"With this ring I thee wed----" he couldn't see, but he knew the ring was being placed on the third finger of the left hand--chosen by tradition because a vein of blood was supposed to run direct from that finger to the heart--what a solemn farce!

And now he was saying:

"What God hath joined together--let not man put asunder----"

"'God!' Surely he didn't say 'God,'" Stuart brooded. "Does God, the august, mysterious, awful creator of the universe, work like this? Did not the God of heaven and earth give this woman to him beneath the sunny skies of the South while their souls sang for joy?"

They were moving again down the aisle, the organ throbbing the recessional from Mendelssohn. A wave of emotion swept the crowd inside and they became a mob of vulgar, chattering, gossiping fools swarming over the church as if it were the grandstand of a racecourse, without hesitation tearing down and stealing its decorations for souvenirs.

When Stuart reached the door it was pouring rain. He was glad of it.

The splash of the rain in his face was refreshing and the breath of the storm was good. He walked for an hour facing the wind, not knowing or caring where it might lead.

By a curious law of reaction, all resentment and anger were gone, and only a great pity for Nan began to fill his heart.

CHAPTER X

GROPING

Stuart reached home from his walk thoroughly tired and dropped into a feverish sleep. A strange dream haunted this attempt to rest. He found himself laughing and chatting with Bivens on terms of intimate friendship. All feeling of resentment against him had gone. The little man had grown to be a great figure and he was happy in remembering their boyhood associations. And strangest of all, they had united in a feeling of hatred for Nan. She was the common enemy of both, and not only so, she was the enemy of all men. As she passed through the street, crowds were hissing and insulting her, and as she was entering her home they tried to kill her. A stone struck her beautiful forehead, and the blood was trickling down the white drawn face. He was hurling himself against the mob in a vain effort to reach her side, and while the crowd laughed and mocked, an officer mounted the steps and, instead of driving the mob back, began to strike her furiously with his club.

Stuart waked with a cry--pressed his head and looked about the room, bewildered. The tip of a swinging limb was pounding against his window pane.

He opened the window quickly and broke the twig.

"What a nightmare!" he exclaimed, with a shiver.

For hours its horror haunted his imagination.

He dressed and started to his club for dinner, changed his mind and turned down Broadway for the old Cafe Boulevard on Second Avenue. He stopped again in front of the dingy Bible House at the head of the Bowery and watched the flood of shopgirls and clerks passing across the street from the department stores. What an endless throng! Hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, men and women, girls and boys, hurrying homeward. He had never noticed them before--this mighty host of three hundred thousand women and five hundred thousand men who rush into these swarming hives every morning and stream out again in the gathering dusk of spring and the deepening nights of winter.

For the first time they seemed human beings who might have hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, even as he.

How strange the world began to look through the new eyes of pity a great sorrow had given him. How worn the faces of these children. They must be horribly overworked. What a pitiful, starved life for a child.

He thought of his own childhood, and saw himself with swift bare feet roaming the open fields of the South.

He was struck with the wistful faces of the very young girls--eager and wise beyond their years. What an incongruous thing this mingling of the tense eagerness of young girlhood in the straight open stare of worldly wisdom with which some of them looked at him, and, passing, turned to look again. It made him shiver. They ought to be at school, these children; why were they here, jostling, elbowing, and fighting their way through this crowd? A floor walker passed, holding a pretty girl's arm. His position was unmistakable. No other man strolls through the world with just his step and just his elevation of chin--a chin that will hold its angle in death. Among the hurrying throng that jostled by were men and women with the deep cut lines of sorrow and tragedy in faces that had seen better days, but had somehow lost their way.

Stuart's heart went out to the passing crowd in a throb of sympathy--these slaves of the Modern Invisible Master without a soul--who asked always and without comment for efficiency and economy.

They must make money for him or fall by the wayside, and, if they fell, the master never knew and couldn't care.

He ate his dinner in a whirl of confused emotion and again found himself on Broadway walking at a furious pace uptown. He had no idea how furious the pace until he suddenly noticed that he was an object of mild curiosity. He slackened his speed, conscious at last that big forces were fighting within the first pitched battle for the mastery of life.

Could high ideals survive the white heat of this furnace--the focus of the modern world's fiercest desire to live and to will--the money centre of the earth? Was not the whole structure of Society at last thoroughly materialistic? Was not religion merely a tradition, honour and virtue merely the themes of song and story? Had not self and self-interest at last become the sole force behind all great deeds? It looked that way. Then why should any man be a sentimental fool? Why not grasp the main chance?

