Chapter 18…

Chapter 18

Monsignor Lafelle in his interview with Carmen had thrown out a hint of certain rumors regarding her; but the days passed, and the girl awoke not to their significance. Then, one morning, her attention was attracted by a newspaper report of the farewell address of a young priest about to leave his flock. When she opened the paper and caught sight of the news item she gave a little cry, and immediately forgot all else in her absorption in the closing words:

"--and I have known no other ambition since the day that little waif from a distant land strayed into my life, lighting the dead lamp of my faith with the torch of her own flaming spirituality. She said she had a message for the people up here. Would to God she might know that her message had borne fruit!"

The newspaper slipped from the girl's hands to the floor. Her eyes, big and shining, stared straight before her. "And I will lead the blind by a way that they know not--" she murmured.

The telephone rang. It was Miss Wall, ready now for the postponed ride. Carmen clapped her hands and sang for joy as she summoned the car and made her preparations. "We'll go over to his church," she said aloud. "We'll find him!" She hurried back to the newspaper to get the address of the church from which he had spoken the preceding day. "They will know where he is," she said happily. "Oh, isn't it just wonderful!"

A few minutes later, with Miss Wall at her side, she was speeding to the distant suburb where the little church was located.

"We are going to find a priest," she said simply. "Oh, you mustn't ask me any questions! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles doesn't like to have me talk about certain things, and so I can't tell you."

Miss Wall glanced at her in wonder. But the happy, smiling countenance disarmed suspicion.

"Now tell me," Carmen went on, "tell me about yourself. I'm a missionary, you know," she added, thinking of Father Waite.

"A missionary! Well, are you trying to convert the society world?"

"Yes, by Christianity--not by what the missionaries are now teaching in the name of Christianity. I'll tell you all about it some day. Now tell me, why are you unhappy? Why is your life pitched in such a minor key? Perhaps, together, we can change it to a major."

Miss Wall could not help joining in the merry laugh. Then her face grew serious. "I am unhappy," she said, "because I have arrived nowhere."

Carmen looked at her inquiringly. "Well," she said, "that shows you are on the wrong track, doesn't it?"

"I'm tired of life--tired of everything, everybody!" Miss Wall sank back into the cushions with her lips pursed and her brow wrinkled.

"No, you are not tired of life," said Carmen quietly; "for you do not know what life is."

"No, I suppose not," replied the weary woman. "Do you?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes, it is God."

"Oh, don't mention that name, nor quote Scripture to me!" cried the woman, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "I've had that stuff preached at me until it turned my stomach! I hope you are not an emotional, weepy religionist. Let's not talk about that subject. I'm heartily sick of it!"

"All right," replied Carmen cheerily. "Padre Josè used to say--"

"Who's he?" demanded Miss Wall, somewhat curtly.

"Oh, he is a priest--"

"A priest! Dear me! do you constantly associate with priests, and talk religion?"

The young girl laughed. "Well," she responded, "I've had a good deal to do with both."

"And are you any better for it?"

"Oh, yes--lots!" she said quickly.

The woman regarded her with curiosity. "Tell me something about your life," she said. "They say you are a princess."

"Surely I am a princess," returned Carmen, laughing merrily. "Listen; I will tell you about big, glorious Simití, and the wonderful castle I lived in there, and about my Prime Minister, Don Rosendo, and--well, listen, and then judge for yourself if I am not of royal extraction!"

Laughing again up into the mystified face of Miss Wall, the enthusiastic girl began to tell about her former life in far-off Guamocó.

As she listened, the woman's eyes grew wide with interest. At times she voiced her astonishment in sudden exclamations. And when the girl concluded her brief recital, she bent upon the sparkling face a look of mingled wonder and admiration. "Goodness! After going through all that, how can you be so happy now? And with all your kin down there in that awful war! Why--!"

"Don't you think I am a princess now?" Carmen asked, smiling up at her.

"I think you are a marvel!" was the emphatic answer.

"And--you don't want to know what it was that kept me through it all, and that is still guiding me?" The bright, animated face looked so eagerly, so lovingly, into the world-scarred features of her companion.

"Not if you are going to talk religion. Tell me, who is this priest you are seeking to-day, and why have you come to see him?"

"Father Waite. He is the one who found me--when I got lost--and took me to my friends."

The big car whirled around a corner and stopped before a dingy little church edifice surmounted by a weather-beaten cross. On the steps of a modest frame house adjoining stood a man. He turned as the car came up.

"Father Waite!" Carmen threw wide the door of the car and sprang out. "Father Waite!" clasping his hands. "Don't you know me? I'm Carmen!"

A light came into the startled man's eyes. He recognized her. Then he stepped back, that he might better see her. More than a year had passed since he had taken her, so oddly garbed, and clinging tightly to his hand, into the Ketchim office. And in that time, he thought, she had been transformed into a vision of heavenly beauty.

"Well!" cried the impatient girl. "Aren't you going to speak?" And with that she threw her arms about him and kissed him loudly on both cheeks.

The man and Miss Wall gave vent to exclamations of astonishment. He colored violently; Miss Wall sat with mouth agape.

"Aren't you glad to see me?" pursued the girl, again grasping his hands.

Then he found his tongue. "An angel from heaven could not be more welcome," he said. But his voice was low, and the note of sadness was prominent.

"Well, I am an angel from heaven," said the laughing, artless girl. "And I'm an Inca princess. And I'm just plain Carmen Ariza. But, whoever I am, I am, oh, so glad to see you again! I--" she looked about carefully--"I read your sermon in the newspaper this morning. Did you mean me?" she concluded abruptly.

He smiled wanly. "Yes, I meant you," he softly answered.

"Come with me now," said the eager girl. "I want to talk with you."

"Impossible," he replied, shaking his head.

"Then, will you come and see me?" She thought for a moment. "Why have you never been to see me? Didn't you know I was still in the city?"

"Oh, yes," he replied. "I used to see your name in the papers, often. And I have followed your career with great interest. But--you moved in a circle--from which I--well, it was hardly possible for me to come to see you, you know--"

"It was!" exclaimed the girl. "But, never mind, you are coming now. Here," drawing a card from her bag, "this is the address of Madam Beaubien. Will you come there to-morrow afternoon, at two, and talk with me?"

He looked at the card which she thrust into his hand, and then at the richly-gowned girl before him. He seemed to be in a dream. But he nodded his head slowly.

"Tell me," she whispered, "how is Sister Katie?"

Ah, if the girl could have known how that great-hearted old soul had mourned her "little bairn" these many months.

"I will go to see her," said Carmen. "But first you will come to me to-morrow." She beamed upon him as she clasped his hands again. Then she entered the car, and sat waving her hand back at him as long as he could see her.

It would be difficult to say which of the two, Miss Wall or Father Waite, was the more startled by this abrupt and lively rencontre. But to Carmen, as she sat back in the car absorbed in thought, it had been a perfectly natural meeting between two warm friends. Suddenly the girl turned to the woman. "You haven't anything but money, and fine clothes, and automobiles, and jewels, you think. And you want something better. Do you know? I know what it is you want."

"What is it?" asked the wondering woman, marveling at this strange girl who went about embracing people so promiscuously.

"Love."

The woman's lip trembled slightly when she heard this, but she did not reply.

"And I'm going to love you," the girl continued. "Oh, so much! You're tired of society gabble and gossip; you're tired of spending on yourself the money you never earned; you're not a bit of use to anybody, are you? But you want to be. You're a sort of tragedy, aren't you? Oh, I know. There are just lots of them in high society, just as weary as you. They haven't anything but money. And they lack the very greatest thing in all of life, the very thing that no amount of money will buy, just love! But, do you know? they don't realize that, in order to get, they must give. In order to be loved, they must themselves love. Now you start right in and love the whole world, love everybody, big and little. And, as you love people, try to see only their perfection. Never look at a bad trait, nor a blemish of any sort. Try it. In a week's time you will be a new woman."

"Do you do that?" the woman asked in a low tone.

"I have always done it," replied Carmen. "I don't know anything but love. I never knew what it was to hate or revile. I never could see what there was that deserved hatred or loathing. I don't see anything but good--everywhere."

The woman slipped an arm about the girl. "I--I don't mind your talking that way to me," she whispered. "But I just couldn't bear to listen to any more religion."

"Why!" exclaimed Carmen. "That's all there is to religion! Love is the tie that binds all together and all to God. Why, Miss Wall--"

"Call me Elizabeth, please," interrupted the woman.

"Well then, Elizabeth," she said softly, "all creeds have got to merge into just one, some day, and, instead of saying 'I believe,' everybody will say 'I understand and I love.' Why, the very person who loved more than anybody else ever did was the one who saw God most clearly! He knew that if we would see God--good everywhere--we would just simply have to love, for God is love! Don't you see? It is so simple!"

"Do you love me, Carmen, because you pity me?"

"No, indeed!" was the emphatic answer. "God's children are not to be pitied--and I see in people only His children."

"Well, why, then, do you love me?"

The girl replied quickly: "God is love. I am His reflection. I reflect Him to you. That's loving you.

"And now," she continued cheerily, "we are going to work together, aren't we? You are first going to love everybody. And then you are going to see just what is right for you to do--what work you are to take up--what interests you are to have. But love comes first."

"Tell me, Carmen, why are you in society? What keeps you there, in an atmosphere so unsuited to your spiritual life?"

"God."

"Oh, yes," impatiently. "But--"

"Well, Elizabeth dear, every step I take is ordained by Him, who is my life. I am where He places me. I leave everything to Him, and then keep myself out of the way. If He wishes to use me elsewhere, He will remove me from society. But I wait for Him."

The woman looked at her and marveled. How could this girl, who, in her few brief years, had passed through fire and flood, still love the hand that guided her!

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Chapter 19

To the great horde of starving European nobility the daughters of American millionaires have dropped as heavenly manna. It was but dire necessity that forced low the bars of social caste to the transoceanic traffic between fortune and title.

That Mrs. Hawley-Crowles might ever aspire to the purchase of a decrepit dukedom had never entered her thought. A tottering earldom was likewise beyond her purchasing power. She had contented herself that Carmen should some day barter her rare culture, her charm, and her unrivaled beauty, for the more lowly title of an impecunious count or baron. But to what heights of ecstasy did her little soul rise when the young Duke of Altern made it known to her that he would honor her beautiful ward with his own glorious name--in exchange for La Libertad and other good and valuable considerations, receipt of which would be duly acknowledged.

"I--aw--have spoken to her, ye know, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles," that worthy young cad announced one afternoon, as he sat alone with the successful society leader in the warm glow of her living room. "And--bah Jove! she said we were engaged, ye know--really! Said we were awfully good friends, ye know, and all that. 'Pon my word! she said she loved me." For Reginald had done much thinking of late--and his creditors were restless.

"Why, you don't mean it!" cried the overpowered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, beaming like a full-blown sunflower.

"But I do, really! Only--ye know, she'll have to be--coached a bit, ye know--told who we are--our ancestral history, and all that. You know what I mean, eh?"

"Of course--you dear boy! Why, she just couldn't help loving you!"

"No--aw--no, of course--that is--aw--she has excellent prospects--financial, I mean, eh? Mines, and all that, ye know--eh?"

"Why, she owns the grandest gold mine in all South America! Think of it!"

"Bah Jove! I--aw--I never was so attracted to a girl in all me blooming life! You will--a--speak to her, eh? Help me out, ye know. Just a few words, eh? You know what I mean?"

"Never fear, Reginald" she's yours. "There will be no opposition."

"Opposition! Certainly not--not when she knows about our family. And--aw--mother will talk with you--that is, about the details. She'll arrange them, ye know. I never was good at business."

And the haughty mother of the young Duke did call shortly thereafter to consult in regard to her son's matrimonial desires. The nerve-racking round of balls, receptions, and other society functions was quite forgotten by the elated Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose ears tingled deliciously under the pompous boastings of the Dowager Lady Altern. The house of Altern? Why, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was convinced, after a half hour's conversation with this proud mother, that the royal house of Brunswick was but an impudent counterfeit! What was La Libertad worth? She knew not. But her sister's brother, Mr. Reed, who had hastily appraised it, had said that there was a mountain of gold there, only awaiting Yankee enterprise. And Carmen? There was proof positive that she was an Inca princess. Yes, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was so honored by the deep interest which the young Duke manifested in the wonderful girl! And she would undertake negotiations with her at once. But it must be done wisely. Carmen was not like other girls. No, indeed!

And now Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had to plan very carefully. She was terribly in debt; yet she had resources. The Beaubien was inexhaustible. Ames, too, might be depended upon. And La Libertad--well, there was Mr. Philip O. Ketchim to reckon with. So she forthwith summoned him to a consultation.

But, ere her talk with that prince of finance, another bit of good fortune fell into the lady's spacious lap. Reed had written that he was doing poorly with his western mining ventures, and would have to raise money at once. He therefore offered to sell his interest in the Simití Company. Moreover, he wanted his wife to come to him and make her home in California, where he doubtless would spend some years. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles offered him twenty-five thousand dollars for his Simití interest; of which offer Reed wired his immediate acceptance. Then the lady packed her rueful sister Westward Ho! and laid her newly acquired stock before the Beaubien for a large loan. That was but a day before Ketchim called.

"Madam," said that suave gentleman, smiling piously, "you are a genius. Our ability to announce the Duke of Altern as our largest stockholder will result in a boom in the sales of Simití stock. The Lord has greatly prospered our humble endeavors. Er--might I ask, Madam, if you would condescend to meet my wife some afternoon? We are rapidly acquiring some standing in a financial way, and Mrs. Ketchim would like to know you and some of the more desirable members of your set, if it might be arranged."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles beamed her joy. She drew herself up with a regnant air. The people were coming to her, their social queen, for recognition!

"And there's my Uncle Ted, you know, Madam. He's president of the C. and R."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles nodded and looked wise. "Possibly we can arrange it," she said. "But now about our other investments. What is Joplin Zinc doing?"

"Progressing splendidly, Madam. We shall declare a dividend this month."

The lady wondered, for Joplin Zinc was not yet in operation, according to the latest report.

* * * * *

Meantime, while Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was still laying her plans to herd the young girl into the mortgaged dukedom of Altern, Father Waite kept his appointment, and called at the Beaubien mansion on the afternoon Carmen had set. He was warmly received by the girl herself, who had been watching for his coming.

"Now," she began like a bubbling fountain, when they were seated in the music room, "where's Jude? I want to find her."

"Jude? Why, I haven't the slightest idea to whom you refer," returned the puzzled man.

"The woman who took me to the Sister Superior," explained Carmen.

"Ah! We never saw her again."

"Well," said the girl confidently, "I saw her, but she got away from me. But I shall find her--it is right that I should. Now tell me, what are you going to do?"

"I have no idea. Earn my living some way," he replied meditatively.

"You have lots of friends who will help you?"

"None," he said sadly. "I am an apostate, you know."

"Well, that means that you're free. The chains have dropped, haven't they?"

"But left me dazed and confused."

"You are not dazed, nor confused! Why, you're like a prisoner coming out of his dungeon into the bright sunlight. You're only blinking, that's all. And, as for confusion--well, if I would admit it to be true I could point to a terrible state of it! Just think, a duke wants to marry me; Mrs. Hawley-Crowles is determined that he shall; I am an Inca princess, and yet I don't know who I am; my own people apparently are swallowed up by the war in Colombia; and I am in an environment here in New York in which I have to fight every moment to keep myself from flying all to pieces! But I guess God intends to keep me here for the present. Oh, yes, and Monsignor Lafelle insists that I am a Catholic and that I must join his Church."

"Monsignor Lafelle! You--you know him?"

"Oh, yes, very well. And you?"

He evaded reply by another query. "Is Monsignor Lafelle working with Madam Beaubien, your friend?"

"I think not," laughed Carmen. "But Mrs. Hawley-Crowles--"

"Was it through him that she became a communicant?"

"Yes. Why?"

"And is he also working with Mr. J. Wilton Ames? He converted Mrs. Ames's sister, the Dowager Duchess, in England. The young Duke is also going to join the faith, I learn. But--you?" He stopped suddenly and looked searchingly at her.

At that moment a maid entered, bearing a card. Close on her heels followed the subject of their conversation, Monsignor himself.

As he entered, Carmen rose hastily to greet him. Lafelle bent over her hand. Then, as he straightened up, his glance fell upon Father Waite. The latter bowed without speaking. For a moment the two men stood eying each other sharply. Then Lafelle looked from Father Waite to Carmen quizzically. "I beg your pardon," he said, "I was not aware that you had a caller. Madam Beaubien, is she at home?"

"No," said Carmen simply. "She went out for a ride."

"Ah!" murmured Lafelle, looking significantly from the girl to Father Waite, while a smile curled his lips. "I see. I will intrude no further." He bowed again, and turned toward the exit.

"Wait!" rang forth Carmen's clear voice. She had caught the churchman's insinuating glance and instantly read its meaning. "Monsignor Lafelle, you will remain!"

The churchman's brows arched with surprise, but he came back and stood by the chair which she indicated.

"And first," went on the girl, standing before him like an incarnate Nemesis, her face flushed and her eyes snapping, "you will hear from me a quotation from the Scripture, on which you assume to be authority: 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!'"

For a moment Lafelle flushed. Then his face darkened. Finally a bland smile spread over his features, and he sat down. The girl resumed her seat.

"Now, Monsignor Lafelle," she continued severely, "you have urged me to unite with your Church. When you asked me to subscribe to your beliefs I looked first at them, and then at you, their product. You have come here this afternoon to plead with me again. The thoughts which you accepted when you saw Father Waite here alone with me, are they a reflection of love, which thinketh no evil? Or do they reflect the intolerance, the bigotry, the hatred of the carnal mind? You told me that your Church would not let me teach it. Think you I will let it or you teach me?"

Father Waite sat amazed at the girl's stinging rebuke. When she concluded he rose to go.

"No!" said Carmen. "You, too, shall remain. You have left the Church of which Monsignor Lafelle is a part. Either you have done that Church, and him, a great injustice--or he does ignorant or wilful wrong in insisting that I unite with it."

"My dear child," said Lafelle gently, now recovered and wholly on his guard, "your impetuosity gets the better of your judgment. This is no occasion for a theological discussion, nor are you sufficiently informed to bear a part in such. As for myself, you unintentionally do me great wrong. As I have repeatedly told you, I seek only your eternal welfare. Else would I not labor with you as I do."

Carmen turned to Father Waite. "Is my eternal welfare dependent upon acceptance of the Church's doctrines?"

"No," he said, in a scarcely audible voice.

A cynical look came into Lafelle's eyes. But he replied affably: "When preachers fall out, the devil falls in. Your reply, Mr. Waite, comes quite consistently from one who has impudently tossed aside authority."

"My authority, Monsignor," returned the ex-priest in a low tone, "is Jesus Christ, who said: 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

"Ah!" murmured Lafelle; "then it was love that prompted you to abandon your little flock?"

"I left my pulpit, Monsignor, because I had nothing to give my people. I no longer believe the dogmas of the Church. And I refused longer to take the poor people's money to support an institution so politically religious as I believe your Church to be. I could no longer take their money to purchase the release of their loved ones from an imagined purgatory--a place for which there is not the slightest Scriptural warrant--"

"You mistake, sir!" interrupted Lafelle in an angry tone.

"Very well, Monsignor," replied Father Waite; "grant, then, that there is such Scriptural warrant; I would nevertheless know that the existence of purgatory was wholly incompatible with the reign of an infinite God of love. And, knowing that, I have ceased to extort gifts of money from the ignorance of the living and the ghastly terrors of the dying--"

"And so deceive yourself that you are doing a righteous act in removing their greatest consolation," the churchman again interrupted, a sneer curving his lip.

