with a different ring to it, and clapping of hands.

"I think that I may assume," he went on, "that no audience before
which I am likely to appear, will suspect me of accepting the Bible as
altogether admirable. Some of the prophets and holy men of old, as I
read of their doings in the scriptures, always impress me as having been
long overdue at the penitentiary."

There was laughter and applause at this sally, and the intangible
something which emanates from an audience which tells a speaker that he
now has a mental grasp upon his hearers, made itself felt. The slight
air of resentment which arose when he had said that he should refer for
his authority to the Bible subsided, and he went on.

"But notwithstanding these facts and opinions, one sometimes finds in
the Bible things that are true. Sometimes they are not only true, but
they are also good. Again they are good in fact, in sentiment, and in
diction. Now when this sort of conjunction occurs, I am strongly moved
to drop for the time such differences as I may have with other portions
and sentiments, and give due credit where credit is due.

"Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich
man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their
poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this
trip at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is
ignorance, or vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty
which it is the fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the
truth--the destruction of the poor _is_ their _poverty._

"And who are the poor? Are they not those who, in spite of their labor,
their worth, and their value to the state as good citizens are still
dependent upon the good-will--the charity, I had almost said--of someone
else who has power over the very food they have earned a hundred times
over, and the miserable rags they are allowed to wear instead of the
broadcloth they have earned? Are they not those who, because of economic
conditions, are suppliants where they should be sovereign citizens,
dependents where they should be free and independent and self-respecting
persons?"

"Right you are!" "Drive it home!" came with the applause from the
audience.

"Are they not those who must obey oppressive laws made by those who
legislate against the helpless and in favor of the powerful? Are they
not those whose voices are silenced by subjection, whose wishes and
needs are trampled beneath the feet of the controlling class?"

The applause was ready now and instant. Avery paused. There was silence.
"And who are these?" he asked, and paused again.

"What class of people more than any other--more than all others--fits
and fills each and every one of these queries?" "Laboring men!" shouted
several. "All of us!" "No," said Avery, "you are wrong. To all of
you--to all so-called laboring men they do apply; but more than to
these, in more insidious ways, do they apply to laboring women. To all
women, in fact; for no matter how poor a man is, his wife and daughters
are poorer; no matter how much of a dependent he is, the woman is more
so, for she is the dependent of a dependent, the serf of a slave, the
chattel of a chattel! The suppliant, not only for work and wage, but the
suppliant at the hands of sex power for equality with even the man who
is under the feet and the tyranny of wealth. They share together that
tyranny and poverty, but he thrusts upon her alone the added outrage of
sex subjugation and legal disability." He paused, and held up his hand.
Then he said, slowly, making each word stand alone:--

"And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the
Legislature and what it has taught me--I tell you that there is no
outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and
does not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this
cruel earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell
you that to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and
I reiterate:--the destruction of the poor is their _poverty._ It has
been doubly woman's destruction. Her absolute financial dependence upon
men has given him the power and--alas, that I should be compelled to say
it!--the will, to deny her all that is best and loftiest in life,
and even to crush out of her the love of liberty and the dignity of
character which cares for the better things. Look at her education! Look
at the disgraceful 'annexes' and side shifts which are made to prevent
our sisters from acquiring even the same, or as good, an education as we
claim for ourselves. Look--" He paused and lowered his voice. "Look at
the awful, the horrible, the beastly laws we pass for women, while
we carefully keep them in a position where they cannot legislate for
themselves. Do you know there is no law in any state--and no legislature
would dare try to pass one--which would bind a ten-year-old boy to any
contract which he might have been led, driven, or coaxed into, or have
voluntarily made, if that contract should henceforth deprive him of all
that gives to him the comforts, joys, or decencies of life! All men hold
that such a boy is not old enough to make such a contract. That any
one older than he, who leads him into a crime or misdemeanor, or the
transfer of property, or his personal rights and liberty, is guilty of
legal offence. The boy is without blame, and his contract is absolutely
void--illegal. But in more than one state we hold that a little girl of
ten may make the most fatal contract ever made by or for woman, and that
she is old enough to be held legally responsible for her act and for her
judgment. The one who leads her into it, though he be forty, fifty, or
sixty years old, is guiltless before the law. I tell you, gentlemen,
there is no crime possible to humanity that is as black as that infamous
law, sought to be re-enacted by our own state at this very time, and
which has already passed one house!" He explained, as delicately as he
could, the full scope and meaning of the bill. Surprise, consternation,
swept over the room. Men, a few of whom had heard of the bill before,
but had given it scant attention, saw a horror and disgust in the
eyes of the women which aroused for the first time in their minds, a
flickering sense of the enormity of such a measure. No one present
was willing that any woman should believe him guilty of approving such
legislation, and yet Avery impressed anew upon them that the bill had
passed one house with a good majority. On his way out of the room, a
tall girl stepped to his side.

For the moment he had not recognized her. It was Francis King. She
looked straight at him.

"Did my father vote for that bill?" she asked, without a prelude of
greeting. Avery hesitated.

"Oh, is it you, Miss King?" he asked, "I did not see you before. Do you
come here often?"

