“... Sure, I could have hunted you up. In fact, I would have done it eventually, but I haven’t been in New York all the time; running back west to get my stuff up, now and then.” “I thought you lived in New York,” Pidge said. “I keep an apartment in East Twenty-fourth Street,” he granted. A lull for just an instant before he went on: “You see, it’s handy to my publishers, and my bank is only a square or two away.” Pidge wished she could accept him for just what he seemed--the upstart American in literature. She wished to forget everything else, save the youth who said, in effect, “This is my bank, this is my solicitor, this is my publisher.” But she could not smile her scorn and pass on. She felt like the parent of a child showing off. Back of the tinkle and flush of these big days of his, which he seemed to be drinking in so breathlessly, she felt more than ever that thing about him which was imprisoned. A thing it was that called to her, kept calling beseechingly. “I’ll never forget,” he said, speaking of the fifty dollars--“I’ll never forget that night, when I left you--and the fog in the Square. Everything was different, after that.” “You didn’t go to Cleveland that night, as you said,” she declared, watching the curve of his black lashes. The eyes darted her way. “Lucky, I didn’t,” he said. “God! How I wanted to! New York had me bluffed that night, before you came to the rescue.” “Why didn’t you go?” “I was up close to Grand Central with my bag, when the idea struck me--the idea that has since come out in the story series that has caught on. I could hardly realize that I had your money. I kept it in my hand--the hand in my pocket. That was a turning point in a life. New York had frightened me pretty nearly to death--the hunger thing, you know. All I wanted on earth was to crawl into that train for Cleveland, but it was as if you were calling on me to stay.” She turned in pain and amazement. He was looking straight ahead and talking softly. She saw every twist and drive of his mind as he dramatized the situation unfolding to him. He was deeply absorbed in the pictures which his fertile brain uncovered one by one. It hurt her like the uncovering of something perverted in herself. “Don’t go on like that,” she said. “You’re not working now. You are just walking in the street. You mustn’t make stories when you talk.” He glanced at her sorrowfully, as one realizing in himself a truth so big that he is willing to wait for it to be believed. “It is God’s truth,” he said. “That was the turning point in my career--that night--the night I turned back from the train. It was as if you were calling me, and it was as if the idea came from you. I knew I had to stay on and do the work here, close to the markets.” She looked into his face and laughed. “And you could forget me--forget the fifty dollars for nearly a year!” “I don’t blame you for talking that way. I expect to be misunderstood--not me, but the thing I stand for.”