H. R.

by Edwin Lefevre

FREE OF CHARGE!

Everybody started for the floor.

H. R. left the stage and walked into the Goodchild box. Grace had been receiving congratulations all the evening until she had convinced herself that this was her dinner. It was all H. R. could do to force his way through the plutocracy in the Imperial Box. Talking to Grace at the same time were three young men who never before had accepted Mrs. Goodchild's invitations to marry Grace. But Grace was now the most-talked-of girl in all New York. And she was officially very beautiful and Goodchild père was not enough. And Grace was very kind to all of them. All empresses are kindly when they haven't Dyspepsia or Dynamite Dreams. All unpleasant things seem to begin with a "D." There is Death and Damnation; also Duty.

Mr. Goodchild frowned when he saw H. R. in the box. But when he saw that H. R. never even looked at him he became really angry.

Mrs. Goodchild looked alarmed and hissed, "Don't you talk to him, Grace!"

Grace, knowing herself desired by the most eligible young men in her set, decided to squelch H. R. in public. H. R., however, walked past everybody, looking neither to left nor right. Feeling themselves treated as so many chairs or hat-racks, the élite of New York began to feel like intruders.

Then, as an imperial mandate is given, H. R. said to Miss Goodchild:

"We're needed!"

He offered her his arm. The young men rose and made room for him. Duty called, and they never interfered with duty.

Grace hypnotically obeyed, for H. R. was frowning. Together they walked down to the floor of the Garden.

The Public Sentiment Corps did their duty. They had not yet received the beer. They shouted, frenziedly:

"H. R.! H. R.! H. R.!"

The public took up the cheering. Thousands of outstretched hands reached out for his. But H. R. merely bowed, right and left, and walked to the middle of the floor.

"Smile at them!" he whispered, fiercely, to Grace.

She did. She knew then what it was to be a Queen. She felt an overpowering kindliness toward all these delightful, simple people. Reggie was not brilliant, but that wasn't expected of a Van Duzen. She did not love Reggie, but she liked him. As Mrs. Van Duzen she would always have what she liked. She would never marry H. R.! It was preposterous.

The band began to play. The crowd, instead of dancing, moved toward the sides—to give H. R. room to dance.

Never before on Manhattan Island had such a triumph of personality fallen to the lot of any man.

H. R. put his arm about Grace Goodchild. She shrank from the symbolism of bondage.

"The world is looking on!" he admonished her.

Knowing that she danced very well, she now had but one fear—that her partner might make her ridiculous.

But H. R. was the best dancer she had ever honored.

She felt her resolution not to marry him slipping away. He led divinely. She felt that she herself had never danced so well in her life. He brought out the best that was in her.

"Ever try the Rutgers Roll?" he whispered, tensely.

"N-no! she gasped.

"Let yourself go!"

When a woman lets herself go, all is over except the terms of the capitulation. She let herself go desperately, because she was forced to do it; fearfully, because of the appalling possibility of a fiasco.

She did not know how it was done. She had looped the loop and was still dancing away—a new but unutterably graceful undulation of torso and rhythmical leg work and exquisite sinuous motions of the arms and hands.

A storm of applause came to her ears, a hurricane steeped in saccharine. A man who could dance like that was fit to be any girl's husband!

The élite flocked on the floor and began to indulge in old-fashioned specialties, some of which were nearly a fortnight old. You heard delighted remarks:

"That's Mrs. Vandergilt!"

"There goes Reggie Van Duzen!"

"Look at Katherine Van Schaick!"

Then the New York that Americans call ruffianly, impolite, vulgar, selfish, spendthrift, money-loving, self-satisfied, and stupid, also began to dance decorously! The veteran reporters did not believe their eyes, but they made a note of the fact, nevertheless.

Grace was nearly out of breath. She said, "I'm—I'm—I'm—"

"Certainly, dear girl." And H. R. deftly piloted her out of the crush. They stopped dancing, and he gave her his arm. She took it.

"Grace," he said, "when will you marry me?"

"Never!" she answered, determinedly. "And you must not call me Grace."

"Right-O!" he said, gratefully. "I'll call to-morrow afternoon. Shall I speak to Bishop Phillipson, or will father—"

"I said never!" she frowned.

"I heard you," he smiled, reassuringly. "I—"

Andrew Barrett and the reporters came up to him.

"What about the men that fell for the beer?"

"Oh, give 'em the left-over grub, if you boys think it's right. But don't print it. The W. C. T. U. would howl at the thought of giving food to people who had first wanted booze."

Grace looked on, marveling at the way he ordered things done and at the way men listened to his words.

"But what about that ten-thousand-dollar cash to the coupon-holders?" asked young Mr. Lubin, finally taking his eyes off the beautiful capitalist. Feeling that he was beginning to condone with capitalistic crimes, he spoke sternly to H. R. in self-defense.

"Oh yes!" said H. R. and turned to Grace. "My dear, I'll have to leave you. Shall I take you to mother?"

Reggie Van Duzen saved him the trip.

"Say, Mr. Rutgers, could I have—"

"Yes, my boy!" gratefully smiled H. R. He shook hands with Reggie and said, very seriously, "I leave her in your care!"

Reggie, who was very young and careless, flushed proudly. Here was a man who understood men! He would protect Grace with his life. And it gave him a new respect for other women.

"I don't blame you, Grace," he said, with his twelve-year-old's smile that clung to him through life and made even poor people like him. "He is a wonder! Beekman Rutgers had the nerve to tell me that all the Rutgerses are like H. R. What do you think of that?"

Grace answered, "Certainly not!"

She was not going to marry H. R., but if you intend to have it known that you have refused to marry a man who is crazy to marry you, the greater the man the greater the refusal. She added, with conviction:

"There is only one Rutgers like that and his first name is Hendrik."

Reggie nodded, looked at her, sighed, and began to dance.

He didn't touch H. R. as a dancer.

"Can you do the Rutgers Roll?" she asked.

"No!" he confessed.

She could never marry Reggie. She knew it now. But of course she would not marry H. R.

In the mean time H. R., accompanied by the reporters, drove to the Cardinal's residence. They explained their mission to a pleasant-faced young priest and sent in their cards.

The young priest began to make excuses and spoke of the lateness of the hour.

H. R. said to him, deferentially: "Monsignor, we have come to the Cardinal because he is the supreme authority in this case. The Mayor of New York and the representative of the Socialist press, Mr. Lubin, here, have agreed to leave it to the decision of his Eminence."

The Cardinal sent back word that he would see Mr. Rutgers.

H. R. went in alone. He saw not the head of the Catholic hierarchy, but a man in whose eyes was that light which comes from believing in God and from hearing the truth from fellow-men who told him their sins. H. R. bowed respectfully before the aged priest.

"How may I help you? asked the Cardinal. He was an old man and this was a young man. No more; no less; both of them children.

"Your Eminence, I am the unfortunate American who in his misguided way has tried to feed the hungry in order that New York's grown children may realize that charity is not dead. If I have used the methods of a mountebank it is because I have labored where God had been forgotten, almost."

"Generalities are not always verities, though they may come close to them. I know about your work. I shall be glad to do what I can for you."

"Thank you, sir. I promised to give ten thousand dollars in cash to any New-Yorker who could answer this question: What is it we have all heard about from earnest childhood and that we acknowledge exists; that is neither a person nor a beast, neither a thing nor an object, but something that no man can kill, though it is dead to-day; that all men need and most New-Yorkers neglect; that should be present everywhere and is found in no trade? The answer is a word of five letters and begins with 'A.' There is a synonym that, though not exactly obsolete, is at least obsolescent."

"Five letters? Is it in English?" smiled the Cardinal.

"It is in every good English dictionary. I think the dictionary is the only place in which I can find it nowadays."

"Oh no, my son." And the Cardinal shook his head in kindly dissent.

"Reverend sir, I said anybody with brains could guess it."

"It was not an ingenuous question, Mr. Rutgers."

"It was a coupon that entitled anybody who held it to answer the question and get ten thousand dollars. It was part of a ticket for which the holder paid twenty-five cents to feed a starving fellow-being. But what I wish you to do is to assure the reporters that it was a legitimate question. The word is Anima."

"I knew it."

"Because you use it every day."

"But your condition—"

"New York's condition, your Eminence," corrected H. R., politely. "I said the synonym, soul, would answer. Nobody won the ten thousand dollars. New York will cudgel its brains because it did not win the ten thousand dollars. In searching for the missing word it may find something more precious—the missing soul."

"Your way is not our way, but perhaps—" The Cardinal was silent, his kindly eyes meditatively bent on H. R.

"The reporters, your Eminence—" began H. R., apologetically.

"Ah yes!" And the white-haired prelate accompanied H. R. to the room where the reporters were waiting.

"I have heard Mr. Rutgers's question. The word of five letters beginning with an 'A' I think answers it, from his point of view, which is not unreasonable. I cannot say that the inability to guess proves the non-possession of brains—"

"The Cardinal knew at once," put in H. R.

"But that nobody should have guessed is astonishing."

"They were not all Christians," explained H. R.

"What is the answer?" asked a reporter.

"A word of five letters beginning with 'A,'" said H. R.

"Can't we publish it?"

"It is our secret now. New York is very rich. When it discovers that one word—or its synonym of four letters—it will be infinitely richer in every way."

The reporters brightened up. They saw columns and columns of guesses. But the Cardinal looked thoughtful. Then he said to H. R.:

"Come and see me again."

"Thank you. I will, your Eminence."

The Cardinal bowed his head gravely and H. R. and the newspaper men left.

"Are you a Catholic?" the World man asked.

"No," answered H. R., doubtfully.

"All roads lead to Rome," interrupted Lubin, with a sneer.

"Excepting one, Lubin," said H. R., pleasantly. "Keep on going, my boy. It's nice and warm there."

---

XXV

The newspapers did nobly. Too many prominent names were involved for them not to print the news. There was an opportunity for using real humor and impressive statistics in describing the new labor-saving machinery. The marvelous efficiency of H. R. as a practical philanthropist, demonstrated by his elimination of people who had money with which to buy food, and the simple but amazing efficacy of his Thirst-Detector raised the story to the realm of pure literature.

There was also a serious aspect to the entire affair. All the hungry men, women, and children in Greater New York that had no money had been fed. Assuming, as was probable, that most of the hungry were not bona-fide residents of New York, it showed that in the metropolis of the Western World less than one-thousandth of the total population were hungry and penniless. No other city in the world could boast of such statistics.

But H. R.'s work was not done. Before he retired for the night, knowing that his position in society and in the world of affairs was established on an adamant base, he nevertheless composed thirty-eight communications for the Public Sentiment Corps to send out the next day to the newspapers. A sample will suffice:

It has been clearly proven that New York is a great big city with a great big heart. As always, it responded generously to the call of Charity. The Hunger Feast at Madison Square Garden was an extraordinary bit of municipal psychology and an illuminating object-lesson. Why not make permanent a state of mind of the public which does so much to dispel the danger of a bloody revolution? Social unrest can be cured by only one thing: Charity! Man does not need justice. He needs the good-will of other men. The newspapers have it in their power to check the hysterical and un-American clamor against individual fortunes. They can throw open their columns! Treat Charity as if it were as important as baseball or at least billiards. Carry a regular Department of Charity every day. Give your readers a chance to be kind. It will be a novelty to many, but it will help all—the giver no less than the beneficiary. If you will agree, Mr. Editor, I'll send check.

Other specimens emphasized the non-sectarian phase of such charities as that conceived and carried to success by one of the most remarkable men in a city where the best brains of the country admittedly resided. Intelligent charity, wisely discriminating, truly helpful, had been placed for all time among the possibilities. Systematized charities were delusions, chimeras, thin air. There was a demand for the opportunity to be decent and kind. Let the newspapers supply it. "If your readers want lurid accounts of murder trials and divorce cases, let them have them. If they want expert advice on how to help their fellow-men give it to them, also. It remains to be seen whether there is one newspaper in New York that knows real news when it sees it!"

There were thirty-eight epistolary models in all.

In the afternoon of the day following the Mammoth Hunger Feast H. R. called at the Goodchild house.

