lves. They were nice, earnest boys with all sorts of
serious Marxian ideas of establishing social justice in the plants
which their fathers had built; and carrying the highest motives into
the city or national politics. But the industrial reformers, Constance
was quite certain, never could have built up the industries with which
they now, so superiorly, were finding fault; the political purifiers
either failed of election or, if elected, seemed to leave politics
pretty much as they had been before. The picture of Spearman,
instantly appealed to and instantly in charge in the emergency,
remained and became more vivid within Constance, because she never saw
him except when he dominated.

And a decade most amazingly had bridged the abyss which had separated
twelve years and thirty-two. At twenty-two, Constance Sherrill was
finding Henry Spearman--age forty-two--the most vitalizing and
interesting of the men who moved, socially, about the restricted
ellipse which curved down the lake shore south of the park and up Astor
Street. He had, very early, recognized that he possessed the vigor and
courage to carry him far, and he had disciplined himself until the
coarseness and roughness, which had sometimes offended the little girl
of ten years before, had almost vanished. What crudities still came
out, romantically reminded of his hard, early life on the lakes. Had
there been anything in that life of his of which he had not told
her--something worse than merely rough and rugged, which could strike
at her? Uncle Benny's last, dramatic appeal to her had suggested that;
but even at the moment when he was talking to her, fright for Uncle
Benny--not dread that there had been anything wrong in Henry's
life--had most moved her. Uncle Benny very evidently was not himself.
As long as Constance could remember, he had quarreled violently with
Henry; his antagonism to Henry had become almost an obsession; and
Constance had her father's word for it that, a greater part of the
time, Uncle Benny had no just ground for his quarrel with Henry. A
most violent quarrel had occurred upon that last day, and undoubtedly
its fury had carried Uncle Benny to the length of going to Constance as
he did.

Constance had come to this conclusion during the last gloomy and stormy
days; this morning, gazing out upon the shining lake, clear blue under
the wintry sun, she was more satisfied than before. Summoning her
maid, she inquired first whether an