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Technology Now Chapter 6
Purchasing and Maintaining a Computer
TRUE/FALSE
1. Once you determine your budget, you can narrow your search to look for the best computer that fits
your budget.
3. If you have a restricted budget, buy a computer with a more powerful processor and less
memory—you can add more memory to it later.
4. If you need Microsoft Office or other installed programs, keep in mind that not all tablets can run
traditional programs.
6. Once you determine the form factor for your computer, the next decision you need to make is what
oeprating system you will use.
7. A disadvantage of the all-in-one form factor is that the box is larger and takes up a significant amount
of space.
8. Advantages of the convertible form factor include that it is small and portable and often includes
phone and text capabilities.
9. Computers with the Intel i7 processors are best for gamers and heavy technical users.
10. The amount of RAM you need is independent of what programs you intend to run.
11. Many business people use scanning apps, turning their smartphones into portable scanners.
ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 6-5
12. Heat is bad for electronics, but low temperatures are unlikely to damage a computer’s mechanical and
electronic components.
13. Hard drive storage uses magnetic technology to arrange particles on the disk.
15. Often, the data on a computer is worth more than the computer itself.
16. You can back up your files to remote servers over the Internet, called surge backup.
17. File History is the backup and restore feature on a Windows 8.x computer.
18. Use passwords that are at least five characters with a combination of upper- and lowercase letters,
numbers, and symbols.
19. You should shut down your computer or disconnect it from the Internet if you are not using it for
extended periods of time.
20. If you boot up your computer and it doesn’t get past the startup screen, the problem might be with the
hard drive.
MODIFIED TRUE/FALSE
1. Cloud storage technology uses light in the form of a low-power laser beam to record and read a disk.
_________________________
ANS: F, Optical
3. A disk degragmentation utility removes unused files from your hard drive so the computer doesn’t
search through unneeded files. _________________________
ANS: F, cleanup
4. Utility programs can help return your computer to better working condition by scanning for viruses
and spyware. _________________________
5. Adware poses a security risk because it can track and steal your personal information.
_________________________
ANS: F, Spyware
ANS: F
GB
gigabytes
gigabytes (GB)
GB (gigabytes)
8. Because wires can get tangled, many add-on devices can connect wirelessly using Bluetooth
technology. _________________________
9. To prevent power fluctuations from damaging electronic components, you should always use a(n)
power suppressor with your computer. _________________________
ANS: F, surge
10. You can use a cable lock to secure a computer to a table or desk. _________________________
3. The ____ coordinates the functions of various hardware components and determines the types and
brands of application software you can use.
a. virtual memory c. platform
b. device driver d. form factor
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-3
4. An advantage of a(n) ____ computer is that internal system components and electronics are integrated
into the back of the monitor.
a. desktop c. laptop
b. notebook d. all-in-one
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
5. Disadvantages of a(n) ____ computer include that they are less powerful and offer less functionality
than other types of computers.
a. tablet c. notebook
b. ultrabook d. desktop
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
6. A(n) ____ computer provides a detachable keyboard base that has extra ports or drives.
a. desktop c. ultrabook
b. convertible d. tablet
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
7. One of the main operating systems for desktop and laptop computers is ____.
a. Blackberry c. Windows
b. Apple iOS d. Android
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
9. ____ is temporary storage used to store data and operate programs while the computer is running.
a. Random Access Memory (RAM) c. Flash memory
b. Virtual memory d. Encrypting File System (EFS)
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
10. Intel ____ processors are best for light use such as Microsoft Office, Web research, and email.
a. i3 c. i7
b. i5 d. i9
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
11. ____ devices store files permanently so you can retrieve them later.
a. Encrypting c. Firewall
b. Storage d. Platform
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-5
13. A(n) ____ drive has no moving parts and is therefore more durable and suitable for portable
computers.
a. external c. real-time
b. magnetic d. solid state
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-5
14. ____ are useful is you are not familiar with computers, or if you feel your computer might need
replacement parts due to wear and tear.
