o love it in a man is because it makes of
him a sort of restful harbor she can steer to from gathering worries. No
man can possibly know how comforting it is for a girl's course to be
laid within easy running distance of a safe harbor. He may know of
wrecks which occur without them, but seldom considers how easily many of
these might have been averted."

"Men sometimes feel that way about girls," he suggested. "Only, in
girls, they ask for tenderness."

She took the rebuke, simply adding:

"Girls feel tenderness for shelter, not for a destroying sea."

They were quiet then. The hum of night life was about them, and from the
house came faintly the mellow notes of a piano, where the Colonel and
Bob were watching out of shadow the enraptured light in Dale's face as
Ann introduced him for the first time in his life to that type of
instrumental music.

As though this were in some way made known to her, Jane broke the
silence.

"A man with an honest purpose in life," she gently said, "with a duty to
perform, who sticks to it through thick and thin, admitting no defeat,
hammering upon stubborn places, finds in good womankind an ever-ready
tenderness. It is the feminine answer to masculine courage."

"There are two kinds of courage," he replied after a polite pause, "just
as there are two kinds of duty, and two kinds of pride--each so closely
resembling its other self that men, and particularly women, are often
misled. When fear tugs at a fellow's heart (and without fear there would
be no courage) he is courageous who walks resolutely into every
uncertainty if duty chances to be there calling. I think you will agree
with me. But what is duty? There's your stumbling block! A false
conception of this--a belief that he sees ahead of him what there is
not--may cause him to be sacrificed as ignominiously as a bone tossed to
a dog; his life would be gobbled up for no better purpose. That's bad
business. Humanity would be bankrupt at such a rate. So, if a man of
courage be not also a man of foresight--"

"You mean that he would have no excuse for keeping out of danger," she
laughed. "That when he saw a duty, or heard its call, he would not be
able to justify himself in sitting calmly down to consider if the
sacrifice were worth while! Then, indeed, would the world be a sorry
place! Personally, I'd rather see fat dogs stalking over the earth than
just bones!"

"I hope you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said," he