened hisgiant figure between the two officers who led him. 

A cheer suddenly burst from the crowd and echoed through thecourt-room. 

There was no mistaking that cry. He had heard it before. He knew. He had killed a banker. They were glad of it and proud of him. Inmuttered curses and cheers they said so. He was the champion of aclass, and the murder of an enemy had made him a hero. No matterthe right or wrong. Down with every banker--what did they care!

Ruth met him in the anteroom, followed him into the prisoner's dockand took her place by his side. 

The bill of indictment was read. 

"The People against Frank Gordon. "

With terrible memories the title rang through his soul. The people, for whom he had fought, for whom he had suffered, worked and dreamed, had put him on trial for his life. What a strange fate! The facesgrew dim, and a sense of illimitable and awful ruin crushed him. 

A soft hand stole gently into his, and its warmth cleared his brain. 

He looked around the room and, to his surprise, saw dozens of peoplehe had helped in his ministry of the Pilgrim Church. Just in frontof him sat a woman who, under the inspiration of his preaching, had given her fortune to found an orphanage for homeless girls, and was spending her life in happy service as its presiding genius. 

She nodded and smiled, and her eyes filled with tears. 

There was a stir in the group of lawyers behind him, and the oldwoman who had kissed him the day Ruth was watching pushed to hisside, seized his hand, choked, and could say nothing. She had comeall the way from Virginia to cheer him. 

Ludlow, his faithful deacon, he saw, and near him sat Van Meter. The little black eyes were solemn and the mouth drawn with sorrow. Over against the wall, jammed in the crowd, he saw Jerry Edwards, who was still telling the story of his life with reverent wonderand love. He clasped both hands together, shook them over the headsof the crowd, and smiled. 

A feeling of awe came over him as he thought of the eternity ofman's deeds, going on and on forever, whatever might be his ownfate. 

He looked curiously at Barringer, the young Assistant DistrictAttorney, who was conducting the case against him. In the dark-browneyes, keen and piercing, there was deadly hostility. He had becomefamous as a relentless public prosecutor. He came of a long lineof great lawyers of the old South, and the breath of a court-roomwas born in his nostrils. Gordon was chilled by the cold, clearring of his penetrating voice. 

While the jury was being impaneled, Ruth sat by Gordon, eagerlytrying to see the invisible secrets of every juror's soul who facedthe man she loved. 

The court ruled that Socialists were disqualified to sit on thecase. 

When the twelve men were selected she scanned their faces withsearching gaze for the signs of life or death. Their names allseemed strange. She could make nothing out of them. 

The opening address of Barringer choked her with fear. Incold-blooded words he told the jury of the certainty of the guiltof the prisoner. His manner was earnest, dignified and terrible inits persuasive assurance. 

For days his awful closing sentence rang like a death knell in herears. 

Four days of the week were consumed by the witnesses for theprosecution. On Friday morning Ruth and her lawyers were elatedover the unimportant character of the testimony. 

Suddenly Barringer looked at the prisoner, frowned, and said:

"Call Kate Ransom Gordon to the witness stand. "

The prisoner went white and lowered his eyes. 

There was a stir at the side door. With quick, firm step themagnificent figure crossed the room, with every eye save one rivetedon her beautiful face. 

She took her seat, and in cool, clear tones told her story. 

The prisoner looked up once, and she met his gaze with a glance offierce resentment. 

She gave the long history of his suspicions of Overman, of theirquarrels about him, of his jealousy and his threat to kill him. With minute detail she explained the events of the fatal Sunday, described his entrapping Overman in the library unarmed, and ofhis murder in the dark. She told how she had rushed to the doorand found no light within, and how he had enticed her into the roomand attempted to choke her to death. 

Finally she explained to the jury that the wounds Gordon hadreceived were not from Overman in a fight, but that he had triedto kill her and commit suicide and had failed. 

