Front matter (continued 3)

It is said that the last step gained by the individual or the race is the first step lost, in sickness, age and fear. So Georgia's illness began its attack on the topmost layer of her character, that part of it which had been built in the recent years. She was driven, as it were, to a lower floor of her own edifice and no longed saw so wide a view.

Her pride and self-will crumbled—for the sick aren't proud—and her modernity trickled away. After all, was it not more peaceful to do what people thought you ought to, than to fight them constantly for your own way? Life was too short and human nature too weak for the stress and strain of such ceaseless resistance as she had made in the past few years against her family, the friends of her family, and the Church. For God's sake let her now have peace.

Yes, for God's sake. The words had come irreverently to her mind. But after all, could she or anyone else have peace except from God? and was there any other gift as sweet?

She knew there was one sure anodyne for her troubled spirit, and only one—the confessional. She had kept away too long already, for more than two years. She would go to-morrow, or perhaps the next day, and wash her soul clean. Father Hervey would talk to her as if to rip her heart strings out, but in the end he would leave her with peace, after she had promised and vowed to give up her mortal sin. Poor Mason, that meant him. She wept a few weak tears, then dried her eyes on the corner of the sheet.

So this was to be the end of her spiritual adventuring, the end of the free expression of her free being, and selfhood, and all those other valorous things she had rejoiced in.

She wasn't able any longer to go on with it. She must desert the army of women in the day of battle, the army led by Curie, Key, Pankhurst, Schreiner, Addams, Gilman, and cross over to the adversary, the encompassing Church. It would absorb her into its vast unity as a drop disappears in the sea. It would think for her and will for her. She would be animated with its life, not her own; but it would suffuse her with the comfort that is past understanding. She would eat the lotus and submit. She was not strong, like great people.

Perhaps the priest would suggest her return to Jim. But that wasn't in the law. He could only suggest and urge it. He could not insist on it. She couldn't go back to Jim, she couldn't, she couldn't. She sobbed as if there were a presence in the room which she hoped to move by her tears.

A clear vision of her husband came before her, as she had often seen him, sitting on the edge of this very bed, in undershirt and trousers, leaning forward, breathing abominably loud, his paunch sagging, unlacing his shoes. Right or wrong, good or bad, heaven or hell, that was one sight the priest should never make her see again. She hated Jim and loathed him forever.

As she was dressing next morning she called to Al to please go down and telephone for the doctor, for she knew she could never go through the day's work without medicine.

Presently Dr. Randall bowled up, a jolly stout man, smiling gayly and crinkling up the corners of his eyes, though he had slept just eight hours in the last seventy-two. The family was glumly finishing breakfast when he came. Throughout the meal Mrs. Talbot had been burningly aware of the contrast between decent, self-respecting women with a thought to themselves, and brazen young fly-by-nights in thin waists, who run after men and make themselves free; but she threw only a few pertinent remarks into the atmosphere, because the poor girl was so evidently out of sorts, with her high color and not touching a bite of food. Indeed, a body could hardly help feeling sorry for her, for all her wicked pride of will; very likely this sickness was a judgment on her for it.

When Dr. Randall had considered her pulse, her temperature and her tongue, and asked half a dozen questions, he told Al to send for a carriage and take her immediately to Columbus Hospital.

"Why, doctor," exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, terrorized, "is it anything serious?"

"Typhoid—I'll go telephone to let 'em know you're coming."

The doctor departed and Mrs. Talbot took Georgia on her lap and crooned over her until the carriage came.

XVII THE LIGHT FLICKERS

It was decided that Georgia was to have a bed in a ward at eight dollars a week. Private rooms were twenty-five and they couldn't afford that during the month she would be laid up, particularly since her pay would stop automatically after her third day of absence. The office rule was very strict on that point.

She sat limply in the waiting room while Al was attending to her registration and her mother was upstairs with the nurse unpacking her things. On the opposite wall were a couple of windows, sharply framing vistas into the park across the street, and she saw two fragments of the path where she had often walked on Sunday mornings with Stevens.

It was this same wall in front of her which had seemed so sullen gray and prison-color from the other side and which had sometimes turned their talk to sombre things—death and immortality. From the inside, as she now saw it, the wall was not gray but cheerfully reddish brown, patterned vertically like a thrasher's wing.

Two pictures hung by the window, of the pope and of Frances Xavier Cabrini, founder of the order of nuns that conducted the hospital. They were photographs, she thought, or reproductions from photographs.

She looked closely at them, first at the old man, then at the old woman. She saw in them more than she had ever seen in such pictures before. They offered at least one positive answer to the riddle, perhaps the safest answer for such as she—to submit oneself through one's lifetime so as to attain at the end of it the matchless serenity of those two untroubled faces.

It came to her then in a moment of more than natural revelation, as it seemed, that she must seek the peace which these two had found.

She crossed slowly to the desk in the corner, to write what she knew might be the last of the thousands of letters she had written.

My dear, she began on the hospital paper, I am here with, not to cause him anxiety in the beginning of his great enterprise, a touch of the grip. Nothing serious. In haste and headache. Georgia.

She paused. Even if it must end by her giving him up, she loved him. Should she, by an omission so significant, upset and distress him and perhaps hinder him in a task which, well performed, would bring great things to him, if never now to her! I love you, she added, always.

A second note she dated a week forward. My dear, I haven't pulled around again as soon as I expected, but the rest has done me a world of good. Don't worry about me—they say I've a constitution like a horse. For my sake, make good, Mason—you've got to. With love, lots of it, always, G.

A third she put two weeks ahead. Dearest, I'm doing fine and will be out soon now. Your letters have been such a comfort. It's almost two thousand years since we've seen each other, isn't it? I love you, dear. Georgia.

She put them in their envelopes, addressed them, and wrote 1, 2 and 3 respectively in the upper right hand corners in such a way that the stamps would conceal them. Al came in as she was finishing, and she explained how she wanted them mailed a week apart. At first he refused, but at last was over-persuaded by her misery. He promised to do her errand as she asked, and kept his promise faithfully.

A page boy chanting "Mis-ter Stev-uns, Mis-ter Riggle-hei-murr, Mis-ter An-droo Brown, Mis-ter Noise, Mis-ter Stevuns," caught Mason in the grill paying a lot of attention to a first vice-president over a planked tenderloin, German fried and large coffee. Accordingly he made his first report not to Silverman, but to the old man, thus:

Night Letter

548 ch jf 63

Kansas City Mo 10/17 Fredk. Tatton, Eastern Life Insurance Co. 60 Monroe st., Chicago.

Strict confidence am engaged marry your secretary Georgia Connor who now sick columbus hospital please arrange hospital authorities give her best care private room special trained nurse my expense don't let her know my participation say attention comes from company gratitude her fidelity ability also keep her name payroll until return duty charge my account confidential my progress here satisfactory wire answer collect. Stevens 814 AM

The old man himself had not been entirely immune to Georgia's charm, although in the office and before him she had steadily veiled her personality behind her status as a precise, prompt and well-lubricated appanage of a Standard Typewriter No. 4. So it was only a well subdued charm that the old man sensed in her, stimulating as a small glass of syrupy liqueur.

It seemed to him pathetic that the silent, presentable, self-respecting young woman, to whom for over a year now he had been revealing his most private, money-making thoughts almost as fast as they came to him, might never smile him another "good morning," agree with him pleasantly that it was hot or cold or wet, and get rapidly to work on his business.

She was so accustomed to his ways, and he hated the thought of breaking in another one—but, damn it, that wasn't all by any means, he liked the girl on her own account—she was such a little lady.

The old man did some rapid telephoning and was able to answer Stevens' wire half an hour after he got it.

Chicago Ills. Oct. 18

Mr. Mason Stevens, Hotel Boston, K C Mo

Best accommodations provided as stipulated salary continues your expense diagnosis simple case typical convalescense anticipated will wire promptly new developments regarding patient warm congratulations

Fredk. Tatton 949 AM

The old man naturally supposed that Mason knew the nature of Georgia's illness and was trying to reassure him, in a kindly way, that as typhoid cases go it was only a very little one.

Indeed, the old man, if he was a little lax later on in wiring all the developments in the case—because he didn't want to frighten the young man into throwing up his investigation in the very middle of it—was more valuably helpful in another way.

When the fever reached its crisis he got a great specialist out of bed for a three o'clock in the morning consultation over the little stenographer, and charged his costly loss of sleep to the company instead of to Mason Stevens, Mr. Silverman cordially approving.

They said afterwards that Georgia could not have taken another small step toward death, without dying. She flickered and guttered like a lamp whose oil has been used up. For a few moments it seemed that her light had been put out altogether, but there must have been a tiny spark hidden somewhere in the charred wick, for the doctors brought her back by artificial stimulation, and you can not stimulate the dead.

If specialists and private rooms and nurses give sick people more chance of getting well, then Stevens and the old man and Mr. Silverman saved Georgia by their care of her, for she could not have had less chance to live and lived.

