"Oh, John!" she began. "John! What do you mean? How could you--how could I--" He flung out his hand in a gesture of despair. "Oh, there you go again! Can't you fall into line at _all_?" "But John! I've never done anything in all my life to deserve them, of course. Besides, I couldn't wear them--I really couldn't--I'd be afraid! And they wouldn't seem right--on me!" "You've _got_ to wear them!" he retorted. "We've got to go out once in a while if I'm to play this game--we've got to go to shows, theaters, operas, somewhere. They've got to sit up and say that we've got some _class_, Laura, I'm telling you!" "But, John! How would I look decked out in things like that? I'm so plain, common, you know." "That's not the question. Do you know how much these cost?" "Why, no--maybe a thousand dollars, for all I know!" "A thousand dollars!" groaned Rawn. "Maybe they did! Do you know what I paid for what you've got in your hand, Laura? Twenty-eight thousand dollars! That's all." Impulsively she held out her hand to him. "Take them back!" she whispered. "It isn't right." For one moment he looked at her, and she shrank back from his gaze. But Rawn's anger turned to self-pity. "My own wife won't wear my diamonds," said he. "This, for a man as ambitious as I am, and a man who has done as much as I have!" She came now and put her arms about his neck, the first time in years; but not in thankfulness. She looked straight into his eyes. "John!" she said. "Oh, _John_!" There was all of woman's anguish in her eyes, in her voice. CHAPTER IV AT HEADQUARTERS I The International Power Company remained a puzzle in suspended animation before the business world. Its campaign, whatever it was, went on behind closed doors and closed mouths. The men who were backing John Rawn were doing so with daring and courage, yet with business discretion and business eagerness for results. There was no leak anywhere, but the capitalists who were showing their faith in the basic idea of the company began to grow impatient because of the slow advancement of the most important of their plans; those bearing on wireless transmission from the central generating station on the Mississippi River. Rawn's duties at the central offices, as president of the company, although steadily increasing, were still to very large extent perfunctory matters of routine; but the president's office evinced very early a singular efficiency in executive affairs. Rawn's directors looked on him with mingled approval and cautiousness, coming almost to the belief that, if the progress of the central distributing plant, or "Wireless No. 1," as it was known in the company's literature, did not seem all it should be, at least the president of the company was not to blame therefor. They turned to the department of mechanical installation; which brought Charles Halsey under investigation. II