Victoria walked straight up to Victor and said,

"Victor, what are you doing?"

As she spoke his fingers nervously opened and the package of money fell upon the floor. Victoria stooped and picked it up and during the conversation that followed, stood between Victor and the door, as if she feared he might attempt to go away before she could talk with him.

"Were you going to steal this money?" Victoria asked the question with a feeling of indignation at Victor's act. For a moment she had no feeling but scorn for him.

Victor looked this way and that. He was so completely surprised that he had no defense to make. He had thought Victoria was sound asleep. She had not awakened when he passed through into her room. At last he said in a low voice--

"I am in great need of money!"

"And so you steal mine!"

"I have not stolen it. I was just going to look at the package."

"Do you know how much money there is here?"

"No, I tell you, Victoria, I never counted it."

"There is a thousand dollars. Do you know what I was going to do with this money?"

"No, I didn't know you had so much."

Victoria was calmer now after the first agitation. Her heart ached as she began to think of the misery Victor was suffering from his own evil life. She came closer up to him and said, trembling with feeling--

"Victor, I drew this money out of the bank today on purpose to give it to you on condition that you take it and go abroad to get a position where you can sing in some country where the story of your trouble in not known. Tell me, Victor, do you love me? If you do, you will take this money and use it to redeem your past. The manager has written letters of introduction to friends in Berlin and London and they will be of very great help to you. O Victor, Victor! My heart is breaking to think of the life you live! My own ambition is almost gone. If it were not for father and the need of keeping on I should be ready to break down. If you love me Vic, for the sake of the dear mother who was so proud of you--"

Victoria looked down suddenly. She threw herself into a chair by the writing desk and burying her head in her arms, sobbed and cried so violently that Victor could not endure it.

He stood irresolutely a moment, then falling on her knees by the sided of his sister he threw his arms about her and cried almost as when he broke through his pride in the prison.

"Victoria, Victoria, I do love you! I am the most miserable being on earth. I don't deserve such love as yours. I am living in a constant hell, Victoria, I will kill myself. Then I shall be out of the way and you will not be troubled with me any more!"

Victor's passion once expressed was so violent and unrestrained that Victoria was terrified. He continued to pour out a perfect torrent of self reproach as he kneeled by Victoria. He almost shrieked in his excitement. Victoria felt her own feeling subside. At last she was able to say, "Victor, it is wicked for you to talk so. Do you want to fill my whole life with horror? Or do you want to start a new career from this night and go on to grow into a happy useful man?"

"O, I will do anything, Vi! Only let me try away from here. Can you love me after all this?"

"Of course I can, Victor. The past will be past to me. It shall rest with you to make me perfectly happy. Assert your manhood. Break away from this gambling passion. With your great gift you can make your place in the world and be of so much service to mankind. And I would be willing to slave all my days to help you if--"

"I know it, I know it, Vi! I learned of your paying up the New York manager. Oh, I have been a brute! I have been a brute! I have not much hope for myself."

"Promise me, Victor. Start out from this very night. You are young and strong. You have everything in your voice. Let the past be forgotten. Live it down. And then after you have won distinction and honor come back and we will all welcome you into a happy life with us here."

Victoria spoke with enthusiasm. She saw that Victor was deeply moved, more so than at any time since his first downward step. Victor listened sadly and when Victoria ceased he continued to kneel there by her with his head bowed and his whole attitude one of the deepest shame and remorse. They were both roused by a cry from the other room. The father had been stirred out of his half stupor, half sleeping condition by the noise. Brother and sister went into the other room and stood by him.

Victor was shocked at his father's appearance. He whispered to Victoria, "How long has father been like this? Isn't he much worse?"

"He has been this way for more than a month. The doctor fears paralysis." Victoria spoke quietly but she had long been accustomed to think of the time when her father would be a helpless invalid.

"Is that you, Victor?" the father suddenly spoke, struggling with difficulty to make himself heard.

"Yes, father," said Victor putting out his hand and laying it on the sick man's.

Mr. Stanwood seemed anxious to make a great effort. Twice he seemed incapable of making any intelligible sound. Then Victor as he bent over caught the words, "Love your sister. Do as she says." He fell back exhausted and lapsed into his customary semi-insensible condition. And those were the last words that Victor ever heard his father speak.

