ave
been a fight without it. She had determined that he should see his enemy
and meet him in the plains and face him down; and he was never many feet
away from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years all had
gone well. There was another year. Would he last out the course?

At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in terms
of currency, with the head of Jim's father on every note, was much with
her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars
stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the
game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her;
but rather what it represented--power, width of action, freedom to help
when the heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans, ability
to surround with advantage those whom we love. So, at first, while yet the
memories of Washington were much with her, the appeal of the millions was
strong. The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake braced her;
she felt the blood quicken in her pulse.

But, all through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea that
Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived
became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of vivacious
memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to be
repeated--days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her
face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been set on
the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarized her mind, made
her end and goal sordid--the descent of a nature rather than its
ascension.

When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on a new importance, for
now it seemed to her that it was her duty to secure for the child its
rightful heritage. Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who
could never fulfil himself unless working through the natural channels of
his birth, inheritance, and upbringing. Jim, drunken and unreliable, with
broken will and fighting to find himself--the waste places were for him,
until he was the master of his will and emotions. Once, however, secure in
ability to control himself, with cleansed brain and purpose defined, the
widest field would be still be too narrow for his talents--and the five,
yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his.

She had never repented having married Jim; but twice in those three years
she had broken down and wept as though he