"Consolation! The consolation which the stupifying drug affords, yes! Ah, Monsignor, as I looked down into the faces of my poor people, week after week, I knew that no sacerdotal intervention was needed to remit their sins, for their sins were but their unsolved problems of life. Oh, the poor, grief-stricken mothers who bent their tear-stained eyes upon me as I preached the 'authority' of the Fathers! Well I knew that, when I told them from my pulpit that their deceased infants, if baptized, went straight to heaven, they blindly, madly accepted my words! And when I went further and told them that their dead babes had joined the ranks of the blessed, and could thenceforth be prayed to, could I wonder that they rejoiced and eagerly grasped the false message of cheer? They believed because they wanted it to be so. And yet those utterances of mine, based upon the accepted doctrine of Holy Church, were but narcotics, lulling those poor, afflicted minds into a false sense of rest and security, and checking all further human progress."

Lafelle shrugged his shoulders. "It is to be regretted," he said coldly, "that such narrowness of view should be permitted to impede the salvation of souls."

"Salvation--of--souls!" exclaimed Father Waite. "Ah, how many souls have I not saved!--and yet I know not whether they or I be really saved! Saved? From what? From death? Certainly not! From misery, disease, suffering in this life? No, alas, no! Saved, then, from what? Ah, my friend, saved only from the torments of a hell and a purgatory constructed in the fertile minds of busy theologians!"

Lafelle turned to Carmen. "Some other day, perhaps--when it may be more convenient for us both--and you are alone--"

Carmen laughed. "Don't quit the field, Monsignor--unless you surrender abjectly. You started this controversy, remember. And you were quite indiscreet, if you will recall."

Monsignor bowed, smiling. "You write my faults in brass," he gently lamented. "When you publish my virtues, if you find that I am possessed of any, I fear you will write them in water."

Carmen laughed again. "Your virtues should advertise themselves, Monsignor."

"Ah, then do you not see in me the virtue of desiring your welfare above all else, my child?"

"And the welfare of this great country, which you have come here to assist in making dominantly Catholic, is it not so, Monsignor?"

Lafelle started slightly. Then he smiled genially back at the girl. "It is an ambition which I am not ashamed to own," he returned gently.

"But, Monsignor," Carmen continued earnestly, "are you not aware of the inevitable failure of your mission? Do you not know that mediaeval theology comports not with modern progress?"

"True, my child," replied the churchman. "And more, that our so-called modern progress--modernism, free-thinking, liberty of conscience, and the consequent terrible extravagance of beliefs and false creeds--constitutes the greatest menace now confronting this fair land. Its end is inevitable anarchy and chaos. Perhaps you can see that."

"Monsignor," said Carmen, "in the Middle Ages the Church was supreme. Emperors and kings bowed in submission before her. The world was dominantly Catholic. Would you be willing, for the sake of Church supremacy to-day, to return to the state of society and civilization then obtaining?"

"That would not follow."

"No? I point you to Mexico, Cuba, the Philippines, South America, all Catholic now or formerly, and I ask if you attribute not their oppression, their ignorance, their low morals and stunted manhood, to the dominance of churchly doctrines, which oppose freedom of conscience and press and speech, and make learning the privilege of the clergy and the rich?"

"It is an old argument, child," deprecated Lafelle. "May I not point to France, on the contrary?"

"She has all but driven the Church from her borders."

"But is still Catholic!" he retorted. "And England, though Anglican, calls herself Catholic. She will return to the true fold. Germany is forsaking Luther, as she sees the old light shining still undimmed."

Carmen looked at Father Waite. The latter read in her glance an invitation further to voice his own convictions.

"Monsignor doubtless misreads the signs of the times," he said slowly. "The hour has struck for the ancient and materialistic theories enunciated with such assumption of authority by ignorant, often blindly bigoted theologians, to be laid aside. The religion of our fathers, which is our present-day evangelical theology, was derived from the traditions of the early churchmen. They put their seal upon it; and we blindly accept it as authority, despite the glaring, irrefutable fact that it is utterly undemonstrable. Why do the people continue to be deceived by it? Alas! only because of its mesmeric promise of immortality beyond the grave."

Monsignor bowed stiffly in the direction of Father Waite. "Fortunately, your willingness to plunge the Christian world into chaos will fail of concrete results," he said coldly.

"I but voice the sentiments of millions, Monsignor. For them, too, the time has come to put by forever the paraphernalia of images, candles, and all the trinkets used in the pagan ceremonial which has so quenched our spirituality, and to seek the undivided garment of the Christ."

"Indeed!" murmured Lafelle.

"The world to-day, Monsignor, stands at the door of a new era, an era which promises a grander concept of God and religion, the tie which binds all to Him, than has ever before been known. We are thinking. We are pondering. We are delving, studying, reflecting. And we are at last beginning to work with true scientific precision and system. As in chemistry, mathematics, and the physical sciences, so in matters religious, we are beginning to prove our working hypotheses. And so a new spiritual enlightenment is come. People are awaking to a dim perception of the meaning of spiritual life, as exemplified in Jesus Christ. And they are vaguely beginning to see that it is possible to every one. The abandonment of superstition, religious and other, has resulted in such a sudden expansion of the human mind that the most marvelous material progress the world has ever witnessed has come swiftly upon us, and we live more intensely in a single hour to-day than our fathers lived in weeks before us. Oh, yes, we are already growing tired of materiality. The world is not yet satisfied. We are not happy. But, Monsignor, let not the Church boast itself that the acceptance of her mediaeval dogmas will meet the world's great need. That need will be met, I think, only as we more and more clearly perceive the tremendous import of the mission of Jesus, and learn how to grasp and apply the marvelous Christ-principle which he used and told us we should likewise employ to work out our salvation."

During Father Waite's earnest talk Lafelle sat with his eyes fixed upon Carmen. When the ex-priest concluded, the churchman ignored him and vouchsafed no reply.

"Well, Monsignor?" said the girl, after waiting some moments in expectation.

Lafelle smiled paternally. Then, nodding his shapely head, he said in a pleading tone:

"Have I no champion here? Would you, too, suddenly abolish the Church, Catholic and Protestant alike? Why, my dear child, with your ideals--which no one appreciates more highly than I--do you continue to persecute me so cruelly? Can not you, too, sense the unsoundness of the views just now so eloquently voiced?"

"That is cant, Monsignor! You speak wholly without authority or proof, as is your wont."

The man winced slightly. "Well," he said, "there are several hundred million Catholics and Protestants in the world to-day. Would you presume to say that they are all mistaken, and that you are right? Something of an assumption, is it not? Indeed, I think you set the Church an example in that respect."

"Monsignor, there were once several hundred millions who believed that the earth was flat, and that the sun revolved about it. Were they mistaken?"

"Yes. But the--"

"And, Monsignor, there are billions to-day who believe that matter is a solid, substantial reality, and that it possesses life and sensation. There are billions who believe that the physical eyes see, and the ears hear, and the hands feel. Yet these beliefs are all capable of scientific refutation. Did you know that?"

"I am not unacquainted with philosophical speculation," he returned suggestively.

"This is not mere speculation, Monsignor," put in Father Waite. "The beliefs of the human mind are its fetish. Such beliefs become in time national customs, and men defend them with frenzy, utterly wrong and undemonstrable though they be. Then they remain as the incubus of true progress. By them understanding becomes degraded, and the human mind narrows and shrinks. And the mind that clings to them will then mercilessly hunt out the dissenting minds of its heretical neighbors and stone them to death for disagreeing. So now, you would stone me for obeying Christ's command to take up my bed on the Sabbath day."

Lafelle heaved a great sigh. "Still you blazon my faults," he said in a tone of mock sadness, and addressing Carmen. "But, like the Church which you persecute, I shall endure. We have been martyred throughout the ages. And we are very patient. Our wayward children forsake us," nodding toward Father Waite, "and yet we welcome their return when they have tired of the husks. The press teems with slander against us; we are reviled from east to west. But our reply is that such slander and untruth can best be met by our leading individual lives of such an exemplary nature as to cause all men to be attracted by our holy light."

"I agree with you, Monsignor," quickly replied Carmen. "Scurrilous attacks upon the Church but make it a martyr. Vilification returns upon the one who hurls the abuse. One can not fling mud without soiling one's hands. I oppose not men, but human systems of thought. Whatever is good will stand, and needs no defense. Whatever is erroneous must go. And there is no excuse, for salvation is at hand."

"Salvation? And your thought regarding that?" he said in a skirmishing tone.

"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts," she replied earnestly. "To him that soweth righteousness--right thinking--shall be a sure reward. Ah, Monsignor, do you at heart believe that the religion of the Christ depends upon doctrines, signs, dogmas? No, it does not. But signs and proofs naturally and inevitably follow the right understanding of Jesus' teachings, even according to these words: These signs shall follow them that believe. Paul gave the formula for salvation, when he said: But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Can you understand that? Can you see that, taking Jesus as our model and following his every command--seeing Him only, the Christ-principle, which is God, good, without any admixture of evil--we change, even though slowly, from glory to glory, step by step, until we rise out of all sense of evil and death? And this is done by the Spirit which is God."

"Yes," said Father Waite, taking up the conversation when she paused. "Even the poorest human being can understand that. Why, then, the fungus growth of traditions, ceremonies, rites and forms which have sprung up about the Master's simple words? Why the wretched formalistic worship throughout the world? Why the Church's frigid, lifeless traditions, so inconsistent with the enlarging sense of God which marks this latest century? The Church has yet to prove its utility, its right to exist and to pose as the religious teacher of mankind. Else must it fall beneath the axe which is even now at the root of the barren tree of theology. Her theology, like the Judaism of the Master's day, has no prophets, no poets, no singers. And her priests, as in his time, have sunk into a fanatical observance of ritual and form."

"And yet," observed Carmen, "you still urge me to unite with it."

Lafelle was growing weary. Moreover, it irked him sore to be made a target for the unassailable logic of the apostate Waite. Then, too, the appearance of the ex-priest there that afternoon in company with this girl who held such radical views regarding religious matters portended in his thought the possibility of a united assault upon the foundations of his cherished system. This girl was now a menace. She nettled and exasperated him. Yet, he could not let her alone. Did he have the power to silence her? He thought he had.

"Have you finished with me?" he asked, with a show of gaiety. "If so, I will depart."

"Yes," replied Carmen, "you may go now."

Lafelle paled. He had not expected that reply. He was stung to the quick. What! dismissed like a lackey? He, Monsignor, a dignitary of Holy Church? He could not believe it! He turned upon the girl and her companion, furious with anger.

"I have been very patient with you both," he said in a voice that he could not control. "But there is a reasonable limit. Abuse the Church as you will, the fact remains that the world fears her and trembles before her awful voice! Why? Because the world recognizes her mighty power, a power of unified millions of human beings and exhaustless wealth. She is the leader, the guide, the teacher, the supreme object of worship of a countless army who would lay down their lives to-day for her. Her subjects gather from every quarter of the globe. They are English, French, German, American--but they are Catholics first! Emperor, King, Ruler, or Government--all are alike subject to her supreme, divine authority! Nationalities, customs, family ties--all melt away before her, to whom her followers bow in loyal consecration. The power which her supreme leader and head wields is all but omnipotent! He is by divine decree Lord of the world. Hundreds of millions bend before his throne and offer him their hearts and swords! I say, you have good reason to quake! Aye, America has reason to fear! The onward march of Holy Church is not disturbed by the croaking calumnies of such as you who would assault her! And to you I say, beware!" His face was purple, as he stopped and mopped his damp brow.

"What we have to beware of, Monsignor," said Father Waite gravely, "is the steady encroachments of Rome in this country, with her weapons of fear, ignorance, and intolerance--"

"Intolerance! You speak of intolerance! Why, in this country, whose Constitution provided toleration for every form of religion--"

Carmen had risen and gone to the man. "Monsignor," she said, "the founders of the American nation did provide for religious tolerance--and they were wise according to their light. But we of this day are still wiser, for we have some knowledge of the wonderful working of mental laws. I, too, believe in toleration of opinion. You are welcome to yours, and I to mine. But--and here is the great point--the opinion which Holy Church has held throughout the ages regarding those who do not accept her dogmas is that they are damned, that they are outcasts of heaven, that they merit the stake and rack. The Church's hatred of heretics has been deadly. Her thought concerning them has not been that of love, such as Jesus sent out to all who did not agree with him, but deadly, suggestive hatred. Now our Constitution does not provide for tolerance of hate and murder-thoughts, which enter the minds of the unsuspecting and work destruction there in the form of disease, disaster, and death. That is what we object to in you, Monsignor. You murder your opponents with your poisonous thoughts. And toward such thoughts we have a right to be very intolerant, even to the point of destroying them in human mentalities. Again I say, I war not against people, but against the murderous carnal thought of the human mind!"

Monsignor had fallen back before the girl's strong words. His face had grown black, and his hands were working convulsively.

"Monsignor," continued Carmen in a low, steady voice, "you have threatened me with something which you apparently hold over me. You are very like the people of Galilee: if you can not refute by reason, you would circumvent by law, by the Constitution, by Congress. That failing, you would destroy. Instead of threatening us with the flames of hell for not being good, why do you not show us by the great example of Jesus' love how to be so? Are you manifesting love now--or the carnal mind? I judge your Church by such as manifest it to me. How, then, shall I judge it by you to-day?"

He rose slowly and took her by the hand. "I beg your pardon," he said in a strange, unnatural voice. "I was hasty. As you see, I am zealous. Naturally, I resent misjudgment. And I assure you that you quite misunderstand me, and the Church which I represent. But--I may come again?"

"Surely, Monsignor," returned the girl heartily. "A debate such as this is stimulating, don't you think so?"

He bowed and turned to go. Just then the Beaubien appeared.

"Ah, Monsignor," she said lightly, as she stepped into the room. "You are exclusive. Why have you avoided me since your return to America?"

"Madam," replied Lafelle, in some confusion, "no one regrets more than I the press of business which necessitated it. But your little friend has told me I may return."

"Always welcome, Monsignor," replied the Beaubien, scanning him narrowly as she accompanied him to the door. "By the way, you forgot our little compact, did you not?" she added coldly.

"Madam, I came out of a sense of duty."

"Of that I have no doubt, Monsignor. Adieu."

She returned again to the music room, where Carmen made her acquainted with Father Waite, and related the conversation with Lafelle. While the girl talked the Beaubien's expression grew serious. Then Carmen launched into her association with the ex-priest, concluding with: "And he must have something to do, right away, to earn his living!"

The Beaubien laughed. She always did when Carmen, no matter how serious the conversation, infused her sparkling animation into it. "That isn't nearly as important as to know what he thinks about Monsignor's errand here this afternoon, dearie," she said.

Father Waite bowed. "Madam," he said with great seriousness, "I would be very wide awake."

The Beaubien studied him for a moment. "Why?" she asked.

"I think--I think--" He hesitated, and looked at Carmen.

"Well?" impatiently.

"I think he--has been greatly angered by--this girl--and by my presence here."

"Ah!" Her face set hard. Then abruptly: "What are you going to do now?"

"I have funds enough to keep me some weeks, Madam, while making plans for the future."

"Then remain where I can keep in touch with you."

For the Beaubien had just returned from a two hours' ride with J. Wilton Ames, and she felt that she needed a friend.

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Chapter 20

The Beaubien sat in the rounded window of the breakfast room. Carmen nestled at her feet. The maid had just removed the remains of the light luncheon.

"Dearest, please, please don't look so serious!"

The Beaubien twined her fingers through the girl's flowing locks. "I will try, girlie," she said, though her voice broke.

Carmen looked up into her face with a wistful yearning. "Will you not tell me?" she pleaded. "Ever since Monsignor Lafelle and Father Waite were here you have been so quiet; and that was nearly a week ago. I know I can help, if you will only let me."

"How would you help, dearie?" asked the woman absently.

"By knowing that God is everywhere, and that evil is unreal and powerless," came the quick, invariable reply.

"My sweet child! Can nothing shake your faith?"

"No. Why, if I were chained to a stake, with fire all around me, I'd know it wasn't true!"

"I think you are chained--and the fire has been kindled," said the woman in a voice that fell to a whisper.

"Then your thought is wrong--all wrong! And wrong thought just can't be externalized to me, for I know that 'There shall no mischief happen to the righteous,' that is, to the right-thinking. And I think right."

"I'm sure you do, child." The Beaubien got up and walked slowly around the room, as if to summon her strength. Then she returned to her chair.

"I'm going to tell you," she said firmly. "You are right, and I have been wrong. It concerns you. And you have help that I have not. I--I have lost a great deal of money."

Carmen laughed in relief. "Well, dear me! that's nothing."

The Beaubien smiled sadly. "I agree with you. Mr. Ames may have my money. I have discovered in the past few months that there are better things in life. But--" her lips tightened, and her eyes half closed--"he can not have you!"

"Oh! He wants me?"

"Yes. Listen, child: I know not why it is, but you awaken something in every life into which you come. The woman I was a year ago and the woman I am to-day meet almost as strangers now. Why? The only answer I can give is, you. I don't know what you did to people in South America; I can only surmise. Yet of this I am certain, wherever you went you made a path of light. But the effect you have on people differs with differing natures. Just why this is, I do not know. It must have something to do with those mental laws of which I am so ignorant, and of which you know so much."

Carmen looked at her in wondering anticipation. The Beaubien smiled down into the face upturned so lovingly, and went on:

"From what you have told me about your priest, Josè, I know that you were the light of his life. He loved you to the complete obliteration of every other interest. You have not said so; but I know it. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? On the other hand, that heartless Diego--his mad desire to get possession of you was only animal. Why should you, a child of heaven, arouse such opposite sentiments?"

"Dearest," said the girl, laying her head on the woman's knees, "that isn't what's worrying you."

"No--but I think of it so often. And, as for me, you have turned me inside-out."

Carmen laughed again merrily. "Well, I think this side wears better, don't you?"

"It is softer--it may not," returned the woman gently. "But I have no desire to change back." She bent and kissed the brown hair. "Mr. Ames and I have been--no, not friends. I had no higher ideals than he, and I played his game with him. Then you came. And at a time when he had involved me heavily financially. The Colombian revolution--his cotton deal--he must have foreseen, he is so uncanny--he must have known that to involve me meant control whenever he might need me! He needs me now, for I stand between him and you."

"You don't!" Carmen was on her feet. "God stands between me and every form of evil!" She sat down on the arm of the Beaubien's chair. "Is it because you will not let him have me that he threatens to ruin you financially?"

"Yes. He couldn't ruin me in reputation, for--" her voice again faded to a whisper, "I haven't any."

"That is not true!" cried the girl, throwing her arms about the woman's neck. "Your true self is just coming to light! Why, it is beautiful! And I love it so!"

The Beaubien suddenly burst into a flood of tears. The strain of weeks was at last manifesting. "Oh, I have been in the gutter!--he dragged me through the mire!--and I let him! I did it for money, money! I gave my soul for it! I schemed and plotted with him; I ruined and pillaged with him; I murdered reputations and blasted lives with him, that I might get money, dirty, blood-stained money! Oh, Carmen, I didn't know what I was doing, until you came! And now I'd hang on the cross if I could undo it! But it's too late! And he has you and me in his clutches, and he is crushing us!" She bent her head and sobbed violently.

Carmen bent over the weeping woman. "Be still, and know that I am God." The Beaubien raised her head and smiled feebly through her tears.

"He governs all, dearest," whispered Carmen, as she drew the woman's head to her breast. "And He is everywhere."

"Let us go away!" cried the Beaubien, starting up.

"Flee from our problems?" returned the girl. "But they would follow. No, we will stay and meet them, right here!"