a. Extended warranties c. Encrypting file systems
b. Surge suppressors d. Optical sotrage technologies
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-5
15. Hard drive storage uses ____ technology to arrange particles on the disk.
a. laser c. cloud
b. magnetic d. virtual memory
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-6
16. Power is supplied by either ____ current from a wall outlet or from a battery.
a. SSD c. AC
b. EFS d. DC
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-7
17. You can avoid data loss by installing a(n) ____ to prevent power loss to your computer.
a. solid state drive c. firewall
b. surge suppressor d. uninterruptible power supply
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-7
19. To prevent power fluctuations from damaging your computer, you should always use a(n) ____ with
your computer.
a. uninterruptible power supply c. solid state drive
b. virtual memory system d. surge suppressor
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-7
20. Using ____ technology and real-time location systems, you can install computer-tracking software on
your laptop.
a. global positioning system c. uninterruptible power supply
b. encrypting file system d. personal identification number
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-8
22. You can store your documents, pictures, videos, and music using cloud computing technologies such
as ____.
a. Bluetooth c. DropBox
b. CNET d. Chrome
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-8
23. Your best protection against data loss is to ____ your files to an external storage location.
a. convert c. process
b. extend d. back up
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-8
24. You can use a personal storage device such as ____ to back up your files.
a. DVDs c. firewalls
b. cloud drives d. tablets
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-8
25. ____ are short words or phrases kept secret by a person and used to gain access to a site or data.
a. Usernames c. Bytes
b. Passwords d. PINs
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-9
26. ____ are short number sequences, kept secret and frequently used by banks, used to access accounts.
a. Usernames c. Bytes
b. Passwords d. PINs
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-9
27. ____ are words determined by users to identify themselves in the digital world.
a. Usernames c. Bytes
b. Passwords d. PINs
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-9
28. A ____ inspects data being transmitted by your computer to external recipients to prevent unsolicited
data exchanges.
a. driver c. form factor
b. firewall d. platform
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-10
29. ____ “scrambles” or encodes data so that even if unauthorized users somehow gain access to your
files, they will not be able to read or understand what is in them.
a. Virtual memory c. Data encryption
b. Optical storage d. A firewall
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-10
31. ____ hard drives, mostly found in older desktop computers, are fragile and susceptible to damage.
a. Magnetic c. Optical
b. Solid state d. Convertible
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-10
32. If the head touches the platter, or if dirt gets on the disk, you can have a ____.
a. power spike c. head flash
b. head crash d. peripheral crash
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-11
33. When a program needs more RAM than is currently available on the computer, it calls on the hard
drive to create ____ memory.
a. convertible c. virtual
b. backup d. flash
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-11
34. You can optimize the way files are stored by running a disk ____ utility.
a. processing c. service
b. encryption d. defragmentation
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-12
35. If two monitors connected to your computer are blank, you may have a damaged ____.
a. video card c. tablet
b. firewall d. internal hard drive
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-12
36. If you turn on your computer, and you don’t see a pointer on the screen, you might have problems with
your ____.
a. CPU c. flash drive
b. pointing device d. platform
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-12
37. A ____ drive is a small portable solid state storage device that plugs into a USB port.
a. convertible c. flash
b. soft d. virtual
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-14
38. When cleaning a computer screen, you can use a 50/50 solution of water and ____.
a. dish soap c. ammonia
b. baking soda d. alcohol
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-15
39. When doing manual computer maintenance, wear a(n) ____ wristband to protect the components.
a. antistatic c. conductive
b. silicon d. anti-glare
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-16
40. The Windows ____ utility can identify temporary Internet files and other others that can be safely
remvoed.
a. Disk Defragmentation c. Firewall
b. Disk Cleanup d. Defender
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6-17
41. A ____ is software that helps peripheral devices communicate with a computer.
a. disk optimization utility c. device driver
b. virtual memory utility d. firewall
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-17
42. ____ programs show you unsolicited advertisements and banners or pop-up windows.
a. Firewall c. Spyware
b. Cloudware d. Adware
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-18
43. A computer ____ is malicious software that infects your computer without your knowledge or
permission.
a. virus c. firewall
b. cookie d. spike
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6-18
44. The best way to avoid spyware and adware is to install and run ____ software.
a. disk optimization c. prevention
b. all-in-one d. cloud storage
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6-18
45. Some people choose a platform based on its ____, or “look and feel”.
a. peripherals c. device driver
b. control panel d. user interface
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6-4
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He stood aside, and Katie clapped him warmly on the shoulder.
"You're doin' your best, Woods," she said, "an' I thank you for it. I'll get
the job someways, but not the way you think, an'—an' I thank you."
