Her spectral interview on the Long Island estate brought a new influence to her. The next morning at breakfast she found the most commonplace-looking letter imaginable beside her plate. The contents were as follows:

DEAR MIRIAM:
My laboratory is at Seven Hundred and Ninety-Sixth Street, near the river. Come at three o’clock any day. Pardon the abrupt way I presented myself yesterday. It was made possible by our saturnian affiliations. I am still a little awkward about it—the interruption was caused by an accident to the coordination. I hope to fulfil your expectations. I am myself more than ever convinced that we shall achieve together something that will modify the course of human history.

Sincerely yours, MARY FAUST.

Sincerely yours, MARY FAUST.

Miriam looked across at her father, who was immersed in his business mail. How near and dear to her he was, and yet how far removed! Distance is but the relation of one mind to another; we may be closer to the Pleiades than to the companion whose arm is linked in our own. But diameters of sidereal systems cannot sever us from those we love.

She said nothing to her father; but that afternoon she privately visited Mme. Faust’s laboratory; and thus began a secret connection destined to have important issues.

CHAPTER II
RACE FOR LOVE

A LITTLE more than a year after Miriam became Mary Faust’s pupil and partner, the new Madison Square Garden was opened with the annual horse-show, which, for ages, had been a leading function of New York society.

The new building covered four city blocks, and was raised above the vast plaza in the midst of which it stood by flights of ornamental steps. The great central tower rose fifteen hundred feet above the pavement, and the towers of less elevation stood at the four corners. Forests of delicate columns supported the superstructure, which mounted height above height in snowy elevations, finely touched with gold and color, till the central tower leaped aloft like a fountain. So just were the proportions of the whole that the edifice seemed rather to rise upward with an aspiring impulse than to press upon the earth.

The populace filled the plaza, thronged the steps, and streamed inward through twenty broad doorways. The king and court were to attend the ceremony of the opening, and the uniforms of the guards divided with their bright lines the masses of the crowd. Air-boats, like great birds, chased one another high overhead in sweeping circles, dropping small parachutes carrying bags of sugar plums, which were caught by the crowd. The October sun shone on the front of the marble edifice, kindling all into airy splendor.

A young man of modest demeanor but of striking aspect was slowly edging his way through the throng. He was nobody in particular—an artist, Jack Paladin by name. But he was tall, well formed and handsome; his fellow students in the art class, a few years before, found a strong resemblance between him and the statue of Hermes, ascribed to Praxiteles, and used to get him to pose for them. Jack was good-natured and easy-going; but his mind was not centered upon himself. It did not even dwell upon one or another beautiful girl, with whom he could imagine himself in love. He thought of and loved nothing but art: was a Galahad of art, in short. Mankind and the universe were to him material for pictures: his constant problem and delight was to make them serve art purposes. He had little money, and only one living relative—his uncle, Sam Paladin, quite a notable personage, who had been a great traveler and adventurer in all parts of the world, a hero of daring escapades, a soldier of fortune; but now, at a little less than fifty, had settled in New York, enjoying the society of a few old friends and applying himself enthusiastically to astronomy; as if, having exhausted the resources of this planet, he were seeking further entertainment in other satellites of our sun. Jack had no heartier backer and sympathizer than Uncle Sam, though art was an unknown region to him. Though by no means a rich man, Uncle Sam devised all sorts of pretexts for “tipping” him; and Jack was obliged to stipulate that his uncle was not to buy any picture of him which had not already been sought by some outside purchaser. Hitherto, the outside purchaser had seldom brought the stipulation to the test.