The Beaubien's hand shook as she clasped Carmen's. "I can't turn to Kane, nor to Fitch, nor Weston. They are all afraid of him. I've ruined Gannette myself--for him! I've ruined Mrs. Hawley-Crowles--"

"Mrs. Hawley-Crowles!" exclaimed Carmen, rising.

"Oh, don't, don't!" sobbed the suffering woman, clinging to the girl.

"But--how did you do that?"

"I lent her money--took her notes--which I sold again to Mr. Ames."

"Well, you can buy them back, can't you? And return the money to her?"

"I can't! I've tried! He refuses to sell them!"

"Then give her your own money."

"Most that I have is mortgaged to him on the investments I made at his direction," wailed the woman.

"Well?"

"I will try--I am trying, desperately! I will save her, if I can! But--there is Monsignor Lafelle!"

"Is he working with Mr. Ames?"

"He works with and against him. And I'm sure he holds something over you and me. But, I will send for him--I will renew my vows to his Church--anything to--"

"Listen, dearest," interrupted Carmen. "I will go to Mr. Ames myself. If I am the cause of it all, I can--"

"You will not!" cried the Beaubien fiercely. "I--I would kill him!"

"Why, mother dearest!"

The desperate woman put her head in the girl's lap and sobbed bitterly.

"There is a way out, dearest," whispered Carmen. "I know there is, no matter what seems to be or to happen, for 'underneath are the everlasting arms.' I am not afraid. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles told me this morning that Mrs. Ames intends to give a big reception next week. Of course we will go. And then I will see Mr. Ames and talk with him. Don't fear, dearest. He will do it for me. And--it will be right, I know."

And Carmen sat with the repentant woman all that day, struggling with her to close the door upon her sordid past, and to open it wide to "that which is to come."

* * * * *

The days following were busy ones for many with whom our story is concerned. Every morning saw Carmen on her way to the Beaubien, to comfort and advise. Every afternoon found her yielding gently to the relentless demands of society, or to the tiresome calls of her thoroughly ardent wooer, the young Duke of Altern. Carmen would have helped him if she could. But she found so little upon which to build. And she bore with him largely on account of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, for whom she and the Beaubien were now daily laboring. The young man tacitly assumed proprietorship over the girl, and all society was agog with expectation of the public announcement of their engagement.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles still came and went upon a tide of unruffled joy. The cornucopia of Fortune lay full at her feet. Her broker, Ketchim, basked in the sunlight of her golden smiles--and quietly sold his own Simití stock on the strength of her patronage. Society fawned and smirked at her approach, and envied her brilliant success, as it copied the cut of her elaborate gowns--all but the deposed Mrs. Ames and her unlovely daughter, who sulked and hated, until they received a call from Monsignor Lafelle. This was shortly after that gentleman's meeting with Carmen and Father Waite in the Beaubien mansion. And he left the Ames home with an ominous look on his face. "The girl is a menace," he muttered, "and she deserves her fate."

The Ames grand reception, promising to be the most brilliant event of the year, barring the famous Bal de l'Opéra, was set for Thursday. But neither Mrs. Hawley-Crowles nor Carmen had received invitations. To the former it was evident that there was some mistake. "For it can't be possible that the hussy doesn't intend to invite us!" she argued. But Thursday morning came, and found Mrs. Hawley-Crowles drenched with tears of anxiety and vexation. "I'd call her up and ask, if I dared," she groaned. But her courage failed. And, to the amazement of the exclusive set, the brilliant function was held without the presence of its acknowledged leaders, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her ward, the Inca princess.

* * * * *

On Wednesday night Harris arrived from Denver. His arrival was instantly made known to J. Wilton Ames, who, on the morning following, summoned both him and Philip O. Ketchim to his private office. There were present, also, Monsignor Lafelle and Alonzo Hood. Harris and Ketchim came together. The latter was observed to change color as he timidly entered the room and faced the waiting audience.

"Be seated, gentlemen," said Ames genially, after cordially shaking hands with them and introducing the churchman. Then, turning to Harris, "You are on your way to Colombia, I learn. Going down to inaugurate work on the Simití holdings, I suppose?"

Harris threw a quick glance at Ketchim. The latter sat blank, wondering if there were any portions of the earth to which Ames's long arms did not reach.

"As a matter of fact," Ames continued, leaning back in his chair and pressing the tips of his fingers together before him, "a hitch seems to have developed in Simití proceedings. I am interested, Mr. Ketchim," turning suddenly and sharply upon that gentleman, "because my brokers have picked up for me several thousand shares of the stock."

Ketchim's hair began to rise.

"But," proceeded Ames calmly, "now that I have put money into it, I learn that the Simití Company has no property whatever in Colombia."

A haze slowly gathered before Ketchim's eyes. His ears hummed. His heart throbbed violently. "How do you make that out, Mr. Ames?" he heard Harris say in a voice that seemed to come from an infinite distance. "I myself saw the title papers which old Rosendo had, and saw them transferred to Mr. Ketchim for the Simití Company. Moreover, I personally visited the mine in question."

"La Libertad? Quite so," returned Ames. "But, here's the rub. The property was relocated by this Rosendo, and he secured title to it under the name of the Chicago mine. It was that name which deceived the clerks in the Department of Mines in Cartagena, and caused them to issue title, not knowing that it really was the famous old La Libertad."

"Well, I don't see that there is any ground for confusion."

"Simply this," returned Ames evenly: "La Libertad mine, since the death of its former owner, Don Ignacio de Rincón, has belonged to the Church."

"What!" Harris was on his feet. "By what right does it belong to the Church?"

"By the ancient law of 'en manos muertas', my friend," replied Ames, unperturbed.

"Good Lord! what's that?"

"Our friend, Monsignor Lafelle, representing the Church, will explain," said Ames, waving a hand toward that gentleman.

Lafelle cleared his throat. "I deeply regret this unfortunate situation, gentlemen," he began. "But, as Mr. Ames has pointed out, the confusion came about through issuing title to the mine under the name Chicago. Don Ignacio de Rincón, long before his departure from Colombia after the War of Independence, drew up his last will, and, following the established custom among wealthy South Americans of that day, bequeathed this mine, La Libertad, and other property, to the Church, invoking the old law of 'en manos muertas' which, being translated, means, 'in dead hands.' Pious Catholics of many lands have done the same throughout the centuries. Such a bequest places property in the custody of the Church; and it may never be sold or disposed of in any way, but all revenue from it must be devoted to the purchase of Masses for the souls in purgatory. It was through the merest chance, I assure you, that your mistake was brought to light. Knowing that our friend, Mr. Ames, had purchased stock in your company, I took the pains to investigate while in Cartagena recently, and made the discovery which unfortunately renders your claim to the mine quite null."

"God a'mighty!" exploded Harris. "Did you know this?" turning savagely upon the paralyzed Ketchim.

"That," interposed Ames with cruel significance, "is a matter which he will explain in court."

Fleeting visions of the large blocks of stock which he had sold; of the widows, orphans, and indigent clergymen whom he had involved; of the notes which the banks held against him; of his questionable deals with Mrs. Hawley-Crowles; and of the promiscuous peddling of his own holdings in the now ruined company, rushed over the clouded mind of this young genius of high finance. His tongue froze, though his trembling body dripped with perspiration. Somehow he got to his feet. Somehow he found the door, and groped his way to a descending elevator. And somehow he lived through that terror-haunted day and night.

But very early next morning, while his blurred eyes were drinking in the startling report of the Simití Company's collapse, as set forth in the newspaper which he clutched in his shaking hand, the maid led in a soft-stepping gentleman, who laid a hand upon his quaking shoulder and read to him from a familiar-looking document an irresistible invitation to take up lodgings in the city jail.

* * * * *

There were other events forward at the same time, which came to light that fateful next day. It was noon when Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, after a night of mingled worry and anger over the deliberate or unintentional exclusion of herself and Carmen from the Ames reception the preceding night, descended to her combined breakfast and luncheon. At her plate lay the morning mail, including a letter from France. She tore it open, hastily scanned it, then dropped with a gasp into her chair.

"Father--married to--a French--adventuress! Oh!"

The long-cherished hope of a speedy inheritance of his snug fortune lay blasted at her feet.

The telephone bell rang sharply, and she rose dully to answer it. The call came from the city editor of one of the great dailies. "It is reported," said the voice, "that your ward, Miss Carmen Ariza, is the illegitimate daughter of a negro priest, now in South America. We would like your denial, for we learn that it was for this reason that you and the young lady were not included among the guests at the Ames reception last evening."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles's legs tottered under her, as she blindly wandered from the telephone without replying. Carmen--the daughter of a priest! Her father a negro--her mother, what? She, a mulatto, illegitimate--!

The stunned woman mechanically took up the morning paper which lay on the table. Her glance was at once attracted to the great headlines announcing the complete exposure of the Simití bubble. Her eyes nearly burst from her head as she grasped its fatal meaning to her. With a low, inarticulate sound issuing from her throat, she turned and groped her way back to her boudoir.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the automobile in which Carmen was speeding to the Beaubien mansion was approached by a bright, smiling young woman, as it halted for a moment at a street corner. Carmen recognized her as a reporter for one of the evening papers, who had called often at the Hawley-Crowles mansion that season for society items.

"Isn't it fortunate!" exclaimed the young reporter. "I was on my way to see you. Our office received a report this morning from some source that your father--you know, there has been some mystery about your parentage--that he was really a priest, of South America. His name--let me think--what did they say it was?"

"Josè?" laughed the innocent girl, utterly unsuspecting. The problem of her descent had really become a source of amusement to her.

"It began with a D, if I am not mistaken. I'm not up on Spanish names," the young woman returned pleasantly.

"Oh, perhaps you mean Diego."

"That's it! Was that your father's name? We're very much interested to know."

"Well, I'm sure I can't say. It might have been."

"Then you don't deny it?"

"No; how can I?" she said, smiling. "I never knew him."

"But--you think it was, don't you?"

"Well, I don't believe it was Padre Diego--he wasn't a good man."

"Then you knew him?"

"Oh, very well! I was in his house, in Banco. He used to insist that I was his child."

"I see. By the way, you knew a woman named Jude, didn't you? Here in the city."

"Yes, indeed!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Do you know where she is?"

"No. But she took you out of a house down on--"

"Yes. And I've tried to find her ever since."

"You know Father Waite, too, the ex-priest?"

"Oh, yes, very well. We're good friends."

"You and he going to work together, I suppose?"

"Why, I'm sure I don't know. He's very unsettled."

"H'm! yes. Well, I thank you very much. You think this Diego might have been your father? That is, you can't say positively that he wasn't?"

"I can't say positively, no. But now I must go. You can come up to the house and talk about South America, if you want to."

She nodded pleasantly, and the car moved away. The innocent, ingenuous girl was soon to learn what modern news-gathering and dissemination means in this great Republic. But she rode on, happy in the thought that she and the Beaubien were formulating plans to save Mrs. Hawley-Crowles.

"We'll arrange it somehow," said the Beaubien, looking up from her papers when Carmen entered. "Go, dearie, and play the organ while I finish this. Then I will return home with you to have a talk with Mrs. Hawley-Crowles."

For hours the happy girl lingered at the beloved organ. The Beaubien at her desk below stopped often to listen. And often she would hastily brush away the tears, and plunge again into her papers. "I suppose I should have told Mrs. Hawley-Crowles," she said. "But I couldn't give her any hope. And even now it's very uncertain. Ames will yield! I'll force him to! He knows I can expose him! And yet," she reflected sadly, "who would believe me?" The morning papers lay still unread upon her table.

Late in the afternoon the Beaubien with Carmen entered her car and directed the chauffeur to drive to the Hawley-Crowles home. As they entered a main thoroughfare they heard the newsboys excitedly crying extras.

"Horrible suicide! Double extra! Big mining scandal! Society woman blows out brains! Double extra!"

Of a sudden a vague, unformed presentiment of impending evil came to the girl. She half rose, and clutched the Beaubien's hand. Then there flitted through her mind like a beam of light the words of the psalmist: "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." She sank back against the Beaubien's shoulder and closed her eyes.

The car rolled on. Presently the chauffeur turned and said something through the speaking tube.

"What!" cried the Beaubien, springing from the seat. "Merciful heaven! Stop and get a paper at once!" The chauffeur complied.

A loud cry escaped her as she took the sheet and glanced at the startling headlines. Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, financially ruined, and hurled to disgrace from the pinnacle of social leadership by the awful exposure of the parentage of her ward, had been found in her bedroom, dead, with a revolver clasped in her cold hand.

CARMEN ARIZA

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Book 4

Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh.

--Isaiah.

CARMEN ARIZA

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Chapter 1

The chill winds of another autumn swirled through the masonry-lined cañons of the metropolis and sighed among the stark trees of its deserted parks. They caught up the tinted leaves that dropped from quivering branches and tossed them high, as Fate wantons with human hopes before she blows her icy breath upon them. They shrieked among the naked spars of the Cossack, drifting with her restless master far out upon the white-capped waves. They moaned in low-toned agony among the marble pillars of the Crowles mausoleum, where lay in pitying sleep the misguided woman whose gods of gold and tinsel had betrayed her.

On the outskirts of the Bronx, in a newly opened suburb, a slender girl, with books and papers under her arm, walked slowly against the sharp wind, holding her hat with her free hand, and talking rapidly to a young man who accompanied her. Toward them came an old negro, leaning upon a cane. As he stepped humbly aside to make room, the girl looked up. Then, without stopping, she slipped a few coins into his coat pocket as she passed.

The negro stood in dumb amazement. He was poor--his clothes were thin and worn--but he was not a beggar--he had asked nothing. The girl turned and threw back a smile to him. Then of a sudden there came into the old man's wrinkled, care-lined face such a look, such a comprehension of that love which knows neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor Barbarian, as would have caused even the Rabbis, at the cost of defilement, to pause and seek its heavenly meaning.

A few blocks farther on the strong wind sternly disputed the girl's right to proceed, and she turned with a merry laugh to her companion. But as she stood, the wind fell, leaving a heap of dead leaves about her feet. Glancing down, something caught her eye. She stooped and took up a two-dollar bill.

Her companion threw her a wondering look; but the girl made no comment. In silence they went on, until a few minutes more of brisk walking brought them to a newly built, stucco-coated bungalow. Running rapidly up the steps, the girl threw wide the door and called, "Mother dear!"

The Beaubien rose from her sewing to receive the hearty embrace. "Well, dearie?" she said, devouring the sparkling creature with eager eyes. "What luck?"

"We're registered! Lewis begins his law course at once, and I may take what I wish. And Mr. Hitt's coming to call to-night and bring a friend, a Mr. Haynerd, an editor. What's Jude got for supper? My! I'm starved."

The Beaubien drew the girl to her and kissed her again and again. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the man with a bantering twinkle in her eyes and said, "Don't you wish you could do that? But you can't."

"Yes he can, too, mother," asserted the girl.

Father Waite sighed. "I'm afraid it wouldn't look well," he said. "And, besides, I don't dare lose my heart to her."

With a final squeeze the girl tore herself from the Beaubien's reluctant arms and hurried to the little kitchen. "What is it to-night, Jude?" she demanded, catching the domestic in a vigorous embrace.

"Hist!" said Jude, holding up a finger. "It's a secret. I'm afraid you'd tell him."

"Not a word--I promise."

"Well, then, liver and bacon, with floating island," she whispered, very mysteriously.

"Oh, goody!" cried Carmen. "He just loves them both!"

Returning to the little parlor, Carmen encountered the fixed gaze of both the Beaubien and Father Waite. "Well?" she demanded, stopping and looking from one to the other.

"What about that two dollars?" said the Beaubien, in a tone of mock severity.

"Oh," laughed the girl, running to the woman and seating herself in the waiting lap, "he told, didn't he? Can't I ever trust you with a secret?" in a tone of rebuke, turning to the man.

"Surely," he replied, laughing; "and I should not have divulged this had I not seen in the incident something more than mere chance--something meant for us all."

Then he became serious. "I--I think I have seen the working of a stupendous mental law--am I not right?" addressing the girl. "You saw a need, and met it, unsolicited. You found your own in another's good."

The girl smiled at the Beaubien without replying. "What about it, dearie?" the latter asked tenderly.

"She need not answer," said Father Waite, "for we know. She but cast her bread upon the unfathomable ocean of love, and it returned to her, wondrously enriched."

"If you are going to talk about me, I shall not stay," declared Carmen, rising. "I'm going out to help Jude." And she departed for the kitchen, but not without leaving a smile for each of them as she went. And they understood.

The Beaubien and Father Waite remained some moments in silence. Then the woman spoke. "I am learning," she said. "She is the light that is guiding me. This little incident which you have just related is but a manifestation of the law of love by which she lives. She gave, unasked, and with no desire to be seen and advertised. It returned to her ten-fold. It is always so with her. There was no chance, no miracle, no luck about it. She herself did nothing. It was--it was--only the working of her beloved Christ-principle. Oh, Lewis! if we only knew--"

"We shall know, Madam!" declared the man vehemently. "Her secret is but the secret of Jesus himself, which was open to a world too dull to comprehend. Carmen shall teach us. And," his eyes brightening, "to that end I have been formulating a great plan. That's why I've asked Hitt to come here to-night. I have a scheme to propose. Remember, my dear friend, we are true searchers; and 'all things work together for good to them that love God.' Our love of truth and real good is so great that, like the consuming desire of the Jewish nation, it is bound to bring the Christ!"

* * * * *

For three months the Beaubien and Carmen had dwelt together in this lowly environment; and here they had found peace, the first that the tired woman had known since childhood. The sudden culmination of those mental forces which had ejected Carmen from society, crushed Ketchim and a score of others, and brought the deluded Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to a bitter end, had left the Beaubien with dulled sensibilities. Even Ames himself had been shocked into momentary abandonment of his relentless pursuit of humanity by the unanticipated dénoûement. But when he had sufficiently digested the newspaper accounts wherein were set forth in unsparing detail the base rumors of the girl's parentage and of her removal from a brothel before her sudden elevation to social heights, he rose in terrible wrath and prepared to hunt down to the death the perpetrators of the foul calumny. Whence had come this tale, which even the girl could not refute? From Lafelle? He had sailed for Europe--though but a day before. Ketchim? The man was cringing like a craven murderer in his cell, for none dared give him bail. Reed? Harris? Was it revenge for his own sharp move in regard to La Libertad? He would have given all he possessed to lay his heavy hands upon the guilty ones! The editors of the great newspapers, perhaps? Ames raged like a wounded lion in the office of every editor in the city. But they were perfectly safe, for the girl, although she told a straightforward story, could not say positively that the published statements concerning her were false. Yet, though few knew it, there were two city editors and several reporters who, in the days immediately following, found it convenient to resign their positions and leave the city before the awful wrath of the powerful man.

Then Ames turned upon his wife. And, after weeks of terror, that browbeaten woman, her hair whitening under the terrible persecution of her relentless master, fled secretly, with her terrified daughter, to England, whither the stupified Duke of Altern and his scandalized mother had betaken themselves immediately following the exposé. Thereupon Ames's lawyer drew up a bill of divorce, alleging desertion, and laid it before the judge who fed from his master's hand.

Meantime, the devouring wrath of Ames swept like a prairie fire over the dry, withering stalks of the smart set. He vowed he would take Carmen and flaunt her in the faces of the miserable character-assassins who had sought her ruin! He swore he would support her with his untold millions and force society to acknowledge her its queen! He had it in his power to wreck the husband of every arrogant, supercilious dame in the entire clique! He commenced at once with the unfortunate Gannette. The latter, already tottering, soon fell before the subtle machinations of Hodson and his able cohorts. Then, as a telling example to the rest, Ames pursued him to the doors of the Lunacy Commission, and rested not until that body had condemned his victim to a living death in a state asylum. Kane, Fitch, and Weston fled to cover, and concentrated their guns upon their common enemy. The Beaubien alone stood out against him for three months. Her existence was death in life; but from the hour that she first read the newspaper intelligence regarding Carmen and the unfortunate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, she hid the girl so completely that Ames was effectually balked in his attempts at drastic vindication in her behalf.

