CHAPTER XIX

“‘This afternoon Charlie Peck called at the office of theExpressand ordered its editor, who is candidate for mayor, to cease from his present aggressive campaign tactics. He threatened, in case the candidate refused, to order the “boys” to knife him at the polls.“‘The candidate refused.“‘Voters of Westville, do your votes belong to you, or do they belong to Charlie Peck?’

“‘This afternoon Charlie Peck called at the office of theExpressand ordered its editor, who is candidate for mayor, to cease from his present aggressive campaign tactics. He threatened, in case the candidate refused, to order the “boys” to knife him at the polls.

“‘The candidate refused.

“‘Voters of Westville, do your votes belong to you, or do they belong to Charlie Peck?’

“That’s my answer, Peck. It all goes in big, black type in a box in the centre of the first page of this afternoon’s paper. We’ll see whether the party will stand for your methods.” At this instant the grimy young servitor of the press appeared. “Here, boy. Rush that right down.”

“Hold on!” cried Peck in consternation. “You’re not going to print that thing?”

“Unless the end of the world happens along just about now, that’ll be on the street in half an hour.” Bruce stepped to the door and opened it wide. “And, now, clear out! You and your votes can go plum to hell!”

“Damn you! But that piece will do you no good. I’ll deny it!”

“Deny it—for God’s sake do! Then everybody will know I’m telling the truth. And let me warn you, Charlie Peck—I’m going to find out what your game is! I’m going to show you up! I’m going to wipe you clear off the political map!”

Blind Charlie swore at him again as he passed out of the door.

“We’re not through with each other yet—remember that!”

“You bet we’re not!” Bruce shouted after him. “And when we are, there’ll not be enough of you left to know what’s happened!”

Twohours later Bruce was striding angrily up and down the West parlour, telling Katherine all about it.

She refrained from saying, “I told you so,” by either word or look. She was too wise for such a petty triumph. Besides, there was something in that afternoon’sExpress, which Bruce had handed her that interested her far more than his wrathful recital of Blind Charlie’s treachery; and although she was apparently giving Bruce her entire attention, and was in fact mechanically taking in his words, her mind was excitedly playing around this second piece of news.

For Doctor Sherman, so said theExpress, had that day suddenly left Westville. He had been failing in health for many weeks and was on the verge of a complete breakdown, theExpresssympathetically explained, and at last had yielded to the importunities of his worried congregation that he take a long vacation. He had gone to the pine woods of the North,and to insure the unbroken rest he so imperatively required, to prevent the possibility of appealing letters of inconsiderate parishioners or other cares from following him into his isolation, he had, at his doctor’s command, left no address behind.

Katherine instantly knew that this vacation was a flight. The situation in Westville had grown daily more intense, and Doctor Sherman had seemed to her to be under an ever-increasing strain. Blake, she was certain, had ordered the young clergyman to leave, fearing, if he remained, that his nerve might break and he might confess his true relation to her father’s case. She realized that now, when Doctor Sherman was apparently weakening, was the psychological time to besiege him with accusation and appeal; and while Bruce was rehearsing his scene with Blind Charlie she was rapidly considering means for seeking out Doctor Sherman and coming face to face with him.

Her mind was brought back from its swift search by Bruce swinging a chair up before her and sitting down.

“But, Katherine—I’ll show Peck!” he cried, fiercely, exultantly. “He doesn’t know what a fight he’s got ahead of him. This frees me entirely from him and his machine, and I’m going to beat him so bad that I’ll drive him clear out of politics.”

She nodded. That was exactly what she was secretly striving to help him do.

He became more composed, and for a hesitant, silent moment he peered thoughtfully into her eyes.

“But, Katherine—this affair with Peck this afternoon shows me I am up against a mighty stiff proposition,” he said, speaking with the slowness of one who is shaping his statements with extreme care. “I have got to fight a lot harder than I thought I would have to three hours ago, when I thought I had Peck with me. To beat him, and beat Blake, I have got to have every possible weapon. Consequently, circumstances force me to speak of a matter that I wish I did not have to talk about.” He reached forward and took her hand. “But, remember, dear,” he besought her tenderly, “that I don’t want to hurt you. Remember that.”

