ternoon.
Brauner was still grumbling. Mr. Feuerstein could not possibly be
adjusted in his mind to his beloved ideals, his religion of
life--"Arbeit und Liebe und Heim." Still he was yielding and Hilda saw
the signs of it. She knew he was practically won over and was secretly
inclined to be proud that his daughter had made this exalted conquest.
All men regard that which they do not know either with extravagant awe
or with extravagant contempt. While Brauner had the universal human
failing for attaching too much importance to the department of human
knowledge in which he was thoroughly at home, he had the American
admiration for learning, for literature, and instead of spelling them
with a very small "l," as "practical" men sometimes do with age and
increasing vanity, he spelled them with huge capitals, erecting them
into a position out of all proportion to their relative importance in
the life of the human animal.

Mr. Feuerstein had just enough knowledge to enable him to play upon
this weakness, this universal human susceptibility to the poison of
pretense. All doubt of success fled his mind, and he was free to
indulge his vanity and his contempt for these simple, unpretending
people. "So vulgar!" he said to himself, as he left their house that
night--he who knew how to do nothing of use or value. "It is a great
condescension for me. Working people--ugh!"

As he strolled up town he was spending in fancy the income from at
least two, perhaps all three, flat-houses--"The shop's enough for the
old people and that dumb ass of a brother. I'll elevate the family.
Yes, I think I'll run away with Hilda to-morrow--that's the safest
plan."

Otto had guessed close to the truth about Feuerstein's affairs. They
were in a desperate tangle. He had been discharged from the stock
company on Saturday night. He was worthless as an actor, and had the
hostility of the management and of his associates. His landlady had got
the news promptly from a boarder who paid in part by acting as a sort
of mercantile agency for her in watching her very uncertain boarders.
She had given him a week's notice, and had so arranged matters that if
he fled he could not take his meager baggage. He was down to
eighty-five cents of a borrowed dollar. He owed money everywhere in
sums ranging from five dollars to twenty-five cents. The most of
these debts were in the form of half-dollar borrowings. He had begun
his New York career with loans o