"No, father," she answered simply, and continued, "What can I do with
all that money?"

"Marry some man who's got sense enough to double it, and double it,"
cried Barclay, harshly. "Then there'll be no question but that you'll
be the richest people in the world."

"And then what?" asked the girl.

"Then--then," he cried, "make the people in this world stand
around--that's what."

"But, father," she said as she put her hand on his arm, "what if I
don't want them to stand around? Why should I have to bother about
it?"

"Oh," he groaned, "your grandmother has been filling you full of
nonsense." He did not speak for a time, and at length she rose to go
to bed. "Jeanette," he cried so suddenly that it startled her, "are
you still moping after Neal Ward? Do you love him? Do you want me to
go and get him for you?"

The girl stood by her father's chair a moment and then answered
colourlessly: "No, father, I don't want you to get him for me. I am
not moping for him, as you call it."

Her desolate tone reached some chord in his very heart, for he caught
her hand, and put it to his cheek and said softly, "But she loves
him--my poor little girl loves him?"

She tried to pull away her hand and replied, in the same dead voice:
"Oh, well--that doesn't matter much, I suppose. It's all over--so
far as I am concerned." She turned to leave him, and he cried:--

"My dear, my dear--why don't you go to him?"

She stopped a moment and looked at her father, and even in the
starlight she could see his hard mouth and his ruthless jaw. Then she
cried out, "Oh, father, I can't--I can't--" After a moment she
turned and looked at him, and asked, "Would you? Would you?" and
walked into the house without waiting for an answer.

The father sat crumpled up in his chair, listening to the flames
crackling in his heart. The old negation was fighting for its own, and
he was weary and broken and sick as with a palsy of the soul. For
everything in him trembled. There was no solid ground under him. He
had visited his material kingdom in the City, and had seen its strong
fortresses and had tried all of its locks and doors, and found them
firm and fast. But they did not satisfy his soul; something within him
kept mocking them; refusing to be awed by their power, and the eternal
"yes" rushed through his reason like a great wind.

As he sat there, suddenly, as from some power outside, John Barclay
felt a creaking of his resisting timbers, and he