The boy was thoroughly aroused, for the time, out of his selfishness. He insisted on remaining to care for the father while Victoria lay down to get the rest she so much needed. In the morning there was no change in the sick man's condition. The doctor came and said that he might live in the same condition for weeks or even months.

"I ought to stay and help you bear this, Vi," he said when the two were talking over the future plans.

"No, Victor, you can help me more by doing as I said last night. You see," continued Victoria with a sad smile, "how much I depend on you for keeping up here."

She talked with him for an hour. He seemed truly repentant. He was more like the old Victor than she had once hoped for. During the day he yielded to Victoria's plan so far as to go out and make some arrangements for his trip abroad. Victoria placed all the money at his disposal. She felt that she was safe in doing that under the present condition of Victor's mind.

Within the next few days Victor gave every evidence of being true to his first impulse for a new and better life. He followed Victoria's directions in preparing for his trip abroad, her own experience proving of much value to him. And at the end of the week he was all ready to leave for New York. His leave taking with Victoria was pathetic to her because all his old jaunty, self-assertive, vain air of manner was entirely gone. She had never seen him so thoughtful, so humble. In her heart she rejoiced at it.

"Write me from New York and again the minute you land in London, Vic."

"Yes, I will. I don't feel right to go and leave you to take care of father." Victor had parted from him with the sorrowful picture of the broken-minded old man trying in vain to speak. Already the paralytic affection prophesied by the doctor had gained control of his tongue.

"It is best this way," Victoria answered bravely. "Remember, dear Vic, I have put faith in you. Don't disappoint me, will you?"

He went away brushing the tear from his cheek with those last words of the great hearted, loving little sister echoing in his heart, and as Victoria, the tears flowing over her face, watched him until he was out of sight, she sent after him the most longing prayer she had ever uttered that he might redeem his broken past. It was the turning point with him. The crisis. It was well worth all the sacrifice of money and affection if the life could be saved. And she turned back from the window to take up the burden of her home sorrows and her public professional career with the quiet courage that was becoming every day more and more characteristic of her.

The month that followed was a busy one for her. In time the father's condition grew steadily worse. He was a helpless paralytic and required constant attendance. Victoria was able to secure the best of nursing for him but with her public duties she could not bear to leave the invalid entirely to the care of hired strangers. She spent hours herself by his side. The father showed his affection for her in various ways. It was at times more nearly like that of a dog than of a human being. Victoria was repeatedly moved to tears by it.

Her music classes in the slums and the Monday might Question Class, however, gave her a needed change and rest from all this strain at home. One Monday evening she was invited to John King's to dinner and among the half dozen guest besides herself were Richard Bruce and Tom Howard, with whom she was coming to have a pleasant acquaintance through their mutual interest in the slum work. There was a table full of interesting people and the talk turned on books and authors and writing. Victoria knew very little about the world of letters and she was eager to know more of all sorts of life in other directions. She had never heard Bruce talk very much. She had read one or two of his stories in the Monthly Visitor with which he was connected but she had never read any of his longer efforts and was a little surprised when something said by King revealed the fact that Richard had just finished a novel of three hundred pages.

"Richard must be getting wealthy by this time," said John King, with a twinkle of his great dark eyes in the direction of Tom. "This is his fourth book in as many years. Dick, what do you do with all your money? I don't see where it all goes to."

"It all goes to the publishers," replied Richard with a smile.

"That's so," said Tom. "There's no money in writing books, that is, for the author."

"How do you know Tom?" asked King.

"Why, didn't you people know that I was the author of a thrilling novel entitled "The Pen Is Mightier Than The Ink Stand?" I have sent it in type written manuscript to fifteen different publishers and they have all read it with such force that I have been obliged to have it retype written two times. I pay the postage and they do the rest."

"I should like very much to read your book when it comes out," said Victoria demurely.

"May I put you down for a copy, Miss Stanwood?" said Tom without a quiver of his countenance. "The book will be sold by subscription only. Plain cloth $1.75. Half calf $3. Full grown calf $3.50. Morocco $5. Let me call your attention, madam, to the table of contents. Full copper plate steel chiseled engravings, copies from the old masters taken with a Kodak on the spot, 600 pages of the most thrilling descriptions of life around the North Pole on the Fourth of July. Book will be ready for delivery by freight or express any time after Christmas 1912."

