of the few unmistakable opportunities I've ever had to
make two people permanently as happy as Miriam was to-night. I'd feel
guilty all my life if I didn't help all I could, knowing how happy I am
going to be, myself!"

Thus did he work around, quite without abruptness, to a renewal of that
discussion which she had thought to close, weeks before.

"Are you trying to infer that I am to be a part of that happiness?" she
asked none too promisingly.

"You ought to know. I said 'all my life.'"

And there, suddenly, Barbara laughed.

"I suppose now they'll marry and live happily ever after!" she
exclaimed with an attempt at airiness.

"Most certainly," asserted Steve, although her mirth puzzled him. "Why
is it funny to you?"

"It isn't, but--yes it is too, now that it's no longer a thing one need
worry about. That's always the trouble with emotions which are too
intense. They're either very sad to contemplate, or very, very absurd.
And they will persist in exchanging faces, to the confusion of the
on-lookers. Garry was so dangerously in love with Mary Graves, you
see!"

"He was in love with an idea," the man contradicted flatly. "He was in
love with just that. And it is not safe for any man to live alone with
an abstract conception of anything. He's bound, sooner or later, to
lose his grip on tangible things if he does. He's likely to start
destroying property to further the cause of labor, or liable to turn to
shooting men who were born to jobs I'm certain some of them never
wanted--kings and that sort, I mean--figuring on solving the social
problems of men and women who must solve that problem themselves.
Perfection is a fine thing to anticipate; expectations of it are
dangerous. And women aren't made that way."

"No?" her voice slid coolly upward.

"No," he told her, and smiled with that serenity she had come to know
so well. "Not even you, though I suppose I'd about annihilate anyone
else if he ever hinted at it." He chose to be didactic in tone. "No,
you're not perfect; you've too much intelligence for that. Why, right
now you're fighting with your brain against the dictates of your heart,
and if you were above mortal error in judgment you'd know that you are
wasting your time."

The girl forgot entirely that she, too, had promised herself that their
leave-taking should not cross the border of personalities. And with
that lazy joy of her on his tongue she might not have been quite so
quick