“Honestly, no. I think I am in love with my profession. If I didn’t have other things to trouble me, I believe I could go on making maps to the end of the chapter.” “You think that now because the drudgery is preferable to the other things, maybe. Tell me about the other things.” “I shall, and I’ll cut it short. You know what the public knows about George Brant of Silverette and elsewhere, so we needn’t go into that, though perhaps you will let me say that I was no worse than other men of my tribe. I mean by that that I never dealt a brace game, and I never picked a quarrel of my own motion.” “These things say themselves. Go on.” “Well, one day I came to the end of things. You may imagine that the life would nauseate any man who has ever known anything better, and that is what it did to me. So I turned short, pasted down the old leaf, and began all over again.” “So far so good. And then?” “Then I began to hunger and thirst after respectability, and a wife, and a home, and all the commonplace blessings of the well-behaved. And because I can’t have them I am minded to do a lot of foolish things.” The editor removed his glasses and fell to polishing them absently. “Perhaps you are not willing to pay the price,” he suggested. “Yes, I am--if I know my own mind.” “Then you have found the--what shall we call her?--the affinity?” “I have; found her and lost her again.” “Very few things are lost in this world--beyond the hope of finding them again, I mean. What happened?” “That which was sure to happen, sooner or later. Her mother found me out and sent me adrift with a Scotch blessing.” “H’m! that was a bit hard. Does the young woman know?” “That is what I can’t find out, though I am afraid she does. I met her face to face yesterday, and she passed me without a word.” “Which proves nothing more than that she may be nearsighted. I shouldn’t lose any sleep over that.” “But I did; I went mad, and spent half the night in a gambling den.” “You did? That is the worst thing I know about you thus far. It was unworthy of you.” “Don’t I know it? Haven’t I been eating the bread of bitterness all day?” “I suppose you have; but you will have to eat a good bit of it before you get through. You say you are willing to pay the price, but I have my doubts about that.” Now Brant could be steel cold in the fiercest fray, but he was not beyond flinching under a friendly lash. Forsyth’s doubt whipped him out of his chair, and he made two or three quick turns up and down the narrow walkway behind the desk before the pot of passion boiled over. “God in heaven, Forsyth, you don’t know what you are talking about!” he burst out. “I’d sell my soul and the reversion of it to win that girl’s love--and respect.” “Exactly; but you are not required to sell it. You are expected to pay it out of debt.” “I am willing to do that. But what can I do more than I have done?”