consequence drenched his skin with cold perspiration.

On the desk before him lay the essay which he had asked Carmen to
write during the week, as her report of the brilliant event. He had
read it through three times, and each time had read into it a new
meaning. He dared not run it. Not that it ridiculed or condemned--at
least, not openly--but because every one of its crisp comments
admitted of an interpretation which revealed the hidden depths of the
social system, and its gigantic incarnation, as if under the glare of
a powerful searchlight. It was in no sense a muck-raking exposition.
Rather, it was an interpretation, and a suggestion. It was, too, a
prediction; but not a curse. The girl loved those about whom she
wrote. And yet, he who read the essay aright would learn that her love
stopped not at the flimsy veil of the flesh, but penetrated until it
rested upon the fair spiritual image beyond. And then Haynerd saw that
the essay was, in substance, a social clinic, to which all searchers
after truth were bidden, that they might learn a great lesson from her
skillful dissection of the human mind, and her keen analysis of its
constituent thought.

As he sat wrapped in reflection, the early morning mail was brought
in. He glanced up, and then started to his feet. The letters spread
over his desk like an avalanche of snow; and the puffing mail carrier
declared that he had made a special trip with them alone. Haynerd
began to tear them open, one after another. Then he called the office
boy, and set him at the task. There were more than five hundred of
them, and each contained a canceled subscription to the Social Era.

A dark foreboding settled down over Haynerd's mind. He rose and went
to the card-index to consult his subscription list. It was gone! He
stood confusedly for a moment, then hastened to the window that looked
out upon a fire-escape. Its lock lay broken upon the floor. He turned
and rushed to the vault, which, reflecting his own habitual
carelessness, was never locked. His ledgers and account books were not
there. Then he crept back to his desk and sank into a chair.

The noon mail brought more letters of like nature, until the office
boy tallied nearly eight hundred. Then Haynerd, as if rousing from a
dream, reached for the telephone and summoned Hitt to his rescue. The
Social Era was foundering. Its mailing list had contained some
fifteen hundred names. The subscription price was twelve dollars a
yea