Hilda was almost in tears--it was all intensely real to her. She felt that he was superfine, that he suffered more than ordinary folk, like herself and her people. "I'll do the best I can," she pleaded. "It would be best for you to introduce them to me at once and let ME speak." "No--no," she protested earnestly, terror in her voice and her hand trembling in his. "That would spoil everything. You wouldn't understand them, or they you. I'll speak--and see you Monday night." "Let it be so," he conceded. "But I must depart. I am studying a new role." He had an engagement to take supper with several of his intimates at the Irving Place cafe, where he could throw aside the heaviest parts of his pose and give way to his appetite for beer and Schweizerkase sandwiches. "How happy we shall be!" he murmured tenderly, kissing her cheek and thinking how hard it was to be practical and keep remote benefits in mind when she was so beautiful and so tempting and so trustful. He said aloud: "I am impatient, soul's delight! Is it strange?" And he bowed like a stage courtier to a stage queen and left her. She joined Sophie and Heilig and walked along in silence, Sophie between Otto and her. He caught glimpses of her face, and it made his heart ache and his courage faint to see the love-light in her eyes--and she as far away from him as Heaven from hell, far away in a world from which he was excluded. He and Sophie left her at her father's and he took Sophie home. Sophie felt that she had done a fair evening's work--not progress, but progress in sight. "At least," she reflected, "he's seeing that he isn't in it with Hilda and never can be. I must hurry her on and get her married to that fool. A pair of fools!" Heilig found his mother waiting up for him. As she saw his expression, anxiety left her face, but cast a deeper shadow over her heart. She felt his sorrow as keenly as he--she who would have laid down her life for him gladly. "Don't lose heart, my big boy," she said, patting him on the shoulder as he bent to kiss her. At this he dropped down beside her and hid his face in her lap and cried like the boy-man that he was. "Ach, Gott, mother, I love her SO!" he sobbed. Her tears fell on the back of his head. Her boy--who had gone so bravely to work when the father was killed at his machine, leaving them penniless; her boy--who had laughed and sung and whistled and diffused hope and courage and made her feel that the burden was not a burden but a joy for his strong, young shoulders. "Courage, beloved!" she said. "Hilda is a good girl. All will yet be well." And she felt it--God would not be God if He could let this heart of gold be crushed to powder. III FORTUNE FAVORS THE IMPUDENT