s actual
knowledge of the depth and steadfastness of his friend's nature was
pooh-poohed or ignored. Benis, dear old chap, cared nothing for women.
Hadn't he always shunned them in his quiet way? And hadn't he, John,
warned Benis, anyway? The Thought insisted upon the warning with
virtuous emphasis. It pointed out that Benis had laughed at the
warning. Even if--but we need not follow John's excursions further.
They all led through devious ways to the old, old justification of
everything in love and war.

As time went on, the thing which fed the mistaken thoughts of both
Benis and John was the change in Desire herself. That she was
increasingly unhappy was evident to both. And why should she be
unhappy--unless?

To John Rogers, that summer remained the most distracting summer of his
life. Desire should have seen this--would have seen it had her
mind-roads not been closed by their own obsession. The probability is
that she did not consciously think of John at all. He was there and he
was kind. She saw nothing farther than that.

The relationship between the two men remained apparently the same and
indeed it is likely that, in the main, their conception one of the
other did not change. To Benis, John's virtues were still as real and
admirable as ever. To John, Benis was still a bit of a mystery and a
bit of a hero>. (There were war stories which John knew but had never
dared to tell, lest vengeance befall him.) But, these basic things
aside, there were new points of view. Seen as a possible mate for
Desire, Benis found John most lamentably lacking. Seen in the same
light, Benis to John was undesirable in the extreme. "If it could only
be someone more subtle than John," thought Benis. And, "If only old
Benis were a bit more stable," thought John. Both were insincere, since
no possible combination of qualities would have satisfied either.

Of this fatally misled quartette, Mary Davis was perhaps the one most
open to reason. And yet not altogether so, for the thought of Benis
Spence as eternally escaped was not a welcome one. She realized now
that she might have liked the elusive professor more than a little.
They would have been, she thought, admirably suited. At the worst,
neither would have bored the other. And the Spence home was quite
possible--as a home for part of the year at least. It was certainly
annoying that fate should have cut in so unexpectedly. And for what?
Apparently for nothing but that a girl with gre