A stern look came into Sam’s eyes. “It does not ring right, Sue,” he said coldly; “fathers do not mean much to me. I choked my own father and threw him into the street when I was only a boy. You knew about that. You heard of it when you went to find out about me that time in Caxton. Mary Underwood told you. I did it because he lied and believed in lies. Do not your friends say that the individual who stands in the way should be crushed?” She sprang to her feet and stood before him. “Do not quote that crowd,” she burst out. “They are not the real thing. Do you suppose I do not know that? Do I not know that they come here because they hope to get hold of you? Haven’t I watched them and seen the look on their faces when you have not come or have not listened to their talk? They are afraid of you, all of them. That’s why they talk so bitterly. They are afraid and ashamed that they are afraid.” “Like the workers in the shop?” he asked, musingly. “Yes, like that, and like me since I failed in my part of our lives and had not the courage to get out of the way. You are worth all of us and for all our talk we shall never succeed or begin to succeed until we make men like you want what we want. They know that and I know it.” “And what do you want?” “I want you to be big and generous. You can be. Failure cannot hurt you. You and men like you can do anything. You can even fail. I cannot. None of us can. I cannot put my father to that shame. I want you to accept failure.” Sam got up and taking her by the arm led her to the door. At the door he turned her about and kissed her on the lips like a lover. “All right, Sue girl, I will do it,” he said, and pushed her through the door. “Now let me sit down by myself and think things out.” It was a night in September and a whisper of the coming frost was in the air. He threw up the window and took long breaths of the sharp air and listened to the rumble of the elevated road in the distance. Looking up the boulevard he saw the lights of the cyclists making a glistening stream that flowed past the house. A thought of his new motor car and of all of the wonder of the mechanical progress of the world ran through his mind. “The men who make machines do not hesitate,” he said to himself; “even though a thousand fat-hearted men stood in their way they would go on.” A line of Tennyson’s came into his mind. “And the nation’s airy navies grappling in the central blue,” he quoted, thinking of an article he had read predicting the coming of airships. He thought of the lives of the workers in steel and iron and of the things they had done and would do. “They have,” he thought, “freedom. Steel and iron do not run home to carry the struggle to women sitting by the fire.” He walked up and down the room. “Fat old coward. Damned fat old coward,” he muttered over and over to himself.