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To-day were three mysteries tremblingly close to revealing themselves one to another:  the great green mystery of the woodlands; the mystery of a man clothed in his masculinity as in an outer garment; the tender mystery of a young girl athrill with romance, effervescent with youth, her own thoughts half veiled from herself, her instincts alive and urgent, and often all in confusion.  How could a man like Mark King quite understand a girl like Gloria?  How could a girl like Gloria, with all of her surety of her own decisions, understand a man like King?  Each glimpsed that day much of the other’s true character, and yet all the while the mainsprings were just out of sight, unguessed, undreamed of.

At Gloria’s age, if one be a girl and very pretty and made much of by adoring parents and a host of boys and men, the world is an extremely nice place inhabited exclusively by individuals pressing forward to do her reverence.  She is beautiful, she is vivacious, filled with delight; she is a sparkling fountainhead of joy.  She is so superabundantly supplied with eager happiness that she radiates happiness.  If she thinks a very great deal of herself, so for that matter does every other individual in the world; it is merely that with all of her sophistication she remains much more naive than she would ever believe; she is a coquette because she is female; she is pleased with herself and with the high excuse that every one else is pleased with her.  Hence she demands adoration as a right.  If she rides on a street-car she fully expects that the conductor will regard her admiringly and that the motorman will turn his head after her.  She doesn’t expect to marry either of these gentlemen; she does not particularly require their flattering attentions....  Gloria did not expect to marry Archie or Teddy or Mr. Gratton; she had no thought of being any one’s wife; that term, after all, at Gloria’s age, is a drab and humdrum thing.  She did not dream of Mark King as a possible husband; another unromantic title.  She merely hungered for male admiration.  It was the wine of life, the breath in her nostrils.  As it happens to be to some countless millions of other girls....  All of which is so clearly a pretty nearly universal condition that it would seem that if Mark King had had his wits about him he must have realized it.  And yet had he glimpsed that which should have been so obvious he would have been startled, somewhat shocked, and would have grieved over his friend’s empty-headed daughter, holding her unmaidenly—­when she was but dallying with dreams which mean so much to all maidens.