hair had almost touched his cheek; her startled
drawing back at Bauer's solemn remark about the eggs having to be good
before they could hatch; her frank but entirely innocent questioning of
him about his home life, and how she unknowingly hurt him; her swift
realisation of something wrong and her tactful change of conversation;
and then her remark about the power of money when she had asked Bauer
about the possibility of his becoming rich. The girl's enthusiasm, her
perfect physical animal health, her smile, her unquestioned interest in
his work, her ingenuous and pure joy in life,--all affected poor Bauer
so deeply that he felt as if he were walking through an apple orchard in
full bloom, his feet pressing through fragrant red clover, and the apple
blossom petals floating down gently, caressing his face and hands, the
sky a robin egg blue and the air elixir of heaven--and then, he was
suddenly recalled to the plain, dusty, weed-bordered road he was
actually travelling, he, Felix Bauer, German, poor, homely, with a
dishonoured family history, with no prospects worth considering and no
future worth dreaming over. And the road became very dusty, and the
weeds very coarse, and the sky very grey and the air very heavy for
Bauer, as Helen went out of the library and left him there staring
intently at the place where she had been and recalling what she had said
about money.

After all, money was the great power of the world. It could buy
anything, even a wife, even in these modern times. But could it buy
love? Had it ever bought so divine a thing as that since the foundation
of the world?

Bauer's question did not go much farther. Somehow he shrank from trying
to answer it. But he brooded over the utter hopelessness of his thought
of Helen as he stood, penniless and obscure, and dishonoured, as he
believed, through the sin of his parents. And as his patent grew under
his hands and the possibility of his really making money from it became
more possible, he found himself growing possessed with the "auri fames"
and nourishing it as if it were the one indispensable factor in his
final possession of the one being in the whole world worth living for.
He believed he could never win such a life without money. There might be
some hope for him or any man with it.

The letter which he was about to open bore the Washington postmark and
he took for granted it was from someone interested in the purchase of
his patent rights. He opened