LITMIR.BIZ

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the night, which was oppressive even in the street, was almost stifling in the little room with its scant western exposure.

      But the flame burning in Oliver's breast had purged away such petty considerations as those for material comforts. He had risen above the heat, above the emptiness of his pockets, above the demands of his stomach. It was a matter of complete indifference to him whether he slept in a house or out of doors, whether he ate or went hungry. His exaltation was so magnificent that while it lasted he felt that he had conquered the physical universe. He was strong! He was free! And it was characteristic of his sanguine intellect that the future should appear to him at the instant as something which existed not beyond him, but actually within his grasp. Anger had liberated his spirit as even art had not done; and he felt that all the blood in his body had rushed to his brain and given him the mastery over circumstances. He forgot yesterday as easily as he evaded to-day and subjugated to-morrow. The past, with its starved ambitions, its tragic failures, its blighting despondencies, melted away from him into obscurity; and he remembered only the brief alternating hours of ecstasy and of accomplishment. With his wind-blown, flame-like temperament, oscillating in the heat of youth between the inclinations he miscalled convictions, he was still, though Cyrus had disowned him, only a romantic variation from the Treadwell stock. Somewhere, in the depths of his being, the essential Treadwell persisted. He hated Cyrus as a man hates his own weakness; he revolted from materialism as only a materialist in youth revolts.

      A knock came at his door, and pausing, with a volume of Heine still unwrapped in his hand, he waited in silence until his visitor should retire down the stairs. But instead of Mrs. Treadwell's trembling tones, he heard, after a moment, the firm and energetic voice of Susan.

      "Oliver, I must speak to you. If you won't unlock your door, I'll sit down on the steps and wait until you come out."

      "I'm packing my books. I wish you'd go away, Susan."

      "I haven't the slightest intention of going away until I've talked with you – " and, then, being one of those persons who are born with the natural gift of their own way, she laid her hand on the door-knob while Oliver impatiently turned the key in the lock.

      "Since you are here, you might as well come in and help," he remarked none too graciously, as he made way for her to enter.

      "Of course I'll help you – but, oh, Oliver, what in the world are you going to do?"

      "I haven't thought. I'm too busy, but I'll manage somehow."

      "Father was terrible. I heard him all the way upstairs in my room. But," she looked at him a little doubtfully, "don't you think he will get over it?"

      "He may, but I shan't. I'd rather starve than live under a petty tyranny like that?"

      "I know," she nodded, and he saw that she understood him. It was wonderful how perfectly, from the very first instant, she had understood him. She grasped things, too, by intelligence, not by intuition, and he found this refreshing in an age when the purely feminine was in fashion. Never had he seen a finer example of young, buoyant, conquering womanhood – of womanhood freed from the consciousness and the disabilities of sex. "She's not the sort of girl a man would lose his head over," he reflected; "there's too little of the female about her – she's as free from coquetry as she is from the folderol of sentimentality. She's a free spirit, and God knows how she ever came out of the Treadwells." Her beauty even wasn't of the kind that usually goes by the name. He didn't suppose there were ten men in Dinwiddie who would turn to look back at her – but, by Jove, if she hadn't beauty, she had the character that lends an even greater distinction. She looked as if she could ride Life like a horse – could master it and tame it and break it to the bridle.

      "It's amazing how you know things, Susan," he said, "and you've never been outside of Dinwiddie."

      "But I've wanted to, and I sometimes think the wanting teaches one more than the going."

      He thought over this for an instant, and then, as if the inner flame which consumed him had leaped suddenly to the surface, he burst out joyously: "I've come to the greatest decision of my life in this last hour, Susan."

      Her eyes shone. "You mean you've decided not to do what father asks no matter what happens?"

      "I've decided not to accept his conditions – no matter what happens," he answered.

      "He was in earnest, then, about wanting you to give up writing?"

      "So much in earnest that he would give me a job only on those terms."

      "And you declined absolutely?"

      "Of course I declined absolutely."

      "But how will you live, Oliver?"

      "Oh, I can easily make thirty dollars a month by reviewing German books for New York papers, and I dare say I can manage to pull through on that. I'll have to stay in Dinwiddie, of course, because I couldn't live anywhere else on nearly so little, and, besides, I shouldn't be able to buy a ticket away."

      "That will be twenty dollars for your board," said the practical Susan, "and you will have to make ten dollars a month cover all your other expenses. Do you think you can do it?"

      "I've got to. Better men have done worse things, haven't they? Better men have done worse things and written great plays while they were about them."

      "I believe Mrs. Peachey would let you have a back room and board for that," pursued Susan. "But it will cost you something to get your books moved and the shelves put up there."

      "As soon as I get through this I'll go over and see her. Oh, I'm free, Susan, I'm happy! Did you ever see an absolutely happy man before? I feel as if a weight had rolled off my shoulders. I'm tired – dog-tired of compromise and commercialism and all the rest of it. I've got something to say to the world, and I'll go out and make my bed in the gutter before I'll forfeit the opportunity of saying it. Do you know what that means, Susan? Do you know what it is to be willing to give your life if only you can speak out the thing that is inside of you?" The colour in his face mounted to his forehead, while his eyes grew black with emotion. In the smoky little room, Youth, with its fierce revolts, its impassioned egoism, its inextinguishable faith in itself, delivered its ultimatum to Life. "I've got to be true to myself, Susan! A man who won't starve for his ambition isn't worth his salt, is he? And, besides, the best work is all done not in plenty, but in poverty – the most perfect art has grown from the poorest soil. If I were to accept Uncle Cyrus's offer, I'd grow soft to the core in a month and be of no more use than a rotten apple."

      His conviction lent a golden ring to his voice, and so winning to Susan was the impetuous flow of his words, that she felt herself swept away from all the basic common sense of her character. She saw his ambition as clearly as he saw it; she weighed his purpose, as he weighed it, in the imaginary scales of his judgment; she accepted his estimate of his powers as passionately as he accepted it.

      "Of course you mustn't give up, Oliver; you couldn't," she said.

      "You're right, I couldn't."

      "If you can get steady reviewing, I believe you can manage," she resumed. "Living in Dinwiddie costs really so very little." Her voice thrilled suddenly. "It must be beautiful to have something that you feel about like this. Oh, I wish I were you, Oliver! I wish a thousand times I were you!"

      Withdrawing his eyes from the sky at which he had been gazing, he turned to look at her as if her words had arrested him. "You're a dear girl," he answered kindly, "and I think all the world of you." As he spoke he thought again what a fine thing it would be for the man who could fall in love with her. "It would be the best thing that could happen to any man to marry a woman like that," he reflected; "she'd keep him up to the mark and never let him grow soft. Yes, it would be all right if only one could manage to fall in love with her – but I couldn't. She might as well be a rose-bush for all the passion she'd ever arouse in me." Then his charming egoism asserted itself, and he said caressingly: "I don't believe I could stand Dinwiddie but for you, Susan."

      She smiled back at him, but there was a limpid clearness in her look which made him feel that she had seen through him while he was thinking. This clearness, with its utter freedom from affectation or sentimentality, embarrassed him by its unlikeness to all the attributes he mentally classified as feminine. To look straight seemed

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