"There are personal considerations to every question, Percival," answered Mr. Early, shading his face with his hand, and watching Dick's expression with artistic appreciation of the changes that he felt sure he should see.

"Not for me," said Dick. "Thank Heaven my hands are clean, and I can do whatever I believe to be right."

"Yes, for you," answered Mr. Early suavely, and then he broke into a suppressed laugh. "Why, you young idiot, if you care to be told, your feet are limed, and the sooner you recognize the fact the better."

"What do you mean?" cried Dick with fierce resentment.

"Oh, sit down, my boy," said Mr. Early, still amiable. "There's no use in rampaging. I just want to tell you a little story and show you a little piece of paper."

Dick sat down and glared at his guest.

"Your wife—" Dick started up with something like a groan. "Yes, your wife, Percival. You see a man does not always stand alone. Your wife has a necklace of worthless rubies, which she has told you was a present from our dear departed Swami. If people only knew about it, there might be a certain amount of scandal about a young woman's receiving a supposedly valuable gift from a swindler who was also a social idol. Don't go off your head, Dick. You've got to listen to me. As a matter of fact, she lied to you when she told you he gave them to her. She bought them; and she had not the money to pay for them. I suppose it was at his suggestion that she borrowed the sum from me. That would have been all right, except that she gave me a note signed by Richard Percival, and she quite omitted to tell me that her husband was away at the time. I found that out by chance afterward, after I had supplied her demand. Would you like to see the forgery, Dick? It's an ugly word, but we might just as well be plain with each other."

Dick's tongue had grown dry and speechless, so that he seemed to have no power to check this recital, and now all he could do was to reach out an eager hand.

"Not so fast," said Mr. Early. "It's mine, not yours. And it will take more than the five thousand dollars out of which it swindled me to buy it back. It sounds bad, doesn't it? A forgery, connected with a rascal who was the talk of the country. I should not myself care to pose again as the dupe of a woman and her friendly counterfeiter, but that would be a small matter compared with the hail of scandal that would whir around the head of that pretty little butterfly, your wife."

"Scandal! My wife!" Dick staggered to his feet.

"That is what we all want to avoid, don't we?" Mr. Early asked with his fat smile.

They looked at each other in silence. Dick had a wild impulse to fling himself on his knees, spiritually speaking, and to beg for mercy; but the expression of Mr. Early's face suggested that all sentiment would fall into cold storage in his breast.

"You've been devoting yourself, with a certain amount of success, to digging out the hidden things in other men's careers," the tormentor went on with a cheerful sneer. "I suppose it has amused you. I know it amuses me, and it would doubtless amuse the public, to fix attention on this little affair of your own. You must remember that you have this disadvantage: you and your kind are thin-skinned. Billy Barry and his kind are pachyderms."

He settled back comfortably in his chair and smiled benevolently at Dick's white face.

"Well?" Dick asked at last hoarsely.

Mr. Early carefully refolded the slip of paper, and tucked it away in his vest pocket, but he spoke with engaging openness.

"It's yours, my dear boy, the day after the lighting franchise passes over the mayor's veto. If they fail to pass it, I shall know that you and Mrs. Percival are willing to stand a little public obloquy for the sake of what you consider right. Very creditable to you, I am sure, and damned uncomfortable for your wife."

Dick still stared at him, and he went on: "I'll leave you to think it over. In fact, I do not know that it is necessary for me to learn your decision except by your action. Sorry to have to take extreme measures, but it's every one for himself, in this world."

He went out, and Dick sank into a chair and stared at his toes and the ashes.

"What's the use?" he said to himself. "She didn't know what she was doing. I can't change it or her."

Winter went on, and Ellery and Madeline were married. Dick squandered himself on their wedding present, and looked like a thunder-cloud as he watched the ceremony. On the day after he returned from his brief honeymoon, Norris started down town to take up the routine of life, irradiated now by love and purpose. The world seemed fresh and fair, and even the face of Billy Barry less unlovely than usual as they met near Newspaper Row.

