“Eh? My daughter does. Did you--Why, you were the one that put her on the golf team, were n’t you! I’d forgotten. You must be a good teacher.” “She was a good pupil. Never knew when she was beaten.” “It didn’t happen often enough for her to know, I guess,” laughed the magnate. “She came out to visit Elizabeth and made a fool of me on my own course. I owe you a grudge for that, young man! Will you take me out and show me some of the tricks some time when I’m down here? We’ll talk politics while we go around, so you can soothe your conscience for taking the time off.” “Glad to. Miss Ames and I used to play in the early morning, but I guess I can take an afternoon off when you come down. By the way, where is she?” “In Hamburg, I believe. There was some hint of an engagement.--a relative of her stepfather’s, I believe. Very advantageous match.” Jeremy heard the reply “Is that so?” in a tone of flat and polite simulation of interest, issue upon the air. It was obviously the result of a mechanical ventriloquism of his own, for he was quite sure that his lips had been for the moment incapable of speech. Of course he had always known that it must come. Inevitable with a girl like Marcia. But hope, though it withers, clings hardily to the last pulsing of secret life in the young. Even in the heart-emptiness of a long year of silence--except for the one note delivered by Buddy Higman--Jeremy had cherished a delusion dear as on the day when he first met her.... He became aware that Laurens was saying something to him. Politics--that was it. He had to fix his mind on politics, and though life had abruptly become sterile of hope and dreams, nevertheless there was a job to do. For the next twenty minutes, Jeremy passed through an ordeal which entitled him to a hero’s medal. He forced his aching mind to take in what Laurens was telling him, and afterward he fashioned from it a skillful and dispassionate interview. After Laurens’s departure the editor opened the drawer in his desk which was always kept locked. Therein were a dozen golf scores--he was still very young, and his stock of souvenirs had been pathetically scant--her note and the little photograph. He understood, now, why she had written him no letter. When she gave him up, she had mapped out her course for herself. If she were not formally betrothed then, she had determined upon the step. And having determined, she ended it all, then and there. It was the honorable way. It was the direct, definite, frank way. It was the right way. It was Marcia’s way.