“I know this,” said John Bruce steadily, “that you have never been really put to the test. The test is here now. You'd stop, and stop forever, wouldn't you, if it meant Claire's happiness, her future, her salvation from the horror and degradation and misery and utter hopelessness that a life with a man who is lost to every sense of decency must bring her? I would believe you if you promised under those conditions. It seems to me to be the only chance there is left to save her. It is true she believes Paul is her father and accepts him as such, and neither his influence nor his arguments will move her from her determination to marry Crang; but I think there is a chance if she is told your story, if she is brought to her own father through this very thing. I think if you are in each other's arms at last after all these years from just that cause it might succeed where everything else failed. But this much is sure. It has a chance of success, and you owe Claire that chance. Will you take it, Hawkins? Will you promise?” There was no answer from the window, only the shaking of the old man's shoulders. “Hawkins,” said John Bruce softly, “wouldn't it be very wonderful if you saved her, and saved yourself; and wonderful, too, to know the joy of your own daughter's love?” The old man turned suddenly from the window, his arms stretched out before him as though in intense yearning; and there was something almost of nobility in the gray head held high on the bent shoulders, something of greatness in the old wrinkled face that seemed to exalt the worn and shabby clothes hanging so formlessly about him. “My little girl,” he said brokenly. “Your promise, Hawkins,” said John Bruce in a low voice. “Will you promise?” “Yes,” breathed the old man fiercely. “_Yes_--so help me, God! But”--he faltered suddenly--“but Paul-----” “Ask Paul to come down here,” said John Bruce. “I have something to say to both of you--more than I have already said to you. I will answer for Paul.” The old cab driver obeyed mechanically. He crossed the room and went out. John Bruce heard him mounting the stairs. Presently he returned, followed by the tall, straight, white-haired figure of Paul Veniza. Hawkins closed the door behind them. Paul Veniza turned sharply at the sound, and glanced gravely from one to the other. His eyebrows went up as he looked at John Bruce. John Bruce's face was set. “What is the matter?” inquired Paul Veniza anxiously. “I want you to listen first to a little story,” said John Bruce seriously--and in a few words he told Paul Veniza, as he had told Hawkins, of his love for Claire and the events of the night that had brought him there a wounded man. “And this afternoon,” John Bruce ended, “I asked Claire to marry me, and she told me she was going to marry Doctor Crang.” Paul Veniza had listened with growing anxiety, casting troubled and uncertain glances the while at Hawkins. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. John Bruce spoke abruptly: