question a
command for an answer. "Who told you?"

"I knew there was trouble. I asked about it. Brayley told me."

He made no answer. There was nothing for him to say. She had Brayley's
account of the fight, she believed it, and Conniston would not let her
know that he cared enough to give his own version.

"I have not meant to be unkind, Mr. Conniston," she said, after a
moment. A new note had crept into her voice with what sounded like
sympathy. He did not look toward her. "And, after all, it is none of
my concern how you think, how you carry yourself. But I did want you
to realize just what that great handicap is. You said on that day when
you first came to the Half Moon that you were going to make yourself
my friend, didn't you? Do you mind if I talk to you now like a friend?
You may call me presumptuous if you like. No doubt I am. As a friend I
have a right to be meddlesome, haven't I?" She smiled at him as
brightly as if she had never said or thought the things which she had
flung at him a moment ago. "To begin with, then, I think that you have
deep down in some corner of your being a strength which might do great
things, that nature intended you to be a man, a great, big, splendid
man!"

"Thanks," murmured Conniston, dryly. "I don't know what I have done to
deserve--"

"Nothing! You have done nothing! That is just it. Oh, you see, when I
start to meddle I do it very thoroughly! It is not what you have done but
what you might do. And I was going to tell you what the real handicap is.
It is not the being-without-things, without advantages, which has
restricted the fuller growth of such men as Bat Truxton and Brayley. It
is something very different from that--essentially different. It is the
being-raised-a-rich-man's-son! It is the being-born-something instead of
the being-obliged-to-make-oneself-something!"

"Theoretically, Miss Crawford, I suppose that you are right. But
theory is only theory, you know. Frankly, would not a man be a fool to
work when there is no need for it? Would not a man be a fool to eschew
the pleasures of life when fortune is ready to spill them into his lap
for him? Does not the rich man's son get a great deal more out of the
game than the poor devil who spends his life punching cows at thirty
dollars a month? Even if I began to take myself seriously at this late
hour and to take life as a serious sort of thing, too; even if I
tucked in and fell in love with my work"--he shuddered fo