"Barstow," he continued more calmly, "this is n't a whine. I 'm not discouraged--it is n't that. I 'm not frightened, nor despondent, nor worried, understand. I know that things will come out all right by the time I 'm fifty, but I shall then be fifty. I 'd like a taste of the jungle now--a week or two of roaming free, of sprawling in the sunshine, of drinking at the living river, of rolling under the blue sky. I 'd like to slash around uncurbed outside the pale a little. I 'd like to do it while I 'm young and strong,--I 'd like to do it now." "In brief," suggested Barstow, "you desire money." "Enough so that I might forget there was such a thing." "Well, you 'll have to sell something of yourself to get it." "Just so. I won't and there you are. You see I don't fit." Donaldson paused a moment and then went on. "You know something of my story, you alone of all this grinding city. You saw me in college and in the law school, where on a coolie diet I did a man's work. But even you don't know how close to hard pan I was during those seven years,--down to crackers and water for weeks at a time." "You don't mean to say you went hungry?" "Hungry?" laughed Donaldson. "Man dear, there were days when I was starving! I 've been to classes when I was so weak I could n't push my pencil. I was hungry, and cold, and lonesome, but at that time I had my good warm, well-fed dreams, so I did n't mind so much. And always I thought it would be better next year, but it was n't. None of the things that come to some men fell to me; it continued the same old pitiless grind until I began to expect it. Then I said to myself that it would be different when I got through. But it was n't. I finished, and you are the only pleasant recollection I have of all that past. You used to let me sit by your fire and now and then you brought out cake they had sent you from home." "Good Lord," groaned Barstow, "why did n't you let a fellow know?" "Why should I let you know? It was my fight. But I 've watched by the hour your every move about the room, so hungry that my pulse increased or decreased as you neared or retreated from the closet where you kept that cake. I 'll admit that this condition was a good deal my fault,--I had a cursed false pride that forbade my doing for grub what some of the fellows did. Then, too, I was an optimist; it was coming out all right in the end. But it did n't and it has n't." Donaldson paused. "Am I boring you, old man?" "No! No! Go on. But if I had suspected--" "You could not then have been the friend you were to me,--I 'd have cut you dead. And understand, I 'm not recalling this now for the purpose of exciting sympathy. I don't deserve sympathy; I went my own gait and cheerfully paid the cost, content with my dreams of the future. I would n't sell one whit of myself. I wouldn't sacrifice one extravagant belief. I would n't compromise. And I 'm glad I did n't.