"Not very," she said, still looking at him, and with fire gathering in
her eyes. "Did my father vote for that bill?" she repeated.

"Ah--I--to tell you the truth," began Avery, but she put out her hand
and caught firm hold of his arm.

"Did my father vote for that bill?" she insisted, and Avery said:
--"Yes, I'm sorry to say, he did, Miss King; but--so many did, you know.
The fact is--"

Her fingers grasped his arm like a vice, and her lips were drawn. "Did
Ettie's pa?" she demanded.

Avery saw the drift of her thought.

"God forgive him! yes," he said, and his own eyes grew troubled and
sympathetic.

"God may forgave him if he's a mind to," exclaimed Francis, "but I don't
want no such God around me, if he does. Any God that wants to forgive
men for such work as that ain't fit to associate with no other kind of
folks _but_ such men; but I don't mean to allow a good little girl like
Ettie to live in the same house with a beast if I know it. She shan't
go home again now, not if her pa begs on his knees. He ain't fit to wipe
her shoes. 'N my pa!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "My pa talkin' about
Ettie being bad, and settin' bad examples for decent girls! Him a
talkin'! Him livin' in the same house with my little sister 'n me! Him!"
The girl was wrought to a frenzy of scorn, and contempt, and anger. They
had passed out with the rest into the street.

"Shall I walk home with you?" asked Avery. "Are you alone?"

"Yes, I'm alone," she said, with a little dry sob. "I'm alone, an' I
ain't goin' home any more. Not while he lives there. It's no decent
place for a girl--living in the house with a man like that. I ain't
goin' home. I'm goin' to--" It rushed over her brain that she had no
other place to go. She held her purse in her hand; it had only two
dollars and a few cents in it. She had bought her new dress with the
rest. Her step faltered, but her eyes were as fiery and as hard as ever.

"You'd better go home," said Avery, softly. "It will only be the harder
for you, if you don't. I'm sorry--"

She turned on him like a tigress. They were in Union Square now. "Even
_you_ think it is all right for good girls to be under the control and
live with men like that! Even _you_ think I ought to go home, an' let
him boss me an' make rules fer me, an' me pretend to like it an believe
as he does, an' look up to him, an' think his way's right an' best! Even
_you!_"

"No, no," said Avery, softly. "You must be fair, Miss King. I don't
think it's right; but--but--I said it was best just now, for--what else
can you do?" The girl was facing him as they stood near the fountain in
the middle of the square.

"That's just what I was meaning to show to-night when I said what I
did to the club, of the financial dependence of women; it is their
destruction; it destroys their self-respect; it forces them to accept a
moral companionship which they'd scorn if they dared; it forces them to
seem to condone and uphold such things themselves; it forces them to
be the companions and subordinates of degraded moral natures, that hold
wives and daughters to a code which they will not apply to themselves,
and which they seek to make void for other wives and daughters;
it--" "You told me to go home," she said, stubbornly. "I'm not goin'! I
make money enough to live on. I always spent it on--on things to wear;
but--but I can live on it, an' I'm goin' to. I ain't goin' to live in
the house with no such a man. He ain't _fit_ to live with. I won't tell
ma an' the girls--yet; not till--"

She paused, and peered toward the clock in the face of the great stone
building across the street. "Do you think it's too late fer me t' talk
a minute with Miss Gertrude?" she asked, with her direct gaze, again.
"She'd let me stay there one night, I guess, n' she'd tell me--I c'd
talk to her some."

"If you won't go home," he said, slowly, "I suppose it would be best
for you to go there, but--it is rather late. Go home for to-night, Miss
Francis! I wish you would. Think it over to-night, please. Let me take
you home to-night. Go to Miss Gertrude to-morrow, and talk it over." His
tone had grown gentle and more tender than he knew. He took the hand she
had placed on his arm in his own, and tried to turn toward her street.
She held stubbornly back. "For my sake, to please me--because I think
it is best--won't you go home to-night?" She looked at him again, and
a haze came in her eyes. She did not trust herself to speak, but she
turned toward her own street, and they walked silently down the square.
His hand still held her own as it lay on his arm.

"Thank you," he said, and pressed her fingers more firmly for an instant
and then released them. He had taken his glove off in the hall and had
not replaced it. When they reached the door of her father's house, she
suddenly grasped his ungloved hand and kissed it, and ran sobbing up the
steps and into the house without a word.

"Poor girl," thought Avery, "she is not herself to-night. She has never
respected nor loved her father much, but this was a phase of his nature
she had not suspected before. Poor child! I hope Gertrude--" and in the
selfishness of the love he bore for Gertrude, he allowed his thoughts
to wander, and it did not enter his mind to place anything deeper than
a mere emotional significance upon the conduct of the intense, tall,
dark-eyed girl who had just left him.

