“If only——­” and then Raymond’s eyes looked queer.  He was living over the black hour which he did not realize was the hour of his soul’s birth.  He’d never have that battle again, he inwardly swore, but that was poor comfort.

And then, while talking to Nancy, he grew very gay and light-hearted, like someone who had made a safe passage past the siren’s rocks.  Not that it mattered, except that one did not want to be shipwrecked.  Of course, Raymond knew, he wouldn’t forget while he lived, the other thing just past, but it had not wrecked him.

After that dinner nothing would have happened if all sorts of pressure had not been brought to bear.  Raymond was affectionately inclined to be kind to Mrs. Tweksbury because he knew he had wronged her faith in him, though she would never know; so he accompanied her whenever she beckoned, and she beckoned frequently and always toward Nancy.

Then Clive Cameron happened, at the crucial moment, to be on the middle of the stage for the same reasons that Raymond was there.  Cameron followed Martin’s vigorous beckoning, although he was bored to the limit.  He liked Nancy and thought her very beautiful, but Cameron had not enshrined any type of woman—­a few men are like that.  He knew, because he was young and vital and sane, that he had a shrine, or pedestal, in his make-up and if, at any time, he saw a girl that made him forget, for a moment, the profession that was absorbing him just then, he’d humbly implore her to fill the empty niche and after that he would do the glorifying.  But if it pleased his uncle to trot him about, he went with charming grace; and because it did not affect him in the least, he played almost boisterously with Nancy and made her jollier than she had ever been in her life.

He made her forget things!  Forget The Gap!

Cameron simply knocked unpleasant memories into limbo; he was like a fresh northwest wind—­he revived everyone.  He made Doris think of David Martin as she first knew him—­and naturally Doris adored Cameron.  She came near praying that Nancy might, after a fashion, pay her debts for her.  But no! she would not influence Nancy—­she must be respected in her beautiful freedom as Joan was in hers.

So Doris widened the field of Nancy’s vision, and old friends came happily to the front.

It is not wholly ignoble, the marriage market.  To understand the game of life is to be prepared, and women like Doris Fletcher were not entirely self-seeking when they presented their best to what they believed should be the best.  Nancy was worthy, as Martin often said, to carry on the truest American tradition of womanhood, so it became a reverent concern to help this matter personally, and nationally, on its course.

Young men swarmed about Nancy because, as Mrs. Tweksbury truly said, the ideal was in their hearts and they were stirred by it.

And Nancy was radiant and lovely.  She blossomed and throbbed—­she was happy and appreciative.  She was charming to everyone, but ran to Cameron for safety and kept her sweet eyes on Raymond.