"How those men down town would poke fun at you," said she, "if they knew you had me with you all the time, right beside you." 

 This amused him. "Still, I suspect there are lots of men who'd be exposed in the same way if there were a general and complete show-down." 

 "Sometimes I wish I really were with you—working with you—helping you. You have girls—a girl—to be your secretary—or whatever you call it—don't you?" 

 "You should have seen the one I had to-day. But there's always something pathetic about every girl who has to make her own living." 

 "Pathetic!" protested Miss Burroughs. "Not at all. I think it's fine." 

 "You wouldn't say that if you had tried it." 

 "Indeed, I should," she declared with spirit. "You men are entirely too soft about women. You don't realize how strong they are. And, of course, women don't resist the temptation to use their sex when they see how easy it is to fool men that way. The sad thing about it is that the woman who gets along by using her sex and by appealing to the soft-heartedness of men never learns to rely on herself. She's likely to come to grief sooner or later." 

 "There's truth in all that," said Norman. "Enough to make it dangerously unjust. There's so much lying done about getting on that it's no wonder those who've never tried to do for themselves get a wholly false notion of the situation. It is hard—bitterly hard—for a man to get on. Most men don't. Most men? All but a mere handful. And if those who do get on were to tell the truth—the whole truth—about how they succeeded—well, it'd not make a pleasant story." 

 "But you've got on," retorted the girl. 

 "So I have. And how?" Norman smiled with humorous cynicism. "I'll never tell—not all—only the parts that sound well. And those parts are the least important. However, let's not talk about that. What I set out to say was that, while it's hard for a man to make a decent living—unless he has luck—and harder still—much harder—for him to rise to independence——" 

 "It wasn't so dreadfully hard for you," interrupted Josephine, looking at him with proud admiration. "But then, you had a wonderful brain." 

 "That wasn't what did it," replied he. "And, in spite of all my advantages—friendships, education, enough money to tide me over the beginnings—in spite of all that, I had a frightful time. Not the 

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