. We have seen that women
won't stop him; it's plain that money nor fame won't stop him, though
they clearly tore his coat tails. I imagine from what Laura says he must
have decided once to accept."

"Yes," answered his wife, "but it does seem to me, if my old father
needed care as his does, and my brother had to accept charity, I'd give
that particular devil my whole coat and see if I couldn't make a bargain
with him for a little money, at some small cost."

"Mother Eve--Mother Eve," smiled the minister, "you women are so
practical--we men are the real idealists--the only dreamers who stand by
our dreams in this wicked, weary world."

He leaned back in his chair. "There is still one more big black devil
waiting for Grant: Power--the love of power which is the lust of
usefulness--power may catch Grant after he has escaped from women and
money and fame. Vanity--vanity, saith the preacher--Heaven help Grant in
the final struggle with the big, black devil of vanity."

Yet, after all, vanity has in it the seed of a saving grace that has
lifted humanity over many pitfalls in the world. For vanity is only
self-respect multiplied; and when that goes--when men and women lose
their right to lift their faces to God, they have fallen upon bad times
indeed. It was even so good a man as John Dexter himself, who tried to
put self-respect into the soul of Violet Hogan, and was mocked for it.

"What do they care for me?" she cried, as he sat talking to her in her
miserable home one chill November day. "Why should I pay any attention
to them? Once I chummed with Mag Mueller, before she married Henry Fenn,
and I was as good as she was then--and am now for that matter. She knew
what I was, and I knew what she was going to be--we made no bones of it.
We hunted in pairs--as women like to. And I know Mag Mueller. So why
should I keep up for her?"

The woman laughed and showed her hollow mouth and all the wrinkles of
her broken face, that the paint hid at night. "And as for Tom Van
Dorn--I was a decent girl before I met him, Mr. Dexter--and why in God's
name should I try to keep up for him?"

She shuddered and would have sobbed but he stopped her with: "Well,
Violet--wife and I have always been your friends; we are now. The church
will help you."

"Oh, the church--the church," she laughed. "It can't help me. Fancy me
in church--with all the wives looking sideways at all the husbands to
see that they didn't look too long at me. The ch