He went over close to the stairs and dropped his voice.

"If you want the bitter truth," he went on, trying to smile, "I've put
myself on trial and been convicted of being a fool and a failure. I've
failed regularly and with precision at everything I have tried. I've
been going around so long trying to find a place that I fit into, that
I'm scarred as with many battles. And now I'm on probation--for the last
time. If this doesn't go, I--I--"

"What?" she asked, leaning down to him. "You'll not--"

"Oh, no," he said, "nothing dramatic, of course. I could go around the
country in a buggy selling lightning-rods--"

She drew herself back as if she resented his refusal of her sympathy.

"Or open a saloon in the Philippines!" he finished mockingly. "There's a
living in that."

"You are impossible," she said, and turned away.

Oh, I haven't any excuse to make for him! I think he was just hungry for
her sympathy and her respect, knowing nothing else was coming to him.
But the minute they grew a bit friendly he seemed to remember the
prince, and that, according to his idea of it, she was selling herself,
and he would draw off and look at her in a mocking unhappy way that made
me want to slap him.

He watched her up the stairs and then turned and walked to the fire,
with his hands in his pockets and his head down.

I closed the news stand and he came over just as I was hanging up the
cigar-case key for Amanda King in the morning. He reached up and took
the key off its nail.

"I'll keep that," he said. "It's no tobacco after this, Minnie."

"You can't keep them here, then," I retorted. "They've got to smoke;
it's the only work they do."

"We'll see," he said quietly. "And--oh, yes, Minnie, now that we shall
not be using the mineral spring--"

"Not use the mineral spring!" I repeated, stupefied.

"Certainly NOT!" he said. "This is a drugless sanatorium, Minnie, from
now on. That's part of the theory--no drugs."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," I snapped, "theory or no theory, you've
got to have drugs. No theory that I ever heard of is going to cure Mr.
Moody's indigestion and Miss Cobb's neuralgia."

"They won't have indigestion and neuralgia."

"Or Amanda King's toothache."

"We won't have Amanda King."

He put his elbow on the stand and smiled at me.

"Listen, Minnie," he said. "If you hadn't been wasting your abilities in
the mineral spring, I'd be sorry to close it. But there will be plenty
for you to