It doesn't seem possible
that she's a woman, with a future to think about."

"Phil's future--" murmured Kirkwood pensively.

"Your future and hers are bound up together; there's no escaping that."

"I'm afraid that's so! There are a thousand things I know should be done
for her, but I don't grasp them. I seem unable to get hold of anything
these days."

He looked at his hands, as though wondering at their impotence. They
were bronzed and rough from the camp, but his sensitive nature was
expressed in them. The gray showed in his beard and hair. Where the
short beard did not hide his cheeks they were tanned. His blue serge
suit had been freshly pressed; a polka-dot scarf was neatly tied under
the points of a white-wing collar. He suggested an artist who had just
returned from a painting trip in the open--a town man who wasn't afraid
of the sun. If an artist one might have assumed that he was none too
prosperous; his white cuffs were perceptibly frayed. Nan Bartlett
scrutinized him closely, and there came into her eyes the look of one
about to say something, long withheld and difficult to say.

She was a small, fair woman, with a becoming roundness of figure. Her
yellow hair, parted evenly in the middle, curled prettily on her
forehead. A blue shirt-waist with a turnover collar and a ready-made
skirt spoke for a severe taste in dress. A gold-wire bracelet on her
left wrist and a stickpin in her four-in-hand tie were her only
ornaments. She had a fashion of raising her arm and shaking the bracelet
back from her hand. When she did this, it was to the accompaniment of a
slight turning of the head to one side and a dreamy look came into her
large blue eyes. It was a pretty, graceful trick. She did not hesitate
now that her mind was made up, but spoke quickly and crisply.

"You don't work hard enough; you are not making your time count. It
isn't fair to Phil; it isn't fair to yourself."

"That's true; I know it," he replied, meeting her eyes quickly.

"And now's the time for you to change; Phil needs you. Phil's going to
need a lot of things--money, for example. And you've reached a time of
life when it's now or never."

The bracelet flashed back under her cuff. She looked at her wrist
wonderingly as if surprised that the trinket had disappeared; then she
glanced at Kirkwood, casually, as though she were in the habit of saying
such things to him, which was not, however, the fact.

He straightened himself and his hand