were exploiters.

"See how good the conditions are under which Miss Hahlstroem is filling
her engagement with me. There is my wife. In some respects she has been
a mother to the girl. She is taking care of her in our own home, and
the girl is in good health. She has a dancer's physique. It is a piece
of bare-faced impudence to impugn the girl's honour. She is not a
degenerate. She is not a neglected child. On the contrary she is simply
a great artist."

Lilienfeld had left his highest trump for the last.

"Mr. Garry," he shouted so loud that the lofty windows rattled, "Mr.
Garry called me a foreigner, a freebooter and the like. I object most
decidedly. I am as much an American citizen as Mr. Garry. Mr. Garry, do
you hear I am an American citizen?" For certain reasons Lilienfeld had
had himself naturalised only a month before. "Mr. Garry, do you hear I am
an American citizen?" he cried several times in succession, directly
addressing the old jingo and leaning far across the table. "Mr. Garry, do
you hear I am an American citizen? Mr. Garry, I am an American citizen,
and I will have my rights like you."

That was the end. The wheezing in Lilienfeld's chest, as he seated
himself, breathing heavily, was distinctly audible. There was not the
faintest quiver in Mr. Garry's face.

After a rather lengthy pause, during which there was profound silence,
the Mayor spoke. His words came out quietly, in his customary manner of
mild embarrassment and shrewd affability, which rather became him. His
decision was exactly what the political augurers, judging by the
constellation in the ascendant, had prophesied. Ingigerd was granted the
right to dance in public.

"The young lady, according to the decision of physicians called upon to
testify, has been declared sound in body. There is no occasion to doubt
that she is over sixteen years of age and no reason for preventing her
from earning her livelihood by the exercise of an art which she has
already practised in Europe."

The reporters grinned at one another significantly. The secret hate of
the Irish Catholic toward the native Puritan of English descent had
broken through the surface. Mr. Garry arose and shook his enemy's hand
with cold dignity. Then he walked away, drawn up to his full height. His
other adversary, of a very different nature from the Mayor, did not
succeed in darting in his face his look of hate, also of a very different
nature from the Mayor's; for Mr. Garry's e