d man, with mingled
pride and affection. "I go to see her in her shop every now and then,
and I reckon she values my advice about her affairs as much as
anybody's. Well, when she came home from Europe she found that she
owned a row of tenements like this one, and her agent was profiteering
in rents like most of the others. I wish you could have seen her when
she discovered it. Splendid? Well, I reckon she's the most splendid
thing this old world has ever had on top of it! She went straight to
work and had those houses made into modern apartments--bathrooms, steam
heat, and back yards full of trees and grass and flowers, just like
Monroe Park, only better. The rent wasn't raised either! She put that
back just where it was before the war; and then she let the whole row to
the tenants for two years. You never saw anything like the interest she
took in that speculation--you'd have thought to hear her that she was
setting out to bring what the preachers call the social millennium."

"She never mentioned it to me," said Stephen, with interest. "How did it
turn out?"

Darrow threw back his great head with a laugh. "I don't reckon she did
mention it, bless her! It don't bear mentioning even now. Why, when she
went back last fall to see those houses, she found that the tenants had
all moved into dirty little places in the alley, and were letting out
the apartments, at five times the rent they paid, to other tenants.
They were doing a little special profiteering of their own--and, bless
your life, there wasn't so much as a blade of grass left in the yards,
even the trees had been cut down and sold for wood. And you say she
never mentioned it?"

"How could she? But, after all, I suppose the question goes deeper than
that?"

"The question," replied Darrow, with an energy that shook the little
car, "goes as deep as hell!"

They were driving rapidly up Grace Street; and as they shot past the
club on the corner, Stephen noticed the serene aristocratic profile of
Peyton at one of the brilliantly lighted windows. A little farther on,
when they turned into Franklin Street, he saw that the old print shop
was in darkness, except for the lights in the rooms of the caretaker
and the lodgers in the upper storey. Corinna had gone home, he supposed,
and he wondered idly if she were with Benham? As they went on they
passed the house of the Blairs, where he caught a glimpse of Margaret on
the porch, parting from the handsome young clergyman