"Frederick, tell Miss Grace—"

"She 'as gone, sir!" said Frederick, tragically.

"Did she leave word when she would return?"

"She 'as gone, sir!" persisted Frederick, in abysmal distress at the news and at his inability to convey it in letters of molten meteors. He added, "To Philadelphia."

It sounded to him like Singapore. He did not think there was much difference, anyhow.

"Philadelphia?" echoed H. R., blankly.

"Yes, sir!" said Frederick, with sad triumph.

"Whatever in the world can she—" H. R. caught himself in time. He nearly had reduced himself to the level of humanity—well called dead level—by confessing ignorance aloud.

"Mrs. Goodchild is at 'ome, sir!" suggested Frederick, ingratiatingly.

"Damned good place for her!" muttered H. R., savagely, and gave Frederick a five-dollar gold piece. In some respects, Frederick admitted, America was ahead of the old country.

H. R. walked away frowning fiercely. He went nearly a block before he smiled. Love always interferes with the chemistry of the stomach and hits the brain through the toxins. What an ass he was not to have realized the truth on the instant:

Grace had run away from him!

He returned to his office and told Andrew Barrett to set the Public Sentiment Corps at work on the thirty-eight models he had prepared. Then he wrote forty-two more. The consciousness of Grace's confessed weakness gave him an eloquence he himself had never before known. They were masterpieces.

The newspapers always know they have made a bull's-eye when they get letters from their readers. It is an obvious fact that a man who writes is a steady customer—at least, until his communication is printed.

The Public Sentiment Corps merely started the ball rolling. An avalanche of letters from all sorts and conditions of men, women, and merchants descended upon the editorial offices.

It became clear, even to the newspapers, that people in New York were willing to give, but they didn't know how. The papers, therefore, announced that they would thereafter run Charity as a regular department. It would be strictly non-sectarian. The world's greatest authorities and most eminent philanthropists had been asked to contribute—not money; articles. The World printed a full-page biography of St. Vincent de Paul and satanically invited some of its pet aversions to send in their autobiographies.

All the papers informed the charitable men and women of New York that checks, clothing, supplies, etc., could be sent to the Charity editor.

All the papers, also, invited H. R. to accept the editorship of the page. His duties would consist of allowing his name to be printed at the top of the page.

He declined their offers with profound regret, but promised to give interviews to the reporters whenever they wished. Personal matters precluded his acceptance of their kind invitations.

The personal matters consisted of the boom in sandwich advertising. It was not uncommon to see "Sandwich-board Maker, approved by the S. A. S. A.," in signs in various parts of the city. A new industry!

---

XXVI

In the mean time Grace was in Philadelphia. She had gone there for sundry reasons. The telephone calls told on her nerves. Mr. Goodchild had to install a new one, the number of which was not printed in the Directory but confided to intimate friends. Requests for autographs, interviews, money, food, advice, name of soap habitually used, permission to name massage ointments and face lotions after her, contributions to magazines, and ten thousand other things had been coming in by mail or were made in person by friends and strangers until Grace, in desperation, decided to go on a visit to Philadelphia. She craved peace.

Ruth Fiddle had long urged her to come. Grace had agreed to be one of her bridesmaids in June and Ruth naturally wished to discuss marriage, generally and particularly.

Ruth delightedly met Grace at the station. Two young men were with her. One was her fiancé. The other was a very nice chap who had blood, brains, and boodle. His ancestors had been William Penn's grandfather's landlords in Bristol, England, and he himself had once written a story which he had sent to the Saturday Evening Post. His father was in coal, railroads, and fire insurance.

They decided to adjourn to the Fairview-Hartford for luncheon. Before so doing they talked.

Ruth asked a thousand excited questions about the Hunger Feast, fame, and the Rutgers Roll. Grace answered, and then confided to Ruth her iron resolve never to marry H. R. She admitted that he was as great as the papers said, even greater, and, besides, good-looking. But her determination was inflexible.

Ruth, to show she approved, told Grace that Monty—the writer—was her fiancé's chum and African hunting-companion. Monty himself told Miss Goodchild that there was a good story in the whole affair. In fact, two stories. In both of them the heroine—he looked at her and nodded his head convincingly. "Drawn from life," he added. "Of course I'll have to know you—I mean, the heroine—better. But don't you think she'd make a great one?"

She wasn't thrilled a bit. She was not even politely interested. What was such talk, Grace impartially asked herself, to one who had been madly cheered by thousands?

Still, he was a nice boy, not so consciously clever as New-Yorkers who chose to regard themselves as vaudeville wits.

Finally they got into the waiting motor and went to the Fairview-Hartford, where the eating is better than in any New York hotel.

As they were about to enter the dining-room Grace Goodchild put on her restaurant look of utter unconsciousness and stone deafness and blindness, which had grown into a habit since she became famous.

She entered the dining-room ahead of the others, as usual. She took nine steps before she stopped short. Her face went pale.

Nobody had stopped eating!

Nobody had turned around to stare!

Nobody had stage-whispered, "There she is!"

No woman had said, "Do you think she is as beautiful as the newspapers try to make out?"

Not one imbecile male look; not one feminine sneer! Nothing! No fame!

"What's the matter?" asked Monty in alarm.

Grace felt an overwhelming desire to stand there until the people looked, even if it took a year.

As the century-long seconds passed she barely could resist the impulse to shout, "Fire!"

"Anything wrong?" whispered Monty, with real concern.

"N-no-nothing!" she stammered, and followed Ruth, who had passed her, unnoticing.

Her color returned as wrath dispelled amazement.

For the first time since H. R. began to woo her in public places with sandwiches Grace Goodchild actually had to eat food in a restaurant. In New York famous people don't go to restaurants to eat.

She was distraite throughout the luncheon. She thought Monty was an ass.

And the other feeding beasts must have read the New York papers! There was absolutely no excuse.

In the evening the same thing happened. That is, nothing happened. The Fiddles' friends tried to be particularly nice to her by talking of the opera, novels, the dancing-craze, the resurgence of the Republican party, and cubism. It only made it worse. And not one knew the Rutgers Roll!

The next day Ruth and the young men took her to the Philadelphia Country Club. Same thing! And later to a dance at the Fitz-Marlton. Ditto!

Her good looks, her gowns, and her nice manners made a very favorable impression on all of Ruth's friends, male and female, young and old. Hang 'em, that's all it did!

It was like Lucullus being asked to eat sanitary biscuits.

She had wanted peace. But not in a burial crypt. On the fourth day of extinction she said to Ruth after breakfast:

"My dear, I must return to New York!"

"Oh no! Grace, darling, I've accepted seventeen—"

"I must, Ruth. I simply must!"

"But Monty is coming at one to take us to his father's—"

Grace felt like saying that Monty could take himself to Hades or to Atlantic City. But she merely shook her head. She dared not trust herself to speak. Ruth appealed to her mother. But Mrs. Fiddle shrugged her shoulders and said: "No use! New York!" She herself was a Van Duzen.

And so Grace Goodchild returned home, five days before she was expected.

"I couldn't stand it, mother," she explained, almost tearfully.

"Very well," said Mrs. Goodchild.

What else can a mother say in New York? And isn't it right to stand by your own flesh and blood?

Grace hesitated, full of perplexities and unformulated doubts and an exasperating sense of indecision. She felt like opening the book of her soul to other eyes. To hear advice or, at least, opinions.

"I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you, mother," said Grace, hesitatingly. Then she apologized, self-defensively. "It concerns my future, dear."

"Yes, darling," said Mrs. Goodchild, absently. "I don't think. I'd like it quite like Celestine's— Grace, love, will you run over to Raquin's spring exhibition at the Fitz-Marlton and look at it? It is next to the black that Mrs. Vandergilt liked. I have an appointment with Celestine—"

Grace knew that the selection of a husband could wait, for fashions in that line do not change so quickly as in skirts. She dutifully said, "I will!" She also had her eye on one.

Before going to Raquin's display she stopped at Oldman's.

The store flunky opened the door of her motor and smiled happily when he saw who it was. She was made subtly conscious that he was dying to announce her name to the world at the top of his enthusiastic voice. Life in New York had its compensations, after all.

She entered. The shop-girls whispered to the customers on whom they were waiting. The customers turned quickly and stared at Grace Goodchild.

"She often comes here!" she heard the pretty little thing in charge of seventy-two glove-boxes say proudly to a client.

The girl who waited on Grace was a stranger. Nevertheless, when Grace told her "I'll take these!" the girl said, "Very well, Miss Goodchild."

"Oh!" gasped Grace. "You know me?"

"What d'ye t'ink I am?" said the girl, indignantly. "Say, it was great, Miss Goodchild!"

The worship in the girl's eyes kept the language from being offensive.

"Thank you!"

"I hope you'll be very happy, Miss Goodchild," said the girl, and blushed. "Oh, I didn't mean to be—I—I couldn't help wishing it, Miss Goodchild!"

"I'm sure I'm very grateful for your good wishes," Grace told her, graciously.

The child's—age twenty-four—eyes filled with tears. As Grace walked away, Mayme's lips moved raptly. She was memorizing dem woids.

On her way out Grace went through the same craning of necks, the same vivid curiosity, the same half-audible murmurs, the same spitefulness in the eyes of the women who, though rich, were not famous. Everybody is so disgustingly rich nowadays that society had begun to applaud such remarks as, "I've had to give up one of my motors," or, "Jim says he won't put the Mermaid in commission this year; simply can't afford it."

At Raquin's wonderful exhibition of models Grace saw exactly what she wished to see. It would be worthy of her and of her throat. One who is photographed many times a week has to have gowns; not to have them is almost immoral. Grace was so concerned with doing her duty toward the public that she forgot that she had come to see the third one, next to Mrs. Vandergilt's black. She was nearly half-way home before she remembered what her mother had asked her to do.

Grace went back to the Fitz-Marlton. Dress was a public service. Mrs. Goodchild's clothes must tell the public whose mother she was.

She told the chauffeur "Home," and began to think.

Pleasure could be made a duty. Blessed indeed is she in whose mind, as in a vast cathedral, pleasure and duty solemnly contract nuptials.

This beautiful figure of speech in turn made her think of marriage. If she married Reggie or Mr. Watson or Percival or one of the others, what would her married life be? What?

One long visit to Philadelphia!

"I could kill him!" she said to the flower-holder, frowning fiercely. Happening to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror for that purpose provided in an town cars, Grace smoothed her brow and smiled. A man would have required slathers of flattery to dispel ill-humor. With a woman, the truth is enough. A mirror does not lie. Providence is more than kind to them; even automatic.

If she wouldn't marry Reggie or the others and did marry H. R.— But how could she?

She was an imaginative American girl with a sunshiny soul and much vitality who lived in New York. She thought of her marriage to H. R. She thought of the newspapers! The mound of clippings that instantly loomed before her made her gasp.

What wouldn't the newspapers do when she married H. R., especially if H. R., prompted by love, really made an effort?

She was forced to admit that he was a remarkable man!

"Papa," she said aloud, "will never consent!"

Papa's life had been made miserable by H. R. Indeed, the only thing that reconciled him to the ungrateful task of living was the steady growth of the bank's deposits. It was due, Mr. Goodchild often declared, to his management. But he couldn't speak about H. R. without profanity.

Parental opposition was not everything. Marriage was a serious thing.

---

XXVII

The motor stopped. She had arrived at her house. The car door was opened by H. R.

She started back. Then she looked at him curiously, almost awe-strickenly, as though her wishes had taken on magical properties of automatic fulfilment.

Was this the same remarkable person she had almost deified on the way from Raquin's exhibition? What would he say? She prayed that he might not spoil everything, by some inanity.

He held out his hand to help her alight. Then he spoke.

"It was time!" he said, and walked beside her—but a couple of inches ahead. That was because, though he was an American husband-to-be, he also was a man, a protector, a leader. Such men are cave-men minus the club.

Grace at times was not a true Goodchild. This time she said nothing.

Frederick opened the door. His face expressed no sense of the unusualness of the sight.

