rl was inspired by love to put
so much of that celebrated American quality "punch" into his work that
the Touricar was sweeping the market. Or to picture with quietly
falling tears the pathos of his business failure at the time when he
most needed money. As a matter of fact, the Touricar affairs were
going as, in real life, most businesses go--just fairly well. A few
cars were sold; there were prospects of other sales; the VanZile
Corporation neither planned to drop the Touricar, nor elected our
young hero vice-president of the corporation.

* * * * *

In June Gertrude Cowles and her mother left for Joralemon. Carl had,
since Christmas, seen them about once a month. Gertie had at first
represented an unhappy old friend to whom he had to be kind. Then, as
she seemed never to be able to give up the desire to see him tied
down, whether by her affection or by his work, Carl came to regard her
as an irritating foe to the freedom which he prized the more because
of the increasing bondage of the office. The last stage was pure
indifference to her. Gertie was either a chance for simple sweetness
which he failed to take, or she was a peril which he had escaped,
according to one's view of her; but in any case he had missed--or
escaped--her as a romantic hero escapes fire, flood, and plot. She
meant nothing to him, never could again. Life had flowed past her as,
except in novels with plots, most lives do flow past temporary and
fortuitous points of interest.... Gertie was farther from him now than
those dancing Hawaiian girls whom Ruth and he hoped some day to see.
Yet by her reaching out for his liberty Gertie had first made him
prize Ruth.

* * * * *

The 1st of July, 1913, Ruth left for the Patton Kerrs' country house
in the Berkshires, near Pittsfield. Carl wrote to her every day. He
told her, apropos of Touricars and roof-gardens and aviation records
and Sunday motor-cycling with Bobby Winslow, that he loved her; he
even made, at the end of his letters, the old-fashioned lines of
crosses to represent kisses. Whenever he hinted how much he missed
her, how much he wanted to feel her startle in his arms, he wondered
what she would read out of it; wondered if she would put the letter
under her pillow.

She answered every other day with friendly letters droll in their
descriptions of the people she met. His call of love she did not
answer--directly. But she admit