For five hours she sat in the witness chair and coolly swore hislife away, baffling with keenest wit at every turn the shrewd lawyerwho baited, harassed and cross-questioned her with merciless vigour. 

When she declared that Gordon's wounds were self-inflicted, hestared at her in dazed wonder and gasped to Ruth:

"Merciful God, is she deliberately lying, or does she believe it?"

Ruth did not answer, but slipped her warm little hand in his andpressed it. His fingers were like icicles. 

Gordon seemed to sink into a stupor and take no further note ofwhat was going on in the room. 

He turned around, placed his arm on the chair, and fixed his eyeson Ruth, looking, looking! As he felt her hot hand trying to warmthe chill of death in his own, he followed every movement of amuscle of her face with hypnotic intensity. 

When they led him back to the prison van his shoulders drooped withmortal weariness. He had lived a lifetime in a day, and his hairhad turned gray. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE VERDICT

Gordon seemed to take no further interest in the trial. He only satday after day and watched Ruth. Now and then a faint flush tingedthe prison pallor of his cheeks as from some thought passing inhis memory. 

Barringer's speech to the jury was one of fierce and terribleeloquence. Every art of persuasion, every trick of oratory, everyforce of personality he used with pitiless power. In ridicule, sarcasm, invective, pathos and logic, his voice rose and fell, pulsed and quivered, or rang with the peal of a trumpet. He heldthe jury in the hollow of his hand for four hours, while Ruth staredat him with her heart in her throat, every word cutting her fleshlike a knife or smashing the tissues of her brain with the forceof a bludgeon. 

The jury retired. 

Through the dreary hours of the afternoon Ruth sat in the anteroomby Gordon's side waiting for the verdict. Minutes lengthened intohours, and hours into days and years, until time and eternity wereone, and she lived a life of despair or hope within the secondbetween the ticks of the clock on the wall. 

She tried to say a word of cheer to Gordon, and choked. The littlechin drooped, showing the white teeth, and she sat in dumb miserylike a sick child. 

The man looked at her tenderly and said:

"You must be calm, Ruth, dear. Death is a physical incident thatno longer interests me, except as it affects you. You are the onemiracle of life and death to me. "

She pressed his hand and could not answer. 

At five o'clock the jury returned for instructions, and she listenedwith agony to their awful questions. 

At six o'clock there was a hurried stir in the court-room. Thecrowd surged into its doors and packed every inch of space. 

The jury were filing in with their verdict. 

The judge solemnly took his seat, and the clerk summoned Gordon tostand up. 

The giant figure rose with dignity and his steel-gray eyes piercedthe jury. 

The foreman's lips moved:

"Guilty of murder in the first degree!"

A long breath, a stir, a murmur, and then a broken sob from a woman'sheart. Her arms were around his neck, her head on his breast, andher swollen lips in low, piteous tones cried:

"My darling!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE APPEAL

Two weeks later the judge pronounced the sentence of death. Againthe dark figure was by the prisoner's side, alert, erect, everyfaculty of mind and body at its highest tension, her cheeks aflamewith defiance, her eyes gleaming with hidden fire. 

She was sure the Court of Appeals would grant a new trial. She badeher beloved good-by at the gates of Sing Sing, and the door of theChamber of Death closed upon him. 

Day and night she worked with tireless energy. She systematicallylaid siege to the editors and owners of the papers in New York, and at last won every hostile critic by her patience, her beautyof character, and the infinite pathos of her love. 

The moment sentence of death was pronounced on Gordon, Kate suedfor a divorce from him as a convicted felon, and it was granted. 

The little dark woman became the toast of every hardened newspaperreporter who came in contact with her. The newsboys learned torecognise her from her pictures, and as she went in and out of thecourt-rooms and the lawyers' offices they would watch and wait forher, doff their dirty caps, smile, hand her a flower, and cry:

"She's de queen!"

When Ruth saw the notice of Kate's divorce, she asked her lawyersto arrange at once for her to remarry Gordon at Sing Sing. 

