“Something worth while?” she mused absently. Then she came and stood by Durkin, and studied his face once more. Some sense of his isolation, of his unhappy aloofness from his kind, touched and wrung her feeling. She caught at his arm with a sudden companionable enthusiasm, and joined him in pacing the room.
“After all, there would be something big, and wide, and sweeping about this sort of work, wouldn’t there?”
“Yes; it’s a blamed sight better than pool-room piking!” he cried. “It’s living; it’s doing things!”
“I believe I could plunge in it, and glory in it!” she went on, consolingly.
“There’s just one drawback—just one nasty little blot on the face of the fun,” he ventured, catching at the sustaining arm of her enthusiasm.
“And that is—?”
“We’ve got to get this ten thousand dollars just for a day or two!”
“But have you any idea as to how, or where, or when?”
“Yes, I have,” he answered, looking at her steadily. There seemed to be some covert challenge in his glance, but she faced him unwaveringly.
“Say it out, Jim; I’m not afraid!”