Ralph Stock

“ Shall we walk?”
A biting wind was blowing from the east, and for a while the two men strode briskly and in silence. Sprague's hands were thrust deeply into his pockets, his head bent forward, and his mouth set firm.
“I feel as silly as a schoolgirl before her first dance,” he said presently. “I'm right on the edge of things, Stone; shall I fall into the charmed circle of success or outside it?” ”

“ Sprague went on hotly, “understanding to sanction suicide and premature burial, then I'm sorry, but I certainly don't understand. You carry that picture round your neck and in your mind's eye; you see her always as she appeared to you in the old days; you worship her image—do you understand?—not her, but her memory. If you could see her now—why, she has probably developed the temper of a fiend; she has grown fat and coarse; she has three children; she may have had some disease that has disfigured her for life—smallpox—anything. ”

“ To realize a dream is more often to shatter it; and, supposing your 'Lorette' is a success, well, what then?”
“I can go on——”
“And on, and on—and what then?”
“Then—well—what a rum un you are, Stone! That's life, isn't it?”
“I wish I could think so,” said the American. “Mind, I'm not saying that a man's work isn't part of his life, and an important part—if we don't work, most of us pretend that we do, which proves its necessity—but to say that it is life——” He shook his head slowly.
Something in the man's quiet assurance jarred on Sprague. ”