bled Philip snatched it. It read: "Combine is announced,
shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?"

That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message
three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own
sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter
of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound
note. He pushed the boy from him.

"Run!" he commanded. "Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!"

He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned
or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence,
Helen said: "Is it good news?"

"That depends entirely upon you," replied Philip soberly. "Indeed, all
my future life depends upon what you are going to say next."

Helen breathed deeply and happily.

"And--what am I going to say?"

"How can I know that?" demanded Philip. "Am I a mind reader?"

But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
shared with the bears in Regents Park.

Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
taxi-cab.

Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN

In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley
line, the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his
son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his
father; or, if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone
through Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would
not have known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told
him.

When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon
lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for
other social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes
and ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to
lay siege to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York
itself. A widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had
told them not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent
of a society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them
that in New York the wai