t you, Ken?"

"With pleasure."

Raymond felt that any compromise would be well to offer.

"I'll do my best by her, too, Aunt Emily. I rather shy at perfect types;
girls, at the best, make me skittish. They make me think of myself and
then I get gawky."

"You'll forget yourself when you see Nancy Thornton."

"Nancy--queer old name for a modern girl!" The two puffed away like old
cronies--Raymond had got into a chair now and Mrs. Tweksbury had
relaxed, also.

"She isn't modern!"

"No? What then, Aunt Emily?"

"Ken, she's just woman. She appears just once so often, like a prophet
or something, that keeps your faith alive. She's the kind that the Bible
calls 'blessed,' and if she didn't reappear now and then I think the
race would perish."

"Ugh!" grunted Raymond. Then added: "Calm down, Aunt Emily, go slow.
When you lose your head you're apt to buck."

Mrs. Tweksbury laughed at this and helped herself to another cigarette.

It was a week later that Raymond met Nancy at his aunt's dinner table.
He knew she was coming. At least he thought he knew--but when he saw her
he felt that he had not expected her at all.

It was a small party: Doris Fletcher, Doctor Martin, young Doctor
Cameron, and Nancy.

Nancy came into the dim old drawing room behind young Cameron. It was
that fact that attracted Raymond first. He recalled what Mrs. Tweksbury
had said about the type being the ideal of man--or something like
that--and Cameron, whom he had just met a few weeks before, had
apparently got into action.

After Nancy came Doctor Martin--it was as if the male element surrounded
the girl.

She was rather breath-taking and radiant. She wore a coral-pink satin
gown, very short and narrow. Her pretty feet were shod in pink stockings
and satin slippers. Her dainty arms and neck were white and smooth, and
her glorious fair hair was held in place by a string of coral beads.

There are a good many platitudes that are really staggering facts.

"Caught on the rebound," is one.

Raymond was more open to certain emotions than he had ever been in his
life. He was sore and bruised; he had lost several beliefs in
himself--and was completely ignorant of the big thing that had given him
new strength.

He had had the vision of passion through the wrong lens; he had been
blinded by the close range, but he _knew_ what the vision was. In that
he had the advantage of poor Joan.

His youth cried out for Youth; he wanted what he had al