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"What's the trouble, honey?" she whispered, as soon as her father was out of hearing. "You look
worried."
"Nothing much, I hope, sweet," he said. "Chicago is burning up and there's going to be trouble
to-morrow. I have to talk to your father."
She had time only for a sympathetic, distressed "Oh," before he withdrew his hand and followed
Butler upstairs. She squeezed his arm, and went through the reception-room to the parlor. She
sat down, thinking, for never before had she seen Cowperwood's face wearing such an
expression of stern, disturbed calculation. It was placid, like fine, white wax, and quite as cold;
and those deep, vague, inscrutable eyes! So Chicago was burning. What would happen to him?
Was he very much involved? He had never told her in detail of his affairs. She would not have
understood fully any more than would have Mrs. Cowperwood. But she was worried,
nevertheless, because it was her Frank, and because she was bound to him by what to her
seemed indissoluble ties.
Literature, outside of the masters, has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle,
calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral
pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a
censorship of life had been established by divinity, and the care of its execution given into the
hands of the utterly conservative. Yet there is that other form of liaison which has nothing to do
with conscious calculation. In the vast majority of cases it is without design or guile. The
average woman, controlled by her affections and deeply in love, is no more capable than a child
of anything save sacrificial thought--the desire to give; and so long as this state endures, she
can only do this. She may change--Hell hath no fury, etc.--but the sacrificial, yielding, solicitous
attitude is more often the outstanding characteristic of the mistress; and it is this very attitude in
contradistinction to the grasping legality of established matrimony that has caused so many
wounds in the defenses of the latter. The temperament of man, either male or female, cannot
help falling down before and worshiping this nonseeking, sacrificial note. It approaches vast
distinction in life. It appears to be related to that last word in art, that largeness of spirit which is
the first characteristic of the great picture, the great building, the great sculpture, the great
decoration--namely, a giving, freely and without stint, of itself, of beauty. Hence the significance
of this particular mood in Aileen.
All the subtleties of the present combination were troubling Cowperwood as he followed Butler
into the room upstairs.
"Sit down, sit down. You won't take a little somethin'? You never do. I remember now. Well,
have a cigar, anyhow. Now, what's this that's troublin' you to-night?"
Voices could be heard faintly in the distance, far off toward the thicker residential sections.
"Extra! Extra! All about the big Chicago fire! Chicago burning down!"
"Just that," replied Cowperwood, hearkening to them. "Have you heard the news?"
"No. What's that they're calling?"
"It's a big fire out in Chicago."
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