"Morning," said Mr. Barry. "You look ripping. My congratulations. Sorry you could not come around to the council meeting, last night. You'd have been pleased to see the old franchise waltz through."

"What do you mean?" demanded Norris, stopping short.

"Haven't even read the morning paper? Good land, that's what it means to be a bridegroom!" Barry went on with a chuckle. "Couldn't stop looking at her face behind the coffee-pot!"

Norris restrained an impulse to throttle him and allowed Barry to proceed.

"Why, yes, we passed the old thing. I always said we would. Your friend Percival voted with the combine. He's the real stuff. When he saw how truth and justice lay, he buckled down and did the square thing. Have a cigar? No? Oh yes, it's straight goods I'm givin' you. You needn't look so queer. And say, on the quiet, I'm rather stuck on you reform fellers. All they need is argument. So when you get 'em, you get 'em cheap. Say, it's better than cash, any day."

Norris ran up the steps and snatched a morning's paper. Yes, it was true. Percival had voted against his friends and had given the victory to the other side. Ellery flung into his office and whirled into his day's work in a kind of daze. There was much to do and no time for outside thought, but when the afternoon was over, instead of rushing back to the little home, as he had expected, Norris hurried into his coat and hastened to find Dick. Mr. Percival was at home; and, without waiting to be announced, Ellery sprang up the stairs to the little sanctum where the two had confabbed on many a day. He plunged in on Dick, pale and unresponsive, and blurted out his question.

"Yes," said Dick, "I voted for it. I became convinced that it was the best thing the city could do. I've been telling the boys so for the past two weeks. I really didn't understand the matter before. Don't get so excited, Norris."

He spoke quietly, but without meeting his friend's eyes, and Ellery's heart sank.

"I don't know what it means, Dick," he said bitterly, "but it seems to me that, like Lucifer, you've been falling from dawn to dewy eve, and now you are likely to consort with the devils in the pit. Are you the old Dick who used to be my idol?"

"Oh, bosh!" said Dick. "You are making mountains out of mole hills. The franchise is all right."

"It's not all right; and you're not all right," cried Norris, in a frantic grasping after the truth of the matter. "The old relationships are slipping away and something that was as dear to me as myself is going with them."

He turned away and Dick suddenly rose.

"Ellery," he cried hoarsely, and Norris turned to see anguish in Dick's face and outstretched hand, "I—I—can't explain to you," cried Percival; "but, Ellery—" he moved forward, "don't cut the bonds of old friendship, for God's sake! I need you now, as I never did before. If you desert me, I shall lose my grip."

Norris stepped back, and the two took each other's hands and looked steadfastly, eye into eye. And Norris saw something that took on him the hold that death has on us, and made him ready to forgive. Death is the big problem of every mind. We may perhaps master and solve the question when the death is of the body, but when the soul dies out, the problem is too great.

Ellery sank into a chair with weariness.

"Tell me about it," he said.

Then Dick stiffened again.

"There isn't anything to tell."

"See here," said Norris. "This isn't only a question of the lighting franchise. The city may walk in darkness and be damned for all I care; but I can't bear that you should walk in darkness. Do you realize what it means? You have fought your first public battle on a basis of truth. You make your first public appearance in league with evil. You are killing the hope of your public career before it is fairly in bud."

"I know it," said Dick.

"Percival, you've stirred this city into consciousness. It's been wonderful how you have done it so swiftly, for it is your doing. The decent elements are marching forward into control and it belongs to you to march at their head. The thing has got to go on. If you don't lead it, some one else will."

"I know it."

"And you are going to give up?" Ellery urged, incredulous.

"I haven't decided. Perhaps I have done with politics."

"And if you abandon your public career, what are you going to do?"

"What do other failures do?"

"Oh, stuff!" exclaimed Norris, and began to pace the room. "Then you did not vote for the franchise because you believed in it. Somebody has a pull on you. I'd never have believed that any man in this wide world would get a pull on Dick Percival."

