going to talk more to-night than I ever talked in my life, but I always
saw everything that was going on around me, and it didn't take me long
to make out that all you'll get in life is a kick and a crust if you
haven't got some kind of power in your hands."

"God, you're hard, hard as iron!" The room rang with the echoes of his
mirthless laughter. "Five, three minutes ago, you were in my arms, soft,
yielding, trembling, giving me back kiss for kiss, and now you sit
there expounding your merciless philosophy."

"It ain't me that's merciless," she returned, apparently unmoved, "it's
life. You think my dancing's great, so does everybody; so it is. Well,
it didn't grow. I made it." Here she lifted her head with pride, and
folded her arms on her chest. "Maybe you don't think it took some
training. Maybe you don't think it took some will and grit when I was a
little kid to keep right on at my exercises when I ached so bad that the
tears would run down my cheeks all the time I was at them. My mother
knew that you had to begin young and keep at 'em all the time, but mom
never would have had the nerve to keep me to it. She used often to cry
with me.

"When I was a girl I'd liked to have had a good time, just in that
careless way like other girls, but I gave that up, too, so's I could
work at my dancing. When I'd get tired and blue I'd look at the stones
I'd begun to collect with the money I'd earned. I'm hard, yes, I guess
you're right. I guess you got to have a streak of hardness in you to be
one of the biggest dancers in the world, or to be the biggest anything,
but"--here she ran across the room and was down on her knees beside his
chair--"I'm not hard any longer. Those jewels there," pointing to the
table behind her, "they don't mean a thing to me any longer, nor my