er arm with fierce strength that hurt.

"Then I'll break the spell. You shall not do this hideous thing. You
are mine, I tell you, and I am bigger than money. I have the power to
think, to create ideas, to create beauty--the power that remakes the
world. I expect to have all the money we shall need. In the years to
come we shall be rich whether we seek it or not. But the sweetest days
of all life will be those in which we fight side by side the first
battles of life in youth and poverty when we shall count the pennies
and save with care for the little ones God may send us! With your sweet
face bending above me and the touch of your hand, the highest success
is sure. Marry me now. Here is your home. We don't need to be rich to
be happy--a loving heart, generous sympathies, comradeship, high
ambitions, strong young bodies and clean souls--and the angels will
envy us!"

"But life is short, Jim! I can have things now. He has already promised
them--a palace in town, another by the sea, a great castle in the heart
of the blue southern mountains we used to watch as children, and armies
of servants to do my bidding--I can live now!"

"And you call these trappings and tinsel life?"

"I want them."

"My God, Nan, haven't you a soul? Hasn't the life within no meaning for
you? To me such luxury is sheer insanity. The possibilities of personal
luxury have been exhausted thousands of years ago. It's commonplace,
vulgar, and contemptible. If you wish for power why choose the lowest
of all its forms? The way you are entering is worn bare by the feet of
millions of forgotten fools whose bodies worms have eaten. Not one of
them lives to-day even in a footnote of history. They sailed no unknown
seas. They conquered no new worlds. They merely got dollars, spent them
and died."

"And yet, Jim, you know as well as I do that money is the sign of
success and power; its absence, of failure and weakness."

"To those who see the surface of things only--oh, Nan, why have you let
this brood of black-winged bats build their nest in your heart?--this
greed, this avarice, this envy of the rich----"

The girl lifted her hand with a gesture of impatience.

"You persist in misunderstanding me. Why should your desire for power
be called high ambition, and mine a vulgar avarice? If you make a
mistake in your career, you can correct it and begin again. Being a
woman I cannot, for marriage is my only career. A mistake now would be
to me fatal."