The senior counsel shook his head. 

"You must not dare, madam, " he gravely said. "If we should not geta new trial, or fail on the second trial, the Governor at Albanyis our only hope. "

A wave of sickening terror swept Ruth's soul. She recalled King'sstrange reserve of the past months. His letters were kind andsympathetic, but there was something hidden between their linesthat chilled her. 

"We must not lose!" she answered, bitterly. 

"I don't think we will, " the lawyer hastened to assure her. "Butwe must reserve every weapon. "

The Court of Appeals decided in Gordon's favour and ordered a newtrial. 

As the day approached, Ruth's nervousness increased. His chanceswere better, but she could hear the awful words of Kate Ransomswearing away his life. Their echoes rang in her soul until shecould no longer endure it. 

She was at Gramercy Park at last. 

When Kate swept proudly and coldly into the room, and extended herhand, she held it in her grasp timidly and nervously. 

"I've come to beg you, " she said, piteously, "not to say he madethose wounds in his own breast. They fought a duel as men have oftendone. You were in a swoon. You thought he did it himself becausehe told you he was going to die with you. He did not hurt you. Heonly laid you tenderly on the lounge, smoothed your hair, kissedand left you. Surely you have brought me enough sorrow. Have pityon me!"

Kate led her to a seat and spoke with quiet decision. "I said whatI believed to be the truth. I shall repeat it. I can feel his wildbeast's claws on my throat now in the night sometimes and wake witha scream. "

"Ah, but he was mad, " she cried, through her tears. "He is tenderand gentle as a child. Surely you"--she paused and caught herbreath--"who have slept with your head on his dear breast knowthis!"

"It is useless to talk to me, " she answered, with anger. "He deservesto die. And it will be a good riddance for you, and for the world. He was stirring the passions of mobs that will yet make work forhangmen. "

"But he is not on trial for this, " she pleaded, "You should bethe last to reproach him with it. Think of all the sacrifices foryou--his career, his wife and children, his father, his friends. Surely there is yet one spark of love for him in your heart?"

Kate shook her head. 

"Then for my sake, I beg of you--you are a woman. You have loved. Have mercy on me! You asked me once for help--did I fail you?"

The blond face softened. 

"No, you didn't. I'm sorry for you. If it were your life, I'd saveit if I swore a thousand lies--but for him, the brute--I can feelhim strangling me now--you have not felt his hands on your throat. "

"No, " said the soft contralto voice, "not on my throat; it wouldhave been a relief to have felt them there. They were on my soul. But I love him---"

Kate was relentless, and Ruth left, shivering with anguish andangry pride. 

The new trial dragged its length to the second jury. Ruth spentand pledged the last dollar of her fortune. 

Once more she heard the foreman, in tones that seemed far off inspace, say the fatal word--

"Guilty!"

She stood by his side again before the judge and heard the wordsof death fall from his lips, this time with blanched face and coldlittle fingers locked in agony. 

Again the gates at Sing Sing closed, and a woman turned her footstepstoward the Governor's Mansion at Albany. 

CHAPTER XXXV

BETWEEN TWO FIRES

Ruth trembled at the thought of her appeal to King. She knew hisiron will, his intense love, and the certainty with which he hadlong regarded their coming union. His ambitions were still mounting, and daily with better assurances of success. His party had chosenanother man their candidate for the Presidency, and had beenoverwhelmed in defeat, while he had been re-elected Governor by alarger plurality. 

He received her with grave tenderness. 

"Morris, " she cried, pathetically, seizing his hand and holdingit, "he is not guilty of murder. Everything has been against himin these trials. They were not fair. He killed that man in what menhave always called a fair fight. You are a manly man. You believein justice. You will not let them kill him!"

She could feel the strong man's hand tremble in hers, looked upinto his face, and saw a tear quiver on his lashes. 

