* * * *

All that afternoon and far into the night a gaping, wondering
concourse braved the cold and stood about the walk that led up to the
little Beaubien cottage. Within, the curtains were drawn, and Sidney,
Jude, and Miss Wall answered the calls that came incessantly over the
telephone and to the doors. Sidney had not been in the court room, for
Haynerd had left him at the editor's desk in his own absence. But with
the return of Haynerd the lad had hurried into a taxicab and commanded
the chauffeur to drive madly to the Beaubien home. And once through
the door, he clasped the beautiful girl in his arms and strained her
to his breast.

"My sister!" he cried. "My own, my very own little sister! We only
pretended before, didn't we? But now--now, oh, God above! you really
are my sister!"

The scarce comprehending girl drew his head down and kissed him.
"Sidney," she murmured, "the ways of God are past finding out!"

Aye, for again, as of old, He had chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise; He had chosen the weak to confound the
mighty; and the base things, and the things despised, had He used to
bring to naught the things that are. And why? That no flesh might
glory in His terrible presence!

"Carmen!" cried the excited boy. "Think what this means to our book!"

The girl smiled up at him; then turned away. "My father!" she
murmured. "He--my father!" she kept repeating, groping her way about
the room as if in a haze. "He! It can't be! It can't!"

The still dazed Beaubien drew the girl into her arms. "My little
princess!" she whispered. "Oh! But who would have dreamed it! Yet I
called you that from the very first. But--oh, Carmen! And he--that
man--your father!"

"Don't! Mother, don't! It--it isn't proved. It--"

Then the Beaubien's heart almost stopped. What if it were true? What,
then, would this sudden turn in the girl's life mean to the lone woman
who clung to her so?

"No, mother dearest," whispered Carmen, looking up through her tears.
"For even if it should be true, I will not leave you. He--he--"

She stopped; and would speak of him no more.

But neither of them knew as yet that in that marvelous Fifth Avenue
palace, behind those drawn curtains and guarded bronze doors, at which
an eager crowd stood staring, Ames, the superman, lay dying, his left
side, from the shoulder down, paralyzed.

* * * * *

In the holy quie