content, for you may never again see the fool of fools in all the world,
the fool who thought himself competent to cope with men of brains, with
men who really know how to play the game of dollars as it is played in
this Christian age. Don't ask me not to call you Beulah; that what I tried
to do was for you is the one streak of light in all this black hell.
Beulah, Beulah, we are ruined, you, your father, and I, ruined, and I'm
the fool who did it."

She rose from her desk with all the quiet, calm dignity that we had been
admiring for three months, and stood facing Bob. She did not seem to see
me; she saw nothing but the man who had gone out that morning the
personification of hope, who now stood before her the picture of black
despair, and she must have thought, "It was all for me." Suddenly she took
the lapels of his torn coat in either hand. She had to reach up to do it,
this winsome little Virginia lady. With her big calm blue eyes looking
straight into his, she said:

"Bob."

That was all, but the word seemed to change the very atmosphere in the
room. The look of desperation faded from Bob's face, and as though the
words had sprung the hidden catch to the doors of his storehouse of
pent-up misery, his eyes filled with hot, blinding tears. His great chest
was convulsed with sobs. Again--clear, calm, fearless, and tender, came
the one syllable, "Bob." And at that Bob's self-control slipped the
leash. With a hoarse cry, he threw his arms around her and crushed her to
his breast. The sacredness of the scene made me feel like an intruder, and
I started to leave the room. But in a moment Beulah Sands was her usual
self and, turning to me, she said: "Mr. Randolph, please forget what you
have seen. For an instant, as I saw Mr. Brownley's awful misery, I thought