And in the reading there grew up in her heart a mighty respect for these men, for, in the analysis of their deeds, the beam swayed strongly against the measure of the world in its balance of good and harm.
Many times her feet carried her into strange streets among strange people, where the reek of shipping became incense to her nostrils, and hairy-chested men of many ports stared boldly into her face and, reading her aright, made room with deference.
Upon an evening just before the annual surcease of frivolity, Gregory St. Ledger called at the Manton home and, finding Ethel alone in the library, asked her to be his wife.
Because it was an evening of her blackest mood she neither refused nor accepted him, but put him off for a year on the ground that she did not know her mind.
In vain he protested, arguing the power and prestige of the St. Ledger millions, and in the end departed to seek out an acquaintance who had to do with a blatant Sunday newspaper.
During the interview that followed, in the course of which the reporter ordered and St. Ledger paid for many tall drinks of intricate concoction, the gilded youth made no statement of fact, but the impression he managed to convey furnished the theme for the news story whose headlines seared into Bill Carmody's soul to the crashing of his tenets and gods.
In the library the girl sat far into the night and thought of the man who had won her heart and of the toy man who would buy her hand.
CHAPTER XXVII
JEANNE