XVIII THE PRIEST

The crisis of the fever came upon Georgia so suddenly that she had lapsed into semi-consciousness before the arrival of Father Hervey. She was able, in making her confession to him, barely to gasp out a few broken sentences of contrition.

He anointed with holy oil her eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and feet, absolving her in the name of the Trinity from those sins which she truly repented.

When at last she came out of the shadow, her mother believed that it was the priest even more than the doctors who had saved her, for it is taught that the reception of Extreme Unction may restore health to the body when the same is beneficial to the soul.

A few days later the priest came again to see her and was amazed at the rapidity of her convalescence.

"You're out of the woods this time, Georgia," he said, "sure enough. But I can tell you you had us frightened." He spoke with just the barest shade of a tip of a brogue, too slight to indicate in print.

His coat was shiny, his trousers slightly frayed at the bottom, and his shoes had been several times half-soled. A parish priest, throughout his life he had kept to the vow of personal poverty as faithfully as a Jesuit.

He stayed for half an hour and made himself charming. He asked the nurse not to leave the room, saying that he needed an audience. He had some new stories, he said, and he wanted to test them, which he couldn't do on Georgia alone, she was so solemn. Besides, she was almost sure to hash them up in repeating them, and he had a reputation to preserve. There was a shepherd in County Clare whose wife was from County Mayo, with the head of the color of a fox, inside and out. And so forth.

First the women smiled with him, then laughed, then roared. His touch was sure, his shading delicate, his technique perfected. He had them and he held them. It was excellent medicine for the sick he gave them.

Then he told them a little parish gossip of wedding banns he thought he would shortly be requested to publish. His eyes twinkled at Georgia's astonished "You don't say—well, what she sees in him——" And he finished his pleasant visit with a couple of little anecdotes, each with a moral subtly introduced; simple tales of heroism and self-sacrifice that had lately come under his notice.

When he arose to go Georgia and the nurse bent their heads. He offered a short little prayer, gave them his blessing and departed.

He had not said a word in a serious way to Georgia of her affairs. But she knew that he was merely postponing.

Before his decisive interview with her he prayed earnestly for strength; for strength rather than guidance, for he felt no shade of doubt that the path which he would urge her to take was the right one. The Church had pointed it out long ago, and that settled it. He never questioned the wisdom or the inspiration of the great policies of the Church. He was none of your modernists, questioners and babblers; he was a veteran soldier, a fighting private in the army which will make no peace but a victor's.

"Georgia," he began, "do you feel strong enough for a serious talk? For if you don't I will come later."

She was sitting up in bed. Her skin had the translucent pallor of one whose life has hung in the balance. Her hair, braided and coiled about her head, had lost its peculiar gloss and become dry and brittle.

"Yes, Father; I am strong enough. As well have it over with now as any time."

There was more of defiance in her words than in her heart, for she could not help being a little afraid of this gentle, gray old man with the Roman collar. Since her childhood he had stood in her mind for strange power and mystery. Even in her most rebellious days before her sickness she had not been willing to confront him. She had evaded him, run away from him. Now she could not run away.

"I have seen Jim since I was here last," said he, "and——"

"Father, I know what you're going to say—and a reconciliation is impossible.

"You know that he has stopped drinking?"

"Yes, I heard so."

"It is true. He looks fine, fine. Brown and strong."

"I didn't think he ever could do it," said she, shaking her head. "He is fighting a battle he has lost so often."

"There is none who could help him so much in his struggle as you."

"Oh, there," she answered quickly and bitterly, "I think you are mistaken. He has paid very little attention to me or my wishes for four or five years past."

"Then," said the priest, "he has learned his lesson, for now he depends on you more than on any other person."

She did not answer, but closed her eyes and clenched her fists as tightly as she could, summoning her will to resist. But she realized that her will, like her body, was not in health. The sick bed is the priest's harvest time.

"My child," he said gently, "there is a human soul struggling for its salvation. Will you help or hinder it?"

"I do not think that is quite a fair way to put it."

"Not fair? With all my soul I believe it to be true. And, remember, in helping him to his salvation you are bringing your own nearer."

"But must we consider everything, everything from the standpoint of salvation? Of course, I want to go to Heaven when I die, but I want to be as happy as I can here on earth, too. And that's impossible if I live with Jim."

"If you had a child," he asked patiently, as if going clear back to the beginning again with a pupil that could not learn easily, "and he said to you, 'Mother, I don't want to go to school, for it makes me unhappy and I want to be as happy as I can,' would you let him have his way?" He paused, but she did not answer, so he went on to make his point clearer. "Of course you wouldn't if you loved your child. You would make him undergo discipline and accept instruction, if you wanted him to be a fine, strong, brave man. Our life on earth is but our school days—our preparation for the greater life to come. And we are not always allowed to seek immediate happiness any more than little children are."

She felt that she was being overcome in argument by the priest, as everyone must be who accepts his fundamental premise, namely, that he is more intimately acquainted with the secrets of life and death than laymen are.

But far below the reach of argument and theological dialectics, which are surface things, from the deep springs of her life the increasing warning flowed up to her consciousness that it was the abomination of a slave to embrace where she did not love.

"Father," she said, not trying to argue any longer, but just to make him see, "Oh, don't you understand? Man and wife are so close together—like that." She placed her two palms together before her in the attitude of prayer.

He raised his hand solemnly, to pronounce that phrase which perhaps more than any other has influenced human destinies, "And they shall be two in one flesh."

"But to live so close with a man you don't love or care for, oh, that is vile, utterly, utterly vile."

He could not entirely sympathize with the intensity of her point of view. If one's earthly love did not turn out as well as the dreams of it, in that it merely resembled other phases of mortal existence, to be submitted to. He knew many married couples that fell out at times, but if they tried to make the best of things as they were, on the whole they got along pretty well. He was inclined to deprecate the modern tendency to invest with too much dignity the varying shades of erotic emotion. It was one of the things which led to divorce—this beatification of earthly, fleshly love.

Had not the highest and holiest lives been led in the entire absence of it, by its ruthless extirpation? Not merely saints, martyrs and great popes, but ordinary priests like himself, ordinary nuns like the hospital sisters, had yielded up that side of life freely and been the better for it, more single-minded in the service of the Lord.

He did not believe that a woman who had met with disappointment in this regard should make of it such a monument of woe. Let her contemplate her position with a little more courage and resignation; let her not exaggerate the importance of her own personal feelings; let her yield up her pride and stubbornness and essay to do her duty in that relationship which she had chosen for herself, with the sanction of the Church.

Father Hervey had sat in a confessional box for nearly fifty years. He knew a very great deal about marriage from without. He had seen its glories and its shames reflected in the hearts of thousands. But he never felt its meanings in his own heart, at first hand.

Perhaps if its priesthood were not celibate, the Roman Church would not so unyieldingly insist upon the indissolubility of marriage. But if its priesthood were not celibate, the Roman Church would almost surely lose much of its grip upon the imagination. The mind of the average laymen, Catholic or not, cannot but be powerfully moved by the spectacle of a body of educated men, leaders in their communities, voluntarily renouncing the most appealing of human relationships for the sake of a supernatural ideal.

It is because the average man does not and cannot live without women which causes him to regard a priest with a species of awe. Reason as you will about it, justify the married clergy with the words of St. Paul and God's promptings within us, the fact remains that the Roman priest alone does what we can't do, lives as we couldn't live; he alone demonstrates that he is of somewhat different clay; he alone mystifies us; and mystery is the essence of sacerdotalism and authority.

"Georgia," resumed Father Hervey, "if all your pretty dreams have not come true, remember they never do in this life. You must learn to compromise."

"I will compromise, Father—that I will do, but I won't surrender utterly." She drew herself straighter up in bed, leaning forward without the prop of the pillow. Her excitement seemed to invigorate her. "There is another man——"

"Another man?" he asked sternly.

"Yes, but I will give him up. I love him, but I will give him up. On the other side, I will never take Jim back. That is my compromise."

"Is that not something like saying you would not commit murder, but would compromise on stealing?"

"Father, that is the best I can do."

"If he continued in his former evil ways," and there was an unusual tone of pleading rather than command in Father Hervey's voice, "I would not urge you to return to him. It is recognized that there are cases where living apart is advisable. But here is poor Jim, doing his best and needing every helping hand, and you won't extend yours. It is not fair, Georgia, and it is not kind—to him or to yourself."

"I can't go back to him, Father. It is impossible. I hate him when I think of it. I can't live with him again. It is inconceivable. It is a horror to imagine." She averted her head and put her hands before her as if pushing away the image of her husband.

"In the top drawer of the bureau," she said, "you will find some letters—one for every day I have been here. They are from the other man. You may take them if you wish—and I will give you my promise to receive no more from him."

The priest felt as if he were touching unclean things when he took up Stevens' letters. There were more than twenty of them, and most of them were very thick.

"You have read them all?" he asked.

"Yes."

Father Hervey wrapped and tied the letters in a newspaper and rang for an attendant.

"Kindly put this package in the furnace," he directed, "just as it is, without undoing it."

