of the offended kleptomaniac.

"But about the apology, Mr. Gilder," he reminded, speaking very
deferentially, yet with insistence.

Business instinct triumphed over the magnate's irritation, and
his face cleared.

"Oh, I'll apologize," he said with a wry smile of discomfiture.
"I'll make things even up a bit when I get an apology from
Gaskell. I shrewdly suspect that that estimable gentleman is
going to eat humble pie, of my baking, from his wife's recipe.
And his will be an honest apology--which mine won't, not by a
damned sight!" With the words, he left the room, in his wake a
hugely relieved Smithson.

Alone in the office, Sarah neglected her work for a few minutes
to brood over the startling contrast of events that had just
forced itself on her attention. She was not a girl given to the
analysis of either persons or things, but in this instance the
movement of affairs had come close to her, and she was compelled
to some depth of feeling by the two aspects of life on which
to-day she looked. In the one case, as she knew it, a girl under
the urge of poverty had stolen. That thief had been promptly
arrested, finally she had been tried, had been convicted, had
been sentenced to three years in prison. In the other case, a
woman of wealth had stolen. There had been no punishment. A
euphemism of kleptomania had been offered and accepted as
sufficient excuse for her crime. A polite lie had been written
to her husband, a banker of power in the city. To her, the