thought had been she.

"How those men down town would poke fun at you," said she, "if they knew
you had me with you all the time, right beside you."

This amused him. "Still, I suspect there are lots of men who'd be
exposed in the same way if there were a general and complete show-down."

"Sometimes I wish I really were with you--working with you--helping you.
You have girls--a girl--to be your secretary--or whatever you call
it--don't you?"

"You should have seen the one I had to-day. But there's always something
pathetic about every girl who has to make her own living."

"Pathetic!" protested Miss Burroughs. "Not at all. I think it's fine."

"You wouldn't say that if you had tried it."

"Indeed, I should," she declared with spirit. "You men are entirely too
soft about women. You don't realize how strong they are. And, of course,
women don't resist the temptation to use their sex when they see how
easy it is to fool men that way. The sad thing about it is that the
woman who gets along by using her sex and by appealing to the
soft-heartedness of men never learns to rely on herself. She's likely to
come to grief sooner or later."

"There's truth in all that," said Norman. "Enough to make it dangerously
unjust. There's so much lying done about getting on that it's no wonder
those who've never tried to do for themselves get a wholly false notion
of the situation. It is hard--bitterly hard--for a man to get on. Most
men don't. Most men? All but a mere handful. And if those who do get on
were to tell the truth--the _whole_ truth--about how they
succeeded--well, it'd not make a pleasant story."

"But _you've_ got on," retorted the girl.

"So I have. And how?" Norman smiled with humorous cynicism. "I'll never
tell--not all--only the parts that sound well. And those parts are the
least important. However, let's not talk about that. What I set out to
say was that, while it's hard for a man to make a decent living--unless
he has luck--and harder still--much harder--for him to rise to
independence----"

"It wasn't so dreadfully hard for _you_," interrupted Josephine, looking
at him with proud admiration. "But then, you had a wonderful brain."

"That wasn't what did it," replied he. "And, in spite of all my
advantages--friendships, education, enough money to tide me over the
beginnings--in spite of all that, I had a frightful time. Not the work.
Of course, I had to work, but I like that. No, it was the--the
maneuveri