"Oh! Ruth, " he cried, bitterly, "why do you cling to this man? Heis regarded as the most dangerous firebrand in America. I couldshow you hundreds of letters piled on that desk begging me in thename of law and order and all the forces of civilised society notto interfere with his sentence. Come, you know how I love you. This is horrible cruelty to me. The doors of the White House areopening. You know that what I have, am now, and ever may be, isyours. It will all be ashes without you. I offer you a deathlesslove, honour and glory, and you come here to tell me you prefer aconvicted felon in his cell. My God, it is too much!"

The Governor leaned on his desk and shaded his face with his hands. 

"How can I help it, Morris, if I love him?" she asked, piteously. 

He raised his head, looked away, and softly said:

"Ruth, could you never love me?"

She was silent a moment and her lips trembled. 

"If he dies, I cannot live, " she gasped. 

He leaned close, took her hand, and said:

"I'll order a stay of sentence for three months. "

She kissed his hand, and murmured:

"Thank you. "

From the telegraph office at Albany over the wires to Sing Sing'shouse of death flew the message:

"Sentence stayed for three months while the Governor considers yourpardon. Faith and hope eternal. RUTH. "

The next express carried her to him with the copy of the Governor'sorder in her bosom. 

The warden smiled and congratulated her. She had long before wonhis heart, and there was no favour within the limits of law thathe had not granted to the man she loved. 

Ruth looked at Gordon tenderly through the barred opening of hiscell. 

Her heart ached as she saw the ashen pallor of his face and the skinbeginning to draw tight and slick across the protruding cheek-bonesof his once magnificent face. Three years of prison had benthis shoulders and reduced his giant frame to a mere shadow of hisformer self. Only the eyes had grown larger and softer, and theirgaze now seemed turned within. They burned with a feverish mysticbeauty. 

Ruth fixed on him a look of melting tenderness and asked:

"Do you not long for the open fields, the sky and sea, my dear?"

He gazed at her hungrily. 

"No. Sometimes I've felt a queer homesickness in these dyingmuscles that thirst for the open world, but I've no time to thinkof mountain or lake, or hear the call of field or sea---Ruth, Ican only think of you! I have but one interest, but one desire ofsoul and body--that you may be happy. I would be free, not becauseI fear death or covet life"--his voice sank to a broken whisper--"butthat I might crawl around the earth on my hands and knees andconfess my shame and sorrow that I deserted you. "

"Hush, hush, my love; I forgive you, " she moaned. 

"Yes, I know; but all time and eternity will be too short for myrepentance. "

The woman was sobbing bitterly. 

"These prison bars, " he went on with strange elation, "are nothing. The old queer instinct of asceticism within me, that made a preacherof an Epicurean and an athlete, has come back to its kingship. Itssublime authority is now supreme. I despise life, and have learnedto live. There is no task so hard but that the king within demandsa harder. There can be no pain so fierce and cruel but that itcalls my soul to laughter. As for Death--"

His voice sank to dreamy notes. 

"She who comes at last with velvet feet and the tender touch of apure woman's hand--her face is radiant, her voice low music. Shewill speak the end of strife and doubt, and loose these bars. Withfriendly smile she will show me the path among the stars, until Ifind the face of God. I'll tell Him I'm a son of His who lost theway on life's great plain, and that I am sorry for all the painI've caused to those who loved me. "

[Illustration: A cheer suddenly burst from the crowd and echoedthrough the court-room. ]

Ruth felt through the bars and grasped his hand, sobbing. 

"Don't, don't, don't, Frank! Stop! I cannot endure it!"

The warden turned away to hide his face. 

CHAPTER XXXVI

SWIFT AND BEAUTIFUL FEET

For three months Ruth went back and forth from Sing Sing toAlbany, battling with the Governor for Gordon's life and cheeringthe condemned man with her courage and love. 

The fatal day of the execution had come, and she was to wage thelast battle of her soul for the life of her love with the man wholoved her. 

