With a short laugh, Brian came and stood before her. "I suppose it had
to come sooner or later, Auntie Sue. I have been trying for days to
muster up courage enough to tell you about it. You have touched the one
biggest thing in my life."

"Why, what do you mean, Brian?"

"I mean just what we have been talking about,--writing," answered Brian.

"Oh!" she cried, with quick and delighted triumph. "Then I AM right. You
have been thinking about it, too."

"Thinking about it!" he echoed, and in his voice she felt the nervous
intensity of his mood. "I have thought of nothing else. All day long
when I am at work, I am writing, writing, writing. It is the last thing
on my mind when I go to sleep. I dream about it all night. And, it is
the first thing I think about in the morning."

Auntie Sue clasped her hands to her heart with an exclamation of joyous
interest.

Brian, with a quiet smile at her enthusiasm, went on: "I know exactly
what I want to say, and why I want to say it. There is a world of
people, Auntie Sue, whose lives have been broken and spoiled by one
thing or another, and who have more or less cut themselves loose from
everything, and are just drifting, they don't care a hang where, because
they think they have failed so completely that there is nothing more
in life for them. People like me,--I don't mean thieves and criminals
necessarily,--who have had that which they know to be the best and
biggest and truest part of themselves tortured and warped and twisted