"Well, somebody has," said Dick shortly. "I wouldn't say so much as that to any mortal but yourself. Now spare me, Ellery, and don't carry it any further. Do you think," he went on bitterly, "that I have not gone over the whole ground and told myself the old truths that never mean anything to you until life rams them home on your consciousness? A man may creep out from under the machinery of state law, and escape from the punishment he deserves; but from the laws under which we really live, there is no escape. It is reap what you sow; hate and you shall be hated; sin and suffer. And it isn't as though one went out to sow. One sows perforce, every minute, whether he will or not. In some instances the reaping is singularly little fun, Ellery."

"Well, whatever hold this mysterious some one has on you, be a man. Stand up and own yourself and let the consequences go hang."

"I know some men could. You could. That's the advantage of having taken a good many hard blows. You learn to stand up against them," Dick answered slowly. "You know other people's opinion has always been a god to me. I haven't the strength to defy it now."

There was a short silence, then Dick laid his arms across his friend's shoulders, quite in the old friendly way.

"Now may we drop that subject and be good pals again?"

"Not yet," Ellery said sharply. "We won't drop it till I've had one more say. Dick, don't be knocked out by a single blow. You! Why, I thought you had a grip like a bulldog. I can't believe even in this ugly mess. Still less will I believe that you haven't the courage—that you aren't man enough to own your defeat, and then go on as though you hadn't been beaten."

Dick poked at the andirons with his toe. Suddenly he looked up with a flash of his old brilliance and buoyancy.

"Suppose I do!" he exclaimed. "What a fellow you are, Ellery, to stick to me this way! But don't underestimate my difficulty. I'm not an absolute coward, but I've been beaten not only once, but on both flanks and in the middle. Everything in life seemed to be giving me a kick. I was at the bottom when you came in, but if you believe in me, perhaps I'll begin to believe in myself again. You've always been telling me how much I did for you. You've done more for me to-night than I ever dreamed of doing for you."

Ellery's face cleared. They stood with clasped hands, and there seemed no need of further explanations or assurances. Norris drew a long breath of relief.

"So we are friends still?" asked Dick.

"Till the Judgment Day and beyond."

"Now good-by," said Dick, as though anxious to get rid of him, "till to-morrow."

"Till to-morrow."

A moment later a radiant vision stood in the doorway making a pouting face.

"Dick," said Lena.

Dick started and stiffened himself as though to give battle, his hands rested on the chair-back in front of him, but an instant's survey of his wife's rose-leaf face, her well-groomed masses of hair, her dainty evening gown, seemed to inspire another attitude. He threw his arms passionately around her.

"Oh, Lena," he cried, "love me! You must love me—you have cost me so dear!"

"Nonsense!" Lena gave him a sharp push and spoke resentfully. "I'm not half so extravagant as most of the women we know."

Dick drew away and became rigid again.

"Extravagant!" he exclaimed as though to himself. "You have cost me my self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing he loves?"

"I do think, Dick," said Lena severely, "that you can talk the silliest nonsense of any person I ever heard. What on earth is the meaning of all this? No—no—" as she saw that he was getting ready to reply. "I have not time to hear. I thought that tiresome Mr. Norris would never go. What can you see in him?—Have you forgotten that we are going to the Country Club for dinner? It's long past time for you to dress."

"Imagine it! I had forgotten that dinner!" Dick answered bitterly. For a moment he turned away as though, he would not see her while he readjusted something in himself. He felt like a different man and looked to her indefinably strange when he faced her again quietly. To himself he was saying, "What would Ellery do?" and on his answer to his own question he was readjusting his whole life.

"We will not go out this evening, Lena," he said. "We've come to a crisis in our affairs more important than a club dinner."

"What, have you been losing money?" cried Lena, startled and resentful.

Dick looked at her with a very unpleasant smile.

"No," he answered. "I wonder what you would say if I told you that I was ruined?"

Lena gasped with horror. For the moment she could not speak. A gulf of poverty—no one knew better than she what that meant—yawned before her. A blind fury against Dick, if he should have plunged her into this, possessed her; and Dick watched her and read her as he had never done before.