"You have wandered far," he said quietly, then took up his soft black hat and departed without prayer or blessing.

She sank back among her pillows, exhausted from the conflict. She had won, she told herself, she had won, but it was without joy.

She had definitely given up Mason, as she knew she must from the beginning of her sickness, from the day that she entered the hospital. Perhaps that had been part of the price of her getting well.

But she had also stuck to her purpose about Jim. She had refused to violate her natural feelings to the extent of entering into life's deepest intimacies with the one person in all the world whom she most disliked. She had put her will against the priest, the holy man, and she had not given in. She knew that not many women could have done that so openly and so successfully.

He had left her without prayer or blessing. She was not at peace with the Church which meant—her eyes fell upon the sacred picture on the wall opposite—which meant that she was not at peace with The Man whose mournful sufferings and woe had been for her.

Fear slowly came over her.

XIX SACRED HEART

The picture which she saw on the wall opposite, across the foot of the bed, was of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

It was the thing which she had seen oftenest and looked at longest since she had been in the hospital. It hung directly before her eyes as she lay in bed with her head on the pillow. She saw it first on waking and last before sleeping. Sometimes when she awoke suddenly in the middle of the night she could feel the picture still there, watching her in the darkness with mournful eyes.

When first she looked at it she realized how crude it was in execution. Its colors were glaring. The Man wore a shining white cloak which he drew back to show underneath a blue garment. On this, placed apparently on the outside of it, was a Sacred Heart of red, girt in thorns. Holy flames proceeded from it, and there was a nimbus of encircling light.

She saw that it would have been better if the Sacred Heart had seemed to glow through His garment, instead of being obviously superposed upon it; that softer blue and grayer white and less scarlet red would have been truer tones for a religious picture. She took not a little pride in her critical perceptiveness.

But as she lay watching the picture day after day, she appreciated the superficiality of her first judgment of it. She had been looking at colored inks and the marks made by copper plates, not at a symbol of eternity.

Does one estimate a put-by baby's slipper, or a lock of someone's hair, or a wedding ring by its intrinsic worth? If the west side print shop which made the picture before her had failed, it could have done nothing else with that subject to portray. All attempts to represent Christ must fail. Rafael had failed. Everyone would fail.

Even the Church had failed. There had been bad popes, had there not? But the Church had tried to represent Him. The Church had come nearer to doing so than any other enginery or person. The saintliest persons had belonged to her and died for her and in her.

One Church, she knew, He had founded, and left behind Him. One and but one. "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church." It was unequivocal. Christ did not say "churches," He said "church." There was but one which He had built.

And she had defied it; she had hardened her heart against it; she had sent away its appointed minister in order to exalt herself.

Her eyes were drawn again to the Sacred Heart, bound in the thorns which she and hers had placed there. So it had been, so it would be. Christ was crucified again each day, in the hearts of the people whom He loved. Had she not herself also given Him vinegar upon a sponge?

She felt the tears trickling down her cheeks as she thought of her own supreme selfishness, and she looked through blurred eyes at the representation of the most supremely unselfish face that mankind has been able to conceive.

Then suddenly divine forgiveness seemed to descend upon her and level the bounds and limits of her ego; the barriers of her nature gave way and she found herself at one with all creation; she, and humanity, and nature, and God were together. Her soul seemed to quicken itself within her and ineffable light shone about her.

She fell on her knees at her bedside, her adoring eyes upon the pictured countenance of her Savior. Over and over again she repeated that wonderful word learned at the convent, which expresses all prayer in itself. "Peccavi," she prayed, "peccavi, peccavi."

It seemed to her at last, when she arose from her knees that she had washed all her sins away with the passion of her contrition; that she had been born again in the spirit and become pure. In her ecstasy she thought that the face of her dear Lord regarded her now less mournfully, and that there was joy in His smile where there had been only sorrow.

She knew for the first time in her self-willed life the peace unspeakable of entire self-surrender. Her tears continued, but they were tears of joy, and she sobbed as sometimes prisoners sob when pardoned unexpectedly. The miracle of deliverance rolled over her soul like a flood, washing away the barriers of self-control.

During her weeks in the hospital she had lived in an atmosphere of perfect faith, as intense and vital, almost, as that of the middle ages. Those who had carried and comforted her through her sickness, nurses and gentle nuns, could not doubt that Christ had died to save them and to save her.

She was environed with Catholicism. Sometimes she could see through her partly opened door a black-coated priest passing in the hall to shrive a dying sinner. The chimes and chants from the chapel came faintly to her ears with benediction. The picture of the Sacred Heart hung before her eyes in unceasing reminder of the whole marvelous fabric of the Church.

Because of her lowered vitality and her days of idleness in bed, her receptivity to exterior impressions was greatly increased. The steady stream of suggestions of her ancient religion which had flowed in upon her welled higher and higher in her subconsciousness until they crossed the line of consciousness and took sudden and complete possession of her mind.

XX

SURRENDER

The next morning Georgia sent for Jim.

Before he came she wrote to Stevens:

Dear Mason—I am going to take my husband back. I have been here now for nearly a month, and I have had plenty of time to think things over, you may be sure. What I am going to do is best for both of us—for all three of us. There is no doubt of that in my mind. I know it.

Please don't answer or try to see me. That would simply make things harder for us, but not change my plans.

It is my religion that has done it, Mason. Do you remember that I once told you, when it came to the big things I didn't believe I would dare disobey? I was right in this respect that I can't bring myself to disobey, but it is not so much from fear as I thought it would be. It is a sense of "ought." That is the only way I can put it. I have a feeling, tremendously strong, but hard to define in words, that I ought not, that I must not go on with what we planned.

This feeling is stronger than I am, Mason. That is all I can say about it.

So good-bye. May God bless you and make you prosperous and happy in this life and the next one. This is my prayer, my dear.

Georgia.

The nurse took the letter to the mail box in the office and when she returned, looked at her patient curiously, saying, "Your husband is waiting downstairs to see you."

"Do you mind asking him to come up, nurse?"

Jim, who had now been in the city for a month, had lost some of his open-air tan and regained a portion of his banished poundage, but still he looked far better than Georgia had seen him for years. He made a favorable impression upon her from the instant he crossed the threshold. He was the Jim of the earlier rather than of the later years of their married life. His aspect seemed to confirm the truth of the revelation which she had received concerning him.

"How do you do," she asked formally.

"Very well, thank you," he replied. "How do you do?"

"Much better—won't you be seated?"

Jim, first carefully placing his brown derby hat under the chair, sat where the priest had been the day before.

She felt a certain numbness of emotion as she looked at him, but none of that loathing and disgust without which, as she had come to believe, he could not be in her presence. Doubtless, she reflected, she had exaggerated her dislike for Jim, to justify herself for Stevens.

"Georgia," said Jim slowly, "I didn't act right before. I know it and I'm sorry and ashamed. It was drink that put the devil in me, same as it will for any man that goes against it hard enough........ Some people can drink in moderation—it doesn't seem to hurt them. But I can't. When I got started I tried to drink up all the whiskey in North Clark Street. Well, it can't be done. I'm onto that now. No more moderate drinking for me. From now on I'm going to chop it out altogether."

He paused for a word of encouragement, but she remained silent. A little nodule of memory, which had been lying dormant in her brain, awoke at his words, "from now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." How many times she had heard him say that before—and every time he had thumped his right fist into his left palm, just as he was doing now.

"All I ask from you is another chance," he continued. "You know about the prodigal son. That's me. I've come back repentant. I know I've brought you misery in my time—and plenty of it. So if you stick on your rights and never forgive me, you don't have to. What do you say, Georgia?"

Again he paused, but she did not speak, sitting with her head bent, picking with her fingers at the coverlet.

"It wasn't me that did you the harm," he pleaded, "it was the whiskey in me, and if I keep away from that why the rest of me isn't so bad. You used to think that yourself once, Georgia."

She waited for him to continue, fearing what he would say next, and he said it. "But if you're through with me, I guess the only friend I've got left after all is whiskey. He put me to the bad all right, but he won't go back on me now I'm there. Whatever else you can say about him, he's faithful. He's always got a smile for you when you're blue, and he'll stick to you clear through to the finish."

Yes, that was Jim of old, word for word and motive for motive, who thought the proper remedy for disappointment was drunkenness.

"Oh, Jim," she cried, "why did you say that?"

He misunderstood her completely. He felt that he was making a most effective threat. "I said it because it's true," he answered roughly, "that's why. You've showed me where I stand—you've given me my answer just as loud as if you'd been shouting it. Good-bye. Likely I'll be laying up in a barrel house on the river front pretty soon, and pretty soon after that they'll be taking me out to Dunning and planting me in the ground with just a little stick and a number on it, or else—" a catch came into his voice as the pathetic picture swam vividly before his eyes, for like most drunkards he possessed something of the artistic temperament, "or else maybe they'll cut me up to show the young internes and the trained nurses which side the heart's on."

