"You were—you were," Helen hastened to assure him; but he shook his head.
"Not if you think, after all, that fire insurance isn't vital."
"I'm afraid I chose my word badly. What I meant, perhaps, was that it wasn't picturesque. It isn't that, is it—as the word is generally understood?"
"You mean it isn't building bridges over boiling chasms three thousand feet below in the Andes river bottoms; it isn't leading ragged armies of half-baked South American natives against a mud stockade; it isn't shooting African animals and dining on quinine and hippopotamus liver. No, there's none of the soldier of fortune business about it. But vital! My heavens! what do you call vital?"
"I don't know," said the girl, humbly. She was somewhat abashed before this flare her words had so suddenly lighted. And she felt honestly contrite, for she saw she had hurt an ideal that was very close and real to the man before her.
At the sound of her reply Smith came to himself.
"I really beg your pardon—again," he said, with a little tremor in his voice. "I didn't appreciate what I was doing, or I wouldn't have blown up with a report like a nitroglycerine storehouse. Will you excuse me?"
Helen looked squarely at him.
"Yes—I will," she said, "on one condition."
"And what is that?"