in his life. He felt as if he had been
assaulting a beautiful alabaster wall of unreason. He felt as if
that which he could shatter at a blow had yet held him in defiance.
The idea of this girl, of whom he had thought as his future wife,
deliberately setting herself against him, galled him inexpressibly,
and in spite of himself he could not quite free his mind of
jealousy. On his way home he stopped at Lyman Risley's office, and
found, to his great satisfaction, that he was alone, writing at his
desk. Even his stenographer had gone home. He turned around when
Robert entered, and looked at him with his quizzical, yet kindly,
smile.

"Well, how are you, boy?" he said.

Robert dropped into the first chair, and sat therein, haunched up as
in a lapse of despair and weariness.

"What is the matter?" asked Risley.

"You have heard about the trouble in the factory?"

For answer Risley held up a night's paper with glaring head-lines.

"Yes, of course it is in the papers," assented Robert, wearily.

Risley stared at him in a lazily puzzled fashion. "Well," he said,
"what is it all about? Why are you so broken up about it?" Risley
laid considerable emphasis on the _you_.

"Yes," cried Robert, in a sudden stress of indignation. "You look at
it like all the rest. Why are all the laborers to be petted and
coddled, and the capitalists held up to execration? Good Lord, isn't
there any pity for the rich man without his drop of water, in the
Bible or out? Are all creation born with blinders on, and can they
only see before their noses?"

"What are you talking about, Robert?" said Risley, laughing a
little.

"I say why should all the sympathy go to the workmen who are acting
like the pig-headed idiots they are, and none for the head of the
factory, who has the sharp-edged, red-hot brunt of it all to bear?"

"You wouldn't look at it that way if you were one of the poor men
just out on strike such weather as this," said Risley, dryly. He
glanced as he spoke at the window, which was beginning to be thickly
furred with frost in spite of the heat of the office. Robert
followed his gaze, and noted the spreading fairy jungle of
crystalline trees and flowers on the broad field of glass.

"Do you think that is the worst thing in the world to bear?" he
demanded, angrily.

"What? Cold and hunger not only for yourself, but for those you
love?"

"Yes."

"Well, I think it is pretty bad," replied Risley.

"Well, suppose you had t