Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/367

 to temporize by accepting a position on the stage for her, that he should have "stood out" for something better. She had not the heart to reply to any of his extravagant misstatements of her case, for she could understand that he was talking to keep up his own courage; but she said, at last: "Yes, yes. It will be all right, of course. Don't worry about it any more to-night. We'll begin fresh in the morning."

"You're not thinking of going home?" he asked timidly.

"No," she said. "I'll stay—with you."

She said it with an accent—as of resignation—that spurred him on to new promises. "You'll never regret it. I never have. It's hard at first, but once you get your start made, you have opportunities—opportunities that you'd never find at home." There was Miss Morris, for example: she had made friends with "one of the most successful dramatists in America," and he had actually come to her and offered her "a leading part in one of his companies." There was Bert Pittsey, taking a staff position on "one of the best papers in New York." There was Walter Pittsey, at the head of a theatrical agency in Boston, with every prospect of rising to a high place among the managers of the "trust."

Their street—when they turned into it—was empty, the houses dark. The city seemed to be sleeping in an immense contempt of their misfortune, and his voice sounded small and impudent, in the optimism of a pigmy, the boast of an impotence so inconsiderable that silence received it without so much as an echo. She