H. R., with the air of a host, led Grace into the drawing-room. He stood beside her in the gorgeous Louis XV. room.

"Grace," he said, gently, "for twenty-nine days I've been the unhappiest man in all New York. For five, the unhappiest in the entire world!"

"Will you kindly release my hand?" she asked. No sooner had the words left her lips than she realized they were piffle. Then she began to laugh. It was the first official acknowledgment that no social barriers divided them.

"Suppose," she asked, with a humorously intended demureness, "that I wished to use my handkerchief?"

H. R. with his disengaged hand took his own out of his pocket and held it to her nose.

"Blow!" he said, tenderly.

"I don't want to," she retorted and tried to pull away her hand.

He replaced his handkerchief in his pocket.

"All over but the mailing-list," he said to her. "Sit down here; by me!"

Something within her stirred to revolt. Unfortunately, he did not release her hand, but led her to the historic divan—part of the suite for which Mr. Goodchild had paid eighteen thousand five hundred dollars in the Sunday supplement. Marie Antoinette had been seated in that very place when de Rohan brought the famous diamond necklace to show her. (Same issue; third column, fourth page.)

"I think that for sheer, unadulterated impudence—" she began, without any anger, because she was too busy trying to decide what she must do to him to put an end to a situation that had become intolerable—at least in its present shape.

"Grace, don't talk nonsense. Just let me look at you."

He held her at arm's-length and looked into her eyes. He saw that they were blue and clear and steady and looked fearlessly at him—the stare of a child who doesn't know why she should be afraid.

If they don't watch out that fearlessness becomes anything but childish in New York.

He continued to stare steadily, unblinkingly, into them.

"I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" he said, hoarsely, and blinked his eyes. Then he closed them—tight. Coward!

She had felt his keen eyes bore through her garments, through her flesh, into her very soul of souls—a look that frightened until it warmed; and after it warmed, it again frightened—in another way.

She saw a wonderfully well-shaped head and very clean-looking hair and a very healthy-looking, clear-cut face and very strong shoulders and very masterful hands. And from all of him came waves that thrilled—the mysterious effluvia that compels and dominates the woman to whom Life means this life.

At length he spoke with an effort. "We shall be married in Grace Chapel." He grew calmer, and added, "People will think it was named for you!"

"I am not going to marry you," she declared, vehemently.

"No. I am going to marry you. After you are my wife we naturally will talk about it. That will enable us to learn whether we shall stay married or not. Grace," he said, earnestly, "I'll do anything you wish."

"Leave this house, then."

"It's your house, dear," he reminded her, gently, "and I am your guest. That puts it out of your power to enforce your desire. Don't you see?"

She tacitly admitted that there was an etiquette of hospitality by asking, coldly, "Why should I marry you?"

"I can't give you as many reasons as I might if you asked why I should marry you. The principal two are that I love you and that I am the only man whom Grace Goodchild can marry and still remain Grace Goodchild."

It seemed to her impossible that he could be sitting beside her talking about marriage seriously, and more than impossible that she could be sitting there listening.

"People know you as Grace Goodchild. After the marriage they will know you as the Grace Goodchild that H. R. has married. What would become of you if you cease to be Grace Goodchild?"

She thought of Philadelphia, and shuddered. But he thought he had not convinced her. He rose and said to her:

"Oh, my love! You are so utterly and completely beautiful that if I have a man's work to do I shall succeed only because the reward is you! I have come to the turning-point in my career and I must have the light of your eyes to guide me."

She did not love him and therefore she heard his words very distinctly. But she was a woman, and she was thrilled by his look and his voice and by his manner. He was no longer a mountebank to her, but an unusual man. And when she thought of not marrying him her mind reverted in some curious way to Philadelphia and its subtle suggestions of sarcophagi and the contents thereof. But this man must not think that he could win her by stage speeches even though they might be real. She said to him, determinedly:

"We might as well understand each other—"

"I am the creature; you are the creator," he quickly interjected. "You are very beautiful, very! but you have much more than beauty. You have brains, and I think your heart is a marvelous lute—"

"A what?" she asked, curiously. No woman will allow the catalogue to be skimped or obscured.

"A lute, a wonderful musical instrument that some day will be played by a master hand. When you cease to be merely a girl and become a woman, with your capacity for loving when you let yourself go! Ah!" He closed his eyes and trembled.

All women, at heart, love to be accused of being psychic pyromaniacs.

"There will I give thee my loves!" he muttered, quoting from the "Song of Songs."

She knew it wasn't original because he said it so solemnly. She dared not ask from whom the quotation was. It sounded like Swinburne.

"Come!" He was not quoting this time. He stood before her, his face tense, his eyes aflame, his arms stretched imploringly toward her.

She met his gaze—and then she could not look away. She saw the wonderful man of whom the papers had printed miles of columns, who had made all New York talk of him for weeks, who was young and strong and comely and masterful, who had an old name and a fighting jaw, whose words stirred the pulses like a quickstep on the piccolo.

And his eyes made her understand what was meant by actinic rays. They were looking at her, piercing through her garments until she felt herself subtly divested of all concealments.

And then she trembled as if his eyes physically touched her! She thrilled, she blushed, she frowned—for she felt herself desired. And her thoughts became the thoughts of a woman who is wooed by life, by love, by a man's red blood and her own. Her New York inhibitions turned to ashes. Life-long mental habits withered and shriveled and vanished in microscopic flakes until into her self-hypnotized consciousness there came the eternal query of the female who has stopped running, "What can I give to this man?"

And Hendrik, seeing her face, held his shaking hands before her, impatiently beckoning to her to come. Some unseen spirit took her slim hands and, without consulting her, placed them in his.

And then he kissed her.

The heavens flamed. She pushed him from her and sank back trembling upon the divan on which Marie Antoinette was not sitting on the day when de Rohan did not bring the diamond necklace that did not cause the French Revolution, though Mr. Goodchild had paid eighteen thousand five hundred dollars for the historic suite, in the Sunday supplement.

---

XXVIII

It is difficult for a man to know what to do after the first kiss. A second kiss is not so wise as appears at first blush. It impairs mental efficiency by rendering irresistible the desire for a third. A banal remark is equally fatal. To tell her, "Now you are mine in God's sight," is worse than sacrilegious; it is conducive to acute suffragism and some polemical oratory. To say, "Now I am yours for ever," may be of demonstrable accuracy, but also conduces to speech.

Hendrik Rutgers was no ordinary man. He knew that one kiss does not make one marriage nor even one divorce. But he knew that he was at least at the church door and he had a wonderful ring in his waistcoat pocket. He therefore became H. R. once more—cool, calm, master of his fate.

It behooved him to do something. He did. He fell on his knees and reverently bowed his head. And then she heard him say, "Grant that I may become worthy of her!"

Then his lips moved in silence. She saw them move. Her soul trembled. Was she so much to this man?

Great is the power of prayer even in the homes of the rich, however cynics may sneer.

He did not glance at her, feeling her eyes on him. When he judged it was time he looked up suddenly, rose to his feet, and, in a diffident, apologetic voice, observed:

"Forgive me, dear! What did you say?"

What could she say? She therefore said it:

"Nothing!" very softly.

"I was very far from New York—and yet you were with me, my love!"

She thought of Philadelphia and her hand sought his with that refuge-seeking instinct which cannot be statuted away from them.

He met her half-way. He raised her hands to his lips and his disengaged left sought his waistcoat pocket where the ring was.

"She is in the drawing-room, sir, with Mr. Rutgers," came in faithful Frederick's warning voice, raised above the menial's pitch.

"What!" they heard Mr. Goodchild ejaculate. Then the titular owner of the house entered.

H. R. politely bowed.

"How do you do?" he said, easily. "You are a trifle inopportune. Grace and I were talking over our plans."

Mr. Goodchild turned purple and advanced. Grace rose hastily. H. R. meditatively doubled up his right arm, moved his clenched fist up and down, felt his biceps with his left hand, and smiled contentedly.

Mr. Goodchild remembered his manners and his years at one and the same time. With his second calm thought he remembered the reporters. He gulped twice and when he spoke it was only a trifle huskily:

"Mr. Rutgers, I have no desire to make a scene in my own house."

H. R. pleasantly pointed to a fauteuil.

"I must ask you—"

"Sit down and we'll talk it over quietly. You will find," H. R. assured him, earnestly, "that I am not unreasonable. Have a seat."

Mr. Goodchild sat down.

H. R. turned to Grace and with one lightning wink managed to convey that everybody obeyed him—excepting one, whose wish was a Federal statute to him.

She looked with a new interest at her father. It was, she realized, the eternal conflict between youth and age. Love the prize! Gratia victrix!

"I—I—am willing to admit"—Mr. Goodchild nearly choked as the unusual words came from his larynx—"that you have shown—er—great cleverness in your—er—career. But I must say to you—in a kindly way, Mr. Rutgers, in a kindly way, believe me!—that I do not care to have this—er—farce prolonged. If you are after—if there is any reasonable financial consideration that will—er—induce you to desist—I—you—"

"You have relapsed," interrupted H. R., amiably, "into the language of a bank president. Suppose you now talk like a millionaire." It was not really a request, but a command.

Mr. George G. Goodchild obeyed.

"How much?" he said.

Grace looked as she felt—shocked. She had not fully regained her normal composure. But this was a man who had kissed her. Was he to be bought off with money? The shame of it overwhelmed her. She listened almost painfully to H. R.'s reply.

"I am now," H. R. impassively said to Mr. Goodchild, "waiting for you to talk like a father."

Mr. Goodchild stared at him blankly.

"Like a father; like a human being," explained H. R. "Grace is no bundle of canceled checks or a lost stock certificate. She is your daughter."

"Well?"

"Excuse me; I mean she is your own flesh and blood—the best of your flesh and blood, at that. Your wishes cannot be considered where her happiness is at stake. Therefore what you think best is merely your personal opinion and hence of interest to yourself and to nobody else."

Mr. Goodchild quickly opened his mouth, but before the sound could come H. R. went on, hurriedly, "Suppose you had set your heart upon her becoming a mathematician. Would that make her one?"

"Never!" instantly declared the non-mathematical Grace.

Mr. Goodchild shook his head violently and again opened his mouth. But H. R. once more surpassed him in speed and pursued, calmly argumentative:

"Or suppose you did not believe in vaccination. Is your opinion to be allowed to prevail against the advice of your competent family physician until Grace gets the disease and you are forced to acknowledge that you were wrong? Or would even the sight of the most beautiful face in the world pitted and pockmarked fail to shake your own faith in your own infallibility?"

Grace shuddered. "Father!" she exclaimed, horror-stricken, and glared at Mr. Goodchild. She was now thinking of paternal opposition in terms of smallpox.

"But—" angrily expostulated Mr. Goodchild.

"Exactly," agreed H. R., hastily. "That's it. Now for a favor. Will you let me talk business with you? My business!"

Mr. Goodchild's business was to know all about the business of others. But he did not take it home with him. However, before he could do more than shake his head, H. R. went on:

"I am organizing six companies."

That sounded like good business. But Mr. Goodchild nodded non-committally from force of habit.

"The S. A. S. A. Imperial Sandwich Board Corporation. Capital stock, one million, of which forty per cent. goes to the public for cash, forty per cent. given to me—"

"Forty?" irrepressibly objected Mr. Goodchild.

"Forty," repeated H. R., firmly. "I am no hog. I get what my ideas, designs, and patents are worth at a fair valuation. And twenty per cent. goes to the S. A. S. A."

"Why?" came from Mr. Goodchild before he could realize that he was speaking bankerwise.

"Because the S. A. S. A. will insist upon the company's boards being used by all our customers. And besides, as head of the S. A. S. A., I vote that twenty per cent. I thus control sixty per cent. and—"

Mr. Goodchild brightened up, but remembered himself and said, very coldly:

"Go on."

"We shall manufacture sandwiches of all kinds, at from one dollar to ten thousand dollars and upward, and—"

"Dreadful word! Loathe it!"

"—The S. A. S. A. Memento Mori Manufacturing Company to manufacture and sell the statuettes of the Ultimate Sandwich. Same capitalization. Same holdings. You see, I have sold my ideas, designs, and patents so that later on nobody can say my companies were overcapitalized. There are also the Rapid Restaurant Service Appliance Company, and four others. Same capitalization; same holdings. The money is all raised. And let me say," finished H. R., sternly accusing, "that the people who furnish the cash and buy the stock get something for their money."

