t I've always seen too much. Only the fountain of Juventius could
have given me time enough. I'm like the lad in the school-reader tale
who reached into the jar of nuts and tried to withdraw his hand
full--and lost them all."

Between Ewing and Teevan there was even a new bond. Ewing discovered
that money inevitably left one's pocket in New York, even if it vanished
under auspices less violent and less obscure than Ben had so gloomily
feared. The steady dribble was quite as effective. When he awoke to this
great fiscal truth he saw that some condescension of effort would be
required. He must sell enough drawings to sustain him modestly. He
broached this regrettable necessity to Teevan, wishing the little man to
understand that, in making a few things for money, he was guilty of no
treachery to the Teevan ideal. But Teevan, much to his embarrassment,
had extended the full hand of bestowal.

He was hurt when Ewing demurred; then annoyed that so petty an obstacle
should retard a progress so splendid. He never dared to suspect a
decadence in the resolution of his young friend.

Ewing was cut by his distress, stung by his doubt, and persuaded by his
logic. He accepted Teevan's money, though not without instinctive
misgiving. There were moments when he traitorously wondered if it might
not be better for him to lack a friend with ideals so rigid. And more
than once he suffered the disquieting suspicion of some unreality in and
through it all--his intimacy with Teevan, and his desertion of a trail
whose beginnings, at least, he knew. There was sometimes a faint ring of
artificiality in the whole situation. Yet Teevan's heartiness and his
certainty--the felicitous certainty of a star in its course--always
dispelled this vague unquiet, and at last it brought Ewing a new
pleasure to remember that an actual, material obligation--one increasing
at measured intervals--now existed between them.

He had never spoken openly to Mrs. Laithe of his intimacy with Teevan.
The little man had conveyed his wish of this by indirect speech. He
would have liked to tell her of the solace and substantial benefits of
their comradeship, to dwell upon the shining merits of this whole-souled
but modest benefactor--for Teevan caused his charge to infer that a
shame of doing good openly inspired his hints--but he had, perforce, to
let the praise die unspoken.

Nor did he speak often of Mrs. Laithe to Teevan, for the little man was
not only bitter as