Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/26

18 at the cost of a thousand little privations. I have clothes while my mother darns my father's underwear!"

"Oh, it's been awful! But what could I do? I was not trained to work; I was not trained to undergo humiliation and hardships. I was—"

"And you won't have to!" he broke in savagely. "I was a fool to ask this of you tonight. I was carried away; that's all! I'll go out and do things for you, Marcia. I can pioneer as well as my father pioneered, for a little while. I will show him that I can work, as he worked, if necessary. I'll make him regret what he said to me and when I do that, I'll bring comfort to you, sweetheart! You're right! Your training has been right! Money and what it will bring is all that matters. How you get it, even, doesn't count any more, unless you're a downright thief. It's dog eat dog and the weak man lose! I hate to grub. I hate to make a mean, slow beginning, but it's my father's way. He doesn't care about money, but he doesn't care about me particularly, either. If I can make him like me by taking up this offer—it won't be long, Marcia, it won't be long!"

She yielded to his embrace again, and lifted her tear-wet face to his. One arm crept about his shoulders and lay there—like the caressing tendril of a flower—or the binding tendril of a creeper; and her eyes, on a distant star, narrowed again, though they were still wet, as she drew his face into the hollow of her soft throat.

"I feel like a rotter," he said. "I've come up short against the collar, when I thought there was no limit to the leash. I've been doing you an injustice, been wasting our youth, when we should have every hour together. I've been keeping you in this damned uncomfortable situation