rt at
your finger tips. Are you going to sweat and stew all your life in the
cab of an engine? Why, you are insane."

"Stop," cried Fairfax again, "for the love of heaven...."

Rainsford regarded him, fascinated. He saw in him his own lost
promises, his own lost chance; it seemed to him that through this young
man he might in a way buy back the lost years.

"I'll _not_ stop till I have used every means to make you see the
hideous mistake you're making."

"Rainsford," said Antony, paling, "if you had made me this offer the day
before I left Nut Street, I would have been in France by this. My God!"
he murmured beneath his breath. "_How_ I would have escaped!"--checked
himself with great control for so young a man and so ardent a man. He
was a foot taller than his desk-bowed pale companion, and he laid his
hand impulsively on his chief's shoulder.

"If you can give me a _job_, Rainsford, do so, will you? I know I have
no right to ask you, after the way I have treated the Company, but I am
married. I have married Molly Shannon. You know her, the girl at
Sheedy's." He waited a second, looking the other man in the eyes, then,
with something of his old humour, he said, "There are two of us now,
Rainsford, and I have got to make our living."

CHAPTER XXIV

Death does not always make the deepest graves. His art was buried
deepest of all, and there was just one interest in his life, and that
was not his wife. He was kind to her, but if he had beaten her she would
have kissed his hand; she could not have loved him better. Her life was
"just wrapped round him." He treated her as a lady, and he was a
gentleman. Her manners were always soft and gentle, coming from a sweet
good heart. She grew thinner, and her pride in him and her love for him
and her humility made Molly Fairfax beautiful. There was a great deal of
cruelty in the marriage and in their mating. It was no one's fault, and
the woman suffered the most. Their rooms were in a white frame building
with green blinds, one of the old wooden houses that remained long in
Albany. It did not overlook the yards, for Fairfax wanted a new horizon.
From her window, Molly could see the docks, the river, the night and day
boats as they anchored, and she had time to watch and know them all.
Nothing in his working life or in his associations coarsened Antony
Fairfax; it would have been better for him had it done so. She was not
married to an engineer, but to a gentleman, and