"I wish I could blot out the memory of the pain."

"Well, I'm glad you can't. Life has become to me a thing so wonderful, so mysterious, so beautiful--just life within itself--I'd live it all over again if I could."

"Every moment of it?"

"Every moment with every light and shadow. It's glorious to live!"

A solemn English butler entered and announced dinner.

Seated by Nan's side alone in the great dining room, while servants in gorgeous liveries hurried with soft light footfall to do her slightest bidding, Stuart could scarcely shake off the impression that he was dreaming. Such pictures he had weaved in his fancy the first wonderful days of their conscious love-life. But it seemed centuries ago now.

They had both died and come to life again in a new mysterious world, a world in which he was yet a stranger and Nan at home. The splendours of the stately room pleased his poetic fancy and in spite of his hostile effort he had to confess in his heart that Nan's magnificent figure gave the scene just the touch of queenly dignity which made it perfect.

He tried again and again to recall the girl he had known in the old days, but the vision faded before the dazzling light of the present.

He looked at Nan cautiously and began to study her every word and movement and weigh each accent. Did she mean what her words and tones implied? In a hundred little ways more eloquent than speech she had said to him to-night that the old love of the morning of life was still the one living thing. Did she mean it or had she merely planned another triumph for her vanity in his second conquest, knowing that his high sense of honour would hold him silent and yet her slave. With a lawyer's cunning he put her to little tests to try the genuineness of her feeling. He threw off his restraint and led her back to the scenes of their youth. With a frankness that delighted her he told of his own struggles of the past nine years and watched with patient furtive care for every tone of feeling she might betray. When dinner ended, she was leaning close, her eyes misty with tears, and a far-away look in them that told of memories more vivid and alluring than all the splendours of her palace.

Stuart drew a breath of conscious triumph and his figure suddenly grew tense with a desperate resolution. But only for a moment.

He frowned, looked at his watch and rose abruptly.

"I must be going, Nan," he said with sudden coldness.

"Why, Jim," she protested. "It's only ten o'clock. I won't hear of such a thing."

"Yes, I must," he persisted. "I've an important case to-morrow. I must work to-night."

"You shall not go!" Nan cried. "I've waited nine years for this one evening's chat with you. Cal has told me of his offer. It's the most generous thing he ever did in his life. I know the kind of fight going on in your heart. Come into the music room, sit down and brood as long as you like. I've planned to charm you with an old accomplishment of mine to-night."

She led him to a rich couch, piled the pillows high, made him snug, drew a harp near the other end, and began to tune its strings.

Stuart gazed at the mural paintings in the ceiling and in a moment was lost in visions of the future his excited fancy began to weave.

Nan's fingers touched the strings in the first soft notes of an old melody. He woke with a start and looked at her. What a picture she made, with her full lips parted in a warm smile, her magnificent bare arms moving in rhythmic unison with the music! In just that pose he had seen her a hundred times in the days when he called her his own. And now that he had lost--her beauty had just reached the full splendour of perfection.

He closed his eyes to shut out the picture and again the fight began for the mastery of life.

A voice whispered:

"Unless you are a coward, grasp the power that is yours by divine right of nature. Why should you walk while pigmies ride? Why should you lag behind the age in this fierce struggle for supremacy? The woman who sits before you is yours if you only dare to tear her from the man who holds her by the fiction of dying customs!"

He felt his heart throb as another voice within cried:

"Yet why should I, an heir to immortality, whose will can shape a world, why should I live a beast of prey with my hand against every man?"

The answer was the memory of dirty finger nails closing on his throat while a mob of howling fools surged over his body and cursed him for trying to save them from themselves. Again he heard a woman's voice as she held his head close, whispering:

"I've something to say to you, Jim!"

His lips tightened with sudden decision. The golden gates of the forbidden land swung open and his soul entered.

CHAPTER XIV

AN AFTERMATH

The day following Bivens's offer to Stuart was made memorable by a sinister event in Union Square.

A mass meeting of the unemployed had been called to protest against their wrongs and particularly to denounce the men who had advanced the price of bread by creating a corner in wheat.

On his way down town Stuart read with astonishment that Dr. Woodman would preside over this gathering. He determined to go. As he hurried through the routine work of his office, giving his orders for the day, he received a telephone call from Nan, asking him to accompany her to this meeting.

"I don't think you ought to go," he answered emphatically.

"Why?"

"Well, there might be a riot for one thing."

"I'm not afraid."

"And you might hear some very plain talk about your husband."

"That's exactly why I wish to go!"

"I don't think it wise," Stuart protested.

"I'm going, anyhow. Won't you accompany me?"

"If you will go--yes."

"That's a good boy. I'll send one of my cars to the office for you immediately."

An hour later when Stuart, seated by Nan's side, reached Union Square, the automobile was stopped by the police and turned into Seventeenth Street.

Every inch of space in the Square seemed blocked by a solid mass of motionless humanity. Stuart left the car in Seventeenth Street and succeeded finally in forcing a way through the crowd to a position within a hundred feet of the rude platform that had been erected for the orators. The scene about the stand bristled with policemen, most of them apparently picked men, their new uniforms glittering in the sun and their polished clubs flashing defiance as they twirled them in the faces of the people with deliberate provocation.

Besides the special detail of picked men who moved about the stand, occasionally clubbing an inoffensive man, a battalion of three hundred reserves was drawn up in serried lines about a hundred yards to the north on the edge of Fourth Avenue. Between these reserves and the crowd about the stand an open space was kept clear for their possible assault in case of any disturbance.

Near these reserves stood the big red automobile of Hamberger, the police captain of the District. He was reputed to be a millionaire, though his salary had never been more than enough to support his wife and children. The sight of his fat insolent face as the representative of Law and Order gave Stuart the impression of farce so irresistibly that he laughed. Surely some of Bivens's sinister philosophy to which he had listened yesterday had a pretty solid basis in the facts of our everyday life.

When the speaking began Stuart pressed his way as close as possible, drawing Nan with him.

He was astonished at the genuine eloquence and power with which the first speaker, evidently of anarchistic leanings, developed his theme, a passionate plea for freedom and the highest development of the individual man. He sketched the growth of the American Republic from its crude beginning in the unbroken forests, and showed with clear historic grasp how all the thinking and creative deeds which had added anything to the sum of human progress belonged to this period of anarchistic liberties. He traced the growth of tyranny in the development of our system of laws until to-day we were less free than the people of England, who lived under the hereditary king against whom our fathers had rebelled. A tyranny of corrupt and ignorant politicians he denounced as the lowest and vilest yet evolved in history.

His concluding sentences roused his crowd to a pitch of wild enthusiasm.

"In the Old World, from which your fathers and mothers fled in search of freedom, men enslaved their fellow-men by becoming lords, dukes or kings, murdering or poisoning their way to a castle or a throne. The methods of your modern masters are more subtle and successful. You vote to make them your masters, and still imagine that you are free.