!"

"Would it be any better? Or would we go on making our mistakes over
again? That seems to be the only way we learn."

"But a second chance; the idea seems so fair, so plausible. Suppose you
are shooting on the ranges, for instance; you are allowed a shot or
two to find your nerve, to get your distance, to settle yourself to the
business in hand. But in this business of life you fire, and if some
distraction, some momentary influence or folly sends your aim wild, the
shot is gone and you are left with all the years that follow to think
about it. You can do nothing but think about it--the most profitless of
all occupations."

"For you there is a second chance," she reminded him. "You must have
thought of that."

"No--no second chance."

She drew herself up slightly and away from him. "I have been very frank
with you, Dennison," she said. "Suppose you try being frank with me?"

In her eyes was still the fire of Zen of the Y.D., a woman unconquered
and unconquerable. She gave the impression that she accepted the
buffetings of life, but no one forced them upon her. She had erred; she
would suffer. That was fair; she accepted that. But as Grant gazed
on her face, tilted still in some of its old-time recklessness and
defiance, he knew that the day would come when she would say that her
cup was full, and, throwing it to the winds, would start life over, if
there can be such a thing as starting life over. And something in her
manner told him that day was very, very near.

"All right," he said, "I will be frank. Fate HAS brought within my orbit
a second chance, or what would have been a second chance had my heart
not been so full of you. She was a girl well worth thinking about. When
an employee introduces herself to you with a declaration of independence
you may know that you have met with someone out of the ordinary. I am
not speaking of these days of labor scarcity; it takes no great moral
quality to be independent when you have the whip-hand. But in the days
before the war, with two applicants for every position, a girl who
valued her freedom of spirit more than her job--more than even a very
good job--was a girl to think about."

"And you thought about her?"

"I did. I was sick of the cringing and fawning of which my wealth made
me the object; I loathed the deference paid me, because I knew it was
paid, not to me, but to my money--I was homesick to hear someone tell me
to go to hell. I wanted to brush up agains