"Will you sit down?" he asked courteously. "I want to talk with you—just by our two selves. I haven't lost any money, Lena. Let me relieve your mind of its worst apprehension." Her face smoothed, but she seated herself quietly, puzzled and foreboding. Dick was so singularly inaccessible.

"I've lost no money," he repeated, "but I've come desperately near ruin for all that. Lena, a moment ago I made a real appeal to your love. You answered me by a shrug and a push for fear that I might muss that very pretty and exceedingly becoming gown. It was a kind of illustration of all our married life."

Lena still stared at him dumbly, vague with uncomprehending fear. This didn't seem like the easy-going husband she knew. She wished he would look at her.

"When we were married," he went on, "I had a dream that a man's wife stood for his ideals, that he might mold his life by her purity and nobleness and love. I've always been saying, in effect, 'Lead on, Mrs. Percival and I will follow where you lead!' You've led me into the depths, Lena, and I'm never going to say that to you any more. You and I have got to remold our relations and start again."

"What has happened?" Lena asked faintly, and feeling very helpless. She seemed suddenly to realize how very big Dick's body was, and how little chance she stood against it. If he was inaccessible in spirit she had no hold over him. She wished he would get angry. That would be something concrete. She would know how to meet it.

"What has happened?" she repeated.

"Only this," Dick said. "I am going to refuse to delude myself any longer; and it is fair to you as it is to me that you should know it. I am going to stop telling myself that you are my ideal woman, when you have shown me, for instance, your unwillingness to make such tender self-sacrifice as a mother must give to a child—that you are true and honest when you are guilty of an underhand thrust like that little squib about Madeline—that—"

"Ah," shrieked Lena, leaping to her feet with the light beginning to come into her eyes. "So that's what's the matter! That girl—"

"No," said Dick evenly, "that is not what cuts most. What hurts through and through, Lena, is the knowledge that you don't even love me enough, in spite of all my wasted passion, to keep from intriguing with another man behind my back for the sake of a few bits of red glass."

"How—did Mr. Early—?" Lena began, but he interrupted her again.

"Did it seem such a simple thing to keep me perpetually blinded? Last night, Lena, I paid your debt to Mr. Early. I sold my vote in the council, along with my self-respect and my honor in the sight of others to get back this shred of paper. Once I might have thought you sinned ignorantly, but I know you better now. Here is that priceless scrap." He drew it from his pocket and threw it into her lap. "Now I've swept away all the mists! There can't be any sweet illusions between you and me, Lena." He drew a sharp breath.

Lena's heart was beating very fast and her eyes were down. She saw shrewdly that there was no need of argument on any of these topics. The less she said about them the better for her. And Dick, with his hands in his pockets, was watching her from the other side of the room. She twisted the piece of paper in her hands. She had always a bald way of telling herself the truth. Now she would face Dick in the same spirit. After all, she was his wife. He couldn't get away from that.

"Well," she said, "I suppose you don't love me any more?" Her voice was like her mother's, acid and selfish.

"Do you love me?" asked Dick.

"No!" said Lena. She saw him writhe and felt glad that she had the power to hurt him, but he answered very gently.

"Then I still have the advantage of you, Lena. I love you, not in the old way I once dreamed of loving—but still I love you. All this that I've said to-night was not spoken in the heat of anger. I've known these facts for a long time, and you have never felt any change in my manner; but gradually I have come to see that there could never be any genuine relations between us—you and me—so long as you thought me just a silly dupe for you to get everything you could from, to be played on as you pleased. We must begin again, a new way. You don't love me, you say. I do love you, sweetheart, not for what I thought you were, but for what you are, because you are my wife, because you need my tenderness and help. But I'm not going to let you lead any longer. We can't even walk side by side as some husbands and wives do." Dick seemed to hear the voices of Ellery and Madeline by their own fireside, and he went on hurriedly. "You needn't look at me that way, Lena, as if you were afraid of me. I shall want you to be comfortable and happy. I shall try to give you the things you want—things—things—things! But I have some purposes in life, and they, not you, are to be my master-spirits."

