h Bruce's age without some pages of romance behind him, was
forever, out of his own perspicacity, trying to make Bruce re-read those
pages, so that this new page, that had been turned under the hand of
Sally Madeira, might not be written.

"Piney," Bruce answered at last regretfully, "it's a pagan world. Men
make mistakes. I think it's largely because they want so much to love
that they love somebody, anybody, till the right person comes along."

"Should think they 'ud wait," demurred Piney stubbornly.

"Well, n--o, that's the notion of a man who has met the right person
exactly in the beginning; or it's a woman's notion; but it isn't the
notion of a man who, with a sense for beauty and sweetness, waits, like
a harp for its music, out in the open where beauty and sweetness beat
down upon him. Out in the open a man gets blind. Lord!" went on
Steering, remembering Miss Gossamer again, and trying to explain her to
himself, "how can a man help loving prettiness! That's what a man loves
often and always, Piney, prettiness, grace, vivacity--and then once in
his life he loves a woman--Hah!" cried Steering, as though he had at
last got the best of Miss Gossamer, "that's it--that sounds good."

"Well, d'you think," went on Piney, jerking his spear of grass
viciously, "d'you think that a man cand fall in love with a lady rat
off, just knowin' her a few weeks?" This was one of Piney's ways of
manifesting the jealousy that disquieted him, slurring covertly, and
with his lips flickering peculiarly, at Steering's brief acquaintance
with Miss Madeira. He was always showing in innumerable ways the hold
that Bruce had taken upon his young affections, but he could not help
showing, too, the sore spot of his valuation of Steering's regard for
Miss Madeira. Though they mentioned Miss Madeira between them only
casually, Bruce knew for himself that Piney, in his crude but vehement
way, was living through a boy's own high tragedy of love for a woman
older than he and beyond his reach, and Piney knew for himself that
Steering, in the most perfect flower of his capacity, had attained his
destiny as a perfect lover, under circumstances most unpropitious. The
fact that the woman who was the object of the boy's enraptured fancy had
levied royal tribute upon the man's love in the same purple-mannered
fashion brought boy and man close. Tacitly they recognised that the bond
between them was strong enough to bear the weight of Piney's jealousy,
and