She sprang up, coming quickly to him. Her little hand sought his arm. "Micky," she breathed softly, with shining eyes, "do it! You can; it's in you; if you will only leave off--and you can--you must! Think of her, Micky,--she cried over you--perhaps she's crying yet! Make her smile, instead! Oh, what makes me talk to you like this, only knowing you a few weeks? What right--" He caught her hand as she moved slowly away and drew her back. "What right?" he echoed warmly. "The best in the world! It does me good! You're a true friend, you are, and you can see what a mess I've made of my life and how I could do better if I would--or could, for you don't know what I have to fight against, Maisie." He drew a chair for her close to his own. "But then, I'm young yet," he pursued, with a rather sorry smile. "Time yet, perhaps, for dreams. Dreams!" he repeated, with a queer, half-shamed look, "how the fellows at the office would laugh to hear me say that! They'd say I'd gone bug-house." "Dreams?" she repeated softly, a divine smile in her wistful eyes, "why, Micky, we're all dreamers. Between here and the store--the store and here, day after day, don't you suppose they help me; the dreams? Doesn't it help your work--your old humdrum work, whatever it is, without any beginning or ending--doesn't it help to mix a little dreaming with it? Of course, it doesn't really help me--I'm a poor, silly little thing--but it can help you, Micky--it can help you!" "'Poor, silly little thing!'" he repeated after her, his eyes moistening. "Don't, Maisie, it makes me feel like a fool! Why, I'm not fit to speak to you, girl! The life I've lived--Oh, the road is where I belong, after all! And the dreams--why, they're just dreams, that's all. I'd only have to try to realize them to prove it--and I'm afraid. Yes, when I haven't been drunk, I've been afraid." She winced at the word, while he, unheeding, stared gloomily at the carpet. "What--" she began hesitantly, and stopped. He looked up, comprehending. "To write," he said simply. "To write instead of scribble. Oh, I can see things--and I can feel 'em. Seems to me that I could do it--but it looms up so that I don't dare try. And sometimes I get into the proper mood, and get squared away--and then--" He broke off with a despairing gesture. "I don't know much about those things, of course," she said, "but I like to read what I can, and it seems to me that feelin' like you do about it--I mean it's lookin' so big to you--that you ought to be all the more able to do it." He stared at her. This subtle viewpoint had never struck him before. "By George, it takes a girl, after all, to hit the nail square," he told her. "I never thought of it. But say,--why--it's encouraging, it is!" "Sure it is." She smiled at him. "You want to get busy."