, of the breakfast or supper table was one
man. The other, who and what was he? Down there in the murk and grime
of the business district raged the Battle of the Street, and therein he
was a being transformed, case hardened, supremely selfish, asking no
quarter; no, nor giving any. Fouled with the clutchings and grapplings
of the attack, besmirched with the elbowing of low associates and
obscure allies, he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the
marchings of an army that surged forever forward and back; now in
merciless assault, beating the fallen enemy under foot, now in repulse,
equally merciless, trampling down the auxiliaries of the day before, in
a panic dash for safety; always cruel, always selfish, always pitiless.

To contrast these men with such as Corthell was inevitable. She
remembered him, to whom the business district was an unexplored
country, who kept himself far from the fighting, his hands unstained,
his feet unsullied. He passed his life gently, in the calm, still
atmosphere of art, in the cult of the beautiful, unperturbed, tranquil;
painting, reading, or, piece by piece, developing his beautiful stained
glass. Him women could know, with him they could sympathise. And he
could enter fully into their lives and help and stimulate them. Of the
two existences which did she prefer, that of the business man, or that
of the artist?

Then suddenly Laura surprised herself. After all, she was a daughter of
the frontier, and the blood of those who had wrestled with a new world
flowed in her body. Yes, Corthell's was a beautiful life; the charm of
dim painted windows, the attraction of darkened studios with their
harmonies of color, their orientalisms, and their arabesques was
strong. No doubt it all had its place. It fascinated her at times, in
spite of herself. To relax the mind, to indulge the senses, to live in
an environment of pervading beauty was delightful. But the men to whom
the woman in her turned were not those of the studio. Terrible as the
Battle of the Street was, it was yet battle. Only the strong and the
brave might dare it, and the figure that held her imagination and her
sympathy was not the artist, soft of hand and of speech, elaborating
graces of sound and color and form, refined, sensitive, and
temperamental; but the fighter, unknown and un-knowable to women as he
was; hard, rigorous, panoplied in the harness of the warrior, who
strove among the trumpets, and who, in the brunt of