that's what a
genius needs. And you couldn't blame her exactly. At least there always
have been people like that and the world hasn't blamed them--no matter
how moral it pretends to be. It's the other sort of people, the ones who
won't take anything unless they can have it all and who can't give
anything unless they can give it all--those that haven't but one thing to
give--that are--no good."

He didn't more than half understand her, which was fortunate, since he
was rather horrified as it was. He put it down broadly as the same sort
of nervous crisis that he had encountered in New York, a sort of
hypersensitiveness due to the strain of war work--the thing he had amused
her by speaking of as shell-shock.

"I think perhaps I know what has upset you to-night," he said
uncomfortably. "At least Graham told me about it."

She looked at him with a puzzled frown. It was the third time that he had
brought up the Stannard boy's name. What in the world...?

"He's terribly distressed about it," Rush went on. In his embarrassment
he wasn't looking at her and she composed her face. "He didn't
mean to shock you or--or offend you. He says he gave you reason enough
to be offended, but only because you didn't understand. He says he
has always--cared for you a lot. He said he thought you were the
most--well, about the most perfect thing in the world. Only to-night
he said he got carried off his feet and went further than he had any
right to. And he simply can't bear to have you think that he meant
anything--disrespectful. He felt he had to apologize to you before he
went home, but you didn't come down so finally he told me about it and
made me promise that I'd tell you to-night. Of course, I don't know what
he did," Rush concluded, "but I can tell you this. Graham Stannard's a
white man; they don't make them whiter than that."

Her reply, although it was unequivocally to the effect that it was all
right--Graham needn't worry--failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was
this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented
further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding
to be told what it was that he and his father, all these hours, had been
talking about.

He took up the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and
deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be
argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start
him in at the botto