The house was pleasantly familiar. As he waited for Miss Hitchcock in the little library that belonged especially to her, he could detect no changes in the conglomerate furnishing of the house. He had half expected to find that it had yielded to the younger generation, but something had arrested the march of innovation. The steel engravings still hung in the hall, and the ugly staircase had not been reformed. Colonel Hitchcock came into the house, and without looking into the study went upstairs. Sommers started to intercept him in the hall, but restrained the impulse. Miss Hitchcock appeared in a few moments, advancing to greet him with a frank smile, as if it were the most natural thing to meet him there. "I have come to ask you to do something for me," Sommers began at once, still standing, "because, as I told you, I have no one else to ask for help." "You take the bloom off kindnesses in a dreadfully harsh way," Miss Hitchcock responded sadly. "But it's something one doesn't usually ask of a young woman," Sommers added. He told her briefly the circumstances that led to his visit. "I haven't literally any friend of whom I could properly ask five cents." "Don't say that. It sounds so forlorn!" "Does it? I never thought about it before. I suppose it is a reflection upon a man that at thirty-three he hasn't any one in the world to ask a favor of. It looks as if he had lived a pretty narrow life." "Hard, not narrow," Miss Hitchcock interposed quickly. "I will send the money to-morrow. John will take it to the brokers, if you will write them a note." As he still stood, she went on, to avoid the awkward silence: "Those horrid industrials! I am sure Uncle Brome will lose everything in them. He's a born gambler. Mr. Carson has got him interested in these new things." "Is his picture still on exhibition?" Sommers inquired, with a faint smile. "I don't know. I haven't seen much of them lately." She spoke as if Carson and his kind were completely indifferent to her. Her next remark surprised Sommers. "I think I can see now why you felt as you did about--well, Mr. Carson. He is a sort of shameless ideal held up before such people as this young man who is speculating. Isn't that it?" Sommers nodded. "Uncle Brome, too? When he makes several hundred thousand dollars in Consolidated Iron, every clerk, every little man who knows anything about it has all his bad, greedy, envious passions aroused." The doctor smiled at the serious manner in which the young woman explored the old ground of their differences. "But," she concluded, "they aren't _all_ like Mr. Carson and Uncle Brome. You mustn't make that mistake. And Uncle Brome is so generous, too. It is hard to understand." "No," Sommers said, preparing to leave. "Of course they are not all alike, and it is hard to judge. No man knows what he is doing--to any great extent." "What will you do?" Miss Hitchcock asked abruptly.