Only half-way to the corner she met the girl that lived across the hall
from her, Carrie Berkowicz, a homely, round-cheeked, brown-haired
Lithuanian Jewess, who worked in a shirtwaist factory on Tenth Street.
Katie nodded.
"Well, say, I just this minute passed Emma Schrem, an' she says Cora
Costigan is quitting her job at the Lennox store to-day to be married to-
morrow. Why don't you pull up there and try for it?"
Try for it? Katie could scarcely stop to thank her rescuer before she had
turned northward. There was no longer left her even the five cents
necessary for carfare, and, though she was faint with hunger and shaking
with fear lest her tardiness should lose her this slim opportunity, she was
forced to walk. Facing a fine rain blown in from the Sound, she walked up
Second Avenue, and finally, turning westward to the shopping quarter now
crowded with salesgirls on their hurried way to work, she entered, by the
dark employés' door, the large department-store of Joshua N. Lennox,
merchant and philanthropist.
A dozen quick inquiries rushed her, wet and weary, but flushed by her
walk and radiant with the excitement of the race, into the presence of the
frock-coated, pale-faced, suave-mouthed Mr. Porter, the tall, thin man, with
the precision of a surgeon and the gravity of a Sunday-school
superintendent, to whose attention, it appeared, such pleas as hers must be
brought. Mr. Porter, who had gray side-whiskers, which he stroked with
white hands, listened in judicial calm to what she had to say.
"Just fill out this application-blank," he remarked as, breathless, Katie
ended her little speech.
They were in a dim, bare office under the street, the man at a roll-top
desk lighted by a green-shaded incandescent lamp, the girl standing beside
him. Mr. Porter indicated a writing-shelf along the opposite wall, where
Katie found a pile of the blanks, and pen and ink. While she struggled with
the task assigned her, Mr. Porter verified, by brief, sharp inquiries through a
telephone, her statement of the approaching marriage of Miss Cora
Costigan.
Katie, meanwhile, was giving her age, her parentage, her birthplace, the
name of the firm that had last employed her—she mentioned the candy-
shop for that,—was cheerfully agreeing to join the "Employés' Mutual
Benefit Association," and was putting a "Yes," which she intended promptly
to forget, to the question that asked her to become a spy on her co-workers:
"If you saw a fellow-employé doing anything detrimental to the interests of
the firm, would you consider it your duty to report the same?" It was only at
one of the last questions that she hesitated.
Mr. Porter deigned to walk across the room and, close to her shoulder,
examined the question. It was the simple one: "Do you live with your
parents?"
"That," said Mr. Porter, "is inserted because the firm wishes to have
only nice girls here, and those with good home influences are considered—
most trustworthy."
Mr. Porter had the type of emotionless eyes that can say one sort of
thing far better than the eyes of more temperamental people, and he now
met Katie's steady gaze with a stare of considerable significance.
"So that," she said, "if I didn't live with my people, I couldn't have the
job?"
"So that," Mr. Porter corrected, "if a girl does get a position and lives
with her family, she will be better cared for, and we will know that she is
safe at home evenings."
Katie hesitated no longer. She took the pen and, opposite the query,
wrote a quick "Yes." To be sure she was, on that account, obliged to invent
the kind of work done by her father and the amount of the family wage; but
she so needed the position that her active wit at once supplied the answers.
More or less truthfully, she put a word in reply to the remaining questions,
signed her name, and wrote her address.
Mr. Porter took the paper in his white fingers, read it slowly, folded it,
indorsed it with several hieroglyphics, and placed it in a pigeon-hole.
"I am filing this with our other applications," he said. "As soon as your
name is reached, I will see that you are notified."
"But I thought," she began, "I thought I was to get the job now. I—isn't
Cora leavin', thin, after all?"
"Miss Costigan is leaving us, I understand," said Mr. Porter, stroking his
whiskers; "but there are others—nearly a hundred—on the list ahead of
you."
Katie was hungry, and hunger finds it hard to think of justice. She had
borne all that she could bear. The waiting, the walking, the hope and the
hopelessness had gnawed the string of her courage. Something snapped
inside of her, and she began to sob with Irish unrestraint.
Katie was on the point of calling all the saints to bless him when she
bethought her of a practical inquiry theretofore, in her eagerness to secure
any sort of work, neglected.
