e had seen
once or twice before. He looked at her shining eyes, her parted lips,
her chin a little lifted. It was as if they were colored by a sunrise he
could not see. He put his hand over hers and clasped it with a strength
she felt. Her eyelashes trembled, her mouth softened, but her eyes were
still brilliant.

"Will you always be like you were down there, if I go with you?" she
asked under her breath.

His fingers tightened on hers. "By God, I will!" he muttered.

"That's the only promise I'll ask you for. Now go away for a while and
let me think about it. Come back at lunchtime and I'll tell you. Will
that do?"

"Anything will do, Thea, if you'll only let me keep an eye on you. The
rest of the world doesn't interest me much. You've got me in deep."

Fred dropped her hand and turned away. As he glanced back from the front
end of the observation car, he saw that she was still standing there,
and any one would have known that she was brooding over something. The
earnestness of her head and shoulders had a certain nobility. He stood
looking at her for a moment.

When he reached the forward smoking-car, Fred took a seat at the end,
where he could shut the other passengers from his sight. He put on his
traveling-cap and sat down wearily, keeping his head near the window.
"In any case, I shall help her more than I shall hurt her," he kept
saying to himself. He admitted that this was not the only motive which
impelled him, but it was one of them. "I'll make it my business in life
to get her on. There's nothing else I care about so much as seeing her
have her chance. She hasn't touched her real force yet. She isn't even
aware of it. Lord, don't I know something about them? There isn't one of
them that has such a depth to draw from. She'll be one of the great
artists of our time. Playing accompaniments for that cheese-faced sneak!
I'll get her off to Germany this winter, or take her. She hasn't got any
time to waste now. I'll make it up to her, all right."

Ottenburg certainly meant to make it up to her, in so far as he could.
His feeling was as generous as strong human feelings are likely to be.
The only trouble was, that he was married already, and had been since he
was twenty.

His older friends in Chicago, people who had been friends of his family,
knew of the unfortunate state of his personal affairs; but they were
people whom in the natural course of things Thea Kronborg would scarcely
meet. Mrs. Frederick Ot