he doctor's turn for silence.

"If you don't go now, you will not be likely to go for a long time."
His eyes kept firmly on the young man's face.

"And if I have a reason to stay here?"

"There can be no reason stronger than your success."

"But there is--at least," he paused, awkwardly--"I feel there is, I
hope there is."

"Do you know why I have backed you so persistently?"

"You have been awfully kind!"

"It was not altogether on your father's account," the doctor
interrupted him. "I might have put you in some business and left you
to fight your own way. That kind of experience we all know makes men,
the successful men, who are tried and found capable of bearing
strains. I have saved you so far from that struggle. Why?

"Because," continued the doctor authoritatively, "there are some men
who care more to do some one thing, who love one object, more than
they care for success, for fame, for pleasure. If they are defeated,
if they never have the chance to do that one thing--perhaps the world
is no poorer--there are plenty to take their places, but they are
capable of misery, real misery, such as no common failure ever brings
to the common man. They may be foolish; they may be idle and be drawn
aside and think they are happier in doing what comes along, but that
is never true. They are wretched. Such men can never love, except as
an interlude. Do you understand me?"

The doctor paused at this sharp interrogation; Long's eyes had
followed him wonderingly during his long monologue.

"So you thought----" he stammered.

"That you were made in that way," nodded the doctor; "an
undomesticated animal."

Long sat brooding over this idea. The doctor went on in his low, swift
tones.

"You have the hunger and the thirst for that work over there. You
would play with a woman and then put her out of your heart into the
street, or try to tame yourself. Which would be worse."

"And if I am not so sure that I am built like that? Suppose I am
willing to make the sacrifice, if you call it that?"

The doctor's tone became neutral again.

"You refer to a possible interest in my daughter."

Long's face slowly flushed under the word "possible."

"Yes! at least, perhaps--I have never put it to myself exactly--indeed
why do you ask?"

"May I ask how far that interest has gone?"

The younger man half rose from his chair.

"If it had _gone_ at all," he said, hotly, "you would have known it."

"Yes," the doctor knitted