om and held her to the subject
of the article he had asked her to write. At the first opportunity she
went back to the subject uppermost in her mind. Said she:

"I guess you're right--as usual. There's no hope for any people of
that class. The busy ones are thinking only of making money for
themselves, and the idle ones are too enfeebled by luxury to think at
all. No, I'm afraid there's no hope for Hull--or for Jane either."

"I'm not sure about Miss Hastings," said Victor.

"You would have been if you'd seen her to-day," replied Selma. "Oh, she
was lovely, Victor--really wonderful to look at. But so obviously the
idler. And--body and soul she belongs to the upper class. She
understands charity, but she doesn't understand justice, and never
could understand it. I shall let her alone hereafter."

"How harsh you women are in your judgments of each other," laughed
Dorn, busy at his desk.

"We are just," replied Selma. "We are not fooled by each other's
pretenses."

Dorn apparently had not heard. Selma saw that to speak would be to
interrupt. She sat at her own table and set to work on the editorial
paragraphs. After perhaps an hour she happened to glance at Victor.
He was leaning back in his chair, gazing past her out into the open; in
his face was an expression she had never seen--a look in the eyes, a
relaxing of the muscles round the mouth that made her think of him as a
man instead of as a leader. She was saying to herself. "What a
fascinating man he would have been, if he had not been an incarnate
cause."

She felt that he was not thinking of his work. She longed to talk to
him, but she did not venture to interrupt. Never in all the years she
had known him had he spoken to her--or to any one--a severe or even an
impatient word. His tolerance, his good humor were infinite.
Yet--she, and all who came into contact with him, were afraid of him.
There could come, and on occasion there did come--into those
extraordinary blue eyes an expression beside which the fiercest flash
of wrath would be easy to face.

When she glanced at him again, his normal expression had returned--the
face of the leader who aroused in those he converted into
fellow-workers a fanatical devotion that was the more formidable
because it was not infatuated. He caught her eye and said:

"Things are in such good shape for us that it frightens me. I spend
most of my time in studying the horizon in the hope that I can foresee