ou have seen her?"

"Yes, I've seen her--only twice--but the last time she indulged her
sense of humour in a practical joke about a sprained ankle."

"I suppose she would joke like that. Even the modern girl that we know
isn't in the best possible taste. And you must remember that Patty Vetch
is something very different from the girls that you admire. I hope
she'll let me help her, but I doubt it. She is the sort that wouldn't
come if you tried to call and coax her. You said her father was like
that, didn't you? Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one
can't put out a cage, you know. The only way is to scatter crumbs on the
window-sill and then stand and wait. Will you let me take you home?"

They had crossed the pavement to her car, and she waited now with her
smile of whimsical gaiety.

"If you will. It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown
you will wear for your triumph."

It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her
laughter. "Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn
hope!"

CHAPTER IV

THE TRIBAL INSTINCT

The spirit of the age, the worship of the many-headed god of magnitude,
was holding carnival in the town. Faster and faster buildings were
rising; the higher and more flimsily built, the better it seemed, for it
is easier to demolish walls that have been lightly erected. Everywhere
people were pushing one another into the slums or the country.
Everywhere the past was going out with the times and the future was
coming on in a torrent. Two opposing principles, the conservative and
the progressive, had struggled for victory, and the progressive
principle had won. To add more and more numbers; to build higher and
higher; to push harder and harder; and particularly to improve what had
been already added or built or pushed--these impulses had united at last
into a frenzied activity. And while the building and the pushing and the
improving went on, the village grew into the town, the town grew into
the city, and the city grew out into the country. Beneath it all,
informing the apparent confusion, there was some crude belief that the
symbol of material success is size, and that size in itself, regardless
of quality or condition, is civilization. For the many-headed god is a
god of sacrifice. He makes a wilderness of beauty and calls it progress.

Long ago the village had disappeared. Long ago the spacious southern
homes, with their walle