Yes, he was doing the baby act again, making excuses and threatening suicide. He might have deceived Al and Father Hervey for a month or more with his "reform," but he couldn't deceive her for ten consecutive minutes. She had seen into the core of his nature, that it was weak and unstable as ever. Sooner or later he would relapse. What had been would be again.

He arose as if to leave, then hesitated to give her one last chance to relent.

"S'long," he said, slowly opening the door.

"You can come home, Jim—if you want."

"If I want!" He went to her quickly and took her in his arms and pressed his lips to her cold ones until she shuddered in his embrace.

When at last he left her she looked to the picture of the Sacred Heart as if for approval, and whispered, "Not my will, but Thine, be done."

XXI WORSHIP

A few days later Georgia was discharged from the hospital with the warning that she was convalescent, but not cured. She might by indiscretion in the ensuing weeks make herself a semi-invalid for the rest of her life; she might even bring about an acute relapse, in which case she would be likely to die.

She telephoned the old man that she was ready to report the following Monday, but he ordered her to stay away for at least another week, saying that her place was absolutely safe and her salary running on. She thanked him so earnestly for his kindness that he was minded to break into her secret, congratulate her on her engagement, tell her it was Stevens who had been kind and generous, but according to his promise he refrained. He supposed she would quickly discover the facts after their marriage anyway.

Jim was rodman with the surveying department of an important landscape gardening firm. Sometimes his employment kept him out in the country for two or three days at a time, but he turned in ten or twelve dollars every Saturday night and the family was more comfortable than it had ever been.

Georgia had in fairness to acknowledge that Jim had shown unexpectedly decent feeling. During her fortnight of convalescence he had assumed no right of proprietorship, made no demands. He slept on a lounge in the front room and never went to her room without first knocking. She wished that things might go on so indefinitely, but she knew that it was now a question of days, perhaps of hours, before she must reassume all the obligations of wifehood. She was getting well so rapidly and so evidently that soon she would have no excuse for not meeting them.

She was grateful to Jim for his courtesy; and they spoke to each other more kindly than ever before. They had ceased to act upon the theory that it did not much matter what one said to the other since the other had to stand it anyway. She had already taken over a year out of their lives together to show that she did not have to stand it.

Their example was not without its influence upon the other members of the family, Al and Mrs. Talbot, and there was far less wrangling and friction in the household.

Not without hesitating dread Georgia brought herself to the grilled shutter of Father Hervey's Gothic confessional box. She had been derelict in this as in other obligations; except for her brief and half delirious words of general contrition in the hospital, it was her first confession for three years.

Sinking to her knees she whispered, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

She began the prayer of the penitent. "I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael, the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

As she told her secret sins and pettiness to the priest, it seemed that the poison of them was being drained from her memory where they had become encysted. Her heart was cleaned and purified and lightened by the process of the confessional.

It is indeed doubtful whether any other ecclesiastical instrument since the world began has lifted so much sorrow from mankind.

Georgia's conspicuous and mortal sins were two—Doubt and her continued entertainment of that feeling for Mason Stevens which, since it was unlawful, the Church denominated Lust.

Doubt had followed naturally on absorption in worldly affairs, dangerous associations and reading, and neglect of her obligations to the Church. Especially reprehensible had been her frequent attendance at the Sunday Evening Ethical Club, where the very air was impregnated with dilute agnosticism.

In future she must be more careful in her choice of reading. Materialism and atheism were skillfully concealed in many a so-called sociological treatise. Not that sociology lacked certain elements of truth, but the danger for untrained minds lay in exaggerating their importance until they overshadowed greater truths. She would do well hereafter to leave sociology to sociologists.

The Sunday Evening Ethical Club was anathema. She must not go there again nor to any similar place where veiled socialism and anarchy were preached.

The confessor was rejoiced that her duty toward her husband and toward herself, for the two duties were one, had been so unmistakably revealed to her. Did the image of the other man ever trouble her mind?

Yes, Georgia acknowledged it did.

That was to be expected, in the beginning. But it would cease to trouble her before long. Did this image occur to her often?

Yes, she said, it did—very often, almost continually. It was not always actively before her, she explained, but it seemed never far away, as if it were just beneath the surface of her ordinary thoughts.

In that case it would be impossible to absolve her and she would remain in a state of mortal sin unless she would promise solemnly to refrain from all further thoughts of that man, and if ever they arose unbidden to banish them immediately, as an evil spirit is cast out from one possessed.

The priest waited, but the woman remained silent.

Did she remember, he asked severely, the words of our Savior, that "he who looketh in lust, committeth adultery." If she kept this idol in her heart, no priest had power to forgive her sins in His name. Her choice was before her, her Lord or her flesh.

Her head was bowed, her hands clasped before her, and she felt tears trickle slowly upon her knuckles.

"Oh, I promise, Father," she whispered, "to try never to think of him any more, and to put him out of my mind—when—the thought comes—unbidden."

The sincerity of her intention was evident in the tones of her voice and she was offered her penance; to be hereafter scrupulous in her religious observances; to hear one mass a week besides the Sunday mass for two months; to say her prayers night and morning always reverently on her knees, not standing or in bed; with the addition of five Our Fathers and Hail Marys night and morning until her penance was completed; to endeavor to influence her family to go with her to Sunday mass each week; and to examine her conscience daily.

The wise and gentle old priest had not been harsh with her, and she accepted humbly and gratefully the penance he imposed.

He prayed to God to regard her mercifully and to lead her to eternal life, then raising his right hand he recited over her the consecrated syllables of the sacrament, ending with the solemn words of peace, Ego te absolvo a peccatis in nomine Patris, here he made the sign of the cross, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. (I absolve thee from thy sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.)

Georgia left the confessional and went to the other part of the church to pray for a clean and strengthened spirit.

The Sunday following she went with Jim, Al and Mrs. Talbot to the cathedral where pontifical mass was celebrated. Encrusted with the accumulated observances of centuries of faith, it is, perhaps, the most intricate, aesthetic and impressive religious rite ever practiced by mankind.

From the archbishop seated on his throne, wearing his two-horned mitre in sign of the two testaments, his emerald ring as spouse of the Church, his silken tunic and dalmatic, his gloves of purity; with his shepherd's crosier in his hand, his woolen pallium over his shoulders, bound with three golden pins in memory of the three nails which fastened Him; from the archbishop crowned with gold to the least acolyte in surplice of white to recall His life, and cassock of black to recall His sorrow, the hierarchical symbolism is complex, mysterious, complete, beautiful.

When Georgia, genuflecting and signing herself with holy water, passed through the cathedral's double doors which prefigure the two sides of His being, she felt as if she were coming home again after a long, unhappy journey. The clustered shafts of the columns carried her eyes up to the high, darkened groins of the roof. The south sun streamed in colors through the saints of the windows. In the east, on the altar, the tall slender candles burned purely.

The incense puffed from the swinging censer, like smoke, familiar and pleasing to her. When the priest nine times uttered Kyrie eleison, the prayer of fallen humanity, she felt as if a friend were interceding for her before a great judge.

It made her proud to see the slow evolutions of the choir, regular and disciplined, to hear as if far away their solemn chants in stately Latin, to feel that she belonged to the same fabric of which they were a part.

As the service proceeded, the priests passing back and forth before the altar making obeisance and kissing its holy stone in ancient and regular form, the world outside receded continuously further from the people in the church, and they became increasingly merged into one single, splendid act of worship.

Holding the jewelled paten with its bread, above the jewelled chalice with its wine, the archbishop made three signs of the cross to commemorate the living hours of the crucifixion; then moving the paten he made two signs to signify the separation of His soul and body. The altar bell tinkled, a symbol of the convulsion of nature in that supreme hour. A great sigh went through the Church.

Upon the altar before them was Christ Himself. What had been bread was now become His real body; what had been wine was now become His actual blood.... It is

XXII KANSAS CITY

Kansas City is growing vain and beautiful. She has, within recent years, spent ten million dollars on her looks—not to increase her terminal facilities or make her transit rapider—but simply and solely on her looks, to clear up her complexion and improve her figure.

Beauty pays dividends to towns, as to women and gardeners. Since Kansas City put in its park and boulevard system for ten million, adjoining real estate has advanced twelve, or according to the inhabitants, fifteen million.

Mason Stevens decided he would like to get transferred to Kansas City, with a raise of salary. Then he could pick out a small house in the trees at the end of one of the new macadam roads, and eventually go back and forth in a Panno Six just as he had planned. He put in a good many odd hours with the maps and prospectuses of proposed, suggested or hoped for subdivisions.

If he could arrange with Mr. Silverman to shift him, he would send for Georgia and they would scout for a lot near a boulevard end. The land out there was bound to appreciate in value as the town built up and the parkways were still further extended. He would like to buy one lot for himself and another for investment. He would have to buy on time, but that's an incentive to a young business man.

He felt confident of Georgia's enchantment with the project. The view from the bluffs was finer than anything one could get in Chicago for the same money. Besides the process of social stratification was not so far along. Kansas City was to Chicago as Chicago to New York, and New York to London. Comers-up, like himself and Georgia, would be more important more quickly in the smaller city.

