ir, and once more presented the
soles of her shoes to the flames. "Look here," she said, "aren't you,
just among old friends, rather flitting your life away? I don't think
it's very pretty to borrow money from strangers, and to be always just
getting into difficulties or just getting out of them. Do you?"

"Well, you know," said Wilmot earnestly, "I don't. When I don't hate
myself, I don't like myself any too well. But there's something wrong
with me. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe I lack an impulse. Maybe I'd do
better if any single solitary person in this world really gave a damn
about me."

His cheerful boyish face assumed a proper solemnity of expression, and
a certain nobility. At the moment he really thought that nobody in the
world cared what became of him.

"Nobody," said Barbara, "likes to back a flighty pony. You yourself, for
instance, are always putting money, your own or some one else's, on
horses that always run somewhere near form. Of course you have excuses
for yourself."

"I? None."

"Oh, yes, you have. You were brought up to be rich, and you were left
poor, and a man has to live and even secure for himself the luxuries to
which he has been accustomed. Haven't you ever excused yourself to
yourself something like that?"

Wilmot admitted that he had, and went further. "You can't knock livings
out of a tree with a stick like ripe apples," he said. "You've either
got to use your wits or begin at the bottom and work up. And it seems to
me that I'd rather be a little bit tarnished than toil away the best
years of my life the way some men I know are doing."

"Yes," said Barbara, "but why not go somewhere where the world is
younger, and there are real chances to be a man, and real opportunities
to make money in real ways? I don't blame you for living on your wits. I
blame you for gambling and never getting anywhere and not caring."

"Not caring? And this from you?"

She changed color under his steady eyes.

"You just give me a certain promise, Barbs, and I give you my word of
honor I'll settle to something above-board and make it hum. Look here
now! How about it? Who's been so faithful to the one girl for so long?
Who understands her so well? Who'd enjoy dying for her so much?"

"Good old Wilmot," she said gently and gave him her hand. He kissed it
and would have liked to go on holding it forever, but she took it away
from him, and after a silence said, with some bitterness: "I mustn't
ever marry anyb