The arrival of Mr. Babcock with a traveling-bag was, it seemed, to be considered important; more important even than the heap of letters that lay ready opened on the mahogany desk. For now Mr. Babcock had been summoned, the stenographer had been dismissed to some work in the outer office, and Mr. Bigelow, closely attentive, and Mr. Babcock, with much to communicate in that low voice of his, were settling down to consider a problem. “The price appealed to them,” Mr. Babcock was saying, “but they are afraid of Higginson. They admit it. Higginson, they say, has their written order to cut out the timber at the old price. Higginson, on his part, has agreed to deliver the entire bill, two hundred thousand feet or more, at the wharf at Michigan City, by the fourteenth of this month.” Mr. Bigelow's eyes strayed to his desk calendar. “Yes,” went on Mr. Babcock, “to-day's the eleventh. That gives us three days to stop it in.” At this point there was an interruption. As had happened once before when these two gentlemen were talking, the door opened and the small office-boy appeared, catching his breath hurriedly before getting out the words: “Lady t' see y'u, sir.” A decisive utterance was hanging on Mr. Bigelow's lips; a hand was raised to make it more emphatic, but the lips closed and the hand fell. “You will excuse me, Mr. Babcock?” “Certainly.” “I shall be engaged only a moment.” The discreet Mr. Babcock withdrew, and the head of the firm, with a glance at the heap of letters still untouched, turned, without rising, toward the door. There was a curious expression on his face, the expression of a man who feels himself at last in a position to cut knots, who knows that he commands the situation. A person who might choose to break in on such a weighty conference this morning need not be surprised at summary treatment. And as the woman entered and softly closed the door he leaned a little forward and drew his brows together, his whole appearance saying plainly: “My time is short, madam. Speak to the point.” The woman faltered and waited for his question. He said not a word. She started to speak, but seemed unable to break through this heavy silence. He waited, his brows coming down more and more. And at last, when the words did pass her lips, they were not at all what she had meant to say. “I have tried not to come to you again. God knows how it hurts me. But I had to come. I was turned out of the New York Store ten days ago, without warning.” Once started, she was finding it a little easier to go on; but Mr. Bigelow, carrying the weight of millions on his shoulders, dealing hourly with questions of importance, greater or less, to the whole commercial world, had no time now--kind as he may have been in the more leisurely past--to waste on trivial matters. He had given the woman a chance; was he to blame for her failure? Did “not potential success exist within every human being? Was any man to blame for the shipwreck of another?