It was a day of storm. The spring rains had been pouring in torrentsfor a week and the wind was now dashing against the windows blindingsheets of water. 

A carriage stopped before the Governor's Mansion, and two womenwrapped in long cloaks leaped quickly out. The Governor was at hisdesk in his office. 

There was the rustle of a woman's dress at his door. He looked andsprang to his feet, trembling. 

He threw one hand to his forehead as though to clear his brain, and caught a chair with the other. 

Advancing swiftly toward him, he saw the white vision of RuthSpottswood the night of the ball when he had lost her. The samedress, the same rounded throat, only the bust a little fuller, andthe same beautiful bare arms with the delicate wrists and taperingfingers. The great soulful eyes, with just a gleam of young sunshinein their depths, and the same flowers on her breast. She walkedwith lithe, quick grace, and now she was talking in the low sweetcontralto music that had echoed in his soul through the years. 

"Please, Governor, " she was saying, as her hot hand held his, "savemy father!"

The man's eyes were blinking, and he put one hand to his throat asthough he were about to choke. He looked past the white figure ofthe girl and saw her mother kneeling in the corner of the room, the tears streaming down her face and her lips moving in prayer. 

In quick tones he called:

"Ruth!"

She leaped to her feet and was before him in a moment, with scarletface, dilated eyes and disheveled hair. 

"You've won. I give it up. "

Ruth pressed both hands to her breast and caught her breath to keepfrom screaming. 

He pressed the button on his desk. The clerk appeared. 

"Write out a full pardon for Frank Gordon, and call the warden ofSing Sing!"

Ruth dropped to her knees, crying:

"O Lord God, unto thee I give praise!"

In a moment the clerk hurried back to the Governor's side and instartling tones whispered:

"The wires are down, sir. I can't get the warden. "

The Governor snatched his watch from his pocket. 

"There is no train for two hours. Order me a special!"

The despatcher flashed his command for a clear track as far as thewires would work, and within fifteen minutes the great engine withits single coach dashed across the bridge and plunged down thegrade toward Sing Sing, roaring, hissing, screaming its warningsabove the splash and howl of the storm. 

The Governor sat silent with his head resting on his hand, shadinghis eyes. 

Ruth, still and pale, gazed out the car window, and, shivering, closed her eyes now and then over the vision of a cold dead faceshe feared to see at the journey's end. 

They had made fifty miles in fifty minutes, and not a word had beenspoken. 

The Governor looked at his watch and leaned over:

"Cheer up, Ruth. We are making a mile a minute through the storm, over slippery rails. We will make it in time. "

Suddenly the emergency brakes came down with a crash, every wheelwas locked, and the train slid heavily on the track, hissing, grinding, swaying, the steel rails blazing with sparks. 

The Governor sprang from the car. "We're blocked by a wreck, sir, "the conductor said, touching his cap. "The high water has underminedthe track on the river bank. "

Within twenty minutes the engine in front of the wreck was secured, Ruth and Lucy were in the cab, and the engineer and fireman stoodreading their orders. 

"Gentlemen, I am the Governor, " said a voice by their side. 

They looked up. 

"This is a matter of life and death. The life of a man--and the lifeof the little pale woman I helped into your cab. Put this engineinto Sing Sing by five minutes to two o'clock and I'll give you athousand dollars. Five hundred for each of you. "

The engineer smiled. 

"We'll do it for you, sir, without money. We voted for you. "

The Governor pressed their hands. 

Down the storm-clouded track the engine flew with throbbing heartof steel and breath of fire like a panting demon. Back and forthover the spongy rails she swayed, her mighty ribs cracking as shelurched and jumped and plunged. But the fireman in his flannelshirt, dripping with perspiration, never paused, as with steadystroke he fed her roaring mouth; and the engineer, with his handon her pulse, leaned far out of the cab with his eyes fixed on theflying track. 

The hour for the condemned man was at hand. He had asked the wardenas a special favour to do his duty without delay at the appointedtime. 

