ir before the open fire. "Horribly cold, isn't
it?"

She moved uneasily. He slowly lighted a cigar and began to smoke it,
his attitude one of waiting.

"I've been thinking," she began at last--she was looking reflectively
into the fire--"about your great talent for business and finance. You
formed your big combination, and because you understand everything
about wool you employ more men, you pay higher wages, and you make the
goods better than ever, and at less cost."

"Between a third and a half cheaper," he said. "We employ thirty
thousand more men, and since we settled the last strike"--a grim smile
that would have meant a great deal to her had she known the history of
that strike and how hard he had fought before he gave in--"we've paid
thirty per cent. higher wages. Yet the profits are--well, you can
imagine."

"And you've made millions for yourself and for those in with you."

"I haven't developed my ideas for nothing."

She paused again. It was several minutes before she went on:

"When a doctor or a man of science or a philosopher makes a discovery
that'll be a benefit to the world"--she looked at him suddenly,
earnest, appealing--"he gives it freely. And he gets honor and fame.
Why shouldn't you do that, John?" She had forgotten herself in her
subject.

He smiled into the fire--hardly a day passed that he did not have
presented to him some scheme for relieving him of the burden of his
riches; here was another, and from such an unexpected quarter!

"You could be rich, too. We spend twenty, fifty times as much as we
can possibly enjoy; and you have more than we could possibly spend.
Why shouldn't a man with financial genius be like men with other kinds
of genius? Why should he be the only one to stay down on the level
with dull, money-grubbing, sordid kinds of people? Why shouldn't he
have ideals?"

He made no reply. Indeed, so earnest was she that she did not give him
time, but immediately went on:

"Just think, John! Instead of giving out in these charities and
philanthropies--I never did believe in them--they're bound to be more
or less degrading to the people that take, and when it's so hard to
help a friend with money without harming him, how much harder it must
be to help strangers. Instead of those things, why not be really
great? Just think, John, how the world would honor you and how you
would feel, if you used your genius to make the necessaries cheap for
all these fellow-b