prised Olga, and she felt thoroughly ashamed of her

outburst.

"I suppose you do love him as much as a girl like you can," she modified her previous statement; "but folks brought up your way cannot have the same feelings as working-girls. We have to fight for everything we get. It makes us hate harder and love stronger. You could not understand."

"Aren't you taking a great deal for granted, Olga?" "Why, our whole lives are made up of sacrifice! What have you ever had to give up in order to get something else?"

"I do understand," Lola insisted, . . "perhaps better than you know. What sacrifices I have made in my life are nothing compared with yours; but until you have seen me fail you cannot say that I wouldn't prove equal to the test if a great sacrifice was demanded of me."

Olga looked at Lola intently, instantly challenged by her statement.

"Do you mean that?" she demanded quickly. "Listen I will give you the test. We both love Richard Norton. Except for you, I know that I could marry him. You never made a real sacrifice, I have never known anything else. Give Richard to me. This is your chance. Will you take it?"

"I would take it in a moment," Lola answered deliberately, "if I thought it would mean his greatest happiness. You have no claim on me which warrants such a sacrifice; the fact that I love him gives such a claim to Richard ... But why talk of this now?

He is not going to marry any one, so the sacrifice has come to us both."

"The reason he does not wish to marry is because he thinks it will interfere with his work for the men. Do you not see that I could help him much more than you because I am one of the working-people, and understand them better?"

"Whenever Richard feels that to be so, I will stand aside."

"You will?”

Olga's expression manifested her unqualified astonishment.

Lola bowed her head in reiteration, and as she did so Olga thought she saw tears glistening in her eyes. She looked again to make sure.

"You are not really crying?" she asked incredulously. "How foolish of me!" Lola exclaimed, drying her eyes. "You touched on something which is very precious to me, but I didn't mean to show any one how precious it is. I have given up all thought of marrying Richard. I have steeled myself to look at things the way he wishes me to. But nothing can keep me from loving him with all the strength I have, so long as I live."

IV

It was a day of novel sensations to Olga. These people who lived in beautiful houses and were surrounded by every luxury, were human after all! This girl beside her was crying, just as she had cried that afternoon when Richard left her! Let them exchange po

sitions, and there would be little difference between them they were sisters under the skin!

Olga was sobered by her discovery. Half hesitating at her temerity, she slipped her arm about Lola's waist. Receiving no rebuff she grew bolder.

"I never knew you folks had feelings like that," she said in a low voice. "Perhaps you have made a sacrifice already that I would not make when Richard asked me to. I want him to be happy, just as you do, and he probably knows better than either one of us what is best for him. I did not mean to hurt you. I have been unhappy. Until today I hated you, but it was I who did not understand. I cannot hate you now.

"We both understand each other better," Lola reassured her, smiling through her tears. "I'm so glad that I yielded to the impulse to take you home with me today. Neither one of us can blame the other for loving Richard. Each of us has that right, and needs not be ashamed to acknowledge it. We must let it be a bond between us, instead of something to keep us apart. We both will wish him success and happiness."

Olga rose in silence to take her leave. At the door she held Lola's proffered hand, and before releasing it touched it to her lips.

"I guess my most selfish wish would be that he never marries," she said quietly. "So long as he could get a girl like you he would never look at me. I did not know before that there were such people in the world!"

CHAPTER XXXII

A

I

PROBLEM which concerned Richard deeply was how to work out his plan in such a way

as to capitalize the ex-service men in industry. From his own experiences he recognized the inability of these returned soldiers to go back into the old grooves after having realized so tremendous a momentum in a new and different direction; but he refused to accept the bromidic statements that they were drained emotionally, or that the baptism of fire, instead of uplifting, had made them unfit or unwilling to return to their former positions, and thus produced a class of social misfits.

"If the world has been sorely disappointed in the returned soldier," he explained to his Directors, "so has the returned soldier been sorely disappointed in the world into which he returned. It was natural that he should be gratified by the extravagant praise given for his sacrifice, his heroism, and his consecration to the cause. It was agreeable to him to accept the theory of the regenerated soldier. He believed in the talk about the strange light of vision in the eyes of men who had stood face to face with death, because he had seen

it. He was willing to admit that he had been purged by fire and sword. Then, when he discovered that all this idealization of him was only a passing phase of society, a distrust came into his soul which thus far nothing has relieved; and out of this bitterness was born a desire to force society to recognize its obligation by paying him a bonus. Think of it! Asking for a bonus when we haven't yet taken care of the disabled, soldiers! But when these artificial excrescences are scraped off, underneath is the real product of the war: men whose inventive and constructive instincts have been sharpened by the premium which war places upon human ingenuity and skill, and whose desire to express these instincts is dominating. The factory as run today offers no scope for this, and that is what causes unrest. We must turn this liability into an asset."

II

They were hard days but rare days to Richard, filled with opposition and discouragement, but never void of the ever-present confidence that success must come because it ought to come. He tried to gauge his progress, but there was nothing by which to measure it. The Directors at last gave their consent to the employment of experts, and for a time everything seemed in so chaotic a condition that all except Richard lost hope. Alec Sterling was a tower of strength, but his unswerving support was an expression of loyalty rather than confidence. He knew that some change was essential in the relations between employer and employed, but what that change ought to be had never been clear to him.