ur could not reply. To deny was impossible, and he
had no wish to attempt to make excuses. She had shown him to himself, and
he could only echo her just scorn.

"As for waiting," she went on, "I am sure, from what you say, that if you
ever got back in the lofty place of a parasite living idly and foolishly
on what you abstracted from the labor of others, you'd forget me--just as
your rich friends have forgotten you." She laughed bitterly. "O Arthur,
Arthur, what a fraud you are! Here, I've been admiring your fine talk
about your being a laborer, about what you'd do if you ever got the
power. And it was all simply envy and jealousy and trying to make
yourself believe you weren't so low down in the social scale as you
thought you were. You're too fine a gentleman for Madelene Schulze,
Arthur. Wait till you get back your lost paradise; then take a wife who
gives her heart only where her vanity permits. You don't want _me_, and
I--don't want you!"

Her voice broke there. With a cry that might have been her name or just
an inarticulate call from his heart to hers, he caught her in his arms,
and she was sobbing against his shoulder. "You can't mean it, Madelene,"
he murmured, holding her tight and kissing her cheek, her hair, her ear.
"You don't mean it."

"Oh, yes, I do," she sobbed. "But--I love you, too."

"Then everything else will straighten out of itself. Help me, Madelene.
Help me to be what we both wish me to be--what I can't help being, with
you by my side."

When a vanity of superiority rests on what used to be, it dies much
harder than when it rests upon what is. But Arthur's self-infatuation,
based though it was on the "used-to-be," then and there crumbled and
vanished forever. Love cleared his sight in an instant, where reason
would have striven in vain against the stubborn prejudices of snobbism.
Madelene's instinct had searched out the false ring in his voice and
manner; it was again instinct that assured her all was now well. And she
straightway, and without hesitation from coquetry or doubt, gave herself
frankly to the happiness of the love that knows it is returned in kind
and in degree.

"Yes, everything else will come right," she said. "For you _are_
strong, Arthur."

"I shall be," was his reply, as he held her closer. "Do I not love a
woman who believes in me?"

"And who believes because she knows." She drew away to look at him. "You
_are_ like your father!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my dear, my love,