"That's all very well," began Mr. Goodchild, contemptuously, "but—"

"Exactly," said H. R. "I propose to transfer all our accounts to your bank. You know you said you'd like to have mine when I became famous."

"I know nothing about your companies, and care less. But I want to tell you right now—"

"What interest are you going to allow us on our balances?" cut in H. R.

"No interest!" said Mr. Goodchild in a voice that really meant "No Grace!"

H. R. turned to his sweetheart and, desiring to forestall desertion, took her hand in his and said to her:

"Grace, this house is a very nice house. You have spent many happy hours here. But it is, after all, only a house. And New York is New York!"

And Philadelphia was Philadelphia!

Grace's hand remained in H. R.'s.

"You can't have her!" said Mr. Goodchild, furiously.

"Who can't have whom?" asked Mrs. Goodchild, entering the room.

H. R. released Grace's hand, approached Mrs. Goodchild, and, before she knew what he was going to do, threw his right arm about her and kissed her—a loud filial smack.

She quickly and instinctively put one hand up to her hair, for the strange young man had been a trifle effusive. But before she could transform her surprise into vocal sounds the stranger spoke, in a voice ringing with affectionate sincerity not too playful, you understand, but convincing, nevertheless:

"She inherits her good looks, her disposition, and her taste in dress from you. I saw it the first time I met you. Don't you remember? And I warn you now that if I can't marry Grace I'll kill that husband of yours and marry you!"

To prove it, he kissed her again, twice.

"How dare—" shouted Mr. Goodchild.

"I am not sure," said H. R. to Mrs. Goodchild, "that I want Grace now. Between thirty-two and forty a woman is at her best."

He patted her shoulder, as we paternally do with the young ones, and went back to Grace. It all had happened so quickly that only H. R. was calm.

"My dear!" said Mrs. Goodchild, looking helplessly at Grace.

"What is it, mother?" said H. R., appropriating the affectionate words. And as she did not answer he asked, generally. "What do you say to the eighth?"

"An eighth?" echoed Mr. Goodchild, almost amiably, thinking, of one-eighth of one per cent.

"Of June!" said H. R. "That gives you ample time for everything, Grace. And, remember, give the reporters the detailed list of the trousseau."

"There isn't going to be any marriage. And there isn't going to be any nauseating newspaper articles with pictures of intimate lingerie enough to make a decent man blush."

"A really decent man always blushes with shame when he does not give carte blanche to his only daughter," said H. R. with great dignity.

"Mr.—er—Rogers," said Mrs. Goodchild.

"Rutgers," corrected her prospective son-in-law. "The 'g' is hard. It's Dutch, like Roosevelt, Van Rensselaer, and Cruger."

"But we don't know anything about your family," she said, very seriously.

"Do you know," asked H. R., pleasantly, "the Wittelbachs?"

"It's beer, isn't it?" she said. It might be the best brewing blood in Christendom, but still it wasn't Wall Street or real estate.

"Good shot!" exclaimed H. R., admiringly. "It is the patronymic of the reigning house of Bavaria. You know, Munich, where beer is the thing. And do you know the Bernadottes?"

"I've heard of them," replied Mrs. Goodchild, made wary by her non-recognition of a sovereign house.

"It is not French delicatessen, but the royal family of Sweden. And the Hapsburgs? The Emperor of Austria belongs to them. And Romanoff? The Czar of Russia would answer to that if he voted. And there are also the Hohenzollerns and the Bourbons and the Braganzas. And then," he finished, simply, "there is Rutgers!"

"It seems to me," put in Grace, coldly, "that I have something to say—"

"Empress, you don't. Just look," interrupted H. R. "Of course, the date is subject to your approval. I didn't have any luncheon. Will you tell Frederick to bring some tea and a few sandwiches—"

"Damnation!" shrieked Mr. George G. Goodchild. "Is a man to be insulted in his own home? Get to hell out of here with your sandwiches!"

"George!" rebuked Mrs. Goodchild, placidly. She never frowned. Wrinkles.

"Yes, George!" maniacally mimicked her husband. "It's sandwiches! Sandwiches! Sandwiches! Everywhere! Yesterday I discharged my secretary. I told him to send out for a chicken sandwich for me and I heard him give the boy the order: 'Son-in-law for Mr. Goodchild. Cock-a-doodle-do!' At this week's meeting of our directors Mr. Garrettson asked me: 'How is the King of the Sandwiches? Living at your house yet?' And the other jackasses all laughed. Sandwiches!"

He turned to his daughter, and fearing that she was in the conspiracy, asked her, vehemently: "Do you wish to be known all your life as the Queen of the Sandwiches? Do you? Do you wish your humorous friends to say to you, Grace, will you have a caviare husband?"

"No!" replied Grace. Fame was fame, but ridicule was Hades.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Goodchild.

"Tell Frederick," said H. R., fiercely, "to bring in fifteen Rutgerses, if you prefer to call them that."

"That isn't funny," rebuked Grace, coldly. "I don't think you are accustomed to surroundings—"

"No; it's hospitality. I'm starving."

"You'll have sandwiches for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner, my child," Mr. Goodchild told Grace, angrily but intelligently. "In the newspapers!"

"Of course I won't marry him!" said Grace, decisively. "It's preposterous."

H. R. went up to her. She shook her head. He spoke very seriously:

"Grace, when people tell you that I have given free sandwiches to New York they mean that I have taken the poorest of the poor, the pariahs of commerce, the despised of the rabble, poor human derelicts, souls without a future, without a hope, worse than dirt, poorer than poverty, and I have made them men!"

"Yes, but s-s-sandwiches," blubbered Grace.

"I took these victims of society and capitalism and organized them, and then I emptied them into the golden Cloaca Maxima that you call Fifth Avenue, and lo! they emerged free men, self-supporting, well-fed, useful, artistic. They have been the efficient instruments of fame. It is they who have made you known from one end of the city to the other."

"Yes; but sandwiches!" doggedly repeated Grace.

"I have worked," said H. R., sternly, "with human souls—"

"Sandwiches!" corrected Mr. Goodchild.

H. R. flushed angrily.

"The sandwich," he told them all with an angry finality, "is here to stay. Our net receipts, after paying big wages, are over one thousand dollars a day. What do you think I am, an ass? Or a quick lunch? Or a bank president? Pshaw! We've only begun! A capitalization of over five millions at the very start and the business growing like cheap automobiles, and me owning forty per cent. of the stock and controlling sixty per cent. in perpetuity! These men have made me their leader. I will not forsake them!"

"Can you give me," said Mr. Goodchild, seriously, "evidence to prove your statements?" If the love affair was not to end in an elopement it would be wise to have a business talk with this young man, who, after all was said and done, had a valuable asset in his newspaper publicity.

"You may be a wonderful man," said Grace to H. R., "but all my friends would ask me if I am going to have a mammoth sandwich instead of a wedding-cake! I ask you not to persist—"

H. R. smiled sympathetically and said: "You poor darling! Is that all you are afraid of?"

She thought of Philadelphia and a quiet life, and she shook her head sadly. Why couldn't he have made her famous by unobjectionable methods.

But H. R. said, "I'll guarantee that my name will never again be associated with sandwiches—"

"You can't do it!" declared Grace, with conviction, thinking of humorous American girls. "When they are friends all you have to do is to take out the 'r' to turn them into fiends."

Mrs. Goodchild said nothing, but frowned. It had just occurred to her that here they all were, amicably talking with the man who had made their lives grievous burdens. Mr. Goodchild also was silent, but shrewdly eyed H. R.

"I'll do it!" repeated H. R., confidently.

"How can you without killing everybody?" challenged Grace, skeptically. "Everybody knows you as the leader of the sandwich men, and if you form companies—"

"My child," H. R. told her, gently, "I don't know anything about finance. That is why I want to get father's advice about my business. Every man to his trade. But I do know New York. I ought to, hang it! My grandfather owned what is now the Hôtel Regina, and— Well, look here! If by the first of June nobody even remembers that I had anything to do with sandwiches will you marry me?"

"Yes," said Mr. Goodchild.

If H. R. could do that he was fit to be anybody's son-in-law. If he couldn't, the annoyance would end.

"Grace?" asked H. R.

"I'm willing to take a chance for two weeks," said Mr. Goodchild, feeling certain he was displaying Machiavellian wisdom. But Grace shook her head.

"Everything you've done," she told H. R., "is child's play—"

"What!" interrupted H. R., indignantly. "Make New-Yorkers give money for charity that they might have spent for their own pleasure?"

"Nothing alongside of making 'em forget that you invented sandwiches. If it had been anything else, you might—I might—you—" She floundered helplessly. Her life for weeks had been so full of excitement that she could not co-ordinate her ideas quickly.

"You don't know me, dear," said H. R. "I hate to say it myself, but, really, I'm a wonder!"

He looked so confident, so masterfully sure of himself, so little like a dreamer, and so much like a doer, that Grace was impressed.

"Can you?" she asked, more eagerly than Mr. Goodchild liked to see. But then H. R. had never kissed him.

"With your hand for the prize and your love for my reward? Can you ask me if I can?"

"Yes, I can. Can you?"

"Yes!" he said. "But of course I'll need your help."

"My help?" Doubt came back into her eyes.

"Yes. This way." He took her in his arms and kissed her.

Mrs. Goodchild stared, open-eyed. Mr. Goodchild grew purple, and shouted:

"Here! This is—"

H. R. turned to him and said, "This is all right." And again he pressed his lips to hers and kept them pressed this time.

"I won't have it!" shrieked Mr. Goodchild, going toward the young people, one fist upraised.

H. R. ceased kissing, and spoke rebukingly:

"What do you want me to do? Kiss her in the vestibule before ringing the door-bell, as if we were plebeian sweethearts? Or in a taxi in the Park? Listen: Fear not to intrust your daughter to a man who never kisses her save in the sight of those who brought her into this world!" H. R. spoke so aphoristically that Mr. Goodchild thought it was a quotation from Ecclesiastes.

H. R. took the ring out of his waistcoat pocket and gave it to Grace.

"Here, my love!"

It was a magnificent green diamond, the rarest of all. Mrs. Goodchild rose quickly and said, "Let me see it!" Mother-like, being concerned with her only daughter's happiness, she took the ring to the window.

Grace followed. It was her ring.

"Say, Big Chief," H. R. asked his prospective father-in-law, "do I get the sand—do I get some slices of bread with some slices of viands, two breads to one viand, and a cup of tea?"

"Tea be hanged! Have a man's drink," hospitably and diplomatically said Mr. Goodchild. There was still a chance of escaping. He knew what violent opposition had done to sentimental daughters.

"Yes, but you'll have to allow us a decent rate of interest on our balances."

"How much do you carry?" asked Mr. Goodchild, carelessly.

"Enough for Dawson to offer three per cent. But let us not talk business here. I'll call on you to-morrow.

"All right. But Dawson can't do it, not even on time deposits, and—"

"Scotch for mine," said H. R. "Is Frederick coming?"

Mr. Goodchild was, after all, a gentleman. He rang for Frederick. He also was thirsty.

"Hendrik, it's beautiful," said Grace, enthusiastically. "But are you perfectly sure you can—"

"Empress, don't you wish it done?"

"Of course."

"Then, of course, it is done. You'll be able to yell 'sandwich'! anywhere in New York and nobody will think of anything except that you are the most beautiful girl in the world. Give me another before Frederick brings 'em."

"Brings what?"

"Lamb chops!" answered H. R., who was a humorist of the New York school. "Quick!" And he kissed her twice.

"We'll have tea up-stairs if you're really going to be one of the family," said Mrs. Goodchild, with the dubious smile so familiar on the faces of mothers of New York girls.

"Come, Grace!" said H. R., taking her by the unringed hand. He knew better—by instinct.

It was a very satisfactory day. Such was the compelling force of his self-confidence that before he left the house Mr. and Mrs. Goodchild sincerely hoped he could accomplish the impossible and wipe out the sandwich stain from the old Knickerbocker name of Rutgers.

