"You're too thin-skinned. If I were a man I'd _make_ them come to me, and then I'd teach them to have confidence--the way Dick Holden does." "Dick Holden's way, somebody else's, never mine," he thought bitterly, "is always the best." But he did not let her see him wince. Instead, he said gently, "In the long run it's not the sound way. If I do good work, some day people will realize it and come to me. And I _do_ good work," he cried, not to boast, but because their courage needed a tonic, "and some day when I get my chance I'll do far finer." She smiled wearily. "Some day! It's always some day. Why don't you _make_ your chance--as Dick does?" That talk rankled in David's heart long after Shirley had forgotten it. She could say such things and forget them in an hour. But her comparisons never angered him, only hurt. He tried to be just, and blamed himself for their predicament. If he had been wise and firm at the beginning, when the temptations to indulgences came, they could have escaped these troublous waters. Firmness now seemed only cruel. "You see," he would explain to himself, trying to believe, "she's really only a child still. It is very hard on her. If I said no to things now, she wouldn't understand. I must just make it as easy as possible for her--somehow." But he sighed, "If only we could give up this apartment and live cheaply and--and honestly until we're on our feet. If only she'd look at it that way!" He had suggested that to Shirley once--but only once. "Oh, no!" she had cried. "That would be a confession to everybody. It would be humiliating, more than I could bear. We've got to keep this apartment and not let people know we're hard up." They thought people did not know. So it went for nearly two years. You must not think there were no happy times, hours or days or even weeks when they took joy in their love and Davy Junior; though more and more these times lost their wonderfulness and the power to charm away the grisly goblin Care. But the ugly or weary or despondent hours bulked largest in David's mind because he took them so keenly to heart. Yet, though his debts slowly grew, and he was always a month behind in his office and apartment rent, he did not lose faith in himself; he gave his very best to the little business he had and worked away at his sketches, which grew better all the time. (It hurt him more than a little that Shirley took no interest in them.) And though he saw clearly that she had faults, even as you and I, he did not lose faith in Shirley nor cease to love her. Often at nights, especially after there had been a quarrel, he stole away from his sketching to the room where she slept with the baby by her side and lightly kissed her hair or an outflung arm. Then the old tender protective impulse swept over him; he wished he were the sort of man that could give her all the things she wanted, thinking that the way to prove a love.