One afternoon, after he had actually been digging away at a bulb bed for half an hour, Nan suggested that he come in for refreshment. Gradually this became a habit. Sansome and Nan sat cozily either side the little Chinese tea table. He visibly luxuriated. "You don't know what a privilege this is for me--for any lonesome bachelor in this crude city--to have a home like this to come to occasionally." He hinted at his situation, but made of its details a dark mystery. The final impression was one of surface lightness and gayety, but of inner sadness. "It is a terrible city for a man without an anchor!" he said. "Keith is a lucky fellow! If I only had some one, as he has, I might amount to something." A gesture implied what a discouraged butterfly sort of person he really was. "You ought to marry," said Nan gently. "Marry!" he cried. "Dear lady, whom? Where in this awful mixture they call society could one find a woman to marry?" "There are plenty of nice women here," chided Nan. "Yes--and all of them taken by luckier fellows! You wouldn't have me marry Sally Warner, would you--or any of the other half-dozen Sally Warners? I might as well marry a gas chandelier, a grand piano, and a code of immorals--but the standard of such women is so different from the standard of women like yourself." Nan might pertinently have inquired what Ben Sansome did in this gallery, anyhow; but so cold-blooded and direct an attack would have required a cool detachment incompatible with his dark, good looks, his winning, appealing manners, his thoughtfulness in little things, his almost helpless reliance on her sympathy; in other words, it presupposed a rather cynical, elderly person. And Nan was young, romantic, easily stirred. "All you need is to believe in yourself a little more," she said earnestly and prettily. "Why don't you undertake something instead of drifting? Some of the people you go with are not especially good for you--do you think so?" "Good for me?" he laughed bitterly. "Who cares if I go to the dogs? They'd rather like me to; it would keep them company! And I don't know that I care much myself!" he muttered in a lower tone. She leaned forward, distressed, her eyes shining with expostulation. "You mustn't hold yourself so low," she told him vehemently. "You mustn't! There are a great many people who believe in you. For their sake you should try. If you would only be just a little bit serious--in regard to yourself, I mean. A gay life is all very well----" "Gay?" he interrupted, then caught himself. "Yes, I suppose I do seem gay--God knows I try not to cry out--but, really, sometimes I'm near to ending it all----" She was excited to a panic of negation. "Oh, no! no!" she expostulated vehemently. ("Egad, she's stunning when she's aroused!" thought Sansome.) "You mustn't talk like that! It isn't fair to yourself; it isn't fair to your manhood! Oh, how you do need some one to pull you up! If I could only help!"