Then for a time Bim entered upon great trials.  Jack Kelso weakened.  Burning with fever, his mind wandered in the pleasant paths he loved and saw in its fancy the deeds of Ajax and Achilles and the topless towers of Illium and came not back again to the vulgar and prosaic details of life.  The girl knew not what to do.  A funeral was a costly thing.  She had no money.  The Kinzies had gone on a hunting trip in Wisconsin.  Mrs. Hubbard was ill and the Kelsos already much in her debt.  Mr. Lionel Davis came.

He was a good-looking young man of twenty-nine, those days, rather stout and of middle stature with dark hair and eyes.  He was dressed in the height of fashion.  He used to boast that he had only one vice—­diamonds.  But he had ceased to display them on his shirt-front or his fingers.  He carried them in his pockets and showed them by the glittering handful to his friends.  They had come to him through trading in land where they were the accepted symbol of success and money was none too plentiful.  He had melted their settings and turned them into coin.  The stones he kept as a kind of surplus—­a half hidden evidence of wealth and of superiority to the temptation to vulgar display.  Mr. Davis was a calculating, masterful, keen-minded man, with a rather heavy jaw.  In his presence Bim was afraid for her soul that night.  He was gentle and sympathetic.  He offered to lend her any amount she needed.  She made no answer but sat trying to think what she would best do.  The Traylors had paid no attention to her letter although a month had passed since it was written.

In a moment she rose and gave him her hand.

“It is very kind of you,” said she.  “If you can spare me five hundred dollars for an indefinite time I will take it.”

“Let me lend you a thousand,” he urged.  “I can do it without a bit of inconvenience.”

“I think that five hundred will be enough,” she said.

It carried her through that trouble and into others of which her woman’s heart had found abundant signs in the attitude of Mr. Davis.  He gave the most assiduous attention to the comfort of Bim and her mother.  He had had a celebrated physician come down from Milwaukee to see Mrs. Kelso and had paid the bill in advance.  He bought a new and wonderful swinging crib of burnished steel for the baby.

“I can not let you be doing these things for us,” Bim said one evening when he had called to see them.

“And I can not help loving you and doing the little I can to express it,” he answered.  “There is no use in my trying to keep it from you when I find myself lying awake nights planning for your comfort.  I would like to make every dollar I have tell you in some way that I love you.  That’s how I feel and you might as well know it.”

“You have been kind to us,” Bim answered.  “We feel it very deeply but I can not let you talk to me like that.  I am a married woman.”

“We can fix that all right.  It will be easy for you to get a divorce.”