white
linen and flowers; I love good food, good clothes, good wine, good
music, good sermons, and good books. All--all it is within me to love
and to desire mightily. How I want those things--not morbidly--but
because I have five good senses and God knows how many more; because I
was _made_ to have those things!"

"Then why don't you keep after them?" demanded Barstow coldly.

"Because the price of them is so much of my soul and body that I 'd
have nothing left with which to enjoy them afterwards. You can't get
those things honestly in time to enjoy them, in one generation. You
can't get them at all, unless you sell the best part of you as you did
when you came to the Gordon Chemical Company. Oh Lord, Barstow, how
came you to forget all the dreams we used to dream?"

Barstow turned quickly. There was the look upon his face as of a man
who presses back a little. For a moment he appeared pained. But he
answered steadily,

"I have other dreams now, saner dreams."

"Saner dreams? What are your saner dreams but less troublesome
dreams,--lazier dreams? Dreams that fit into things as they are
instead of demanding things as they should be? You sleep o' nights
now; you sleep snugly, you tread safely about the cage they trapped you
into."

"Then let me alone there. Don't--don't poke me up."

Donaldson snapped away his cigarette.

"No. Why should I? But I 'll have none of it. That damned Barnum,
'Society,' shall not catch me and trim my claws and file my teeth."

He laughed to himself, his lips drawn back a little, rubbing behind the
pup's ears. The dog moved sleepily.

"Barstow," he continued more calmly, "this is n't a whine. I 'm not
discouraged--it is n't that. I 'm not frightened, nor despondent, nor
worried, understand. I know that things will come out all right by the
time I 'm fifty, but I shall then be fifty. I 'd like a taste of the
jungle now--a week or two of roaming free, of sprawling in the
sunshine, of drinking at the living river, of rolling under the blue
sky. I 'd like to slash around uncurbed outside the pale a little. I
'd like to do it while I 'm young and strong,--I 'd like to do it now."

"In brief," suggested Barstow, "you desire money."

"Enough so that I might forget there was such a thing."

"Well, you 'll have to sell something of yourself to get it."

"Just so. I won't and there you are. You see I don't fit."

Donaldson paused a moment and then went on.

"Yo