Mason soon found out that there was not much to be said against Mr. Plaisted, the local agent in chief, except that he was getting old. In routine matters and methods he was excellent, but had ceased to be creative. In the terminology of a great art, he had lost his wallop.

It was the time when the big life companies were beginning their drive to get business in block; to insure for one large premium paid in a lump sum, the entire working force of a bank or business house. When the employe was honorably retired, say at sixty or sixty-five, after a stipulated number of years of steady work, he would be pensioned until he died, which pension might in whole or in part be continued to his wife if she survived him. Or he might receive, upon superannuation, an endowment equaling three years' salary. If he died before retirement his relict might become the beneficiary of an ordinary life policy. There were still other plans and combinations and permutations thereof, whose details were more or less veiled in a haze of actuarial figures, but whose broad effects were alike calculated to incite fidelity in the employe by holding out to him the prospect of a comfortable decline if he stuck to his employer through youth and middle age.

Mason quickly reported to Mr. Silverman that within six months the New England Life had written two such block policies for corporations and that three other rival companies had secured one each, while the Eastern had obtained none.

Silverman telegraphed sharply to Plaisted, "Why don't you get any corporation business in bulk! Our competitors do."

Mr. Plaisted responded with a laborious letter of explanation.

Then it developed that the New England Life had things already in shape for a third big deal—the Phosphate National Bank. Mason got the first wind of it, not in Kansas City, but by a direct tip from Mr. Silverman in New York, with instructions to investigate promptly. Within six hours he was able to report back that the proposed premium would exceed five thousand dollars a year, and furthermore that the Phosphate Trust & Savings, being controlled by the same parties as the Phosphate National, was preparing to follow its lead. That would make four banks for the New England in half a year and greatly increase its already disturbing prestige.

Silverman answered, "Immediately use all proper methods secure Phosphate business for us. We must maintain prestige. Authorize you act independently Plaisted your discretion. Draw on me in reason."

Mason drew on him for one thousand dollars, and obtained two five hundred dollar bills, one of which, after duly cautious preliminaries, he handed to the cashier, the other to the auditor of the Phosphate National. Again, after duly cautious preliminaries, they accepted. These two gentlemen had been detailed a committee to draw up for the convenience of the bank's Board of Directors an analytical syllabus of the differing propositions offered by the competing insurance companies. The Eastern Life got the Phosphate National's business, followed by that of its subsidiary, the Trust & Savings Bank, and Mason got Mr. Silverman's congratulations.

Two days later Silverman walked unexpectedly into Plaisted's office. Plaisted, who had just that instant signed his name to a letter addressed to his visitor in New York, was rattled.

"Mr. Plaisted," said Mr. Silverman, biting off the end of a three-for-a-dollar, "I have found out what is the trouble, that is, the main trouble with your agency here."

Plaisted winced. He hadn't realized that there was any trouble, and certainly not any main trouble with his agency. "Yes, Mr. Silverman."

"You're undermanned."

"Why, yes—perhaps. I've thought of breaking in a few new agents this winter."

"No," said Silverman, "I mean you're undermanned at the top. Weak on the executive side."

"Oh," said Plaisted.

"You need new blood, new ideas, new life, hustle," he snapped his fingers with each successive word—"speed—force—energy—vigor— enterprise—vitality—dynamics—do you get me?"

"I—yes—I'm sure I do," answered Plaisted, in considerable apprehension.

"I suggest therefore that you appoint young Stevens—you have met him?"

"Yes," answered Plaisted, who detested the ground Mason walked on, "I have met him."

"I suggest you appoint him as your first assistant," remarked Mr. Silverman, calmly eyeing Plaisted. "He will take the burden of details off your shoulders."

"I—ah—don't know, Mr. Silverman, if that would be entirely wise. You see our methods—his and mine—"

"I have made my suggestion, Mr. Plaisted," answered Silverman slowly. "In my judgment that would be the best thing to do."

The two men looked at each other until at last Plaisted dropped his eyes murmuring, "I will think it over."

"I leave at two. I should like to know your decision before then."

Plaisted yielded by telephone within half an hour.

He wasn't deprived of the corner room; he would continue to sign General Agent after his name. But he realized bitterly that he had left to him only the shadow of his long authority. The substance had passed to the young stranger.

At the beginning of the following year Plaisted was granted a six months' leave of absence with pay, and soon after his return resigned. He now travels peevishly from Palm Beach to Paris and back again in company with a valet-nurse.

Georgia's letter of farewell came in the afternoon mail, just after Mr. Silverman's departure. Mason read it over every night for a month and found it bad medicine for sleep. The lines in his shrewd face deepened perceptibly. Finally he locked the letter up in his safe deposit vault, and seemed to rest better afterwards.

He dickered with the hotel for room and bath by the year and got thirty-three per cent off. He was known by his office force as a hard man to please.

XXIII THE LAST OF THE OLD MAN

Georgia pressed the knob of the time clock at fifteen minutes to nine the next morning. When she opened her locker to hang up her hat and jacket she discovered a novel which she had drawn from a circulating library six weeks before and which had been costing her two cents a day ever since, a box of linen collars, an umbrella she thought she had lost, and a shirt waist done up in paper.

She went from the locker hall into the room of the office, half expecting to find it changed in some way, but everything was the same. The same clerks were stoop-shouldered over the same desks, the same young auditor was lolling back in his swivel chair, pulling his stubby mustache, his elbow on the low mahogany railing that marked him off from his assistants. That was how he always began the day. At nine precisely he would ring for a stenographer and dictate from notes. He never dictated straight from his head, probably because his work was so full of figures.

Georgia was taken back by the casual way in which she was greeted. Several arose and shook hands and were briefly glad to see her again; others simply nodded a good morning. An oldish bookkeeper asked, "Been away, haven't you?"

The girls of the lunch club, however, welcomed her warmly as they came in one after the other and found her seated at her old desk, just outside the old man's door. But even they, she felt with a twinge of bitterness, failed to grasp the stupendousness of her experience.

Since last she had been in the office she had knocked at the gate of death and lost her lover and found her faith, yet the people of the office seemingly perceived no change in her except that she was pale.

All that they knew of her was the surface and that, she reflected, was all she knew of them. Perhaps during her absence the oldest bookkeeper had received notice to quit at the end of the year and dreaded to tell his invalid wife; perhaps he had had a daughter die, not recover, from typhoid; or his son had gone to prison or received a hero medal or become a licensed aviator.

The young auditor might be frowning and pulling his mustache because he had recently acquired a chorus lady for a stepmother. The tall, red-puffed girl with the open-work waist and abrupt curves might, as had been suspected, be no better than she should be. It wouldn't surprise Georgia greatly if that was so.

But, she reflected, what of it? None of them mattered to her, just as she mattered to none of them.

For everyone she supposed it was much the same; four or five people one knew and the rest strangers.

She slipped some paper into the machine to try her fingers. She wrote hadn't, "hand't" and stenographer, "stonegrapher." She was not pleased to find whoever had been subbing for her had put a black ribbon on her machine. She liked purple better.

Mechanically she pulled at the upper left-hand drawer where she had kept her note books and pencils, but it was locked. And she didn't have the key. She had sent it by Al from the hospital.

Miss Gerson walked briskly to the desk. "Oh," she said, "Miss Connor, you're back."

"Yes. How do you do!" They shook hands.

"That's fine—you do look a little pale—we were all so sorry to hear of your illness. I've been your understudy," she gave a little sigh, "using your desk. I'm afraid its cluttered up with my things. If I'd only known you were returning to-day I'd have left it spick and span for you." She took out the key and unlocked the master drawer, which released the others, and removed her notebook, pencils, erasers, some picture postal cards, a broken-crystalled lady's watch, an apple and a book on etiquette.

"I think the old man's just fine to work for, don't you!" she asked as she collected her belongings.

"Indeed I do," said Georgia jealously. "Will you be at the club for lunch to-day?"

"Indeed I will," responded Miss Gerson, departing.

The telephone tinkled on Georgia's desk.

"Hello," came the voice, "is this Miss Gerson?"

"Did you wish to speak to her personally?"

"I wish to speak with Miss Gerson, Mr. Tatton's secretary."

"This is his secretary," said Georgia.

"This is St. Luke's hospital," said the voice. "Mr. Tatton wants you to take a cab and come right down here to see him, and say—hello—I'm not through—bring your typewriter. Right away."

The old man was propped up in a chair, fully dressed, when Georgia arrived. "Oh, Miss Connor," he said when he saw her, "I wasn't expecting you. All the better, though. Glad you're well again. I'm not." He held his hand to his side and seemed to have difficulty with his breathing.

"Take this," he said. "Date it and write: Codicil. And I hereby declare and publish, being of sound mind and body, and in the presence of witnesses, that I do now revoke and cancel and make of no effect and void, in whole and in part, the clause numbered seven—then put also figure seven in parenthesis—in the foregoing instrument, will and testament of date July second, nineteen hundred and five. I expressly withdraw and withhold all the bequests therein made, named and stipulated."