He did not dream that at that moment she lay face down on her bed
sobbing as if her heart would break, and yet, that a strange little
flutter of happiness touched her heart as she held her gloved hand
against her flushed cheek or kissed it in the darkness. It was the hand
Avery had held so long within his own, as it lay upon his arm. At last
the girl drew the glove off, and going to her drawer, took out her
finest handkerchief and lay the glove within, wrapping it softly and
carefully. She was breathing hard, and her face was set and pained.
At two o'clock she had fallen asleep, and under her tear-stained cheek
there was a glove folded in a bit of soft cambric. Poor Francis King!
The world is a sorry place for such as you, and even those who would be
your best friends often deal the deadliest wounds. Poor Francis King!
Has life nothing to offer you but a worn glove and a tear-stained bit
of cambric? Is it true? Need it be true? Is there no better way? Have
we built your house with but one door, and with no window? Smile at the
fancies of your sleep, child; to-morrow will bring memory, reality,
and tears. You are a woman now. Yesterday you were but an unformed,
strong-willed girl. Poor Francis King! sleep late to-morrow, and dream
happily if you can. Poor Francis King, to-morrow is very near!

XI.

"Gertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she passed the library
door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you."

"Committee meeting?" laughed Gertrude, as she took a seat beside her
father. It had grown to be rather a joke in the family to speak of Mr.
Avery's calls as committee meetings, and Mr. Foster had tried vainly to
tease his daughter about it.

"In my time," he would say, "we did not go a courting to get advice.
we went for kisses. I never discussed any more profound topic with my
sweetheart than love--and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I sit
and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's so
perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. It's a deal more
like--why I should have looked upon that sort of thing as a species of
committee meeting, in my day."

Gertrude had laughed and said something about thinking that love ought
to enter into and run through all the interests of life, and not be held
merely as a thing apart. All women had a life to live. All would not
have the love. So the first problem was one of life and its work. The
love was only a phase of this. But her father had gone on laughing at
her about her queer love-making.

"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father,
smiling dryly. Her mother answered first.

"Yes--no--partly. Your father wanted to speak to you about--he thinks
you should not be seen with, or have those girls--You tell her yourself,
dear," she said, appealing to her husband. Mr. Foster was fidgeting
about in his chair; he had not felt comfortable before. He was less so
now, for Gertrude had turned her face full upon him, and her hand was on
his sleeve.

"'Well, there's nothing to tell, Gertrude," he said. "I guess you
can understand it without a scene. I simply don't want to see those
girls--that King girl and her friend--about here any more. It won't do.
It simply won't do at all. You'll be talked about. Of course, I know it
is all very kind of you, and all that, and that you don't mean any
harm; but men always have drawn, and they always will draw, unpleasant
conclusions. They may sympathize with that sort of girls, but they
simply won't stand having their own women folks associate with them. The
test of the respectability of a woman, is whether a man of position will
marry her or not. A man's respectable if he's out of jail. A woman if
she is marriageable or married. Now, unfortunately, that little Berton
girl is neither the one nor the other, and its going to make talk if you
are seen with her again. She must stay away from here, too."

There had come a most unusual tone of protest into his voice as he went
on, but he had looked steadily at a carved paper knife, which he held in
his hand, and with which he cut imaginary leaves upon the table. There
was a painful silence. Gertrude thought she did not remember having ever
before heard her father speak so sharply. She glanced at her mother,
but Katherine Foster had evidently made up her mind to leave this matter
entirely in the hands of her husband.

"Do you mean, papa, that you wish me to tell that child, Ettie Berton,
not to come here any more, and that I must not befriend her?" asked
Gertrude, in an unsteady voice.

"Befriend her all you've a mind to," responded her father, heartily.
"Certainly. Of course. But don't have her come here, and don't you be
seen with her, nor the other one again. You can send James or Susan
--better not send Susan though--send James with money or anything you
want to give her. Your mother tells me you are paying the Berton girl's
board. That's all right if you want to, but--your mother has told me the
whole outrageous story, and that cashier ought to be shot, but--"

"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him
less, and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present
infamous order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never
willingly done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't
ask me to help crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her
now. Don't ask that of me, papa. Why do men--even you good men--make it
so hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What
has Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a
mere child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or
judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did
not. And yet _even you_ ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa,
don't!" She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her
hands and kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against
her father or seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed
him. A little frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to
his wife, "I wish you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally.
_You_ always have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her
husband. She smiled.

"I always have, what dear?" she asked.

"Understood these things as I do--as everyone does," said her husband.
"You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and--"

The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother
did not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was
steady, and less light than usual.

"No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or
how I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired,
no one ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and
acquiesced in established opinions, went without saying. That was
expected of me. That I did. Gertrude belongs to another generation,
dear. She cannot be so colorless as we women of my time--"

Her husband laughed.

"Colorless, is good, by Jove! _You_ colorless indeed!" He looked
admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more
sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless
indeed!" Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy
reflection of your own shades of thought or mind have always passed
current as my own? Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that--it is
easier and--pleasanter all around. But--" she paused. "It was not my
color, my thought, my opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant
echo of yourself which has so charmed you. It was not I."

Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had
been long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward
her mother.

"In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the
most level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in
this--suicidal policy--her--this--absurd nonsense about that girl?"

Gertrude's eyes widened. She slowly arose from his knee. The revelation
as to her father's mental outlook was, to her more sensitive and
developed nature, much what the one had been to Francis King that night
at the club.

