"Can't accept? What's this nonsense?" said Drake, stopping short.

"I can't make money off the losings of my friends, whom I have ruined to make your deal succeed."

"That's a hard word!"

"And there's another reason," said Bojo, ignoring his flash of anger. "I was not honest with you. The night I came here I was ruined myself."

"I knew that."

"But you didn't know that I had used the fifty thousand dollars pledged to your pool and that if you had been operating as I thought and wiped out, I should have owed you thirty-five thousand dollars--pledged to you--a debt which would mean dishonor to me."

"I didn't know that. No. How did that happen?" said Drake, sitting down and gazing anxiously at him.

"I lost my head--absolutely--completely. I did just what Forshay and DeLancy did--gambled with money that didn't belong to me. I lived in a nightmare. Mr. Drake, I lost my bearings. Now I'm going to get them back." He paused, drew breath, and continued earnestly: "Now you understand why I don't deserve a cent of that money even if you could swear to me you didn't use me purposely, which you can't! I pretty nearly went over the line, Mr. Drake, and it wasn't my fault I didn't, either. I guess I'm not built right for this sort of life--that's the short of it."

"You are young, very young, Tom," said Drake slowly. "Young people look at things through their emotions. That's what you're doing!"

"Thank G.o.d," said Bojo, and it seemed to him for the first time a feeling of peace returned.

"What do you want to do?" said Drake, frowning and rising.

"I can not return you the two hundred thousand dollars," said Bojo slowly. "I paid one friend thirty-eight thousand to cover his losses, to save him from disgrace and dishonor in the eyes of a woman; another friend refused to accept a cent. I paid to the estate of Forshay every cent of indebtedness he owed the firm--fifty-two odd thousand dollars.

Forshay gambled because he thought I knew. That makes over ninety thousand dollars. The rest--one hundred and fifty-nine thousand--I will return to you."

"Good heavens, Tom, you did that?" said Drake, taking out his handkerchief. He sat down in his chair, overcome. For a long interval no one spoke, and then from the chair a voice came out that sounded not like Drake but something bodiless. "That's awful--awful. From my point of view I have played the game as others, as square as the squarest. I have lost thousands of thousands sticking to a friend, thousands in keeping to my word. This is not business, this is war. Those who go in, who intend to gamble with life, to fight with thousands and millions, must go in to take the consequences. If they ever get me it'll be because some one has turned traitor, not because I've sold out or done anything disreputable. If others were ruined in Pittsburgh & New Orleans, that's because they were willing to make money by smashing up some other person's property. It was their fault, not mine. If a man can't control himself--his fault. If a man goes bankrupt and won't face the world and work back instead of blowing his brains out--his fault.

"You think of the individual--men, friends, death. They move you, they're closer to you than the big perspective. They don't count, no one counts. If a man kills himself, he dies quicker than he would and is not worth living, that's all. Sounds cold-blooded to you. Yes. But we're dealing in movements, armies! Poverty, sorrow, disaster, death, they are life--you can't get away from them. A great bridge is more important than the lives of the men who build it, a great railroad is necessary, not the question whether a few thousand people lose their fortunes, in the operation which makes a great amalgamation possible. That's my point of view. It's not yours. You're set on what you've made up your mind to do. Your emotions have got you. Ten years from now you'll regret it."

"I hope not," said Bojo simply.

"What are you going to do? Well, come in here as my private secretary,"

said Drake, placing his hand on the young man's shoulder, and adding, with that burst of human understanding which gave him a magnetic power over men: "Tom, you're a ---- fool to do what you're doing, but, by heaven, I love you for it!"

"Thank you," said Bojo, controlling his voice with difficulty.

"Will you come here?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Frankly, I want to do something by myself," said Bojo stubbornly. "I don't want some one to take me by the collar and jack me up into success."

"Think it over!"

"No, I'll stick to that. I want to get into a rational life. To live the way I've been living is torture."

Drake hesitated, as though loathe to let him go, seeking some way out.

"Won't you let me make good your losses--at least that?"

"Not after the hole I got into, no."

"d.a.m.n it, Tom, won't you let me do something to help out?"

"No, not a thing." He went up and shook hands. "You don't know what it means to be able to look you in the eyes again, sir. That's everything!"

"And Doris?" said Drake slowly, beaten at every point.

"Doris I am going to see now," he said.

He went to the door hastily to avoid sentimentalities, and on the other side of the curtain, where she had been listening, he found Doris, wide-eyed and thrilled, her finger on her lips.

CHAPTER XIX

A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK

"What, you were there! You heard!" he said, astounded.

She nodded her head, incapable of speech, her finger still on her lips, drawing him by the hand into the little sitting-room where they were in a measure free from other eyes.

"Now for a torrent of reproaches," he thought grimly.

But instead the next moment tears were on her cheeks, her arms about him, and her head on his shoulder. Seeing her thus shaken, he thought bitterly that all this grief was but for the material loss, the blow to her ambitions. All at once she raised her head, took him firmly by the shoulder, and said:

"Bojo, I've never loved you before--but I do now, oh, yes, now I know!"

He shook his head, unable to believe her capable of great emotions.

"Doris, you are carried away--this is not what you'll say to-morrow!"

"Yes, yes, it is!" she cried fervently. "I'll sacrifice anything now--nothing will ever make me give you up!"

"Luckily for you," he said, his look darkening, "you'll have time enough to come to your senses. If you heard all, you know what this means--starting at the beginning."

"I heard-- I understand," she said, close to him, her eyes shining with a light that blotted out the world in confused shadow. He looked at her, thrilled by her feeling, by the thought that it belonged to him, that he was the master of it, and yet unconvinced.

"It's just your imagination," he said quietly, "that's all. Doris, I know you too well--what you've lived with and what you must have." He added, with a doubting smile: "You remember what you said to me that day on our ride, when we pa.s.sed through that factory village--'ask me anything but to be _poor_.'"

"Bojo," she said, desperately, "you don't understand what a woman is.

That was true--then. There's all that you say in me, but there's something else which you've never called out before, which can come when I love, when I really love." She clung to him, fighting for him, feeling how close she had been to losing him. "Bojo, believe in me, give me one more chance!"

"To-morrow you'll come to me with some new scheme for making money!"

"No, no."