“Joy, he said nothing for two or three minutes steady, till the waiter came and he told him to bring anything, but get out. Then he said—‘I—see now! The valiance and potential beauty I saw in the spirit of the little girl who brought me back to myself—the shining hardness of the cabaret singer, whom I pitied as drawn in and around by her past and inevitable future environment—I discarded that hardness, and all that went with it, and built on the valiance and beauty. And you were discarding and building in reality—as I, with all the idiotic finality of a man, never thought you could!’ “Joy—I didn’t think I’d built. Before—he thought I was worse than I was. Last night, seeing me ooze around his sister’s drawing room, he thought I was better than I am. I began to tell him this, and he stopped me. “When I first knew you—I knew you were better than I,’ he said. ‘As I see you now, you have all but put yourself beyond me. I have led a life of which I am ashamed; the dusty corners of which no one shall ever know, or try to sweep out. You have led a life of which you can say you are not ashamed; a life of striving against odds, from which you came out on top; a life of which to be proud. “Joy—I was ashamed at that. For since the war—you know how I’ve been—Building, he thought! When I’d just been growing into the ways of his world. Excitement-Eating! That was the main thing I’d been growing on. I began to tell him—and he wouldn’t let me. ‘What has happened is not mine now. It is for what is to be that I plead. With your future mine, and mine yours, you can help me to forget the years we might not have esteemed so lightly.’” Jerry had finished, at the same time that she had snapped the last catch together in her green evening gown—the same green sequin affair that she had worn that terrible night they had looked for Sarah. . . . “Well—and then what happened the rest of the afternoon?” Joy drew out from lungs that had been deserted of breath. “I’ve told you more than I shall ever tell anybody. The rest is mine—that and—_this_!” Jerry flaunted her left hand before her. On the third finger was a tiny platinum circlet, so small that it had melted into the white of her hand at a distance, as gold could not have done. “I’ve tried to thrust it down your throat a thousand ways, but you would keep looking at my face and a thousand other unimportant things!” Joy sank back upon the bed, her whole being a rag of dumfounderment. “Jerry!” “Mrs. Philip Lancaster—and hurry up and put on some rouge! I don’t want to keep my husband waiting!” “But—but why—how—where——”