Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1911 — STORIES of WALL STREET The CALL of the STREET [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STORIES of WALL STREET The CALL of the STREET

By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

■■mw S the taxicab whirled round Al the corner, and the rumble I of the wheels upon the cob- - | bles was replaced by the liquid swish of the tires JOK!| upon Fifth Avenue's asS& jS&I phalt, Steele turned suddenly, looking at his wife. rewUl He had an impression poll that she had spoken and 3 that he > niomentaril y lost ■mmmmw in the intricacies of the In-

terstate Tunnel deal, had neglected to answer her. "What did you say, Sara?" he asked. But his words were drowned in the' roar of a passing Forty-second street car. The wheels ,of the taxicab bounced softly across the car tracks, and the ride** home —uptown—was continued with speed undiminlshed. Little flashes of cold light illuminated the interior of the vehicle in quick succession, thrown by the passing procession of high-swinging arc lamps, swiftly silhouetting the woman's pure profile against the dark background of cushions. Steele watched, for the moment forgetful of the Interstate Tunnel problem, swelling with the pride of possession. “By George,” he said, with contented appreciation, “she is beautiful.” “Thank you, dear,” she said; "I didn’t think you’d notice.” "What was it, dear?” he asked. “What was it you said a while back?” She frowned in pretty perplexity, trying to remember. ~~— “Just as I closed the door,” he helped. “I thought you asked a question —I was thinking of something else at the moment” “Oh! Of course you were thinking of something else; you are always thinking of something else, Jim.” There was a note of petulance in her voice that puzzled him. “And that was what I asked. It was silly enough —I said, *A penny for your thoughts.* Extravagance, for I knew you were thinking of business." He felt vaguely that fie was being Indicted and began clumsily to defend 2 himself. “Yes. You were right. Affairs in rather a mix up just now, little girl; they bother a chap. Important deal on ”

~ “Always, always,” she commented, wearily—even a trifle bitterly. But he did not hear; the bare reference to the importance of the tunnel deal had plunged his mind into a profundity of calculations. While he fumbled with his keys, the shivered noticeably in the brisk air of the early morning hours. “Cold, dear?" he asked, roused out of his affairs for the moment. Smiling up at hiin, "A wee bit,” she confessed, “but happy, Jim.” “Eh?” He stared. “Happy?” “Happy,” she repeated with a low laugh as the door swung open. Steele gated after her, bewildered, while he shot the bolts. Then he followed her upstairs, heavily. Ten minutes later, she looked up from her dressing table to see him standing in the doorway of her boudoir, glowering down upon her. He had exchanged his dress coat for a quilted smoking Jacket, his shoes for slippers, and was smoking; she smiled, struck by the grotesque figure he made. “Well?” she queried, archly, her hands busy with her hair. “What made you say that, Sara?" he demanded, bluntly. Her eyes widened. “Say what, Jim?” “About being happy. What made you me nr ion it ’ Why are you “more happy tonight than any other? Aren’t you generally happy, little girl?” She rose, came over to him, kissed him. Then, fumbling with a frog on his jacket, “I was more happy tonight than usually,” she admitted. "I suppose—generally—l’m as happy as I've *ny right to be, dear.” "I don’t understand.” His face showed that plainly. “Why—tonight especially V - - “Because my husband was with me. How little, how very little of your time you give your wife, Jim.” “Why—l ” he stammered awkwardly, struggling with a totally new

idea. This had never occurred to him "before. "Ton are away all day,” she went on—not complaining, but making a ealm statement of fact—“and every night you are off to the club, or some one Is here, closeted with you. It's business, I know, but Why, I hardly ever have you to myself, Jim. I Tonight, the opera, the music, the lights, with you—why, it was like an oasis to me—an oasis in a weary, husbandless desert” She laughed nervously. “But—but business- —he tried to ■object, realising the justice of her finding. “Is there nothing in life but Wall -Street?” she pleaded, softly. “Can't you give it up, Jim, before long, for uny sake? Why should you keep on tend on forever, wearing your life out —for what? You’ve made a comfort,abl* fortune, dear; it’s enough to last

