king in pure generalities, just as you were."

"Let us go on, then," she said gayly. "I see I can't conceal from you
that I am doing you the honor to wonder what you are. A lawyer would
think of it in the light of damage it might create and the subsequent
possibilities of litigation." She made a little pause. "A business
man would take it into account, as he has to take into account all
things in nature or human; it would delay transportation, or harm or
aid the winter wheat."

"Or stop competition somewhere," he observed, more interested.

The flash of satisfaction which came to her face and as quickly was
checked and faded showed him she thought she was on the right track.

"Business," she said, still lightly, "will--how is it the newspapers
put it?--will marshal its cohorts; it will send out its generals in
command of brigades of snowplows, its colonels in command of regiments
of snow-shovelers and its spies to discover and to bring back word of
the effect upon the crops."

"You talk," he said, "as if business were a war."

"Isn't it?--like war, but war in higher terms."

"In higher terms?" he questioned, attempting to make his tone like
hers, but a sudden bitterness now was betrayed by it. "Or in lower?"

"Why, in higher," she declared, "demanding greater courage, greater
devotion, greater determination, greater self-sacrifice."

"What makes you say that?"

"Soldiers themselves say it, Mr. Eaton, and all the observers in this
horrible war say it when they say that they find almost no cowards and
very few weaklings among all the millions of every sort of men at the
front. They could not say the same of those identical millions under
the normal conditions of everyday business life."

He remained silent, though she waited for him to reply.

"You know that is so, Mr. Eaton," she said. "One has only to look on
the streets of any great city to find thousands of men who have not had
the courage and determination to carry on their share of the ordinary
duties of life. Recruiting officers can pick any man off the streets
and make a good soldier of him, but no one could be so sure of finding
a satisfactory employee in that way. Doesn't that show that daily
life, the everyday business of earning a living and bearing one's share
in the workaday world, demands greater qualities than war?"

Her face had flushed eagerly as she spoke; a darker, livid flush
answered her words on his.

"But the opportunities