"You will receive," replied Mr. Porter in the tones in which his
employer announced the gift of a small fortune to a large college, "four
dollars and fifty cents a week."
"Four—" she began. "But, Mr. Porter," she concluded, "will you be
tellin' me how I'm to be livin' on all that?"
Mr. Porter's calm eyes came again into significant play.
"You have said in your application, you may recall," he dryly remarked,
as he reached for that document, "you have said that you lived with your
father."
"But for all that," she said, "I have to support meself entirely."
Mr. Porter was still looking at her with his emotionless, appraising gaze.
He saw a girl with pretty, piquant features, with glossy black hair, with
cheeks that bloomed even in privation and blue eyes that were beautiful
even in tears.
"Miss Flanagan," said he, "most of the girls that start at these wages in
department-stores are partly supported by their family or have some friend
to help them out."
"They find one," he said; "and I may add, Miss Flanagan, that you
should experience no difficulty in that direction."
Poverty will do much for most of us. For Katie it succeeded in curbing a
temper that, in better times, was never docile. Beggars, she reflected, cannot
afford to look too closely into the source or significance of the alms they
have asked. She swallowed her wrath.
"Och, now, Mr. Porter," she protested. "That's all well enough for the
green girls; but you an' I know that you're the boss in matters of this sort.
Lend me two an' a quarter."
"Thanks," Katie responded as she took the money, and turned to go. "I'll
report to-morrow, then, at a quarter of eight, Mr. Porter."
"At quarter to eight," repeated Mr. Porter, slowly closing the door
behind her.
But, out in the wet street, Katie was saying what she had refrained from
saying in the darkened office.
"An' as for the pay," she concluded, "I can't buy no automobiles with me
loose change; but I think you'll find, you limb of Satan, that I can keep body
an' soul together without a friend in the wor'rld!"
X
ANOTHER SPHERE
That same evening, his crisp brown mustache hiding the meaning of his
mouth, and his drooping lids concealing the purpose of his steel-gray eyes,
Wesley Dyker, from the rooms he had rented in an East Side Assembly
district, took a cab northwestward through the rain to Riverside Drive. He
was dressed precisely as he dressed to go to the house of Rose Légère, but
he was bound for the house of Joshua Lennox.
"Miss Lennox will be down in a moment, sir," said the servant. "May I
bring you anything, Mr. Dyker?"
Charles bowed, brought a tray, and, when Dyker had poured the
whiskey, added some seltzer, and lighted the cigarette that the guest had
taken from a wrought silver box on a nearby tabouret.
"That is all, Charles," said Dyker, and the servant silently left him alone.
Wesley sank back in his chair with a sigh of comfort. He liked the house
of the philanthropic merchant so well that he could have wished its master
liked him better, and when, within a few minutes, the master himself
chanced into the room, Dyker was prepared to be diplomatic.
Joshua N. Lennox was the explanation of that Mr. Porter who held so
much power under him. The latter was tall and thin, the former short and
compact, but there all physical differences ended: Mr. Porter had found his
model in his employer. Here was the source of the seneschal's gray hair and
side-whiskers, his trap mouth tortured to the line of benevolence, his calm
gaze and his manner that combined the precision of the surgeon with the
gravity of the head of a Sunday-school. Mr. Lennox, in fact, conducted the
second largest Bible Class in New York. He knew its textbook from the first
chapter of Genesis to the twenty-second chapter of the Revelation, and he
believed in the literal inspiration of every verse of the original and of every
syllable of the English translation.
It was in the voice in which he habitually addressed his Bible Class, the
voice of one uttering a benediction, that he said:
The man before him was the perfection of that noble work of Heaven, a
Prominent Citizen. Joshua Lennox endowed Bowery chapels with organs
and meat-supplies; he contributed heavily to missions among the benighted
Japanese; he assisted in arbitrating strikes wherein his fellow-employers
were concerned; he always served on memorial committees; and he
regularly subscribed to the campaign funds of all movements toward
municipal political reform.
If his climbing wife insisted upon having liquor in the house, Mr.
