Carefully, painfully, hesitantly, I outlined Martin’s ambition to Nora. More than that I explained the reasonableness of it, the prime importance of it to their later fortunes. I tried to paint in glowing terms the high station to which Nora, through Martin, might be exalted. I leaped from point to point with enthusiastic eloquence, when the theme had mastered me. But when I had concluded, and was looking eagerly into the young woman’s face for a favorable sign, she gasped, then in a cold voice she said: “Oh, yes, it’s all right for _him_; but don’t I know that if he goes to college he’ll meet other girls, better looking, better dressed, better educated than I am, or can ever hope to be. Suppose I don’t break off this engagement now, how am I to know that he’ll not forget me, throw me over. Have you thought of that in all your plans?” “Martin’s a man of his word, I suppose,” I protested. “You’d find me true, Nora,” declared Martin. “How long do you want me to wait?” demanded the girl. “Only about seven or eight years or so!” haltingly explained Martin. Nora leaped to her feet and stamped the floor, angrily, imperatively. “You’d keep me waiting seven or eight years; waiting that long for you, with all the risk! Not me! _Not for a thousand Martins!_” That was her answer. We left her without more words. We left her watching us, crying. Martin commented, when we were outside: “Now, if she’d only had more faith in me and made me feel certain of victory, maybe I’d given the whole thing up; but now--we’ll go tomorrow, sure!” The following evening we sat in the North Station in Boston, awaiting the train that would carry us on an all-night journey. Every nerve Martin possessed quivered with pessimism. He scolded, chided, lodged complaints at everything and everybody. He tried to give me the impression that I had made a prisoner of him; that he no longer had any initiative of his own. As we sat in the waiting room he held humorous monologues the purport of each one being, “What a fool I am, at my age, to be running out among a lot of kids to get ready for college. What a fool!” During that hour’s wait, he had resolved four times to expend that fifty dollars in a ticket to the orange groves of California. Finally, when he had been brooding in silence for some moments, with a quick action he pulled out his pocket book, handed it to me and said, savagely, “Here, take this and keep it safe. No matter how I beg or what I say, don’t let me have it. To make things sure, you’d better run and get me my ticket to the school; then I’ll be sure and not turn back!”