else in the world."

He shook his head.

"It is an ugly fascination," he said. "You are in the swim, and you must
hold your own. You gamble with other men, and when you win you chuckle.
All the time you're whittling your conscience away--if ever you had any.
You're never quite dishonest, and you're never quite honest. You come
out on top, and afterwards you hate yourself. It's a dirty little life!"

"Well," she remarked after a moment's pause, "you have surprised me very
much. At any rate you are rich enough now to have no more to do with
it."

He kicked a fir cone savagely away.

"If I could," he said, "I would shut up my office to-morrow, sell out,
and live upon a farm. But I've got to keep what I've made. The more you
succeed the more involved you become. It's a sort of slavery."

"Have you no friends?" she asked.

"I have never," he answered, "had a friend in my life."

"You have guests at any rate!"

"I sent 'em away last night!"

"What, the young lady in blue?" she asked demurely.

"Yes, and the other one too. Packed them clean off, and they're not
coming back either!"

"I am very pleased to hear it," she remarked.

"There's a man and his wife and daughter here I can't get rid of quite
so easily," he went on gloomily, "but they've got to go!"

"They would be less objectionable to the people round here who might
like to come and see you," she remarked, "than two unattached young
ladies."

"May be," he answered. "Yet I'd give a lot to be rid of them."

He had risen to his feet and was standing with his back to the
cedar-tree, looking away with fixed eyes to where the sunlight fell upon
a distant hillside gorgeous with patches and streaks of yellow gorse and
purple heather. Presently she noticed his abstraction and looked also
through the gap in the trees.

"You have a beautiful view here," she said. "You are fond of the
country, are you not?"

"Very," he answered.

"It is not every one," she remarked, "who is able to appreciate it,
especially when their lives have been spent as yours must have been."

He looked at her curiously. "I wonder," he said, "if you have any idea
how my life has been spent."

"You have given me," she said, "a very fair idea about some part of it
at any rate."

He drew a long breath and looked down at her.

"I have given you no idea at all," he said firmly. "I have told you a
few incidents, that is all. You have talked to me as though I were an
equal. Listen! y