us the rest of our lives and give the boy a good start besides. Why need you keep it up, always, at the expense of your health and your family? You know that Dr. Dexter warned you to take a rest last month, and you laughed at him, and- 2 —” “Oh, Dexter!” he derided. “He doesn’t understand. Neither do you, little girl. Why, what'll I do, anyhow? No.’/ His mouth straightened into a firm, hard line; he had settled the matter, man-like, forgetting the original issue—her happiness, not his own. “No, I can’t give it up. It would be foolishness .with —with my prospects, my career. No, yotKdon’t understand." He decided-.to-xxrfnfort her with a platitude: "’Men must work and wonlen must weep/ you know.” “Why?” she cried, rebelliously. "Why must we weep? Why must men work incessantly?” “The law of life,” he told her with portentous gravity, Naturally enough, perhaps, the element of the unforeseen figures largely in the life of the Street. On the following aftrnoon, Steele's deal in Interstate Tunnel came to an unexpected end—to a successful culmination unexpectedly sudden. The clique of men who, desiring to obtain control of the Interstate Tunnel Company, had combined their Interests and put Steele at their head, allowing him full discretion —thereby forming what is termed a "blind pool”—had calculated that his campaign- wouldhe oneof weeks,-- if not of months, before their object was attained. As it happened, however, another combination had been formed with precisely the same object, thereby creating an unusual demand for Tunnel Common—so unusual, in fact, that the market price went up by leaps and bounds, and the trading in Tunnel Common became the feature of the day. Steele and those brokers who acted by his orders bought steadily, at the market; the opposition bought as steadily, if less successfully. But, about two o’clock in the afternoon, the ticker ceased to record transactions in Tunnel Common; the demand had outlasted the supply; a “natural corner" had resulted. Steele and his opponents between them had bought up every available share in addition to a large number of shares in excess of the total issue—the outcome of persistent “short" selling by the bear element. When he realized what had happened, Steele told himself that his work for the day was done. He could return to his office and count the gains and receive the congratulations of his associates. The shorts were squealing in agony, but that was their affair; he would settle with them tomorrow. As he was about to leave thefiSoor, however, the staccato rapping of the gavel on the rostrum made him pause; he knew, or suspected, what was coming, and would not have missed it for much. A slight lull succeeding the frenzied uproar that had prevailed in the board room, he was able to hear the chairman’s voice as it boomed out over the heads of the brokers, announcing the suspension of Belden & Tausig. Steele smiled grimly under his mustache. "Belden will think twice, I guess, before he monkeys with the buzz saw again,” he thought as he crossed Broad street to the Mills building. At the same time he was both surprised” and disappointed to find that he was experiencing nothing of Elation; he, who had hugged jealously to himself the hope of such a just vengeance during all the years of his enmity with Belden, felt the glow of accomplishment barely warm in his breast. Rather, indeed, he was conscious of a dull depression, a listless weariness, as though he were an old man, drugged with years. Which Steele was not-/

Even his success in obtaining the control of Interstate Tunnel seemed a tawdry, futile thing. He found himself walking slowly, his step lacking its accustomed springiness, his head drooping and hot and heavy, his feet like leaden weights. He was tired, be assumed, waking up to the fact that he had been working! hard and very steadily for many days. And when he found Belden, the obnoxious, humbly waiting him in the ante room, the keen edge of his gratification was blunted by that same, gray apathy. He did not care—now. It-was not until Belden approached him with his Insinuating whine that was colored with something of his one-time patronizing disdain—‘T say, Jim, my boy”—that the change came. It was utterly without premeditation on Steele’s part, something entirely outside of his calculations. When the hateful accents fell upon his ear; Steele seemed to lose control of himself; for the time the room swam before him; he was shaken by a little gust of febrile rage, which, he later considered, must have seemed childishly spiteful. “Oh, go to the devil!” he cried, whirling upon his heel to face Belden.

