lean, who
have trained their minds by years of hard work, who don't try to tear
down and bring things to a smash, but are always building, building! You
talk about this upper class. But they're my people, aren't they, that's
where I was born. And I'm going on with them. I believe they're right
and I know they're strong--I mean strong enough to handle all this--make
it better."

"They'll make it worse," Joe answered. And then as he turned to me once
more he added very bitterly, "You'll see strength enough in the people
some day."

A few moments later he left me.

I looked at my watch and found it was not yet nine o'clock. I went to
Eleanore Dillon. And within an hour Joe and his world of crowds and
confusion were swept utterly out of my mind.

CHAPTER XVII

I had often told Eleanore of Joe. She had asked me about him many times.
"It's queer," she had said, "what a hold he must have had on you. I feel
sure he's just the kind of a person I wouldn't like and who wouldn't
like me. I don't think he's really your kind either, and yet he has a
hold on you still. Yes, he has, I can feel he has."

And to-night when I told her that I had been with him,

"What did he want of you?" she asked.

"He wants me to drop everything," I answered. And I tried to give her
some idea of what he had said.

But as I talked, the thought came suddenly into my mind that here at
last was the very time to settle my life one way or the other, to ask
her if she would be my wife. I grew excited and confused, my voice
sounding unnatural to my ears. And as I talked on about Joe, my heart
pounding, I could barely keep the thoughts in line.

"And I don't want what he wants," I ended desperately. "That nor
anything like it. I want just what I've been getting--just this kind of
work and life. And I want _you_--for life, I mean--if you can ever feel
like that."

Eleanore said nothing. In an instant the world and everything in it had
narrowed to the two of us. The intensity was unbearable. I rose abruptly
and turned away. I felt suddenly far out of my depth. Confusedly and
furiously I felt that I had bungled things, that here was something in
life so strange I could do nothing with it. What a young fool I was to
have thought she could ever care for a fellow like me! I felt she must
be smiling. Despairingly I turned to see.

And Eleanore was smiling--in a way that steadied me in a flash. For her
smile was so plainly a quick, strong effort