Georgia took his words directly on the machine. A nurse and an interne witnessed his signature.

"Now," said the old man, "take this in shorthand, to my wife, care Platz & Company, Bankers, 18 Rue Scribe, Paris, France.

"Dear Marion: Except for those three pleasant days last summer we haven't seen each other for six years, and as you will know long before you read this, we shan't see each other alive again.

"I deeply regret that, especially of later years, our marriage has been so unsuccessful. I apprehend clearly that the fault lay with me insofar as I—quote—had grown so very prosy—end quote—as you remarked last summer.

"My last wish is that you will bring Elsie home and keep her here until she marries some decent American with an occupation. Underline those last three words, Miss Connor. She is now a young woman of seventeen, and it was evident to me last summer that her head is fast becoming stuffed with nonsense. She is learning to look down on her country and her countrymen and mark my words—underline mark my words, Miss Connor—if you encourage her to marry some foreign scamp she will be very unhappy. I know you don't agree with these views, but I know they are sound, and if you keep Elsie over there you will live to see that proved; although I hope not.

"Give my love to Elsie and remind her of her old dad now and then.

"Good-bye, Marion. You and Elsie are the only women I ever loved.

"That's all, Miss Connor. Now what I want you to do is this: If I don't come out of this operation—appendicitis—please write that up and mail it. Just sign it Fred. If I do get well, destroy your notes and don't send the letter.

"Oh, you better add a postscript—P.S. I am dictating this because I have neither the time nor the strength to write myself. I was attacked suddenly."

Two nurses and a doctor who had been waiting now gathered about the old man, lifted him gently to the bed and began to undress him. He held out his hand. "Good-bye, Miss Connor," he said.

He died, and Georgia sent the letter to his wife.

XXIV THE NEW KING

Samuel Cleever, a tall, thin dyspeptic with a pince-nez and English intonation, was moved from Newark, N.J., to succeed the old man.

His first conference with Georgia was brief. "Good morning, Miss Ah-ah-"

"Connor."

"Quite so. Do you understand the Singer cross-filing reference system?"

"I understand cross-indexing and card-catalogues."

"The Singer system specifically, do you know that?"

"No, sir."

"So I feared."

"But I could learn quickly."

"Quite so. But to be frank," said Mr. Cleever, "I have brought my private secretary with me from Newark." New kings make new courts.

"Yes, sir," said Georgia in a low voice.

"I will assign you to the auditing department for the present."

"Yes, sir."

She felt many eyes upon her and her cheeks were burning as she walked down the long room carrying her business belongings to a narrow flat-top which the young auditor pointed out to her. It was next the inside wall.

The color came to her face in waves as she passed Miss Gerson's desk and she had a furious sensation that her habit of blushing was damnable. Why, she asked herself angrily, couldn't she at least appear calm in unpleasant situations!

Her new work was less interesting, more mechanical. There were rows on rows of figures in it, and much technical accounting jargon. She ceased to throw in overtime to the company, quitting sharply each night on the dot of five thirty. On pay night she found, as she had feared, that her salary had been standardized. She received the regular class A stenographer's $15 instead of the private secretary's $20.

On Tuesday of her second week in the auditing department, Mr. Cleever sent for her. Hoping devoutly that the new secretary had sprained his wrist (Mr. Cleever's secretary was a young man, Mrs. Cleever having been a stenographer herself), Georgia took her notebook.

But Mr. Cleever wanted instead to inform her that the system of bookkeeping whereof she was the apparent beneficiary disaccorded with his notions of system.

Since that remark seemed to leave her in the dark, he tossed across his table to her a report from the auditor's department which showed that in the past seven weeks she had been credited with $140 which had been debited to Mason Stevens, also that Columbus Hospital bills for $129.60 (including extras) had been paid by the company and charged to Stevens, and that a doctor's statement for $300 had been settled by the company and charged to Mr. Silverman's private fund. As to the last item, Mr. Cleever explained he, of course, had nothing to say, but as to the other two, although he had neither the desire nor the right to inquire into her personal affairs or her conduct out of the office, he must henceforth make it an undeviating rule not to permit the use of the company's books to facilitate private financial transactions between employes.

As Mr. Cleever's precise syllables clicked on, she looked from him to the two page report in her hand, and back again to him. Her lips were partly open and she breathed through them.

When he spoke of his desire not to inquire into her conduct out of the office, she thought she distinguished a discreet sneer in his modulated voice.

She knew instantly that it was out of the question for her to remain in the place. The report she held had been typewritten by a woman in her own department. It would spread from her to the other women and then to the men. Her engagement to marry Stevens could never now be announced in explanation. She would be construed as she herself had construed the tall, red-headed girl with the abundant figure.

She felt a flood rush over her face, suffusing it to the roots of her hair. She saw that Cleever saw it, and that he took it for confirmation of his suspicions.

"Mr. Cleever, I assure you I never knew anything of this until this moment."

"Of course, Miss Connor," he responded drily. "Please understand I make no criticism of the method of my predecessor. But in future—"

"It will stop, Mr. Cleever. I wish to hand in my resignation."

"We are sorry to lose you, Miss Connor, but of course if that is your decision—"

"Yes, sir, it is."

He bowed slightly. "Then at the end of the week, Saturday?"

"Yes, sir, Saturday night."

He again bowed slightly to signify that it was understood and that their talk was ended.

She took her lunch hour to write to Mason. She put many sheets in the machine and crumpled them into the waste basket in accomplishing this:

Dear Mason: I have just learned of your kindness to me at the hospital. Thank you for the thought.

I find that I owe you $269.60, which I will repay in installments. I enclose $12 for first installment. I regret that I am unable to pay it all at once. I am leaving the office. Please don't write.

Congratulations on your success.

Sincerely, Georgia Connor.

She felt as she dropped the note in the mail chute that Mason was a man to love. Imagine Jim doing her a great service and keeping it quiet. Jim took his affections out in words and physical embrace. Jim—she caught herself up suddenly. This wasn't being resigned, as she had prayed God she might be.

She answered half a dozen want ads before she could get the upset price she had determined on—eighteen dollars. She covenanted for this finally with a frowsy looking, bald little lawyer, in an old-fashioned five-story, pile-foundationed, gray stone building on Clark street, put up soon after the fire. The windows were seldom washed and there were two obsolete rope elevators.

The little lawyer, Mr. Matthews, had a large single room in which he sublet desk-room to a pair of young real-estaters. Georgia didn't like the looks of the place, but inasmuch as Mr. Matthews didn't haggle an instant about her salary, she took it.

She had nothing important to do. Mr. Matthews' mind was fussy and unsystematic. He had little business and set her to copying over his briefs of bygone years. "Codifying," he called it; why she never knew.

She shrewdly suspected she was engaged rather as a "front" to impress clients than to work at her trade.

Whenever a visitor, whether collector or suspender peddler, came to see Mr. Matthews, that attorney bade him sit a few minutes while he finished up a letter that had to catch the Twentieth Century or the five thirty Pennsylvania Limited, as the case might be. Then he would fake a letter and Georgia would help him at the end by inquiring, "Special delivery, I suppose, sir?"

It answered her purpose for the time being, but she hadn't the vaguest intention of staying. She saw there was no future.

Mr. Matthews each morning requested her to oblige the young real-estaters by "helping them out" with their correspondence.

"Helping them out" meant doing it all. Mr. Matthews was brimming with euphemisms. Likewise they, the real estaters, got to asking her to "help out" their friends, which she good-naturedly did—in hours.

Saturday Mr. Matthews didn't turn up, nor yet Monday. Tuesday when Georgia suggested her payment, he said he was expecting a check that afternoon. Thursday, when she insisted on it, he told her to collect half from the real-estaters, since she had been working for them as much as for him.

She couldn't see it that way at all. He had engaged her.

He fell into legal phraseology. "Qui facit per alium," or something of the sort; and she told him nettly she wasn't a fool and that if he didn't pay her immediately she would attach his furniture.

He turned his pockets inside out, showing a ten-dollar bill and eighty-five cents. She took the bill and walked out. But it wasn't much of a triumph. Her wages during her employment by Mr. Matthews had averaged six dollars a week.

She was therefore unable to send Mason another installment; and couldn't help being relieved because, despite her injunction, he had written her.

"Dear Mrs. Connor: Please do not hurry at all in that matter. Indeed, I would be pleased to consider it an investment bringing in 5%, or if you prefer, 6% a year. If you pay me $16.18 annually (or $4.18 more during the balance of the current year), that would be an advantageous business arrangement for me. I hope you may see your way clear to agreeing to this.

"With kind regards,

"Very truly, "Mason Stevens."

XXV JIM REËNLISTS

Georgia smiled a little woefully over the transparent intention of Stevens' letter. He was so obviously trying to do her a great kindness and disguise it as business by his talk of six per cent.

She knew that with young men and small sums interest rates lose their meaning. Everybody would rather have a quarter down than a cent a year forever. Any young hustler on a salary would rather have $270 cash than an unsecured promise of $16 annually.

