ybody. So I want good terms. The
next five or six years are going to be my best."

"You'll get what you demand, if you are uncompromising. I'm safe in
congratulating you now."

Thea laughed. "It's a little early. I may not get it at all. They don't
seem to be breaking their necks to meet me. I can go back to Dresden."

As they turned the curve and walked westward they got the wind from the
side, and talking was easier.

Fred lowered his collar and shook the snow from his shoulders. "Oh, I
don't mean on the contract particularly. I congratulate you on what you
can do, Thea, and on all that lies behind what you do. On the life
that's led up to it, and on being able to care so much. That, after all,
is the unusual thing."

She looked at him sharply, with a certain apprehension. "Care? Why
shouldn't I care? If I didn't, I'd be in a bad way. What else have I
got?" She stopped with a challenging interrogation, but Ottenburg did
not reply. "You mean," she persisted, "that you don't care as much as
you used to?"

"I care about your success, of course." Fred fell into a slower pace.
Thea felt at once that he was talking seriously and had dropped the tone
of half-ironical exaggeration he had used with her of late years. "And
I'm grateful to you for what you demand from yourself, when you might
get off so easily. You demand more and more all the time, and you'll do
more and more. One is grateful to anybody for that; it makes life in
general a little less sordid. But as a matter of fact, I'm not much
interested in how anybody sings anything."

"That's too bad of you, when I'm just beginning to see what is worth
doing, and how I want to do it!" Thea spoke in an injured tone.

"That's what I congratulate you on. That's the great difference between
your kind and the rest of us. It's how long you're able to keep it up
that tells the story. When you needed enthusiasm from the outside, I was
able to give it to you. Now you must let me withdraw."

"I'm not tying you, am I?" she flashed out. "But withdraw to what? What
do you want?"

Fred shrugged. "I might ask you, What have I got? I want things that
wouldn't interest you; that you probably wouldn't understand. For one
thing, I want a son to bring up."

"I can understand that. It seems to me reasonable. Have you also found
somebody you want to marry?"

"Not particularly." They turned another curve, which brought the wind to
their backs, and they walked on in comparative cal