Dick turned away and stared out of the winter window, stirred by his own words into a strange new understanding of himself—a mere fatuous self-believer, a man who trusted to fate not fight, to fortune not to mastery, who had not made his standards, but let them make themselves. And now it was come to this, that a half-hour in a room with a foolish girl was the turning-point in his life.

He seemed strange to himself, as though he were examining a life from the outside rather than from the inside, and fumbling at its real meaning.

He had done no wrong; but what does the march of events care whether the failure be intentional or careless? Results follow just the same.

There flashed before his inward eye the face of his long-dead father, white and set with some inward pain of which he did not speak. Dick remembered that as a boy that had seemed to him a pitiful thing. Now he saw it somewhat as the believers once saw the face of the martyr, the visible manifestation of triumph—the success of being true to yourself in spite of all the world.

Dick drew a long breath and dropped his boyhood without even a regret. He knew he could accept conditions and limitations and not kick against the pricks, but quietly, as one who is capable of being superior to them. The bitterness, the depression of an hour, two hours, ago faded into trifles, and the thing nearest to his consciousness was that dead father who had had his wound and lived his life in spite of it; nearer, infinitely nearer, than the living wife whom a slight noise brought to his remembrance. He had forgotten her. She belonged now to the elements outside his dearest life.

He turned toward Lena, waiting, silent, uncomprehending,—poor little Lena, a woman who could never be anything more. He felt a wave of strange new pity for her, unlike the pity he had once experienced for her poverty of body, a sorrow, this, for what she was in herself, his wife—poor, poor little child!

Lena sat still, picking at the bit of paper, but she looked up now, moved in spite of herself by the exultant ring in Dick's voice, as he strode over to her and held out both his hands.

"And so we begin again—honestly, this time. Perhaps some day you'll come to accept my standards inwardly as well as outwardly. Perhaps you'll even come to love me, some day, little wife."

Lena took his hands submissively. Her small tyranny, her stock of little ambitions had slipped from her and she shivered as though she was stripped and cold; but behind there was a kind of delight in this new Dick, with authoritative eyes into which she stared, wondering still, with trepidation, what he was going to make of her life.



CHAPTER XXII

ANOTHER BEGINNING

Norris, as he left Percival's house, had a glimpse of Lena coming down the hall, wonderful in her shimmering evening gown, brave in jewels. She dazzled him, though he despised his eyes for admiring her and told himself that she was tinsel.

He bowed in response to her curt nod, well aware that she thought him too unimportant to merit her courtesy, while she resented her husband's inexplicable regard for him. He went out into a cold winter drizzle and turned his face toward home and Madeline, those new and thrilling possessions. For the moment, however, there was no exhilaration in his heart, rather a depressed questioning whether, after all, everything beautiful was a sham. Was the daily grind a mechanical millwheel? Dick and Dick's marriage, were they but samples of the way life deals with hope? A pang stabbed through him as his own marriage rose and stood beside Dick's in his mind. It meant so much to him; yet only a few months before his friend had been bubbling with an exultation more open-voiced than his own.

There are not only great Sloughs of Despond waiting here and there for the pilgrim, but there are in almost every day little gutters of despond that must be jumped if one does not wish cold and soiled feet; so here his healthy mind cried out against morbid thoughts and he reviled himself for companioning the thing he held sacred with the thing he had always felt foredoomed to failure. He told himself that middle-age was not a dead level of hopes grown gray and withered, but rather a heightening of the contrasts between success and failure. A word of Mr. Elton's spoken long ago, flashed back to him: "Don't build your attics before you've finished your cellars." That, after all, was a test. If one could but get a good solid foundation under hope, one might trust it to lift its pinnacle as far toward Heaven as the ethereal upper air. Alas for Dick!

Then, though he still loved his one-time hero, Ellery put Dick from his mind. His feet quickened and his heart began to beat joyously again. He ran up his steps, delighting in the commonplace performance of putting a latch-key into a lock. The cold and drizzle were shut outside, and Madeline waited in the warmth and light of the hall to insist on helping him off with his overcoat, a task so absurdly difficult that when it was finished they laughed and kissed each other in mutual delight at their own foolishness.