She felt a sudden tightening about the heart.

“Yes—what is it?” she asked quietly.

“Remember, dear, that I don’t want to hurt you,” he repeated. “It’s about your father’s case. You see how certain victory would be if we only had the evidence to prove what we know?”

“I see.”

“I don’t mean to say one single unkind word about your not having made—having made—moreencouraging progress.” He pressed her hand; his tone was gentle and persuasive. “I’ll confess I have secretly felt some impatience, but I have not pressed the matter because—well, you see that in this critical situation, with election so near, I’m forced to speak about it now.”

“What would you like?” she said with an effort.

“You see we cannot afford any more delays, any more risks. We have got to have the quickest possible action. We have got to use every measure that may get results. Now, dear, you would not object, would you, if at this critical juncture, when every hour is so valuable, we were to put the whole matter in the hands of my Indianapolis lawyer friend I spoke to you about?”

The gaze she held upon his continued steady, but she was pulsing wildly within and she had to swallow several times before she could speak.

“You—you think he can do better than I can?”

“I do not want to say a single word that will reflect on you, dear. But we must admit the facts. You have had the case for over four months, and we have no real evidence as yet.”

“And you think he can get it?”

“He’s very shrewd, very experienced. He’ll follow up every clue with detectives. If anyman can succeed in the short time that remains, he can.”

“Then you—you think I can’t succeed?”

“Come, dear, let’s be reasonable!”

“But I think I can.”

“But, Katherine!” he expostulated.

She felt what was coming.

“I’m sure I can—if you will only trust me a little longer!” she said desperately.

He dropped her hand.

“You mean that, though I ask you to give it up, you want to continue the case?”

She grew dizzy, his figure swam before her.

“I—I think I do.”

“Why—why——” He broke off. “I can’t tell you how surprised I am!” he exclaimed. “I have said nothing of late because I was certain that, if I gave nature a little time in which to work, there would be no need to argue the matter with you. I was certain that, now that love had entered your life, your deeper woman’s instincts would assert themselves and you would naturally desire to withdraw from the case. In fact, I was certain that your wish to practise law, your ambition for a career outside the home, would sink into insignificance—and that you would have no desire other than to become a true woman of the home, where I want my wife to be, where she belongs. Oh, come now, Katherine,” he added with arush of his dominating confidence, taking her hand again, “you know that’s just what you’re going to do!”

She sat throbbing, choking. She realized that the long-feared battle was now inevitably at hand. For the moment she did not know whether she was going to yield or fight. Her love of him, her desire to please him, her fear of what might be the consequence if she crossed him, all impelled her toward surrender; her deep-seated, long-clung-to principles impelled her to make a stand for the life of her dreams. She was a tumult of counter instincts and emotions. But excited as she was, she found herself looking on at herself in a curious detachment, palpitantly wondering which was going to win—the primitive woman in her, the product of thousands of generations of training to fit man’s desire, or this other woman she contained, shaped by but a few brief years, who had come ardently to believe that she had the right to be what she wanted to be, no matter what the man required.

“Oh, come now, dear,” Bruce assured her confidently, yet half chidingly, “you know you are going to give it all up and be just my wife!”

She gazed at his rugged, resolute face, smiling at her now with that peculiar forgiving tenderness that an older person bestows upon a child that is about to yield its childish whim.

“There now, it’s all settled,” he said, smoothing her hand. “And we’ll say no more about it.”

And then words forced their way up out of her turbulent indecision.

“I’m afraid it isn’t settled.”

His eyebrows rose in surprise.

“No?”

“No. I want to be your wife, Arnold. But—but I can’t give up the other.”

“What! You’re in earnest?” he cried.

“I am—with all my heart!”

He sank back and stared at her. If further answer were needed, her pale, set face gave it to him. His quick anger began to rise, but he forced it down.

“That puts an entirely new face on the matter,” he said, trying to speak calmly. “The question, instead of merely concerning the next few weeks, concerns our whole lives.”

She tried to summon all her strength, all her faculties, for the shock of battle.

