“Of a Virginia redbird, you mean.”

“A redbird?  Then you have seen her?”

“Yes, I’ve seen her—­only twice—­but the last time she indulged her sense of humour in a practical joke about a sprained ankle.”

“I suppose she would joke like that.  Even the modern girl that we know isn’t in the best possible taste.  And you must remember that Patty Vetch is something very different from the girls that you admire.  I hope she’ll let me help her, but I doubt it.  She is the sort that wouldn’t come if you tried to call and coax her.  You said her father was like that, didn’t you?  Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one can’t put out a cage, you know.  The only way is to scatter crumbs on the window-sill and then stand and wait.  Will you let me take you home?”

They had crossed the pavement to her car, and she waited now with her smile of whimsical gaiety.

“If you will.  It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown you will wear for your triumph.”

It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her laughter.  “Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn hope!”

CHAPTER IV

THE TRIBAL INSTINCT

The spirit of the age, the worship of the many-headed god of magnitude, was holding carnival in the town.  Faster and faster buildings were rising; the higher and more flimsily built, the better it seemed, for it is easier to demolish walls that have been lightly erected.  Everywhere people were pushing one another into the slums or the country.  Everywhere the past was going out with the times and the future was coming on in a torrent.  Two opposing principles, the conservative and the progressive, had struggled for victory, and the progressive principle had won.  To add more and more numbers; to build higher and higher; to push harder and harder; and particularly to improve what had been already added or built or pushed—­these impulses had united at last into a frenzied activity.  And while the building and the pushing and the improving went on, the village grew into the town, the town grew into the city, and the city grew out into the country.  Beneath it all, informing the apparent confusion, there was some crude belief that the symbol of material success is size, and that size in itself, regardless of quality or condition, is civilization.  For the many-headed god is a god of sacrifice.  He makes a wilderness of beauty and calls it progress.

Long ago the village had disappeared.  Long ago the spacious southern homes, with their walled gardens of box and roses and aromatic shrubs in spring, had receded into the shadowy memories of those whom the modern city pointed out, with playful solicitude, as “the oldest inhabitants.”  None except the very oldest inhabitants could remember those friendly and picturesque streets, deeply shaded by elms and sycamores; those hospitable houses of gray