I must have been a railway man born. At twenty-two--no, six months after my majority--I was jumped into a head clerkship at twelve hundred a year. Big pay for a youngster in those days; not so bad for a youngster even in these inflated years. When I brought Edna the news I think she began to love me. To her that salary was a halo, a golden halo round me--made me seem a superior person. She had long thought highly of my business abilities, for she was shrewd and had listened when the older people talked, and they were all for me as the likeliest young man of the neighborhood. “I’ve had another raise,” said I carelessly. We were sitting on her front porch, she upon the top step, I two steps down. “Another!” she said. “Why, the last was only two months ago.” “Yes, they’ve pushed me up to twelve hundred a year--a little more, for it’s twenty-five per.” “Gee!” she exclaimed, and I can see her pretty face now--all aglow, beaming a reverent admiration upon me. I rather thought I deserved it. But it has ever been one of my vanities to pretend to take my successes as matters of course, and even to depreciate them. They say the English invariably win in diplomacy because they act dissatisfied with what they get, never grumbling so sourly as when they capture the whole hog. I can believe it. That has been my policy, and it has worked rather well. Still, any policy works well if the man has the gift for success. “Twenty-five per,” I repeated, to impress it still more deeply upon her and to revel in the thrilling words. “Before I get through I’ll make them pay me what I’m worth.” “Do you think you’ll ever be making more than that?” exclaimed she, wonderingly. “I’ll be getting two thousand some day,” said I, far more confidently than I felt. “Oh--Godfrey!” she said softly. And as I looked at her I for the first time felt a certain peculiar thrill that comes only when the soul of the woman a man loves rushes forth to cling to his soul. In my life I have never had--and never shall have--a happier moment. Once more patience, gentle reader! I know this bit of sordidness--this glow of sentiment upon a vulgar material incident--disgusts your delicate soul. I am aware that you have a proper contempt for all the coarse details of life. You would not be _gentle_ reader if you hadn’t. You would be a plain man or woman, living busily and usefully, and making people happy in the plain ways in which the human animal finds happiness. You would not be devoting your days to making soul-food out of idealistic moonshine and dreaming of ways to dazzle yourself and your acquaintances into thinking you a superior person. “Do you know,” said my pretty Edna, advancing her bond at least halfway toward meeting mine, “do you know, I’ve had an instinct, a presentiment of this? I was dreaming it when I woke up this morning.”