But this served only to intensify his anger, and he thereupon turned its full force upon the lone woman. Driven to desperation, she stood at length at bay and hurled at him her remaining weapon. Again the social set was rent, and this time by the report that the black cloud of bigamy hung over Ames. It was a fat season for the newspapers, and they made the most of it. As a result, several of them found themselves with libel suits on their hands. The Beaubien herself was confronted with a suit for defamation of character, and was obliged to testify before the judge whom Ames owned outright that she had but the latter's word for the charge, and that, years since, in a moment of maudlin sentimentalism, he had confessed to her that, as far as he knew, the wife of his youth was still living. The suit went against her. Ames then took his heavy toll, and retired within himself to sulk and plan future assaults and reprisals.

The Beaubien, crushed, broken, sick at heart, gathered up the scant remains of her once large fortune, disposed of her effects, and withdrew to the outskirts of the city. She would have left the country, but for the fact that the tangled state of her finances necessitated her constant presence in New York while her lawyers strove to bring order out of chaos and placate her raging persecutor. To flee meant complete abandonment of her every financial resource to Ames. And so, with the assistance of Father Waite and Elizabeth Wall, who placed themselves at once under her command, she took a little house, far from the scenes of her troubles, and quietly removed thither with Carmen.

One day shortly thereafter a woman knocked timidly at her door. Carmen saw the caller and fled into her arms. "It's Jude!" she cried joyously.

The woman had come to return the string of pearls which the girl had thrust into her hands on the night of the Charity Ball. Nobody knew she had them. She had not been able to bring herself to sell them. She had wanted--oh, she knew not what, excepting that she wanted to see again the girl whose image had haunted her since that eventful night when the strange child had wandered into her abandoned life. Yes, she would have given her testimony as to Carmen; but who would have believed her, a prostitute? And--but the radiant girl gathered her in her arms and would not let her go without a promise to return.

And return she did, many times. And each time there was a change in her. The Beaubien always forced upon her a little money and a promise to come back. It developed that Jude was cooking in a cheap down-town restaurant. "Why not for us, mother, if she will?" asked Carmen one day. And, though the sin-stained woman demurred and protested her unworthiness, yet the love that knew no evil drew her irresistibly, and she yielded at length, with her heart bursting.

Then, in her great joy, Carmen's glad cry echoed through the little house: "Oh, mother dear, we're free, we're free!"

But the Beaubien was not free. Night after night her sleepless pillow was wet with bitter tears of remorse, when the accusing angel stood before her and relentlessly revealed each act of shameful meanness, of cruel selfishness, of sordid immorality in her wasted life. And, lastly, the weight of her awful guilt in bringing about the destruction of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles lay upon her soul like a mountain. Oh, if she had only foreseen even a little of it! Oh, that Carmen had come to her before--or not at all! And yet she could not wish that she had never known the girl. Far from it! The day of judgment was bound to come. She saw that now. And, but for the comforting presence of that sweet child, she had long since become a raving maniac. It was Carmen who, in those first long nights of gnawing, corroding remorse, wound her soft arms about the Beaubien's neck, as she lay tossing in mental agony on her bed, and whispered the assurances of that infinite Love which said, "Behold, I make all things new!" It was Carmen who whispered to her of the everlasting arms beneath, and of the mercy reflected by him who, though on the cross, forgave mankind because of their pitiable ignorance. It is ignorance, always ignorance of what constitutes real good, that makes men seek it through wrong channels. The Beaubien had sought good--all the world does--but she had never known that God alone is good, and that men cannot find it until they reflect Him. And so she had "missed the mark." Oh, sinful, mesmerized world, ye shall find Me--the true good--only when ye seek Me with all your heart! And yet, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." Only a God who is love could voice such a promise! And Carmen knew; and she hourly poured her great understanding of love into the empty heart of the stricken Beaubien.

Then at last came days of quiet, and planning for the future. The Beaubien would live--yes, but not for herself. Nay, that life had gone out forever, nor would mention of it pass her lips again. The Colombian revolution--her mendacious connivances with Ames--her sinful, impenitent life of gilded vice--aye, the door was now closed against that, absolutely and forever more. She had passed through the throes of a new birth; she had risen again from the bed of anguish; but she rose stripped of her worldly strength. Carmen was now the staff upon which she leaned.

And Carmen--what had been her thought when foul calumny laid its sooty touch upon her? What had been the working of her mind when that world which she had sought to illumine with the light of her own purity had cast her out?

When the blow fell the portals of her mind closed at once against every accusing thought, against every insidious suggestion of defeat, of loss, of dishonor. The arrows of malice, as well as those of self-pity and condemnation, snapped and fell, one by one, as they hurtled vainly against the whole armor of God wherewith the girl stood clad. Self sank into service; and she gathered the bewildered, suffering Beaubien into her arms as if she had been a child. She would have gone to Ames, too, had she been permitted--not to plead for mercy, but to offer the tender consolation and support which, despite the havoc he was committing, she knew he needed even more than the Beaubien herself.

"Paul had been a murderer," she often said, as she sat in the darkness alone with the suffering woman and held her trembling hand. "But he became the chief of apostles. Think of it! When the light came, he shut the door against the past. If he hadn't, dearest, he never could have done what he did. And you, and Mr. Ames, will have to do the same." And this the Beaubien could do, and did, after months of soul-racking struggle. But Ames sat in spiritual darkness, whipped by the foul brood of lust and revenge, knowing not that the mountainous wrath which he hourly heaped higher would some day fall, and bury him fathoms deep.

Throughout the crisis Father Waite had stood by them stanchly. And likewise had Elizabeth Wall. "I've just longed for some reasonable excuse to become a social outcast," the latter had said, as she was helping Carmen one day to pack her effects prior to removing from the Hawley-Crowles mansion. "I long for a hearthstone to which I can attach myself--"

"Then attach yourself to ours!" eagerly interrupted Carmen.

"I'll do it!" declared Miss Wall. "For I know that now you are really going to live--and I want to live as you will. Moreover--" She paused and smiled queerly at the girl--"I am quite in love with your hero, Father Waite, you know."

Harris, too, made a brief call before departing again for Denver. "I've got to hustle for a living now," he explained, "and it's me for the mountains once more! New York is no place for such a tender lamb as I. Oh, I've been well trimmed--but I know enough now to keep away from this burg!"

While he was yet speaking there came a loud ring at the front door of the little bungalow, followed immediately by the entrance of the manager of a down-town vaudeville house. He plunged at once into his errand. He would offer Carmen one hundred dollars a week, and a contract for six months, to appear twice daily in his theater. "She'll make a roar!" he asserted. "Heavens, Madam! but she did put it over the society ginks." And the Beaubien, shivering at the awful proposal, was glad Harris was there to lead the zealous theatrical man firmly to the door.

Lastly, came one Amos A. Hitt, gratuitously, to introduce himself as one who knew Cartagena and was likely to return there in the not distant future, where he would be glad to do what he might to remove the stain which had been laid upon the name of the fair girl. The genuineness of the man stood out so prominently that the Beaubien took him at once into her house, where he was made acquainted with Carmen.

"Oh," cried the girl, "Cartagena! Why, I wonder--do you know Padre Josè de Rincón?"

"A priest who once taught there in the University, many years ago? And who was sent up the river, to Simití? Yes, well."

Then Carmen fell upon his neck; and there in that moment was begun a friendship that grew daily stronger, and in time bore richest fruit. It soon became known that Hitt was giving a course of lectures that fall in the University, covering the results of his archaeological explorations; so Carmen and Father Waite went often to hear him. And the long breaths of University atmosphere which the girl inhaled stimulated a desire for more. Besides, Father Waite had some time before announced his determination to study there that winter, as long as his meager funds would permit.

"I shall take up law," he had one day said. "It will open to me the door of the political arena, where there is such great need of real men, men who stand for human progress, patriotism, and morality. I shall seek office--not for itself, but for the good I can do, and the help I can be in a practical way to my fellow-men. I have a little money. I can work my way through."

Carmen shared the inspiration; and so she, too, with the Beaubien's permission, applied for admittance to the great halls of learning, and was accepted.

* * * * *

"And now," began Father Waite that evening, when Hitt and his friend had come, and, to the glad surprise of Carmen, Elizabeth Wall had driven up in her car to take the girl for a ride, but had yielded to the urgent invitation to join the little conference, "my plan, in which I invite you to join, is, briefly, to study this girl!"

Carmen's eyes opened wide, and her face portrayed blank amazement, as Father Waite stood pointing gravely to her. Nor were the others less astonished--all but the Beaubien. She nodded her head comprehendingly.

"Let me explain," Father Waite continued. "We are assembled here to-night as representatives, now or formerly, of very diversified lines of human thought. I will begin with myself. I have stood as the embodiment of Christly claims, as the active agent of one of the mightiest of human institutions, the ancient Christian Church. For years I have studied its accepted authorities and its all-inclusive assumptions, which embrace heaven, earth, and hell. For years I sought with sincere consecration to apply its precepts to the dire needs of humanity. I have traced its origin in the dim twilight of the Christian era and its progress down through the centuries, through heavy vicissitudes to absolute supremacy, on down through schisms and subsequent decline, to the present hour, when the great system seems to be gathering its forces for a life and death stand in this, the New World. I have known and associated with its dignitaries and its humble priests. I know the policies and motives underlying its quiet movements. I found it incompatible with human progress. And so I withdrew from it my allegiance."

Carmen's thought, as she listened, was busy with another whose experience had not been dissimilar, but about whom the human coils had been too tightly wound to be so easily broken.

"Our scholarly friend, Mr. Hitt," Father Waite went on, "represented the great protest against the abuses and corruption which permeated the system for which I stood. He, like myself, embodied the eternal warfare of the true believer against the heretic. Yet, without my churchly system, I was taught to believe, he and those who share his thought are damned. But, oh, strange anomaly! we both claimed the same divine Father, and accepted the Christly definition of Him as Love. We were two brothers of the same great family, yet calling each other anathema!"

He looked over at Hitt and smiled. "And to-day," he continued, "we brothers are humbly meeting on the common ground of failure--failure to understand the Christ, and to meet the needs of our fellow-men with our elaborate systems of theology."

"I heard another priest, years ago, make a similar confession," said Hitt reflectively. "I would he were here to-night!"

"He is here, in spirit," replied Father Waite; "for the same spirit of eager inquiry and humble desire for truth that animates us no doubt moved him. I have reason to think so," he added, looking at Carmen. "For this girl's spiritual development I believe to be very largely his work."

Hitt glanced at Carmen inquiringly. He knew but little as yet of her past association with the priest Josè.

"You and I, Mr. Hitt, represented the greatest systems of so-called Christian belief," pursued Father Waite. "Madam Beaubien, on the other hand, has represented the world that waits, as yet vainly, for redemption. We have not been able to afford it her. Yet--pardon my frankness in thus referring to you, Madam. It is only to benefit us all--that the means of redemption have been brought to her, we must now admit."

All turned and looked at Carmen. She started to speak, but Father Waite raised a detaining hand. "Let me proceed," he said. "Miss Wall represents the weariness of spirit and unrest abroad in the world to-day, the spirit that finds life not worth the while; and Mr. Haynerd voices the cynical disbelief, the agnosticism, of that great class who can not accept the childish tenets of our dogmatic systems of theology, yet who have nothing but the philosophy of stoicism or epicureanism to offer in substitute."

Haynerd bowed and smiled. "You have me correctly classified," he said. "I'm a Yankee, and from Missouri."

"And now, having placed us," said the Beaubien, "how will you classify Carmen?"

Father Waite looked at the girl reverently. "Hers is the leaven," he replied gently, "which has leavened the whole lump.

"My good friends," he went on earnestly, "like all priests and preachers, I have been but a helpless spectator of humanity's troubles. I have longed and prayed to know how to do the works which Jesus is said to have done; yet, at the sick-bed or the couch of death, what could I do--I, to whom the apostolic virtue is supposed to have descended in the long line of succession? I could anoint with holy oil. I could make signs, and pray. I could give promises of remitted sins--though I knew I spoke not truth. I could comfort by voicing the insipid views of our orthodox heaven. And yet I know that what I gave was but mental nostrums, narcotics, to stupify until death might end the suffering. Is that serving Christ? Is that Christianity? Alas, no!"

"And if you were a good orthodox priest," interposed Haynerd, "you would refuse burial to dissenters, and bar from your communion table all who were not of your faith, eh?"

"Yes," sadly. "I would have to, were I consistent; for Catholicism is the only true faith, founded upon the revealed word of God, you know." He smiled pathetically as he looked around at the little group.

"Now," he continued, "you, Mr. Haynerd, are a man of the world. You are not in sympathy with the Church. You are an infidel, an unbeliever. And therefore are you 'anathema,' you know." He laughed as he went on. "But you can not deny that at times you think very seriously. And, I may go farther: you long, intensely, for something that the world does not offer. Now, what is it but truth that you are seeking?"

"I want to know," answered Haynerd quickly. "I want to be shown. I am fond of exhibitions of sleight-of-hand and jugglery. But the priestly thaumaturgy that claims to transform a biscuit into the flesh of a man dead some two thousand years, and a bit of grape juice into his blood, irritates me inexpressibly! And so does the jugglery by which your Protestant fellows, Hitt, attempt to reconcile their opposite beliefs. Why, what difference can it possibly make to the Almighty whether we miserable little beings down here are baptised with water, milk, or kerosene, or whether we are immersed, sprinkled, or well soused? Good heavens! for nearly twenty centuries you have been wandering among the non-essentials. Isn't it time to get down to business, and instead of burning at the stake every one who differs with you, try conscientiously to put into practice a few of the simple moral precepts, such as the Golden Rule, and loving one's neighbor as one's self?"

"There," commented Father Waite, "you have a bit of the world's opinion of the Church! Can we say that the censure is not just? Would not Christ himself to-day speak even more scathingly to those who advocate a system of belief that puts blinders on men's minds, and then leads them into the pit of ignorance and superstition?"

"Ye have taken away the key of knowledge," murmured Carmen; "ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."

"Just so!" exclaimed Haynerd, looking at the girl who stood as a living protest against all that hampers the expansion of the human mind; that quenches its note of joy, and dulls its enlarging and ever nobler concept of God. "Now I want to know, first, if there is a God; and, if so, what He is, and what His relation is to me. I want to know what I am, and why I am here, and what future I may look forward to, if any. I don't care two raps about a God who can't help me here on earth, who can't set me right and make me happy--cure my ills, meet my needs, and supply a few of the luxuries as well. And if there is a God, and we can meet Him only by dying, then why in the name of common sense all this hullabaloo about death? Why, in that case, death is the grandest thing in life! And I'm for committing suicide right away! But you preacher fellows fight death tooth and nail. You're scared stiff when you contemplate it. You make Christianity just a grand preparation for death. Yet it isn't the gateway to life to you, and you know it! Then why, if you are honest, do you tell such rubbish to your trusting followers?"

"I would remind you," returned Hitt with a little laugh, "that I don't, now."

"Well, friends," interposed Father Waite, "it is to take up for earnest consideration just such questions as Mr. Haynerd propounds, that I have my suggestion to make, namely, that we meet together once or twice a week, or as often as we may agree upon, to search for--" his voice dropped to a whisper--"to search for God, and with this young girl as our guide. For I believe she is very close to Him. The world knows God only by hearsay. Carmen has proved Him.

"Men ask why it is," he went on, "that God remains hidden from them; why they can not understand Him. They forget that Jesus revealed God as Love. And, if that is so, in order to know Him all mankind must love their fellow-men. But they go right on hating one another, cheating, abusing, robbing, slaying, persecuting, and still wondering why they don't know God, regardless of the only possible way of ever working out from the evils by which they are beset, if we believe that Jesus told the truth, or was correctly reported." He paused and reflected for a moment. Then:

"The ancient prophet said: 'Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your hearts.' It is my proposal that we bind ourselves together in such a search. To it we can bring diverse talents. To our vast combined worldly experience, I bring knowledge of the ancient Greek and Latin Fathers, together with Church history. Mr. Hitt brings his command of the Hebrew language and history, and an intimate acquaintance with the ancient manuscripts, and Biblical interpretation, together with a wide knowledge of the physical sciences. Madam Beaubien, Miss Wall, and Mr. Haynerd contribute their earnest, searching, inquisitive spirit, and a knowledge of the world's needs. Moreover, we all come together without bias or prejudice. And Carmen--she contributes that in which we have all been so woefully lacking, and without which we can never know God, the rarest, deepest spirituality. She is a living proof of her faith. Shall we undertake the search, my friends? It means a study of her thought, and the basis upon which it rests."

The Beaubien raised her hand to her moist eyes. She was thinking of that worldly coterie which formerly was wont to meet nightly in her magnificent mansion to prey upon their fellows. Oh, how different the spirit of this little gathering!

"You will meet here, with me," she said in a broken voice. "I ask it."

There were none there unacquainted with the sorrows of this penitent, broken woman. Each rose in turn and clasped her hand. Carmen threw her arms about her neck and kissed her repeatedly.

"You see," said the Beaubien, smiling up through her tears, "what this child's religion is? Would the swinging of incense burners and the mumbling of priestly formulæ enhance it?"

"Jesus said, 'Having seen me ye have seen God,'" said Father Waite.

"And I say," replied the Beaubien, "that having seen this child, you have indeed seen Him."

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Chapter 2

"I'm afraid," Haynerd was saying, as he and Father Waite were wending their way to the Beaubien home a few evenings later, "that this Carmen is the kind of girl you read about in sentimental novels; the kind who are always just ready to step into heaven, but who count for little in the warfare and struggle of actual mundane existence. You get me? She isn't quite true to life, you know, as a book critic would say of an impossible heroine."

"You mistake, my friend," replied Father Waite warmly. "She is the very kind we would see oftener, were it not for the belief that years bring wisdom, and so, as a consequence, the little child is crushed beneath a load of false beliefs and human laws that make it reflect its mortal parents, rather than its heavenly one."

"But I'd like to see her under stress--"

"Under stress! Good heavens, man! You haven't the slightest conception of the stress she's been under most of her life! But your criticism unconsciously pays her the highest tribute, for her kind never show by word, deed, or look what they are enduring. That frail-appearing girl has stood up under loads that would have flattened you and me out like gold leaf!"

"Well, she doesn't look it!" protested Haynerd tenaciously.

"Of course she doesn't! Her kind never do! She's so far and away ahead of mortals like you and me that she doesn't admit the reality and power of evil--and, believe me, she's got her reasons for not admitting it, too! Don't presume to judge her yet. Only try humbly to attain a little of her understanding and faith; and try to avoid making yourself ridiculous by criticising what you do not comprehend. That, indeed, has been mankind's age-long blunder--and they have thereby made asses of themselves!"

