"I want to take it off," whispered Dosia intensely. "I hate him, I hate him! I never want to see him again. I can't see him again! I threw the ring out in the hall somewhere. You'll have to find it-- I couldn't have it in the room with me! Lois, you must tell him I can't see him again; promise me that I'll never see him again-promise, _promise_!"

She clung to Lois as if her life depended on that protection.

"Yes, yes, dear, I promise," said Lois with a sudden warmth of sympathy such as she had never before felt for the girl. This situation, this feeling, she could comprehend-it might have been her own in similar case. She had known girls before who had been engaged for but a day or a week, and then revolted; it was not so new a circ.u.mstance as the world fancies.

She drew the towel now from Dosia's relaxed fingers, and held her closer as she said:

"There, be quiet, Dosia, and don't make yourself ill. I don't see what that poor man is going to do-of course he'll feel dreadfully; but you can't help that now-it's a great deal better than finding out the mistake later. I'll tell him not to come again, I promise you. Of course, I'll have to speak to Justin; I don't know what he will say!"

Lois broke into a rueful smile. "Dosia, Dosia! What sc.r.a.pe will you get into next?"

"Isn't it dreadful!" gasped poor Dosia. She sat up straight and looked at Lois with tragic eyes.

"Now two men have kissed me. I can never get over that in this world. I can never be nice again-no one can ever think I'm nice again! No one can ever-_love_ me in this world!" She buried her hot face in Lois'

bosom, sobbing tearlessly against that new shelter, in spite of the other's incoherent words of comfort so unalterably, so inherently a woman made to be loved that the loss of the dream of it was like the loss of existence. After a moment Dosia went on brokenly:

"It seems so strange-things begin-and you think they are going to turn out to be something you want very much, and then all of a sudden they end-and there is nothing more. Everything is all beginning-and then it ends-there is nothing more. And now I can never be really nice again!"

"Nonsense! You'll feel very differently about it all after a while,"

said Lois sensibly.

"I don't want to go down-stairs again." Dosia began to shake violently.

"If he were to come back--"

"Well, stay up here. Zaidee shall bring you your dinner," said Lois humoringly. "I must go down now; I hear Justin. Only, you'll have to promise me to be quiet, Dosia, and not begin going wild again the moment I'm out of the room."

"No, I'll be good," murmured Dosia submissively. "Oh, Lois, you're so kind to me! I love you so much!"

Her head ached so hard that it was easy to be quiet now. She could not eat the meal which Zaidee, a.s.sisted to the door by the maid, brought in to her. It seemed, oddly enough, like a reversion back to that first night of her arrival-oh, so long ago!-after tempest and disaster. Yet then the white, enhancing light of the future had shone down through everything, and now there was no future, only a murky past, and she a poor girl who had dropped so far out of the way of happiness that she could never get back to it, never be nice again. That hand that had once held hers so firmly, so steadily, that she could sleep secure with just the comfort of its remembered touch-the thought of it had become only pain, like everything else. Oh, back of all this shaming hurt with Lawson and George Sutton was another shame, that went deeper and deeper still. Since that visit of Bailey Girard's, she had known that he had thought of her as she had thought of him, with a knowledge that could not be controverted. It is astonishing that we, who feel ourselves to be so dependent on speech as a means of communication, have our intensest, our most revealing moments without it. He had thought of her as she had of him, and, with the thought of her in his heart, had been content easily that it should be no more.

Oh, if this stranger had been indeed the hero of her dreams,-lover, protector, dearest friend,-to have sought her mightily with the privilege and the prerogative of a man, so that she might have had no experience to live through but that white experience with him!

"Dosia! Open the door quickly."

It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note in it. She stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she turned on as she held out a telegram-for the second time the transmitter of bad news from the South. The message read: "Your father is ill. Come at once."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There are times and seasons which seem to be full of happenings, followed by long stretches that have only the character of transition from the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and months fly by us; we do not realize that they are here before they are gone, there is so little to mark any day from its fellow. Yet we lay too much stress on the power of separate and peculiar events to shape the current of our lives, and do not take into account that drama which never ceases to be acted, which knows no pause nor interim, and which takes place within ourselves.

It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North again, after extending months, in no day of which had her stay seemed anything but temporary-a condition to be ended next week or the week after at farthest. Her father's illness turned out to be a lingering one, taking every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter; and after his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while, with only Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, trying to earn money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to some of the temporary tribe at the hotel-an existence in which self was submerged in loving care for those who clung to her, and to cling to Dosia was always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the day, and too much of a luxury to have any of its precious moments wasted in wakeful dreaming; besides, there was nothing to dream about any more. But when she crept into her low bed she turned away from the moonlight, because there are times, when one is young, when moonlight is very hard to bear.