“Just so,” she answered

“Then we must go over the matter very fully,” he said. His command over himself grew more easy. He believed that what he had to do was to be patient, and talk her out of her absurdity. “You must understand, of course,” he went on, smiling at her tenderly, “that I want to support my wife, and that Iam able to support my wife. I want to protect her—shield her—have her lean upon me. I want her to be the goddess of my home. The goddess of my home, Katherine! That’s what I want. You understand, dear, don’t you?”

She saw that he confidently expected her to yield to his ideal and accept it, and she now knew that she could never yield. She paused a space before she spoke, in a sort of terror of what might be the consequence of the next few moments.

“I understand you,” she said, duplicating his tone of reason. “But what shall I do in the home? I dislike housework.”

“There’s no need of your doing it,” he promptly returned. “I can afford servants.”

“Then what shall I do in the home?” she repeated.

“Take things easy. Enjoy yourself.”

“But I don’t want to enjoy myself. I want to do things. I want to work.”

“Come, come, be reasonable,” he said, with his tolerant smile. “You know that’s quite out of the question.”

“Since you are going to pay servants,” she persisted, “why should I idle about the house? Why should not I, an able-bodied person, be out helping in the world’s work somehow—and also helping you to earn a living?”

“Help me earn a living!” He flushed, buthis resentment subsided. “When I asked you to marry me I implied in that question that I was able and willing to support you. Really, Katherine, it’s quite absurd for you to talk about it. There is no financial necessity whatever for you to work.”

“You mean, then, that I should not work because, in you, I have enough to live upon?”

“Of course!”

“Do you know any man, any real man I mean,” she returned quickly, “who stops work in the vigour of his prime merely because he has enough money to live upon? Would you give up your work to-morrow if some one were willing to support you?”

“Now, don’t be ridiculous, Katherine! That’s quite a different question. I’m a man, you know.”

“And work is a necessity for you?”

“Why, of course.”

“And you would not be happy without it?” she eagerly pursued.

“Certainly not.”

“And you are right there! But what you don’t seem to understand is, that I have the same need, the same love, for work that you have. If you could only recognize, Arnold, that I have the same feelings in this matter that you have, then you would understand me. I demand for myself the right that all menpossess as a matter of course—the right to work!”

“If you must work,” he cried, a little exasperated, “why, of course, you can help in the housework.”

“But I also demand the right to choose my work. Why should I do work which I do not like, for which I have no aptitude, and which I should do poorly, and give up work which interests me, for which I have been trained, and for which I believe I have an aptitude?”

“But don’t you realize, in doing it, if you are successful, you are taking the bread out of a man’s mouth?” he retorted.

“Then every man who has a living income, and yet works, is also taking the bread out of a man’s mouth. But does a real man stop work because of that? Besides, if you use that argument, then in doing my own housework I’d be taking the bread out of a woman’s mouth.”

“Why—why——” he stammered. His face began to redden. “We shouldn’t belittle our love with this kind of talk. It’s all so material, so sordid.”

“It’s not sordid to me!” she cried, stretching out a hand to him. “Don’t be angry, Arnold. Try to understand me—please do, please do. Work is a necessity of life to you. It is also a necessity of life to me. I’m fighting withyou for the right to work. I’m fighting with you for my life!”

“Then you place work, your career, above our happiness together?” he demanded angrily.

“Not at all,” she went on rapidly, pleadingly. “But I see no reason why there should not be both. Our happiness should be all the greater because of my work. I’ve studied myself, Arnold, and I know what I need. To be thoroughly happy, I need work; useful work, work that interests me. I tell you we’ll be happier, and our happiness will last longer, if only you let me work. I know! I know!”

“Dream stuff! You’re following a mere will-o’-the-wisp!”

“That’s what women have been following in the past,” she returned breathlessly. “Look among your married friends. How many ideally happy couples can you count? Very, very few. And why are there so few? One reason is, because the man finds, after the novelty is worn off, that his wife is uninteresting, has nothing to talk about; and so his love cools to a good-natured, passive tolerance of her. Most married men, when alone with their wives, sit in stupid silence. But see how the husband livens up if a man joins them! This man has been out in the interesting world. The wife has been cooped up at home. The man has something to talk about. The wifehas not. Well, I am going to be out in the interesting world, doing something. I am going to have something to talk to my husband about. I am going to be interesting to him, as interesting to him as any man. And I am going to try to hold his love, Arnold, the love of his heart, the love of his head, to the very end!”

