rembled just a little, "you will help the people of Avon, but
not because I shall marry you. God does not work that way. I have
loved you. And I love them. And nothing can kill that love. God will
open the way."

"Then you refuse my offer, do you?" he asked sharply, as his face set.
"Remember, all the blame will be upon you. I have shown you a way
out."

She looked up at him. She saw now with a clairvoyance which separated
him from the mask which he had worn. Her glance penetrated until it
found his soul.

"You have shown me the depths of the carnal mind," she slowly replied.
"The responsibility is not with me, but with--God. I--I came to-day
to--to help you. But now I must leave you--with Him."

"Humph!"

He stooped and took up her muff which lay upon the floor. As he did so,
a letter fell out. He seized it and glanced at the superscription.

"Cartagena! To Jose de Rincon! Another little _billet-doux_ to your
priestly lover, eh?"

She looked down at the letter which he held. "It is money," she said,
though her thought seemed far away. "Money that I am sending to a
little newsboy who bears his name."

"Ha! His brat! But, you still love that fallen priest?"

"Yes," was the whispered answer.

He rose and opened a drawer in his desk. Taking out a paper-bound
book, he held it out to the girl. "Look here," he sneered. "Here's a
little piece of work which your brilliant lover did some time ago.
'Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest.' Do you know the penalty your
clerical paramour paid for that, eh? Then I'll tell you," bending over
close to her ear, "his _life_!"

Carmen rose unsteadily. The color had fled from her cheeks. She staggered
a few steps toward the door, then stopped. "God--is--is--_everywhere_!"
she murmured. It was the refuge of her childhood days.

Then she reeled, and fell heavily to the floor.

CHAPTER 15

If additional proof of the awful cost of hating one's fellow-men were
required, the strike which burst upon the industrial world that winter
must furnish it in sickening excess. But other facts, too, were
rendered glaringly patent by that same desperate clash which made Avon
a shambles and transformed its fair name into a by-word, to be spoken
only in hushed whispers when one's thought dwells for a moment upon
the madness of the carnal mind that has once tasted blood. The
man-cleft chasm between labor and capital, that still unbridged void
which separates master and servant, and