Helen did not belong to that easy-conscienced class who can eliminate unpleasantness by closing their eyes against it. She had to face her question with open vision--learn what truth was in it. She secured all she could find in print about her father and read it behind the locked door of her room. There was case after case in which her father, by skilful breaking of the law, or skilful compliance with it, or complete disregard of moral rights, had moved relentlessly, irresistibly, to his ends over all who had opposed him. The picture these cases drew was of a man it sickened her daughter-love to look upon--a man who was truly, as the articles frequently called him, an "industrial brigand," and whose vast fortune was the "loot of a master bandit." The articles seemed woven of fact, but she could not accept them unsubstantiated. She must know the truth--beyond a single doubt. At the same time, she, her father's daughter, could not go to the men he had wronged, demanding proof. At length she thought of her Uncle Henry, whom she loved and trusted, and whom she knew to be intimately acquainted with her father's career. To him she went one night and opened her fears. "Are these things true?" she asked. And he said: "They are true." She went away, grief-burdened, feeling that the whole structure of her life was tottering. And two questions that before had been vaguely rising, became big, sharp, insistent: What should be her attitude toward her father, whom she loved? And what should be her attitude toward his fortune, which she shared? CHAPTER II DAVID SEES THE FACE OF FORTUNE When David had handed Helen into the cab, she had not spoken to him, had not even said, "Thank you," and had rolled away without giving him so much as a backward glance. He now felt it had been brutal, dishonourable, to trap her into denouncing her father and then to strike her with her father's guilt. He was certain she was deeply offended, and this conviction grew as day after day passed without a word from her. But there were other things to be thought of during these days. There was his future--upon which, uncertain as it was, he saw that Lillian Drew was to be a parasite; for she had made another call (while Kate was out of the office; he was thankful for that) and had carried away the larger fraction of his small store of money. He was again workless--again at the base of that high, smooth wall which before he had been able to surmount only with, as it were, his last gasping effort.