nto
streetwalkers; a few new palaces on Fifth Avenue, and a few new libraries
given to communities that formerly took pride in building them from their
honestly earned savings. A report or two of record-breaking diamond sales
by Tiffany to the kings and czars of dollar royalty, then front-page news
stories of clawing, mauling, and hair-pulling wrangles among the stage
harlots for the possession of these diamonds. They were not quite sure
that the dividend cut alone would do the trick, and they were taking no
chances, these mighty warriors of the 'System,' so their hireling Senate
committee held a session last night and unanimously reported to put sugar
on the free list. The people will read that in the morning, and probably
the day after they'll be told that the committee held another session
to-night and unanimously reported to take it off the free list. By that
time these honourable statesmen will have loaded up with the stock that
you and I and Beulah Sands sold, and that other poor devils will slaughter
to-morrow after reading their morning papers."

Bob's bitterness was terrible. My heart was torn as I listened. He stalked
through the office and into that of Beulah Sands. I followed. She was at
her desk, and when she looked up, her great eyes opened in wonderment as
they took in Bob, his grim, set face, the defiant, sullen desperation of
the big brown eyes, the dishevelled hair and clothes. For an instant she
stood as one who had seen an apparition.

"Look me over, Beulah Sands," he said, "look me over to your heart's
content, for you may never again see the fool of fools in all the world,
the fool who thought himself competent to cope with men of brains, with
men who really know how to play the game of dollars as it is played in
this Christian age. Don't ask me not to call you Beulah; that what I tried
to do was for you is the one streak of light in all this black hell.
Beulah, Beulah, we are ruined, you, your father, and I, ruined, and I'm
the fool who did it."

She rose from her desk with all the quiet, calm dignity that we had been
admiring for three months, and stood facing Bob. She did not seem to see
me; she saw nothing but the man who had gone out that morning the
personification of hope, who now stood before her the picture of black
despair, and she must have thought, "It was all for me." Suddenly she took
the lapels of his torn coat in either hand. She had to reach up to do it,
this winsome little Virgi