Then Madeline took his hand and drew him into the living-room, where the light was low and shaded, but blazing logs painted even far-shadowed corners with warmth, and pranked the girl's white dress into glowing pink, while the fire hummed and crackled its own triumph:

"I consumed the deep green forest with all its songs, And all the songs of the forest now sing aloud in me."

Ellery stood with his arm around his wife's waist and looked about with a quizzical expression that made her ask,

"What are you thinking?"

"I was remembering."

"And pray what business have you, sir, to live in anything but the present?"

"Perhaps I get more from to-day because I don't forget yesterday. When I first came to St. Etienne, sweetheart, Dick took me to his home. You know, with your mere mind, but you can not appreciate, how unrelated my life had been. You can't imagine how hungrily I looked at that restful room and at Dick's mother. I felt as though I would give anything—my soul—to have a home. And now, behold, I have one."

"And you had to pledge your soul to me to get it."

"True. I paid dearly," he said. "But I was wondering how it was that you had managed to put so much atmosphere into so untried a place. It looks to me as impossible as a miracle. Here are some new walls, and new furniture and new curtains and new vases and new pictures. Even the books are mostly new. I always resented new books. They are like green fruit. A book isn't ripe until it begins to be frayed around the edges. It would seem to me a hopeless job to make a home out of all this raw material. Yet this room already reminds me of Mrs. Percival's library, Madeline, and it isn't only because it is a long room with a big fireplace."

"I think it is a good beginning," she answered. "Now all we have to do is to live in it."

"You talk as though 'living' were a very easy matter," he remonstrated. "I think it must be the hardest thing in the world, judging by the failures. I know heaps of people who are drifting, or grubbing, or wallowing, or stumbling, or racing, but only a handful that are living. The thought of it made me blue all the way home."

"Dick?" Madeline asked with ready intuition.

"Yes, Dick. He voted with the combine and against the reform element in last night's council meeting; and he did it on some one's compulsion. I can't tell you how it has stirred and disheartened me."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"That he could not explain."

"Then," said his wife decisively, "it is some of Lena's doings. About anything else—anything—he would have told you, Ellery."

"Very likely, though it is hard to see how Mrs. Percival could be mixed up in affairs like this."

Madeline was moving about restlessly.

"Ellery," she said at last, "I feel as though you and I had to be a sort of pair of god-parents to Dick. He is so dear, so lovable, so fine—and so unable to go alone. You, particularly, dearest, are the stanchest thing he has. I know just how he feels about you, for I feel so, too. You are going to push behind him and understand him and back up all his resolves, aren't you, even if he does half disappoint you? You aren't going to let anything alienate you or come between your friendship and his, are you? I know you love him, and I'm sure he needs you."

Ellery smiled down at her questioning eyes and the intoxicating appeal of her confidence in him—Madeline's!

"I rather think I am Dick's friend for all I'm worth," he said slowly, at last. "Even if I were tempted to disloyalty, I should be ashamed to harbor it with your faithfulness standing before me. And I believe this very afternoon was a kind of crisis with him—that he was gathering himself together when I came away."

"And by your help, I dare say," added his wife.

"I hope so. I know but one thing that seems to me more worth while than the purpose of helping Dick Percival to be what it is in him to be."

"And what is that other better thing?"

"You arrant fraud! Do you need to ask?" he said, laughing.

"Well, comfort yourself. You are to go on fulfilling your two purposes in life—you and I together."

"I pray we may. I believe we shall," answered her husband earnestly.

"I know we shall, doubting Thomas. I'm one of the women who are strong in unreasoning faith."

They stood silently smiling at each other for a moment.

"Shall we celebrate the beginning of home with pomp and music?" she asked. "There's a little time before dinner. Make yourself comfortable. Push Mrs. Percival up to the fire."

"Mrs. Percival!" Ellery exclaimed, dropping his guilty arm and looking about in a startled manner.

