It was noon when Stuart reached the Primrose house and Nan was again out. He received the announcement from her mother with a feeling of rage he could ill conceal.

"Where is she? I seem never to be able to find her at home."

"Now, don\'t be absurd, Jim. You know she would have broken any engagement to see you, had she known you were going to call to-day. She has only gone to the dressmaker\'s."

"How long will she be there?"

"Until four."

"Four hours at a dressmaker\'s——"

"And then she\'s going to the hair dressser\'s."

"And then?"

"She has an engagement for tea. I don\'t expect her home until seven. I\'m awfully sorry."

"Of course, I understand, Mrs. Primrose," Stuart said with a light laugh, "I should have told her—but I didn\'t know until a few moments ago that I was coming."

"Nothing serious has happened, I hope?" she asked, with carefully modulated sympathy which said plainly that she hoped for the worst.

"No. Just say that I\'ll call after dinner."

"All right, Jim, dear," the mother purred. "I\'ll see that she\'s here if I have to lock the door."

Stuart smiled in spite of himself as he passed out murmuring:

"Thank you."

It was useless to try to work. His mind was in a tumult of passionate protest. He must have this thing out with Nan once for all. Their engagement must be announced immediately.

He went to the Players\' Club and lunched alone in brooding silence. He tried to read and couldn\'t. He strolled out aimlessly and began to ramble without purpose. Somehow to-day everything on which his eye rested and every sound that struck his ear proclaimed the advent of the new power of which Bivens was the symbol—Bivens with his delicate, careful little hand, his bulging forehead, his dark keen eyes! An ice wagon dashed by. It belonged to the ice trust. A big coal cart blocked the sidewalk. The coal trust was one of the first. The street crossing at Broadway and Twenty-third Street was jammed with a string of delivery waggons from the department stores whose growth had crushed a hundred small trades. The clang of the cars proclaimed the Street Railway Merger and a skyscraper called "The Flatiron" was just raising its giant frame on the little triangle where a half-dozen old-fashioned buildings had stood for generations. Across Madison Square the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was tearing down a whole block, section by section, and a palace of white marble was slowly rearing its huge form. The passing of an era was plain. He could see the hand of the new mysterious power building a world before his very eyes. Strange he hadn\'t noticed it until Bivens\'s dark sneering face this morning, insolent in its conscious strength, had opened his eyes. What chance had his old friend Woodman against such forces?

Yet why should he resent them personally? He was young. The future was his—not the past. He didn\'t resent them. Of course not. What he did resent was the approach of the particular Juggernaut named John C. Calhoun Bivens toward the woman he loved. That Bivens should fall hopelessly and blindly in love with Nan at first sight was too stupefying to be grasped at once. She couldn\'t love such a man—and yet his millions and that slippery mother were a sinister combination. He congratulated himself that his interview with Bivens had put him in possession of a most important secret, and he would force the issue at once.

By evening he had thrown off his depression and met Nan with something of his old gaiety, to which she responded with a touch of coquetry.

"Tell me, Jim," she began with a smile of mischief in her eyes, "why you called at the remarkable hour of twelve noon, to-day? Am I becoming so resistless that work no longer has any charms? You must have something very important to say?" Her eyes danced with the consciousness of her advantage.

"Yes. I have, Nan," he answered soberly, taking her hand. "I want a public announcement of our engagement in to-morrow morning\'s papers."

"Jim!"

"I mean it."

"But why? You know the one concession, the only one I have ever made to my mother\'s hostility to you, is that our engagement shall be kept a secret until we are ready to marry. We must play fair."

"I will, we are ready now."

Nan\'s voice broke into a ripple of laughter.

"Oh, are we?—I didn\'t know it."

"Yes, that\'s what I came to tell you," Stuart went on, catching her spirit of fun and pressing her hand. "I\'ve arranged a little trip to the country to-morrow, and I\'m going to convince you before we return. You can go?"

"Of course, I\'m open to conviction."

"And you consent to the announcement?"

"To-night?"

"Yes."

"No. You must convince me first. You\'ve planned the trip for that purpose."

"Make the announcement to-night, dear! On my honour I promise to convince you to-morrow that we are ready. I\'ve an argument that never fails—an argument no woman can resist."

"Not to-night, Jim," was the laughing reply.

"Can\'t you trust me, when I tell you that I\'ve discovered something to-day that makes it necessary?"

