as
startled that he had not left. His only palliation for such a venture
into two lives--was the memories her voice roused. His lips tightened
with scorn of self. And yet the thought became a fury as he walked
rapidly through the dark toward the river--what it would mean to have a
woman want him that way!.... His thoughts did not violate the soldier's
domain. Quite clean, he was, from that; yet she had shown him afresh
what was in the world. It was nearing midnight; sentries of the city,
still under martial law, ordered him off the streets before he realized
passing time.... And the hours did not bring to his mind the woman of
the Block-House, nor anyone of those flaming desert-women who love so
fiercely and so fruitlessly; whose relations with men do not weave, but
only bind the selvage of the human fabric....

* * * * *

Bedient was glad to get away to sea.... David Cairns, overtaken in
China, had changed a little. It appears that the very best of young men
must change when they begin to wear their reputation. Riding with
Thirteen had made easily the best newspaper fodder which the Luzon
campaigns furnished, and the sparkling wine of recognition eventually
found its own. It must be repeated that only a boy-mind can depict war
in a way that fits into popular human interest.

The David Cairns whom Bedient met at the Taku forts, near the mouth of
the Pei-ho, had a bit of iron tonic in his veins. His sentences were
shorter, less faltering and more frequent. He _knew_ things that he had
formerly held tentatively. His conceptions (during night-talks) were
called in quickly from the dream-borders, and given the garb and weight
of matter. The stamina of decision had hardened. He was eager to call
Bedient his finest friend, but he had forgotten for the time the
amazing subtleties which at first had deepened and broadened this
wanderer's place in his inner life. A touch of success and the steady
drive of ambition had gradually moved the abiding place of Cairns'
consciousness from his heart to his brain. Few would have detected
other than manliness and improvement. Bedient did not trust himself to
think much about it, for fear he would do his friend an injustice. The
fact that he could not see Cairns differently in the latter's first
fame-flush, and observing past doubt, that he was lifted for the
world's eyes, helped Bedient to realize that he was a bit weird in
judgment. At all events, somethi