He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but always more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not cynically, it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the heart. It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in the least to any one but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom was in the midst of it. There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing which had happened to him--“this fool thing,” as he called it. There was this monstrous, magnificent house,--he knew it was magnificent, though it wasn't his kind,--there was old Palford and his solemn talk about ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm. It always reminded him of how ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the “Temple Temple” and how he had told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it. And there was seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as a baby,--Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and squeezed her!--and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until “he had found out.” That was it. She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of making herself seem more important: she just believed it. She was doing it because she wanted to let him “have his chance,” just as if she were his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about. His chance! He laughed outright--a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill exceedingly. When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride up and down as he continued to think it over. “I wish she was as sure as I am,” he said. “I wish she was as sure of me as I am of myself--and as I am of her.” He laughed the short, confident laugh again. “I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do, and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty, us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!” he exclaimed imaginatively. “Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million.” He laughed outright joyfully. “Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!”