rectly
or indirectly, enter into any operations in any one of our stocks during
your absence, except for your profit as well as our own. We will execute
a deed of partnership as regards any transactions which we might enter
into during your absence."

Phineas Duge nodded thoughtfully.

"I suppose," he said, "we might be able to fix things up that way. I
should be glad enough to get the paper back again, but Vine is not an
easy man to deal with, and he is pleased to call himself my enemy."

"The men who have called themselves that," Higgins remarked grimly,
"have generally been sorry for it."

"And so may he," Phineas Duge answered, "but I am not sure that his time
has come yet. You must let me think this over, gentlemen, until
to-morrow morning. I will meet you with my broker and lawyer at ten
o'clock at your office, Weiss, and if I make up my mind to go to Europe,
my luggage will be on the steamer by that time. On the whole I might
tell you that I am inclined to go."

Weiss drew a great breath of relief. He poured himself out a glass of
wine and drank it off.

"It's good to hear you say that, Duge," he said. "I tell you we have
come pretty near being scared the last week or so. I feel a lot more
comfortable fighting with you in the ranks."

Phineas Duge forbore from all recrimination. He filled Higgins' glass
and his own. He could afford to be magnanimous. He had fought them one
against four, and they had come to him for mercy!

"We will drink," he said, "to the new President. This one has tilted
against the windmills once too often. He must learn his lesson."

CHAPTER XI

CONSCIENCE

Virginia slept little that night. Her room, one of the smallest and
least expensive in the cosmopolitan boarding-house where she was
staying, was high up, almost in an attic. The windows were small, and
opened with difficulty. The heat, combined with her own restlessness,
made the weary hours one long nightmare for her. Early in the morning
she rose and sat in front of the little window, looking out across the
wilderness of house-tops, where a pall of smoke seemed to convert to
luminous chaos the rising sun. There was a lump in her throat, and
gathering tears in her eyes. It seemed to her that no one could ever
realize a loneliness more absolute and complete than hers. She thought
of the early summer mornings in that tiny farmhouse perched on the side
of the lonely valley, where the air at least was clear and pure and