---

XXIX

The next morning H. R. called Andrew Barrett into the inner office.

"Shut the door," said he.

Andrew Barrett did so and looked alarmed—alarmed rather than guilty.

"To-morrow, and until further notice," said H. R., sternly, "you will tell the department-store sandwiches to parade in front of the various newspaper offices from morning until night."

"But not in Park Row, surely?"

"Exactly! And find out whether the business managers of the various newspapers have been holding conferences with the managing editors. They probably will—this afternoon or to-morrow."

"How can I—"

"By paid spies—office-boy scouts. Of course, lady stenographers being more in your line— No! Look me in the eye!"

Andrew Barrett blushed and said, feebly:

"I am taking the count, Chief."

"Very well. I shall now go out and do your work. See that you do mine!" And H. R. went out, leaving Andrew Barrett full of devastating curiosity.

"I wonder what he has up his sleeve now?" mused young Mr. Barrett. "I'll bet it's a corker!"

H. R. himself called on the head of one of the most progressive of New York's great department stores—a man to whom full pages on week-days were nothing. He, therefore, had heard of H. R., and also had used sandwiches. He greeted the founder of the S. A. S. A. with respectful interest. H. R. said, calmly:

"I am here now to make you a present of from ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars a year—in cash!"

Mr. Liebmann, of course, knew that H. R., though an aristocrat, was neither a fool nor a lunatic. He diplomatically asked, "And my gratitude for your kindness may be expressed just how, Mr. Rutgers?"

"By accepting the cash and putting it in your pocket, to have and to hold until death do you part."

"Mr. Rutgers, I am an old man and suspense is trying." And Mr. Liebmann smiled deprecatingly.

"I have come to show you how you may save the amount I have mentioned in your newspaper-advertising appropriation. You big advertisers are now helpless to help yourself. There are no rebates and you can't play one paper against the others. Those days are over. Will you hear me to the end and not go on at half-cock while I am talking?"

"Yes," promised Mr. Liebmann, impetuously.

"Mr. Liebmann, you must write a letter to all the advertising managers of all the newspapers, saying that you have decided to discontinue all advertising in the daily papers as soon as your contracts expire. Hold your horses! Explain that you intend to reach your suburban trade through the fashion magazines, local papers, and circulars, and that for Manhattan and Brooklyn you have decided to use sandwiches—Don't talk yet!"

"I am only listening," Mr. Liebmann hastened to assure him.

"The newspapers know that you are a Napoleonic advertiser. They will pay to your communication the double compliment of belief and consternation. They know you know your business and that you are not only ultra-modern, but a pioneer. You have always been a highly intelligent advertiser. You will then let me supply you with one hundred of our best men, who will parade in front of the newspaper-offices in full regalia, and also in plain sight of your dear friends, the advertising managers. You know their psychology. Take it from me, you'll win.

"The only thing you mustn't do is to call the reductions rebates. There is no way by which the papers can get back at you. If I can make New York feed the hungry, would it be very difficult for me to make the advertising managers act wisely? Of course, if your letter does not bring about a saving of not less than ten thousand dollars a year you will not have to pay a penny for the sandwiches. I wish nothing written from you. The word of a Liebmann is enough for a Rutgers. My family has been in New York long enough for you to know whether a Rutgers is a man of his word or not."

"I'd rather shake hands with you than save a million a year in advertising," said Mr. Liebmann.

H. R. looked him straight in the eye—suspiciously, incredulously, insultingly. Mr. Liebmann flushed and then H. R. said, earnestly:

"I believe you, Mr. Liebmann!" and shook hands.

Mr. Liebmann, bareheaded, proudly escorted him to the sidewalk. He thanked H. R. to the last.

H. R. called on the other liberal advertisers and, with more or less ease, succeeded in impressing them as he had Mr. Liebmann.

Then he visited the managing editors of all the daily papers. He began with the best. The managing editor was delighted to see the man he had helped to make famous.

"I have come," H. R. told him, "to ask a great favor of you. I am, as you know, very greatly interested in charity work. Your paper has been good enough to publish my views."

H. R. spoke with a sort of restrained zeal simply, not humorously, obviously as a one-idea man, a crank, still young and undyspeptic. The editor prided himself on his quick and accurate insight into character. He said:

"Oh yes; I know about your work."

"Thank you. Well, sir, I find my usefulness to the cause somewhat impaired by the persistence with which my name is associated with the merely commercial phase of sandwiching. You know the sandwich men commercially were vermin, and I have taught them to pay for their own food. I took paupers and unpauperized them."

"And the signs in your parade were great. I told them at the Union League Club that at least one poor man's parade had shown brains. Not a single threat! Not one complaint! Not one window smashed! Not one spectator insulted! It showed genius!" And the editor held out his hand.

"I am a Christian, sir," said H. R., gently.

"Well, I'll shake hands, anyhow, if you'll let me," said the editor, cordially.

H. R. took his hand and looked so embarrassed that the editor would have sworn he blushed. This was no publicity-seeker, no fake modesty. Yes, that must be it—a Christian, the kind editors seldom shake hands with.

"And so," continued H. R., earnestly, "if you please, if you would only tell your reporters not to mention me in connection with sandwiches I could do more for the cause. You see, what I did with the sandwiches was merely the entering wedge. I don't want you to think I am complaining of your reporters, sir; they have been more than kind to me; but if you could see your way clear to not speaking about sandwiches as though they were my personal property—"

"You are the man who gave free sandwiches to New York," smiled the editor, as though he had said something original.

The situation was more serious than H. R. had believed, but he said, with dignity:

"I made free men of pariahs, sir. That job is finished. The newspapers have helped nobly; and to-day, thanks to them, charity is brought daily before their readers."

"But it is less picturesque than your courtship of Miss Goodchild with sandwiches."

"There were"—and H. R. smiled deprecatingly—"peculiar circumstances about my personal relations with Mr. Goodchild. Of course, I also desired to prove to intelligent but not very original business men that sandwiching is the most effective form of advertising. It is like all art, sir. The personal quality gives to it a human appeal that no combination of printed words on a page can have."

"How do you make that out?" asked the editor.

"When you read a play you see the printed words; but when you see the same play well acted you find that the same words you have read and liked reach the public through the senses of sight and of hearing as well as through the intellect, and is thus trebly efficient on the stage. Now, sandwiching is beyond question the highest form of commercial advertising. It succeeds even in love! And—"

"I congratulate you," said the editor, heartily.

H. R. looked so serious that the editor found himself saying, with even greater seriousness, "What you say is extremely interesting."

"I have long studied—in my humble way—the psychology of the crowd. I have discovered some very interesting things—at least they are interesting to me, sir," apologized H. R., almost humbly. "I am led to think, indeed I feel certain, that the art of sandwiching is in its infancy. The marvelous imagination of the American people, their resourcefulness and ingenuity, will make the development of artistic sandwiching one of the most extraordinary commercial phenomena of the twentieth century. But personally I am not interested in advertising, sir, except as in this instance as a means to an end. When the result is reached that is the end of my interest. And so, sir, though I feel gratitude for the noble work your paper is doing for the cause of charity, I really and honestly think that less attention should be paid to the business side of one of our successful experiments with the submerged tenth, and more to charity itself. Can't you tell your reporters that sandwiching at union wages has nothing to do with it?"

"News is news," said the editor, shaking his head regretfully. "We print what is of interest to our readers."

"If your readers were made to think of filling other people's stomachs instead of their own there would be less dyspepsia—and more newspaper-readers, sir. It is a discouraging fact that the world appears to be more concerned over making money than over the unspeakable folly of dying rich."

"We can do without death more easily than without money," observed the editor, sententiously.

"Oh no! Death was invented in order to teach men how to live wisely. This is the only reason why the cessation of the organic functions, which is life's one great commonplace, has at all times attained to the dignity of rhetoric. But I am taking your time. I hope you will be good enough to drop sandwiches and stick to charity. I thank you for your kindness; and—and," he finished, diffidently, "I should like to shake hands with you."

He looked appealingly at the editor, who thereupon shook his hand warmly.

"I'll do what I can for you, Mr. Rutgers. I am very glad to have met you. Anything we can do to help you in your efforts we shall gladly do. You are a very remarkable man and you have done greater work than you seem to realize."

H. R. shook his head vehemently, however, and retired in obvious confusion.

With a few trifling differences, due to the divers editorial personalities, he did the same thing to the other managing editors. All of them thought that none of the reporters really knew what manner of man H. R. was. Withal, all of them were right. He was a wonder!

On the next morning the eyes of the business managers of the great metropolitan dailies, morning and evening, were made to glow by twenty-seven letters from their biggest advertisers. The tenor of the communications was that, as soon as existing contracts expired, the twenty-seven biggest would do their urban advertising by means of S. A. S. A. sandwiches. They expected to reach the suburbs through fashion journals, circulars, and local media.

The advertising managers smiled, not only at the palpable bluff, but at the evidence of an infantile conspiracy. Before ten o'clock, however, the vast crowds in front of their very doors made them swear. Scores of sandwich men, advertising the said twenty-seven shops and the day's bargains, were parading up and down, causing said crowds to collect and to comment audibly and admiringly.

The advertising managers rushed to the managing editors to tell than that something must be done to prevent their sudden death. The managing editors, to a man, recalled H. R.'s prophecy of the marvelous growth of the most effective form of advertising.

"That H. R.," said the managing editor of the Times, "is a wizard!"

"You fellows made him," bitterly retorted the business manager. "He's had more free advertising than I can book in a hundred and ten years!"

"Why, he particularly asked me not to mention sandwiches!"

"Well, by gad, you'd better not!" Then, "What d'ye want?" he snarled at his first assistant, who came in with a sheet of paper in his right hand and a look of perplexity in both eyes.

The assistant silently gave him the copy:

all the leading shops and the big department stores of greater new york are using our sandwiches. they employ the best advertising talent in the world.

their experts unanimously have decided that sandwiching is the highest form of advertising yet discovered. it is the cheapest when returns and results are considered.

are you using our sandwiches, mr. merchant?

they will move your shop to fifth avenue.

try it! employ only union men.

society american sandwich artists,
allied arts building.

For the first time in history the familiar

O. K.
H. R.,
Sec.

was absent.

It bore out the managing editor's assertion of H. R.'s distaste of publicity.

"Go out and lasso your maverick advertisers," said the managing editor, sternly, after he had read the S. A. S. A. advertisement—full-page, too! "I'll take care of the news columns."

"The damned sandwich men are so thick in this town I'll have trouble in breaking through their lines."

"Use dynamite!" said the managing editor, savagely. He owned ten bonds of his own paper.

He then summoned the city editor and said, sternly:

"Mr. Welles, under no circumstances whatever must this paper mention sandwiches or sandwich advertising or the S. A. S. A."

"Did you see their latest exploit? Two hundred and seventy-six sandwiches to the block, by actual count. Talk about high art!"

"They have commercialized it," frowned the managing editor. "Not a line—ever!"

The same thing must have happened in all the other offices. The public talked about the advertising revolution and the wonderful new styles in boards; and they looked in the next morning's papers to get all the picturesque details, as usual. Not a word!

---

XXX

H. R. called, shortly after ten o'clock the next morning, at the Ketcham National Bank to discuss with his father-in-law-to-be interest rates on the balance he did not yet have.

Mr. Goodchild had slept over the matter. He had spent an hour in going over his annoyances and humiliations, and had failed himself with a wrath that became murderous anger when he compelled himself to realize that H. R. had it in his power to intensify the troubles of the Goodchild family. The marriage of H. R. with his daughter became worse than preposterous; it was a species of blackmail against which there was no defense. He could not reach H. R. by means of the law or by speech or by violence.

When his anger cooled, however, he saw that what he had done was to pay the young man the greatest compliment an elderly millionaire can pay anybody. The more formidable your enemy is, the less disgraceful is your defeat. Mr. Goodchild was as intelligent a man as one is apt to find in the office of the president of a bank; but he was susceptible, as all men are, to self-inflicted flattery. He therefore decided that H. R. was a problem to be tackled in cold blood, with both eyes open and prayer in the heart. The only plan of action he could think of was proposing to H. R. to accomplish an impossibility; in fact, two impossibilities. He also would treat H. R. amicably.

