He retraced his steps, his thoughts still busy with Hilmer. Here was a typical case of what America could yield to the nature that had the insolence to ravish her. America was still the tawny, primitive, elemental jade who gave herself more readily to a rough embrace than a soft caress. She reserved her favors for those who wrested them from her...she had no patience with the soft delights of persuasion. It was strange how much rough-hewn vitality had poured into her embrace from the moth-eaten civilization of the Old World. Starratt was only a generation removed from a people who had subdued a wilderness ... he was not many generations removed from a people who wrestled naked with God for a whole continent--that is, they had begun to wrestle; the years that had succeeded found them still eager and shut-lipped for the conflict. They had abandoned the struggle only when they had found their victory complete. Naturally, soft days had followed. Was eternal conflict the price of strength? Starratt found himself wondering. And was he a product of these soft days, the rushing whirlwinds of Heaven stilled, the land drowsy with the humid heat of a slothful noonday? He had never thought of these things before. Even when he had thrilled to the vision of line upon line of his comrades marching away to the blood-soaked fields of France he had surrendered to a primitive emotion untouched by the poetry of deep understanding. He thrilled not because he knew that these people were doing the magnificent, the decent thing ... but because he merely felt it. He had his faiths, but he had not troubled to prove them ... he had not troubled even to _doubt_ them. His disquiet sharpened all of his perceptions. He never remembered a time when the cool fragrance of the night had fallen upon his senses with such a personal caress. He had come out into its starlit presence flushed with narrow, sordid indignation ... smarting under the trivial lashes which insolence and circumstance had rained upon his vanity. His walk in the dusky silence had not stilled his restlessness, but it had given his impatience a larger scope ... and as he stood for one last backward glimpse at the twinkling magnificence of this February night he felt stirred by almost heroic rancors. The city lay before him in crouched somnolence, ready to leap into life at the first flush of dawn, and, in the chilly breath of virgin spring, little truant warmths and provocative perfumes stirred the night with subtle prophecies of summer. His exaltation persisted even after he had turned the key in his own door to find the light still blazing, betraying the fact of Helen's wakeful presence. He dallied over the triviality of hanging up his hat. She was reading when he gained the threshold of the tiny living room. At the sound of his footsteps she flung aside the magazine in her hand. Her thick brows were drawn together in insolent impatience. "Oh," he exclaimed, inadequately, "I thought you'd be asleep!"