Oh, he was naïve and boyish as ever to think she wouldn't promptly penetrate his little plan. She had always seen through his various tricks and stratagems in regard to her from the very beginning. She didn't remember one time when he had fooled her successfully. It was like having a young son who hardly needs to talk to you at all, you can read his mind so easily as it runs along from thing to thing.

She went to a newspaper office to answer one advertisement and insert another. The one she answered was for "A rapid typist—beginners not wanted. State name, experience, age, education." A blind address was given. "Y 672," care of the paper. She wrote an appreciative account of her talents, but was grieved to discover that Y 672 was none other than the Eastern Life Assurance Company. Evidently Mr. Cleever was going in for many changes.

Ten days later she was with a mail order house, in a huge reënforced concrete block-like building, just across the river on the west side. The roof of this enormous edifice, according to advertisement, covered 99 acres of floor space, or some such dimension. The firm didn't do a retail business in Chicago, so everything was rough and ready. The clerks worked in their shirt sleeves, usually blue ones. They were a bigger, thicker-necked lot than the downtowners, and freer-tongued before the women. She wasn't at all disconcerted, however, by any amount of the "damns" and "hells."

She was described on the books of the company as "Stenographer; Class A; Female; First six months' of employment; salary $12." The understanding was that if she made good she would be promoted, and this she promised herself to do, but didn't.

The advertisement which Georgia put in the paper was:

TO RENT—2667 Pearl Ave., beautiful double front room, near lake and park; single gentleman; breakfast if desired; reasonable. Connor, third flat.

Mrs. Talbot could not be brought to lowering caste by taking a roomer until Georgia explained about her debt to Mason. This veered the older woman's mind violently about, and she began immediately to figure if it wouldn't be possible to squeeze in two persons instead of one—which proposition Georgia promptly vetoed.

Jim acquiesced gloomily in the loss of the front room. He didn't see why paying Stevens' interest at six per cent wouldn't satisfy the nicest sense of honor. Six per cent was a good investment for anybody. Lord knows he wished someone was paying it to him. He would feel ashamed to have a visitor shown back to the dining room instead of forward to the parlor.

Al alone contemplated the subject with equanimity. He dismissed it by saying that it wouldn't get him anything one way or the other. To him the parlor meant the place where the family gathered together after supper to bore him. He'd rather sit in a back room and chin with the crowd across a round, yellow, slippery table, or go across to Jonas' and try to win a little beer money at Kelly pool. He seldom analyzed his emotions; he simply knew it was fun to squat down by the rectangular green cloth table, squint his eye, and sight his shot, while the crowd watched him through the cigarette smoke, then to straighten up decisively as if he had solved the problem, tip his hat back, whistle through his teeth, chalk his cue and put the ball in. Contrariwise it was darned little fun in the front room after supper.

The applicant for lodging with whom Georgia finally agreed on terms was Mr. Cyrus Kane, copy reader on an afternoon newspaper. He was a widower of forty-five, quiet, neat and regular pay. He never once had a visitor to see him. He didn't kick.

But to balance all these excellent qualities was one major drawback: his unalterable condition was that he should be served in bed with a pot of black coffee at five o'clock each morning. He explained he had to be at the office at six, and that he couldn't stir without coffee; in fact, he said he was a regular caffein fiend. Georgia hesitated, then added a dollar and a half to her price, which he accepted, agreeing to pay $5.50 a week.

Mrs. Talbot paled a trifle when informed that she had been elected to arise at 4:45 A.M. every day and set Mr. Kane's coffee on the gas ring until it was hot enough to take in to him. But she agreed because she felt that so she was helping to clear Georgia's honor. On the first Sunday morning of this stay Mrs. Talbot missed the coffee because she knew that Mr. Kane's paper didn't publish that day and supposed, or anyway hoped, that he would sleep late. At six the whole family was awakened by his loud mutterings to himself which percolated through the flat.

"They agreed to bring my coffee at five; they agreed; and here it is near seven and not a sign of it. Not a sign of it. —— it. I'll leave, yes by —— I'll leave!" He thrashed about furiously in his bed, turning over and over, and striking the pillow with clenched fists in his rage.

Mrs. Talbot, in sack and skirt over her nightgown, stockingless, her gray hair loose, went running in to him with his pot of steaming black dope. He smiled cherubically when he saw her. It was the only trouble they ever had with him.

On Mr. Kane's coming Jim had to clear out of the front room, so he went to Georgia's.

That evening as she undressed rapidly in the light before his approving eyes she had a sudden strange relieved feeling that after what she had been through in the past few months a little more wouldn't greatly matter one way or the other.

It would certainly be unpleasant to have Jim pawing her again, but she had successfully postponed it much longer than she expected, so now she had better be philosophical about it. As far as she could gather most women obliged their husbands and not themselves in the frequency of their embraces.

Why, therefore, excite her imagination and her sense of horror, and try to make a tremendous hard luck story out of what after all was a perfectly common and commonplace situation? Let her avoid it whenever possible and accept it with calm equanimity when necessary.

It was rather ridiculous to think herself a shrinking victim of masculine passion. She had borne this man a child, she was scarred with life, a matron of nearly ten years standing.

"And I look every bit of it," she commented half aloud, as she stood before the mirror slipping off her corset cover.

"What'd you say?" he asked, turning his eyes toward her. He was seated on the bed stooping over, trying to undo a hard knotted shoe lace with his blunt finger nails.

"I said hurry up—I'm sleepy."

"You just bet I will," he answered eagerly.

Not long after this domestic readjustment Jim was smoking, his wife reading and his mother-in-law sewing in the dining room after supper when the doorbell rang from the vestibule below. Georgia pressed the opener and admitted Ed Miles, the boss of the ward, "the big fellow." She wasn't a bit glad to see him. She thought that to keep Jim away from politics and politicians was the only way to keep him away from drinking.

The big fellow made a formal call. He sat on the edge of his chair, his gray derby hat pushed under it, and constantly addressed Georgia as ma'am. Although she mistrusted him every moment of his visit, she felt the power of him, the brusque charm of his vitality, the humor of his laugh.

When he rose to go he said good-bye politely to the women and then to Jim, who could tell by the pressure of the big fellow's hand that he wanted a word alone with him.

"I'll see you to the door, Ed," said Jim, and they walked out together.

Georgia noticed thankfully that her husband did not take his hat and that he was wearing slippers.

"I want you to do me a little favor, Jim. You know we have our ward club election the first Monday of the new year.

"Yes."

"Come around."

"I ain't a member of the club any more."

"I'll fix that—and your back dues, too."

"I promised my wife to keep out of politics."

"I don't blame her either. You were going some for a married man. But the fact is, they're trying under cover to take the organization away from us."

"I heard there was a little battle on."

"It's more than that. It goes deep. They've got backing. Now if my friends throw me down—"

"You know damn well I wouldn't throw you down, Ed."

"If you don't come to the front when I need you, it's the same thing. And I need you now. This is confidential, y'understand?"

"Sure."

"Because I wouldn't let it get out I was worried."

The two men were standing side by side on the front stoop in a stream of arc light from the street lamp.

"I want your vote," said Miles, "for old sake's sake."

"I dassen't go into politics regular, Ed."

"I don't ask you to."

"But I might slip up to the ward meeting one night, just doing my duty as a citizen."

"You're a good fellow, Jim." There was a trace of huskiness in the big fellow's bass voice and Jim felt himself again moved by his old loyalty to his leader. The two shook hands warmly, fervently, with the facile emotions of politicians.

"One thing about me—I never quit on my friends when they need me." There was a perceptible huskiness in Jim's voice also.

"I know it damn well," said the big fellow, throwing his arm about the other's shoulder, "because you're a thoroughbred." He thrust his hand into his side pocket and brought forth several dozen large glazed white cards bearing the legend, "For President Fortieth Ward Club, Carl Schroeder," with an oval half-tone of the fat-faced candidate.

"I don't know's I've got time to make any canvass, Ed," said Jim, slipping the cards back and forth through his fingers. "So you're running Carl, eh?"

The big fellow boomed a laugh. "You didn't know it—Reuben come to town. Sure we're running Carl, and he said only this morning if he could get you with him he'd walk in."

Jim was pleased. "Did Carl say that, honest?"

"Come on up to the corner and he'll tell you himself."

"I haven't got my hat."

"Take mine." The boss slipped his gray derby on Jim's head. It descended to his ears. "You're a regular pinhead," exclaimed the big fellow loudly, and they both laughed.

They walked up to the saloon, Connor's slippers flapping against the pavement flags with every step.

The saloon welcomed Jim as if he had been a conquering hero. It was light and warm and gay and full of men.

Carl Schroeder and Jim went into the private office and whispered importantly together for half an hour. When they came out, Carl was smiling and announced, clapping Jim on the back, "This old scout's brought be the best news in a week. What'll you have, boys?"

Jim took lithia, explaining he was wagoning, and they congratulated him and took whiskey themselves. He left reasonably early, half a dozen rounds of lithia having given him a rather sloppy-weather sensation within. Besides, the other fellows had got to feeling good and were talking to beat the band, and he just sat there like a bump on a log without a thing to say.

