Paul had sat through the opera that evening with his customary intensity of interest--but the chatter in the box had irritated him. He had been, of late, seeing a great deal of Loraine Haswell, and he thought she at least might have sympathized with his mood and refrained from disconcerting small talk. Their intimacy had so ripened that she should have understood how the things he had to say in their tete-a-tetes could not be uttered in company. So when she invited him to join her supper-party he declined with a poor grace.

Paul Burton took the opera seriously, almost religiously, and as he strolled in the foyer during an entr'acte, his annoyance grew. Was there no place where one could enjoy the art of fellow-artists without having one's spirit jarred out of all receptiveness?

Then he remembered the high perches of the less-fashionable devotees. He had never been up there, but he had heard that the occupants of these upper galleries frowned on noise and even refrained from applause, drinking in the music as though it were too sacred a thing to treat as a mere evening's entertainment. Following a momentary whim, he went out to the box-office and bought a fresh ticket. Holding it in his hand, he mounted above the parterre boxes and the grand-tier boxes, to the highest and cheapest of the galleries where silence and an almost awed concentration reigned. And there, when the lights came on again, he saw a slender figure in a chair near him, leaning forward with her chin resting on her hand, in an absolute fervor of interest. It was Miss Terroll and again she was alone. Once more she impressed him as someone purring with pleasure, and when the performance ended he found himself on the sidewalk whimsically waiting for her to come down from her dollar seat, among the gallery gods.

When he caught sight of her, she was slipping as quietly and unobtrusively through the crowds of jewelled and fur-wrapped women and men in evening-dress as though she were a mouse vanishing from a hall of banqueting, to which she had surreptitiously crept for her crumb. She did not look at the people about her. She did not seem to see them, for her eyes were still languorous with memories of Tristan and Isolde. As Paul touched her arm, she started and he hastened to say: "My car is here. Won't you let me drive you down-town?"

She let him lead her to his machine and lay back dreamily against the cushions, as they shot down the avenue between twin threads of electric opals.

For a while they talked of the opera, of the music and the voices, and the musician found himself expanding with a warmth of appreciative contentment, because he had a companion whose understanding and enthusiasm kept step with his own, and a step like that of a classic dance, attuned to harmonies.

He found himself often coming with a sort of start to the realization of a discovery under whose influence he tingled. Theoretically he knew that in this city, in whose varying meeting places of extremes the unexpected was to be expected, one should never be astonished. He knew there were artists who shunned Bohemia, and once he had met a barber whose enthusiasms were all for cuneiform inscriptions. He had heard in a club of a hobo whose nails were clean, whose address was elegant and who had confounded surgeons on surgery, artists on art, poets on verse and theologues on theology. He knew that the circles which had soothed his artistic snobbery with an admiration as grateful as soft fingers on a cat's back held no letters patent on charm or cultivation and yet his own mind had catalogued women of the stage, off-stage, under a general heading, in some way associated with cabaret places and false gaiety.

Here was one who called upon him to discard preconceived ideas and begin anew. On every topic he broached he encountered intelligent discussion and untrammeled originality of thought. In the back of his brain lurked the feeling that when he had broached all the topics upon which he could talk, he would still have touched on only a part of those at her command.

But between these moments of surprise were others of restful delight when she made him forget everything except that he was talking with a charming woman who saw in the opera a pleasure equal to his own.

And though he did not know it, Marcia Terroll, even this soon, saw in him a nature full of tuneful sweetness, but very weak, and realized that he was an instrument upon which a strong hand could play to an end of harmony or discord--an instrument upon which his great brother had already played, and which his great brother did not in the least comprehend. Paul's frequent allusions, tinged with hero-worship, had given her that understanding.

"I saw you in your box," she told him with a smile.

"And I saw you in yours," he laughed back at her.

The girl raised her brows, and he explained. "I ran away from the chatterboxes and came up to your gallery." They had almost reached the arch when he earnestly asked: "I wonder if you will go to the opera with me some evening? It would be wonderful to have someone who really cared for it."

Once more she laughed, but this time it was rather seriously. "We inhabit rather different worlds, you and I."

"I want you to let me be an explorer into yours--and your guide into mine," he declared. After a moment's hesitation she gravely answered: "It might not hurt you to know something of my world after all. It's rather humanizing for an artist to free himself from a single environment. It is possible to suffocate on incense."

Paul Burton smiled. "But you know," he said, "until I was twelve I never wore a pair of trousers that hadn't been bequeathed to me by my older brother--and when they reached me they were always liberally patched."

She was alighting from his car and her smile flashed on him as she held out a small, white-gloved hand. "And I," she retorted, "at that age was being tricked out in Paris finery. Time brings changes, doesn't it?" It was the first flash of self-revelation she had given him. But after that Paul Burton saw Marcia Terroll more than occasionally, and admitted to himself an interest which he did not seek to analyze.

J.J. Malone returned from the opera that evening for a consultation in his study with Harrison and Meegan.

"On the day after tomorrow," he reminded them, "the stock-holders'

meeting of Coal and Ore is held. By use of the cumulative system of balloting we can concentrate our fire on Burton."

