o beat back the forces seeking to
devour her.

"The mind is an obscure kingdom subject to inexplicable revolts and
sudden confusions," he thought. "Delusions are easy to foment, and at
the last are indistinguishable from the fact, so far as the mind which
gave them being is concerned. The body of this girl is young, but her
brain may be cankered by the sins and lies of a long line of decadent
ancestry." The thought was horrible, but it was less revolting than
the alternative--in no other way could her life be explained and
excused. In any case it was highly courageous in her to put marriage
away as decisively as if it were a crime. And this she must have done,
for even Clarke, according to Britt, had thus far sued in vain. There
was a heroic strain in the girl somewhere. Was it too late to rescue
her from the mental gangrene eating its way to the very centre of her
soul? This was the question which only a renewed acquaintance, a
careful study could resolve.

IV

THE PATRON OF PSYCHICS

Up to the hour of his wife's death Simeon Pratt had been but the
business-man, large of appetite, pitiless, self-sufficient, and
self-absorbed--the type of man often described by amiable critics as
"a hard citizen, but good to his family, you know," as if the fact of
his not beating his wife were adequate excuse for railway wrecking.

He might be seen taking the 7.49 train at Eighty-sixth Street each
week-day morning with a bundle of newspapers under his arm, a man of
depending jowls and protuberant belly, who never offered any one a
seat and did not expect such courtesy from others. He was burly and
selfish as a hog, and was often so designated by work-weary women,
whom he forced to stand while he read his market reports in callous
absorption.

His associates greeted him with a nod, unsmiling and curt, and the
elevator-boys at the Pratt building were careful not to elbow him. He
had the greed of a wolf and the temper of an aging bear, and yet his
business ability admittedly commanded respect. Everything he did had a
certain sweep. He was not penurious or mean in his wars. On the
contrary, he despised the small revenges; but in a strife with his
equals he was inexorable--he pushed his adversaries to the last ditch,
and into it, remorseless as a mountain land-slide.

All the tenderness in his nature, all his faith in goodness and
virtue, he reserved for his home. To his wife (a woman of simple
tastes and native refinement