Edward Haynerd, or "Ned," as he was invariably known, prided himself on being something of a philosopher. And in the name of philosophy he chose to be quixotic. That one who hated the dissimulations and shams of our class aristocracy so cordially should have earned his livelihood--and a good one, too--as publisher of the Social Era, a sprightly weekly chronicle of happenings in fashionable society, would have appeared anomalous in any but a man gifted in the Greek sophistries and their modern innumerable and arid offshoots. Haynerd was a laughing Democritus, an easy-going, even-tempered fellow, doomed to be loved, and by the same graces thoroughly cheated by the world in general. He had in his rapid career of some thirty-five years dipped deeply into things mundane, and had come to the surface, sputtering and blowing, with his face well smeared with mud from the shallow depths. Whereupon he remarked that such an existence was a poor way of serving the Lord, and turned cynic. His wit was his saving grace. It was likewise his capital and stock-in-trade. By it he won a place for himself in the newspaper world, and later, as a credit asset, had employed it successfully in negotiating for the Social Era. It taking over the publication of this sheet he had remarked that life was altogether too short to permit of attempting anything worth while; and so he forthwith made no further assaults upon fame--assuming that he had ever done so--but settled comfortably down to the enjoyment of his sinecure. He had never married. And as justification for his self-imposed celibacy he pompously quoted Kant: "I am a bachelor, and I could not cease to be a bachelor without a disturbance that would be intolerable to me." Yet he was not a misogynist. He simply shirked responsibility and ease-threatening risk.

"You see," he remarked, explaining himself later to Carmen, "I'm a pseudo-littérateur--I conduct a 'Who's It?' for the quidnunces of this blasé old burg. And I really meet a need by furnishing an easy method of suicide, for my little vanity sheet is a sort of social mirror, that all who look therein may die of laughter. By the way, I had to run those base squibs about you; but, by George! I'm going to make a retraction in next Saturday's issue. I'll put a crimp in friend Ames that'll make him squeal. I'll say he has ten wives, and eight of 'em Zulus, at that!"

"Don't, please!" laughed Carmen. "We have enough to meet, without going out of our way to stir up more. Let it all work out now, as it will, in the right way."

"In the right way, eh? Is that part of your doctrine? Say, don't you think that in formulating a new religion you're carrying coals to Newcastle? Seems to me we've got enough now, if we'd practice 'em."

"My religion, Mr. Haynerd, is only the practice of the teachings of a Nazarene Jew, named Jesus," she replied gently.

"Well, my religion is Socialism, I guess," he said lightly.

"So's mine," she quickly returned. "I'm a thorough Socialist. So we meet on common ground, don't we?" She held out her hand, and he took it, a puzzled expression coming into his face.

"Well," he said, glancing about, "we'll have to dispute that later. I see Father Waite is about to open this little religious seminar. But we'll get back to the discussion of myself," he added, his eyes twinkling. "For, like Thoreau, I prefer to discuss that subject, because there's no other about which I know so much."

"Nor so little," she added, laughing and squeezing his hand as she turned from him.

The little coterie took their places around the dining room table, which was well strewn with books of reference and writing materials. Father Waite rapped gently for order. A deep, reverent silence fell upon the group. They had begun their search for God.

"Friends," began Father Waite slowly, "we are inaugurating to-night a mission of the most profound significance. No question so vitally touches the human race as the one which we shall reverently discuss in this and subsequent meetings. I thought as I came in here to-night of the wisdom of Epictitus, who said, 'What do I want? To acquaint myself with the true order of things and comply with it.' I am sure no statement so fully expresses our common desire as that."

"Just so!" interrupted Haynerd. "If Adam was a Baptist, I want to know and comply with the fact."

A general laugh followed. Then Father Waite held up a hand and again became serious.

"Can we treat lightly even the Adam story, when we consider how much misery and rancor its literal acceptance has caused among mankind? No. Out of deepest sympathy for a world in search of truth, let us pity their stumblings, and take heed that we fall not ourselves."

He paused. A hush lay upon the room. Carmen's hand stole toward the Beaubien's and clasped it tightly.

"In these days, as of old, it is still said, 'There is no God!' And yet, though the ignorant and wilful admit it not, mankind's very existence is a function of their concept of a Creator, a sole cause of all that is. No question, economic, social, political, or other, is so vitally related to humanity as this: 'Is there a God?' And the corollary: 'What is His relation to me?' For there can be nothing so important as a knowledge of truth. Can the existence of a God be demonstrated? Can He be shown to be beneficent, in view of the world's testimony? What is our source of truth? If the Bible, then can its authenticity be established? The greatest of our so-called civilizations are known as Christian. But who can say by them what Christianity really is?"

"I am quite prepared to say what it is not!" again interrupted Haynerd.

"Doubtless," resumed Father Waite. "And so are we all. But at present we are seeking constructive criticism, not solely destructive. There has been quite enough of that sort in the world. But, to go a step further, can we say positively that the truth is to be found even in Christianity?"

"Please explain your question," said Miss Wall, with a puzzled look.

"The first essential is always facts," he continued. "The deduction of right conclusions will follow--provided, as Matthew Arnold so tersely said, we have sufficient delicacy of perception, subtlety, wisdom, and tact. And, I may add, sufficient freedom from prejudice and mental bias--ah, there is the stumbling block!"

"Matthew Arnold," ventured Haynerd, "was dubbed a first-class infidel, as I recall it."

"Doubtless. As have been many of the world's most earnest searchers. Yet he enunciated much truth, which we to-day are acknowledging. But, to resume, since Christianity as we know it is based upon the personality of a man, Jesus, we ask: Can the historicity of Jesus be established?"

"What! Do you mean: did he ever live?" queried Miss Wall in greater surprise than before.

"Yes. And if so, is he correctly reported in what we call the Gospels? Then, did he reveal the truth to his followers? And, lastly, has that truth been correctly transmitted to us?"

"And," added Hitt, "there is still the question: Assuming that he gave us the truth, can we apply it successfully to the meeting of our daily needs?"

"The point is well taken," replied Father Waite. "For, though I may know that there are very abstruse mathematical principles, yet I may be utterly unable to demonstrate or use them. But now," he went on, "we are brought to other vital questions concerning us. They are, I think, points to which the theologian has given but scant thought. If we conclude that there is a God, we are confronted with the material universe and man. Did He create them? And what are their natures and import?"

"Well!" ejaculated Haynerd. "Seems to me you've cut out a large assignment for this little party. Those are questions that the world has played football with for thousands of years. Do you think we can settle them in a few evenings' study? I think I'll be excused!"

"No! We can't spare you," laughed Father Waite. Then he glanced at Carmen, who had sat quiet, apparently unhearing, during the remarks. "I think you will hear things soon that will set you thinking," he said. "But now we are going to let our traveled friend, Mr. Hitt, give us just a word in summation of his thought regarding the modern world and its attitude toward the questions which we have been propounding."

The explorer leaned back in his chair and assumed his customary attitude when in deep thought. All eyes turned upon him in eager expectation.

"The world," he began reflectively, "presents to me to-day the most interesting aspect it has assumed since history began. True, the age is one of great mental confusion. Quite as true, startling discoveries and astounding inventions have so upset our staid old mediaeval views that the world is hurriedly crowding them out, together with its God. Doctrines for which our fathers bled and burned are to-day lightly tossed upon the ash heap. The searchlight is turned never so mercilessly upon the founder of the Christian religion, and upon the manuscripts which relate his words and deeds. Yet most of us have grown so busy--I often wonder with what--that we have no time for that which can not be grasped as we run. We work desperately by day, building up the grandest material fabric the world has ever seen; and at night we repair the machine for the next day's run. Even our college professors bewail the lack of time for solid reading and research. And if our young pursue studies, it is with the almost exclusive thought of education as a means of earning a material livelihood later, and, if possible, rearing a mansion and stocking its larder and garage. It is, I repeat, a grandly materialistic age, wherein, to the casual observer, spirituality is at a very low ebb."

He thrust his long legs under the table and cast his eyes upward to the ceiling as he resumed:

"The modern world is still in its spiritual infancy, and does not often speak the name of God. Not that we are so much irreverent as that we feel no special need of Him in our daily pursuits. Since we ceased to tremble at the thunders of Sinai, and their lingering echoes in bulls and heresy condemnations, we find that we get along just as well--indeed, much better. And it really is quite bad form now to speak continually of God, or to refer to Him as anything real and vital. To be on such terms of intimacy with Him as this girl Carmen is--in thought, at least--would be regarded to-day as evidence of sentimentalism and weakness."

He paused again, to marshal his thought and give his auditors an opportunity for comment. Then, as the silence remained unbroken, he continued:

"Viewing the world from one standpoint, it has achieved remarkable success in applying the knout to superstition and limitation. But, like a too energetic housekeeper, it has swept out much that is essential with the débris. When spirituality ceases to be real or vital to a people, then a grave danger threatens them. Materiality has never proved a blessing, as history shows. Life that is made up of strain and ceaseless worry is not life. The incessant accumulation of material wealth, when we do not know how really to enjoy it, is folly. To pamper the flesh, to the complete ignoring of the spirit, is suicide. The increased hankering after physical excitements and animal pleasures, to the utter abandonment of the search for that which is real and satisfying, is an exhibition of gross, mesmeric stupidity, to say the least. It shows that our sense of life is awry."

"But the world is surely attempting its own betterment," protested Haynerd.

"I grant you that," replied Hitt. "But legislation and coercion are the wrong means to employ. They restrain, but they do not cure. They are only narcotics."

"Oh, well, you are not going to change the race until the individual himself changes."

"Have I disputed that?" said Hitt. "Quite the contrary, that is the pith of my observations. Reform is a hearthside affair. And no sane man will maintain that general reform can ever come until the individual's needs are met--his daily, hourly, worldly needs."

"I think I get your point," said Father Waite. "It is wholly a question of man's concept of the cause of things, himself included, and their purpose and end, is it not?"

"Quite so," replied Hitt. "The restless spirit of the modern world is hourly voicing its discontent with a faltering faith which has no other basis than blind belief. It wants demonstrable fact upon which to build. In plain words, mankind would be better if they but knew how!"

"Well, we show them how," asserted Haynerd. "But they don't do as we tell 'em."

"Are you quite sure that you show them how?" asked Hitt. "What do you ever do toward showing them how permanently to eradicate a single human difficulty?"

"Oh, well, putting it that way, nothing, of course."

"Quite so, my friend. The relief we afford is but temporary. And so the world continues to wait for surcease from woe in a life beyond the grave. But now, returning to our survey, let me say that amid all the folly of vain pursuits, of wars and strife, of doleful living and pitiable dying, there are more encouraging and hopeful signs hung out to the inquiring thought to-day than ever before in history. If I misread not, we are already entered upon changes so tremendous that their end must be the revolutionizing of thought and conduct, and hence of life. Our present age is one of great extremes: though we touch the depths, we are aiming likewise at the heights. I doubt if there ever was a time when so many sensed the nothingness of the pleasures of the flesh. I doubt if ever there was such a quickening of the business conscience, and such a determined desire to introduce honesty and purity into our dealings with one another. Never was the need of religion more keenly felt by the world than it is to-day; and that is why mankind are willing to accept any religious belief, however eccentric, that comes in the guise of truth and bearing the promise of surcease from sin, sickness, and sorrow here this side of the grave. The world was never so hungry for religious truth; and this fact is a perpetual challenge to the Church. There is a tremendous world-yearning to know and to do better. And what is its cause? I answer, a growing appreciation of the idea that 'the kingdom of harmony is within you.'"

"Jesus said that," murmured Carmen, looking up.

"He but amplified and gave form to the great fact that there was an influence for better things always existent in the ancient Jews, that 'something not ourselves,' if you will, 'that makes for righteousness.' And he showed that that influence could be outwardly externalized in freedom from the ills which beset humanity."

"Very good," put in Haynerd. "And then, what?"

"That 'something not ourselves' is the germ of the true idea of God," answered Hitt.

"Which makes God--?"

"Wholly mental."

"Spirit?"

"Mind," offered Carmen.

"The terms are synonymous," said Hitt. "And now let me conclude with a final observation. Mankind's beliefs are in a whirl. Ecclesiasticism is dying. Orthodoxy and conservatism are hanging desperately to the world's flying skirts, but they will eventually drop off. No change in thought has been greater than that concerning God. The absentee Lord who started the universe and then withdrew has gone to the scrap heap, with the ridiculous views of predestination and infant damnation. The idea of a God who at divers times interfered with His creation and temporarily set aside His own laws to convince puny man of His greatness, is likewise obsolescent. The world is slowly growing into a conception of a creator, of some kind, but at least mental, and universally present. Nay, more, available for all our problems and needs. And the end will be the adoption of that conception, enlarged and purified still further, and taken into the minutest affairs of our daily life--as this girl has done. The day of patient suffering in this world, under the spell of a promise of compensating reward in the heavenly future, has all but passed. We are gradually becoming conscious of the stupendous fact that the kingdom of all harmony, immortality, and good, is right here within us--and therefore can be naught but a consciousness of absolute good, perfectly attainable by humanity as the 'old man' of Paul is laid off, but not gained, necessarily, through what we call death."

The silence which followed was broken at length by Miss Wall. "And what constitutes the 'old man'?" she asked.

"Largely, I think," said Hitt, "the belief that matter is real."

"What?" exclaimed Haynerd, almost rising from his chair. "Matter, real?"

Hitt laughed. "I stand on my statement," he replied.

Father Waite rose slowly, as if lost in thought. "History shows," he said, meditatively, "that man's progress has been proportionate to his freedom from the limitation of ignorance and undemonstrable belief. And that freedom has come as man's concept of God has grown less and less material, and more and more spiritual. From the animal nature of the savage, to whom all is matter, down--or up--to the man of to-day, to whom mind is assuming ever greater ascendency, man's progress has been marked by a throwing off of limiting beliefs, theological or other, in material power and substance. The development of the least material forces, steam, electricity, the X-ray, has come only as the human mind has thrown off a portion of its hampering material beliefs. I am astounded when I think of it, and of its marvelous message to future generations! For, from the premise that the creator of all things is spirit, or mind, as you will, comes the corollary that the creation itself must of necessity be mental. And from this come such deductions as fairly make me tremble. Carmen has told me of the deductions which her tutor, the priest Josè, drew from the single premise that the universe is infinite in extent--a premise which I think we all will accept."

"There can be no question about it," said Hitt, nodding his head.

"Well," continued Father Waite, "that granted, we must likewise grant its creator to be infinite, must we not?"

"Certainly."

"And that puts the creator out of the matter-class entirely. The creator must be--"

"Mind," said Carmen, supplying the thought ever-present with her.

"I see no other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect in every part."

"Perhaps it is already disintegrating, and that's what causes the evil in the world," hazarded Haynerd.

"Utterly untenable, my friend," put in Hitt. "For, granted an infinite mind, we must grant the concomitant fact that such a mind is of very necessity omnipotent, as well as perfect. What, then, could ever cause disintegration in it?"

"You are right," resumed Father Waite. "And such a mind, of very necessity perfect, omnipotent, and, of course, ever-present, must likewise be eternal. For there would be nothing to contest its existence. Age, decay, and death would be unknown to it. And so would evil."

"And that," said Carmen, rising, "is my God."

Father Waite nodded significantly to the others, and sat down, leaving the girl facing them, her luminous eyes looking off into unfathomed distances, and her face aglow with spiritual light.

"My God is infinite Good, to whom evil is unknown," she said. "And good includes all that is real. It includes wisdom, intelligence, truth, life, and love--none of them material. How do I know? Oh, not by human reasoning, whereby you seek to establish the fact of His existence, but by proof, daily proof, and in the hours when the floods of suppositional evil have swept over me. You would rest your faith on your deductions. But, as Saint Gregory said, no merit lies in faith where human reason supplies the proof; and that you will all some day know. Yes, my God is Mind. And He ceaselessly expresses Himself in and through His ideas, which He is constantly revealing. And He is infinite in good. And these ideas express that goodness and infinitude, from the tiniest up to the idea of God himself. And that grandest idea is--man. Oh, no, not the men and women you think you see about you in your daily walk. No! no! They but counterfeit the divine. But the man that Jesus always saw back of every human concept. That man is God's own idea of Himself. He is God's image and likeness. He is God's reflection. That is the man we shall all put on when we have obeyed Paul and put off the old man, its counterfeit."

"Then, Carmen," said Father Waite, "you believe all things to be mental?"

"Yes, everything--man himself--and matter."

"But, if God is mind, and infinite, He must include all things. Hence He must include this imperfect representation, called the physical man. Is it not so?"

"No," returned the girl emphatically. "Did not Jesus speak often of the one lie about his Father, God? The material man and the material universe are but parts of that lie. And a lie is always a supposition; not real. All evil is contained in that supposition--a supposition that there is power and life and substance apart from God."

"But who made the supposition?" queried Haynerd.

"A supposition is not made," replied Carmen quietly. "Its existence is suppositional."

"I don't quite get that," interposed Miss Wall, her brows knitting.

Carmen smiled down at the inquiring woman. "Listen," she said. "The creator of all things is mind. You admit that. But you would have that mind the creator of evil, also. Yet, your own reasoning has shown that, on the premise of mind as infinite, such mind must be forever whole, harmonious, perfect. The thoughts and ideas by which that mind expresses itself must be likewise pure and perfect. Then that creative mind can not create evil. For, a mind that creates evil must itself be evil. And, being infinite, such a mind must include the evil it creates. We would have, then, either a mind wholly evil, or one of mixed evil and good. In either case, that mind must then destroy itself. Am I not right?"

"Your reasoning is, certainly," admitted Miss Wall. "But, how to account for evil, when God is infinite good--"

"To account for it at all," replied Carmen, "would be to make it something real. Jesus would account for it only by classing it as a lie about God. Now God, as the creative mind, must likewise be truth, since He is perfection and harmony. Very well, a lie is always the opposite of truth. Evil is the direct opposite of good."

"Yes," said Father Waite, nodding his head as certain bright memories returned to him. "That is what you told me that day when I first talked with you. And it started a new line of thought."

"Is it strange that God should have a suppositional opposite?" asked Carmen. "Has not everything with which you are concerned a suppositional opposite? God is truth. His suppositional opposite is the great lie of evil. God is good. Hence the same opposite. God is spirit. The suppositional opposite is matter. And matter is just as mental as the thoughts which you are now holding. God is real. Good is real. And so, evil and the lie are unreal."

"The distinction seems to me theoretical," protested Miss Wall.

Hitt then took the floor. "That word 'real,'" he said, "is perhaps what is causing your confusion. The real is that which, according to Spencer, does not pass away. We used to believe matter indestructible, forever permanent. We learn that our views regarding it were very incorrect. Matter is quite destructible."

"And yet," said Father Waite, "in this universe of constant change, something endures. What is it but the mind that is God, expressing itself in such immaterial and permanent things as law, love, life, power?"

"Exactly," replied Hitt. "But now we have been brought back again to the question of matter. If we can prove that matter is mental, and not real substance, we will have established Carmen's premise that everything is mental. Then there remains but the distinction between the mind that is God, and its suppositional opposite, as expressed in human existence. Let us conclude, therefore, that to-night we have established, at least as a working hypothesis, that, since a thing existing implies a creator; and since the existent universe, being infinite, demands an infinite creator; and since a creator can not be infinite without being at once mind, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniactive, and good, we are fully justified in assuming that the creator of all things still exists, and is infinite, ever-present mind. Further than that we are not prepared to go, until we have discussed the questions of matter and the physical universe and man. Let us leave those topics for a subsequent meeting. And now I suggest that we unite in asking Carmen to sing for us, to crown the unity that has marked this discussion with the harmony of her own beautiful voice."

A few moments later, about the small upright piano which the Beaubien had rented for Carmen, the little group sat in reverent silence, while the young girl sent out through the little room the harmonious expression of her own inner life, the life that had never left heaven for earth.

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Chapter 3

With her exit from the beau monde and her entrance upon the broad stage of University life, Carmen seemed to have awakened from the lethargy which her abrupt transition from mediaeval Simití into the modern world had occasioned. The static struggle to hold her own against the rushing currents of materialism had turned at length in her favor. Her lamp had been kept alight. The lethal influences which rose about her like stupifying fumes in the courts of fashion had been lifted and swept away by the fresher and more invigorating breezes into which her bark had now been drawn.

