on." He added, "And I know it wasn't anything
bad--anything unwomanly."

"I did the best I could--nothing I'm ashamed of--or proud of
either. Just--what I had to do."

"But you ought to be proud that you arrived."

"No--only glad," said she. "So--so _frightfully_ glad!"

In any event, their friendship was bound to flourish; aided by
that dinner and that wine it sprang up into an intimacy, a
feeling of mutual trust and of sympathy at every point. Like all
women she admired strength in a man above everything else. She
delighted in the thick obstinate growth of his fair hair, in the
breadth of the line of his eyebrows, in the aggressive thrust of
his large nose and long jawbone. She saw in the way his mouth
closed evidence of a will against which opposition would dash
about as dangerously as an egg against a stone wall. There was
no question of his having those birthmarks of success about
which he talked. She saw them--saw nothing of the less
obtrusive--but not less important--marks of weakness which might
have enabled an expert in the reading of faces to reach some
rather depressing conclusion as to the nature and the degree of
that success.

Finally, he burst out with, "Yes, I've made up my mind. I'll do
it! I'm going to New York. I've been fooling away the last five
years here learning a lot, but still idling--drinking--amusing
myself in all kinds of ways. And about a month ago--one night,
as I was rolling home toward dawn--through a driving sleet
storm--do you remember a line in 'Paradise Lost'"

"I never read it," interrupted Susan.

"Well--it's where the devils have been kicked out of Heaven and
are lying in agony flat on the burning lake--and Satan rises
up--and marches haughtily out among them--and calls out, 'Awake!
Arise! Or forever more be damned!' That's what has happened to
me several times in my life. When I was a boy, idling about the
farm and wasting myself, that voice came to me--'Awake! Arise!
Or forever more be damned!' And I got a move on me, and insisted
on going to college. Again--at college--I became a
dawdler--poker--drink--dances--all the rest of it. And suddenly
that voice roared in my ears, made me jump like a rabbit when a
gun goes off. And last month it came again. I went to
work--finished a play I've been pottering over for three years.
But somehow I couldn't find the--the--whatever I needed--to make
me break away. Well--_you've_ given me that. I'll resign from t