was prepared to give. Eve had an
off-with-the-old-and-on-with-the-new theory of living which left him
breathless. She expressed it one night when she said that she shouldn't
have "obey" in her marriage service. "I never expect to mind you, Dicky,
so what's the use?"

There was no use, of course. Yet he had a feeling that he was being
robbed of something sweet and sacred. The quaint old service asked things
of men as well as of women. Good and loving and fine things. He was
old-fashioned enough to want to promise all that it asked, and to have
his wife promise.

Eve laughed, too, at Richard's grace before meat. "You mustn't embarrass
me at formal dinners, Dicky. Somehow it won't seem quite in keeping with
the cocktails, will it?"

Thus the spirit of Eve, contending with all that made him the son of his
mother, meeting his spiritual revolts with material arguments, banking
the fires of his flaming aspirations!

Yet he rarely let himself dwell upon this aspect of it. He had set his
feet in a certain path, and he was prepared to follow it.

On this path, at every turning, he met Philip. The big man had not been
driven from the field by the fact of Eve's engagement. He still asked her
to go with him, he still planned pleasures for her. His money made things
easy, and while he included Richard in most of his plans, he looked upon
him as a necessary evil. Eve refused to go without her young doctor.

Now and then, however, he had her alone. "Dicky's called to an
appendicitis case," she informed him ruefully, one night over the
telephone, "and I am dead lonesome. Come and cheer me up."

He went to her, and during the evening proposed a week-end yachting trip
which should take them to the North Shore and Aunt Maude.

"Is Dicky invited?"

"Of course. But I'm not sure that I want him."

"He wouldn't come if he knew that you felt like that."

"It isn't anything personal. And you know my manner is perfect when I'm
with him."

"Yes. Poor Dicky. Pip, we are a pair of deceivers. I sometimes think I
ought to tell him."

"There's nothing to tell."

"Nothing tangible,--but he's so straightforward. And he'd hate the idea
that I'm letting you--make love to me."

"I don't make love. I have never touched the tip of your finger."

"_Pip!_ Of course not. But your eyes make love, and your manner--and deep
down in my heart I am afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"That Fate isn't going to give me what I want. I don't want you, Pip