“No! No! No!” he cried, inflamed with love and the danger of the loved one’s eternal loss, and seizing at every argument. “Listen!” He stepped nearer her. “Listen, before you speak finally. I can take you out of this poverty, this turmoil, this oppression! I can give you peace, and comfort, and position!”
“Ah!” she breathed. “Again the king stoops to the beggar maid.”
Swept madly on by his desire to win her, his dreams for a towering financial future rushed into the form of argument. He stood before her the impassioned embodiment of the American hero—the strong, masterful man of affairs, flashing forth an all-conquering confidence.
“Yes!” cried he, and he glowed dominantly down upon her. “You shall have everything! Everything! You and I, side by side, shall go breast to breast with the foremost. I tell you, with your beauty, you shall queen it over every woman in Chicago!”
He had not noted the strange, quiet look that had come into her face. “In substance, you mean to tell me that you can give me position.”
“I can give you the very highest!”
“You are of an old family, then?”
“None older in Chicago!”
She did not speak.
“Come!” he went on with the mighty rush of his schemes. “Mine is to be no trifling million-dollar success. I do not mean to boast—but I feel the power in me! No young man in America has a chance like mine! I shall become one of the first business men of America! It is sure—sure as that the years roll round. I shall become the master of railroads, of mines, of factories. All—all!—are going to yield me their wealth. And that means power, and more power—and position, and greater position. And this wealth, this power, this position, shall all be yours!”