walking their horses along the turf at the side of the road
skirting the woods. Reggie pulled up and Mary stopped also a little in
front.

"Got a stone?" she asked carelessly.

Reggie did not answer or dismount, and she turned in her saddle to look
at him, to meet his crooked, whimsical smile. Suddenly he dropped his
reins and beat his breast, exclaiming melodramatically: "And Nathan
said unto David, 'Thou art the man.'"

"What on earth do you mean?" Mary asked, bewildered. "What man? do you
mean you'd behave like the man in the story, or you wouldn't, or . . .
Oh, Reggie, you don't mean to say you wrote it yourself?"

"You have spoken."

"You must be awfully clever!" Mary ejaculated with awe-struck
admiration.

"My cleverness will not be of much comfort to me if you persist in your
wrong-headed opinion that the man who wrote that story is a beast."

"Oh, that's different. I know you, you see, and you're not a beast.
You aren't really like that."

"But I am. That's the real me. It is truly; the real, deep-down me,
the me that's worth anything."

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, "I don't believe it; you _have_ some
consideration for other people."

"Not in that sense; if there was anything, any big thing, I had to put
through--no one should stand in my way. And it's the same with
anything I want very much. I go straight for it, and it matters
nothing to me who gets knocked down on the route . . . and so you'll
find," Reggie added very low.

They were looking each other straight in the face, Mary a little
breathless and wondering: "And so you'll find," Reggie repeated a
little louder, and there was a look in his eyes that caused Mary to
drop hers, and she rode on.

Reggie caught her up.

"Are you sorry, Mary?" he asked gently.

"About what?"

"Well . . . about everything. The story, and my ferocious mental
attitude, and all the rest of it."

He laid his hand on her horse's neck, and leaned forward to look in her
face. They were riding very close together, and Mary was too near the
hedge to put more distance between them.

"I can't be sorry you write so well," she said slowly, "it is very
exciting--is the news for publication or not?"

"I'd be grateful if you'd say nothing as yet--you see I've only done
these two, and what's a couple of short stories? Besides, it's not
really my job, only it's amusing, and one can rub it in that way, and
reach a larger class than by the strictly milit