She plunged into her new work joyously; yet not without a deeper comprehension of its meaning than that of her fellow-students. She knew that the University was but another stepping-stone, even as her social life had been; another series of calls and opportunities to "prove" her God to be immanent good. And she thankfully accepted its offerings. For she was keenly alive to the materialistic leadings of the "higher education," and she would stand as a living protest against them.

It had not taken her long to discover the impotence lying at the heart of so-called modern education. She had not been slow to mark the disappointment written upon the faces of many of her fellow-students, who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now floundering in the devouring morass of materialism. To her keen insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this latest century's obsessing idea that the true function of education is expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a training for the business of earning one's daily bread according to the infamous code of the world's carnal social system. The University did not meet the most urgent need of the race by equipping men to stand against the great crises of human experience. It did not teach men to lay aside the counterfeit man of material sense; but rather emphasized the world's belief in the reality of this man by minutely detailed courses in his mundane history and the manifestations of his pitiable ignorance in his wanton crimes and watery ambitions. To Carmen, God was the most insistent fact of creation. And mankind's existence could find its only justification in ceaseless, consecrated manifestation of His harmonious activity. True, the University vaguely recognized God as infinitely competent. But in the same breath it confessed its utter ignorance of a demonstrable knowledge of Him, to know whom alone is life. True, these men of worldly learning prayed. But their hollow prayers bore no hope, for they knew not how to gain answers to them.

And yet the girl remained in her new environment, awaiting the call to "come up higher." And meantime she strove to gain daily a wider knowledge of the Christ-principle, and its application to the needs and problems of her fellow-men. Her business was the reflection of her Father's business. Other ambition she had none. The weak, transient, flighty, so-called intellectual life which she saw about her sent no call across the calm currents of her thought. Her education was religious in the strictest, deepest sense, for she was learning to know God.

Though the girl pursued her way quietly, unwilling that the notoriety which had been fastened upon her should mark her as an object of curiosity, yet her story soon spread among University circles, and the first semester was a scant two weeks old before her name had been debated in the numerous Sororities and Women's Clubs, and quietly dropped. Negro blood coursed in her veins; and the stigma of parental disgrace lay dark upon her. She lived with a woman of blackened reputation--a reputation which waxed no brighter under the casual, malicious comments of J. Wilton Ames, whose great financial strength had made him a Trustee of this institution of learning. If Carmen divined the comment that was passed concerning herself, she gave no indication. But Hitt and Father Waite knew that the girl had not found favor in the social and fraternal organizations of her mates; and they knew why.

"A curse upon such little minds!" mused Hitt, when he could no longer restrain himself. Then he called a student to his desk one day, at the conclusion of his lecture.

"Miss West," he said, "you are leader in the most prominent Sorority in the University. I want you to give Miss Carmen Ariza a bid."

The girl shook her head. "She is not desirable."

"But the charges against her are unfounded! They are flagrantly false!" stormed Hitt.

"Have you proof, Professor?" the girl asked, as she arched her brows.

"None definite. But--well, what if she were a negress? Hers is the most brilliant mind in the entire student-body!"

But, no. Race segregation is a divine tenet, scripturally justified. What though the girl's skin vied with the lilies and rosebuds? What though her hair was the brown of ripe fields? Had not God Almighty decreed that the negro should remain a drawer of water? A hewer of wood? Had the Lord designed him the equal of the noble white, He would have bleached his face, and bridged his flat nose. Miss West was a Southerner. And the reference to her dark-skinned sisters caused a little moue of disgust, as she flatly declined to consider Carmen an eligible candidate for membership in her Society.

"Lord above!" ejaculated Hitt, who had been brooding over the incident as he walked home with Father Waite. "That toadying, sycophantic, wealth-worshiping Miss West can see no farther than the epidermis! If we could have maintained Carmen's reputation as an Inca princess, this same girl would have fawned at her feet, and begged to kiss the edge of her robe! And she would have used every art of cajolery to ingratiate herself into Carmen's favor, to catch the social crumbs that our girl might chance to drop!"

"There, there, Hitt," soothed Father Waite. "Have you any idea that Carmen is at all injured by Miss West's supercilious conduct?"

"Not in the least!" asseverated Hitt vigorously. "But it makes me so--!"

"There, check that! You're forgetting the girl's influence, aren't you?"

Hitt gulped his wrath down his long throat. "Waite," he blurted, "that girl's an angel! She isn't real!"

"Oh, yes, she is!" replied Father Waite. "She's so real that we don't understand her--so real that she has been totally misunderstood by the petty minds that have sought to crush her here in New York, that's all."

"But certainly she is unique--"

"Ah, yes; unique in that she goes about putting her arms around people and telling them that she loves them. Yes, that certainly is unique! And she is unique in that her purity and goodness hang about her like an exquisite aura, and make people instinctively turn and look after her as she passes. Unique in that in her sweet presence one seems to hear a strain of heavenly music vibrating on the air. So unique that the dawn, the nesting birds, the wild flowers, the daily sunset, fairly intoxicate her with ecstasy and make her life a lyric."

Hitt essayed to reply; but the words hung in his throat.

"Yes," continued Father Waite, "she is so unique that when the empty-headed, vain young Duke of Altern, learning that she had been thrown out of society because of the base rumor regarding her parentage, sent her a written statement to the effect that there was no engagement between them, and demanded that she sign it, she did so, with a happy smile, with an invocation, with a prayer for blessing upon those who had tried to ruin her."

"Good God! Did she do that?"

"Aye, she did. And when Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and Ames and Lafelle filched La Libertad from her, she would have given them the clothes on her back with it, if they had demanded them. Yes, she's unique--so unique that again and again I hear her murmur, as she looks off absently into space: 'If it is right that he should have a son, then I want it to be so.'"

"Referring to--that priest--Josè de Rincón?"

"Yes, doubtless. And time and again I have heard her say: 'God is light. Sight depends upon light. Therefore Anita's babe sees.' Old Rosendo's grandson, you know."

Hitt nodded. "Waite," he said earnestly, "she is simply illustrating what would happen to any of us if we threw ourselves wholly upon God's protecting care, and took our thoughts only from Him. That's why she can lose her home, her family, her reputation, that mine--everything--and still stand. She does what we don't dare to do!"

"She is a living illustration," replied Father Waite, "of the mighty fact that there is nothing so practical as real Christianity. I want you to tell Professor Cane that. He calls her 'the girl with the Utopian views,' because of her ingenuous replies in his sociological class. But I want you to show him that she is very far from being impractical."

"I'll do it," said Hitt emphatically. "I'll prove to Cane that her religion is not a visionary scheme for regulating a world inhabited only by perfect beings, but is a working principle for the every-day sinner to use in the solution of his daily problems. Moreover, Waite, she is a vivid illustration of the fact that when the individual improves, the nation does likewise. Do you get me?"

"I not only get you, but I stand as a proof of your statement," returned Father Waite gently.

Carmen, her thoughts above, though her feet trod the earth, came and went, glad and happy. The change in her mode of living from the supreme luxury of the Hawley-Crowles mansion to the common comforts of the home where now she dwelt so simply with the Beaubien, seemed not to have caused even a ripple in the full current of her joy. Her life was a symphony of thanksgiving; an antiphony, in which all Nature voiced its responses to her in a diapason, full, rich, and harmonious. Often that autumn she might have been seen standing among the tinted leaves on the college campus, and drinking in their silent message. And then she might have been heard to exclaim, as she turned her rapt gaze beyond the venerable, vine-clad buildings: "Oh, I feel as if I just couldn't stand it, all this wealth of beauty, of love, of boundless good!" And yet she was alone, always alone. For her dark story had reared a hedge about her; the taboo rested upon her; and even in the crowded classrooms the schoolmates of her own sex looked askance and drew their skirts about them.

But if the students avoided her, the faculty did not. And those like Professor Cane, who had the opportunity and the ability to peer into the depths of the girl's soul, took an immediate and increasing interest in her. Often her own naïve manners broke down the bars of convention, and brought her enduring friendships among the men of learning. This was especially the case with Doctor Morton, Dean of the School of Surgery. Yielding to a harmless impulse of curiosity, the girl one afternoon had set out on a trip of exploration, and had chosen the Anatomy building to begin with. Many odd sights greeted her eager gaze as she peered into classrooms and exhibit cases; but she met with no one until she chanced to open the door of Doctor Morton's private laboratory, and found that eminent man bending over a human brain, which he was dissecting.

Carmen stopped, and stood hesitant. The doctor looked up, surprise written large upon his features as he noted his fair caller. "Well!" he said, laying down his work.

"Well!" returned Carmen. "That sounds like the Indian 'How?' doesn't it?" Then both laughed.

"You--are--Doctor Morton?" queried the girl, twisting around and looking at the name on the door to make certain.

"Yes," replied the genial doctor, with growing interest. He was a gray-haired, elderly man, slightly inclined to embonpoint, and with keen, twinkling eyes. "Will you come in?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the girl; "I'd love to. I am Carmen Ariza."

"Ah, yes. The young South American--lady. I have heard of you."

"Most everybody seems to have heard of me," sighed the girl. "Well, it doesn't make any difference about my coming in here, does it?" She looked up at him so wistfully that he felt a great tug at his heartstrings.

"Not a bit!" he replied cordially. "You're as welcome as the April sun."

She seized his hand and pressed it. "Now tell me," she said eagerly, looking about. "What are you doing? What's that thing?"

"That," said he, taking up the pulpy gray object, "is the brain of my erstwhile friend and collaborator, Doctor Bolton. He willed it to the University."

"Alas, poor Yorick!" murmured Carmen, a facetious twinkle coming into her eyes as she looked at it. "And why are you cutting it up?"

"In the interests of science," returned the man, studying her. "That we may increase our knowledge of this marvelous mechanism of thought, and the laws by which it operates in mental processes."

"Then you still blindly seek the living among the dead, don't you?" she murmured. "You think that this poor thing held life, and you search now among its ashes for the living principle. But, God is life; and 'Canst thou by searching find out God?'"

The man regarded her intently without replying. She bent for a while over the half-dissected brain in deep thought. Then she looked up.

"Doctor," she said, "life is not structural. God is life; and to know Him is to reflect life. Reflecting Him, we are immortal. Doctor, don't you think it is about time to do away with this business of dying?"

The man of science started visibly, and his eyes opened wider. The abrupt question quite swept him off his feet.

"You didn't really expect to find anything in this brain, did you?" she went on. "The brain is composed of--what?"

"Why, mostly water, with a few commonplace salts," he answered, wondering what the next question would be.

"And can a compound of water and a few commonplace salts think?" she asked, looking intently at him.

"N--no," he answered tentatively.

"The brain is not the cause of thought, then, but an effect, is it not?" she pursued.

"Why, really, my dear Miss Carmen, we don't know. We call it the organ of thought, because in some way thought seems to be associated with it, rather than with--well, with the liver, or muscles, for example. And we learn that certain classes of mental disturbances are intimately associated with lesions or clots in the brain. That's about all."

The girl reflected for a few moments. Then:

"Doctor, you wouldn't cut up a machine to discover the motive power, would you? But that is just what you are doing there with that brain. You are hoping by dissecting it to find the power that made it go, aren't you? And the power that made it go was mind--life."

"But the life is not in the brain now," hazarded the doctor.

"And never was," returned Carmen promptly. "You see," she went on, "if the brain was ever alive, it could never cease to be so. If it ever lived, it could never die. That brain never manifested real life. It manifested only a false sense of life. And that false sense died. Who or what says that the man who owned that brain is dead? Why, the human mind--human belief. It is the human mind, expressing its belief in death, and in a real opposite to life, or God. Don't you see?"

"H'm!" The doctor regarded the girl queerly. She returned his look with a confident smile.

"You believe in evolution, don't you?" she at length continued.

"Oh, surely," he replied unhesitatingly. "There is overwhelming evidence of it."

"Well, then, in the process of evolution, which was evolved first, the brain, or the mind which operates it and through it?" she asked.

"Why," he replied meditatively, "it is quite likely that they evolved simultaneously, the brain being the mind's organ of expression."

"But don't you see, Doctor, that you are now making the mind really come first? For that which expresses a thing is always secondary to the thing expressed."

"Well, perhaps so," he said. "At any rate, it is quite immaterial to a practical knowledge of how to meet the brain's ills. I am a practical man, you know."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said simply. "Practical men are so stupid and ignorant."

"Well, I declare!" he exclaimed, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at the smiling face.

"And you are so nice and friendly, I wouldn't want to think you stupid and ignorant," she went on blandly.

"H'm! Well, that kind o' takes the edge off your former classification of me," he said, greatly amused, yet wondering just what appraisal to place upon this frank girl.

"And evolution," she continued, "is an unfolding, isn't it? You see, the great fact of creation is the creator, infinite mind. Well, that mind expresses itself in its ideas. And these it is unfolding all the time. Now a fact always gives rise to a suppositional opposite. The opposite of a fact is an error. And that is why error has been called 'negative truth.' Of course, there isn't any such thing as negative truth! And so all error is simply falsity, supposition, without real existence. Do you see?"

He did not reply. But she went on unperturbed. "Now, the human, or carnal, mind is the negative truth of the real mind, God. It is infinite mind's suppositional opposite. And it imitates the infinite mind, but in a very stupid, blundering way. And so the whole physical universe manifests evolution, too--an unfolding, or revealing, of material types, or mental concepts. And all these manifest the human mind's sense of life, and its equally strong sense of death. The universe, animals, men, are all human types, evolved, or unfolded, or revealed, in the human mind. And all are the human mind's interpretations of infinite mind's real and eternal and perfect ideas. You see that, don't you?

"You know," she laughed, "speaking of 'negative truth', the first chapter of Genesis sets forth positive truth, and the second chapter sets forth its opposite, negative truth. It is very odd, isn't it? But there it is for everybody to read. And the human mind, of course, true to its beliefs, clings to the second chapter as the reality. Isn't it strange?"

Meantime, Carmen's attention had been attracted to a large microscope that stood on the table near her. Going to it, she peeped curiously down into the tube. "Well, what have you here?" she inquired.

"Germs," he said mechanically.

"Germs! What funny, twisted things! Well," she suddenly asked, "have you got the fear germ here?"

He broke into a laugh. But when the girl looked up, her face was quite serious.

"You do not know it, Doctor, for you are a practical man, but you haven't anything but fear germs under this glass," she said in a low voice.

"Why, those are germs of typhoid and tuberculosis!" he exclaimed.

"And manifestations, externalizations, of the fear germ itself, which is mental," she added. "These things don't cause disease," she went on, pointing to the slide. "But the thoughts which they manifest do. Do you scientists know why people die, Doctor?"

"No," he admitted seriously. "We really do not know why people die."

"Then I'll tell you," she said. "It's because they don't know enough to live. This poor Doctor Bolton died because he didn't know that God was life. He committed sickness, and then paid the penalty, death. He sinned by believing that there were other powers than God, by believing that life and thought were in matter. And so he paid the wages of sin, death. He simply missed the mark, that's all."

She turned and perched herself upon the table. "You haven't asked me to sit down," she commented brightly. "But, if you don't mind, I will."

"I--I beg your pardon!" the doctor exclaimed, coloring, and hastily setting out a chair. "I really was so interested in what you were saying that I forgot my manners."

"No," she said, shaking her head as she declined the proffered chair, "I'll sit here, so's I can look straight into your eyes. You go ahead and cut up poor Yorick, and I'll talk."

The doctor laughed again. "You are much more interesting," he returned, "than poor Bolton, dead or alive. In fact, he really was quite a bore. But you are like a sparkling mountain rill, even if you do give me a severe classification."

"Well," she replied, "then you are honestly more interested in life than in death, are you?"

"Why, most assuredly!" he said.

"So am I, much! Death is such a mistake; and I haven't a bit of use for it," she continued. "It's like making mistakes in music, or mathematics. Now when we make mistakes in those, we never stop to discuss them. We correct them. But, dear me! The world has nearly talked its poor old head off about the mistakes of sickness and death. It never seems to occur to the world that Jesus always associated sickness with sin. You know, the Rabbis of his day seem to have hit upon a great truth, although they didn't make it really practical. They maintained that a sick man could not be healed of his diseases until all his sins had been forgiven. And so they attempted to forgive sins and make men clean by their elaborate ceremonies. But they missed the mark, too. And nobody got to the root of the difficulty until Jesus came. He forgave sin by destroying it completely. And that cured the disease that was the manifestation of sin. Now I ask, why do you, nearly two thousand years after his time, still do as the old Rabbis did, and continue to treat the body--the effect--instead of the mental cause? But," looking down in meditation, "I suppose if you did that the people would cry, 'He hath a devil!' They thought I was a witch in Simití."

"H'm!" returned the doctor. "Then you do not believe that disease is caused by microbes, I take it?"

"Disease caused by microbes? Yes, so it is. And the microbe? It is a manifestation of the human mind again. And, as with typhoid fever, diphtheria, and other diseases, the human mind applies its own cherished, ignorant beliefs in certain methods, and then renders innocuous its own manifestations, microbes. The human mind makes its own diseases, and then in some cases removes the disease, but still by human, material methods. Its reliefs are only temporary. At last it yields itself to its false beliefs, and then goes out in what it calls death. It is all a mental process--all human thought and its various manifestations. Now why not get beyond microbes and reach the cause, even of them, the human mind itself? Jesus did. Paul did. Others have done so. Why do not you men of science do likewise?"

Doctor Morton himself took the chair which he had set out for the girl. "What you say," he replied slowly, "is not new to me. But I can only answer that the world is not ready yet for the great change which you suggest."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "What cant! What mesmerism you are laboring under! Was the world ready for Jesus?"

"No. He came too soon. Events show that."

"Well, then, would he be accepted to-day, if he had not come before?"

"I can not say. But--I think he would not."

"And I quite agree with you," she said firmly. "Now the world has doctored for more than four thousand years, despite the fact that health is not sold in bottle or pill form. Doctor, what does the history of all these centuries of drugging show you?"

He hesitated. Carmen waited a moment; then continued:

"Don't they demonstrate the absolute inability of medicines to cure disease?" she asked. "Any more than putting men in prison cures crime?" she added as an afterthought.

"They at least prove that medication has not permanently removed disease," he ventured, not wishing to go too far.

"Doctor," she said earnestly, "that man Jesus, who, according to you, came too soon, said: 'Without me ye can do nothing.' Well, didn't he come very, very close to the truth when he made that statement? He did not say that without drugs or material remedies we could do nothing, but that without the Christ-principle mankind would continue, as before, to miss the mark. He showed that disease and discord result from sin. Sin is lack of righteousness, lack of right-thinking about things. It is wrong belief, false thought. Sin is mental. Its effect, disease, is mental--a state of discordant consciousness. Can you with drugs change a state of mind?"

"Certainly," he replied quickly. "Whiskey and opium cause changes in one's state of mind."

"No," she answered. "But the human belief of power inherent in whiskey and opium, or of the human body's reaction to them, causes a change in the human thought-activity that is called consciousness. The state of human consciousness changes with the belief, but not the real state of mind. Can you not see that? And Doctor Bolton--"

"Bolton was not sick. He died of natural causes, old age, and general breakdown," was the doctor's refuge.

Carmen laughed and sprang down from the table. "What an obstinately obdurate lot you scientific men are!" she exclaimed. "Don't you know that you doctors are only a development of the old 'medicine-man'? Now in the first place, Mr. Bolton isn't dead; and, in the second, there are no natural causes of death. Old age? Why, that's gone out of fashion, long since."

"You deny senile changes--?"

"I deny every human error!" she interrupted.

"Then," with a note of banter in his voice, "I take it that you do not expect to die."

