d which
those who know from experience the powerful electro-magnetic current
generated by the rushing life of the New York metropolis can well
understand. He struck out into the stream with the rest, and with
overweening confidence in himself--in himself as master of circumstances
which he intended to control in his own interests, in himself as the
pivotal point of Flamsted affairs. The rapidity of the current acted as
a continual stimulus to exertion. Like all bold swimmers, he knew in a
general way that the channel might prove tortuous, the current threaten
at times to overpower him; but, carried rapidly out into mid-stream with
that gigantic propulsive force that is the resultant of the diverse
onward-pressure of the metropolitan millions, he suddenly found himself
one day in that mid-stream without its ever having occurred to him that
he might not be able to breast it. Even had he thought enough about the
matter to admit that certain untoward conditions might have to be met,
he would have failed to realize that the shore towards which he was
struggling might prove in the end a quicksand.

Another thing: he failed to take into account the influence of any cross
current, until he was made to realize the necessity of stemming his
strength against it. This influence was Aileen Armagh.

Whenever in walking up lower Broadway from the office he found himself
passing Grace Church, he realized that, despite every effort of will, he
was obliged to relive in thought the experience of that night seven
years ago at the Vaudeville. Then for the first time he saw the little
match girl crouching on the steps of the stage reproduction of this same
marble church. The child's singing of her last song had induced in him
then--wholly unawares, wholly unaccountably--a sudden mental nausea and
a physical disgust at the course of his young life, the result being
that the woman "who lay in wait for him at the corner" by appointment,
watched that night in vain for his coming.

In reliving this experience, there was always present in his thought the
Aileen Armagh as he knew her now--pure, loyal, high-spirited, helpful,
womanly in all her household ways, entertaining in her originality,
endowed with the gift of song. She was charming; this was patent to all
who knew her. It was a pleasure to dwell on this thought of her, and,
dwelling upon it too often at off-times in his business life, the desire
grew irresistible to be with her again; to c