The girl looked at him sharply.

"Now, I can\'t trust you at all! I\'ve got to know the secret of your call this morning. What has happened since we parted last night?"

"I have seen Mr. Bivens."

Nan leaped to her feet, her face flushed, her voice ringing with triumph.

"And you did what I asked you—oh, you\'re a darling! Why did you tease me so last night? You accepted his offer?"

"You misunderstand, I didn\'t call on Bivens. He came to see me."

"And you refused! Oh, Jim, don\'t tell me you were so foolish!"

"I\'m sorry to disappoint you, dear, but I had to—that\'s all."

The girl dropped into her seat with a sigh, while he went on:

"My interview with Bivens led to a most important and embarrassing discovery."

"Embarrassing—what do you mean? He offered you the position?"

"Yes, and finally confessed that he did it wholly to please you."

Nan\'s figure suddenly straightened.

"Indeed! I\'m glad to hear that my wishes find favour somewhere!"

"Bivens further confided in me the fact that he is hopelessly and desperately in love with you."

A flash of anger mantled Nan\'s cheeks.

"That will do, Jim," she said in quiet cold tones. "Your joke has gone far enough."

"Joke! Do you think I could joke on such a subject?"

A smile began to play about the corners of the full lips.

"You don\'t mean it—really?"

"Certainly. He told me so in the plainest sort of blunt English. And you mean to say that you have not suspected it?"

"I never dreamed he was so easy!" Still smiling dreamily Nan crossed her hands over her knees and studied the pattern in the rug, ignoring the presence of her lover.

"Then you underestimate your powers."

"Evidently."

Her eyes were laughing again mischievously.

"Let\'s not joke, Nan. It\'s too serious."

"Serious! I fail to see it."

"Can\'t you see that we must at once announce our engagement?"

The girl\'s lips curled with the faintest suggestion of sarcasm.

"I don\'t see it at all. You may be a good lawyer, but I fail to follow your logic."

Stuart rose with a gesture of anger.

"Come to the point, Nan. Let\'s not beat the devil around the stump any longer. You know as well as I do that you\'ve been trying to flirt with this little insect——"

"Trying to flirt?"

"Yes."

"Trying? Don\'t you think I could if I wished without bungling the effort? What a poor opinion you hold of my talent."

"You know in your heart of hearts you despise Bivens."

"On the contrary, I vastly admire him. The man who can enter with his handicap this big heartless city and successfully smash the giants who oppose him is not an insect. I\'d rather call him a hero. All women admire success."

"I see," Stuart replied with suppressed fury, "you enjoy your conquest."

"And why not?" she drawled, with lazy indifference.

"It\'s disgusting!"

Nan fixed her dark eyes on Stuart.

"How dare you use such a word to me?"

"Because it\'s true and you know it."

"True or false, you can\'t say it"—she rose deliberately—"you may go now!"

"Forgive me, dear," Stuart stammered in a queer muffled voice. "I didn\'t mean to hurt you. I was mad with jealousy."

"You may go," was the hard even answer.

"I can\'t go like this, dearest," he pleaded. "You must forgive me—you must! Look at me!"

She turned slowly, stared him full in the face for a moment without the quiver of an eyelid, her fine figure tense, erect, cold, as she quietly said:

"You are tiring me, Jim."

For an instant an impulse of overwhelming anger mastered him. He returned her look with one of concentrated rage and their eyes met in the first supreme clash of wills. For a moment he saw the world red, and caught in its glare something he had never seen in Nan before, a conscious cruelty and a joy in her power that was evil—a cruelty that could spring only from the deepest and most merciless self-worship. For the first time he saw a cold-blooded calculation behind her beautiful eyes, caught its accent in the richly modulated voice, and felt it in the smile which showed the white teeth—the smile of a woman who would pause at nothing to get what she wanted. The old savage impulse to strangle surged through his veins, and he was startled into the consciousness of his situation by the fierce grip of his finger nails in his fists clinched so tight they began to cut the flesh.

A blush of shame tinged his face as he tremblingly said:

"Please, dear, let\'s not part like this! I\'ve suffered enough to-day. You\'re only teasing me. And I\'ve acted like a fool. Say that you forgive me!"

"Our engagement is at an end, Mr. Stuart," was the quiet answer.

"Nan——"

Before he could recover from the shock or utter a protest, she opened the door and he had passed out into the night.