"Yes, it is!" she exclaimed, "and, just because you've struck ore, that doesn't prove that you're right in everything. I've 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 trail, leaving Denver with something to think about. CHAPTER XIV THE STRIKE