“You —you get out of my office—Til have nothing to do with you!” instantly Steele began to regret; passion which had gripped him so strongly that he had forgotten himself was a new thing in his experience. He had never made such an exhibition of himself —to his knowledge, at least —so causelessly. He glanced around the room, shame-faced, wondering who had witnessed his trans port There were two witnesses; Hunt office partner of the firm of C. D. Hunt & Wilder, through which Steele cleared his transactions, and in whose offices he was accorded a desk as a courtesy; and a stranger to Steele—a stout man, florid of complexion, thickset. Him Steele intuitively knew for Tausig, Belden’s partner. “Oh,”, he said, shortly, “you’re Tausig?" The fellow nodded. “I’ve nothing against you personally, Tausig,” Steele continued more calmly; “but Belden ! A damned scoundrel — gives you a bad name, Tausig. But this is what I wanted to say: you tell Belden what I had Intended to, that your firm will get just the same treatment from us as the rest of the shorts in this deal. And —and we’re not disposed to be hard on the shorts.” Tausig nodded curtly. “That’s what we wanted to know, Mr. Steele,” he replied. “If there’s to be no discrimination, we may pull through. Good day.” And he left. Hunt watched the door close before speaking. Then he laughed shortly. “If Belden’s looks go for anything, Steele,” he commented, “you’ll pay /high for that.” Steele stared at him dully under heavy eyelids. “Oh, Belden,” he said, after a while, slowly; “he be damn’. Anyhow, his power in the street is broken.” To himself his tongue seemed thick and unwieldy; he had some difficulty in enunciating distinctly. It annoyed Steele, and Hunt was watching him strangely. “Yes,” he heard Hunt say, “but this isn’t the first time that Belden’s been broken. Maybe it isn’t to be the last, either.” “To tell the truth," said Steele,.very carefully, “I didn’t mean to flare up—that way. Something seemed to snap. I wonder ” "Reaction, perhaps,” suggested Hunt, coolly philosphical in the consideration of another’s troubles. "You’ve kept yourself keyed up to the fever pitch for several weeks', and a reaction’s bound to come.” Steele did not directly reply. He sat down, with his hands in his pockets, and stared gloomily at the carpet “Anyhow,” he said, rising again after an Interval, "I’m —tired, tired. I’m going home —now. Take care of things ” He reached blindly for his hat and staggered a pace or two toward the door. Hunt jumped up, alarmed. “Here, old man!” he said. Steele fell, like a column pushed from its base; he fell, to lie inert, supine, breathing heavily. It was three months later, almost to a day, before the Street again knew Jim Steele’s footsteps. Following his discharge from a sanitarium as convalescent —a discharge accompanied by a warning that would return to business life within three years at his peril— t few weeks had been put in at Palm Beach. Now Steele and his wife were to spend a few weeks in town until their son’s spring term at school should be ended, when the three of them were to go abroad.

As for Mrs. Steele, she was radiantly happy; for tfte first time in their twelve years of married life she had what she most desired in all the ■world —first place in the thoughts of her husband. For it was an understood thing that Steele had given up the Street and all its works —"for better or worse,” Steele had laughed when he promised. Yet it was with a distinct shiver of foreboding that the woman looked up from her breakfast plate, on the morning following their return to the city, to find Steele eyeing her with a gaze half doubtful, half deprecating. She put down her fork deliberately, her eyes upon the letter which he had been reading, and still held in his hand. Steele fancied that she lost a shade of color, and he could not ignore the anxiety in her eyes. “What is it?” she demanded, almost breathlessly. He laughed lightly to reassure her. “Why, nothing of any great importance, Sara; only that I’m going downtown for an hour or two today.” He saw her little hands clinch until the knuckles stood out white and hard against the firm pink of her flesh, and hurried to explains ““Hunt writes me that he wants to buy my seat on the Exchange. He’s establishing a couple of branches, and thinks that the firm needs another floor member to handle its increased business. He’ll pay a good price, so I’m going down to sell to him.” “You’re —you’re not ” she faltered. "?ib, no; I’m not going to go into the market, at all. I’m through with all that; It’s behind me. I’m merely goiag to sever the last tie that binds me to the Street.” “You promised, you know,” she reminded him, dubiously, for she knew his weakness —being the man’s wife — and what hold the Street had upon him, and she was afraid that he might prove an easy prey to temptation. “I promised, sweetheart,” he assented, again laughing, “and I give you my word again.” And with that pledge sealed warm upon his lips, she let him go; not, however, without misgivings stirring deep in her heart But once In the elevated train, ■ bound downtown, he forgot that in the

