reserves, he
added:

"Give them here."

"You mustn't leave your writing," said Lydia primly if shyly, and
delivered up her charge.

Jeff stepped out after her into the hall. He had left dull issues at his
table, and Lydia seemed very sweet, her faith in him chiefly, though he
didn't want any more of it.

"Don't worry about my writing," said he.

"Oh, no," she answered, turning on him the clarity of her glance. "I
shouldn't. Authors never want it talked about."

"That's not it," said he. She found him tremendously in earnest. "I'm
not an author."

"But you will be when this is written."

"I don't know," he said, "how I can make you see. The whole thing is so
foreign to your ideas about books and life. It only happened that I met
a man--in there--" he hesitated over it, not as regarding delicacies but
only as they might affect her--"a man like a million others, some of 'em
in prison, more that ought to be. Well, he talked to me. I saw what
brought him where he was. It was picturesque."

"You want other people to understand," said Lydia, bright-eyed, now she
was following him. "For--a warning."

His frown was heavy. Now he was trying to follow her.

"No," he said, "you're off there. I don't take things that way. But I
did see it so plain I wanted everybody to see it, too. Maybe that was
why I did want to write it down. Maybe I wanted to write it for myself,
so I should see it plainer. It fascinated me."

Lydia felt a helpless yearning, because things were being so hard for
him. She wished for Anne who always knew, and with a word could help you
out when your elucidation failed.

"You see," Jeff was going on, "there's this kind of a brute born into
the world now, the kind that knows how to make money, and as soon as
he's discovered his knack, he's got the mania to make more. It's an
obligation, an obsession. Maybe it's only the game. He's in it, just as
much as if he'd got a thousand men behind him, all looting territory. It
might be for a woman. But it's the game. And it's a queer game. It cuts
him off. He's outside."

And here Lydia had a simple and very childlike thought, so inevitable to
her that she spoke without consideration.

"You were outside, too."

Jeff gave a little shake of the head, as if that didn't matter now he
was here and explaining to her.

"And the devil of it is, after they're once outside they don't know they
are."

"Do you mean, when they've done something and been found guil