"Most certainly! Why not?" His voice was not quite so unenthusiastic now. "It's one of the few unmistakable opportunities I've ever had to make two people permanently as happy as Miriam was to-night. I'd feel guilty all my life if I didn't help all I could, knowing how happy I am going to be, myself!" Thus did he work around, quite without abruptness, to a renewal of that discussion which she had thought to close, weeks before. "Are you trying to infer that I am to be a part of that happiness?" she asked none too promisingly. "You ought to know. I said 'all my life.'" And there, suddenly, Barbara laughed. "I suppose now they'll marry and live happily ever after!" she exclaimed with an attempt at airiness. "Most certainly," asserted Steve, although her mirth puzzled him. "Why is it funny to you?" "It isn't, but--yes it is too, now that it's no longer a thing one need worry about. That's always the trouble with emotions which are too intense. They're either very sad to contemplate, or very, very absurd. And they will persist in exchanging faces, to the confusion of the on-lookers. Garry was so dangerously in love with Mary Graves, you see!" "He was in love with an idea," the man contradicted flatly. "He was in love with just that. And it is not safe for any man to live alone with an abstract conception of anything. He's bound, sooner or later, to lose his grip on tangible things if he does. He's likely to start destroying property to further the cause of labor, or liable to turn to shooting men who were born to jobs I'm certain some of them never wanted--kings and that sort, I mean--figuring on solving the social problems of men and women who must solve that problem themselves. Perfection is a fine thing to anticipate; expectations of it are dangerous. And women aren't made that way." "No?" her voice slid coolly upward. "No," he told her, and smiled with that serenity she had come to know so well. "Not even you, though I suppose I'd about annihilate anyone else if he ever hinted at it." He chose to be didactic in tone. "No, you're not perfect; you've too much intelligence for that. Why, right now you're fighting with your brain against the dictates of your heart, and if you were above mortal error in judgment you'd know that you are wasting your time." The girl forgot entirely that she, too, had promised herself that their leave-taking should not cross the border of personalities. And with that lazy joy of her on his tongue she might not have been quite so quick to hold that she could love no man, had she stopped to give it thought. Her advance to the skirmish was most spirited. "Your opinion has the merit of sincerity," she said, "although, looking back upon a--a certain day, I can't help but wonder whether you haven't been guilty of mouthing pretty nothings for my poor ears." "That proves my point right now." He was imperturbable. "You're begging the question to gain----"