"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for--so sorry--for us all.
We seem so far apart, and--"

"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I
talked with him to-day. He--"

Gertrude glanced at her mother, and there was a definite curl upon her
lip. "Mr. Martin," she said slowly, "is not a conscience for me. He and
I are leagues apart, papa. We--"

"More's the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved
toward the door.

"I've said my say, Gertrude. It's perfectly incomprehensible to me what
you two are aiming at. But what I know is this: you must _do_ my way in
this particular case, think whatever you please. You know very well I
would not ask it except for your own good. I don't like to interfere
with your plans, but--you must give that girl up." He spoke kindly, but
Gertrude and her mother sat silent long after he had gone. The twilight
had passed into darkness. Presently Katherine's voice broke the
silence:--

"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up
stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these
subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old
question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her
mother's side.

"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see
you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies
come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is
above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink."

She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own
down to a soft cheek.

"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is
enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear
it better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?"

Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she
threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go
back to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only
you are strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong
enough. I am not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness
and calm in her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her
eyes and the flush on her cheeks.

"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she
stroked her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With
her splendid spirit, that _she_ should be broken on the wheel!" the girl
said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not
light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the
street.

"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I
matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later
on, and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why
should my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use
as my guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and
distinct nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which
conforms to those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what
seems right to myself. I shall not desert--"

She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was
rising. It had never come to her before.

"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not--it is my
father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and--and--"
(the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives
me. He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the
rest, he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it
to please him--if they are not willing to--they have no right to stay,
and then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me.
If he wants--" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a
right to dictate? We have our places in _his_ home. We are not paid
wages like James and Susan, but--but--we are given what we have; we are
dependent. He has never refused us anything--any sum we wanted--but he
can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should.
Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not
know. What can _I_ afford?" She spread her hands out before her, palms
up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the electric
light in the street.

"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they
are helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the
conceit, and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is
true. A pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a
dependent and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness
save me! They have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they
were compelled to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a
dependent. Have I a right to stand against the will and pleasure of my
father, when by doing so I compel him to seem to sustain and support
that which he disapproves? Have I a right to do that?"

She was standing close to the window now, and she put her hot face
against the glass. "The problem is easy enough, if all think alike--if
one does not think at all; but now? I cannot follow my own conscience
and my father's too. We do not think alike. Is it right that I should,
to buy his approval and smiles, violate my own mind, and brain, and
heart? But is it right for me to violate _his_ sense of what is right,
while I live upon the lavish and loving bounty which he provides?"
And so, with her developed conscience, and reason, and individuality,
Gertrude had come to face the same problem, which, in its more brutal
form, had resulted so sorrowfully for the two girls whom she had hoped
to befriend. The ultimate question of individual domination of one by
another, with the purse as the final appeal--and even this strong and
fortunate girl wavered. "Shall I swim, after all? Have I the right to
try?" she asked herself.

XII.

When Francis King told Mr. Avery that she could and would leave her
father's home and live upon the money she earned, and had heretofore
looked upon as merely a resource to save her pride, she did not take
into consideration certain very important facts, not the least of which
was, perhaps, that her presence at the store was not wholly a pleasant
thing for the cashier to contemplate under existing circumstances.

Francis King was not a diplomat. The cashier was not a martyr. These two
facts, added to the girl's scornful eyes, rendered the position in the
trimming department far less secure than she had grown to believe.

So when she came to the little room which Gertrude Foster had provided
as a temporary home for Ettie Berton, she felt that she came as a help
and protector and not at all as a possible encumbrance.

"I've had a terrible blow-out with pa," she said, bitterly. "I can't
go home any more if I wanted to--and I don't want to. I told him what I
thought of him, and of your--and of the kind of men that make mean laws
they are ashamed to have their own folks know about and live by. He was
awful mad. He said laws was none o' my business, and he guessed men knew
best what was right an' good for women."

"Of course they do," said Ettie with her ever ready acquiescence. "I
reckon you didn't want t' deny _that,_ did you Fan? You 'n your pa must
a' shook hands for once anyhow," she laughed. "How'd it feel? Didn't you
like agreein' with him once?" Francis looked at the child--this pitiful
illustration of the theory of yielding acquiescence; this legitimate
blossom of the tree of ignorance and soft-hearted dependence; this poor
little dwarf of individuality; this helpless echo of masculine measures,
methods, and morals--and wondered vaguely why it was that the more
helpless the victim, the more complete her disaster, the more certain
was she to accept, believe in, and support the very cause and root of
her undoing.

Francis King's own mental processes were too disjointed and
ill-formulated to enable her to express the half-formed thoughts that
came to her. Her heart ached for her little friend to whom to-day was
always welcome, and to whom to-morrow never appeared a possibility other
than that it would be sunshiny, and warm, and comfortable.

Francis saw a certain to-morrow which should come to Ettie, far more
clearly than did the child herself, and seeing, sighed. Her impulse was
to argue the case hotly with Ettie, as she had done with her father; but
she looked at her face again, and then, as a sort of safety-valve for
her own emotion, succinctly said: "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest
fool I ever saw."

Ettie clapped her hands.

"Right you are, says Moses!" she exclaimed, laughing gleefully, "and you
like me for it. Folks with sense like fools. Sense makes people so awful
uncomfortable. Say, where'd you get that bird on your hat? Out 'o stock?
Did that old mean thing make you pay full price? Goodness! how I do wish
I could go back t' store!"