"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. I've been all over the house this afternoon, christening our things with the names of the people that gave them to us. Doesn't it make all the wedding presents seem very friendly and not at all new? Wouldn't you know, even if you hadn't been told, that this particular chair was Mother Percival—it's so graceful and comforting. Dump yourself into it, Ellery."

She pushed him down laughing.

"Ah, I begin to see that you stole your atmosphere. The things aren't so new after all. They're old acquaintances."

"Of course they are. Isn't it jolly to have 'your loving friends' tucked around in spirit in every nook and corner of the house, without the nuisance of having the good people here in the body to disturb our privacy?"

"I see," he meditated, then went on ungratefully: "After all, I think I'm more taken with the privacy than with the spiritual presences, though they can hardly be considered skeletons at the feast."

"I should think not," exclaimed Madeline indignantly. "I love them each and all—well, with a few exceptions, Ellery. You needn't grin sarcastically. Now there's the piano—such a piano as I have always dreamed of but never hoped to own. If I called it a Steinway Grand, I should know that it was an excellent instrument; but when I call it 'Vera,' it warms and delights my heart a thousand times."

Ellery rose and bowed ceremoniously to the piano.

"Vera, will you and Mrs. Norris favor me with Schubert's Serenade, while I sit on Mrs. Percival?" he asked. "I am ragingly hungry, but perhaps the Serenade will keep me harmless and quiet for a little."

He sat and listened and looked into the warm deep heart of the friendly fire. Dreams and hopes came back to him, as things once seen through a glass darkly, but now face to face. Without turning, he was conscious of Madeline, across the room, filling life with music.

When a small maid, as new as the books, appeared to announce dinner, he looked up startled.

"Shall we go?" asked Madeline, rising.

"To our own private particular family communion-table," he answered, drawing her arm through his.

* * * * *

FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size. Printed on excellent paper—most of them with illustrations of marked beauty—and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.

THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE, By Mary Roberts Reinhart

With illustrations by Lester Ralph.

In an extended notice the New York Sun says: "To readers who care for a really good detective story 'The Circular Staircase' can be recommended without reservation." The Philadelphia Record declares that "The Circular Staircase" deserves the laurels for thrills, for weirdness and things unexplained and inexplicable.

THE RED YEAR, By Louis Tracy

"Mr. Tracy gives by far the most realistic and impressive pictures of the horrors and heroisms of the Indian Mutiny that has been available in any book of the kind * * * There has not been in modern times in the history of any land scenes so fearful, so picturesque, so dramatic, and Mr. Tracy draws them as with the pencil of a Verestschagin or the pen of a Sienkiewics."

ARMS AND THE WOMAN, By Harold MacGrath

With inlay cover in colors by Harrison Fisher.

The story is a blending of the romance and adventure of the middle ages with nineteenth century men and women; and they are creations of flesh and blood, and not mere pictures of past centuries. The story is about Jack Winthrop, a newspaper man. Mr. MacGrath's finest bit of character drawing is seen in Hillars, the broken down newspaper man, and Jack's chum.

LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL, By Geo. Cary Eggleston

With illustrations by Hermann Heyer.

In this "plantation romance" Mr. Eggleston has resumed the manner and method that made his "Dorothy South" one of the most famous books of its time.

There are three tender love stories embodied in it, and two unusually interesting heroines, utterly unlike each other, but each possessed of a peculiar fascination which wins and holds the reader's sympathy. A pleasing vein of gentle humor runs through the work, but the "sum of it all" is an intensely sympathetic love story.

HEARTS AND THE CROSS, By Harold Morton Cramer

With illustrations by Harold Matthews Brett.

The hero is an unconventional preacher who follows the line of the Man of Galilee, associating with the lowly, and working for them in the ways that may best serve them. He is not recognized at his real value except by the one woman who saw clearly. Their love story is one of the refreshing things in recent fiction.

GROSSET & DUNLAP. Publishers,—NEW YORK

* * * * *

FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size. Printed on excellent paper—most of them with illustrations of marked beauty—and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.

NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA, By Kate Douglas Wiggin With illustrations by F. C. Yohn

Additional episodes in the girlhood of the delightful little heroine at Riverboro which were not included in the story of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," and they are as characteristic and delightful as any part of that famous story. Rebecca is as distinct a creation in the second volume as in the first.

THE SILVER BUTTERFLY, By Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

With illustrations in colors by Howard Chandler Christy.

A story of love and mystery, full of color, charm, and vivacity, dealing with a South American mine, rich beyond dreams, and of a New York maiden, beyond dreams beautiful—both known as the Silver Butterfly. Well named is The Silver Butterfly! There could not be a better symbol of the darting swiftness, the eager love plot, the elusive mystery and the flashing wit.

BEATRIX OF CLARE, By John Reed Scott

With illustrations by Clarence F. Underwood.

A spirited and irresistibly attractive historical romance of the fifteenth century, boldly conceived and skilfully carried out. In the hero and heroine Mr. Scott has created a pair whose mingled emotions and alternating hopes and fears will find a welcome in many lovers of the present hour. Beatrix is a fascinating daughter of Eve.

A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH, By Joseph Medill Patterson

Frontispiece by Hazel Martyn Trudeau, and illustrations by Walter Dean Goldbeck.

Tells the story of the idle rich, and is a vivid and truthful picture of society and stage life written by one who is himself a conspicuous member of the Western millionaire class. Full of grim satire, caustic wit and flashing epigrams. "Is sensational to a degree in its theme, daring in its treatment, lashing society as it was never scourged before."—New York Sun.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,—NEW YORK

* * * * *

FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size. Printed on excellent paper—most of them with illustrations of marked beauty—and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.

THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS.

By Lew Wallace. With illustrations by Eric Pape.

"The story tells of the love of a native princess for Alvarado, and it is worked out with all of Wallace's skill * * * it gives a fine picture of the heroism of the Spanish conquerors and of the culture and nobility of the Aztecs."—New York Commercial Advertiser.

"Ben Hur sold enormously, but The Fair God was the best of the General's stories—a powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat of Montezuma by Cortes."—Athenaeum.

THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.

A story of love and the salt sea—of a helpless ship whirled into the hands of cannibal Fuegians—of desperate fighting and tender romance, enhanced by the art of a master of story telling who describes with his wonted felicity and power of holding the reader's attention * * * filled with the swing of adventure.

A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M. White. With a frontispiece.

The scene of the story centers in London and Italy. The book is skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying, exciting detective stories ever written—cleverly keeping the suspense and mystery intact until the surprising discoveries which precede the end.

THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett Yeats. With cover and wrapper in four colors.

Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman's A Gentleman of France will be engrossed and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian history. It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breath escapes, magnificent sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias were tottering to their fall.

SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece, and wrapper in color.

In all fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study of the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his courage, his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to struggle in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic value in Sister Carrie than in a whole shelfful of sermons.

GROSSET & DUNLAP,—NEW YORK



FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time. Library size. Printed on excellent paper—most of them with illustrations of marked beauty—and handsomely bound in cloth. Price, 75 cents a volume, postpaid.

LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.

A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and quaintest of old-fashioned love stories * * * A rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity. A dainty volume, especially suitable for a gift.

DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman Duncan. With a frontispiece and inlay cover.

How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, Doctor Luke is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note of rare personality.

THE DAY'S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.

The London Morning Post says: "It would be hard to find better reading * * * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end, that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till they have read the last—and the last is a veritable gem * * * contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a born story-teller and a man of humor into the bargain."

ELEANOR LEE. By Margaret E. Sangster. With a frontispiece.

A story of married life, and attractive picture of wedded bliss * * * an entertaining story or a man's redemption through a woman's love * * * no one who knows anything of marriage or parenthood can read this story with eyes that are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart of everyone who knows the meaning of "love" and "home."

THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John

Reed Scott. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood.

"Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling and romantic situations." "So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the far-spreading desert of similar romances."—Gazette-Times, Pittsburg.

"A slap-dashing day romance."—New York Sun.

GROSSET & DUNLAP,—NEW YORK.

THE END