terrible discovery, could keep them apart. In vain Genevieve tried to
steel herself against him; but she fought herself, not him. To her
surprise she discovered a thousand excuses for him, found him lovable as
ever; and she entered into his life to be his destiny, and to control him
after the way of women. She saw his future and hers through glowing
vistas of reform, and her first great deed was when she wrung from him
his promise to cease fighting.

And he, after the way of men, pursuing the dream of love and striving for
possession of the precious and deathless object of desire, had yielded.
And yet, in the very moment of promising her, he knew vaguely, deep down,
that he could never abandon the Game; that somewhere, sometime, in the
future, he must go back to it. And he had had a swift vision of his
mother and brothers and sisters, their multitudinous wants, the house
with its painting and repairing, its street assessments and taxes, and of
the coming of children to him and Genevieve, and of his own daily wage in
the sail-making loft. But the next moment the vision was dismissed, as
such warnings are always dismissed, and he saw before him only Genevieve,
and he knew only his hunger for her and the call of his being to her; and
he accepted calmly her calm assumption of his life and actions.

He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and made
for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding through their
bodies; and wherever they went together, even on Sunday outings across
the bay amongst people who did not know him, eyes were continually drawn
to them. He matched her girl's beauty with his boy's beauty, her grace
with his strength, her delicacy of line and fibre with the harsher vigor
and muscle of the male. Frank-faced, fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in
expression, eyes blue and wide apart, he drew and held the gaze of more
than one woman far above him in the social scale. Of such glances and
dim maternal promptings he was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was
quick to see and understand; and she knew each time the pang of a fierce
joy in that he was hers and that she held him in the hollow of her hand.
He did see, however, and rather resented, the men's glances drawn by her.
These, too, she saw and understood as he did not dream of understanding.

CHAPTER III

Genevieve slipped on a pair of Joe's shoes, light-soled and dapper, and
laughed with Lottie, who stoo