to witness the
sale of a woman's body. There could be no illusions about the fact and
it was hideous.

He forced his way into the side door and stood waiting the arrival of
the bride and groom. When Bivens came, the sight of him roused the
slumbering devil in Stuart. The excitement of his triumph had evidently
steadied the little man's nerves. His yellow teeth were shining in a
broad grin, and from his piercing eyes there flashed the conscious
success of the adventurer. His fine clothes and well-groomed body gave
him dignity. Never had his shrimp-like figure looked so slippery and
plausible.

He extended his slender hand and touched Stuart's in passing. To save
his life the lawyer could not repress a shudder. In that moment he
could have committed murder with joy. The agony of defeat was on him.

He knew he could beat this man in every fair fight with his bare hands
or with equal weapons. And yet there he was carrying off with a grin
before his very eyes the woman he loved. He felt in that moment his
kinship with all the rebels and disinherited of the earth.

At last the bride came and the surpliced choir moved slowly and
solemnly down the aisles through a sea of eager faces as the great
organ pealed forth the first bars of the wedding march from
"Lohengrin."

Nan was leaning on the arm of a stranger he had never seen before--an
uncle from the West. She was pale--deathly pale and walked with a
hesitating movement as though weak from illness. Suddenly his heart
went out to her in a flood of pity and tenderness. He tried to make her
feel this, but she passed without a glance. She had not seen him. The
procession moved slowly back to the altar, and a solemn hush fell on
the throng.

Stuart listened to the ceremony with a vague impersonal interest, as if
it were something going on in another world.

A single question was burning itself into his brain--the price of a
woman!

"Have we all our price?" he asked, searching deep into his own soul.
Something pathetic in the white face of the bride had touched the
deepest sources of his being.

"Have I, too, my price, oh, boastful soul?" he cried. "Would I sell my
honour for a million? No. For ten, fifty, a hundred millions? No--not
in the market place, no--but would I sell by a compromise of principle
in the secret conclave of my party--at a sale the world could never
know--would I sell for the Presidency of the Republic? Or would I sell
now to win this woman? Would