Lennox never touched it. If she served tobacco, he did not smoke. If she
took in a Sunday paper, written and printed on Saturday, he would read no
news until the appearance of the Monday journal merely written and printed
on Sunday. And if his mercantile establishment sold poker-chips under the
pseudonym of "counters," he was aware only that it did not sell playing-
cards. The business he considered as his creation had grown beyond the
limits of his power, and though, a good man and sincere, he might have
done something by keeping a closer eye upon his work, he was in reality as
much the creature of conditions as his worst-paid cash-boy. The great
Frederick complained that a monarch could not know all the evil done in his
kingdom: Joshua Lennox was so busy benefiting mankind that he had no
leisure to observe in his own shop the state of affairs that made his
philanthropy financially possible.
"I hope you are going with us to the opera, Mr. Lennox," said Dyker.
"No," said he in the slow, deliberate utterance that he had acquired with
his first million of dollars; "I am on my way farther down town than that."
"But you had better come," urged Wesley, knowing that refusal was
certain. "This is the last performance of the season."
"On the contrary," the merchant chuckled kindly, "I think you had better
let Marian go to the opera alone and come along with me. I am going to the
first performance of a new season."
"Where's that?"
"Oh, but I couldn't do that," he said. "I'm on the other side, you know."
"Against irregularity, Mr. Lennox. There never has been and there never
can be any lasting reform from the outside. We must clean our own houses.
That is why I have moved to my present address. I believe in reform from
within the party, and I believe that to effect this we want men of your sort to
help us indoors and not to attack us from the street."
The merchant's cold eye looked hard at the speaker, but Dyker's lowered
lids betrayed nothing.
"Yes," replied Lennox, dryly; "I heard that when Tammany Hall first
came into power, but I have never seen any trace of reform from the inside.
What I have seen is the spectacle of most of these inside reformers
developing into leaders of the machine. If you will take an older man's
advice, you will withdraw while there is yet time."
Wesley's reply sprang ready to his lips, but, before he could utter it,
Marian Lennox came into the room.
She was tall and moved with assurance. Her full throat rose above the
ermine of her cloak, supporting a delicately carved head, the head of a
Greek cameo, held rigidly erect. The hair was a rich chestnut, the eyes large
and brown, and the mouth at once firm and kindly. Her skin was very fair
and her gloved hands long and slender.
"While there is yet time," she paraphrased, "Mr. Dyker will withdraw
from this room and get me to the opera-house before the overture has
ended. I am so unfashionable as to want my music entire."
She was used to commanding her parents in their own house, and she
thought that she was used to commanding Wesley everywhere, so that she
dismissed Lennox and secured Dyker's entrance into her waiting limousine
with almost no delay whatever.
"There," she remarked as she settled herself comfortably for their drive;
"I rather fancy that I rescued you from a sermon."
"I think that he is slow to see that two persons may differ on a question
of political tactics and yet remain, both of them, honest men."
"Well," he lightly accepted the challenge, "I shall take the specific case.
There is no doubting your father's sincerity; there is no doubting the
sincerity of nearly all the men that will, with him, to-night try to launch
another of these municipal-reform parties which, if they ever get started at
all, are sure to run on the rocks at last."
"And on the other hand," said the girl, "I suppose I must generously
refuse to doubt the sincerity of Tammany Hall?"
"On the other hand you must justly refuse to doubt the sincerity of a few
young men who have seen that reform-parties always end in violent
reaction within the city and, if briefly successful, weaken the party in the
next national campaign. You must refuse to doubt the sincerity of these
young men when they go into the heart of the East Side to live and work
among the people that make up the organization's fighting-strength. You
must believe in them when they try to get nominated for even the smallest
offices on the machine-ticket. And you must have faith that, if they can
work themselves at last into places of power, they will reform the party in
the only way that will keep it reformed."
"Dear me," sighed Marian, "it seems that it was father that I rescued
from a sermon."
"Well," said Dyker, "you asked me why your father and I should not
mistrust each other, and there you have the reason. You know what I am
trying to do; I have told you my plans as I haven't told them to another
human being—and you should know that I am not to be suspected."
There was a ring in his voice that touched her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I beg you'll forgive me. Only really, you know,
you can't expect father to be with you: he would have to break the habit of a
lifetime."
"I don't ask him to be with me; I only ask him to believe that a man can
work with the organization and yet have pure principles."
"He can't even go so far as that; he says that every system is the
reflection of the men that make it, and he says that the system you support
battens on horrors."
"But it can't be the system. The horrors existed long before the system.
