now all about it, and I can get back to Mr. Selby
at once. And thank you ever so much, Mr. Baruch!"

"But," protested Mr. Baruch, "it is a little thing--it is nothing.
And it is much pleasure to me to do this for you and the poor man.
Tonight he will have it, and tomorrow perhaps he will be better."

They went down the stairs together and bade each other a friendly
good night in the gateway.

"And I'm ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Baruch," said Miss Pilgrim
again, her pale face shining in the dusk.

Mr. Baruch put a fatherly hand on her sleeve.

"Hush! You must not say it," he said. "It is I that am happy."

Half an hour later, he found what he sought in a large furniture
store on the Pushkinskaia, an imitation Persian rug, manufactured at
Frankfurt, and priced seventeen rubles. With a little bargaining the
salesman was no match for Mr. Baruch, at that he got it for fifteen
and a half. He himself directed the packing of it, to see that no
store-label was included in the parcel; and a quarter of an hour
later he delivered it by cab to the dvornik at the hospital gate for
Doctor Semianoff. Then he drove homeward; he could not spare the time
to walk while the bundle he held in his arms was yet unopened nor its
treasure housed in his home.

His stratagem was perfect. Even if the Armenian were to make an
outcry, who would lend him an ear?

It would appear it could easily be made to appear that he was
endeavoring to extort money from Miss Pilgrim upon a flimsy pretext
that a worthless rug had been substituted for a valuable one, and the
police would know how to deal with him. Mr. Baruch put the matter
behind him contentedly.

The majestic woman in his home watched him impassively as he unpacked
his parcel and spread the rug loosely across a couple of chairs in
the salon. In actual words he said only: "This is the carpet, Adina,
for your bed. Look at it well!" She looked obediently, glancing from
it to his face, her own still with its unchanging calm, and wondered
dully in her sex-specialized brain at the light of rapture in his
countenance. He pored upon it, devouring its rareness of beauty, the
sum and the detail of its perfection, with a joy as pure, an
appreciation as generous, as if he had not stolen it from under the
hands of a sick pauper and a Good Samaritan.

That night he stood at the door of his wife's room. "Blessings upon
you!" he said, and smiled at her in acknowledgment of the blessings
she retur