He was exasperated by her persistence, but he still held himself in check.

“That sounds very plausible to you. But there is one thing in your argument you forget.”

“And that?”

“We are grown-up people, you and I. I guess we can talk straight out.”

“Yes. Go on!”

He gazed at her very steadily for a moment.

“There are such things as children, you know.”

She returned his steady look.

“Of course,” she said quickly. “Every normal woman wants children. And I should want them too.”

“There—that settles it,” he said with triumph. “You can’t combine children and a profession.”

“But I can!” she cried. “And I should give the children the very best possible care, too! Of course there are successive periods in which the mother would have to give her whole attention to the children. But if she livestill she is sixty-five the sum total of her forty or forty-five married years that she has to give up wholly to her children amounts to but a few years. There remains all the balance of her life that she could give to other work. Do you realize how tremendously the world is changing, and how women’s work is changing with it?”

“Oh, let’s don’t mix in statistics, and history, and economics with our love!”

“But we’ve got to if our love is to last!” she cried. “We’re living in a time when things are changing. We’ve got to consider the changes. And the greatest changes are, and are going to be, in woman’s work. Up in our attic are my great-grandmother’s wool carders, her spinning wheel, her loom, all sorts of things; she spun, wove, made all the clothing, did everything. These things are now done by professional experts; that sort of work has been taken away from woman. Now all that’s left for the woman to do in the home is to cook, clean, and care for children. Life is still changing. We are still developing. Some time these things too will be done, and better done, by professional experts—though just how, or just when, I can’t even guess. Once there was a strong sentiment against the child being taken from the mother and being sent to school. Now most intelligent parents are gladto put their children in charge of trained kindergartners at four or five. And in the future some new institution, some new variety of trained specialist, may develop that will take charge of the child for a part of the day at an even earlier age. That’s the way the world is moving!”

“Thanks for your lecture on the Rise, Progress and Future of Civilization,” he said ironically, trying to suppress himself. “But interesting as it was, it has nothing whatever to do with the case. We’re not talking about civilization, and the universe, and evolution, and the fourth dimension, and who’s got the button. We’re talking about you and me. About you and me, and our love.”

“Yes, Arnold, about you and me and our love,” she cried eagerly. “I spoke of these things only because they concern you and me and our love so very, very much.”

“Of all things for two lovers to talk about!” he exclaimed with mounting exasperation.

“They are the things of all things! For our love, our life, hangs upon them!”

“Well, anyhow, you haven’t got these new institutions, these new experts,” he retorted, brushing the whole matter aside. “You’re living to-day, not in the millennium!”

“I know, I know. In the meantime, life for us women is in a stage of transition. Untilthese better forms develop we are going to have a hard time. It will be difficult for me to manage, I know. But I’m certain I can manage it.”

He stood up. His face was very red, and he swallowed once or twice before the words seemed able to come out.

“I’m surprised, Katherine—surprised!—that you should be so persistent in this nonsense. What you say is all against nature. It won’t work.”

“Perhaps not. But at least you’ll let me try! That’s all I ask of you—that you let me try!”

“It would be weak in me, wrong in me, to yield.”

“Then you’re not willing to give me a chance?”

He shook his head.

She rose and moved before him.

“But, Arnold, do you realize what you are doing?” she cried with desperate passion. “Do you realize what it is I’m asking you for? Work, interesting work—that’s what I need to make me happy, to make you happy! Without it, I shall be miserable, and you will be miserable in having a miserable wife about you—and all our years together will be years of misery. So you see what a lot I’m fighting for: work, development, happiness!—the happiness of all our married years!”

“That’s only a delusion. For your sake, and my sake, I’ve got to stand firm.”

“Then you will not let me?”

“I will not.”

She stared palely at his square, adamantine face.

“Arnold!” she breathed. “Arnold!—do you know what you’re trying to do?”

“I am trying to save you from yourself!”

