hand. "We are going to be
friends, whatever happens, from now on, because I really like you. You
mustn't ask me to decide about the other, though, to-day. I can't do
it. I don't want to. I don't care to."

"Not when I would so gladly give you everything--when I need it so
little?"

"Not until I think it out for myself. I don't think so, though. No,"
she replied, with an air. "There, Mr. Guardian Father," she laughed,
pushing his hand away.

Cowperwood's heart bounded. He would have given millions to take her
close in his arms. As it was he smiled appealingly.

"Don't you want to jump in and come to New York with me? If your mother
isn't at the apartment you could stop at the Netherland."

"No, not to-day. I expect to be in soon. I will let you know, or
mother will."

He bustled out and into the machine after a moment of parley, waving to
her over the purpling snow of the evening as his machine tore eastward,
planning to make New York by dinner-time. If he could just keep her in
this friendly, sympathetic attitude. If he only could!

Chapter LIV

Wanted--Fifty-year Franchises

Whatever his momentary satisfaction in her friendly acceptance of his
confession, the uncertain attitude of Berenice left Cowperwood about
where he was before. By a strange stroke of fate Braxmar, his young
rival, had been eliminated, and Berenice had been made to see him,
Cowperwood, in his true colors of love and of service for her. Yet
plainly she did not accept them at his own valuation. More than ever
was he conscious of the fact that he had fallen in tow of an amazing
individual, one who saw life from a distinct and peculiar point of view
and who was not to be bent to his will. That fact more than anything
else--for her grace and beauty merely emblazoned it--caused him to fall
into a hopeless infatuation.

He said to himself over and over, "Well, I can live without her if I
must," but at this stage the mere thought was an actual stab in his
vitals. What, after all, was life, wealth, fame, if you couldn't have
the woman you wanted--love, that indefinable, unnamable coddling of the
spirit which the strongest almost more than the weakest crave? At last
he saw clearly, as within a chalice-like nimbus, that the ultimate end
of fame, power, vigor was beauty, and that beauty was a compound of the
taste, the emotion, the innate culture, passion, and dreams of a woman
like Berenice Fleming. That was it: that was it