The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come to the end of its resources, when Mrs. Linden's brother in San Francisco offered her and her children a home with him-an offer which, naturally, did not include Dosia. She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she had worked so hard for them, they were not to belong to her for her very own. The aunt whose generosity had given her the money for her musical education had also died, leaving a small sum in trust for the girl; it was that which furnished her with means when she went once more to stay at the Alexanders'. Justin himself had written to see if she could come.

There was another baby now, a couple of months old, and Lois needed her.

No fairy-story maiden this, going out to seek her fortune, who took an uneventful train journey this time-only a very tired girl, worn with work and worn with the sorrow of parting, yet thankful to lean her head against the back of the car-seat and feel the burden of anxiety and care slip from her for a little while.

Hard work alone is not enn.o.bling, but drudgery for those whom we love may have its uplifting trend. Dosia was pale and thin, the blue veins on her temples showed more plainly, her face was no longer the typical white page, unwritten upon; that first freshness of youth and inexperience had gone. Dosia had lived. Young as she was, she had tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; she had known suffering, she had faced shame and disappointment and-truth; yes, through everything she had faced that-taken herself to account, probed, condemned, renounced. What she had lost in youthfulness she had gained in character. She had an innocent n.o.bility of expression that came from a light within, as of one ready to answer unwaveringly wherever she might be called. Yet something in her soft eyes at times trembled into being, indescribably gentle, intolerably sweet-the soul of that Dosia who was made to be loved.

If she had changed since that first journeying a year and a half ago, so had the conditions changed in the household to which she went. Justin had had the not unusual experience of the business man who has achieved what he has set out to achieve without the expected result; in the silting-pan which holds success some of the gold mysteriously drops through. The Typometer Company was doing a very large business, quadrupled since the day of its inception. The building was hardly big enough now to hold the offices and manufacturing plant; the force had been greatly increased, and an additional floor for storage had been hired next door. The typometer had absorbed the output of two small rival companies, one out West and one in a neighboring town-both glad, in view of a losing game, to make terms with the successful arbiter.

Where one person used a typometer three years ago, it was in request by fifty people now, for many things-for many more, indeed, than had been thought of at first; every week plans in special adjustments were made to fit the machine for different purposes. It was undoubtedly not only a success in itself, but was destined to fit into more and more of the needs of the working world as a standard product.

Orders came in from all parts of the globe. Justin, as he hurried over to his office or held important consultations with the men who wanted to see him, was awarded the respect given to the head of a large and successful concern. He was marked as a rising man. Yet, in spite of all this real accomplishment of the Typometer Company, the net profits had always fallen short of the mark set for them; the company was in constant and growing need of money.

Prices of everything to do with manufacturing had increased-prices of copper and steel, of machinery, of wages, in addition to the larger number of hands employed, and the rent of the additional floor. It was always necessary for one's peace of mind to go back to the value of the material stock and the a.s.sets to be counted on in the future. The steady branching out of the business in every direction was proof of the fact that if it did not it must retrench; and to retrench meant fewer orders, fewer opportunities-financial suicide.

It was the powerful shibboleth of the world of trade that one must be seen to be doing business; only so could the doors of credit be opened.

If Cater came in with him now, as seemed at last to be expected, the doors must open farther. No matter how one tries to see all around the consequences of any change, any undertaking, there always arise minor consequences which from their very nature must be unforeseen, and yet which may turn out to be the really powerful factors in the main issue; unimportant genii that, let out of their bottles, swell immeasurably.

The consequences of the fire, small as it was, seemed never-ending. The defective bars had proved a disastrous supply for the machine, in more ways than one.

Left by the Leverich-Martin combination to work his own retrieval, he had borrowed the ten thousand from Lewiston, and had used part of the money to pay the interest to the others; and later, in the flush of reinstatement, he had borrowed another ten thousand from Leverich, a loan to be called by him at any time. Lewiston's loan had seemed easy of repayment at six months, Justin knew when the money was coming in, but he had been obliged, after all, to antic.i.p.ate, and get his bills discounted before they came due for other purposes, often paying huge tribute for the service. Lewiston had renewed the note for sixty days, and then for sixty more, but with the proviso that this was the last extension.

In short, the whole process of competently keeping afloat had been gone through, with a definite aim of accomplishment; Cater's cooperation, about which he had been so slow, would infuse new blood into the business. It was maddening at times to have so many good uses for money and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. Justin had approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him cautiously negative where once he had seemed friendlily suggesting.

Such a process, to be successful, depends on the power of the man behind it, which must not only comprehend and direct the larger issues, but must be able to carry along smoothly all the easily entangling threads of detail; he must not only have a capable brain, but he must have the untiring nervous energy that can "hold out" through any crisis. Such men may go to pieces after incredible effort, but they are on the way to success first. Danger only quickens the sure leap to safety.