Why not turn now and beat Bivens at his own game? There was yet time to accept his offer, join his powerful group of the exploiters of modern industry, crush this little shrimp in the hollow of his fist at last, and take the woman he loved from him by the law of might. Deep within he felt throbbing forces of savage cruelty that in the centuries of the past had given his ancestors the leadership of men before the finer virtues of love and mercy which permitted a Bivens to exist had been born. The big nostrils of his long straight nose dilated, the white hard teeth of his strong jaw snapped, and his eyes flashed.

Why not?

Again and again these fierce questions surged within. The "Great White Way" flashed its splendours of electric light. But there was no warmth in it for his spirit. He noted to-night for the first time that the lights were not hung on high for the joy of those who pass. They were flames in the temple of the new god Mammon. They were the signs of hucksters who had goods to sell to the crowds at a profit. The profusion of light, the rush of eager throngs to the theatres, the flash and clatter of passing carriages, the streets piled with debris, the half-finished steel skyscraper whose black ribs stood out against the stars, all brought to his imagination this evening the impression of exhaustless power.

But what power?

Certainly not the power of love, pity, heroism, and unselfish devotion to ideals. There could be but one answer. These flaming signs in the sky were the signals of the advance skirmish line of a huge host--growing in number and power each hour--the army of Mammon!

He paused before a theatre into which a stream of pleasure seekers were pouring. The ticket speculators were yelling their wares on the sidewalk. The play was a famous musical comedy. He knew to-night why musical comedy had such vogue in the money centres of the world. It had become the supreme expression of the utterly absurd--the reduction of life to the terms of an absurdity expressed in rhythmic and sensuous beauty. For men whose god was money, it would doubtless become ultimately the only form of public entertainment.

He began to negotiate with one of the young Hebrew philanthropists of the pavement for a ticket, but stopped in disgust and moved on. There was something inside that hadn't surrendered. He began to be dimly conscious of the fact that the real fight had scarcely begun. The philanthropist's feelings were hurt by his abrupt departure. He followed for half a block holding to Stuart's coat, protesting his affectionate and earnest desire to promote his pleasure without a cent of profit. He offered to cut the price of a seat to $3.50 and solemnly swore that the unfeeling and unprincipled manager had made him pay $3.00 for the ticket.

Stuart paused a moment, his imagination caught by the ravenous eagerness of the man's face. Here surely was a true worshipper in the modern temple.

The young lawyer smiled and said:

"I salute you, my brother--I'm thinking of joining you soon!"

The speculator suddenly let go his sleeve and hurried back to his place, glancing over his shoulder with a vague fear that the lunatic might follow him.

Stuart hurried on to one of the more dignified and serious theatres just off Broadway. He bought a ticket and entered, wondering if he would find the house empty. To his surprise it was full--orchestra, balcony, and gallery. The play was a serious effort by a brilliant young dramatist of the modern school of realism. In two minutes from the rising of the curtain the play had gripped him with relentless power. Slowly, remorseless as fate, he saw the purpose of the author unfold itself in a series of tense and terrible scenes. The comedy over which the crowd laughed with such contagious merriment was even more sinister than the serious parts. No matter what the situation--whether set to laughter, to terror, or to tears--beneath it all throbbed one insistant question:

"Has the woman who sells herself for money a soul?"

With breathless interest he watched the cruel carving of her body into tiny pieces. Without sniffling, whining, or apology, with arms bared and gleaming scalpel firmly gripped in a hand that never quivered once, the author dissected her. Always he could hear this white invisible figure bending over each scene talking to the audience in his quiet terrible way:

"Well, if be she has a soul, we shall find it. Perhaps it's here!" The knife flashed and the crowd laughed. The result was so unexpected, yet so remarkable they had to laugh.

"We'll try again!" the white figure said with a smile, "Perhaps we should go deeper."

And then with firm strong hand the last secret of muscle and nerve and bone was laid bare and the white face looked into the eyes of the audience through a mist of tears.

"I'm sorry, my friends. But we must face the truth. It's better to know the truth, however bitter, than to believe a lie. I do not dogmatize. I do not draw conclusions. I merely show you the thing that is."

With a soft rush the big curtain came down in a silence that could be felt. The dazed crowd waked from the spell and poured into the aisles, while Stuart still sat gripping the arms of his seat with strangling emotion.

At last he said to himself with choking emphasis:

"He was cruel, inhuman, unjust--I refuse to believe it--she has a soul---- She has a soul!"

And yet a question had been raised in his mind that was destined to change the whole motive and purpose of his life.

CHAPTER XI

ILLUMINATION