willing to accept your assistance,” she said, “when the deal promised a profit to all of us, because I appreciated your goodness and knew how much it would hurt your feelings if I were churlish about the division; but now that we all lose I must stand my fair share; I must.”  She said this in a way that we both knew precluded the possibility of argument.  “We owned together 150,000 shares.  I was to have had the profits on 20,000 shares.  Our total loss is $2,775,000, of which I must bear my just proportion.  Mr. Brownley, you will see that $370,000 is charged to my account.  I shall have $30,000 left.  If our cause is as just as we think, God in his goodness will make this ample for our purposes.”

Though Bob and I were in despair at her determination to strip herself of what Bob had worked so hard to accumulate, we could not help feeling a reverence for her faith and her sturdy independence.  She now showed us in her delicate way that she wished to be alone; as we went she held out her hand to Bob.  “Mr. Brownley, please, for the sake of the work we have to do, look on the bright side of this calamity, for it has a bright side.  You wanted me to send word to my father that we were about to grasp victory.  Think if we had sent it—­then you will know that God is good, even when we think he is chastening us beyond endurance.”

Bob took me into his office.  “Jim, you see what a woman can do, and we are taught women are the weaker sex.  Now listen to what you must do.  Accept my notes for the whole loss, less one hundred thousand which I have to my credit, and which I will pay on account.  I won’t listen to any objection.  The deal was mine; you came in only to help us out, and I ought never to have tempted you.  If I remain in my present busted condition, the notes will be blank paper.  Therefore you do me no harm in taking them.  If I should strike it rich, I should never feel like a man until I made up the loss.”

It was no use arguing with him in his inflexible mood, so I took his demand notes for $2,405,000.  I begged him to go home with me to dinner, but he insisted that he could not face my wife with his last night’s break still fresh in her mind.  Next day he did not turn up.  Along in the afternoon I received a telegram from him, saying that he was on his way to Virginia, that he needed a rest and would be back in a week.  I was worried, nervous.  It takes until the next day and the day after, and the week after that, to get down to the deepest misery of an upset such as we had been through.  I did not feel easy with Bob out of sight while he was sounding for a new footing.  I went to Beulah Sands in hope we might talk over the affair, but when I told her that Bob was to be gone for a week and that I was uneasy, she said in her calm, confident manner:  “I don’t think there is anything to worry about, Mr. Randolph.  Mr. Brownley is too much of a man to allow an affair of dollars to do anything more than annoy him.  He will be back all the better for his rest.”  She dropped her long lashes in a this-conversation-is-closed way that we had come to know meant going time.