"Good morning, young man!" he said, pleasantly.

"Morning!" said H. R., briskly. "Now let's get down to cases. I expect you to—"

"Hold on!" said Mr. Goodchild, coldly, in order to keep from saying it hotly. "Aren't you a trifle premature?"

"No," said H. R. "I find I can give you a few minutes to-day."

"You'll have to use some of those minutes in listening to me," said Mr. Goodchild, trying to look as though this was routine business.

"I'll listen," H. R. assured him, kindly.

"You will admit that you have given me cause to—well, not to feel especially friendly toward you."

"Big men are above petty feelings," said H. R. "You will, in turn, admit that you made a mistake in not advancing me in the bank— Wait! I'll listen later, as long as you wish. You object, I suppose, to my methods; but let me point out to you that I have arrived! Where should I be if I hadn't been talked about? And where shall I land if I keep on hypnotizing the newspapers into giving me columns of space? You know what publicity means in business to-day, don't you? Well, just bear in mind that I not only make news, but, by jingo, I am news! There is only one other man in the United States who can say that, and you may have to vote for him for President, notwithstanding your fear of him. Wait!" H. R. held up his hand, took out his watch, and went on: "For an entire minute think of what I have said before you answer. Don't answer until the time is up. One minute. Begin! Now!"

H. R. held his hand detainingly two inches in front of Mr. Goodchild's lips. Mr. Goodchild did not open them. He thought and thought, and he became conscious that he had to argue with himself to find said answer.

"Speak!" commanded H. R. when the minute was up.

"The cases are not analogous. Publicity has its uses and—"

"It has this one use—that you can always capitalize it. It spells dollars—and, more than that, easy dollars, untainted dollars, dollars that nobody begrudges you and that nobody wants to take away from you—not even the Administration at Washington. Think over that for two minutes. And he pulled out his watch once more.

"Look here, I—"

"Damn it, don't talk! Think!" said H. R. so determinedly that Mr. Goodchild almost feared a scene would be enacted which he should regret after seeing it in the newspapers. "You have wasted forty seconds in overcoming your anger at my manner of speech," continued H. R., reprovingly. "Begin all over. Two minutes. Now!" And before Mr. Goodchild's wrath could become articulate he rose and walked over to a window.

H. R. stared across the street. It was there he had captured Fleming. How far away that day seemed now—and how far below! The two minutes were up. He turned to Mr. Goodchild.

"Look here; you bank presidents are an unscientific lot. You ought to be psychologists instead of being merely bookkeepers. It is knowledge of people you need—not of human nature at its worst, or of political economy, or of finance, but of people—the people who vote; the people who in the end say whether you are to be allowed to enjoy your money and theirs in comfort or not. Study them! You sit here and disapprove of my methods because they violate some rule established years ago by somebody as radical then as I appear to be now. It is not a question of good taste or bad taste. It was good taste once to kill each other in duels, and to drink two bottles of port, and to employ children in factories. The suffragettes are attacked for methods—"

"Do you mean to say you approve of their slashing pictures—"

"That is beside the question. If the suffragettes stuck to ladylike speeches and circulars they would be merely a joke at the club. The right of women to vote is a problem. Well, the suffragettes have made themselves exactly that—a problem! If they have not a sense of relative values it is because they don't get me to run their campaign for them. I could succeed without destroying one masterpiece. Maybe I will—some day. And then I could marry ten bankers' daughters if I were not in love with one. Let's come back to our own business. Do you think I have brains?"

"Well—"

"No, no! Remember what I have said to you and consider whether it is asinine; and think of what I have done and ponder whether it shows hustling and executive ability, and those qualities that mean the power to develop the individual bank account. Am I an ass or have I brains?"

"Yes; but—"

"All men of brains at all times have had more buts than bouquets thrown at them. I tell you now that I have gone about this business for the purpose of getting there. To become news, to be interesting to the public in some way—in any way—is the quickest way. Then you can pick your own way, a way that will commend itself to the well-bred nonentities who never accomplish anything. Well, I am famous; and it's up to me to decide what I shall do in the future to take advantage of the fact that when people hear of H. R., or see those two initials in print, they look for something interesting to follow. The least of my troubles is that I shall become one of your respected depositors. I don't drink; I am healthy—no taint of any kind, hereditary or acquired; I don't have to lie to get what I want or cheat to get all the money I need—and I need a lot. I've got ideas, and I don't fall down in carrying them out, because I don't go on at half-cock. I never move until I see my destination; and if there is a wall ahead I have my scaling-ladder all ready long before I arrive at the wall."

H. R. paused, and then went on more slowly: "When you get over your soreness at the raw deal the newspapers have given you, you will be glad to have a man of brains in your house. I don't want you to give Grace anything; but I tell you now I'm going to marry her, and you'd better begin to be reconciled to the idea of having me for a son-in-law. I want to be your friend, because I'm quite sure you will not enjoy having me for your enemy—not after I begin the counter attack."

It is always the delivery that does it, as Demosthenes triply assured posterity. Mr. Goodchild's eyes had not left H. R.'s face and he had listened intently to the speech. He did not grasp in full all that H. R. had said; but what really had emptied Mr. Goodchild of anger, and filled him with an interest which was not very different from respect, was the delivery. H. R.'s faculty of knowing how to speak to a particular auditor was instinctive. It always is, with all such men, whether they are famous or obscure, orators or life-insurance agents. It is very simple when you are born with it.

Mr. Goodchild, however, finding his own weapons of offense more dangerous to himself than to the foe, fell back on defense. To do so, he naturally began with a lie. That is the worst of verbal defenses.

"I don't object to you personally. I—I even admit that I made a mistake in not promoting you, though I don't know what position you could have filled here that would have suited you—"

"None; because you don't realize that banks need modernizing. None! Skip all that and get back to me as your son-in-law."

Mr. Goodchild, thinking of his two plans which were his one hope, asked, abruptly:

"Are you a man of your word?"

"Since I have brains, I am. Are you?"

"I object to your methods. Your speech I might overlook, though it comes hard. I am speaking plainly. Now you are known as the Sandwich Man. That would bar you from my club and from ever becoming a really—"

"But that will stop. It will stop to-day. I have told Grace that within a month nobody will ever connect my name with sandwiches."

"Will you agree not to marry or seek to marry my daughter, or annoy us in any way—in short, if a month from now you are still famous as the organizer of the sandwiches, will you stop trying to be my son-in-law?"

"Sure thing!" promised H. R., calmly. Mr. Goodchild was distrustful and looked it, which made H. R. add, impressively: "I'll give you my word that after to-day I'll never even try to see you or Grace, or write to her, or revenge myself on you. So far as I am concerned I'll cease to exist for you. And here's my hand on it."

He held out his hand in such a manner that Mr. Goodchild took it and shook it with the warmth of profound relief. Then he said, heartfully:

"If you do that—"

"Don't worry! It won't kill my business. I'll be just as famous as ever."

"The newspapers made you. Their silence will unmake you."

"Oh no!" And H. R. smiled as one smiles at a child.

Mr. Goodchild almost felt as though his head had been kindly patted.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Sandwiching is here to stay and—and my companies are organized. I'll change the dummy directors as soon as you and I decide which of your friends and clients shall be permitted to buy some of the stock my men haven't sold. For cash, understand! The newspapers have done their work. The newspapers in this instance are like incubators. I put in an egg. The incubator hatched it. Then I took the chick out of the incubator. Suppose the incubator now refuses to keep up the temperature of 102½ degrees Fahrenheit necessary to hatch the egg? Suppose the incubator gets stone cold? Well, let it! The chick is out and growing. And let me tell you right now that I am not going to let Wall Street financiers get their clutches on my chick. They'd caponize it. Talking about interest rates—"

"How big a balance do you expect to keep with us?" asked Mr. Goodchild. He did not like to admit the surrender.

"It depends on you." H. R. pulled out his watch, looked at the time, snapped it shut, and said: "I haven't time to go over the business; but I'll send one of my office men to tell you all you want to know. Listen to him and then ask him any questions you wish. So far as you and I are concerned we are beyond the sandwich stage. I'll send Barrett to you this afternoon. And, believe me, you are going to be my father-in-law. Good morning!" He left the office without offering to shake hands.

On his way out H. R. stopped to speak to Mr. Coster, to whom he owed so much for having led him, as a clerk with the springtime in his blood, to the president's office to be discharged.

"Well, old top, here I be!" said H. R., kindly humorous in order to remove all restraint.

"How do you do, Mr. Rutgers?" said Coster, respectfully.

The clerks looked at their erstwhile fellow-slave furtively, afraid to be caught looking. Was this Hendrik Rutgers? Was this what a man became when he ceased to be a clerk?

Ah, but a salary! Something coming in regularly at the end of the week, rain or shine! Gee! but some men are born lucky!

---

XXXI

H. R. returned to his office feeling that the big battle was about to begin. The preliminary skirmishes he had won. He had captured fame and must now begin his real attack on fortune. He spent an hour dictating plans of campaign for his various companies. Shortly before noon he told the stenographer to call up Miss Goodchild and inform her that Mr. Rutgers would be there in half an hour.

He had promised not to call on Grace for a month after that day. He must not make love to her. He was determined to keep his promise; but she must not forget him. He had accustomed her to his impetuous wooing. In thirty days of inaction much might be undone if he did nothing.

He was punctual. He found Grace waiting for him, curious to know what had happened at H. R.'s conference with her father at the bank. Her curiosity made her forget many other things.

She expected a characteristic greeting from H. R., but his face was so full of adamantine resolution that her curiosity promptly turned into vague alarm. She had told herself she did not love him, but instinctively she now walked toward him quickly.

"What is it?" she asked.

He waved her back and said, hastily:

"Stop right where you are! Don't come any nearer. For the love of Mike, don't!"

She had been thinking of treating him coldly, to keep him at a distance.

"What is it?" she asked again, and again advanced.

"Don't!" said H. R., with a frown.

She now felt alarmed, without giving herself any reason for it.

"Wh-what's the m-matter?" she asked.

"You!" he answered. "You!"

She stared at him. He was looking at her so queerly that naturally she thought something had happened to her face. She looked into the mirror on her right. It was not so. Another look fully confirmed this. So she looked at him. His expression had lost some of its anxiety.

"I promised your dad," he explained, "that I would not see you after to-day, or call here, or try to make love to you by mail, or annoy you or him in any way until I had wiped the sandwich stain off your surname. I have a month in which to do it, and I promised all that! One month! Not to see you! But—"

He looked at her so hungrily that, born and bred in New York though she was, she blushed hotly and turned her face away. Then she felt the thrill by which victory is made plain to the defeated.

"But—but—" repeated H. R. through his clenched teeth, and took a step toward her.

Whatever she saw in his face made her smile and say, challengingly:

"But what?"

Being very wise, he caught his breath and said, sharply:

"Don't do that!"

"Do what?" she asked, innocently, and kept on smiling.

"I will not see you!"

"You won't?" She ceased to smile, in order to look skeptical.

"No, I won't; I'll keep my word, Grace." He was speaking very earnestly now. "I love you—all of you; the good and the bad, your wonderful woman's soul and your perennial childishness. You are so beautiful in so many ways that you yourself cannot know how completely beautiful you are. But I love more than your beauty. After it is all over you will realize that I can be trusted implicitly. Never has man been put to such a task. Don't you know—can't you see what I am doing?"

She knew; she saw. She felt herself mistress of the situation. She therefore said, softly:

"I shouldn't want you to commit suicide here."

Hearing no reply, she looked at him. He was ready for it. She saw his nostrils dilate and his fists clench and unclench.

"Then I won't see you. But—but you can see me," he said.

She frowned.

He went on: "I shall lunch every day at Jerry's—small table in the northeast corner. At one o'clock every day for a whole month."

Did he expect her to run after him? She said, very coldly:

"That wouldn't be fair."

