“Go to Congress,” she says.  “Outlive your enemies.  I think, David, that men are not the equals of women in defending themselves against the shafts of enmity.  Outlive your enemies, David.”

That Lockwin has the nature she required was to be seen in the death of Davy.  An event which would have beclouded the life of common brides came to Esther as an important communication.  She saw Lockwin’s heart.  She saw him kissing the soles of Davy’s feet.  There is something despotic in her nature which was satisfied in his act.  There is also a devotion in her nature which might be as profound.

She would kiss the soles of David Lockwin’s feet, were he dead.  She could kiss his feet were he despised and rejected among men.

Yet she is counted the haughtiest woman that goes by.

“Mrs. Lockwin is a double-decker,” the grocer declares to his head clerk.  “She rides mighty high out of the water.”

The grocer used to haul lumber from Muskegon.  His metaphors smell of the deep.

For ten years young men of all temperaments had besieged this lady.  The fame of her money had entranced them.  Suitors who were afraid of her distinguished person still paid court, smitten by the love of money.

She was so proud that she must marry a proud man.  She must marry a man conspicuous, tall, large, slow.  She must banish from her mind that hateful fear of the man who might want her for her financial expectations.

Sometimes when she surveyed the matrimonial field she noted that the eligible suitors were few.

Men with blonde mustaches of extreme length would recite lovers’ poems.  Men with jet-black hair, eyes and beard would be equally foolish.  The lady would listen politely to both.

“It is the Manitoba cold wave!” the lovers would lament as they left her.

To see Esther Wandrell pass by—­beautiful, heroic, composed—­was to feel she was the most magnetic of women.  To recite verses to her—­to lay siege to her heart—­was to learn that her personal magnetism was from a repellant pole.  The air grew heavy.  There was a lack of ozone.  The presumptuous beleaguerer withdrew and was glad to come off without capture.

There had been one man, and toward the last, two men, who did not meet these mystic difficulties.  Esther Wandrell was pleased to be in the society of either David Lockwin or George Harpwood.

David Lockwin she knew.  He was socially her equal.  He had lived in Chicago as long as she.  He was essentially the man she might love, for there was an element of unrest in his nature that corresponded with the turmoil underneath her calm exterior.

She knew nothing of George Harpwood other than that he was an acquaintance with whom she liked to pass an hour.  He did not degrade her pride.  He walked erectly, he scorned the common people, he presented an appearance sufficiently striking to enable her to accompany him without making a bad picture on the street or in the parlor.