Justin, preeminently clear-headed, had been conscious lately of two phases-one an almost preternatural illumination of intellect, and the other a sort of brain-inertia, more soul- and body-fatiguing than any pain. There were seasons when he was obliged to think when he could instead of when he would. He looked grave, alert, competent, but underneath this demeanor there went an unceasing effort of computation and reckoning to which the computation and reckoning on the first night of his agreement with Leverich was as a child's play with toy bricks is to the building of an edifice of stone.

The large responsibilities now incurred clashed grotesquely with the daily need of money at home for petty uses; a condition of affairs which often happens at the birth of a child, when the household is at loose ends, and the expenses are necessarily greater in every direction at the time when it seems most imperative to limit them. Justin seemed never to have enough "change" in his pockets, no matter how much he brought home.

In some men the business faculties become more and more self-sufficing when there is no other pa.s.sion to divide them-the nature grows all one way; and there are others who seem independent, yet who are always as dependent as children on the unnoticed, sustaining help of affection, the love that makes the home a refuge from the provoking of all men-that unreasonably, and at all times, hotly champions the cause of the beloved against the world. No help-giving virtue had gone out from this household in the last year; it had all been a dead lift.

Justin had never spoken of his affairs to Lois since that Sunday when she had said that she hated them. When she had asked for money, she had always added the proviso, "if he could afford it," and accepted the fact either way without comment. He was, as time went on, more and more affectionately solicitous for her welfare, even if he was, as she keenly felt, less personally loving.

If she went to bed early in the evening, he took that opportunity to go out; and if she stayed up, he remained at home and went to sleep on the lounge; and the little touch that binds divergence with the inner thread of sympathy was lacking.

Yet, strange as it might seem, while she consciously suffered far the most, his loss was mysteriously the greater; the fire of love of which she was by right high priestess still burned secretly for her tending as she cowered over the embers on the hearthstone, though he was cold and chill for lack of that vital warmth.

There were moments when she felt that she could die gladly for him, but always for that glory of self-triumphing in the end. Then that which seemed as if it could never change began to change.

Before the child was born, and now since that, there was a difference.

Men and women who suffer most from imaginary wrongs may become sane and heroic in times of real danger. Lois, n.o.ble, sweet, and brave, thoughtful for Zaidee and Hedge and Justin even while she trembled, excited reverence and a deep and anxious tenderness in her husband.

Then, afterwards, he was proud of his second son. When Justin came in at the end of each day and sat down by his wife's bedside, holding her blue-veined hand while she smiled peacefully at him, there was a sweet, sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though the interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact that one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth of the child had been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a separate and distinct calamitous illness to which she looked forward as one might look forward to being taken with typhoid or diphtheria, he considered it as a manifestation of nature, not in itself dangerous, and her fear that of a child, to be soothed by reason.

Still, he had had his moments of a reluctant, twinging fear. One cause for disquieting thought was removed. Now the helplessness of this little family, for whom he was the provider, tugged at a swelling heart.

As he walked toward his office to-day somewhat later than was his wont, he diverged from his usual custom-instead of entering his own doorway, he went across the street to Cater's after a moment's hesitation. Now that Cater's cooperation was at the consummating point, it was wiser not to run the risk of its sagging back. Leverich and Martin were keenly for its success, Justin's credit would rise immeasurably with it. The Typometer Company had absorbed the minor machines with so little trouble that the unabsorbability of the timoscript had seemed an unnecessary stumbling block. Time and time again Justin had sought Cater with tabulated figures and unanswerable arguments. The combination, he firmly believed, would be highly beneficial for both-the field was, in its way, too narrow to be divided with the highest profit; together they could command the trade.

Cater was opposed to all combinations as trusts,-a word against which he was principled, with obstinate refusal to differentiate as to kind, quality, or intent. Like many men who are given to a far-seeing philosophy in speech, he was narrow-mindedly cautious when it came to action, apt to be suspicious in the wrong place, and requiring to be continually rea.s.sured about conditions which seemed the very a-b-c of commerce. The rivalry between the two firms had been apparently good-natured, yet a little of the sharp edge of compet.i.tion had shown signs of cutting through the bond.

The typometer had put its prices down, and the timoscript had cut under; then the typometer had gone as low as was wise, and the timoscript had begun to weaken in its defenses.

Cater was already at work at a big desk as Justin entered, but rose to shake hands. There was a look of melancholy in his eyes, in spite of his smile of greeting.

"Anything wrong with you?" asked Justin, instinctively noticing the look rather than the smile.