Gordon was ready, dressed with his old fastidious distinction tothe last detail of his toilet. He had spent the entire night beforewriting to Ruth the last chapter in a secret diary he had kept andgiven to the warden for her. 

The warden read the death warrant with halting lips. He had beenstrangely drawn to this tall young giant with his premature grayhairs. Gordon's words of lyric fire to him of the mysteries of lifeand death had thrown a spell over his imagination. He was going tokill him now with the horrible feeling that he was his own brother. 

"Come, my friend, " Gordon said to him, cheerfully, "you promisedme there should be no delay. I've a child's eagerness now to pushthe black curtains aside and see what lies beyond. I've oftendreamed and wondered. In a few minutes I shall know. I hear itcalling me, that unknown world of silence, beauty and mystery. Letus make haste. "

But the feet of the jailer were of lead. He would stop and holdhis lower lip tightly under his teeth, as though in pain. 

At last they were in the dim chamber that is the vestibule ofdeath. The cap had been drawn over his face and the leather strapsbuckled on his wrists legs, The warden put his hand on the electric switch. 

There was a shout and a stir without, the thump of hurrying feet, and the butt of a guard's gun thundered against the door. 

The warden sprang forward. 

"Stop! The Governor!" he heard faintly shouted through the deep-paddedpanels. 

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE KISS OF THE BRIDE

For a quarter of an hour the Governor sat and talked with Lucy, waiting the arrival of Gordon and Ruth. The warden arranged thatthey should meet in the adjoining room alone. 

No eye save God's saw their meeting. Those who waited only heardthrough the heavy curtains half articulate cries like the softcrooning of a mother over her babe. 

When they entered the room and Lucy had clung passionately fora moment to the neck of the tall, gaunt figure, the Governor tookhis hand. 

"I have accepted Ruth's word and yours for the truth in this case, Frank Gordon. I have grown to know that she is the soul of truth. I heard you preach once from the text, 'He saved others, himself hecould not save. ' I did not know then what you were talking about. I know now--"

"Oh, Morris, " Ruth broke in, "we will always love you as the nearestand dearest friend on earth. "

"As for you, Frank Gordon, " he went on. "I could no longer hate youif I tried. In the presence of a love so pure, so divine as thatwhich hallows your life, I uncover my head. I am on holy ground--Iam in the presence of the living God. "

He turned away, and Ruth broke into a sob, while the man by herside hung his head and sat down as though too weak to stand. 

The Governor lifted Gordon from the seat, seized Ruth's hand andplaced it in his. 

"I know your heart's desire, Ruth, " he said, slowly, "I have anofficer of the law here to perform a marriage ceremony. Holdingyour first marriage a divine sacrament, you once planned a civilone in this grim prison. No matter how I learned this: it shall beso to-day. "

The magistrate advanced and pronounced them husband and wife, satdown by a desk, and made out the record. 

The Governor rose and handed the official pardon to Gordon. 

"To you I give life. "

He tore the other paper into two parts by its dotted lines, handedRuth one half and held the other in his trembling fingers. 

"This, Ruth, is your marriage certificate"--he paused--"and mydeath warrant. Frank Gordon, we have changed places. "

Again the woman sobbed. 

"You have forgotten something, Morris, " she answered, wistfully. 

"Yes, I know: myself. "

"It is your right to kiss the bride, " she said, softly, "and I wishit. "

He stooped and reverently touched her forehead. And when he turnedaway Lucy stood before him, her soft young bosom, neck and facecrimson, her eyes dancing, and the sweet little mouth quivering. 

"May I kiss you, Governor?" she cried, tremblingly. "You are myhero!"

Her bare arms flashed around his neck, and her warm lips met his. 

In the mansion on the hill at Albany, the Governor sat that nightin his magnificent room alone until the dawn of day, holding in hishand an old battered tintype picture of a laughing girl standingbeside a poor young lawyer. 

THE END