One day, however, he was commissioned to prepare the case in defense of a large contractor, quite justly accused of fraud. It happened that, when the young lawyer brought the results of his week's work to his chief, the client in whose interests the work had been done was closeted with the head of the firm, and, Dyker being presented, that contractor learned of Wesley's service. At the ensuing trial the client was acquitted, and remembered the service. He lived on the East Side and made most of his money from political jobs. The rest followed simply enough. Dyker was introduced to the powers of his patron's district, and, thinking that he saw here the opportunity of which he had begun to despair, he had left his former employers and was already shouldering his way forward among his new friends. His former acquaintances mildly wondered what the devil he was after; his latter ones began to regard him as a clever fellow, and the newspapers printed stories of him as a young society man that gratuitously gave his legal talents to the help of the poor.
For his own part, Dyker was quite certain of what he was and of what he would be. He had seen, beneath his lowered lids, that a clever man could gain both fortune and power through political prestige, and he meant to use that means to his end. He had also, while still with the firm of corporation-lawyers, been presented to Marian Lennox by her opportunely-met, socially-aspiring mother, and was, whatever his relation with other members of her sex, quite as much in love with her as he could be with anybody. Realizing the power of her father's fortune and the beauty of the girl herself, he had determined to marry her with as little delay as possible.
Until to-night he had delayed all open pursuit, because there had not been lacking signs to free him from fear of all male rivals; but that Marian should thus suddenly develop a purpose in life meant that he was to have a rival of a far more formidable sort. He set his teeth under his crisp mustache, folded his arms across his heart, and sat stolidly through the interminable opera: as soon as it was over, he meant to play his first lead.
He did play it—played it as soon as their car had crept up in answer to its electric-call and whisked them away into the night. As they shot up the flaming street, her clean-cut profile was almost as distinct as it had been in the box, and the girl, still thrilling with the memory of the music she so passionately loved, was close to the mood best suited to his own.
"May I talk now?" he asked ruefully.
She smiled.
"You mean to ask if you may argue," she answered. "No, you may not argue against my determination, and I am a good deal surprised that a man of your sort should want to."
"I don't intend to argue," he protested, leaning the merest trifle toward her. "I mean only to ask you if your determination is quite fixed."
She bowed her splendid head.
"Quite fixed," she said.