e his own pile, I'll bet you. I'm in a position to
do favors for people--the people we'd need. And I'll get in a
position to do more and more. As long as they can make something
out of us--or hope to--do you suppose they'll nose into our pasts
and root things up that'd injure them as much as us?"

"It would be an interesting game, wouldn't it?" said Susan.

She was reflectively observing the handsome, earnest face
before her--an incarnation of intelligent ambition, a Freddie
Palmer who was somehow divesting himself of himself--was
growing up--away from the rotten soil that had nourished
him--up into the air--was growing strongly--yes, splendidly!

"And we've got everything to gain and nothing to lose,"
pursued he. "We'd not be adventurers, you see. Adventurers
are people who haven't any money and are looking round to try
to steal it. We'd have money. So, we'd be building solid,
right on the rock." The handsome young man--the strongest,
the most intelligent, the most purposeful she had ever met,
except possibly Brent--looked at her with an admiring
tenderness that moved her, the forlorn derelict adrift on the
vast, lonely, treacherous sea. "The reason I've waited for
you to invite you in on this scheme is that I tried you out
and I found that you belong to the mighty few people who do
what they say they'll do, good bargain or bad. It'd never
occur to you to shuffle out of trying to keep your word."

"It hasn't--so far," said Susan.

"Well--that's the only sort of thing worth talking about as
morality. Believe me, for I've been through the whole game
from chimney pots to cellar floor."

"There's another thing, too," said the girl.

"What's that?"

"Not to injure anyone else."

Palmer shook his head positively. "It's believing that and
acting on it that has kept you down in spite of your brains
and looks."

"That I shall never do," said the girl. "It may be
weakness--I guess it is weakness. But--I draw the line there."

"But I'm not proposing that you injure anyone--or proposing to
do it myself. As I said, I've got up where I can afford to be
good and kind and all that. And I'm willing to jump you up
over the stretch of the climb that can't be crossed without
being--well, anything but good and kind."

She was reflecting.

"You'll never get over that stretch by yourself. It'll always
turn you back."

"Just what do you propose?" she asked.

It gave her pleasure to see the keen delight