; why there is so much failure, so much anxiety,
fear, loss, and unhappiness in the business world. Mr. Ames, you
haven't the slightest conception of real business, have you?"

She sat for a moment in thought. Then, brightly, "I am in business,
Mr. Ames--?"

"Humph! I am forced to agree with you there! The business of
attempting to annihilate me!"

"I am in the business of reflecting good to you, and to all mankind,"
she gently corrected.

"Then suppose you manifest your love for me by refraining from
meddling further in my affairs. Suppose from now on you let me
alone."

"Why--I am not meddling with you, Mr. Ames!"

"No?" He opened a drawer of the desk and took out several copies of
the Express. "I am to consider that this is not strictly meddling,
eh?" he continued, as he laid the papers before her.

"No, not at all," she promptly replied. "That's uncovering evil, so's
it can be destroyed. All that evil, calling itself you and your
business, has got to come to the surface--has got to come up to the
light, so that it can be--"

"Ah! I see. Then I, the monster, must be exposed, eh? And afterward
destroyed. A very pretty little idea! And the mines and mills which I
own--"

"You own nothing, Mr. Ames, except by consent of the people whom you
oppress. They will wake up some day; and then state and national
ownership of public utilities will come, forced by such as you."

"And that desideratum will result in making everybody honest, I
suppose?"

"No," she answered gravely. "We must go deeper than that. All our
present troubles, whether domestic, business, civic, or social, come
from a total misapprehension of the nature of God--a misunderstanding
of what is really _good_. We have _all_ got to prove Him. And we are
very foolish to lose any more time setting about it, don't you think
so?

"You see," she went on, while he sat studying her, "those poor people
down at Avon don't know any more about what is the real good than you
do. And that's why their thoughts and yours center upon the false
pleasures of this ephemeral existence called life--this existence of
the so-called physical senses--and why you both become the tools of
vice, disease, and misfortune. They build up such men as you, and then
you turn about and crush them. And in the end you are both what the
Bible says--poor, deluded fools."

"Well, I'll be--"

"Oh, don't swear!" she pleaded, again seizing his hand and laughing up
into his face. But th