“I’ve never cared much for people,” he said.

“It’s an acquired taste, I suppose for some of us.  There’s something else.”  She came slowly to a sitting posture and fixed her questioning, baffling eyes on his.  “Ban, don’t you want to make a success in life?”

For a moment he did not answer.  When he spoke, it was with apparent irrelevance to what she had said.  “Once I went to a revival.  A reformed tough was running it.  About every three minutes he’d thrust out his hands and grab at the air and say, ’Oh, brothers; don’t you yearn for Jesus?’”

“What has that to do with it?” questioned Io, surprised and impatient.

“Only that, somehow, the way you said ‘success in life’ made me think of him and his ‘yearn for Jesus.’”

“Errol Banneker,” said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, “you are possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people’s inner thoughts to you.  Success is a species of religion to me, I suppose.”

“And you are making converts, like all true enthusiasts.  Tell, tell me.  What kind of success?”

“Oh, power.  Money.  Position.  Being somebody.”

“I’m somebody here all right.  I’m the station-agent of the Atkinson and St. Philip Railroad Company.”

“Now you’re trying to provoke me.”

“No.  But to get success you’ve got to want it, haven’t you?” he asked more earnestly.  “To want it with all your strength.”

“Of course.  Every man ought to.”

“I’m not so sure,” he objected.  “There’s a kind of virtue in staying put, isn’t there?”

She made a little gesture of impatience.

“I’ll give you a return for your sonnet,” he pursued, and repeated from memory: 

“What else is Wisdom?  What of man’s endeavor Or God’s high grace, so lovely and so great?  To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait; To hold a hand uplifted over Hate.  And shall not Loveliness be loved forever?”

“I don’t know it.  It’s beautiful.  What is it?”

“Gilbert Murray’s translation of ‘The Bacchae.’  My legal mentors had a lapse of dry-as-dustness and sent it to me.”

“‘To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait,’” murmured the girl.  “That is what I’ve been doing here.  How good it is!  But not for you,” she added, her tone changing from dreamy to practical.  “Ban, I suspect there’s too much poetry in your cosmos.”

“Very probably.  Poetry isn’t success, is it?”

Her face grew eager.  “It might be.  The very highest.  But you’ve got to make yourself known and felt among people.”

“Do you think I could?  And how does one get that kind of desire?” he asked lazily.

“How?  I’ve known men to do it for love; and I’ve known them to do it for hate; and I’ve known them to do it for money.  Yes; and there’s another cause.”

“What is it?”

“Restlessness.”

“That’s ambition with its nerves gone bad, isn’t it?”