"Ettie, how'd you like for me to come here an live with you? Do you
'spose Miss Gertrude would care?"

"Hurrah for Cleveland!" exclaimed Ettie, springing to her feet and
throwing her arms about Francis. "Hurrah for Grant! Gracious, but I'm
glad! I'm just so lonesome I had to make my teeth ache for company," she
rattled on. "Miss Gertrude 'll be glad, too. She said she wisht I had
somebody 't take care of me. But, gracious! I don't need that. They
ain't nothing to do but just set still n' wait. It's the waitin' now
that makes me so lonesome. I want t' hurry 'n get back t' the store,
'n--"

She noticed Francis's look of surprise, not unmixed with frank scorn;
but she did not rightly interpret it.

"My place ain't gone is it, Fan?" she asked, in real alarm. "He said
he'd keep it for me."

"Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw," said Francis,
again, this time with a touch of hopelessness and pathos in her voice,
and at that moment there was a rap at the door. It was one of the cash
girls from the store. She handed Francis a note, and while Ettie and
the visitor talked gaily of the store, Francis read and covered her
pale face with her trembling hands. She was discharged "owing to certain
necessary changes to be made in the trimming department." She went and
stood by the window with her back to the two girls. She understood the
matter perfectly, and she did not dare trust herself to speak. It could
not be helped, she thought, and why let Ettie know that she had brought
this disaster upon her friend, also. Francis was trying to think. She
was raging within herself. Then it came to her that she had boldly
asserted that she would help protect and support Ettie. Now she was
penniless, helpless, and homeless herself. There were but two faces that
stood out before her as the faces of those to whom she could go for help
and counsel, and she was afraid to go to even these. She was ashamed,
humiliated, uncertain.

She supposed that Gertrude Foster could help her if she would. She had
that vague miscomprehension of facts which makes the less fortunate look
upon the daughters of wealth and luxury and love as possessed of a magic
wand which they need but stretch forth to compass any end. She did not
dream that at that very moment Gertrude Foster was revolving exactly the
same problem in her own mind, and reaching out vainly for a solution.
"What shall I do? what ought I to do? what can I do?" were questions
as real and immediate to Gertrude, in the new phase of life and thought
which had come to her, as they were to Francis in her extremity. It is
true that the greater part of the problem in Francis's mind dealt with
the physical needs of herself and her little friend, and with her own
proud and fierce anger toward her father and the cashier. It is also
true that these features touched Gertrude but lightly; but the highest
ideals, beliefs, aspirations, and love of her soul were in conflict
within her, and the basis of the conflict was the same with both girls.
Each had, in following the best that was within herself, come into
violent contact with established prejudice and prerogative, and each
was beating her wings, the one against the bars of a gilded cage draped
lovingly in silken threads, and the other was feeling her helplessness
where iron and wrath unite to hold their prey.

The other face that arose before Francis brought the blood back to her
face. She had not seen him since she had kissed his hand that night, and
she wondered what he thought of her. She felt ashamed to go to him for
help. She had talked so confidently to him that night of her own powers,
and of her determination that Ettie should not again live under the same
roof, and be subject to the will of the father whom she insisted was
a disgrace to the child. "I reckon _he_ could get me another place to
work--in a store," she thought. "But--" She shook her head, and a fierce
light came into her eyes. She had learned enough to know that a girl who
had left home under the wrath of her father, would best not appeal for
a situation under the protection and recommendation of a young gentleman
not of her own caste or condition in life. She thought of all this and
of what it implied, and it seemed to her that her heart would burst with
shame and rage.

Was she not a human being? Were there not more reasons than one why
another human unit should be kind to her and help her? If she were a boy
all this shame would be lifted from her shoulders, all these suspicions
and repression and artificial barriers would be gone. She wondered
if she could not get a suit of men's clothes, and so solve the whole
trouble. No one would then question her own right of individual and
independent action or thought. No one would then think it commendable
for her to be a useless atom, subordinating her whole individuality to
one man, to whose mental and moral tone she must bend her own, until
such time as he should turn her over to some other human entity,
whereupon she would be required to readjust all her mental and moral
belongings to accommodate the new master. How comfortable it would be,
she thought, to go right on year after year, growing into and out of
herself. Expanding her own nature, and finding the woman of to-morrow
the outcome of the girl of yesterday. She had once heard a teacher
explain about the chameleon with its capacity to adjust itself to and
take on the color of other objects. It floated into her mind that
girls were expected to be like chameleons. Instead of being John King's
daughter, with, of course, John King's ideas, status and aspirations, or
William Jones's wife--now metamorphosed into a tepid reflex of William
Jones himself--she thought how pleasant it would be to continue to be
Francis King, and not feel afraid to say so. The idea fascinated her.
Yes, she would get a suit of men's clothes, and henceforth have and feel
the dignity of individual responsibility and development. She slipped
out of the room and into the street. She thought she would order the
clothes as if "for a brother just my size." She could pay for a cheap
suit. She paused in front of a shop window, and the sight of her own
face in a glass startled her. She groaned aloud. She knew as she looked
that she was too handsome to pass for a man. It was a woman's face.
Then, too, how could she live with and care for Ettie? "No, _I'll_
have to go to _them_ for help," she said, desperately to herself, and
turning, faced Selden Avery coming across the street. The color flew
into her face, but she saw at a glance that he did not think of their
last meeting--or, at least, not of its ending. "I was just wishing I
could see you and Miss Gertrude," she said, bluntly, her courage coming
back when he paused, recognizing that she wished to speak further with
him than a mere greeting.