Tom rattled off a lot of lingo made up in imitation of the traveling book agent and after the laugh had ceased King said, "I suppose it is true that there in not any money for the author in a book unless it has an exceptionally large sale. I understand that 10,000 copies are considered a good sale for what is called a popular novel. Is that so, Dick?"

"I have heard so. It is certainly true that an author can work longer and harder than almost anyone else and receive less for a year's work in proportion to his labor than the average day laborer."

"Give us an illustration, Dick, out of your own experience."

Richard hesitated. He seldom spoke of his own work or its remuneration. But a glance around the table showed him a group of his nearest friends and for once he broke his reserve and said frankly,

"Well, I will let you into the story of one of my stories. It took me eight months of hard work to write it. Of course during all that time I was not earning anything by my labor. It cost me thirty dollars to have it typewritten, as publishers will hardly look at handwritten manuscript these days. Then I sent it off to a publisher by express at a cost of a dollar and a quarter. It was gone two months and was sent back. I expressed it at the same expense to another house with the same result. The manuscript came back to me after three months' absence. There were thirteen months gone without a cent for my labor of brain. The third publisher to whom I submitted the book accepted it on these terms. He would publish, advertise, and put the book on the market at his own expense and give me to percent royalty on the list price of every book sold after he had sold a thousand copies. I received this offer just fifteen months after I began the story. I accepted it. The manuscript had then to be revised and sent back and forth several times for correction of proof, each time with expense to me. Before the book was out of the press, five more months had gone by. And at the present time just two years and three months have elapsed since I began that story and I have not received a cent from it yet. I shall not get anything from it until the one thousand and first copy is sold and then only ten percent for work that I did over two years ago. Meanwhile I have had to live all these months. Of course if I did not have a salaried position on the Visitor I would starve writing books at that rate,"

"But don't you sometimes sell a story outright for cash down? Asked Victoria to whom all this was a revelation entirely new.

"Yes, but not very often. And when I have done so I have never received more than four hundred dollars for eight months or a year's work. Of course if one is famous as a writer he can make his own terms with his publishers. But the men in this country who can do that can be counted on the fingers. We common writers could never make a living at writing. We are obliged to have a salaried position or starve, as the old English poets in Grubb Street used to do unless they were fortunate enough to get a rich nobleman for a patron."

"I should think the outlook was discouraging to young authors."

"It is," replied Richard, "if a writer expects to make money. An author must write from other motives if he is only average. At the same time I contend that no work is so unevenly paid for considering the time and thought put into it as that of an author. Good average brains will not earn as much food and clothes and comforts as good average muscle. The average carpenter or mason or railroad employee can make more in a year that the average story writer."

The talk led out into a discussion of the rights or the wrongs of the statement by Richard and after a little the guests adjourned to the parlors for the Question Class.

"I feel a little like criticizing your questions to-night," remarked John King as he took out the first one and unfolded it. "How can I give a good answer to a poor question? It takes as much wisdom to ask aright as to answer. However I won't be too severe. Only some of you must not be disappointed at your answers tonight. The fault lies in the way you have put it, some of you."

Question. "Why do more women than men unite with the church?"

"Because there are more of them to start with. Then there is more time given in very many Christian homes to the religious training of girls than of boys. And besides all that, a false theory of life has made very many parents believe that a boy cannot grow up as good as a girl, that he must be a little wild, that is is natural for him to sow his wild oats. There is a difference in the sexes on the emotional side. A woman is more easily excited to tears or tenderness than a man. Some people think a woman is by nature more trustful and more inclined to believe in religious truths than men. I don't believe that myself. I think the reason more women than men are found in churches lies back in the past false training of boys and girls in Christian homes. The double standard of morals and of conduct is responsible for most of the difference between men and women religiously."

Question. "You said awhile ago that you believed foot ball was a good game for college students to play. Is not the game on the whole brutal and degrading as shown by the recent spectacles of games played between large college teams in New England?"

"I have somewhat changed my mind since answering the question some time ago. The manner in which representatives of some of the great colleges have played the game is a disgrace to all true courage and manhood. If I were president of one of those colleges I would use my authority to stop such brutality. Hundreds of the spectators at one of these games said it was the most disgusting exhibition, no more elevating than a bull fight or a prize fight. Many a Christian business man vowed he would take his son out of an institution that encouraged such sports. Yes, the game is in danger of being ruined with the American people unless a speedy stop is put to its professional blackguardism. The game can be played decently. That it has so often been abused of late is exceedingly unfortunate. But no college can afford to encourage anything that turns its students into raving, maddened animals for an hour on Thanksgiving Day."

