g scheme.

VI

He talked animatedly,--these long pent up enthusiasms. She attended,
rapt and gleaming-eyed, following him with most delicious "Yes--yes" and
with little nods; and he suddenly became aware of how poignant to him
was the sympathy of her interest,--and stopped. Thus to pour out, thus
to be heard, was to experience the exquisite pain that comes with sudden
relief of intolerable pain, as when an anodyne steals through the veins
of torture. He stopped. He could not bear it.

"Well, that's all," he said.

She declared, "It's splendid. How well you're doing, Marko. I knew you
would." She paused. "Not that that matters," she said.

He asked her, "What do you mean--'not that that matters'?"

She made a little face at him. "Marko, you're not to snap me up like
that. I've noticed it two or three times. I mean it doesn't matter what
a man does. It's what he is that matters."

He laughed. "Well, that lets me down pretty badly if that's the
estimate. I'm awful, you know."

She shook her head. "Oh, you're not so bad."

"You don't know me. I've been growing awful these years."

"Tell me how awful you are. Does Mabel think you're awful?"

"You ask her! I'm the most unsatisfactory sort of person it's possible
to meet. Really."

"Go on; tell me, Marko. I like this."

"What, like hearing how unsatisfactory I am?"

"I like hearing you talk. You've got rather a nice voice--I used to tell
you that, didn't I?--and I like hearing you stumbling about trying to
explain your ideas. You've got ideas. You're rather an ideary person. Go
on. Why are you unsatisfactory?"

How familiar her voice was on that note,--caressing, drawing him on.

He said, "I'll tell you, Nona. I'm unsatisfactory because I've got the
most infernal habit of seeing things from about twenty points of view
instead of one. For other people, that's the most irritating thing you
can possibly imagine. I've no convictions; that's the trouble. I swing
about from side to side. I always can see the other side of a case, and
you know, that's absolutely fatal--"

She said gently, "Fatal to what, Marko?"

He was going to say, "To happiness"; but he looked at her and then
looked away. "Well, to everything; to success. You can't possibly be
successful if you haven't got convictions--what I call bald-headed
convictions. That's what success is, Nona, the success of politicians
and big men whose names are always in the papers. It's that: seeing a
thing fro