s it is necessary to look after the bread and butter," Thorpe
reminded her gently, although he knew that was not the real reason at
all.

"If your firm can't supply it, I can," she answered. "It seems strange
that you won't grant my first request of you, merely because of a little
money."

"It isn't a little money," he objected, catching manlike at the
practical question. "You don't realize what an amount a clump of pine
like this stands for. Just in saw logs, before it is made into lumber,
it will be worth about thirty thousand dollars,--of course there's the
expense of logging to pay out of that," he added, out of his accurate
business conservatism, "but there's ten thousand dollars' profit in it."

The girl, exasperated by cold details at such a time, blazed out. "I
never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!" she cried. "Either you
are not at all the man I thought you, or you have some better reason
than you have given. Tell me, Harry; tell me at once. You don't know
what you are doing."

"The firm needs it, Hilda," said Thorpe, "in order to succeed. If we do
not cut this pine, we may fail."

In that he stated his religion. The duty of success was to him one of
the loftiest of abstractions, for it measured the degree of a man's
efficiency in the station to which God had called him. The money, as
such, was nothing to him.

Unfortunately the girl had learned a different language. She knew
nothing of the hardships, the struggles, the delight of winning for the
sake of victory rather than the sake of spoils. To her, success meant
getting a lot of money. The name by which Thorpe labelled his most
sacred principle, to her represented something base and sordid. She
had more money herself than she knew. It hurt her to the soul that the
condition of a small money-making machine, as she considered the lumber
firm, should be weighed even for an instant against her love. It was a
great deal Thorpe's fault that she so saw the firm. He might easily have
shown her the great forces and principles for which it stood.

"If I were a man," she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were a man
and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for her. My
riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,--they would be as
nothing, as less than nothing to me,--if I loved. Harry, don't let me
think I am mistaken. Let this miserable firm of yours fail, if fail
it must for lack of my poor little temple of dreams," she held