“You’re trying to break my will across yours,” she cried a little wildly. “You’re trying to crush me into the iron mould of your idea of a woman. You’re trying to kill me—yes, to kill me.”

“I am trying to save you!” he repeated, his temper breaking its frail leash. “Your ideas are all wrong—absurd—insane!”

“Please don’t be angry, Arnold!” she pleaded.

“How can I help it, when you won’t listen to reason! When you are so perversely obstinate!”

“I’m not obstinate,” she cried breathlessly, holding one of his hands tightly in both her own. “I’m just trying to cling as hard as I can to life—to our happiness. Please give me a chance, Arnold! Please, please!”

“Confound such obstinate wrong-headedness!” he exploded. “No, I tell you! No! And that settles it!”

She shrank back.

“Oh!” she cried. Her breast began to rise and fall tumultuously, and her cheeks slowly to redden. “Oh!” she cried again. Then her words leaped hotly out: “Oh, you bigot!”

“If to stand by what I know is right, and to save you from making a fool of yourself, is to be a bigot—then I’m a bigot all right, and I thank the God that made me one!”

“And you think you are going to save me from myself?” she demanded.

He stepped nearer, and towering over her, he took hold of her shoulders in a powerful grasp and looked down upon her dominantly.

“I know I am! I am going to make you exactly what I want you to be!”

Her eyes flamed back up into his.

“Because you are the stronger?”

“Because I am the stronger—and because I am right,” he returned grimly.

“I admit that you are the superior brute,” she said with fierce passion. “But you will never break me to your wishes!”

“And I tell you I will!”

“And I tell you you will not!”

There was a strange and new fire in her eyes.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean this,” she returned, and the hands that gripped her shoulders felt her tremble through all her body. “I should not expect you to marry a woman who was so unreasonableas to demand that you, for her sake, should give up your loved career. And, for my part, I shall never marry a man so unreasonable as to make the same demand of me.”

He fell back a pace.

“You mean——”

“Was I not plain enough? I mean that you will never have the chance to crush me into your iron mould, for I will never marry you.”

“What!” And then: “So I’m fired, am I?” he grated out.

“Yes, for you’re as narrow and as conventional as the rest of men,” she rushed on hotly. “You never say a word so long as a woman’s work is unpleasant! It’s all right for her to scrub, and wash dishes, and wear her life away in factories. But as soon as she wants to do any work that is pleasant and interesting and that will gain her recognition, you cry out that she’s unwomanly, unsexed, that she’s flying in the face of God! Oh, you are perfectly willing that woman, on the one hand, should be a drudge, or on the other the pampered pet of your one-woman harem. But I shall be neither, I tell you. Never! Never! Never!”

They stared at one another, trembling with passion.

“And you,” he said with all the fierce irony of his soul, “and you, I suppose, will now goahead and clear your father, expose Blake, and perform all those other wonders you’ve talked so big about!”

“That’s just what I am going to do!” she cried defiantly.

“And that’s just what you are not!” he blazed back. “I may have admired the woman in you—but, for those things, you have not the smallest atom of ability. Your father’s trial, your failure to get evidence—hasn’t that shown you? You are going to be a failure—a fizzle—a fiasco! Did you hear that? A pitiable, miserable, humiliated fiasco! And time will prove it!”

“We’ll see what time will prove!” And she swept furiously past him out of the room.

Formany an hour Katherine’s wrath continued high, and she repeated, with clinched hands, all her invectives against the bigotry of Bruce. He was a bully—a boor—a brute—a tyrant. He considered himself the superman. And in pitiable truth he was only a moral coward—for his real reason in opposing her had been that he was afraid to have Westville say that his wife worked. And he had insulted her, for his parting words to her had been a jeering statement that she had no ability, only a certain charm of sex. How, oh, how, had she ever imagined that they two might possibly share a happy life together?

But after a season her wrath began to subside, and she began to see that after all Bruce was no very different man from the Bruce she had loved the last few weeks. He had been thoroughly consistent with himself. She had known that he was cocksure and domineering. She had foreseen that the chances were at leastequal that he would take the position he had. She had foreseen and feared this very issue. His virtues were just as big as on yesterday, when she and he had thought of marriage, and his faults were no greater. And she realized, after the first passion of their battle had spent its force, that she still loved him.

