What a strange world it was!  How full of colour and incident, how drenched with the quality of the unusual!

“And what did you learn?” he asked.

“I?” She was speaking earnestly.  “Oh, I learned a great many—­no, a multitude of things about life.”

At this he broke into a laugh of pure delight.  “With a special course of instruction in maneuvers,” he rejoined.

Though her smile showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with defiance.  “And by the time we meet again I shall have learned about—­strategy.”

How ready she was to fence, and how quick with her attack!  It was easy to believe that there was Irish blood in her veins and an Irish sparkle in her wit.

“Oh, then you will out-general me entirely!  Isn’t it enough to force me to acknowledge your superior tactics?”

She appeared to scrutinize each separate letter.  “Tactics?  Have I been using superior tactics without knowing it?”

“That I can’t answer.  Is there anything that has escaped your instinctive understanding?”

She laughed softly.  “Well, there’s one thing you may be sure of.  I’ll know a great deal more about some things by the time I see you again.”  Then, with one of her darting bird-like movements, she ran down the steps and into the car.  “I wish Father were here,” she said, looking out at him.  “He wants to talk to you.”

“I should like to talk to him.  I shall come again, if I may.”

“Oh, of course, and next time we may both be at home.”  As the car started she called out teasingly.  “My next maneuver may be more successful, you know!”

How provoking she was, and how inspiriting!  Was she as shrewd, as sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display of the modern spirit?  At least she was a part of her time—­not, like Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the general march toward recklessness and unrestraint.  Young as she was, he felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or pushed aside.  She had learned the secret of transition—­a perpetual motion that went in circles and was never still.  Here, he realized, was where he had lost connection, where he had failed to hold his place in the turmoil.  He had tried to stand off and reach a point of view, to become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to meditate, never to reason upon one’s course; but to sweep onward, somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction.  Elasticity, variability—­were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern mind?  The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; martyrdom without faith.  And around, above, beneath,