"Were you?" he said, smiling. "Our thoughts were half-way the same then,
for I was wishing to see her, too."

She thought how pleasant and soft his voice was, and she tried to modify
the tones of her own.

"I was goin't' ask you--her--what to do about--about something," she
said, falteringly.

"So was I," he smiled back, showing his perfect teeth. "She will have to
be very, very wise to advise us both, will she not? Shall we go to her
now? And together? Perhaps our united wisdom may solve both your problem
and mine. Three people ought to be three times as wise as one, oughtn't
they?"

XIII.

"When Gertrude came forward to meet Selden Avery and Francis King, she
felt the disapproving eyes of her father fixed upon her. It was a new
and a painful sensation. It made her greeting less free and frank than
usual, and both Avery and Francis felt without being able to analyze it.

"She don't like me to be with him," thought Francis, and felt humiliated
and hurt.

"Surely Gertrude cannot doubt me," was Avery's mental comment, and a
sore spot in his heart, left by a comment made at the club touching
Gertrude's friendship for this same tall, fiery girl at his side, made
itself felt again. John Martin exchanged glances with Gertrude's father.
Avery saw, and seeing, resented what he believed to be its meaning.

The three men bowed rather stiffly to each other. Francis felt that she
was, somehow, to blame. She wished that she had not come. She longed
to go, but did not know what to say nor how to start. The situation was
awkward for all. Gertrude wished for and yet dreaded the entrance of her
mother.

Avery felt ashamed to explain, but he began as if speaking to Gertrude
and ended with a look of challenge at the two men facing him. "I chanced
to meet Miss King in the street and as both of us stood in need of
advice from you," he was trying to smile unconcernedly, "we came up the
avenue together."

There was a distinct look of displeasure and disapproval upon Mr.
Foster's face, while John Martin took scant pains to conceal his
disgust. He, also, had heard, and repeated, the club gossip to
Gertrude's father.

"If good advice is what you want particularly," said Mr. Foster, slowly,
"I don't know but that I might accommodate you. I hardly think Gertrude
is in a position to--to--"

The bell rang sharply and in an instant the little cash girl from the
store rushed in gasping for breath.

"Come quick! quick! Ettie is killed! She fell down stairs and then--oh,
something _awful_ happened! I don't know what it was. The doctor is
there. He sent me here, 'cause Ettie cried and called for you!" She was
looking at Gertrude, who started toward the door.

"Go back and tell the doctor that Miss Foster cannot come," said her
father, rising.

"Certainly not, I should hope," remarked John Martin under his breath;
"the most preposterous idea!" Gertrude paused. She was looking at her
father with appeal in her face. Then her eyes fell upon the tense lips
and piercing gaze of Francis King who, half way to the street door, had
turned and was looking first from one to the other.

"Papa," said Gertrude, "don't say that. I must go. It is right that I
should, and I must." Then with outstretched hands, "I want to go, papa!
I need to. Don't--"

"You will do nothing of the kind, Gertrude. It is outrageous. What
business have you got with that kind of girls? I _asked_ you to stop
having them come here, and I told you to let them alone. I am perfectly
disgusted with Avery, here, for--" He had thought Francis was gone. The
drapery where she had turned to hear what Gertrude would say hid her
from him. "_With that kind of girls!_" was ringing in her ears. "I hope
when you are married _that_ is not the sort of society he is going to
surround you with. It--" Avery saw for the first time what the trouble
was. He stepped quickly to Gertrude's side and slipped one arm about
her. Then he took the hand she still held toward her father.

"My wife shall have her own choice. She is as capable as I to choose.
I shall not interfere. She shall not find me a master, but a comrade.
Gertrude is her own judge and my adviser. That is all I ask, and it is
all I assume for myself as her husband--when that time comes," he added,
with her hand to his lips.

Mrs. Foster entered attired for the street. The unhappy face of Francis
King with wide eyes staring at Gertrude met her gaze. She had heard what
went before. "Get your hat, Gertrude," she said. "I will go with you. It
might take too long to get a carriage. Francis, come with me; Gertrude
will follow us. Come with her, my son," she said, to Selden Avery, and
a spasm of happiness swept over his face. She had never called him that
before. He stooped and kissed her, and there were tears in the young
man's eyes as Mrs. Foster led Francis King away.

"I suppose it was all my fault to begin with," said John Martin, when
the door had closed behind them. "It all started from that visit to the
Spillinis. The only way to keep the girls of this age in--" he was going
to say "in their place," but he changed to 'where they belong,' "is not
to let them find out the facts of life. Charity and religion did well
enough to appease the consciences of women before they had colleges, and
all that. I didn't tell you so at the time, but I always did think it
was a mistake to send Gertrude to a college where she could measure her
wits with men. She'll never give it up. She don't know where to stop."

