statement, but out of the confusion in her mind there came an impression that perhaps the situation was better for her than she had thought.

"You say that you still love the Stewart lady even though you will not marry her," she said slowly, as if trying to put his words into her own language "Does that mean that you do not love me?”

"Of course!" he admitted promptly. "We are friends

ing in each other's lives . . . what could be happier or sweeter?"

The girl clasped her hands about his neck, and looked up into his face. The great brown eyes were wet with unshed tears, the lips quivered, and the voice was low.

"Oh, Richard!" she cried impulsively; "don't you see how different everything is now from what it used to be? Until these last weeks I had not loved any one but myself, but now, . . oh, Richard! While you were so weak and I held your head in my lap, I could close my eyes and think my dream had come true. When you took me in your arms and kissed me .. didn't you love me then, Richard? Was it only the sip of wine? I know you have never held the Stewart lady like that, nor kissed her as you kiss me. When the good God took your money away, I thought He did it for me, so that we both could be poor and you could marry me ... Now I am afraid, and that is why I ask if the Stewart lady is to come between us."

"What in the world possesses you today, Olga?" Richard demanded, as he sought to calm her. "What does a little girl like you know about love, any way?

You have been worrying so much about me these weeks that some foolish thoughts have crept into your mind ... You don't love me, Olga . you are unstrung

over this whole affair, and you are sorry for me. In your sweet anxiety you are still trying to watch over me Don't be silly! I need your friendship now

more than I ever did. What you have done for me is beyond what I can ever repay If there were anything serious in what you say I should be terribly concerned, but fortunately we don't have to think of that. I'm not going to marry any one, so that problem needn't cause us any worry You're not suggesting that

we should cease to be friends, are you?"

"Oh, no! . . no

no!" Olga cried.

"Then we'll leave things just where they were? . . We still are comrades, and always will be?"

"You have told the Stewart lady all that you have told me?" she asked again, to make sure that there was no mistake.

"Yes; exactly that. She understands the situation perfectly, and agrees with me."

Olga was quick to realize that if Lola had acquiesced, she would place herself at a disadvantage by refusing to be equally generous. But she could not yield without a last effort to strengthen her position.

"Then I suppose I, too, must agree with you," she said at length; "but really I do not! If the Stewart lady gives you up so easily she cannot love you . . . Perhaps it is because now you are a poor man. I will never believe you do not love me, Richard, but if I make it hard for you now perhaps your love will turn

to hate. I will be patient . . . But while we wait shall we still sip the wine together?"

"Of course," Richard agreed, relieved to have straightened Olga out. "Everything is mixed up now; but if you will be patient, as you say you will, all is bound to come out right.”

"Then you will marry me," Olga said with finality; "for that only is right."

CHAPTER XXIV

T

I

HE EFFECT on Lola of her visits with Richard was electrifying. Her work in France had impressed her with a sense of obligation, hitherto unknown and unexpressed. The results of her later efforts to give this expression had proved unsatisfying. She had felt the necessity for action and had succeeded in making Richard recognize it, but it was he who at last supplied something tangible which she could grasp. Now the spirit of martyrdom had seized her as it had him.

Fired by the inspiration which comes from a sympathetic listener, Richard put into words for the first time the cumulative results of those days of solitary thought, and his own confidence and enthusiasm were contagious.

"Do you know, Lola," he said to her, "except for what it stands for, this time in jail has its compensations. I believed I had my brief for the new industrial relations well in hand when I presented it to my father, but since I have been here, with so much time to think, the idea has grown beyond anything I could have imagined."

"That is just what happened to you at Toul, wasn't it?" Lola reminded him. "Then your vision gave you the first suggestion that you were something in the scheme of things; now you have discovered how to make the application to something very real."

"What a blessing it would be if every citizen was obliged by law to spend a month each year in solitary confinement," Richard cried enthusiastically, "with no one to talk to, no books, no newspapers, just alone with himself, and forced to think! No man ought to be allowed to write, or make a speech, or advance an opinion until he has solved the problem in his own mind by the pitiless self-analysis which comes from an experience such as I am having here. Oh, Lola, it does separate the essentials from the non-essentials, it does show up the specious emptiness of theories, and it does make the real things stand out in wonderful relief from the very blackness of the background!

From this starting-point, he outlined to her his new conception of the work as he now saw it opening up before him. He pointed out the basic mistakes made in the past and now being made by employers, and with equal clearness laid bare the basic error of labor unionism in placing such stress on organization, rather than on the essentials of service and the welfare of the working-man. With infinite detail he showed Lola the enlarged and revised plan as he had worked it out, to eliminate the errors and to bring the two elements together on a basis which should obviously be for the advantage of both.

Lola was thrilled by the tremendous possibilities