re
willing to murder for the sake of their love. Look at me!"

He spoke so commandingly that Grace looked, wonder and doubt in her
eyes.

In some women incertitude expresses itself in silence. Her mother was of
a different larynx. She wailed: "What shall I do? What shall I do?" And
sank back in her arm-chair. After one second's hesitation Mrs. Goodchild
decided to clasp her own hands with a gesture of helplessness such as
Pilate would have used had he been Mrs. Pontius. She did so, turning the
big emerald _en cabochon_, so that she could plaintively gaze at it.
Eight thousand dollars. Then she turned the gem accusingly in the
direction of this man who might, for all she knew, be penniless. He was
good-looking. Hendrik was Dutch. So was Rutgers. Could he belong?

"I beg your pardon, moth--Mrs. Goodchild," said H. R. so very
courteously and contritely that he looked old-fashioned. "You must
forgive me. But she _is_ beautiful! She will grow, God willing, to look
more like you every day. By making me regard the future with pleasurable
anticipation, you yourself give me one more reason why I must marry
Grace."

Grace looked at her mother and smiled--at the effect. Mrs. Goodchild
confessed to forty-six.

"I am making Grace Goodchild famous," H. R. pursued, briskly, and paused
that they might listen attentively to what was to follow.

Mother and daughter looked at him with irrepressible curiosity. Their
own lives had so few red-blooded thrills for them that they enjoyed
theatricals as being "real life." This man was an Experience!

He shook his head and explained, mournfully: "It is very strange, this
thing of not belonging to yourself but to the world. It is a sacrifice
Grace must make!"

His voice rang with a subtle regret. But suddenly he raised his head
proudly and looked straight at her.

"It is a sacrifice worth making--for the sake of the downtrodden whom
you will uplift with your beauty. _Au revoir_, Grace. _I am needed!_"

He approached her. She tried to draw back. He halted before her, took
her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it.

"I am the dirt under your feet," he murmured, and left the room.

His was the gait of the Invincibles. He had cast a bewitching spell of
unreality over the entire drawing-room that made Grace feel like both
actress and audience.

She heard him in the hall calling, "Frederick!" And, after a brief
pause, "My hat and cane!"

There was another pause. Then she heard Fred