Mr. Foster lighted a cigar--a thing he seldom did in the drawing-room.
He handed one to John Martin.

"I guess you're right, John," he said, slowly. "She can't seem to see
that graduation day ended all that. It was Katherine's idea, sending her
there, though. I wanted her to go to Vassar or some girl's school like
that. I don't know what to make of Katherine lately; when I come to
think of it, I don't know what to make of her all along. She seems to
have laid this plan from the first, college and all; but I never saw
it. Sometimes I'm afraid--sometimes I almost think--" He tapped his
forehead and shook his head, and John Martin nodded contemplatively, and
said: "I shouldn't wonder if you are right, Fred. Too much study is a
dangerous thing for women. The structure of their brains won't stand
it. It is sad, very sad;" and they smoked in sympathetic silence, while
James had hastened below stairs to assure Susan that he thought he'd
catch himself allowing his sweetheart or wife to demean herself and
disgrace him by having anything to do with a person in the position of
Ettie Berton. And Susan had little doubt that James was quite right,
albeit Susan felt moderately sure that in a contest of wits--after the
happy day--she could be depended upon to get her own way by hook or by
crook, and Susan had no vast fund of scruple to allay as to method or
motive. Deception was not wholly out of Susan's line. Its necessity did
not disturb her slumbers.

XIV.

Some one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was
dying, and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter
gentleman did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in
going. He did not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care.
She had faced him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the
morning after she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really
originated, but which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the
earnest behest of a social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in
the interest of virtue, but who was at the present moment engaged in
lobbying vigorously in the interest of vice.

When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two
men there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the
bed, and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you
bring him and--and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where
he is, an'--an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring _all_ of
your kind that helped along the job?"

Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned.

"Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was
standing before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis.
That can do no good. They did not intend--" "No'm," began Berton,
awkwardly; "no'm, I didn't once think o' _my_ girl, n--" He glanced
uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed.

"Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said
Katherine.

"No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague.

"Don't tell me!" exclaimed Francis. "You don't none of you care for her.
He only cares because it is his girl an' disgraces _him_. What did he
do? Care for her? No, he drove her off. That shows who he's a-carin'
for. He ain't sorry because it hurts or murders her. He never tried to
make it easy for her an' say he was a lot more to blame an'--an'--a
big sight worse every way than she was. He's a-howling now about bein'
sorry; but he's only sorry for himself. He'd a let her starve--an' so'd
_he_," she said, pointing to her father. She was trembling with rage
and excitement. "I hope there is a hell! I jest hope there is! I'll be
willin' to go to it myself jest t' see--"

The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden
Avery.

"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of
the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish
to God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an'--an' put
under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on--none of
'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an'
men--men jest love to be mean!"

She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling
and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into
tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she
sobbed: "Even _her_ father's jest like the rest, only--only he says it
easier. He--"

"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were
outside the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and--and
you are partly wrong, besides. If--"

"I didn't mean _him_," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her eyes.
"I didn't mean _him._ I know what he thinks about it. I heard him talk
one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is square. But
_I_ wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel Gabriel an'
give him a chance to lord it over me!"

Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open
door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go
in, you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been
stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the
faces about her, began to sob aloud.

"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do--anything anybody
wants. I like to. The store--" She gave a great shriek of agony. She
had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly
conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to
sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room.
The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr.
King.

"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin'
disgrace on a good man's name!"

The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and
solicitude for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been
noticeable to the least observant that his theory was, that the custody
of that desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members
of a family. Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the
family 'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a
long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of
a male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for
a part of its adherents.

Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the
beaten path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and
felt that "his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly
the code, he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact,
but if any one were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was
compromising her honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking
in what he was pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner
a hypocrite. His sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track.
Was it not the masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not
that final? Was not all other reason and logic merely a spurious
emotionalism? morbid? unwholesome? irrational?

No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which
was much the same thing--and since the opinion of neither of these was
valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point
of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting
majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and
ethics with Representative King--when the voting majority was on his
side.

When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she
yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which
had been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the
death itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He
buried his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face
that would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no
more, and wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable
enough, under all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated
later to Francis that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after
all, Ettie _was_ only the legitimate result of her training and the
social and legal conditions which he had helped to make and sustain,
Representative King curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his
opinion Tom Berton never could be relied on to be anything but a damned
fool? In the long run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up
well in any line; but unless someone else held the reins after that the
devil would be to pay and no mistake.

Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her
tear-swollen eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to
be disgraced by the presence of a father like that was more than she
could bear. She could work or she could die; but there was nothing on
this earth, she felt, that would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as
for her to ever again acknowledge his authority as her guide.

"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think
of a plan--"

"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver;
for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her
type and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go
home, an' I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid
for this month. I'll take her place here an'--an' try to find another
place to work."

Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with
terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not
go home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung
this fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would
have been glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would
prefer even this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and
the thoughts and imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of
unreasoning fear. Her father did not ask her to go home. Representative
King believed in representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not
the figure which stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask
the members of his household to do things. He told them that he wanted
certain lines of action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the
will of that ideal unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King
and he proposed to represent it in all things.