Question. "If a man is out of work, has a large family dependent on him and cannot get work of any kind and is in need of food, fuel and clothing for himself and family, what had he better do? Beg or steal?"

"There is nothing criminal in begging. There is in stealing. If I were that man myself I would of course beg for my family before I would steal for them. Stealing would cause them more misery than ever and if I were caught and put in jail for it some one would have to beg for them. In a choice between two courses like this there ought not to be any hesitation. It is a dreadful position for a man to confront but committing a crime will not better it any. It will always make it worse. There ought not to be such a possibility before any man. That there is such a possibility before many a working man in this country and the world to-day, ought to make all you young people do some hard thinking and doing, the result of which will make such conditions less common in the future."

Question. "Is the use of whisky, brandy, wine and beer absolutely necessary in a great many cases as it is claimed, for medicinal purposes? Why does a state that has prohibition laws need to permit unlimited drug stores to sell liquor under the law, as medicine? Isn't it bought in most cases for a beverage just the same as if bought in a saloon?"

"There is a city of less than fifty thousand people in a prohibition state where thirty-five drug sores have permits to sell intoxicating liquors for medicinal and scientific purposes. One month the sale from these drug stores amounted to over six thousand. That is to say, six thousand or more persons most of them apparently able-bodied men, claimed that they needed anywhere from a pint of whisky to three bottles of beer for rheumatism, malaria, cold, sich headache, and weak stomach. For all these ills that flesh is heir to, intoxication liquors was the only sufficient remedy. It simply means of course that in that prohibition state the people have elected to have special saloons disguised as drug stores. As for the need of liquor as a medicine I have never believed in it and the necessity for it is very much exaggerated. There is a hospital in a city of the old world which is run on strictly total abstinence principles. Not a drop of alcohol in any form is ever given to a patient in any case. It is claimed that the cures from this hospital exceed those of other hospitals where alcohol is used as a medicine. Recent arctic explorers who have gone into the frozen north farther than man ever went before, have not taken a drop of liquor with them on their journeys and they have endured the cold as well as others who have carried whisky and brandy with them. It has been proved in the German army hospitals that beer drinkers are far more liable to die of gun shot wounds than abstainers, and steps are being taken to prevent so much drinking in the army. I would be willing to risk it myself if all the alcohol on earth were destroyed as a medicine. I never felt the need of it. But other men seem to be so sickly that nothing but three or four weekly or monthly visits to a drug store can keep them from dying of some dreadful disease."

Question. "Will the time ever come, do you think, when the tyranny of fashion in very much of woman's dress will give way to something more comfortable and sensible?"

"I hope so. And not only woman's dress but very many fashionable and absurd articles of men's clothing, tooth pick shoes for example. I hope none of you young men ever wear those tooth pick shoes?"

There was a shuffling of feet in the room as of several pairs of shoes being drawn under chairs and some of the girls looked expressively around but John King did not appear to notice. He smiled and took up another question.

Question. "Would you advise young people to read very much fiction?"

"They ought to read some fiction. If you mean, ought they to devour love stories of detective stories or exciting French novels and course I should say no. But fiction of the right sort is always good reading. It is as natural and healthy for a young person to read a good novel as it is to look at a beautiful picture or admire an artistic grouping of color."

Question. "I really cannot afford to buy any Christmas presents this year. I owe other bills. I haven't paid for my winter har. But if I don't get presents for some people they will think I am stingy and mean. What is my duty? Ought I to buy Christmas gifts unless I can afford to?"

"I was in a Boston store one day just before Christmas time and among the crowd of shoppers I saw one nicely dressed woman who had her arms full of bundles smiling and chatting with another woman who had just come in.

‘Ah, you have your hands full,' said the new comer.

