A good philosophy, so John Wollaston with a touch of envy had admitted—­if you can make it work.  Where it breaks down with most young men who set out so valiantly with it, is the point where one sees the only girl in the world and recognizes the imperious necessity of winning her, of holding out lures for her, of surrounding her, once won, with the setting her superlative worth demands.  That this did not happen to Anthony March was due to the fact that the young woman he—­not so much saw as gradually perceived, was his sister Sarah’s friend, Jennie MacArthur.

Independence had been forced upon Jennie so early that she never was called upon to decide whether she liked it or not.  She had an inquiring mind—­perhaps experimental would be the better word for it—­abundant self-confidence and a good stiff backbone.  It was easy to make the mistake of thinking her hard.  She was not a pretty woman, with her sandy hair and rather striking freckles, but she was well formed, she dressed always with that crisp cleanliness which is the extravagant standard of young women who work in good offices, and her voice had an attractive timbre.

To Sarah March (who, having fought for independence, was a little at a loss what to do with it) Jennie’s experience and her rather interesting range of friends were a Godsend.  It was at one of Jennie’s parties in the tiny pair of rooms where she lived alone that Sarah met Walter Davis, a mechanical draftsman by day and an ardent young Socialist by night, whom she afterward married.

On the other hand, the home which Sarah was sometimes rather dubious about the advantage of possessing, was to Jennie a delightful place to be a familiar visitor in.  She liked old David, who was a surprisingly charming person when he had no authority over you, she liked Mrs. March, she adored little Ben—­young Ben he was now rapidly growing up to be—­and finally, she began taking an interest which eventually outweighed all the rest, in the family black sheep, Anthony.

The intimacy between them which began around the time of Sarah’s marriage continued intermittently for nearly four years.  It had not, indeed, been definitely broken off when he went into the army.

When the attraction faded as it had definitely begun to do some months before he went to Camp Grant, it left their friendship unimpaired, enriched on the contrary.  He could talk to her more easily, confide his thoughts to her more freely than to any one else he knew.

This ability to be confided in and depended upon was one of her special talents.  She had emerged, years before, from the crowded stenographers’ room in a big engineering concern into the private office of the chief.  He was an erratic genius, brilliant, irritable, exacting, tireless, all but impossible to maintain any consistent relation with but one of bitter enmity.  He had about made up his mind that a fresh stenographer every morning was all he could hope for, when Jennie became his Scheherazade.