If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed
a personality other than and different from his own, Representative King
did not propose to be disturbed in his home-life--as he persisted in
calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the
iron hand of power ever upon the throat of submission--to the extent of
having such unseemly personality near him.

In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King
was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was
of opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that
power suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he
held to this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to
each other in what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other
relations he held far otherwise--unless he chanced to be on the side
of power and had a fair voting majority. Representative King was an
enthusiastic admirer of submission--for other people. He thought that
there was nothing like self-denial to develop the character and beauty
of a nature. It is true that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the
fact that John Berton "had no head of his own," but then, John Berton
was a man, and a man ought to have some self-respect. He ought to
develop his powers and come to something definite. A definite woman
was a horror. Her attractiveness depended upon her vagueness, so
Representative King thought; and if a large voting majority was not with
him in open expression, he felt reasonably sure that he could depend
upon them in secret session, so to speak. Representative King was not
a linguist, but he could read between the social and legal lines very
cleverly indeed, and finer lines of thought than these were not for
Representative King.

And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my
way and says so, she can come," he thought.

"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude
that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the
future "unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by
means of a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her
dead friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms
of loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow.

XV.

"Francis told me once at the Guild that she can make delicious bread and
pastry," said Gertrude, as they drove home. "I wonder if we could not
start her in a little shop of her own. She has the energy and vim to
build herself a business. I doubt if she will every marry--with her
experience one can hardly wonder--and there is a long life before her.
Her salvation will be work; a career, success."

"A career in a pastry shop seems droll enough," smiled her mother,
"but--"

"I think I might influence the club to take a good deal of her stuff.
We've a miserable pastry cook now," said Avery. "That would help her
to get a start, and the start is always the hard part, I suppose, in a
thing like that."

"That would be a splendid chance. If the members liked her things,
perhaps they would get their wives to patronize her, too," said
Gertrude, gaily. "I'm so glad you thought of that, but then you always
think of the right thing," she added, tenderly. They all three laughed a
little, and Avery slipped his arm about her.

"Do I?" he asked in a voice tremulous with happiness. "Do I, Darling?
I'm so glad you said that, for I've just been thinking that--that I
don't want to go back to Albany without you, and--and the new session
begins in ten weeks. Darling, will you go with me? May she, my mother?"
he asked, catching Mrs. Foster's hand in his own. The two young people
were facing her. She sat alone on the back seat of the closed carriage.
The street lights were beginning to blossom and flicker. The rays fell
upon the mother's face as they drove. Her eyes were closed, and tears
were on her cheeks.

"Forgive me, mother," said Avery, tenderly. "Forgive me! You have gone
through so much to-day. I should have waited; but--but I love her so. I
need her so--I need her to help me think right. Can you understand?"

Mrs. Foster moved to one side and held out both arms to her daughter.

"Sit by me," she said, huskily, and Gertrude gathered her in her young,
strong arms.

"Can I understand?" half sobbed Katherine from her daughter's shoulder.
"Can I understand? Oh, I do! I do! and I am so happy for you both; but
she--she is _my_ daughter, and it is so hard to let her go--even to you!
It is so hard!"

Gertrude could not speak. She tried to look at her lover, but tears
filled her eyes. She was holding her mother's hand to her lips.

"Dear little mamma," she whispered; "dear little mamma, I shall never go
if it makes you unhappy--never, if it breaks my heart. But mamma, I love
you more because I love him; and--"

"I know, I know," said Katherine, trying to struggle out of her
heartache which held back and beyond itself a tender joy for these two.
"But love is so selfish. I _am_ glad. I am glad for you both--but--oh,
my daughter, I love you, _I_ love you!" she said, and choked down a sob
to smile in the girl's eyes.

Mr. Foster was waiting for them in the library. They were late. He had
been thinking.

"Well, I'm tremendously glad you're back," he said brightly, kissing
his wife, and then he took Gertrude in his arms. "Sweetheart," he said,
smiling down into her eyes, "if I seemed harsh to-day, I'm sorry. I only
did it because I thought it was for your own good. You know that."

"Why, papa," she said, with her cheek against his own; "of course I
know. Of course I understand. We all did. You don't mind if we did not
see your way? You--"

"The girl is dead, dear," said Mrs. Foster, touching her husband's arm,
"and--let us not talk of that now, to--to these, our children. They want
your--they want to ask--they are going to be married in ten weeks?"

"The dickens!" exclaimed her father, and held Gertrude at arm's length.
"Is that so, Sweetheart?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, and he lifted
her chin with one finger and then kissed her. "The dickens! Well, all
I've got to say is, I'm sorry for old Martin and the rest of us," and
he grasped Selden Avery's hand. "I hope you'll give up that legislative
foolishness pretty soon and come back to town and live with civilized
people in a civilized way. It'll be horribly lonely in New York without
Gertrude, but--oh, well, its nature's way. We're all a lot of robbers.
I stole this little woman away from her father, and I'm an unrepentent
thief yet, am I not?" and he kissed his wife with the air of a man who
feels that life is well worth living, no matter what its penalties, so
long as she might be not the least of them.