bination of "make-believe" and real pleading in his voice.
"Katrine, dear," he said, "take me to live in that land of yours. I want to let down the bars of the gate you don't know where you found, and go up the pine driveway to meet Colonel Newcome. I want all that it means to have those people for intimate friends."
"One must make one's own 'Land,'" Katrine answered. "And besides," with a curious, lovable puckering of her eyelids, "men mustn't dream things. Men must do."
There was a silence.
"Must they?" he asked, at length. "Why?"
"Did it ever occur to you," she asked, abruptly, "that you might work—ever, I mean—when you were a boy?"
"Never for a second."
"You never felt that you would like to take a part in great affairs, as other men do?"
"Why should I, Katrine? I have all the money I can possibly want. Life is short. I come of a family who tire of living quickly. Say, for instance, I live until I'm sixty. I probably sha'n't, you know, but we'll say so for argument. One-third of the time I sleep, which reduces the real living to forty years. Until the
time of fifteen one doesn't count, anyway. That gives me but twenty-five years of life. Now, I ask you"—he threw back his head as he spoke, his face charming with a humorous smile, an illuminated eye—"now, I ask you, if you would be so hard-hearted as to desire me—with but twenty-five years at my disposal, remember—to spend them in a treadmill of work when I might be spending them under the pines and the beeches with you, Katrine—with you!"