“The boy up the farmer’s tree filling his pocket with apples is happy until he is caught. My motto is to get as many apples as you can until you hear the farmer coming and then beat it while you have the wind with you. It doesn’t require as much nerve as you think, and any time the game isn’t worth it quit. The beaten man in a fight, if he is game, always gets as much applause as the victor and sometimes a great deal more. I have seen the time when it was better to lose than to win, strange as that may seem. I don’t believe in figuring on what is to be years from now because I may be dead. There is no to-morrow in life—it is all to-day. If battles have been won, cities destroyed, empires established and colossal fortunes swept away in an hour what chance has a man—a mere atom on the earth—to speculate in futures? The typhoid germ upon an oyster, the invisible microbe of consumption eaten or breathed in with a thousand other death-dealing mites, can kill him as surely as a thunderbolt or a drop of cyanide of potassium. Upon your hands and your face at this moment are the bacteria of lockjaw only waiting for a scratch or a wound of some kind to enter your veins. Yet you do not worry about that. You see you have me talking about things I do not like and it will take at least another pint to get the taste out of my mouth. Accept my advice, if the sun is shining for you now don’t fear the coming night.”
Through all the winter he never knew where she lived or how she lived and he didn’t care, and that was because he was a philosopher, and she knew as little about him as he did about her. A future meeting was always arranged upon the heels of the previous one. Her name was Bess and his was Ben and that was sufficient.
Very queer, of course, and almost unbelievable, but true nevertheless.
And all the while the match was getting nearer to the guncotton and neither knew it. Playing with fire had come to be such a habit with these two that they didn’t fear the flames.
It was at a nice little afternoon luncheon that she became first serious and then confidential. They had reached the coffee stage—the proper time to put your elbows on the table and talk—when she said:
“Ben, I want $5,000.”
At that particular moment he was lighting a cigarette and he didn’t look up for a full minute, which is a very long while if you only know the real value of time.
“What for?” he asked, finally.
“I am married, you know. I mean you don’t know it, but I’m telling you now, and I want to get a divorce. I have been collecting evidence and I have all I want, but I shall have to get a lawyer, and I shall also have to live until the case is disposed of.”
“Why didn’t you consult me?”