worked and I've
worked, and that's all the good it's done me--I'm a failure, in spite of
everything."

"Oh, I don't know," responded Denver with a superior smile, "you've
still got your five hundred dollars. A man is never whipped till he
thinks he's whipped--why don't you go back and take a run at it?"

"Oh, what's the use of talking?" she cried jumping up, "when you don't
know a thing about it? I've tried and I've tried and the best I could
ever do was to get a place in the chorus. And there you simply ruin your
voice without even getting a chance of recognition. Oh, I get so
exasperated to see those Europeans who are nothing but big, spoiled
children go right into a try-out and take a part away from me that I
know I can render perfectly. But that's it, you see, they're perfectly
undisciplined, but they can throw themselves into the part; and the
director just takes my name and address and says he'll call me up if he
needs me."

Denver grunted and said nothing and as he swung his hammer again the
leash to her passions gave way.

"Yes, and I hate you!" she burst out, "you're so big and self-satisfied.
But I guess if you were trying to break into grand opera you wouldn't be
quite so intolerant!"

"No?" commented Denver stopping to shift his grip and she stamped her
foot in fury.

"No, you wouldn't!" she cried half weeping with rage as she contemplated
the wreck of her hopes, "don't you know that Mary Garden and
Schumann-Heink and Geraldine Farrar and all of them, that are now our
greatest stars, had to starve and skimp and wait on the impresarios
before they could get their chance? There's a difference between digging
a hole in the ground and moving a great audience to tears; so just
because you happen to be succeeding right now, don't think that you know
it all!"

"All right," agreed Denver, "I'll try to remember that. And of course
I'm nothing but a miner. But there's one thing, and I know it, about all
those great stars--they didn't any of them quit. They might have been
hungry and out of a job but they never _quit_, or they wouldn't be
where they are."

"Oh, they didn't, eh?" she mocked looking him over with slow scorn. "And
I suppose that _you_ never quit, either?"

"No, I never did," answered Denver truthfully. "I've never laid down
yet."

"Well, you're young yet," she said mimicking his patronizing tones,
"perhaps that will come to you later."

She smiled with her teeth and stalked off down the tr