"If you go to Jerry's for luncheon with one of your girl friends, and you see me eating alone, keeping bushels of wonderful news all to myself, is that making love to you?"

"Yes."

"No!" he contradicted, flatly. "But I'll do more— I'll let you tell Mrs. Vandergilt that you own the only engine of destruction available against man's stupidity."

Knowing that he was alluding to her beauty, she said:

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, I belong to you, don't I? And if women are to get the vote can't you tell dear Ethel's mother—"

"Do you mean old Mrs. Vandergilt?" she interrupted.

"Yes."

"Then say so."

"I will," he meekly promised. "You tell the old lady that you will insure success for the Cause by lending me to her. I've got a scheme that will do more in a month than all the suffragettes have accomplished in fifty years. You might get Ethel interested in my plan—"

"I won't!" She smiled the forgiving smile that infuriates. She lost her head. "You think I am jeal—that I'm—"

"I think not of you, but of myself, and of how I may keep my promise to your father and survive. If you see me, and can talk to me, I shall live honorably. Will you shake hands?" He held out his right hand. She ignored it. He deliberately took hers and led her to a chair. "Will you do what I ask, dear?" he entreated, humbly.

"No!" She stood there, cold, disdainful, refusing everything—even to sit down.

"Then," he said, tensely, "then I must—" He seized her in his arms and kissed her unresponsive lips. "I am not making love to you," he murmured. "I am not!" And he kissed her again. "I promised not to see you; and I won't—not even if you see me."

He released her and was silent. She looked up and saw that his eyes were tightly closed.

"I'll be there," she said, triumphantly, "at one o'clock."

"I am a man of my word!" he said, fiercely.

"Every day!" she added, with decision.

She did not know that this wifelike attitude thrilled him as not even the kisses had; but he said, earnestly:

"No. I'm going now. It's good-by for a month. For a whole month!"

"Northeast corner table," she said, audibly, as though to herself. "Northeast cor—"

"Play fair!" he urged. "Amuse yourself with Mrs. Vandergilt." He looked at her as though he desired her to occupy herself with some hobby for thirty days. The sight of her face, and nothing else that she could see, made him say, "Good-by!" And he almost ran out of the room.

She went up-stairs to get her gloves. On second thought she called Ethel on the telephone and invited her to luncheon at Jerry's.

He was waiting for her at the northeast corner table when she and Ethel went in. Grace, who had been looking toward the southwest corner, where the exit to the kitchen was, turned casually and saw him.

"There's Hendrik!" she said to Ethel.

He had not risen. He looked up casually now and approached them.

"I was born lucky," he told them, and shook hands with Grace. To Miss Vandergilt he said, very seriously, "Are you Grace's friend?"

"I'm more than that," answered Ethel; "I am the best friend she's got."

"Then I am doubly lucky. I have a table, Ethel. I want you to be a witness to the miracle." There was no reason why he should call Miss Vandergilt by her first name. Even Ethel looked it. But H. R. merely said: "Take this chair, Grace. Ethel—here."

"It seems to me—" began Grace, coldly.

"Your friends are my friends. The miracle, Ethel, is that I've promised not to make love to Grace for a whole month—thirty days; forty-three thousand two hundred precious wasted minutes!"

"Don't you sleep?" interjected Ethel, curiously.

"My poor carcass does, but not my thoughts of her. Now let us eat and be miserable."

It was a wonderful luncheon. H. R. let them do all the talking. He was at his coffee when Ethel mentioned her mother.

"Ah, yes!" said H. R. "By the way, has Grace told her?"

"Told her what?"

Grace caught his eye and shook her head with a frown.

"Very well, dear girl," he said to her. To Ethel he explained, "She doesn't wish me to tell you of her plan."

"Oh, do! Please!" said Ethel, eagerly.

"I'm in training for the position of her husband, Ethel," H. R. told her. "She says no—that's all; plain no!"

"Grace, tell him to tell me!" said Ethel.

"Shall I, Grace?" smiled H. R.

Ethel looked at her and smiled. It made Grace so furious that she said:

"I have no control over his speech."

"Then, Ethel, it is only that Grace has a plan for a suffrage campaign that—well, it isn't for me to boast of her strategy; but it's a sure winner. I thought she would tell your mother."

"It doesn't interest me," said Grace, very coldly, being hot within.

"It will after you're married," observed Ethel, sagely.

"That depends on whom I marry," said Grace, casually.

"So it does," assented H. R., calmly.

"I agree with Hendrik," said Ethel, more subtly personal than Grace thought necessary; so she pushed back her chair and took up her gloves.

"Same table, same time—to-morrow?" H. R. said this to Grace so that Ethel could hear it.

"No," said Grace.

"Very well," he said, meekly. "I'll be here just the same—in case."

She shook her head. Ethel, who was carefully not looking, saw her do it.

Grace did not appear the next day, but Ethel did, properly accompanied by her own mother. They walked toward the northeast corner, on their way to a near-by table. H. R. rose and approached them.

"Just in time," he said to them. "Thursday always was my lucky day."

They sat down. To the waiter he said:

"Tell the chef—for three; for me."

"Yes, Mr. Rutgers," said the waiter, very deferentially.

"What have you up your sleeve, Mrs. Vandergilt? And how near is victory?"

"You mean—"

"The Cause!" said H. R., reverently.

"I never heard you express an opinion," said Mrs. Vandergilt, suspiciously.

"You have expressed them for me far better than I could. Mine isn't a deep or philosophical mind," he apologized to the mind that was. "I merely understand publicity and how sheeplike men are."

"If you understand that, you understand a great deal," remarked Mrs. Vandergilt, sententiously.

"Grace thought—" began H. R., and caught himself in time. "You haven't talked to her about it?"

"Grace?"

"Miss Goodchild."

"No. Why should I?"

"No reason—only that she has what I, as a practical man, in my low-brow way, think is a winner. Of course the suffrage has long since passed the polemical stage. The question does not admit of argument. The right is admitted by all men. But what all men don't admit is the wrong. And all men don't admit it, because all women don't."

"That is true," said Mrs. Vandergilt, vindictively.

"Any woman," pursued H. R., earnestly, "can make any man give her anything she wants. Therefore, if all the women wanted all the men to give them anything, the men would give it. A woman can't always take something from a man; but she can always get it. To put it on the high plane of taking it as a right may be noble; but what I want is results. So long as I get results, nothing short of murder, lying, or ignoble wheedling can stop me. Grace and I went all over that; but she seems to have lost interest—"

"Yes, she has," confirmed Ethel, so amiably that H. R. smiled gratefully; and that annoyed Ethel.

"You have asked for justice," pursued H. R., addressing himself to Mrs. Vandergilt; "but it is at the ignoble side of man that you must shoot. It is a larger target—easier to hit."

"But—" began Mrs. Vandergilt.

"If I were a woman my dream should be to serve under you and implicitly obey all orders. I'd distribute dynamite as cheerfully as handbills. Without competent marshals do you imagine Napoleon could have done what he did?

"Don't I know it?" said Mrs. Vandergilt, bitterly.

"How would you go about it?" interjected Ethel, who had grown weary of her own silence.

"I'd get the marshals. I'd get subordinates that, when your mother said 'Do thus and so!' she could feel sure would obey orders. The general strategy must come from her."

"I've said that until I was black in the face," said Mrs. Vandergilt. "I've told them—" And the great leader talked and talked, while H. R. stopped eating to listen with his very soul. With such a listener Mrs. Vandergilt was at her best.

"Mother, the squab is getting cold," said Ethel.

"The next time it will be cold in advance," said H. R., impatiently. "Go on, Mrs. Vandergilt!"

But Mrs. Vandergilt, knowing she could not finish at one luncheon, shook her head graciously and invited H. R. to dinner the next evening.

"I can hardly wait!" murmured H. R.

---

XXXII

The dinner at Mrs. Vandergilt's home was H. R.'s initial social triumph. The first thing he did was to confess to Mrs. Vandergilt that what he desired above all things was to be her military secretary. All he asked was to serve the Cause so long as she led, and no longer.

"I hate failures," he told her. "I don't propose to be identified with any. If I did not see in you what I do I should not be here. I know creative genius when I see it. You paint the picture. I am only the frame-maker—necessary, but not among the immortals."

"You are more than that," she assured him, with a smile. He shook his head.

"I can fool the rabble; but you know the trick! Organize your personal staff. Fire them with your own enthusiasm. Of course they won't all have brains; but they will do to stop gaps and follow instructions."

And Mrs. Vandergilt, in order that all might know that great minds acknowledged a greater mind, cracked up H. R. to the sky. H. R.'s success was all the greater since he made a point of declining most invitations. He was seen only where most people wished to be seen. That made him talked about.

Grace heard about his stupendous social success. Since the demand for H. R.'s presence came from her social equals, he was at last a desirable possession. She stayed away from Jerry's in a mood of anger that naturally made it impossible for her to stop thinking of H. R.

Meantime H. R. regularly, every day, sent a complete file of newspapers to the Goodchild residence. By his orders the Public Sentiment Corps bombarded the editors with requests for information as to the Society of American Sandwich Artists, and of sandwiching in general. He prepared learned and withal highly interesting articles on sandwiches, their history and development. He suggested over divers signatures that all court notices should be brought to the public's notice by sandwiches, thereby getting nearer to the picturesque town-crier of our sainted forefathers.

Not a single communication was printed. The department stores were holding out for lower advertising rates. Many of the letters asked questions about H. R. in his capacity as the greatest living authority on sandwiches. These, also, were ignored. On the other hand, to show they were not prejudiced, the papers continued to run the charity page and used suggestions furnished by H. R., giving him full credit when it came to philanthropies that had nothing to do with sandwiches.

The series of harrowing radiographs of diseased viscera, published with success by the most conservative of the evening journals, was one of H. R.'s subtlest strokes. And prominent persons took to contributing checks and articles, both signed in full, in response to H. R.'s occasional appeals in aid of deserving destitution.

Then the Public Sentiment Corps began to ask, with a marvelous diversity of chirography and spelling, why H. R. did not undertake to secure votes for women and employment for men. Mrs. Vandergilt, when asked about it by the reporters, replied:

"H. R. is my most trusted adviser. Just wait! When we are ready to move we'll begin; and there will be no stopping us this time!" They published her remarks and her photograph, and also H. R.'s.

Mr. Goodchild had tried, one after another, to get all the newspapers to attack H. R. viciously—then to poke fun at him; and he had failed utterly. When he read the Vandergilt interview, on his way home that evening, he decided to speak to Grace.

"Mrs. Vandergilt is crazy," he said.

"Have they sent her away?" asked Grace, her face full of excitement. Poor Ethel!

"Not yet; but I see she has taken up that—that—"

"Hendrik?" asked Grace, and frowned.

Mr. Goodchild nodded. Then he asked, suspiciously:

"You haven't seen him?"

"Yes; but not to—well, he hasn't made—he has kept his word to you. And the newspapers don't print anything about sandwiches."

"No—damn 'em!" he muttered.

"I thought you didn't want them to."

"I don't want you to have anything to do with him. It is perfectly absurd to think of marrying a fellow like that—"

"He can marry anybody now," she told him. Thinking of this made her so angry that she said, "He hypnotizes people so they think he is—"

"I know what he is," he interrupted. "I'd like to—"

"I suppose you would," she acquiesced; "but you can't deny he is an extraordinary person, and—"

"Do you love him?" he interrupted.

Grace hesitated. She had to in order to be honest.

"I—I don't know," she answered, finally.

"Great Scott! Do you mean to say you don't know that?"

"No; I don't," she replied, tartly.

She thought of H. R., of all he had done, of all he had said to her, of all he might yet do. And then she thought of the way H. R. had been taken up by the people at whose homes she dined and danced. She shook her head dubiously.

"Well, finish!" said her father, impatiently.

"He makes people do what he wants them to," she said, slowly; "though he says he will do what I wish him to do, and—"

"Can you make him do what he doesn't want to do?" challenged her father, with his first gleam of sense.

She thought of H. R.'s love of her.

"Yes," she said, thrilled at the thought of her power.

"Then make him give you up!"

Her father permitted himself a smile of incredulity, which made her say:

"I will!"