Is he such a conservative as not to be able to see that?"
"If you proposed it," he said, "I can't imagine that it was such a very
terrible thing."
"Oh, no; it was merely that I want to be of some use in the world and so
have made up my mind to go in for settlement-work."
Wesley Dyker was one of those rare animals, a human being whose
parents, though they could have arranged it otherwise, permitted him to be
born in New York. He had been reared, at least during the winters of his
earlier life, within the Borough of Manhattan, and his views were, like those
of most of his even less acclimated neighbors, just as wide as that narrow
island, and no wider. Indeed, so far as were concerned his views of the
proper sphere of his own womankind, he limited them entirely to an
extremely small portion of the city.
"I know quite well what it means," said Marian. "I have friends engaged
in it, as I told you, and I've been visiting them and seeing their life at close
quarters."
"I really mean that here we are at the Metropolitan, and that we can't
talk on our way upstairs, and we won't talk while there is music to listen
to."
Slowly their car had taken its grudged place in a long procession of its
fellows, one by one unloading the human freight before the brilliantly
lighted doorway. The pavement and the steps were a tossing sea of silk hats,
colored scarfs, and glittering headdresses. Into this they plunged, hurried to
the crowded elevator, traversed a lighted corridor, passed through a short,
dark passage and came out to the Lennox box in the great, glaring
horseshoe of the opera-house.
Dyker, baffled by the sudden stop that had been put to his protests,
looked moodily upon the familiar picture. Below them, climbing to the rail
behind which was massed the orchestra, was the pit, white bosoms and bare
shoulders, too distant to present, to the unassisted eye, any hint of
individuality. Above rose the teeming galleries, line above line of peering
faces. And to right and left swept the great curve of the boxes splendid with
lace and feathers and jewels.
He saw no more than that during the entire performance and, as Marian,
even in the entr'actes, would talk of nothing but the music to which he had
refused to listen, he heard less. The opera was "Lucia," and as Wesley, with
a taste worthy of a more discerning critic, considered that work nothing but
a display of vocal gymnastics devised for a throat abnormally developed, he
would probably have been, in any case, bored.
His father, who had what his friends called "family," had married what
everybody called "money," but had managed to invest that commodity with
a talent for choosing failures, and, when both parents had died, Wesley,
fresh from the Columbia Law School, had amazedly found himself in a
position where he would actually have to turn his education to practical
account. For five years he held a thankless, underpaid and unmentioned
partnership in a well-known firm of corporation-lawyers. He drew their
briefs, and developed a genuine talent for the task, but he was never given a
chance to plead. The worm of necessity spun its cocoon in his brain, but the
emerging butterfly of ambition could find no way to liberty.
For his own part, Dyker was quite certain of what he was and of what
he would be. He had seen, beneath his lowered lids, that a clever man could
gain both fortune and power through political prestige, and he meant to use
that means to his end. He had also, while still with the firm of corporation-
lawyers, been presented to Marian Lennox by her opportunely-met,
socially-aspiring mother, and was, whatever his relation with other
members of her sex, quite as much in love with her as he could be with
anybody. Realizing the power of her father's fortune and the beauty of the
girl herself, he had determined to marry her with as little delay as possible.
Until to-night he had delayed all open pursuit, because there had not
been lacking signs to free him from fear of all male rivals; but that Marian
should thus suddenly develop a purpose in life meant that he was to have a
rival of a far more formidable sort. He set his teeth under his crisp
mustache, folded his arms across his heart, and sat stolidly through the
interminable opera: as soon as it was over, he meant to play his first lead.
She smiled.
"You mean to ask if you may argue," she answered. "No, you may not
argue against my determination, and I am a good deal surprised that a man
of your sort should want to."
"I don't intend to argue," he protested, leaning the merest trifle toward
her. "I mean only to ask you if your determination is quite fixed."
A lamp stronger than its fellows threw a quick ray full upon her face;
her brown eyes were charmingly serious, her lips dangerously sweet.
His hand, in the semi-darkness, sought and found her own, its glove
withdrawn, cool and firm and unretreating.
"You know the situation I mean," he said. "I love you. I love you so
much, Marian, that I am jealous of any work that would take you from me; I
want so much of your love that I can spare none of it—none even for the
poor and suffering."
