Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/134

 found himself standing immediately before her.

"I am so—sorry," he stammered. "I loved your father almost as I love my own."

The girl recalled her streaming eyes from distance at first with a start as at a stranger; then recognition came, and with it she gave a glance of grateful appreciation.

"Th—thank you!" she said, with an aspirated sob, and turned from him quickly back to her mother, while George felt himself transported from her vicinity almost as miraculously as he had come to it.

The encounter had done him great good. She had remembered him this time, although she had immediately turned away as though recognizing that he was outside her circle. But to George, indomitable and heart afire, this was no serious damper. He was still outside that circle, but not much longer would he remain outside.

Yet his career was periled now by panic conditions.

But there were two redeeming elements in the situation. One was the changed attitude of the banks toward the automobile industry in the five years since he had made his first appeal to them for a loan.

The other element was the discovery that personal faith in him was now rather widely spread. It was not only isolated individuals like Stephen