ave three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more
but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to
me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!"

He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to
the door of Beulah Sands's office. Bob was standing just inside the
threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen
from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to
be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet
mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:

"Bob, in mercy's name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably."

Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not
speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.

"Bob, you are unnerved," she said; "you have been through a terrible
ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and
trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been
ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made
millions--and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my
joy, my gratitude, my love--for, oh, Bob, I love you," she interrupted
herself passionately; "it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity
of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one
single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and
miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me
yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything
that was honourable."

She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes
searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in
her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there
was nothing black there.

As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother's
through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.

"Bob, speak to me, speak to me," she begged, "tell me there was no
dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to
suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the
convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the
madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair
or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or
my heart will break; or if, Bob, y