t. Name--address--papers--all there. She'll have no
trouble--getting money. Thanks, Harber." And after a pause, he added:
"Better take it now--save trouble, you know."

Harber got the leather case from the grip and took it at once to his
own stateroom.

When he returned, Barton seemed for the moment, with the commission
off his mind, a little brighter.

"No end obliged, Harber," he murmured.

"All right," said Harber, "but ought you to talk?"

"Won't matter now," said Barton grimly. "Feel like talking now.
To-morrow may be--too late!" And after another pause, he went on:
"The fine dreams of youth--odd where they end, isn't it?

"This--and me--so different. So different! Failure. She was wise--but
she didn't know everything. The world was too big--too hard for me.
'You can't fail,' she said, '_I won't let you fail_!' But you see----"

Harber's mind, slipping back down the years, with Barton, to his own
parting, stopped with a jerk.

"What!" he exclaimed.

Barton seemed drifting, half conscious, half unconscious of what he
was saying. He did not appear to have heard Harber's exclamation over
the phrase so like that Janet had given him.

"We weren't like the rest," droned Barton. "No--we wanted more out of
life than they did. We couldn't be content--with half a loaf. We
wanted--the bravest adventures--the yellowest gold--the...."

Picture that scene, if you will. What would _you_ have said? Harber
saw leaping up before him, with terrible clarity, as if it were
etched upon his mind, that night in Tawnleytown ten years before. It
was as if Barton, in his semidelirium, were reading the words from
_his_ past!

"I won't let you fail! ... half a loaf ... the bravest adventures ...
the yellowest gold." Incredible thing! That Barton and _his_ girl
should have stumbled upon so many of the phrases, the exact phrases!
And suddenly full knowledge blinded Harber.... No! No! He spurned it.
It couldn't be. And yet, he felt that if Barton were to utter one
more phrase of those that Janet had said and, many, many times since,
written to _him_, the impossible, the unbelievable, would be stark,
unassailable fact.

He put his hand upon Barton's arm and gently pressed it.

"Barton," he said, "tell me--Janet--Tawnleytown?"

Barton stared with glassy, unseeing eyes for a moment; then his
eyelids fell.

"The bravest adventures--the yellowest gold," he murmured. Then, so
faintly as almost to baffle hearing: "Where--all--our--d