cities, police
regulations, fire alarm systems, municipal rules and vagaries of all
sorts--oh, a category of things as long as one's arm, which of course an
underwriter doesn't actually himself supervise, but whose accuracy he
must be able to estimate--and often repair if they get out of order and
cease to run smoothly."

"But--" said the girl, slowly.

"But what?" Smith asked.

"But isn't it awfully technical, this business? I had an idea that fire
insurance was done principally by clerks writing endlessly in large
books. That's what they always seem to be doing in Mr. Osgood's office.
And now you tell me it's like this. This is absolutely different from
what I thought it was, and it seems incredibly difficult, but--"

"Well, but what?" demanded her companion.

"Well, then--it seems to me a little dry. Or perhaps not exactly that,
but a little too scientific, too technical. Not so vivid, so vital--"

She stopped short at the expression of Smith's face.

CHAPTER IX

"Not vital!" he exclaimed, getting out of his chair and facing her.
"Not vital! Really, Miss Maitland, what can you call vital? Fire
insurance is as vital as anything in the world of business to-day--or
in any world that I know anything about." He paused, and some of the
indignation went out of his eyes. "I beg your pardon," he said more
gently. "I had thought I was making you understand."

"You were--you were," Helen hastened to assure him; but he shook his
head.

"Not if you think, after all, that fire insurance isn't vital."

"I'm afraid I chose my word badly. What I meant, perhaps, was that it
wasn't picturesque. It isn't that, is it--as the word is generally
understood?"

"You mean it isn't building bridges over boiling chasms three thousand
feet below in the Andes river bottoms; it isn't leading ragged armies
of half-baked South American natives against a mud stockade; it isn't
shooting African animals and dining on quinine and hippopotamus liver.
No, there's none of the soldier of fortune business about it. But
vital! My heavens! what do you call vital?"

"I don't know," said the girl, humbly. She was somewhat abashed before
this flare her words had so suddenly lighted. And she felt honestly
contrite, for she saw she had hurt an ideal that was very close and
real to the man before her.

At the sound of her reply Smith came to himself.

"I really beg your pardon--again," he said, with a little tremor in his
voi