a thousand-to-one wager against
them. They arrived because they were Carlyle's battle-scarred giants who
will not be kept down. And that is what I must do; I must achieve the
impossible."

"But if you fail? You must consider me as well, Martin."

"If I fail?" He regarded her for a moment as though the thought she had
uttered was unthinkable. Then intelligence illumined his eyes. "If I
fail, I shall become an editor, and you will be an editor's wife."

She frowned at his facetiousness--a pretty, adorable frown that made him
put his arm around her and kiss it away.

"There, that's enough," she urged, by an effort of will withdrawing
herself from the fascination of his strength. "I have talked with father
and mother. I never before asserted myself so against them. I demanded
to be heard. I was very undutiful. They are against you, you know; but
I assured them over and over of my abiding love for you, and at last
father agreed that if you wanted to, you could begin right away in his
office. And then, of his own accord, he said he would pay you enough at
the start so that we could get married and have a little cottage
somewhere. Which I think was very fine of him--don't you?"

Martin, with the dull pain of despair at his heart, mechanically reaching
for the tobacco and paper (which he no longer carried) to roll a
cigarette, muttered something inarticulate, and Ruth went on.

"Frankly, though, and don't let it hurt you--I tell you, to show you
precisely how you stand with him--he doesn't like your radical views, and
he thinks you are lazy. Of course I know you are not. I know you work
hard."

How hard, even she did not know, was the thought in Martin's mind.

"Well, then," he said, "how about my views? Do you think they are so
radical?"

He held her eyes and waited the answer.

"I think them, well, very disconcerting," she replied.

The question was answered for him, and so oppressed was he by the
grayness of life that he forgot the tentative proposition she had made
for him to go to work. And she, having gone as far as she dared, was
willing to wait the answer till she should bring the question up again.

She had not long to wait. Martin had a question of his own to propound
to her. He wanted to ascertain the measure of her faith in him, and
within the week each was answered. Martin precipitated it by reading to
her his "The Shame of the Sun."

"Why don't you become a reporter?" she asked w