But to grant a man an inheritance of fighting blood, and then deny him the opportunity to exercise his birthright, was a sort of grim joke which he could not appreciate.

For dessert a great dish of fruit was set before him.  He chose a peach!

Peaches in November!  The men in the trenches had no peaches, no squabs, no mushrooms, no avacados—­for them bully beef and soup cubes, a handful of dates, or by good luck a bit of chocolate.

He left the peach untasted—­he had a feeling that he might thus, vicariously, atone for the hardships of those others who fought.

After dinner he walked downtown.  Passing Dr. McKenzie’s house he was constrained to loiter.  There were lights upstairs and down.  Was Jean McKenzie’s room behind the two golden windows above the balcony?  Was she there, or in the room below, where shaded lamps shone softly among the shadows?

He yearned to go in—­to speak with her—­to learn her thoughts—­to read her heart and mind.  As yet he knew only the message of her beauty.  He fancied her as having exquisite sensibility, sweetness, gentleness, perceptions as vivid as her youth and bloom.

The front door opened, and Jean and her father came out.  Derry’s heart leaped as he heard her laugh.  Then her clear voice, “Isn’t it a wonderful night to walk, Daddy?” and her father’s response, “Oh, you with your ecstasies!”

They went briskly down the other side of the street.  Derry found himself following, found himself straining his ear for that light laugh, found himself wishing that it were he who walked beside her, that her hand was tucked into his arm as it was tucked into her father’s.

Their destination was a brilliantly illumined palace on F Street, once a choice little playhouse, now given over to screen productions.  The house was packed, and Jean and her father, following the flashlight of the usher, found harbor finally in a box to the left of the stage.  Derry settled himself behind them.  He was an eavesdropper and he knew it, but he was loath to get out of the range of that lovely laughter.

Yet observing the closeness of their companionship he felt himself lonely—­they seemed so satisfied to be together—­so sufficient without any other.  Once Dr. McKenzie got up and went out.  When he came back he brought a box of candy.  Derry heard Jean’s “Oh, you darling—­” and thrilled with a touch of jealousy.

He wondered a little that he should care—­his experiences with women had heretofore formed gay incidents in his life rather than serious epochs.  He had carried in his heart a vision, and the girl in the Toy Shop had seemed to make that vision suddenly real.

The play which was thrown on the screen had to do with France; with Joan of Arc and the lover who failed her, with the reincarnation of the lover and his opportunity, after long years, to redeem himself from the blot of cowardice.