Slowly she turned her face toward me; she had been giving me an opportunity for profile study during this dialogue. Her eyes found mine; her lips--in them again I saw the rose-leaf beauty of her childhood. When she spoke her voice was low and tremulous and musical. "You dear boy! You think so. I only wish it were true!" The last words came with a catch in her breath, I thrust forward and clasped her hands in mine. "You mean that? Oh, Jean, if you do. . . . ." "Yes, I mean it. That is the great difficulty. It isn't true. You wouldn't love me always. I wouldn't always be the only girl." "Jean, you would. I swear it!" "Then I must reverse it. I wouldn't love you always. You wouldn't always be the only man in the world." My spirit, which had gone pounding upward, fell like a burst balloon. "Why?" I demanded. "Because your vision is too small. Because it is bounded by the corner posts of Fourteen. Because I couldn't live penned up in such a--a pasture." "You'd be breaking out--toward section Two." "Frank!" It was her turn to exclaim. "Yes, toward section Two. You've done some plain talking, Jean; now it's my turn. It is Spoof that has upset your mind--put all these wild notions in your head. It is Spoof that you are thinking about, not me. I suppose you think you could marry him and not drop into the routine; you would be less an ox, as you put it, on Two than on Fourteen. Perhaps that would be best, after all. Perhaps if you were fenced in on Two, you might break out toward Fourteen!" "Frank! Please don't be unkind--and unfair. . . . . . . . I _am_ thinking about Spoof, and it is just because he is _not_ bounded by section Two. You and Jack and Jake think he's a greenhorn, and you play your silly little tricks on him, but his world is the world, and yours is Fourteen, and Jack's is Twenty-two, and Jake's is--whatever his section is. He's so big, so big!" "I see. Spoof has travelled more than we have. He has seen more of the world. He has met more people. And so he is big! I bet I grow more oats to the acre than he does--you should see his plowing; looks like--'be guess and be damned,' as Jake says." "Quite an elegant remark; suitable to Jake, hardly to be expected from you. And your argument would be irresistible--if I were an ox." "You're sharp, aren't you? Well, something to eat is not to be despised, even by BIG people, like you and Spoof. Even the soul, which you are afraid of losing on Fourteen, will pick up and leave you on Two, unless you feed that body in which it lives. That's what the soul itself thinks about people who don't hustle for a living; it gets up and leaves them." "Good for you!" cried Jean, "You are actually thinking. I have goaded you into it. Now--where are we?" "We're at Spoof. You say you could love me for a week, and him forever." "I didn't say that."