“Then, by God!” shouted Ames, who had lost himself completely, “I will crush him like a dirty spider! And you, I’ll drag you through the gutters and make your name a synonym of all that is vile in womanhood!”
Carmen stepped quietly to the elevator and pressed the signal button.
“You shall not leave this house!” cried the enraged Ames, starting toward her. “Or you’ll go under arrest!”
The girl drew herself up with splendid dignity, and faced him fearlessly. “We shall leave your house, and now, Mr. Ames!” she said. “You and that for which you stand can not touch us! The carnal mind is back of you! Omnipotent God is with us!”
She moved away from him, then turned and stood for a moment, flashing, sparkling, radiant with a power which he could not comprehend. “You know not what you do. You are blinded and deceived by human lust and greed. But the god you so ignorantly worship now will some day totter and fall upon you. Then you will awake, and you will see your present life as a horrid dream.”
The elevator appeared. Carmen and the dazed Haynerd stepped quickly into it and descended without opposition to the lower floor. A few moments later they were again in the street and hurrying to the nearest car line.
“Girlie,” said Haynerd, mopping the perspiration from his brow, “we’re in for it now––and I shall be crushed! But you––I think your God will save you.”
Carmen took his hand. “His arm is not shortened,” she murmured, “that He can not save us both.”
CHAPTER 5
ON the Monday morning following the Ames reception the society columns of the daily papers still teemed with extravagant depictions of the magnificent affair. On that same morning, while Haynerd sat gloomily in the office of the Social Era, meditating on his giant adversary’s probable first move, Carmen, leaving her studies and classes, sought out an unpretentious home in one of the suburbs of the city, and for an hour or more talked earnestly with the timid, frightened little wife of Congressman Wales. Then, her work done, she dismissed the whole affair from her mind, and hastened joyously 56 back to the University. She would have gone to see Ames himself. “But,” she reflected, as she dwelt on his conduct and words of the previous Saturday evening, “he is not ready for it yet. And when he is, I will go to him. And Kathleen––well, I will help her by seeing only the real child of God, which was hidden that night by the veil of hatred and jealousy. And that veil, after all, is but a shadow.”