Jewel Weed

"What?"

"Everything he had," answered Norris abruptly. "Do you think I have not

watched his courage and ideals wither as if they had been frosted? He is

numb. 'Heavy as frost,' Wordsworth said, and that's the weightiest

figure he could find. It did not take her a month to begin to change

him. In three months she has him well started. Isn't it a pity that the

worse one of the two should have the controlling force? But Dick's very

volatility that we love has laid him open to this thing."

"I'm glad," said Madeline slowly, "that he has his political interest."

"Yes, he's going into it with a kind of fury."

"Won't that give him a big outlet?"

"He may get a lot of satisfaction and do a really creditable thing."

"Your tone does not sound very hopeful."

"A single interest in life may accomplish more for the world, but I

don't believe it is very satisfactory for one's self."

Madeline looked at him inquiringly.

"God gives us of His own creative power," he said reverently, and there

came into his very practical face that dreamy look which she had seen

there once or twice before. "He supplies us with the raw materials of

the universe, gold and beauty and food and desire--and love--and He bids

us out of these things to build a man. We can't build a successful man

if we use only one ingredient. We get a complete man only when we use

them all."

Madeline stared off across the waters, and Ellery watched her over

shipped oars. At last he said, "But are you going to think only of Dick,

and Dick, and Dick for ever?"

She turned on him a face flushed but utterly frank.

"I know what you are thinking," she said. "But you are mistaken, quite

mistaken." And she met his eyes squarely in spite of her heightened

color. "At this very moment I was thinking more of you than of him," she

added.

"And what of me?"

"I was thinking how I misread you at first. I thought you a kind of

grub."

"And now?"

"That you are dogged and persistent; and that therefore you stick to

your ideals better than he."

"Do you know how comparatively easy that is, even for a plodder, when

his ideals are set up before him in visible form, so that he can not

forget them by day or by night? I wonder if you can realize what it

means to have a face like yours looking up from every dirty strip of

galley-proof, and a voice like yours sounding under the rumble of the

big presses. It's something of a possession for an every-day man." A

soft glow that might have been a trick of the spring sun spread over

Madeline's face. There is no thought more intoxicating to a girl than to

feel that she stands to a man for his ideals. A long sweet silence fell

between them, while she mused on this thing, and he watched her in tense

anxiety.