The Fortune Hunter | Page 9

would be best for you to introduce them to me at once and let ME speak.''
``No--no,'' she protested earnestly, terror in her voice and her hand trembling in his. ``That would spoil everything. You wouldn't understand them, or they you. I'll speak--and see you Monday night.''
``Let it be so,'' he conceded. ``But I must depart. I am studying a new role.'' He had an engagement to take supper with several of his intimates at the Irving Place cafe, where he could throw aside the heaviest parts of his pose and give way to his appetite for beer and Schweizerkase sandwiches. ``How happy we shall be!'' he murmured tenderly, kissing her cheek and thinking how hard it was to be practical and keep remote benefits in mind when she was so beautiful and so tempting and so trustful. He said aloud: ``I am impatient, soul's delight! Is it strange?'' And he bowed like a stage courtier to a stage queen and left her.
She joined Sophie and Heilig and walked along in silence, Sophie between Otto and her. He caught glimpses of her face, and it made his heart ache and his courage faint to see the love-light in her eyes--and she as far away from him as Heaven from hell, far away in a world from which he was excluded. He and Sophie left her at her father's and he took Sophie home.
Sophie felt that she had done a fair evening's work--not progress, but progress in sight. ``At least,'' she reflected, ``he's seeing that he isn't in it with Hilda and never can be. I must hurry her on and get her married to that fool. A pair of fools!''
Heilig found his mother waiting up for him. As she saw his expression, anxiety left her face, but cast a deeper shadow over her heart. She felt his sorrow as keenly as he--she who would have laid down her life for him gladly.
``Don't lose heart, my big boy,'' she said, patting him on the shoulder as he bent to kiss her.
At this he dropped down beside her and hid his face in her lap and cried like the boy-man that he was. ``Ach, Gott, mother, I love her SO!'' he sobbed.
Her tears fell on the back of his head. Her boy--who had gone so bravely to work when the father was killed at his machine, leaving them penniless; her boy-- who had laughed and sung and whistled and diffused hope and courage and made her feel that the burden was not a burden but a joy for his strong, young shoulders.
``Courage, beloved!'' she said. ``Hilda is a good girl. All will yet be well.'' And she felt it--God would not be God if He could let this heart of gold be crushed to powder.

III
FORTUNE FAVORS THE IMPUDENT
Like all people who lead useful lives and neither have nor pretend to have acquired tastes for fine-drawn emotion, Otto and Hilda indulged in little mooning. They put aside their burdens--hers of dread, his of despair--and went about the work that had to be done and that healthfully filled almost all their waking moments; and when bed-time came their tired bodies refused either to sit up with their brains or to let their brains stay awake. But it was gray and rainy for Hilda and black night for Otto.
On Sunday morning he rose at half-past three, instead of at four, his week-day rising time. Many of his hard-working customers were astir betimes on Sunday to have the longer holiday. As they would spend the daylight hours in the country and would not reach home until after the shop had closed, they bought the supplies for a cold or warmed-up supper before starting. Otto looked so sad--usually he was in high spirits--that most of these early customers spoke to him or to Joe Schwartz about his health. There were few of them who did not know what was troubling him. Among those friendly and unpretending and well-acquainted people any one's affairs were every one's affairs--why make a secret of what was, after all, only the routine of human life the world over and the ages through? Thus Otto had the lively but tactful sympathy of the whole community.
He became less gloomy under the warmth of this succession of friendly faces and friendly inquiries. But as trade slackened, toward noon, he had more leisure to think, and the throbbing ache returned to his heavy heart. All the time pictures of her were passing before his eyes. He had known her so long and she had become such an intimate part of his daily life, so interwoven with it, that he could not look at present, past or future without seeing her.
Why, he had known her since she was a baby. Did he not remember the day when he,