Women of almost every nationality on the globe stood in the doorways, French, Japanese, Negroes, Swedes, all dressed in flaunting kimonas. They called to the men in the crowd, exchanged jests, or leaned idly against the door-posts, staring fixedly into the faces of the men. From many of the places a bright light streamed out across the water. The shutters of several were drawn. In strange contrast to the scene, in one of the houses some one was singing in a clear tenor voice, which sounded as sweet and pure as if it had been in a choir. For a moment the murmur of voices and tramp of feet ceased, as people paused to listen. Stephen walked slowly down the street. A woman in one of the darker doorways called out to him. He stopped, bit his lip hard. “Why not? What is the use, now?” he thought. He ran up the steps and opened the door. Inside, half a dozen painted women were drinking with the men there. The proprietress beckoned to him to enter. Then like a veil, before his eyes dropped a cloud of memory. He saw the shed at the hoist, two bodies laid limply on the ground; figures moving in dim lantern light. He staggered out into the street, drew a deep breath and strode back across the bridge. “I am through with this sort of thing for good,” he muttered. “I owe the world too big a debt of reparation now. But I will pay it.” For the first time in his life, Loring’s smile was a smile of power, that power which rises sometimes from a supreme sorrow, sometimes from supreme holiness, sometimes, as now, springing from the black soil of crime; but bespeaking the discipline which has learned to control passion, to bring desire to heel, and to make a man master of himself despite all the devils that this world or the next can send against him. He had learned his lesson at last, learned it at the cost of two lost lives, and the cost to himself of an overshadowing remorse which he could never escape, let the future hold what it would. But he had learned it. CHAPTER X After three days of fruitless search for work, Stephen’s outlook upon life grew very gloomy. Dominion was over-supplied with laborers. In looking backward, Stephen felt that he had applied for every sort of position from bank president to day laborer, but everywhere the answer had been the same: “Sorry, but we have nothing for you. We are even turning off our old workmen.” In the West, in time of prosperity, positions and opportunities of every sort go begging. In time of depression there is no harder place in which to get work. To make matters worse, Stephen from principle had always refused to affiliate himself with one of the labor organizations, and in Dominion the power of the Union is paramount. Once he had almost persuaded the foreman at one of the smelters to put him on the rolls; but when the fact had appeared that he was a non-Union man the official had changed his mind.