‘Yes, I had to buy at least ten dollars' worth of presents for people I don't really care about. Great nuisance, isn't it?' She went away laughing and the other woman said to a companion, 'Do you know, to my positive knowledge that woman owes her dressmaker ten dollars and her poor sewing girl has been repeatedly to her house and cannot get the money. And yet she thinks she is celebrating the birth of Christ by getting those people she doesn't care for ten dollars' worth of presents while the dressmaker probably needs the money to buy food and fuel. It's a shame!' Shame indeed! Celebrating the birth of Christ! No, I should say you have no right to buy Christmas gifts if you cannot afford it or if other people who have meed of the money are going to suffer from your foolish extravagance. It is wicked to celebrate Christmas that way. A good deal of the mad rush in the stores at Christmas time is as pagan as if Christ had never come into the world at all. You can show your love for your friends without causing distress and indebtedness you ought not to incur. The beautiful simple custon of exchanging some little token of affection has become degraded into a great mercantile opportunity be the holiday trade and in much of it Christ is not only forgotten but directly disgraced and misrepresented to the world."

It was this week that Victoria had a new experience that brought a new factor into her life and must be related now. She had been to the Symphony and had played before the usual fashionable, richly-dressed, brilliant audience. The Symphony was unusually well attended that winter. When she came out it was beginning to rain and she took a cab. She usually rode home with one of the other ladies who sang in the company and who lived not far from her on the north side. But to-night she happened to be going the other way and Victoria was alone. It was about eleven o'clock. When the cab drew up to the river there was a little delay for some reason and the cab stopped on the bridge. Victoria sat back looking out through the mist at the lights on the river and humming over some strains of the evening's music. She felt happy and hopeful. Victor had written her again telling of his engagement to sing in a good London company. She had received the letter that morning. Her success in the Symphony was gratifying to her. She had won her place with the public and she felt assured of the future, financially. Her heart was light and the world seemed not such a very bad place after all, even as she saw it dripping and dirty through the window.

Finally the cab moved on the bridge a little farther and then stopped again. There was some delay about the draw. Victoria lowered the window a little on the side away from the rain and put her head out a little. As she did so, she saw a girl. She might have been eighteen or twenty years old, standing on the foot passenger's bridge looking down at the river. The light from the cab lamp and the brighter rays from one of the bridge lights brought the girl's face into full view. She was very pretty. There was an unmistakable daintiness and purity about her that attracted Victoria and something in the lines of the countenance that reminded her of her old invalid friend, Aura.

But more than anything else that touched Victoria was the complete look of despair and desolation and utter hopelessness on the girl's face. Victoria had been in the slums, she had stood by poor creatures in the hospitals, she had even become will enough acquainted with the struggles of the sewing girls to understand the depths of despair to which they often sank. With all her affectionate sympathy her heart went out to this stranger. The resemblance to Aura intensified her feeling. It was not necessary to tell her that here was a human being in need of human love and shelter. She might be even now thinking of taking her own life. Victoria thought of all this suddenly as she swiftly recalled the fact printed in the papers only a little while before of a girl who had thrown herself off the end of the very draw bridge where she now was.

All this took but a few seconds. Victoria was not a woman of senseless or foolish impulse but she was a woman grown now, with a growing longing in her heart to do good in the great world. She yielded to the God-given impulse that told her here was need of a living love to save a despairing soul and, opening the door of the cab she stepped out, and asking the driver to hold the cab there a minute swiftly crossed over the short distance between her and the stranger and touched her on the shoulder.

The girl turned around and, trembling, faced Victoria. There was no mistaking the divine sympathy that made Victoria's face as beautiful as an unfallen angel's. With one bound her soul had leaped that cold wide gulf that separates people who have never met through the formalities of social custom and the girl knew that there was human love and sympathy in the world yet.

Victoria said simply, "Dear, you are in trouble. The good God made us both. I once had a friend who had a face like yours. For her sake I want to help you. Will you let me? Come! Let us get into the cab. There is a God and He is good."

The girl uttered a great sob. Then she clutched at Victoria's arm as if she were falling, falling down some hideous gulf and then as if in a dream she allowed Victoria to half lead, half carry her to the cab. Victoria entered behind her and shut the door. And once within, the girl went into the most violent hysterics. Victoria kept her arms about her. The cab moved on. When it reached the house Victoria succeeded in getting her rescued soul into her own room. The rain began to pour down in torrents. It beat on the windows like the spirits of defeated demons. And Victoria kneeled by the side of her bed, by the side of the drenched form of the stranger, drenched and beaten like a storm-beaten Easter lily, and prayed for her as angels pray, looking down with tears upon the mighty sorrow and suffering of the wicked cities of men on the earth.

~ end of chapter 9 ~