interest aroused by a prominent article on the financial page of his newspaper. It was one of those rare, iqfrequent accounts which sometimes see the light, written by an “insider,” an expert, detailing with fine Insight just what motives were then actuating the bear element in the furious raid it was making upon Industrial securities. In particular, Steele gathered that the clique headed by Tom West, his dearest rival of the old waa hammering Tennessee Rope & Twine. Steele considered such action unmoral; West, he allowed, was a nat-ural-born pessimist In regard to stock values, but that was no excuse for his making T. R. & T. his shining mark. Steele happened to know • a good deal concerning that stock and the concern which fathered it, and he was quite convinced that it was sound —worth all of par. Moreover, he held a large block of T. R. & T. as an income investment; it annoyed him to have the market value of his investment depreciated. Now, if he were back in the Street, he would find a way to convince West and his crowd of their mistake. But Steele sighed. He found much, indeed, to induce a feeling of depression; throughout all of his trip he was conscious of a curious, unhappy sessatlon of utter detachment from his surroundings. He was forgotten—already. The Street is a fickle mistress. Even his newsdealer in the Empire building arcade stared blankly in Steele’s face when he paused to buy some publication he did not want, for old time’s sake. To crown all, Hunt happened to be out for the morning. Steele went downstairs from Hunt’s office, feeling, he proclaimed glumly, “like a loose tooth.”. He stood for a while staring desolately at the scluptures on the Broad Street facade of the new Exchange building. He hardly gave them a thought, however; his mind was occupied in grasping the fact of his complete dissociation from the body financial. Suddenly he found himself making for the door of the Exchange; almost without his own volition he pushedthem aside and entered the lobby. There he stood, for a moment aghast. What had he done? What right had he there? Then he remembered that he had every right, as yet; his seat was still his own, the freedom of the floor his. Why not go in and see what “the boys” were about? Perhaps he might win a friendly smile, at least; and he fairly ached for a word of welcome, a sign he was not forgotten. Absent-mindedly he deposited his coat in the cloak room, .and strolled, out upon the floor of the Exchange. He arrived at a critical moment The West clique was undoubtedly pounding the industrial more than it merited. Several points had already been lopped off the day’s opening price. Steele discovered the fact, frowning stern disapproval. There seemed to be little or no buying, although a reaction was bound to come. West’s crowd was selling short and would have to buy in to cover before very long, thereby causing a rally; a far-seeing man would seize upon this opportunity. Hollwedel, board member of West’s firm, plunging back from a consultation with his partner by telephone, spied Steele. The latter’s hat was suddenly smashed down over his ears. He pushed it up, laughing, to see Hollwedel standing before him, offering a welcome hand. “Howdy, Steele?” he panted. “You back? Glad to see you. Sell you a thousand Rope & Twine at 65,” he added, almost in jest. "Done!” cried Steele, mechanically, as though he had suddenly wakened from a dream.

Seemingly by magic he found a pad and pencil in his hand; he never knew how he had acquired them. Scrawling a memorandum on the top sheet, he came back at Hollwedel right - manfully. "Got any more?” He was accommodated to the extent of another thousand shares, at Sara? He never gave her a thought The wine of battle coursed through his veins. His word forgotten, he honied to the telephone to apprise Hunt & Wilder that he was again trading, then hurled himself back into the thick of the fray, to the rescue of the abused Tennessee Rope & Twine. For a few minutes he bought right and left, regardless of consequence, then settled down to a more sane method of procedure. A whisper stole around the room: "Steele’s back—-buying Rope & Twine. Must have an inside tip.” Others, so believing, began to buy. West’s associates became alarmed; they had anticipated a reaction, but not so early in the day. The close of the day’s trading found Steele sitting on one of the wall seats; tired, happy, perturbed. He had had a glorious debauch; he had . demonstrated the fallacy of West’s reasoning; had turned the tables on him; and he had bought something like twenty-five thousand shares of Tennessee Rope & Twine. His profits were handsome enough, on paper, but he did not care to hold the stock as an investment, and he. would have to feed it to the market by driblets in order to avoid a fall in price. And — Sara? He was beginning to remember her. He would have to spend the following day or two on the floor. But how was he to explain his defection to his wife? —— , J - And at that moment Tausig was announcing to Belden, in their private office: "I hear Steele’s back on the floor.” “He is, ehr* Belden licked bls thin lips, glancing furtively at his partner. “Oh, he is back at last, is he?" he said again, with meaning, tracing an invisible diagram on his blotter with

