nt
in its might has inspired me with the only consummate approval of life
that I have ever known--although I might have known it the day before
yesterday if you had looked as you do now." He sat steadily regarding
her for a few moments without speaking, but he was sensible of no
immediate wish to touch her. That, too, belonged to a possibly greater
but far different to-morrow. He was keyed very high. He did not feel
himself so much a human being as a component part of one force disputing
every inch of the progress of a mightier.

"Great God, what men!" he burst out. "I have been with some member of
the Committee of Fifty, on and off, these two days, to say nothing of
last night--Mr. Phelan invited me to serve on it yesterday morning. They
are superb, not daunted for a moment, talking already of the new city,
of the opportunity this conflagration has given them to make it over in
every way. Architects were engaged before three o'clock yesterday
afternoon. And the young business men that have been cleaned out! They
talk only of the enormous possibilities of the future. I remember
reading once of much the same spirit exhibited by Londoners after the
Great Fire. It is the most wonderful thing in the world that for a few
days at least you are permitted to cherish an unleavened respect for
human nature. Every mean cowardly and selfish trait that chains man to
earth is moribund to-day, in the normal at least; and the rats have run
to other holes. The higher qualities, those that have inspired the world
since it began, are in full possession. And, by Jove, it is going to be
the pioneer life over again! Do you remember that I regretted once I
could not be in at the foundation and growth of a great city, also that
the drawback to such an opportunity was that one was never conscious of
his part? Well, now we are back to the conditions of the Fifties, and we
know it. We shall work for tremendous stakes, and in no doubt of the
result."

"The enthusiastic moment has come," said Isabel.

"Rather. Here is my part cut out for me. Here I stay and become a chief
factor in making this city greater even than before. That is enough for
any man. And there will be plenty of fight. Politics will crawl back to
new strongholds, as soon as men become egos again, but I shall fight
them here, not in the country."

He stood up, and Isabel asked, hastily: "Have you had no sleep?"

"Hofer and I broke into an empty house in the Western Addition tow