Nan's fingers touched the strings in the first soft notes of an old melody. He woke with a start and looked at her. What a picture she made, with her full lips parted in a warm smile, her magnificent bare arms moving in rhythmic unison with the music! In just that pose he had seen her a hundred times in the days when he called her his own. And now that he had lost--her beauty had just reached the full splendour of perfection. He closed his eyes to shut out the picture and again the fight began for the mastery of life. A voice whispered: "Unless you are a coward, grasp the power that is yours by divine right of nature. Why should you walk while pigmies ride? Why should you lag behind the age in this fierce struggle for supremacy? The woman who sits before you is yours if you only dare to tear her from the man who holds her by the fiction of dying customs!" He felt his heart throb as another voice within cried: "Yet why should I, an heir to immortality, whose will can shape a world, why should I live a beast of prey with my hand against every man?" The answer was the memory of dirty finger nails closing on his throat while a mob of howling fools surged over his body and cursed him for trying to save them from themselves. Again he heard a woman's voice as she held his head close, whispering: "I've something to say to you, Jim!" His lips tightened with sudden decision. The golden gates of the forbidden land swung open and his soul entered. CHAPTER XIV AN AFTERMATH The day following Bivens's offer to Stuart was made memorable by a sinister event in Union Square. A mass meeting of the unemployed had been called to protest against their wrongs and particularly to denounce the men who had advanced the price of bread by creating a corner in wheat. On his way down town Stuart read with astonishment that Dr. Woodman would preside over this gathering. He determined to go. As he hurried through the routine work of his office, giving his orders for the day, he received a telephone call from Nan, asking him to accompany her to this meeting. "I don't think you ought to go," he answered emphatically. "Why?" "Well, there might be a riot for one thing." "I'm not afraid." "And you might hear some very plain talk about your husband." "That's exactly why I wish to go!" "I don't think it wise," Stuart protested. "I'm going, anyhow. Won't you accompany me?" "If you will go--yes." "That's a good boy. I'll send one of my cars to the office for you immediately." An hour later when Stuart, seated by Nan's side, reached Union Square, the automobile was stopped by the police and turned into Seventeenth Street.