"I do not!" she replied emphatically. "I expect good, nothing but good, ever! Don't you know that physiologists themselves admit that the human body is composed of eighty-five per cent water and fifteen per cent ordinary salts? Can such a combination have intelligence and sensation? Do you still believe that life is dependent upon lungs, stomach, or liver? Why, the so-called 'unit cell' breathes, digests, and manifests life-functions, and yet it has no lungs, no mouth, no stomach, no organs. It is the human mind, assuming knowledge and power which it does not possess, that says the sense of life shall depend upon such organs in the one case and not in the other. And the human mind could be utterly refuted if men would only learn to use the Christ-principle. Jesus and Paul used it, and proved material laws to be only false beliefs."

"Well," he replied meditatively, "if you are correct, then the preachers are way off the track. And I have long since come to the conclusion that--Well," changing abruptly back to the previous topic, "so you refute the microbe theory, eh?"

"I said I did and did not," she laughed. "Listen: fear, worry, hatred, malice, murder, all of which are mental things in themselves, manifest to the human mind as microbes. These are the hurtful microbes, and they produce toxins, which poison the system. What is the cure? Antitoxins? No, indeed! Jesus gave the real and permanent cure. It is the Christ-principle. Now you can learn that principle, and how to apply it. But if you don't care to, why, then you must go on with your material microbes and poisons, and with your diseases and death, until you are ready to leave them and turn to that which is real. For all human-mind activity and manifestation, whether in microbes, death, or life, is mental, and is but the counterfeit of the real activity of divine mind, God.

"Do you know," she pursued earnestly, "I heard a lecture the other day in which it was said that life is a sort of fermentation in the body. Well, as regards human life, I guess that is so. For the human body is only a manifestation of the human mind; and the human mind surely is in a continuous state of ferment!"

She paused and laughed. "The lecturer," she continued, "said that the range of life was from ultra-microbe to man, and that Shakespeare began as a single cell. Think of it! The mundane concept of Shakespeare's body may have unfolded from a cell-concept; but Shakespeare was a manifestation of mind! And that mind was an interpretation, though very imperfect, of the mind that is God. Why can't you materialists raise your eyes above the dust? Why, you would choke the very avenues of the spirit with mud!"

"H'm! Well, your education seems to be--"

"Yes," she interrupted, "my education is beyond the vagaries that are so generally taught in the name of knowledge. Intellectual education is a farce. It does nothing for mankind, except to give them a false culture. Were the so-called great men of the past really educated? Here is an extract which I copied this afternoon from Hawthorne." She opened her note book and read:

"'Ah, but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfected vigor of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers, and that the next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal them one by one away.'

"Now," she asked, "was that man really educated? In current theology, yes. But that theology could not solve his least earthly problem, nor meet his slightest need! Oh, what inexpressibly sad lives so many of your greatest men have lived! Your Hawthorne, your Longfellow, they yearned for the rest which they were taught was to follow death. They were the victims of false theology. They were mesmerized. If they believed in the Christ--and they thought they did--why, then, did they not rise up and do as he bade them do, put death out? He taught no such resignation to human beliefs as they practiced! He showed men how to overcome the world. Why do we not try to overcome it? Has the time not come? Is the world not sufficiently weary of dying?"

He looked at her intently for some moments. She seemed, as she stood there before him, like a thing of gossamer and sunshine that had drifted into his laboratory, despite the closed door.

"Say," he suddenly exclaimed, as a new thought struck him, "I'd like to have you talk with my friend, Reverend Patterson Moore! Pat and I have barked at each other for many years now, and I'm getting tired. I'd like to shift him to a younger and more vigorous opponent. I believe you've been providentially sent to relieve me."

"Well," she acquiesced. "You can tell Professor Hitt, and--"

"Hitt, eh? You know him?"

"Yes, indeed! He comes often to our house. He is very much interested in these things that you and I have been talking about to-day. We have regular meetings, with Father Waite, and Mr. Haynerd, and--"

"Well, no wonder you can argue! You've had practice, it seems. But--suppose I have Hitt bring me to one of your meetings, eh?"

"Do!" cried the girl. "And bring your Reverend Pat."

The genial doctor laughed long and incontinently. "I imagine Reverend Pat wouldn't thank you for referring to him that way," he said. "He is a very high Anglican, and his dignity is marvelous--to say nothing of his self-esteem. Well, we'll see, we'll see. But, don't go yet! We're just getting acquainted."

"I must," replied the girl. "I didn't really mean to come in here, you know. But I guess I was led, don't you?"

And when the door had closed upon her, the doctor sat silently beside the pulseless brain of his deceased comrade and pondered long.

* * * * *

When Carmen entered the house, late that afternoon, she found the Beaubien in conversation with Professor Williams, of the University School of Music. That gentleman had learned through Hitt of the girl's unusual voice, and had dropped in on his way home to ask that he might hear and test it. With only a smile for reply, Carmen tossed her books and hat upon the sofa and went directly to the piano, where she launched into the weird Indian lament which had produced such an astounding effect upon her chance visitors at the Elwin school that day long gone, and which had been running in her thought and seeking expression ever since her conversation with Doctor Morton a short while before.

For a full half hour she sang, lost in the harmony that poured from her soul. Father Waite entered, and quietly took a seat. She did not see him. Song after song, most of them the characteristic soft melodies of her people, and many her own simple improvisations, issued from the absorbed girl's lips. The Beaubien rose and stole softly from the room. Father Waite sat with his head resting on his hand, striving to interpret the message which welled from the depths of his own being, where hidden, unused chords were vibrating in unison with those of this young girl.

Then, abruptly, the singing stopped, and Carmen turned and faced her auditors. "There," she said, with a happy sigh, "that just had to come out!"

Professor Williams rose and took her hand. "Who, may I ask, was your teacher?" he said, in a voice husky with emotion.

Carmen smiled up at him. "No human teacher," she said gently.

A look of astonishment came into the man's face. He turned to Father Waite inquiringly. The latter nodded his confirmation of the girl's words.

"Well!" exclaimed the professor. "I wonder if you realize what you have got, Miss Carmen?"

"Yes," she replied simply. "It's a beautiful gift, isn't it?"

"But--I had thought of asking you to let me train you--but--I--I dare not undertake to handle such a voice as yours. May I--may I send Maitre Rossanni to you, the great Italian? Will you sing for him?"

"Oh, yes," returned the girl; "I'll sing for anybody. The gift isn't mine, you know. It is for all. I'm only the channel."

When the professor had taken his reluctant departure, the Beaubien returned and handed Carmen a letter. With a cry of joy the girl seized it and tore it open. It was from Colombia, the second one that her beloved Rosendo had succeeded in getting down the river to the distant coast. It had been written three months prior, and it bore many stains and evidences of the vicissitudes through which it had emerged. Yes, Rosendo and his family were well, though still at Maria Rosa, far up the Boque, with Don Nicolás. The war raged below them, but they were safe.

"And not a word from Padre Josè, or about him," murmured the girl, sinking into a chair and clasping the soiled letter to her breast.

Father Waite thought of the little newsboy of Cartagena, and his possible share in the cause of Josè's silence. But he made no comment.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter 4

Carmen's first serious test of her knowledge of English composition was made early in the semester, in an essay on town life in Colombia; and so meritorious did her instructor consider it that he advised her to send it to a prominent literary magazine. The result was that the essay was accepted, and a request made for further contributions.

The girl bubbled with new-found happiness. Then she wrote another, and still another article on the life and customs of her people. Both were given publication; and with the money which she received for them she bought a silk dress for Jude, much to that adoring woman's surprise and vehement protest. Carmen might have saved the money toward a piano--but, no; that would have been thinking of herself, and was inadmissible. Nor did the Beaubien offer any objection. "Indeed," commented that fond shepherd of this lone lamb, "she would have poured the money out into somebody's open hand anyway, and it might as well be Jude's."

Then she choked back the tears as she added: "The girl comes home every night with an empty purse, no matter how full it may have been in the morning. What does she do with the money? Follow her some day and see."

Carmen's slight success in the field of letters still further aroused Haynerd's interest. The peacefully somnolent Social Era, he thought, might awaken to new things under the stimulus of such fresh writing as hers. Perhaps life did hold something of real value after all. Would she furnish him with a column or two on the peculiar social aspect of the metropolis?

She would, and did. And the result was that the staid conservative sheet was given a smart shaking; and several prominent society people sat up and blinked. The article was in no way malicious. It was not even condemnatory. It but threw a clear light from a somewhat unusual angle upon certain phases of New York's social life, and uncovered a few of the more subtly hidden springs of its peculiar activity.

Among those who read her essay in the Social Era was J. Wilton Ames. He first lay back in his chair and laughed uproariously. And then, when his agents discovered for him the identity of the author, he glowered. The Beaubien was still standing between him and this budding genius. And though he might, and would, ultimately ruin the Beaubien financially, yet this girl, despite her social ostracism, bade fair to earn with her facile pen enough to maintain them both in luxury. So he bent anew to his vengeful schemes, for he would make them come to him. As Trustee, he would learn what courses the girl was pursuing in the University--for he had long known that she was in attendance there. Then he would learn who her associates were; what suggestions and advice her instructors gave her; and her plans for the future. And he would trace her sources of income and apply pressure at the most vital point. He had never in his life been successfully balked. Much less by a woman.

Then Haynerd came to congratulate Carmen again, and to request that she attend with him the formal opening of the new Ames mansion, the great Fifth Avenue palace, for he wanted her vivid, first-hand impressions for his account of the brilliant affair in the Social Era. As reporters, he explained, they would of necessity remain in seclusion, and the girl might disguise to such an extent as to prevent recognition, if she chose. It was business for him, and an opportunity for rich experience for her. And the fearless girl went, because it would help Haynerd, though the Beaubien inwardly trembled.

Invitations to the number of three hundred had been issued to the élite of New York, announcing the formal opening of the newly finished, magnificent Ames dwelling. These invitations were wrought in enamel on cards of pure gold. Each had cost thirty dollars. The mansion itself, twelve millions. A month prior to the opening, the newspapers had printed carefully-worded announcements of the return of Mrs. J. Wilton Ames and her daughter, after a protracted stay at various foreign baths and rest-cures in the hope of restoring the former's impaired health. But Mrs. Ames now felt that she could no longer deprive society of her needed activities, and so had returned to conduct it through what promised to be a season of unusual brilliancy. The papers did not, however, state that J. Wilton had himself recalled her, after quietly destroying his bill of divorce, because he recognized the necessity of maintaining the social side of his complicated existence on a par with his vast business affairs.

As Carmen and Haynerd approached the huge, white marble structure, cupolaed, gabled, buttressed, and pinnacled, an overwhelming sense of what it stood for suddenly came upon the girl, and she saw revealed in a flash that side of its owner's life which for so many months she had been pondering. The great shadows that seemed to issue from the massive exterior of the building swept out and engulfed her; and she turned and clasped Haynerd's arm with the feeling that she would suffocate were she to remain longer in them.

"Perk up, little one," said Haynerd, taking her hand. "We'll go round to the rear entrance, and I will present my business card there. Ames's secretary telephoned me instructions, and I said I was going to bring a lady reporter with me."

Carmen caught her breath as she passed through the tall, exquisitely wrought iron gateway and along the marble walk which led to the rear. Up the winding steps to the front entrance, where swung the marvelous bronze doors which had stirred the imaginations of two continents, streamed the favored of the fashionable world. Among them Carmen saw many whom she recognized. The buffoon, Larry Beers, was there, swinging jauntily along with the bejeweled wife of Samson, the multimillionaire packer. Kane and his wife, and Weston followed. Outside the gates there was incessant chugging of automobiles, mingled with the shouted orders of the three policemen detailed to direct the traffic. A pinched, ragged urchin and his tattered little sister crept up and peered wildly through the iron pickets of the fence; but a sharp rap from a policeman's club sent them scattering. Carmen stood for a moment in the shadows and watched the swarm mount the marble steps and enter through those wonderful doors. There were congressmen and senators, magnates and jurists, distillers and preachers. Each one owed his tithe of allegiance to Ames. Some were chained to him hard and fast, nor would break their bonds this side of the grave. Some he owned outright. There were those who grew white under his most casual glance. There were others who knew that his calloused hand was closing about them, and that when it opened again they would fall to the ground, dry as dust. Others, like moths, not yet singed, were hovering ever closer to the bright, cruel flame. Reverend Darius Borwell, bowing and smiling, alighted from his parochial car and tripped blithely up the glistening marble steps. Each and all, wrapping the skeleton of grief, greed, shame, or fear beneath swart broadcloth and shimmering silk, floated up those ghostly steps as if drawn by a tremendous magnet incarnate in the person of J. Wilton Ames.

Carmen shuddered and turned away. Did the pale wraith of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sigh in the wake of that gilded assembly? Did the moans of poor, grief-stricken Mrs. Gannette, sitting in her poverty and sorrow, die into silence against those bronze doors? Was he, the being who dwelt in that marble palace, the hydra-headed embodiment of the carnal, Scriptural, age-old power that opposes God? And could he stand forever?

Two detectives met them at the rear door. How many others there were scattered through the house itself, Haynerd could only guess. But he passed inspection and was admitted with the girl. A butler took immediate charge of them, and led them quickly through a short passage and to an elevator, by which they mounted to another floor, where, opening a paneled oak door, the dignified functionary preceded them into a small reception hall, with lavatories at either end. Here he bade them remove their wraps and await his return.

"Well," commented Haynerd, with a light, nervous laugh, "we've crossed the Rubicon! Now don't miss a thing!"

A moment later the butler returned with a sharp-eyed young woman, Mrs. Ames's social secretary.

"You will be very careful in your report," the latter began at once in a business-like manner. "And you will submit the same to me for approval before it is published in your magazine. Mr. Ames deems that imperative, since your recent publication of an essay on modern society in this city. I have a list here of the guests, their business and social standing, and other data. You will run that in full. You will say that this is the most brilliant assemblage ever gathered under one roof in New York. The wealth represented here to-night will total not less than three billion dollars. The jewels alone displayed will foot up not less than twenty millions. Now, let me see," again consulting her notes.

Haynerd stole a covert glance at Carmen and winked.

"The chef," the secretary resumed, "was brought over from Paris by Mrs. Ames on her recent return. His name, Pierre Lotard, descendant of the famous chef of the Emperor Napoleon First. He considers that his menu to-night surpasses anything he ever before achieved."

"May I ask," interrupted Haynerd, "the probable cost of the supper?"

"Yes, perhaps you had better mention that item. It will be in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars a plate. House and table decorations, about eight thousand dollars. Here is a copy of the menu. Run it in full. The menu cards were hand-illuminated by Parisian artists, and each bears a sketch illustrative or suggestive of the guest to whom it is given."

"Cost?" queried Haynerd off-handedly.

"Three thousand, if I correctly recall it," was the nonchalant reply. "As to the viands, you will mention that they have been gathered from every part of the world. Now come with me, and I will give you a hasty sketch of the house, while the guests are assembling in the grand salon. Then you will remain in the balcony, where you will make what notes you wish on the dress displayed. Refreshments will be served to you later in this waiting room. I need not remind you that you are not expected to mingle with the guests, nor to address any one. Keep to the balcony, and quite out of view."

Opening a door opposite the one through which she had entered, the young woman led her charges directly out upon the great marble balcony overlooking the grand salon below. A rush of brilliant light engulfed them, and a potpourri of chatter and laughter, mingled with soft music from a distant organ, and the less distinct notes of the orchestra in the still more distant ballroom, rose about them in confused babel, as they tiptoed to the exquisitely carved marble railing and peered down upon the gorgeous pageant. The ceiling rose far above them, delicately tinted like a soft Italian sky. The lofty walls dropped, like gold-gray veils, to the richly carved paneled wainscoting beneath, which had once lined the halls of a mediaeval castle on the Rhine. The great windows were hidden behind rare Venetian lace curtains, over which fell hangings of brocade, repeating the soft tints of the wall and the brocade-covered chairs and divans ranged close about the sides of the splendid room. On the floor lay a massive, priceless Persian carpet, dating from the fifteenth century.

Haynerd drew a long breath, and whistled softly. From the end of the salon he could mark the short flight of steps which led to the mezzanine, with its walls heavily tapestried, and broken by rich oak doors opening into lavatories and lounging rooms, itself widening at the far end into the grand billiard and smoking parlors, done off in Circassian walnut, with tables and furniture to harmonize. From the mezzanine he saw the grand stairway falling away in great, sweeping curves, all in blended marble from the world's greatest quarries, and delicately chased and carved into classic designs. Two tapestries, centuries old, hung from the walls on either side. Far above, the oak ceiling, for which the Schwarzwald had been ranged, was overlaid with pure gold leaf. The whole was suffused with the glow of myriad hidden and inverted lights, reflected in a thousand angles from burnished gold and marble and rarest gems.

Haynerd turned to the waiting secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to the inept remark, "Swell--by George!"

The secretary, without replying, motioned them to follow. Passing noiselessly around the balcony to the opposite side, she indicated a door below, leading off to the right from the grand salon.

"That room beyond," she said, "is the petit salon. The decorative effects are by French artists. Beyond that is the morning room. It is in panels from French chateaux, covered with Gobelin tapestry. Now from here you can see a bit of the music room. The grand organ cost, installed, about two hundred thousand dollars. It is electrically controlled, with its pipes running all around the room, so as to give the effect of music coming from every corner."

Haynerd again softly whistled.

"There are three art galleries beyond, two for paintings, and one for sculpture. Mr. Ames has without doubt the finest art collection in America. It includes several Titians, Veroneses, da Vincis, Turners, three Rubens, and two Raphaels. By the way, it may interest you to know that his negotiations for the Murillo Madonna were completed to-day, and the picture will be sent to him immediately."

"Might I ask what he paid for it?" Haynerd inquired casually.

"You may say that he paid something over three hundred thousand dollars for it," she replied, in a quite matter of fact tone. "Now," she continued, "you will go back to your first position, near the door of the waiting room, and remain there until I return. I may have an opportunity later to show you the library. It is very unique. Great carved stone fireplace, taken from a Scotch castle. Hundreds of rare volumes and first editions. Now, if any one approaches, you can step behind the screen and remain out of view. You have chairs and a table there for your writing. Do not in any event leave this balcony."

With this final injunction she turned and disappeared into the little waiting room from which they had emerged.

For some moments Carmen and Haynerd stood looking alternately at each other and about them at their magnificent environment. Both had seen much of the gilded life, and the girl had dwelt some months in its alien atmosphere. But neither had ever witnessed such a stupendous display of material wealth as was here unfolded before their astonished gaze. At the head of the grand stairway stood the Ames trio, to receive their resplendent guests. The women were magnificently gowned. But Ames's massive form in its simple black and chaste linen was the cynosure of all eyes. Even Haynerd could not suppress a note of admiration as he gazed at the splendid figure.

"And yet," he murmured, "a victim, like the rest, of the great delusion."

Carmen laid down the opera glasses through which she had been studying the man. "He is an expression," she said, "of the American ideal--the ideal of practical material life. It is toward his plane of life that this country's youth are struggling, at, oh, what a cost! Think, think, what his immense, misused revenue could do, if unselfishly used! Why, the cost of this single night's show would put two hundred men like Father Waite through a four-year course in the University, and train them to do life's work! And what, what will Mr. Ames get out of it?"

"Oh, further opportunities to increase his pile, I suppose," returned Haynerd, shrugging his shoulders.

"But, will he get real happiness? Peace? Joy? And does he need further opportunities to accumulate money? Does he not rather need some one to show him the meaning of life, how to really live?"

"He does, indeed! And it may be your mission, Carmen, to do just that. But if you don't, then I sincerely hope the man may die before he discovers that all that he has achieved, his wealth, his prestige, his power, have not been worth striving for!"

