At present he was an insurance clerk at forty dollars a week with his dream slipping fast behind him. The dark little girl who had made this mess, this terrible and intolerable mess, was waiting to be sent for in a town in Tennessee. In fifteen minutes the woman from whom he sublet his room knocked and asked him with maddening kindness if, since he was home, he would have some lunch. He shook his head, but the interruption aroused him, and getting up from the bed he wrote a telegram. "Letter depressed me have you lost your nerve you are foolish and just upset to think of breaking off why not marry me immediately sure we can make it all right----" He hesitated for a wild minute, and then added in a hand that could scarcely be recognized as his own: "In any case I will arrive to-morrow at six o'clock." When he finished he ran out of the apartment and down to the telegraph office near the subway stop. He possessed in this world not quite one hundred dollars, but the letter showed that she was "nervous" and this left him no choice. He knew what "nervous" meant--that she was emotionally depressed, that the prospect of marrying into a life of poverty and struggle was putting too much strain upon her love. George O'Kelly reached the insurance company at his usual run, the run that had become almost second nature to him, that seemed best to express the tension under which he lived. He went straight to the manager's office. "I want to see you, Mr. Chambers," he announced breathlessly. "Well?" Two eyes, eyes like winter windows, glared at him with ruthless impersonality. "I want to get four days' vacation." "Why, you had a vacation just two weeks ago!" said Mr. Chambers in surprise. "That's true," admitted the distraught young man, "but now I've got to have another." "Where'd you go last time? To your home?" "No, I went to--a place in Tennessee." "Well, where do you want to go this time?" "Well, this time I want to go to--a place in Tennessee." "You're consistent, anyhow," said the manager dryly. "But I didn't realize you were employed here as a travelling salesman." "I'm not," cried George desperately, "but I've got to go." "All right," agreed Mr. Chambers, "but you don't have to come back. So don't!" "I won't." And to his own astonishment as well as Mr. Chambers' George's face grew pink with pleasure. He felt happy, exultant--for the first time in six months he was absolutely free. Tears of gratitude stood in his eyes, and he seized Mr. Chambers warmly by the hand. "I want to thank you," he said with a rush of emotion, "I don't want to come back. I think I'd have gone crazy if you'd said that I could come back. Only I couldn't quit myself, you see, and I want to thank you for--for quitting for me."