orget the tramp, Thea. This is a great big world, and I want you to
get about and see it all. You're going to Chicago some day, and do
something with that fine voice of yours. You're going to be a number one
musician and make us proud of you. Take Mary Anderson, now; even the
tramps are proud of her. There isn't a tramp along the 'Q' system who
hasn't heard of her. We all like people who do things, even if we only
see their faces on a cigar-box lid."

They had a long talk. Thea felt that Dr. Archie had never let himself
out to her so much before. It was the most grown-up conversation she had
ever had with him. She left his office happy, flattered and stimulated.
She ran for a long while about the white, moonlit streets, looking up at
the stars and the bluish night, at the quiet houses sunk in black shade,
the glittering sand hills. She loved the familiar trees, and the people
in those little houses, and she loved the unknown world beyond Denver.
She felt as if she were being pulled in two, between the desire to go
away forever and the desire to stay forever. She had only twenty
years--no time to lose.

Many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie's office with a desire to
run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or
wore out the streets themselves; when her chest ached and it seemed as
if her heart were spreading all over the desert. When she went home, it
was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her mattress beside her low
window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a
machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that
window--or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within,
not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it
was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which
lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.
It was on such nights that Thea Kronborg learned the thing that old
Dumas meant when he told the Romanticists that to make a drama he needed
but one passion and four walls.

XIX

It is well for its peace of mind that the traveling public takes
railroads so much for granted. The only men who are incurably nervous
about railway travel are the railroad operatives. A railroad man never
forgets that the next run may be his turn.

On a single-track road, like that upon which Ray Kennedy worked, the
freight trains make their way as best they can between