Tommy turned on his heel and walked out of the room, conscious that he was a failure. He realized now that he had not made himself indispensable. His information bureau could be shut up and no harm whatever suffered by the company. In the tests to which Mr. Thompson had subjected him he had not proven that there was first-class raw material in him. Perhaps the tests were not fair; probably they were. Why, indeed, should he expect favors? What business could be conducted on the basis of unintelligent kindliness? And the crushing sense of failure made his secret rise before the poor boy. He had intended to make restitution, and here he was good for nothing! When discovery came where would he be? He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as the awful vision fleeted before his eyes--the vision of what discovery would bring to him. He would take the blow! He would be good for something! If not in Dayton, elsewhere. He had been a boy! He had been himself, as God made him. But now he would be different! He would make Tommy Leigh a young man who would secure his advancement by any and all means. To succeed he would bluff and lie and-- No! Nobody had it easy, not even people who wouldn't fight. And now he wanted to fight--fight with all his might! The harder the fight, the better! Fight the world, life, hell, Thompson, everything, and everybody, the more the better. He would die fighting, with his soul full of rage. The great reward was the end of all trouble! When a man commits suicide in a really glorious way he grows calm. How can petty annoyances disturb a heroic corpse? Tommy grew calm. He would have to leave Dayton, but Dayton had taught him just one thing--that beyond all question there was some place in the world where Thomas Francis Leigh would prove his value! He felt even a sort of gratitude to the head of the Tecumseh Motor Company, to whom he was indebted for his education. He had learned more of life in the few weeks he had been there than in the twenty-one years and three months he had spent elsewhere. His gratitude brought in time that mood of genial melancholy which is the heritage of youth, when youth, in the midst of life, feels its own loneliness. And because youth also is generous, Tommy felt he must share it with somebody. He decided to write, not to his father, but to Marion Willetts! He had written to her only once, a bright and amusing letter--of course to be read between the lines. She had answered. And her own letter, too, was full of Tommy Leigh. She asked for details concerning the few hundred things that Tommy intentionally had merely hinted at in his first. This second letter to her must be carefully written. It must both express and conceal, say and leave unsaid. Every word must mean exactly what he desired to convey, in precisely the way he wished her to get the message. He closed his eyes and began to compose.