In the long hours of the night a pang of emptiness, of vast, irretrievable loss, possessed her. She and Love had touched each other for a space—then had flung violently apart, and were speeding each in their eternally separate direction. Life for her might be rich and full of honour and achievement, but as she looked forward into the long procession of years, she saw that life was going to have its dreariness, its vacancies, its dull, unending aches. It was going to be such a very, very different business from that life of work and love and home and mutual aid she had daringly dreamed of during the two weeks she and Bruce had been lovers.

But she did not regret her decision. She did not falter. Her resentment of Bruce’s attitude stiffened the backbone of her purpose. She was going straight ahead, bear the bitterness, and live the life she had planned as best she could.

But there quickly came other matters to share her mind with a lost love and a brokendream. First was the uproar created by Bruce’s defiant announcement in theExpressof Blind Charlie’s threatened treachery. That sensation reigned for a day or two, then was almost forgotten in a greater. This second sensation made its initial appearance quite unobtrusively; it had a bare dozen lines down in a corner of the same issue of theExpressthat had contained Bruce’s defiance and Doctor Sherman’s departure. The substance of the item was that two cases of illness had been reported from the negro quarter in River Court, and that the doctors said the symptoms were similar to those of typhoid fever.

Those two cases of fever in that old frame tenement up a narrow, stenchy alley were the quiet opening of a new act in the drama that was played that year in Westville. The next day a dozen cases were reported, and now the doctors unhesitatingly pronounced them typhoid. The number mounted rapidly. Soon there were a hundred. Soon there was an epidemic. And the Spectre showed no deference to rank. It not only stalked into the tenements of River Court and Railroad Alley—and laid its felling finger on starveling children and drink-shattered men—It visited the large and airy homes on Elm and Maple Streets and Wabash Avenue, where those of wealth and place were congregated.

In Westville was the Reign of Terror. Haggard doctors were ever on the go, snatching a bite or a moment’s sleep when chance allowed. Till then, modern history had been reckoned in Westville from the town’s invasion by factories, or from that more distant time when lightning had struck the Court House. But those milestones of time are to-day forgotten. Local history is now dated, and will be for many a decade, from the “Days of Fever” and the related events which marked that epoch.

In the early days of the epidemic Katherine heard one morning that Elsie Sherman had just been stricken. She had seen little of Elsie during the last few weeks; the strain of their relation was too great to permit the old pleasure in one another’s company; but at this news she hastened to Elsie’s bedside. Her arrival was a God-send to the worn and hurried Doctor Woods, who had just been called in. She telegraphed to Indianapolis for a nurse; she telegraphed to a sister of Doctor Sherman to come; and she herself undertook the care of Elsie until the nurse should arrive.

“What do you think of her case, Doctor?” she asked anxiously when Doctor Woods dropped in again later in the day.

He shook his head.

“Mrs. Sherman is very frail.”

“Then you think——”

“I’m afraid it will be a hard fight. I think we’d better send for her husband.”

Despite her sympathy for Elsie, Katherine thrilled with the possibility suggested by the doctor’s words. Here was a situation that should bring Doctor Sherman out of his hiding, if anything could bring him. Once home, and unnerved by the sight of his wife precariously balanced between life and death, she was certain that he would break down and confess whatever he might know.

She asked Elsie for her husband’s whereabouts, but Elsie answered that she had had letters but that he had never given an address. Katherine at once determined to see Blake, and demand to know where Doctor Sherman was; and after the nurse arrived on an afternoon train, she set out for Blake’s office.

But Blake was out, and his return was not expected for an hour. To fill in the time, Katherine paid a visit to her father in the jail. She told him of Elsie’s illness, and told at greater length than she had yet had chance to do about the epidemic. In his turn he talked to her about the fever’s causes; and when she left the jail and returned to Blake’s office an idea far greater than merely asking Doctor Sherman’s whereabouts was in her mind.

This time she was told that Blake was in,but could see no one. Undeterred by this statement, Katherine walked quickly past the stenographer and straight for his private door, which she quickly and quietly opened and closed.

