hen it came to me that I'd better take the first ship up. I sailed the
next morning."

This startled Cairns. He was unaccustomed to such sincerity. "You mean
it occurred to you that She was here--the One you used to tell me about
in Asia?"

"Yes."

Cairns now felt an untimely eagerness of welcome for the wanderer. A
renewal of Bedient's former attractions culminated in his mind, and
something more that was fine and fresh and permanent. He twinged for
what had happened at the apartment.... Bedient was a man's man, strong
as a platoon in a pinch--that had been proved. He was plain as a sailor
in ordinary talk, but Cairns knew now that he had only begun to
challenge Bedient's finer possessions of mind.... Here in
New York, a man over thirty years old, who could speak of the
Woman-who-must-be-somewhere. And Bedient spoke in the same ideal,
unhurt way of twenty, when they had spread blankets together under
strange stars... Cairns knew in a flash that something was gone from
his own breast that he had carried then. It was an altogether uncommon
moment to him. "So it has not all been growth," he thought. "All that
has come since has not been fineness."... He felt a bit denied, as if
New York had "gotten" to him, as if he had lost a young prince's
vision, that the queen mother had given him on setting out.... He was
just one of the million males, feathering nests of impermanence, and
stifling the true hunger for the skies and the great cleansing
migratory flights....

All this was a miracle to David Cairns. He was solid; almost English in
his up-bringing to believe that man's work, and established affairs,
thoughts and systems generally were right and unimpeachable. He heard
himself scoffing at such a thing, had it happened to another.... He
stared into Bedient's face, brown, bright and calm. He had seen only
good humor and superb health before, but for an instant now, he
perceived a spirit that rode with buoyancy, after a life of loneliness
and terror that would have sunk most men's anchorage, fathoms deeper
than the reach of the longest cable of faith.

"I think I'm getting to be--just a biped.... I'm glad you came up....
Here we are at _Swan's_," said Cairns.

* * * * *

Like most writers, David Cairns was intensely interesting to himself.
His sudden reversal from bleak self-complacence to a clear-eyed view of
his questionable approaches to real worth, was strong with bitterness,
but