In that tight grasp her hand fluttered a little, but she did not answer: she
could not answer, because, while her brain was telling her that a love so
rapacious was necessarily niggardly, her heart was crying out that this was
the love it wanted most of all.
"Marian"—his voice shook now with the emotion that was tugging at its
leash—"you've known for some months that I loved you; all last winter you
must have seen this coming; you can't be unprepared to answer me!"
He possessed himself of her other hand, and pressed her inert palms
between his own.
But the girl's determination loomed large to her. Through her entire life
she had been shut away from the real world, behind rich curtains and amid
soft lights, until, fired with the unrest of a partial education, she had
chanced upon a glimpse of classmates working in what they called the
slums, and now, with all the enthusiasm of youth, she had resolved to join
them. A maturer woman would not have taken so seriously a sudden
impulse to engage in work for which she had no training, but Marian was
young.
"I am not unprepared," she answered. "I did know. But I know too that
there are things that can make even love a finer, a better emotion."
The words reminded her of some speech she had once heard in a play,
and, entirely in earnest as she was, the sound of them from her own lips
strengthened her. She was in love with Wesley Dyker, but she was more in
love with renunciation.
"No," he said, "love is something ultimate. You can't paint the lily; you
can't part it and share it; you must either cherish it or kill it. Which do you
mean to do?"
The car had turned into the smoother way of Riverside Drive, where the
lights are far fewer and less bright than Broadway's. He could not see her
face, but he could not doubt the resolve that was in her voice as she
answered:
"I mean to take up the work that I have told you of."
"I am not laughing; I'm too serious to laugh. I am so serious that I can't
pick and choose phrases. I meant only that you can't help these people
without training——"
He forgot that he had said he would not argue. He used all his power to
convince and to persuade; but if there is one human being that cannot be
moved from a purpose, it is a young girl with a romantic ideal, smarting
under what she conceives to be ridicule, and for the first time tasting what
she believes to be the bitter-sweets of sacrifice. Even when the verbal war
had been carried into her own house, he could bring no concession from
her. If he was helping his neighbors, then he should be all the more anxious
that she, as the woman he wanted to be his wife, should have precisely the
experience that the settlement would supply her.
"Then you mean," he asked, "that you do care—that you care at least a
little?"
He put out his hands, but she did not seem to see them.
It was on the day following her eavesdropping upon Rose that Violet
was awakened early—as early as eleven o'clock in the morning—by a
sudden cry. The sound was one of some pain and more terror, beginning in
the high note of horrified amazement and ending in an attenuating moan of
despair.
It was the deep, contralto voice of English Evelyn, and, as Violet replied
in the affirmative, the woman softly entered.
Her tall, almost thin, figure was draped in a soiled pink kimona; her
yellow hair seemed merely to have been tossed upon her head and to have
been left precisely as it happened to alight; her blue eyes were dull, and her
hard, narrow face, with its spots of high color over the cheek-bones, showed
more plainly than common, the usually faint little red veins that lay close
below its white skin.
"My Gawd," she sighed, as she sank upon the bed and curled up at its
foot, "there are some things I can't get accustomed to, and that"—she
nodded in the direction whence the cry had come—"that's one of them."
She spoke in a weary voice, a voice with almost no animation, but with
a curious mixture of the cockney of the New Yorker and with a rising
inflection that saved what she said from monotony.
"Yes," said Evelyn, seizing a pillow and snuggling her broad shoulders
against it. "Got a cig?" And then, as her hostess produced a box from under
the mattress: "It does so get upon my nerves. Why, sometimes they come
here young enough to play with dollies. This time there was no more sleep
for boiby. Had to run downstairs and rig a B. and S., and then come up to
girlie here for company."
"How the deuce do you suppose? One story is pretty much all of them,
my dear, and one about as narsty as the others."
"But this?"
"Oh, this broke me up just because I had the bad luck to hear the details,
though I must say I've heard the same details often enough before. Her
people lived in a tenement in Essex Street, where it's so crowded that the
men have to come outside every evening while their wives cook the dinners
—three nine-by-seven rooms, no barth and no privacy; four children from
eighteen to ten in one room; pa, ma, the boiby, and the seven-year-old in the
second, and the cot in the kitchen-living-room rented to the lodger. The
lodger was the wiggly snake under the apple-tree."
"Gave her, as you might say, the general directions. But she'd have
come along of her own self sometime."