“Any one of a number of things,” Brainard replied cheerfully. While Melody negligently turned over the pages of his elaborate report, he continued musingly: “It was just six years ago this month when my play was turned down—the last one I ever wrote. I walked back up the avenue with the manuscript in my pocket, feeling that the bottom of the world had dropped out. I was a forlorn, broken specimen. It was a day something like this, too.” He glanced at the lowering April sky. “It is very different now. I’m not much richer than I was then, but I am a totally different being. In fact, I think now I could call myself a man!”
“I think so,” Melody agreed, in a rather doleful voice.
“And a man can always face the world with a light heart, no matter how light his pockets happen to be.”
Melody nodded sympathetically, and murmured,—“for the great adventure!”
“Yes! Life is the great adventure!”
After a long silence, Melody looked up into Brainard’s face and stretched out her hands to him.
“Won’t you take me—with you—on the great adventure?”
Brainard grasped her hands, and, leaning forward, tried to read the full purpose in the gray eyes.
“Melody!”
“Must I ask twice?” she said, blushing. “It’s more than most women have the nerve to do once. You see, after you left that night, I guessed—and—”