fact that he was a real hero--in spite of his keeping a shop just
like everybody else and making no pretenses. He listened without
a word.

``You can't back out now,'' she ended.

Still he was silent. ``Are you angry at me?'' she asked timidly.

He could not speak. He put his arms round her and pressed his
face into her waving black hair. ``MY Hilda,'' he said in a low
voice. And she felt his blood beating very fast, and she
understood.

``Arbeit und Liebe und Heim,'' she quoted slowly and softly.



X

MR. FEUERSTEIN IS CONSISTENT

The next day Mr. Feuerstein returned from exile. It is always
disillusioning to inspect the unheroic details of the life of
that favorite figure with romancers--the soldier of fortune. Of
Mr. Feuerstein's six weeks in Hoboken it is enough to say that
they were weeks of storm and stress-- wretched lodgments in low
boarding- houses, odd jobs at giving recitations in beer halls,
undignified ejectments for drunkenness and failure to pay,
borrowings which were removed from frank street-begging only in
his imagination. He sank very low indeed, but it must be