on voyage--and said briefly: "I have loved your daughter ever
since I first saw her. I'm as poor as you were once, but if I see my
way to making a fortune and can give her everything she ought to have
will you oppose my efforts to make her marry me?"

The daring of the thing pleased Constantine to the point of saying:
"Do you want a loan, O'Valley? I think you'll make good. Then it's up
to my daughter; she knows whom she wants to marry better than I do.
You're a decent sort--her mother would have liked you."

"I don't want a loan just yet. I want to make her marry me because I
have made my own money and can take care of my own wife. I'm just
asking you not to interfere if I do win out. I've saved a little--I'm
going to take a plunge in stocks and draw out before it's too late.
Then I'm going into business if I can; but I'll have to try my luck
gambling before I do. When I hang out my shingle I may ask you to
help--a little. Self-made men of to-day are made on paper--not by
splitting logs or teaching school in the backwoods in order to buy a
dictionary and law books--we haven't the time for that. So I'll take
my chances and you'll hear from me later."

While Beatrice was skimming through school and taking walking trips
through Norway punctuated by fleeting visits home, remaining as
childish and unconcerned as to vital things as her mother had been at
fourteen, Steve left the Constantine factory and took the plunge.

Good luck favoured him, and for five golden years he continued to rise
in the financial world, causing his rivals to say: "A fool's luck
first then the war made him--the government contracts, you know. He's
only succeeded because of luck and the fact of it's being the
psychological moment. Worked in the ordnance game--didn't see active
service--money just kept rolling in. Well, who wants a war fortune?
Some folks in 1860 bought government mules for limousine prices and
sold them for the same. Besides, it's only so he can marry the
Gorgeous Girl. I guess he'll find out it was cheap at half the
price!"

While talk ran riot Steve's fortune multiplied with almost sinister
speed. He learned that flattery and ridicule were the best weapons
known to man. And while the Gorgeous Girl flew home at the first war
cloud to bury herself in serious war activities Steve climbed the
upward path and never once glanced backward lest he grow dizzy.

At thirty-two, in the year 1919, he was able to say to Mark
Constantine,