o call, no responsibility."

"I love Jim. I always loved him, ever since I can remember, as you did. I
see my way ahead. I will not desert him. No one cares what happens to him,
no one but me. Your love wouldn't stand the test; mine will."

"Your folks have disinherited you--you have almost nothing, and I will not
change my mind. What do you see ahead of you?"

"Jim--only Jim--and God."

Her eyes were shining, her hands were clasped together at her side in the
tenseness of her feeling, her indomitable spirit spoke in her face.

Suddenly the old man brought his fist down on the table with a bang. "It's
a crime--oh, it's a crime, to risk your life so! You ought to have been
locked up. I'd have done it."

"Listen to me," she rejoined, quietly. "I know the risk. But do you think
that I could have lived my life out, feeling that I might have saved Jim
and didn't try? You talk of beauty and power and ruling--you say what
others have said to me. Which is the greater thing, to get what pleases
one, or to work for something which is more to one than all else in the
world? To save one life, one intellect, one great man--oh, he has the
making of a great man in him!--to save a soul, would not life be well
lost, would not love be well spent, in doing it?"

"Love's labor lost," said the old man, slowly, cynically, but not without
emotion.

"I have ambition," she continued. "No girl was ever more ambitious, but my
ambition is to make the most and best of myself. Place?--Jim and I will
hold it yet. Power?--it shall be as it must be; but Jim and I will work
for it to fulfil ourselves. For me--ah, if I can save him--and I mean to
do so!--do you think that I would not then have my heaven on earth? You
want money--money--money, power, and to rule; and these are to you the
best things in the world. I make my choice differently, though I would
have these other things if I could; and I hope I shall. But Jim first--Jim
first, your son, Jim--my husband, Jim!"

The old man got to his feet slowly. She had him at bay. "But you are
great," he said, "great! It is an awful stake--awful! Yet, if you win,
you'll have what money can't buy. And listen to me. We'll make the stake
bigger. It will give it point, too, in another way. If you keep Jim sober
for four years from the day of your marriage, on the last day of that four
years I'll put in your hands for you and him, or for your child--if you
have one--five millions of dollars. I am a man of