advice would be as if
she were to ask him to tell her how to put life into a corpse. He
imagined that she was deceived by his silence about the details of his
affairs because she gave no sign, did not even ask questions beyond
generalities. She, however, was always watching his handsome face with
its fascinating evidences of power inwardly developing; and, as it was
her habit to get valuable information as to what was going on inside her
fellow-beings from a close study of surface appearances, the growing
gauntness of his features, the coming out of the lines of sternness, did
not escape her, made her heart throb with pride even as it ached with
sympathy and anxiety. At last she decided for speech.

He was sitting in their dressing room, smoking his last cigarette as he
watched her braid her wonderful hair for the night. She, observing him in
the glass, saw that he was looking at her with that yearning for sympathy
which is always at its strongest in a man in the mood that was his at
sight of those waves and showers of soft black hair on the pallid
whiteness of her shoulders. Before he realized what she was about she was
in his lap, her arms round his neck, his face pillowed against her cheek
and her hair. "What is it, little boy?" she murmured, with that mingling
of the mistress and the mother which every woman who ever loved feels for
and, at certain times, shows the man she loves.

He laughed. "Business--business," said he. "But let's not talk about
it. The important thing is that I have _you_. The rest is--smoke!" And
he blew out a great cloud of it and threw the cigarette through the
open window.

"Tell me," she said; "I've been waiting for you to speak, and I can't
wait any longer."

"I couldn't--just now. It doesn't at all fit in with my thoughts." And
he kissed her.

She moved to rise. "Then I'll go back to the dressing table. Perhaps
you'll be able to tell me with the width of the room between us."

He drew her head against his again. "Very well--if I must, I will. But
you know all about it. For some mysterious reason, somebody--you say it's
Whitney, and probably it is--won't let me buy grain or anything else as
cheaply as others buy it. And for the same mysterious reason, somebody,
probably Whitney again, won't let me get to market without paying a
heavier toll than our competitors pay. And now for some mysterious reason
somebody, probably Whitney again, has sent labor organizers from Chicago
among the