bls pen. “Why, I'm glad to hear it!" Tausig did not doubt hi* sincerity. To Steele’s* relief his prolonged absence of the day before had passed unnoticed; at least, Mrs. Steele made no comment But, as he rose from the breakfast table he felt that the moment for an explanation was at hand. Her eye was upon him, and he was fain to avoid it. “I am sorry* dear,” he said, uneasily, “But I must go downtown again today. I—l have to consult with Morton.” He named his lawyer. It was not strictly untrue; he did mean to see Morton, for a minute or two, if he found time. ?You have sold your seat?” she asked, abruptly. ‘T—er —Hunt, was not ready yesterday. It’ll be settled In a day or so.” As yet he shrank from the lie direct, but the following day a new subterfuge must be invented; he dared not tell her the truth. “I And,” he said glibly—having thought it out beforehand, during a sleepless portion of the night—“that I will have to spend several days—perhaps a week —at the office. A matter has cropped up requiring my attention.” “I understood that Mr. Hunt had arragged everything by your instructions, using your power of attorney.” “I had —er—forgotten this matter—due to my illness perhaps.” How would it work out? Steele failed to foresee. The reformed tippler had broken the pledge. A week passed. The issue grew, became as a wall between the man and the woman. Finally it might no longer be evaded.

‘Tm.involved in the market,” he told her, surlily, with a dogged air. “Jim!” He cringed. \ “I —I can’t help it, Sara —it’s beyond helping now. I’m sorry, but I saw the chance, I thought, to make a few thousands and—” “But, Jim!” He looked quickly away from the pain in her eyeS; he would not have witnessed it, knowing that he had caused it, for worlds. “But, Jim, you—you gave me your word!" "I know, I —■” He floundered miserably under her accusing gaze. "But it can’t be helped. In a few days—a week, at the outside —I hope to have it all fixed. And that will be the end. Sara!” She did not answer; Steele’s primal impression was that she was refusing to listen. Then he saw that she was* for the instant, unable to give him her attention. S She had pushed .back her chair, as though intending to Hse; on the contrary, she seemed held down, as though by an invisible hand —struggling vainly. She had turned from him, averting her face; Steele could see no more than the full curve of her cheek; and that whitened to a pallor beneath his gaze. Unconsciously her left hand went toward the region of her heart, clutching at the folds of her morning gown. Steele hurried toward her. "Sara!” he cried a second time. “Is —is It your heart, dear —the old trouble?” His voice seemed to rouse her; the hand dropped to her side, she sat up determinedly in her chair, then warned him away from her with a little, weary gesture. Steele bent toward her in an agony of solicitude. “The old heart trouble?” he demanded. But she refused to credit him with the anxiety with which his tone was charged. “Yes,” she said, faintly. “It —it’s gone, now. I am all right.” “I’ll send for Doctor ' Dexter, at once,” he proposed. “It is unnecessary.” She rose, coldly ignoring his proffered arm. He followed her toward the door. “He was here yesterday. I tell you—it - is nothing. Now, go on—go to the office. I am all right.” “But—” “Go,” she insisted, drearily. "Don’t pretend to worry about me. I —” "But I will not go!” he cried. “At least, until I know—” “It is getting late,” she reminded him, quietly. “The exchange opens within an hour. You had best go at once. Don’t think of me —think of the money you have Involved.” He had no answer. It was true—he had no choice but to consider the money; his presence upon the floor at the opening was Tin Imperative necessity. While he hesitated, considering that phase of the case, she brushed past him and left the room. Steele started after her, paused, reconsidered —and left the house, muttering to himself. Where before he had gone to the market as a man desiring a stimulant, nqw he plunged into the turmoil on the floor as he would have swallowed an opiate; it would deaden his sensibilities, help him to forget her face as she had last looked upon him. Since that first day, when he had turned the flurry in Tennesse Rope & Twine into a rise, he had been drawn more and more deeply into the tolls. West’s combination, finding that they had but one man to fight, had recovered their lost confidence apd renewed their raid upon the security; Steele had attempted to peg the price against a further drop, and had all but succeeded when West received unexpected support from Belden; under the impact of the thirty thousand shares which Belden hurled bodily at the market; T. R. & T. had broken sharply, ringing at the end of Steele’s second day at 62—three points below the price at which he had purchased. Since that, despite Steele’s utmost efforts, the decline had been slow but steady. On this last day he held thirty-five thousand shares, bought at an average price of 60; and T. R. A T. was quoted at 51. Steele simply could not afford to

