oods above the park at ten tomorrow," she said in an
undertone. Then to Selma, unsmilingly: "You're not interrupting. I'm
going." Selma advanced. The two girls looked frank hostility into
each other's eyes. Jane did not try to shake hands with her. With a
nod and a forced smile of conventional friendliness upon her lips, she
passed her and went through the house and into the street.

She lingered at the gate, opening and closing it in a most leisurely
fashion--a significantly different exit from her furtive and ashamed
entrance. Love and revolt were running high and hot in her veins. She
longed openly to defy the world--her world.

VII

Impulse was the dominant strain in Selma Gordon's character--impulse
and frankness. But she was afraid of Victor Dorn as we all are afraid
of those we deeply respect--those whose respect is the mainstay of our
self-confidence. She was moving toward him to pour out the violence
that was raging in her on the subject of this flirtation of Jane
Hastings. The spectacle of a useless and insincere creature like that
trifling with her deity, and being permitted to trifle, was more than
she could endure. But Victor, dropping listlessly to his chair and
reaching for his pencil, was somehow a check upon her impetuousness.
She paused long enough to think the sobering second thought. To speak
would be both an impertinence and a folly. She owed it to the cause
and to her friend Victor to speak; but to speak at the wrong time and
in the wrong way would be worse than silence.

Said he: "I was finishing this when she came. I'll be done in a
minute. Please read what I've written and tell me what you think."

Selma took up the loose sheets of manuscript and stood reading his
inaugural of the new New Day. As she read she forgot the petty matter
that had so agitated her a moment before. This salutatory--this
address to the working class--this plan of a campaign to take Remsen
City out of the hands of its exploiters and despoilers and make it a
city fit for civilized residence and worthy of its population of
intelligent, progressive workingmen--this leading editorial for the
first number was Victor Dorn at his greatest and best. The man of
action with all the enthusiasm of a dreamer. The shrewd, practical
politician with the outlook of a statesman. How honest and impassioned
he was; yet how free from folly and cant. Several times as she read
Selma lifted her eyes to look at hi