Blake was sitting at his desk, his head bowed forward in one hand. He was so deep in thought, and she had entered so quietly, that he had not heard her. She crossed to his desk, stood opposite him, and for a moment gazed down upon his head.

“Mr. Blake,” she remarked at length.

He started up.

“You here!” he ejaculated.

“Yes. I came to talk to you.”

He did not speak at once, but stood staring a little wildly at her. She had not spoken to him since the day of her father’s trial, nor seen him save at a distance. She was now startled at the change this closer view revealed to her. His eyes were sunken and ringed with purple, his face seemed worn and thin, and had taken on a tinge of yellowish-green.

“I left orders that I could see no one,” he said, trying to speak sharply.

“I know,” she answered quietly. “But you’ll see me.”

For an instant he hesitated.

“Very well—sit down,” he said, resuming his chair. “Now what is it you wish?”

She seated herself and leaned across the desk toward him.

“I wish to talk to you about the fever,” she said with her former composure, and looking him very steadily in the eyes. “I suppose you know what caused it?”

“I am no doctor. I do not.”

“Then let me tell you. My father has just told me that there must have been a case of typhoid during the summer somewhere back in the drainage area of the water-system. That recent big storm carried the summer’s accumulation of germ-laden filth down into the streams. And since the city was unguarded by a filter, those germs were swept into the water-mains, we drank them, and the epidemic——”

“That filter was useless—a complete failure!” Blake broke in rather huskily.

“You know, Mr. Blake, and I know,” she returned, “that that filter has been, and still is, in excellent condition. And you know, and I know, that if it had been in operation, purifying the water, there might possibly have been a few cases of typhoid, but there would never have been this epidemic. That’s the God’s truth, and you know it!”

He swallowed, but did not answer her.

“I suppose,” she pursued in her steady tone, “you realize who is responsible for all these scores of sick?”

“If what you say is true, then your father is guilty, for building such a filter.”

“You know better. You know that the guilty man is yourself.”

His face grew more yellowish-green.

“It’s not so! No one is more appalled by this disaster than I am!”

“I know you are appalled by the outcome. You did not plan to murder citizens. You only planned to defraud the city. But this epidemic is the direct consequence of your scheme. Every person who is now in a sick bed, you put that person there. Every person who may later go to his grave, you will have sent that person there.”

Her steady voice grew more accusing. “What does your conscience say to you? And what do you think the people will say to you, to the great public-spirited Mr. Blake, when they learn that you, prompted by the desire for money and power, have tried to rob the city and have stricken hundreds with sickness?”

His yellowish face contorted most horribly, but he did not answer.

“I see that your conscience has been asking you those same questions,” Katherine pursued. “It is something, at least, that your conscience is not dead. Those are not pleasant questions to have asked one, are they?”

Again his face twisted, but he seemed to gather hold of himself.

“You are as crazy as ever—that’s all rot!” he said huskily, with a denying sweep of a clinched hand. “But what do you want?”

“Three things. First, that you have the filter put back in commission. Let’s at least do what we can to prevent any more danger from that source.”

“The filter is useless. Besides, I am no official, and have nothing to do with it.”

“It is in perfect condition, and you have everything to do with it,” she returned steadily.

He swallowed. “I’ll suggest it to the mayor.”

“Very well; that is settled. To the next point. Have you heard that Mrs. Sherman is sick?”

“Yes.”

“She wants her husband.”

“Well?”

“My second demand is to know where you have hidden Doctor Sherman.”

“Doctor Sherman? I have nothing to do with Doctor Sherman!”

“You also have everything to do with Doctor Sherman,” she returned steadily. “He is one of the instruments of your plot. You feared that he would break down and confess, and so you sent him out of the way. Where is he?”

Again his face worked spasmodically. “I tell you once more I have nothing whatever to do with Doctor Sherman! Now I hope that’s all. I am tired of this. I have other matters to consider. Good day.”

“No, it is not all. For there is my third demand. And that is the most important of the three. But perhaps I should not say demand. What I make you is an offer.”

“An offer?” he exclaimed.

