“Not he. He’s worked too hard and he’s too much in love with his profession to have a thought to spare for women. No. A great surgeon, one of the greatest in New York, Dr. Gaunt, under whom he had served for a time in France, was visiting the hospital and saw him perform an operation on a miner who had been smashed up in a fashion more complicated than usual. Dr. Gaunt was not only much impressed but remembered he had thought Geoff uncommonly clever and resourceful when they had worked together in one of the base hospitals. He needed a young assistant, as the one he’d had for some time had developed incipient tuberculosis and gone to California. He asked Geoff to dinner that night, talked with him for four hours, and then invited him to go to New York. Of course Geoff clinched then and there. When he descended on us this morning and told us the story he said he still felt in a sort of daze. And of course it means a good income from the beginning. Dr. Gaunt will pay him a salary until he is assured of stepping into the personal practice of the former associate, and he is practically certain of that.” “Fine,” said Gita temperately. “But I thought he had discovered a gold-mine at least.” “Old stuff. I shouldn’t have liked that at all. But I wish you’d warm up. Don’t you see what it means to me?” “Oh!” Gita sprang to her feet with a little squeal of delight. “Of course! It means you won’t have to work any more and can devote all your time to writing.” She did not kiss Elsie as another girl would have done, but seized her hand and pumped it up and down. “Now I am excited. It’s too wonderful.” “That’s it, my dear. After I had got over being exultant for Geoff and he had told me to go straight to the store and hand in my resignation, I’m bound to say I forgot him and was filled with an entirely personal excitement. I never felt so happy in my life.” “I should think so. I know what it is to be free.” She looked at Elsie’s flushed face and sparkling eyes and wondered if the young author had what was known as temperament and had been severely repressing it. She was as curious about the secret places of the ego as Elsie herself. “I suppose you’ll give yourself up to an orgy of writing now,” she said. “Get to work on that novel and be famous this time next year?” “I’ll write it anyhow. Oh!” Elsie sprang to her feet and lifted her arms. The color left her face and it glowed with a white radiance. “Oh! To know that I may have a career! A career! Whether you fail or set the world on fire cannot make so very much difference if only you have the opportunity to try for it, to work for it, to think of nothing else! And to be able to write constantly without interruption. You cannot imagine what it means.” “Yes, I can,” said Gita sharply. “And it makes me feel like ten cents. I went to work in the garden this morning because I had nothing to do. I’m sick of the Boardwalk, and I can’t read all day.”