An Ambitious Man

Joy was in a peculiarly overwrought condition of mind and body. Her

hours of extravagant weeping the previous night, followed by a day of

fasting, left her nervous system in a state to be easily excited by

the music she had been playing. She was virtually intoxicated with

sorrow and harmony. She was incapable of reasoning, and conscious

only of two things--that she must leave Beryngford, and that the man

whom she had loved with her whole heart for five years, was asking

her to go with him; to be no more homeless, unloved, and alone, but

his companion while life should last.

"Answer me, Joy," he was pleading. "Answer me."

She moved toward the stairway that led down to the street door; and

as she flitted by him, she said, looking him full in the eyes with a

slow, grave smile, "Yes, Arthur, I will go with you."

He sprang toward her with a wild cry of joy, but she was already

flying down the stairs and out upon the street.

When he joined her, they walked in silence through the rain to her

door, neither speaking a word, until he would have followed her

within. Then she laid her hand upon his shoulder and said gently but

firmly: "Not now, Arthur; we must not see each other again until we

go away. Write me where to meet you, and I will join you within

twenty-four hours. Do not urge me--you must obey me this once--

afterward I will obey you. Good-night."

As she closed the door upon him, he said, "Oh, Joy, I have so much to

tell you. I promised your father when he was dying that I would find

you; I swore to myself that when I found you I would never leave you,

save at your own command. I go now, only because you bid me go.

When we meet again, there must be no more parting; and you shall hear

a story stranger than the wildest fiction--the story of your father's

life. Despite your mother's secretiveness regarding this portion of

her history, the knowledge has come to me in the most unexpected

manner, from the lips of the man himself."

Joy listened dreamily to the words he was saying. Her father--she

was to know who her father was? Well, it did not matter much to her

now--father, mother, what were they, what was anything save the fact

that he had come back to her and that he loved her?

She smiled silently into his eyes. Glance became entangled with

glance, and would not be separated.