flushed
furiously. "Fear of physical and mental pains are just the same,
requiring the same courage to go through." He stopped, as though
weighing the wisdom of continuing. "Oh, I don't care," he moved
uneasily, "I want to tell you nearer what I mean. Once, a long time
ago--maybe three years or four--there was a girl for whom I'd have
suffered anything and thanked God for the pain. That's loving some! And
there was another chap, a sort of friend of mine, and a right decent
sort; steady, always at work, and people said she'd make a great mistake
by taking me. They saw him only when he was making money by his own
grinding, you know, and saw me only when I was spending my allowance. He
wanted her, too; and it was a pretty nice race between us, with a
foregone conclusion that she'd take one or the other. She didn't pay any
attention to what the people said, but one day I picked up some kind of
a self-righteous, courageous microbe, and decided the proper way for
her--I stepped aside."

"And?" she asked, when he did not continue.

"My courage was there, but my point of view was warped; I was out of
focus on duty," he quietly asserted. "She married the other fellow, and
it developed too late that his life was a shabby muss. Now her eyes are
heavy with an endless sorrow. I think that was when I tried--well, when
I began drinking some."

"Wouldn't you have done that anyway?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he slowly answered.

"If he had not married her, and she were here now, would you?"

"Not since you are here," he debonairly smiled.

She might not have heard this from the way she sat, looking down and
thinking.

"I suppose," she said at last, "that all men's lives are shabby musses.
You may think me unkind, but without a shadow of doubt you would have
made her unhappy, too. You are that type."

"I'm very much obliged to you," he murmured. "It seems that I've come to
a friend, and found a judge; that my search for sympathy has brought me
to a sentence. You're most encouraging, Jane. Perhaps it would be
interesting to know how you've found all this out!"

"Oh, I can't say just how," she answered, feeling that his rebuke held
more than a share of justice. "It comes from so many small things,
which, apart, might be immaterial, but, together, speak volumes and make
you quite an impossible quantity in the scheme of domesticity. For
instance, the other day, when you had someone's gun in your hands, you
deliberately fired at an