"He hasn't the slightest idea of the meaning of life," she murmured, looking down upon the glittering throng. "Nor have any of them."

"No," he replied. "They put me in mind of Carlyle's famous remark, as he stood looking out across the London Strand: 'There are in this city some four million people, mostly fools.' How mean, narrow and hard their lives are! These are the high priests of vested privilege, of mediaevalism, of old institutions whose perpetual maintenance, even in a generation that has progressed far beyond them, is a fungus blight upon us. Ah, there's little Willie Van Wot, all dolled out! He's glorifying his Creator now by devoting his foolish little existence to coaching trips along the New England shore. He reminds me of the Fleet street poet who wrote a century ago of the similar occupation of a young dandy of that day--

What can little T. O. do? Why, drive a Phaeton and Two!!! Can little T. O. do no more? Yes, drive a Phaeton and Four!!!!

"He's an interesting outgrowth of our unique social system, eh?"

"We must follow Emerson and treat them all as we do pictures, look at them in the best light," murmured Carmen.

"Aye, hang them in the best light!" returned Haynerd. "But make sure they're well hung! There goes the pseudo-princess, member of the royal house of England. She carries the royal taint, too. I tell you, under the splash and glitter you can see the feet of clay, eh?"

"Yes," smiled Carmen, "resting upon the high heel."

"Huh!" muttered Haynerd, with a gesture of disgust. "The women of fashion seem to feel that the Creator didn't do a good job when He designed the feminine sex--that He should have put a hump where the heel is, so's to slant the foot and make comfortable walking impossible, as well as to insure a plentiful crop of foot-troubles and deformities. The Chinese women used to manifest a similarly insane thought. Good heavens! High heel, low brain! The human mind is a cave of black ignorance!"

Carmen did not reply, but bent her attention again to the throng below.

"Look there," said Haynerd, indicating a stout, full-toiletted woman, resplendent with diamonds. "That's our eminent French guest, Madam Carot. She severed herself from her tiresome consort last year by means of a bichloride tablet deftly immersed in his coffee, and then, leaving a sigh of regret hovering over his unhandsome remains, hastened to our friendly shores, to grace the beau monde with her gowns and jewels."

Carmen turned to him with a remonstrance of incredulity.

"Fact," he stubbornly insisted. "The Social Era got the whole spicy story. And there beside her is our indispensable Mrs. T. Oliver Pennymon. See, she's drifted up to young Watson! Coquetting for a husband still, the old buzzard!"

"Mr. Haynerd!"

"Well, it's fact, anyway," persisted the society monitor. "And there beyond her is fat little Mrs. Stuffenheimer, with her two unlovely, red-faced daughters. Ah, the despairing mamma is still vainly angling for mates for her two chubby Venuses! If they're not married off properly and into good social positions soon, it's mamma for the scrap heap! By George! it's positively tragic to see these anxious mothers at Newport and Atlantic City and other fashionable places, rushing madly hither and yon with their marriageable daughters, dragging them from one function to another in the wild hope that they may ultimately land a man. Worry and pain dig deep furrows into poor mamma's face if she sees her daughters fading into the has-been class. It requires heroism, I say, to travel in society! But I guess you know, eh? Well," taking up his notebook, "we must get busy now. By the way, how's your shorthand progressing?"

"Oh, splendidly," replied the girl, her eyes still upon the massive figure of Ames. Then, recovering from her abstraction, "I can write as fast in it now as in longhand."

"Good!" said Haynerd. "You'll need it later."

For more than an hour the two sat in the seclusion of the splendid balcony, looking down upon the scene of magnificence below. Through the mind of the young girl ran a ceaseless paean of thanksgiving for her timely deliverance from the trammels which she so well knew enshackled these glittering birds of paradise. With it mingled a great, consuming desire, a soul-longing to pour into the vacuity of high society the leaven of her own pure thought. In particular did her boundless love now go out to that gigantic figure whose ideals of life this sumptuous display of material wealth and power expressed. Why was he doing this? What ulterior motive had he? Was it only a vainglorious exhibition of his own human prowess? Was it an announcement, magnificent beyond compare, that he, J. Wilton Ames, had attained the supreme heights of gratified world ambition? That the world at last lay at his feet? And that over it brooded the giant's lament that there remained nothing more to conquer? But, if so, the girl at least knew that the man's herculean efforts to subdue the material world were as nothing. The real conquest lay still before him, the conquest of self. And when that were faced and achieved, well she knew that no such garish display as this would announce the victory to a breathless world.

The bustling little social secretary again appeared, and briefly announced the production of an opera in the auditorium, to which she had come to conduct them. Passing through the little waiting room and to the elevator, they quickly mounted to the unoccupied gallery of the theater above. The parquet, which would seat nearly a thousand spectators, was rapidly filling with an eager, curious throng. The Ames trio and some of the more distinguished guests were already occupying the gorgeously decorated boxes at the sides. An orchestra of fifty pieces was visible in the hollow below the stage. Caroni, the famous grand opera leader, stood ready to conduct. The opera itself was the much discussed music drama, Salome.

"Now," commented Haynerd to his fair, wondering companion, who was lost in contemplation of the magnificent mural decorations of the little theater, "we will see something rare, for this opera has been called the most artistic piece of indecency known to the stage. Good heavens! Ames has got Marie Deschamps for the title rôle. She'll cost him not less than five thousand dollars for this one night. And--see here," drawing Carmen's attention to the bill, "Marcou and Corvalle besides! The man must be made of money! These stars get three thousand dollars a night during the regular season."

Every phase of sophistication was manifested in that glittering audience when the curtain rose and the sensational theme was introduced. But to none came thoughts like those which clamored for admittance at the portals of Carmen's mentality. In the bold challenge of the insanely sensual portrayal of a carnal mind the girl saw the age-old defiance of the spirit by the flesh. In the rolls of the wondrous music, in its shrieks, its pleadings, and its dying echoes, she heard voiced again the soul-lament of a weary world searching vainly in the mazes of human thought for truth. As the wonderful Deschamps danced weirdly before her in the ghastly light and fell gloating over her gory trophy, Carmen saw but the frantic struggles of a diseased soul, portrayed as the skilled surgeon lays bare the malignant growth that is eating the quivering tissues of a human frame. The immodesty of dress, the sensual suggestiveness of the dance, the brutal flouting of every element of refinement and delicacy, blazoned in frenzied tone and movement the bloody orgy and dance of death which goes on incessantly upon the stage of human life, and ends in the mad whirl and confusion and insane gibbering over the lifeless trophies for which mankind sell their very souls.

"About the limit of tolerance, eh?" commented Haynerd, when the final curtain dropped. "Yes, even to a vitiated taste. The passionate thirst for the sensational has led to this sickening display of salacity--"

"Splendid, wasn't it?" came in tones of admiration from the social secretary, who had returned to conduct her charges back to the balcony before the guests emerged from the theater. "You will run the program in full, and comment at some length on the expense attached," she went on. "You have just witnessed the private production of a full opera, unabridged, and with the regular operatic cast. Supper will follow in a half hour. Meantime, you will remain in the balcony where you were before."

Returning to their former position, Carmen sank into a chair at the little table behind the screen, and strove to orient her thought. Haynerd sat down beside her to arrange his voluminous notes. Presently footsteps were heard, and the sound of voices. Haynerd glanced through the hinge of the screen. "Ha!" he whispered, "here comes Ames and--who's with him? Ah, Representative Wales. Showing him about, I suppose."

Carmen gazed at the approaching men with fascinated eyes, although she saw but one, the towering magician who had reared this fairy palace. She saw Ames lead his companion to the door of the little waiting room at their right, and heard the congressman protest against entering.

"But we can talk undisturbed in here," urged Ames, his hand on the door.

"Better remain out here on the balcony," replied the congressman nervously, as he moved toward the railing.

Ames laughed and shrugged his enormous shoulders. He understood the man's repugnance fully. But he humored him.

"You know, Wales," he said easily, going to the railing and peering over at the brilliant assemblage below, "if I could get the heathen Chinee to add an extra half-inch to his shirt length, I'd make a hundred millions. And then, perhaps, I wouldn't need to struggle with your Ways and Means Committee as I do. By the way, the cotton schedule will be reported out unchanged, I presume." He turned and looked quizzically at his companion as he said this.

Wales trembled slightly when he replied to the question he had been awaiting. "I think not, Mr. Ames."

The giant's face clouded. "Parsons will vote for it," he said suggestively. "What will you do?"

The congressman hesitated. "I--the party, Mr. Ames, is committed to the high tariff principle. We can not let in a flood of foreign cotton--"

"Then you want the fight between the farmers and spinners to continue, eh?" interposed Ames cynically. "You don't seem to realize that in the end both will get more money than they are getting now, and that it will come from the consumer, who will pay vastly higher for his finished products, in addition to the tariff. Do you get me?"

"It is a party principle, Mr. Ames," returned the congressman tenaciously.

"Look here, Wales," said Ames, turning savagely upon his companion. "The cotton farmers are organizing. They have got to be stopped. Their coöperative associations must be smashed. The tariff schedule which you have before your Committee will do it. And you are going to pass it."

"Mr. Ames," replied the congressman, "I--I am opposed to the constant manipulation of cotton by you rich men. I--"

"There," interrupted Ames, "never mind explaining your conscientious scruples. What I want to know is, do you intend to cast your vote for the unaltered schedule?"

"N--no, Mr. Ames, I can't--"

"H'm," murmured Ames. Then, with easy nonchalance, turning to an apparently irrelevant topic as he gazed over the railing, "I heard just before coming from my office this evening that the doors of the Mercantile Trust would not open to-morrow. Too bad! A lot of my personal friends are heavily involved. Bank's been shaky for some time. Ames and Company will take over their tangible assets; I believe you were interested, were you not?" He glanced at the trembling man out of the corners of his eyes.

Wales turned ashen. His hands shook as he grasped the railing before him and tried to steady himself.

"Hits you pretty hard, eh?" coolly queried Ames.

"It--it--yes--very hard," murmured the dazed man. "Are you--positive?"

"Quite. But step into the waiting room and 'phone the newspapers. They will corroborate my statements."

Representative Wales was serving his first term in Congress. His election had been a matter of surprise to everybody, himself included, excepting Ames. Wales knew not that his detailed personal history had been for many months carefully filed in the vaults of the Ames tower. Nor did he ever suspect that his candidacy and election had been matters of most careful thought on the part of the great financier and his political associates. But when he, a stranger to congressional halls, was made a member of the Ways and Means Committee, his astonishment overleaped all bounds. Then Ames had smiled his own gratification, and arranged that the new member should attend the formal opening of the great Ames palace later in the year. Meantime, the financier and the new congressman had met on several occasions, and the latter had felt no little pride in the attention which the great man had shown him.

And so the path to fame had unrolled steadily before the guileless Wales until this night, when the first suspicions of his thraldom had penetrated and darkened his thought. Then, like a crash from a clear sky, had come the announcement of the Mercantile Trust failure. And as he stood there now, clutching the marble railing, his thought busy with the woman and the two fair children who would be rendered penniless by this blow, the fell presence of the monster Ames seemed to bend over him as the epitome of ruthless, brutal, inhuman cunning.

"How much are you likely to lose by this failure?" the giant asked.

Wales collected his scattered senses. "Not less than fifty thousand dollars," he replied in a husky voice.

"H'm!" commented Ames. "Too bad! too bad! Well, let's go below. Ha! what's this?" stooping and apparently taking up an object that had been lying on the floor back of the congressman. "Well! well! your bank book, Wales. Must have slipped from your pocket."

Wales took the book in a dazed, mechanical way. "Why--I have no--this is not mine," he murmured, gazing alternately at the pass book and at Ames.

"Your name's on it, at least," commented Ames laconically. "And the book's been issued by our bank, Ames and Company. Guess you've forgotten opening an account there, let me see, yes, a week ago." He took the book and opened it. "Ah, yes, I recall the incident now. There's your deposit, made last Friday."

Wales choked. What did it mean? The book, made out in his name on Ames and Company, showed a deposit to his credit of fifty thousand dollars!

Ames slipped his arm through the confused congressman's, and started with him down the balcony. "You see," he said, as they moved away, "the Mercantile failure will not hit you as hard as you thought. Now, about that cotton schedule, when you cast your vote for it, be sure that--" The voice died away as the men disappeared in the distance, leaving Carmen and Haynerd staring blankly at each other.

"Well!" ejaculated Haynerd at length. "What now?"

"We must save them both," said Carmen quietly.

"I could make my everlasting fortune out of this!" exclaimed Haynerd excitedly.

"And lose your soul," replied the girl. "But I will see Mr. Ames, and tell him that we overheard his conversation. He will save us all."

Haynerd then smiled, but it was a hard smile, coming from one who knew the world. "Listen, my dear girl," he said, "we will keep quiet, you and I. To mention this would be only to court disaster at the hands of one who would strangle us at the slightest intimation of our knowledge. Can you not see the consequences to us?"

"I can see but the right," returned Carmen determinedly. "And the right shall prevail!"

"But, my dear girl," cried Haynerd, now thoroughly alarmed both for himself and her, "he would ruin us! This is no affair of ours. We had no intention of hearing; and so let it be as if we had not heard."

"And let the lie of evil prevail? No, Mr. Haynerd, I could not, if I would. Mr. Ames is being used by evil; and it is making him a channel to ruin Mr. Wales. Shall I stand idly by and permit it? No!"

She rose, with a look of fixed resolution on her face. Haynerd sprang to his feet and laid a detaining hand upon her arm. As he did so, the screen was quickly drawn aside, and Kathleen Ames and two of her young companions bent their curious gaze in upon them. Absorbed in their earnest conversation, Carmen and Haynerd had not heard the approach of the young ladies, who were on a tour of inspection of the house before supper.

"Reporters for the Social Era, Miss Ames," explained Haynerd, hastily answering the unspoken question, while he made a courteous bow.

But Kathleen had not heard him. "What--you!" she cried, instantly recognizing Carmen, and drawing back. "How dared you! Oh!"

"What is it, dear?" asked one of the young ladies, as her eyes roved over Carmen's tense, motionless figure.

"You--creature!" cried Kathleen, spurting her venom at Carmen, while her eyes snapped angrily and her hands twitched. "When the front door is closed against you, you sneak in through the back door! Leave this house, instantly, or I shall have you thrown into the street!"

"Why, Kathleen dear!" exclaimed one of her companions. "She is only a reporter!"

"She is a low, negro wench!" cried Kathleen maliciously. "She comes from a brothel! She foisted herself upon society, and was discovered and kicked out! Her father is a dirty negro priest, and her mother a low--"

Haynerd rushed to the maddened girl and clapped his hand over her mouth. "Hush, for God's sake, Miss Ames!" Then, to her companions, "Take her away!" he pleaded. "And we will leave at once!"

But a house detective, attracted by the loud conversation, had come up and interposed. At his signal another one approached. "Bring Mr. Ames," he quietly commanded. "I can not put them out if they have his permission to remain," he explained to the angry Kathleen.

In a few moments, during which the little group stood tense and quiet, Ames himself appeared.

"Well?" he demanded. "Ah!" as his eyes lighted upon Carmen. "My little girl! And--so this is your assistant?" turning inquiringly to Haynerd. "By George! Her article in last week's Social Era was a corker. But," staring from Kathleen to the others, "what's the row?"

"I want that creature put out of the house!" demanded Kathleen, trembling with rage and pointing to Carmen.

"Tut, tut," returned Ames easily. "She's on business, and has my permission to remain. But, by George! that's a good joke," winking at Haynerd and breaking into a loud laugh. "You put one over on us there, old man!" he said.

"Father!" Scalding tears of anger and humiliation were streaming down Kathleen's face. "If she remains, I shall go--I shall leave the house--I will not stay under the same roof with the lewd creature!"

"Very well, then, run along," said Ames, taking the humiliated Kathleen by the shoulders and turning her about. "I will settle this without your assistance." Then he motioned to the house detectives to depart, and turned to Haynerd and Carmen. "Come in here," he said, leading the way to the little waiting room, and opening the door.

"Lord! but you belong down stairs with the rest," he ejaculated as he faced Carmen, standing before him pale but unafraid. "There isn't one down there who is in your class!" he exclaimed, placing his hands upon her shoulders and looking down into her beautiful face. "And," he continued with sudden determination, "I am going to take you down, and you will sit at the table with me, as my special guest!"

A sudden fear gripped Haynerd, and he started to interpose. But Carmen spoke first.

"Very well, Mr. Ames," she said quietly. "Take me down. I have a question to ask Mr. Wales when we are at the table."

An expression of surprise and inquiry came into Ames's face. "Mr. Wales?" he said wonderingly. "You mean Congressman--"

Then he stopped abruptly, and looked searchingly at Carmen and her companion. Haynerd paled. Carmen stood unflinching. Ames's expression of surprise gave place to one dark and menacing.

"You were behind that screen when Congressman Wales and I--"

"Yes," returned Carmen calmly. "I overheard all you said. I saw you bribe him."

Ames stood like a huge, black cloud, glowering down upon the slender girl. She looked up at him and smiled.

"You are going to tell him that the fifty thousand dollars are just a loan, and that he may vote as he chooses, aren't you?" she said. "You will not ruin his life, and the lives of his wife and babies, will you? You would never be happy, you know, if you did." Her voice was as quiet as the morning breeze.

"So!" the giant sneered. "You come into my house to play spy, eh? And if I had not caught you when I did you would have written another interesting article for the Social Era, wouldn't you? By God! I'll break you, Haynerd, and your infernal sheet into a million pieces if you dare print any such rot as this! And as for you, young lady--"

"You can do nothing to me, Mr. Ames; and you don't really want to," said Carmen quickly. "My reputation, you know--that is, the one which you people have given me--is just as black as it could be, isn't it? So that is safe." She laughed lightly.

Then she became very serious again. "It doesn't really make any difference to you, Mr. Ames," she said, "whether the cotton schedule is passed or not. You still have your millions--oh, so much more than you will ever know what to do with! But Mr. Wales, he has his wife and his babies and his good reputation--would you rob him of those priceless treasures, just to make a few dollars more for yourself?--dollars that you can't spend, and that you won't let others have?"

During the girl's quiet talk Ames was regaining his self-control. When she concluded he turned to Haynerd. "Miss Carmen can step out into the balcony. You and I will arrange this matter together," he said.

Carmen moved toward the door.

"Now," said Ames significantly, and in a low voice, "what's your price?"

Instantly the girl turned back and threw herself between the two men. "He is not for sale!" she cried, her eyes flashing as she confronted Ames.

"Then, by God!" shouted Ames, who had lost himself completely, "I will crush him like a dirty spider! And you, I'll drag you through the gutters and make your name a synonym of all that is vile in womanhood!"

Carmen stepped quietly to the elevator and pressed the signal button.

"You shall not leave this house!" cried the enraged Ames, starting toward her. "Or you'll go under arrest!"

The girl drew herself up with splendid dignity, and faced him fearlessly. "We shall leave your house, and now, Mr. Ames!" she said. "You and that for which you stand can not touch us! The carnal mind is back of you! Omnipotent God is with us!"

She moved away from him, then turned and stood for a moment, flashing, sparkling, radiant with a power which he could not comprehend. "You know not what you do. You are blinded and deceived by human lust and greed. But the god you so ignorantly worship now will some day totter and fall upon you. Then you will awake, and you will see your present life as a horrid dream."

The elevator appeared. Carmen and the dazed Haynerd stepped quickly into it and descended without opposition to the lower floor. A few moments later they were again in the street and hurrying to the nearest car line.

"Girlie," said Haynerd, mopping the perspiration from his brow, "we're in for it now--and I shall be crushed! But you--I think your God will save you."

Carmen took his hand. "His arm is not shortened," she murmured, "that He can not save us both."

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