n she needs him, that
she, and only she, can steady him, cheer him, keep him true to the work
he is in the world to perform. It is called the "mothering" instinct.

Frances felt this mothering instinct toward the sensitive, imaginative,
charming Stedman. She believed he had but two thoughts, his art and
herself. She was content to place his art first. She could not guess
that to one so unworldly, to one so wrapped up in his art, the fortune
of a rich aunt might prove alluring.

When the transport finally picked up the landfalls of Cavite Harbor,
Lee, with the instinct of a soldier, did not exclaim: "This is where
Dewey ran the forts and sank the Spanish fleet!" On the contrary, he
was saying: "When she comes to join me, it will be here I will first
see her steamer. I will be waiting with a field-glass on the end of
that wharf. No, I will be out here in a shore-boat waving my hat. And
of all those along the rail, my heart will tell me which is she!"

Then a barefooted Filipino boy handed him an unsigned cablegram. It
read: "If I wrote a thousand words I could not make it easier for
either of us. I am to marry Arthur Stedman in December."

Lee was grateful for the fact that he was not permitted to linger in
Manila. Instead, he was at once ordered up-country, where at a
one-troop post he administered the affairs of a somewhat hectic
province, and under the guidance of the local constabulary chased
will-o'-the-wisp brigands. On a shelf in his quarters he placed the
silver loving-cup, and at night, when the village slept, he would sit
facing it, filling one pipe after another, and through the smoke
staring at the evidence to the fact that once Frances Gardner and he
had been partners.

In these post-mortems he saw nothing morbid. With his present
activities they in no way interfered, and in thinking of the days when
they had been together, in thinking of what he had lost, he found deep
content. Another man, having lost the woman he loved, would have tried
to forget her and all she meant to him. But Lee was far too honest
with himself to substitute other thoughts for those that were glorious,
that still thrilled him. The girl could take herself from him, but she
could not take his love for her from him. And for that he was
grateful. He never had considered himself worthy, and so could not
believe he had been ill used. In his thoughts of her there was no
bitterness: for that also he was grateful. And, as