assionate, hot hearts
beating behind the silken armor of womanhood.

For who had noticed the dependent, the poor, plodding college boy?

Worthington's Detroit home was a mere social machine-shop, a place
of vanished glories during the adolescence of Miss Alice, and no
Diana had stooped to kiss the forgotten young Endymion sleeping
in the Lethe of a New York business obscurity. Clayton's life had
been gilded by few joys.

His whole nature rose up in a sudden rebellion against this "personally
conducted" career in life. "I am to be a mere hoodwinked worker
in this millionaire's treadmill. A bond slave to one of the great
Trusts which are chaining the whole American population to the
galley-oar for life.

"I must be fairly paid, decently dressed, sufficiently fed, to play
my part as a decent workman; that is all. We will see!"

He had now crushed out all lingering remnant of a friendly feeling
for Ferris.

Even the last social invitation rankled in his mind. "I suppose
that he wanted to pump me, at ease, under the guise of a homelike
hospitality. If there is any little game being played around me,
I will now take a hand in it."

As he moved to the door, the memory of that bewitching woman's
face rose up once more to thrill the very core of his lonely heart.
"She looked lonely. Perhaps she is, like myself, a solitary sail on
Life's lonely ocean. And I shall never see her again! Lost in New
York's human flood. But I'll buy that picture, if I live till Monday.
It will call her back to me; bring back her vanished loveliness."

A motley crowd was pouring into the various doors of the huge
hostelry, for the evening trains were depositing the flotsam and
jetsam of humanity into busy Gotham.

Prosperous tourists, crafty schemers, brazen politicians, overdressed
drummers, and flashy sporting men were pouring in to seek the "first
aid to the weary," which the nearest available hotel affords to
the cramped and jaded traveler.

Even the sidewalks were now thronged with anxious-eyed women, some
of them with wildly-beating hearts, awaiting the kind "gentleman
friend" who so often mysteriously appears at the cross-roads of
Life.

From the Forty-second Street Station the "new departure" of many
a life has begun, the radial lines often curving downward into the
sheer depths of ruin of the Morgue, or the darkened abysses of the
Tenderloin.

Alas! That no angel with a flaming sword stands ready to warn away
the