Mr. Goodchild rose. He patted her cheek encouragingly and said:

"I think you will, my dear."

"I am going to make him—"

"I beg pardon, but Miss Goodchild is wanted at the telephone, sir," announced Frederick.

Grace went to answer the phone. It was Marion Molyneux who spoke.

"Is it true, Grace, that your engagement with H. R. is off?"

"Who told you?" naturally asked Grace before she could think of anything else.

"Why, everybody is talking about it; and—"

"Everybody knows my business better than I do."

"Well, they say Mrs. Vandergilt doesn't give him time to—"

"Is he engaged to her?"

"Oh, dear! You are angry, aren't you? Well, I am glad it isn't true. Good-by."

How could the engagement be off when it never had been on? Grace made up her mind to talk to him very plainly, for the last time, that evening. She knew he would be at the Vandergilts' dinner dance that night. Well, she was going there, anyhow. Therefore she went. She almost had to elbow her way to where he stood. Mrs. Vandergilt was beside him; but Grace could see that H. R. owned the house.

"How do you do, my dear?" said Mrs. Vandergilt, so very graciously that Grace was filled with fury.

It was plain that H. R. was making a professional politician of Mrs. Vandergilt. Grace smiled at her—that is, she made her lips do it mechanically. Then she addressed the fiancé to whom she was not engaged:

"Hendrik!"

That was all she actually said, but, with her eyes, in the manner known only to women who are sure they are not in love, she commanded him to follow her.

"You see him all the time and we don't get a chance very often," protested a vulgar little thing whose father was a financial pirate of the first rank and had given her all the predatory instincts. "Go on, H. R.! Tell us some more. Do!"

Grace's eyes grew very bright and hard, and her cheeks flushed.

"I have news for you," she said to H. R., calmly ignoring the others.

"I am sorry, children," said H. R., regretfully. "Business before pleasure."

"Your business," persisted the vulgar little thing, "is to obey!"

"Hence my exit," he said, and followed Grace.

She led the way to the conservatory. She was conscious of her own displeasure. This enabled her to dispense with the necessity of finding reasons for her own feelings. She halted beside an elaborately carved marble seat, built for two, and motioned for him to sit down. He looked at her. She then said:

"Sit down!"

He obeyed. Then she sat beside him. The seat was skilfully screened by palms and ferns.

"I had a little talk with father this morning," she went on, and frowned—in advance.

"You poor thing!" he murmured, sympathetically, as though he were thinking of what she must have suffered.

As a matter of fact his mind was full of the conviction that she herself did not know which way she was going to jump and it behooved him to pick the right way.

"He asked me whether I loved you," she went on, sternly.

"Well, the answer to that was an easy syllable. When we go back you tell Mrs. Vandergilt that you have decided to allow me to serve under her. Don't worry; I'll be the boss. Ethel has played up like a trump—"

"I told him I didn't," she interrupted.

"You couldn't have told him that!" He smiled easily. "There was no occasion for it. Now tell me exactly what you did say to him."

He could see anger in her eyes—the kind of anger that is at least a first cousin to hatred.

"I said—"

"The exact words."

The change in his voice made her look at him. His eyes, keen, masterful, were fixed on hers. They looked hard, yet not altogether ruthless; and particularly they looked as though they could read thoughts with no effort, which made it necessary to tell the truth.

"I told him I didn't know," she said. To preserve her self-respect she sneered.

"What a wonderful girl you are!"

In his eyes she saw a great admiration. She could not tell what it was this man considered so wonderful; but, whatever it was, he knew exactly—and she did not!

"If I really loved you, shouldn't I know it?"

"Of course not. You are not the surrendering kind. The others are—born slaves, diminutive souls, toys, little pets. Souls like yours don't marry; they mate with an eagle! You will love me as I love you. And then there is nothing that we, together, cannot do! Nothing!"

She opened her mouth, but he checked her speech by saying, sternly:

"Why do you think it is that, having loved you, I cannot love any one else? Because I alone know what you are and what you will be! Grace, I promised your father I would not make love to you until I had deleted one word from our visiting-cards. It is done; but the month isn't up quite, and I won't make love to you. That's flat! I can't break my word."

He looked so determined that naturally she looked away and said, very softly:

"And—and if I should want you to?"

"You should want me to make love to you, but not to break my word!"

"But you say you love me," she complained.

"Love you!"

It flamed in his eyes and his hand reached for hers; but he checked himself abruptly. She extended her hand, but he edged away from her. She drew nearer to him. He retreated to the very edge of the seat. She was pursuing now. He bit his lip and frowned.

She no longer thought of other things. She knew he could not retreat any farther. She covered his hand with hers. He suddenly clutched it so tightly that he hurt her, and that gave her the fierce joy of success in love as she understood it. She felt like shouting: "Hurt me! Hurt me! I've got you!" But what she did was to murmur:

"Hendrik!"

"What?" he said, hoarsely, resolutely keeping his eyes from looking into hers.

"Hendrik, do you really love me?"

"My promise!" he whispered, tensely, and looked at her pleadingly. "Don't, dear!"

She understood him perfectly; so she smiled. It was her iron will against his. He must do what he did not wish to do, and do it because she wished it! She did not wish to kiss him; but she wished, hypnotist-like, to compel him to kiss her. With her eyes she beckoned him to come closer.

Knowing that this would clinch it he stared back at her with a pitiful appeal in his troubled eyes, and shook his head weakly, as though his soul, thinking of his honor, was saying: "No, no! Please don't!"

Her face moved toward him a little and stopped. Something within her was stamping its foot, saying: "Yes! Yes!"—like a peevish child.

H. R., continuing to follow the subtle strategy of the reversed position, stared fascinatedly at her lips. Then slowly, like a man in a trance, his face moved toward hers. On the very brink he paused and said, brokenly: "No! Oh, my darling! No! No!"

She said nothing, in order not to commit herself; but she smiled at him, while her eyes, luminous and blue, pounded away on his resolve, battering it to pieces. Nearer his face came—nearer—until his lips reached hers.

His honor had been wrecked on the coral reef; but all she knew, and all she cared to know, was that she had won! She was so certain of it and showed it so plainly that he knew he had better make it doubly sure; so he pressed his cheek against hers, that she might not see his face while he murmured:

"Now you can't cast me off!"

It was an entreaty, with the nature of which she was familiar from her literary studies; and her answer, eminently feminine, was:

"Never, dearest!"

He started to his feet abruptly.

"Don't follow me!" he said, harshly, and walked away very quickly.

When she rejoined the crush in the drawing-room she learned that H. R. had excused himself on the plea of urgent business and had gone.

"What is he going to do?" they asked her, eagerly.

They were sure it was something picturesque, but she saw in their excited wonderment the appraisal of her victory. The displeasure and suspicion in Mrs. Vandergilt's eyes gave her intense joy.

She was willing to pay for her victory. He loved her! She could make him do whatever she wished. It did not matter whether she loved him or not. There was now no reason, that she could see, why she should not marry him—if the worst came to the worst.

---

XXXIII

Grace did not hear from H. R. the next morning as she fully expected. Since expectation is disguised desire, she was vexed by his silence. She had conquered. Why did he not acknowledge?

She obeyed what she would have called a sudden impulse of no particular significance and called up his office. Andrew Barrett answered. He told her that H. R. had gone away—nobody knew whither—and would not return until the following Thursday.

H. R.'s move was so mysterious that it could mean but one thing: He was running away!

Merely to make sure of it, she went to Jerry's at one o'clock. The northeast corner table was there, but not H. R. However, she sat down and waited.

She ordered her luncheon herself, irritated at having to do what he should have done. If it was business that kept H. R. away, she ought to know it. The right to know everything was part of the spoils. When he came back there would be no more ignorance—ever again!

At three o'clock she went home. But as the days passed she became uneasy. H. R. was the only human being she completely dominated. Brooding on his inexplicable absence, her thoughts came more and more to take the form of the question that victrices always ask of high Heaven: "Have I lost him?"

That made her love him.

At noon on the 20th of May he telephoned to her:

"Meet me at the Plaza at four—for tea. Don't fail! Good-by!"

"Wait!" she exclaimed, angrily, rebellion surging within her by reason of his dictatorial tone of voice. She had been very anxious to see him, but not at that price.

He had wisely hung up the receiver, however. That compelled her to do what he had told her to do. She had something to say to him.

She found him sitting at a small table in the Palm Room. Ethel Vandergilt and Reggie Van Duzen were with him. She approached him frowning, because she ran the usual gantlet of stares, and overheard the usual murmurs: "That's Grace Goodchild! Do you think she is as pretty as—"

Ethel greeted her affectionately, and Reggie looked proud to be there. He was a worshipper of the dynamic H. R. But all that H. R. himself said, in his exasperatingly peremptory voice, was:

"Month is up to-day. Now for the test! Tell Ethel you want some sandwiches!"

Grace started slightly and realized that Ethel had not overheard H. R.—he had taken care that she should not.

"No! I—I'm afraid, Hendrik," she stammered, turning pale. Women love to gamble—in their minds, when alone.

"You? Afraid? Of anything?" He looked at her in pained amazement. "Look at me!"

She did.

"I—I'll marry you any—anyway," she said, to show it was not cowardice, but the reverse.

"Play the game!" he said, sternly.

Before she knew it she obeyed. She sat down limply and said:

"Ethel, I w-want a s-s-sandwich!"

"You poor thing! You're actually faint with hunger. Don't you want some bouillon? Waiter!"

"No; I want a sandwich!" said Grace, loudly. You would have thought she had said, "Jacta est alea!"

Ethel and Reggie heard Grace use that word. People all about them knew who she was and had proudly told their out-of-town companions all about H. R. and Grace Goodchild. They, too, heard Grace say she wanted a sandwich.

Not a soul smiled! Not having seen anything about it in the newspapers for a month, New York had forgotten that H. R. had wooed Grace with sandwiches. H. R. was as famous as ever, but his fellow-citizens no longer knew why or how.

The waiter took the order with unsmiling respect. Grace looked at H. R. almost with awe. He smiled reassuringly and asked her:

"Aren't you going to ask Ethel?"

"Ask me what?" said Ethel.

Grace was silent, because she was blushing like a silly thing in public.

"On the eighth of June," said H. R. "I suppose you won't mind being a—"

Ethel naturally interrupted him by saying to Grace:

"I'm so glad! Is it announced?"

"You're the first one we've told, dear girl," H. R. declared, solemnly. "Reggie, you will give me courage at the altar?"

"Will I?" chuckled Reggie, proudly, and insisted on shaking hands.

H. R. rewarded him. He said:

"Reggie, I'm going to let you help me in my campaign. I'm going to the Assembly in the autumn."

"Albany!" said Reggie, enthusiastically. "First stop on the way to Washington! There was Cleveland—and Roosevelt; and now—"

"Oh, Hendrik!" gasped Grace. She would help him all she could—at the receptions.

Then she looked at Ethel to see whether she, also, understood national politics. Ethel did. She said, with conviction:

"And we'll all vote for him, too!"

The waiter laid a plate of sandwiches before Grace.

H. R. stared at them—a long time, as though he were crystal-gazing. He saw the labor-unions, the churches, the aristocracy, the bankers, the newspapers, the thoughtless, and the hungry; and all were with him and for him. He was the only man the Socialists really feared. If he was H. R. to New York, why should he not become H. R. to the nation?

He saw himself on the steps of the Capitol on a 4th of March. It was typical Rutgers weather. The mighty sun was trying its best to please him and incidentally tranquilizing Big Business by shining goldenly. The clouds, however, were pure silver—with an eye to the retail trade.

In the distance he saw the monument erected with infinite pains to the one American who could not tell a lie. It was a great white finger pointing straight at heaven. It was as though George Washington's stupendous gesture meant, "That is where I got it from!"

That is the place from which everything good comes. It should not be difficult, H. R. thought, to convince his fellow-Americans of it. They had been accustomed to reading, every day, "In God we trust." It was on all the dollars.

"Hendrik!" said Grace.

H. R. started from his dream and passed his hand over his eyes.

"Grace," he said to her resolutely, "my work is just beginning!"