"Hardly----"

"I thought not. He has too much horse-sense in spite of his emotional gymnastics. You learned it in the first dime-novel you read."

"I never read a dime-novel in my life," she interrupted, indignantly.

"I know--you paid a dollar and a quarter for it--but it was a dime-novel. The philosophy of this school of trash you have built into a creed of life. How can you be so blind? How can you make so tragic a blunder?"

"That's just it, Jane: I couldn't if your impressions of his character were true. I couldn't make a mistake about so vital a question. I couldn't love him if he really were a coarse, illiterate brute. What you see is only on the surface. He hasn't had his chance yet----"

"Who is he? What does he do? Who are his people?"

"He has no people----"

"I thought not."

"I love him all the more deeply," she went on firmly, "because of his miserable childhood. I'll do my best to make up for the years of cruelty and hunger and suffering through which he passed. What right have you to sit in judgment on him without a hearing? You've known him two hours----"

Jane shrugged her shoulders.

"Two minutes was quite enough."

"And you judge by what standard?"

"My five senses, and my sixth sense above all. One look at his square bulldog jaw, his massive neck and the deformity of his delicate hands and feet! I hear the ignorant patois of the East Side underworld.

I smell the brimstone in his suppressed rage at my dislike. There's something uncanny in the sensuous droop of his heavy eyelids and the glitter of his steel-blue eyes. There's something incongruous in his whole personality. I was afraid of him the moment I saw him."

Mary broke into hysterical laughter.

"And if my five senses and my intuitions contradict yours? Who is to decide? If I loved him on sight----If I looked into his eyes and saw the soul of my mate? If their cold fires thrill me with inexpressible passion? If I see in his massive neck and jaw the strength of an irresistible manhood, the power to win success and to command the world? If I see in his slender hands and small feet lines of exquisite beauty--am I to crush my senses and strangle my love to please your idiotic prejudice?"

Jane threw up her hands in despair.

"Certainly not! If you're blind and deaf I can't keep you from committing suicide. I'd lock you up in an asylum for the insane if I had the power to save you from the clutches of the brute."

Mary drew herself erect and faced her friend.

"Please don't repeat that word in my hearing--there's a limit to friendship. I think you'd better go----"

Jane rose and walked quickly to the door, her lips pressed firmly.

"As you like--our lives will be far apart from tonight. It's just as well."

She closed the door with a bang and reached the head of the stairs before Mary threw her arms around her neck.

"Please, dear, forgive me--don't go in anger."

The older woman kissed her tenderly, glad of the dim light to hide her own tears.

"There, it's all right, honey--I won't remember it. Forgive me for my ugly words."

"I love him, Jane--I love him! It's Fate. Can't you understand?"

"Yes, dear, I understand, and I'll love you always--good-by."

"You'll come to my wedding?"

"Perhaps----"

"I'll let you know----"

Another kiss, and Jane Anderson strode down the stairs and out into the night with a sickening, helpless fear in her heart.

CHAPTER VIII. JIM'S TRIAL

The quarrel had left Mary in a quiver of exalted rage. How dare a friend trample her most sacred feelings! She pitied Jane Anderson and her tribe--these modern feminine leaders of a senseless revolution against man--they were crazy. They had all been disappointed in some individual and for that reason set themselves up as the judges of mankind.

"Thank God my soul has not been poisoned!" she exclaimed aloud with fervor. "How strange that these women who claim such clear vision can be so stupidly blind!"

She busied herself with her little household, and made up her mind once and for all time to be done with such friendships. The friendship of such women was a vain thing. They were vicious cats at heart--not like her gentle Persian kitten whose soul was full of sleepy sunlight. These modern insurgents were wild, half-starved stray cats that had been hounded and beaten until they had lapsed into their elemental brute instincts. They were so aggravating, too, they deserved no sympathy.

Again she thanked God that she was not one of them--that her heart was still capable of romantic love--a love so sudden and so overwhelming that it could sweep life before it in one mad rush to its glorious end.

She woke next morning with a dull sense of depression. The room was damp and chilly. It was storming. The splash of rain against the window and the muffled roar from the street below meant that the wind was high and the day would be a wretched one outside.

They couldn't take their ride.

It was a double disappointment. She had meant to have him dash down to Long Beach and place the ring on her finger seated on that same bright sand-dune overlooking the sea. Instead, they must stay indoors. Jim was not at his best indoors. She loved him behind the wheel with his hand on the pulse of that racer. The machine seemed a part of his being. He breathed his spirit into its steel heart, and together they swept her on and on over billowy clouds through the gates of Heaven.

There was no help for it. They would spend the time together in her room planning the future. It would be sweet--these intimate hours in her home with the man she loved.

Should she spend a whole day alone there with him? Was it just proper?

Was it really safe? Nonsense! The vile thoughts which Jane had uttered had poisoned her, after all. She hated her self that she could remember them. And yet they filled her heart with dread in spite of every effort to laugh them off.

"How could Jane Anderson dare say such things?" she muttered angrily.

"'A coarse, illiterate brute!' It's a lie! a lie! a lie!" She stamped her foot in rage. "He's strong and brave and masterful--a man among men--he's my mate and I love him!"

And yet the frankness with which her friend had spoken had in reality disturbed her beyond measure. Through every hour of the day her uneasiness increased. After all she was utterly alone and her life had been pitifully narrow. Her knowledge of men she had drawn almost exclusively from romantic fiction.

It was just a little strange that Jim persisted in living so completely in the present and the future. He had told her of his pitiful childhood.

He had told her of his business. It had been definite--the simple statement he made--and she accepted it without question until Jane Anderson had dropped these ugly suspicions. She hated the meddler for it.

In the light of such suspicions the simplest, bravest man might seem a criminal. How could her friend be blind to the magnetism of this man's powerful personality? Bah! She was jealous of their perfect happiness.

Why are women so contemptible?

She began a careful study of every trait of her lover's character, determined to weigh him by the truest standards of manhood. Certainly he was no weakling. The one abomination of her soul was the type of the city degenerate she saw simpering along Broadway and Fifth Avenue at times. Jim was brave to the point of rashness. No man with an ounce of cowardice in his being could handle a car in every crisis with such cool daring and perfect control. He was strong. He could lift her body as if it were a feather. His arms crushed her with terrible force. He could earn a living for them both. There could be no doubt about that. His faultless clothes, the ease with which he commanded unlimited credit among the automobile manufacturers and dealers--every supply store on Broadway seemed to know him--left no doubt on that score.