Elizabeth smiled faintly, but did not reply. She sat with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her delicate chin resting on her hand, and Eades was content to let the subject drop, if it would. He wished the silence would prolong itself. His heart beat rapidly; he felt a new energy, a new joy pulsing within him. He sat and looked at her calmly, her gaze bent on the fire, her profile revealed to him, her lashes sweeping her cheek, the lace in her sleeve falling away from her slender arm. Should he tell her then? He longed to--but this was not, after all, the moment. The moment would come, and he must be patient. He must wait and prove himself to her; she must understand him; she should see him in time as the modern ideal of manhood, doing his duty courageously and without fear or favor. Some day he would tell her. "Your charity bazaar was a success, I hope?" he said presently, coming back to the lighter side of their last topic. "I don’t know," Elizabeth said. "I never inquired." "You never inquired?" "No." "How strange! Why not?" "I lost interest." "Oh!" he laughed. "Well, we all do that." "The whole thing palled on me--struck me as ridiculous." Eades was perplexed. He could not in the least understand this latest attitude. Surely, she was a girl of many surprises. "I shouldn’t think you would find charity ridiculous. A hard-hearted and cruel being like me might--but you--oh, Miss Ward! To think that helping the poor was ridiculous!" "But it isn’t to help the poor at all." He was still more perplexed. "It’s to help the rich. Can’t you see that?" She turned and faced him with clear, sober gray eyes. "Can’t you see that?" she asked again. "If you can’t, I wish I knew how to make you. "’The organized charity, scrimped and iced, In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ’-- "Do you know Boyle O’Reilly’s poetry?" Eades showed the embarrassment of one who has not the habit of reading, and she saw that the words had no meaning for him. "Don’t take it all so seriously," he said, leaning over as if he might plead with her. "’The poor,’ you know, ’we have always with us.’" He settled back then as one who has said the thing proper to the occasion. XVIII Although Marriott had promised Koerner early in the fall that his action against the railroad would be tried at once, he was unable to bring the event to pass. In the first place, Bradford Ford, the attorney for the railroad, had to go east in his private car, then in the winter he had to go to Florida to rest and play golf, and because of these and other postponements it was March before the case was finally assigned for trial. "So that’s your client back there, is it?" said Ford, the morning of the trial, turning from the window and the lingering winter outdoors to look at Koerner.