swallow the loss. He flung himself into the market desperately, making use of every device known to him to stop the slump—to no purpose, it seemed; The bear element controlled the market; the public—always “bullish”—had lost confidence and could not be tempted to buy. On the opening, Rope & Twine broke three points. Steele’s support fell away from him. For a while he felt as though stunned. Then came a slight reaction, due to covering by the shorts. Steele, encouraged, strove to better the advantage. It proved to be a momentary thing, however; again the price began to scale, point by point, slowly, surely. And Belden, in his office, smiled grimly at the reports brought him by* his lieutenants, smiled yet more heartlessly as he thought of the final blow; he was preparing to deal. The floor was in tumult. To Steele it seemed that at least two-thirds of the traders were engaged in the struggle that raged about the T. R. & T. post. Steele himself, Hollwedel and Belden’s broker were the storm centers, around whom revolved a howling mob of frantic brokers, red-faced and wild-eyed all and all perspiring, brandishing aloft their arms, threatening one another with their pads and pencils, pushing, crushing this way and that, surging to and fro, shouting, yelling, shrieking—chanting a monotonous dirge of a hundred notes and but one word, that filled all four marble walls of the great room to its golden ceiling vfith one never-ending cry Of “Sell! Sell. Sell!” And if one dared bleat “Buy!” he was overwhelmed by an instant onslaught. Steele felt that hours passed thus, while he strained his ears to catch a change, however slight, in the insistent iteration of “Sell! Sell!! Sell!” And in the end, when at length it came, he hardly knew it; for he had lost heart and his head and was raving in unison with his And then, just as he began tor realize that the tide was turning, some one thrust a telegram in. his face. He never knew who it was. At first he refused to notice it, but it was thrust at him persistently. Finally he was forced _to .cpmDxeheM >ftt. the message was for him. He seized it, and somehow* the envelope was torn away from it. He backed up against the post and held it up before his eyes, trying to steady himself. The wor&s danced madly; it was some time before he grasped their import. “Your wife is dying. Come home at once. Dexter.”

The shock seemed, in a way, to deaden all his senses. His fortune stood at stake. But what did it matter? What was money to him —life even—without her? Men pressed about him like a wall —determined men without understanding; But he lowered his head, sprang at them, bucked a way through them by main strength and carelessness of consequence, fighting like a madman. Presently he was in Broad Street — hatless, his coat ripped up his back, his collar lying about his neck a sodden pulp of linen, one sleeve hanging from the shoulder almost by a single thread. And it was raining, a steady furious downpour of April. He hardly was conscious of it. He found a taxicab, mainly by intuition; he could not have been said to have seen it; and! jumped in, bellowing large promises to the chauffeur. > She was reading, or had been, when he staggered into her room. She arose suddenly from her chair, and the book, crashed on the floor; she gave a little, stkrtled cry, and one hand went tentatively toward her heart. Her face was very white and apparently drawn, and Steele saw that she had been crying. “Why, Jim!” she said. “You’re —you’re all right?” he gasped, incredulously. “Yes,” she told him, wondering. She came towards him slowly, hesitating, bewildered. “Then,” he said, after an interval, “what does this mean?”

He extended his hand, opening his fingers: a little ball of yellow paper rested in<his palm, damp with its" moisture. "Read it,” he said, impatiently. She unfolded it, read it with a growing wonder, then looked up at him. —“I do not know,” she said, with what seemed an effort, “what it means.” "You are all right, sweetheart? You are not ill?” “At present, not in the least.” He pondered the problem, scowling. “Thank God,” he whispered, once or twice. And finally he straightened up, with a single cry: “Belden!” He had fathomed the mystery. "An enemy sent it to me,” he explained, sitting down heavily. "It was handed to me on the floor of the Exchange. So I came —at once.” He attempted a smile, but without signal success. "At once,” he. repeated, drearily. “Thank God!" "You did that for me, Jim?” she said, softly. “For me? And I did not think you cared so much!” "I did not know how much I cared,” he replied, “until —that There is nothing without you,” he stated with conviction; "I did not know." .• “Dear heart!” And, after a little while: "Did it do great harm, dear? Have you lost much?” “About half of what I had,” he calculated. “It is no matter. Let them keep it. There will still be enough—with you to share it.” “There will be enough,” she whispered, happily. "I am done with the Street,” he stated; and this time his pledge convinced her, for he himself was convinced. “The Street had taken back half of that which it gave me,” he added. "I’m content —with you. TheStreet can keep ft.” But it was not so bad as he believed.