Not that the drinkers seemed particularly wise or witty, for some of them began to sound increasingly foolish as he listened to them, cold sober. But the liquor put them on a different plane from him, lower perhaps, but also wilder, freer, less deliberate and restrained. Their thoughts didn't follow the same sequence as his and he couldn't meet their minds as they seemed able to meet each others. He was self-conscious and glum and awkward, like a new millionaire in the hands of his first valet. And he knew that one drink of whiskey would alter all that and put him in right. But he didn't take it.

The big fellow saw him to the door, giving him a cap that he picked up in the private office to go home in.

"You'll do what you can for the organization in your precinct?"

"Sure."

"And we won't forget you."

"Thanks, Ed, that's mighty fine of you."

They shook hands; then Jim felt his fingers closing over a ten-dollar bill which had been pressed into his palm. It was easy money, he thought, as he paddled home in his cap and slippers. All he'd have to do to earn it would be to get around among the neighbors evenings for a couple or three weeks.

When Georgia, who had been waiting up for him with a peculiar fluttering of the heart each time that she heard a step on the stairs, found that he was entirely sober, she kissed him of her own accord.

XXVI EVE

Some six months later, on a hot, sticky afternoon in July, Georgia came away from a State Street department store carrying a paper-wrapped parcel under her arm. She had come down town to take advantage of an odds and ends sale of white goods advertised that morning.

In spite of the heat which beat down from a cloudless, windless sky and radiated up from the stone pavements where it had stored itself, she wore a long bluish-gray pongee coat. There were dark rings under her eyes and she felt ill and dispirited as she waited at Dearborn and Randolph for a North Clark Street car, which would drop her a block nearer her flat than the L would.

The car was slow in coming and a crowd of fifteen or twenty gathered to wait for it. Most of them were women homeward bound after the morning's shopping excitement. One of them also wore a long bluish-gray coat and Georgia remembered having seen her at the white goods remnant counter. They caught each other's eyes and smiled faintly but did not speak.

When the car stopped there was the customary rush for seats and Georgia had to content herself with a strap. She balanced her bundle against her hip and shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot swaying to the motion of the car, envying men.

A passenger who looked like an oldish maid, with gold-rimmed spectacles and tightly drawn thin hair, half rose and beckoned to Georgia.

"I'm getting out at the next corner," she said, and sliding across the knees of the person next to her, gave Georgia a seat next the window on the shady side.

"Thank you, thank you very much indeed," said Georgia gratefully. Several blocks later she turned and saw the maiden lady still standing on the back platform leaning against the controller-box and trying to write something on the back of a paper novel with a fountain pen. She had a sudden warm feeling for this unknown friend who had done her a small kindness with delicacy.

Then, for she was nervously unstable and the hues and tinges of her emotions followed each other very rapidly like magic lantern slides, she became suddenly and deeply humiliated. Was she already so noticeable that strange women, much older than she, would offer her their seats! From day to day she had gone on, still hoping that she was able to deceive the casual eye. Henceforth she felt that she could not by any stretch of will bring herself to go out of the house except at night.

The car made moving pictures for her as she looked through the heavy wire grill which kept people from putting their heads out of the windows, at the men slowly walking up and down the hot sidewalk in their shirt sleeves or stopping to talk under the projecting awnings of saloons and fruit stores, at the wrappered women sitting stupidly in the upper windows of run-down brick buildings devoted to light housekeeping, at children sucking hokey-pokey cones or playing ball in a side street.

The children seemed to her the only ones with joy. Perhaps that was because they didn't know what they were up against.

The motorman clanged his gong angrily twenty times, then had to slow down and stop behind a lumbering coal wagon while the driver, a much blackened and begrimed Irishman, climbed leisurely from his seat and fussed with the neck yokes of his team, swearing sulkily at the motorman the while. A messenger boy got back at him, in the opinion of the front platform, by hailing him as Jack Johnson, the hope of the dark race. The teamster responded with some dirty language. It was a bad, hot day for tempers.

Georgia had time during the delay to become interested in a little drama which was then being enacted directly across the street from her. Its impelling power seemed to be a dead white horse which lay on the soft sticky asphalt, surrounded by a fringe of men and boys who stared quietly at a little pool of blood that came from a round hole above the animal's eye.

The horse's mate stood stolidly in harness, hitched still to his wagon. She wondered if now he would have to pull it home alone. A man with a note book pushed through the crowd. He was evidently in authority of some sort. He asked a little boy something and the boy turned and pointed toward an alley entrance cat-a-corner from where he stood.

Then a big man with a whip in his hand, a leather strap around his waist and a union button in his cap, probably the driver of the dead horse, threw his cap on the ground and stamped his foot, shook his fist at the boy and turned his back on the man with the note book and refused to answer his questions. She couldn't understand it at all. It seemed very unreasonable.

Then a street car bound the other way rolled up and came to a stop between her and the white horse. Mason Stevens sat on the seat precisely opposite hers, so near that they could have shaken hands if the two grilled iron screens had not been in the way. She noticed that his jaw fell open, like a dead person's.

She heard her conductor and the other conductor jerk simultaneously the go-ahead signals and the cars, quickly getting up speed, went in different directions. She did not turn her head, but she could feel the moment when he flipped onto the back platform. Then she heard him come up the aisle, breathing heavily from his run.

The seat beside her had become vacant and she had placed her paper package of white goods on it. Now she took it into her lap and crossed her arms over it. He sat down.

"How do you do!" he said.

"How do you do?"

They both stared straight ahead, not daring at first to look at each other.

"It's—quite a while since we—saw each other," she ventured after a long pause.

"Yes, quite a while, but—" he stopped.

"But what!"

"I don't know."

Then Georgia, first to regain control of herself, laughed, breaking the tension. "What are you doing here!" she asked. "Where have you come from and where are you going!"

"I got in from New York this morning and I'm going home—that is, to Kansas City, this evening. Had to see Cleever here."

"Is everything going well with you!"

"Yes, that is—yes."

"Business good!"

"Fine."

"Happy!"

"Oh, yes—are you!"

"Oh, yes," she said, then added "very."

They paused. "Don't let me keep you if you have business," she suggested.

"I haven't," he answered.

He thought that never in his life had he seen her look so ill, but doubted how to speak of it.

"You got all over your typhoid, of course," was the way he put it.

"Oh, yes, completely." She read him as usual, and saw what was in his mind, that her appearance had shocked him.

"Oh, don't look at me that way, Mason," she exclaimed suddenly; "I know I've gone off a lot, but don't rub it in."

"You're nothing of the sort. You are a bit fagged out, that's all."

"Yes," she said, "a bit fagged. Besides, I'm a staid, settled-down old thing—and you, perhaps you're married by this time. Are you?"

"No."

"Engaged, then!" She spoke casually, but there was a beating at her heart.

"Not even that."

She pressed the button for the car to stop. She had a morbid hope that she might still keep her secret from him. But when he helped her off the car and they started to walk toward her home, she saw it in his eyes.

"You understand now?" she faltered.

"Yes."

They walked a hundred steps in silence. "Tell me one thing, Georgia," he said, "you are happy?"

"Yes," she answered firmly.

"That's all I care about."

When they reached her door he gave her the package of white goods which he had been carrying.

"Georgia," he said, as they shook hands good-bye, "remember this—if you ever need me, I'll come."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean if you ever need me I'll come—from anywhere."

She looked down at her ungainly figure in wonderment. "Surely you don't mean that now. I'm—I'm so ridiculous."

His voice choked. "God bless and keep you. God bless and keep you always, my dearest," he said, then went away.

She walked slowly and heavily up to the third flight, carrying her burden. When she opened the door with her latchkey she found her mother in blue gingham apron, cleaning Mr. Kane's room.

Mrs. Talbot paused in her operations. "Well," she vouchsafed, "Jim has turned up—just after you left. He's asleep in your room."

"Drunk?" asked Georgia.

"Of course," said Mrs. Talbot, emptying her carpet sweeper.

XXVII THE NAPHTHALINE RIVER

Jim was a dipsomaniac, not a villain. His vice made no one else so abysmally wretched as it made himself.

After each spree he descended into the deep hell of remorse. He thought of pistols, razors and the lake. Would not everyone he cared for be the better for his disappearance? Was it not decenter to die than to live on, a reeking beast, a stenchful sewer for whiskey?

Then as his long enduring body began once more patiently to expel the poison he had thrust into it, he slowly cheered up. He wouldn't kill himself, he would swear off forever and ever, so help him God, amen.

In a few days he was completely reassured, and not a little proud of his evident self-control. He bragged of it casually. He was Pharisaical. He pitied drinking men. "No," he would say, raising a deprecating hand when invited to smile with them, "I've cut it out for good. I don't like it, and," laughing, "it don't like me. I've had enough in my day to keep up my batting average for the rest of my life, and enough is sufficiency. A little ginger ale for mine, thank you."