She did not reply to him directly. She leaned a little farther across his desk and looked at him with an even greater intentness.

“I do not need to ask you to pause and think upon all the evil you have done the town,” she said slowly. “For you have thought. You were thinking at the moment I came in. I can see that you are shaken with horror at the unforeseen results of your scheme. I have come to you to take sides with your conscience; to join it in asking you, urging you, to draw back and set things as nearly right as you can. That is my demand, my offer, my plea—call it what you will.”

He had been gazing at her with wide fixed eyes. When he spoke, his voice was dry, mechanical.

“Set things right? How?”

“Come forward, confess, and straighten out the situation of your own accord. Westvilleis in a terrible condition. If you act at once, you can at least do something to relieve it.”

“By setting things right, as you call it, you of course include the clearing of your father?”

“The clearing of my father, of course. And let me say to you, Mr. Blake—and for this moment I am speaking as your friend—that it will be better for you to clear this whole matter up voluntarily, at once, than to be exposed later, as you certainly will be. To clear this matter at once may have the result of simplifying the fight against the epidemic—it may save many lives. That is what I am thinking of first of all just now.”

“You mean to say, then, that it is either confess or be exposed?”

“There is no use in my beating about the bush with you,” she replied in her same steady tone. “For I know that you know that I am after you.”

He did not speak at once. He sat gazing fixedly at her, with twitching face. She met his gaze without blinking, breathlessly awaiting his reply.

Suddenly a tremor ran through him and his face set with desperate decision.

“Yes, I know you are after me! I know you are having me followed—spied upon!” There was a biting, contemptuous edge to his tone. “Even if I were guilty, do you thinkI would be afraid of exposure from you? Oh, I know the man you have sleuthing about on my trail. Elijah Stone! And I once thought you were a clever girl!”

“You refuse, then?” she said slowly.

“I do! And I defy you! If your accusations against me are true, go out and proclaim them to the city. I’m willing to stand for whatever happens!”

She regarded his flushed, defiant face. She perceived clearly that she had failed, that it was useless to try further.

“Very well,” she said slowly. “But I want you to remember in the future that I have given you this chance; that I have given you your choice, and you have chosen.”

“And I tell you again that I defy you!”

“You are a more hardened man, or a more desperate man, than I thought,” said she.

He did not reply upon the instant, but sat gazing into her searching eyes. Before he could speak, the telephone at his elbow began to ring. He picked it up.

“Hello! Yes, this is Mr. Blake.... Her temperature is the same, you say?... No, I have not had an answer yet. I expect a telegram any minute. I’ll let you know as soon as it comes. Good-by.”

“Is some one sick?” Katherine asked, as he hung up the receiver.

“My mother,” he returned briefly, his recent defiance all gone.

Katherine, too, for the moment, forgot their conflict.

“I did not know it. There are so many cases, you know. Who is attending her?”

“Doctor Hunt, temporarily,” he answered. “But these Westville doctors are all amateurs in serious cases. I’ve telegraphed for a specialist—the best man I could hear of—Doctor Brenholtz of Chicago.”

His defiance suddenly returned.

“If I have seemed to you worn, unnerved, now you know the real cause!” he said.

“So,” she remarked slowly, “the disaster you have brought on Westville has struck your own home!”

His face twitched convulsively.

“I believe we have finished our conversation. Good afternoon.”

Katherine rose.

“And if she dies, you know who will have killed her.”

He sprang up.

“Go! Go!” he cried.

But she remained in her tracks, looking him steadily in the eyes. While they stood so, the stenographer entered and handed him a telegram. He tore it open, glanced it through, and stood staring at it in a kind of stupor.

“My God!” he breathed.

He tore the yellow sheet across, dropped the pieces in the waste-basket and began to pace his room, on his face a wild, dazed look. He seemed to have forgotten Katherine’s presence. But a turn brought her into his vision. He stopped short.

“You still here?”

“I was waiting to hear if Doctor Brenholtz was coming,” she said.

He stared at her a moment. Then he crossed to his desk, took the two fragments of the telegram from his waste-basket and held them out to her.

“There is what he says.”

She took the telegram and read:

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