y a second to stay--my husband misses me if I am five minutes
out of his sight."

"I do not wonder, Aunt Caroline."

"Isn't it all strange, Tony," she asked, "how very far up we have come?"

He shook the ashes off his cigar. "Well, I don't feel myself very far
up, Aunt Caroline."

"My dear Tony, aren't you going to marry an immense fortune?"

"Is that what people say, Aunt Caroline?"

"You are going to do a very brilliant thing, Tony."

"Is that what you call going very far up?"

His aunt shook her pretty head. "Money is the greatest power in the
world, dear boy. Art is very well, but there is nothing in the wide
world like an income, dear."

Her nephew stirred in his chair. Caroline Potowski looked down at her
little diamond watch, her dress shining like a bunch of many-hued roses.
Antony knew that her husband was rich; he also made a good income from
his singing and she must have made not an inconsiderable fortune.

"What are you thinking about?" said his aunt later, her hand on his own.
"You have shown great wisdom, great worldly wisdom."

"My God!" exclaimed her nephew between his teeth.

If Madame Potowski heard this exclamation, it was not tragic to her. She
lowered her tone, although there was no one to hear them.

"Tony, I am very anxious about money."

Her nephew laughed aloud. In spite of himself there came over him in a
flash the memory of the day nearly ten years ago when she sat on the
side of his miserable little bed in his miserable little room in New
York and took from him as a loan--which she never meant to pay back--all
the money he had in the world. He put his hands in his pockets.

"Has your husband any financial difficulties?"

"My husband knows nothing about it," she said serenely. "You don't
suppose I could tell him, do you? I must have five thousand francs, dear
Tony, before to-morrow."

Tony said lightly, "I am afraid economy is not your strong point."

"Tony," she exclaimed reproachfully, "I am a wonderful manager; I can
make a franc go further than my husband can a louis, and I have a real
gift for bargains. Think of it! I only had one hundred dollars a month
to dress myself and Bella and poor little Gardiner, and for all my
little expenses." The children's names on her lips seemed sacrilege to
him. He did not wish her to speak those sacred names, or destroy his
sacred past, whose charm and tenderness persisted over all the suffering
and which nothing could destroy. "I hav