"A failure of it!" "Yes. I want to get away--to look at it from a distance, and see if I can't find out what is the trouble with it, just as--as artists do, you know, when they paint a picture." There was a feverishness in Margaret's manner and a tremulousness in her voice that came perilously near to tears. "But, my dear Margaret," argued the man, "there's nothing the matter with it. It's no failure at all. You've done wonders down there at the Mill House." Margaret shook her head slowly. "It's so little--so very little compared to what ought to be done," she sighed. "The Mill House is good and does good, I acknowledge; but it's so puny after all. It's like a tiny little oasis in a huge desert of poverty and distress." "But what--what more could you do?" ventured the man. Margaret rose, and moved restlessly around the room. "I don't know," she said at last. "That's what I mean to find out." She stopped suddenly, facing him. "Don't you see? I touch only the surface. The great cause behind things I never reach. Sometimes it seems as if it were like that old picture--where was it? in Pilgrim's Progress?--of the fire. On one side is the man trying to put it out; on the other, is the evil one pouring on oil. My two hands are the two men. With one I feed a hungry child, or nurse a sick woman; with the other I make more children hungry and more women sick." "Margaret, are you mad? What can you mean?" "Merely this. It is very simple, after all. With one hand I relieve the children's suffering; with the other I take dividends from the very mills that make the children suffer. A long time ago I wanted to 'divvy up' with Patty, and Bobby and the rest. I have even thought lately that I would still like to 'divvy up'; and--well, you can see the way I am 'divvying up' now with my people down there at the mills!" And her voice rang with self-scorn. The man frowned. He, too, got to his feet and walked nervously up and down the room. When he came back the girl had sat down again. Her elbows were on the table, and her linked fingers were shielding her eyes. Involuntarily the man reached his hand toward the bowed head. But he drew it back before it had touched a thread of the bronze-gold hair. "I do see, Margaret," he began gently, "and you are right. It is at the mills themselves that the first start must be made--the first beginning of the 'divvying up.' Perhaps, if there were some one to show us"--he paused, then went on unsteadily: "I suppose it's useless to say again what I said that day months ago: that if you stayed here, and showed him--the man who loves you--the better way----" Margaret started. She gave a nervous little laugh and picked up a bit of paper from the floor. "Of course it is useless," she retorted in what she hoped was a merry voice. "And he doesn't even love me now, besides." "He doesn't love you!" Frank Spencer's eyes and voice were amazed.