est glance.

"Oh! my lord, how good thou art to me, how patient with my moods and
woman's weaknesses," and she made as though she were about to embrace
him. Then suddenly remembering herself, with a little start that somehow
conveyed more than the most tragic gesture, she pointed to the couch
in token that he should seat himself. When he had done so she drew a
footstool to his feet and sank upon it, looking up into his face with
attentive eyes, like a child who listens for a story.

"Thy reasons, Leo, give me thy reasons. Doubtless they are good, and,
oh! be sure I'll weigh them well."

"Here they are in brief," he answered. "The world, as thou knewest in
thy--" and he stopped.

"Thy earlier wanderings there," she suggested.

"Yes--thy earlier wanderings there, has set up gold as the standard of
its wealth. On it all civilizations are founded. Make it as common as it
seems thou canst, and these must fall to pieces. Credit will fail and,
like their savage forefathers, men must once more take to barter to
supply their needs as they do in Kaloon to-day."

"Why not?" she asked. "It would be more simple and bring them closer to
the time when they were good and knew not luxury and greed."

"And smashed in each other's heads with stone axes," added Leo.

"Who now pierce each other's hearts with steel, or those leaden missiles
of which thou hast told me. Oh! Leo, when the nations are beggared and
their golden god is down; when the usurer and the fat merchant tremble
and turn white as chalk because their hoards are but useless dross;
when I have made the bankrupt Exchanges of the world my mock, and laugh
across the ruin of its richest markets, why, then, will not true worth
come to its heritage again?

"What of it if I do discomfort those who think more of pelf than of
courage and of virtue; those who, as that Hebrew prophet wrote, lay
field to field and house to house, until the wretched whom they have
robbed find no place left whereon to dwell? What if I proved your sagest
chapmen fools, and gorge your greedy moneychangers with the gold that
they desire until they loathe its very sight and touch? What if I uphold
the cause of the poor and the oppressed against the ravening lusts of
Mammon? Why, will not this world of yours be happier then?"

"I do not know," answered Leo. "All that I know is that it would be a
different world, one shaped upon a new plan, governed by untried laws
and seeking other ends. In so strange