t that spirit which says it is
as good as anybody else--against the manliness which stands its ground
and hits back. I found that spirit in Phyllis Bruce."

"Phyllis Bruce--rather a nice name. But are the men and women of the
East so--so servile as you suggest?"

"No! That is where I was mistaken. Generations of environment had merely
trained them into docility of habit. Underneath they are red-blooded
through and through. The war showed us that. Zen--the proudest moment of
my life--except one--was when a kid in the office who couldn't come into
my room without trembling jumped up and said 'We WILL win!'--and called
me Grant! Think of that! Poor chap.... What was I saying? Oh, yes;
Phyllis. I grew to like her--very much--but I couldn't marry her. You
know why."

Zen was looking into the fire with unseeing eyes. "I am not sure that
I know why," she said at length. "You couldn't marry me. It was your
second chance. You should have taken it."

"Would that be playing the game fairly--with her?"

She rested her fingers lightly on the back of his hand, extending them
gently down until they fell between his own.

"Denny, you big, big boy!" she murmured. "Do you suppose every man
marries his first choice?"

"It has always seemed to me that a second choice is a makeshift. It
doesn't seem quite square--"

"No. I fancy some second choices are really first choices. Wisdom comes
with experience, you know."

"Not always. At any rate I couldn't marry her while my heart was yours."

"I suppose not," she answered, and again he noted a touch of weariness
in her voice. "I know something of what divided affection--if one can
even say it is divided--means. Denny, I will make a confession. I knew
you would come back; I always was sure you would come back. 'Then,' I
said to myself, 'I will see this man Grant as he is, and the reality
will clear my brain of all this idealism which I have woven about him.'
Perhaps you know what I mean. We sometimes meet people who impress us
greatly at the time, but a second meeting, perhaps years later, has a
very different effect. It sweeps all the idealism away, and we wonder
what it was that could have charmed us so. Well--I hoped--I really hoped
for some experience like that with you. If only I could meet you again
and find that, after all, you were just like other men; self-centred,
arrogant, kind, perhaps, but quite superior--if I could only find THAT
to be true then the mirage in which I hav