"Do you gather," questioned Meegan anxiously, "that our fears of a Burton raid are founded in fact?"

The elder chief spread before his associates several sheets of closely written paper.

"On the contrary, I gather that Burton has not selected this time for his _coup_. I fancy we have forestalled him."

"Yet," suggested Meegan anxiously, "we want to feel sure."

Malone nodded. "Unless several men whom we trust prove traitors, we may feel sure. Gentlemen, I think we have soon enough, but none too soon, safeguarded ourselves against piracy. I hardly believe that what Gates did to L. and N. will be done to us by Burton.... I have been very busy and for some reason I do not feel quite myself. I think I shall now beg you to excuse me." The man of mighty resource rose smilingly from the table and then suddenly rested both hands on its polished surface. His ruddy face became pallid and he lifted one hand with a bewildered gesture to his brow.

Harrison and Meegan sprang with a common impulse to his side.

As they helped him to a chair, his step was unsteady. "It will pass,"

Malone assured them. "It is an attack of indigestion." Yet within the half-hour his powerful frame was being racked by convulsions and two hours later specialists at St. Luke's were making those preparations which precede an operation for appendicitis. Tomorrow when the Stock-Exchange opened the newspapers would spread the news that J.J.

Malone was out of the game and Wall street would once more mirror an anxiety which any small thing might convert into a parlous situation.

At the same hour a special train with a guaranteed right of way was thundering along its road-bed with a wake of red cinders and black smoke trailing from its stack and a single passenger in its single coach. The Honorable Mr. Ruferton was going to call on the Honorable Mr. Hendricks.

In ignorance of what the morrow held, the Honorable Mr. Hendricks was meanwhile sleeping peacefully in the quiet of his country house.

Shafts of sunlight came pleasantly through the dining-room windows on the following morning as he breakfasted alone, and still in ignorance.

The forests were decked with the first coloring of an early frost, and Mr. Hendricks strolled out for a cigar in the crisp air of his woodland.

Physically he was fit and his conscience did not trouble him; since his conscience was both lenient and practical.

Then as he took pleasure in his life and his Havana, he saw a dilapidated buckboard laboring up the rutty trail. It halted at his gate to let out a man of whom chance had, on more than one occasion, made a colleague, and occasionally an adversary.

"Hello, Ruferton," he shouted amiably, "what brings you here?"

Mr. Ruferton's face wore an expression of deep concern. He consulted his watch. "I came on a special train, Hendricks," he bluntly declared, "and it's waiting to take us both back to New York."

Hendricks laughed. "My dear fellow, I've been speech-making until my throat is raw. The final days before election mean more hard work.

Meantime I am resting. It's the doctor's stern command."

Ruferton stood at the gate and faced his host. He spoke impressively.

"An election-eve scandal threatens you which will probably involve a grand-jury investigation. If that is a matter of indifference, stay here, by all means, but if your future is in any degree important to you, pack your bag and pack it quick."

For an instant the former state senator and present candidate stood bewildered. What traitor had betrayed a false step? His tracks were all well covered, he thought. At last he found his tongue. "In God's name, what are you talking about?"

Mr. Ruferton held his portfolio tightly grasped in his hand. In it there were documents to which the other could hardly be indifferent--but unless all other arguments failed, he preferred reserving them for future use. He met the stupefied gaze of his protagonist with one of serious apprehension.

"I might as well be entirely candid with you, Hendricks. I don't know. I was sent by Hamilton Burton to bring you back to New York; with specific orders that you were to be at his house not later than nine-thirty this evening. There he will tell you what you should learn. I have come in person because he did not care to trust to such a message as could be telephoned or telegraphed."

"Hamilton Burton?" The Honorable Hendricks was more than ever at sea. "I have had many dealings with Mr. Burton, but wherefore this sudden and absorbing interest in my welfare?"

Ruferton smiled. "My dear fellow, perhaps you had better go and ask him.

If Hamilton Burton has turned things topsy-turvy to act as your savior in an eleventh-hour crisis, common sense compels me to infer that he has a reason too interesting to ignore."

Mr. Hendricks paced the path for a few minutes in the disquiet of intense nervousness, then he spoke with sharp accusation and distrust.

"You don't know what this matter is! You have come here by special train to warn me that I face ruin; and you pretend to have no inkling of the nature of my peril! You speak of veiled threats. Are you lying to me, Ruferton?"

"Draw your own conclusions." The time had come for playing the card of offended sensibilities and Mr. Ruferton turned promptly on his heel.

"Stay where you are and--read the newspapers. Burton's instructions were to bring you back, but I don't suppose he expected me to kidnap you in your own behalf. I presume he anticipated your sane realization that he didn't send for you to smoke a cigar with him. He presumed you were interested in avoiding disgrace."

"Don't you understand," demanded Hendricks blankly, "how inconceivable it is that you should come on a mission like this without knowing its exact nature?"

The other nodded. "Burton didn't know that you were out of town. When last night, quite late, he learned of this matter he sent me to find you. There was no time for discussion or explanation."