“All right,” he said, “I will be frank. Fate HAS brought within my orbit a second chance, or what would have been a second chance had my heart not been so full of you. She was a girl well worth thinking about. When an employee introduces herself to you with a declaration of independence you may know that you have met with someone out of the ordinary. I am not speaking of these days of labor scarcity; it takes no great moral quality to be independent when you have the whip-hand. But in the days before the war, with two applicants for every position, a girl who valued her freedom of spirit more than her job—more than even a very good job—was a girl to think about.”
“And you thought about her?”
“I did. I was sick of the cringing and fawning of which my wealth made me the object; I loathed the deference paid me, because I knew it was paid, not to me, but to my money—I was homesick to hear someone tell me to go to hell. I wanted to brush up against that spirit which says it is as good as anybody else—against the manliness which stands its ground and hits back. I found that spirit in Phyllis Bruce.”
“Phyllis Bruce—rather a nice name. But are the men and women of the East so—so servile as you suggest?”
“No! That is where I was mistaken. Generations of environment had merely trained them into docility of habit. Underneath they are red-blooded through and through. The war showed us that. Zen—the proudest moment of my life—except one—was when a kid in the office who couldn’t come into my room without trembling jumped up and said ‘We WILL win!’—and called me Grant! Think of that! Poor chap.... What was I saying? Oh, yes; Phyllis. I grew to like her—very much—but I couldn’t marry her. You know why.”
Zen was looking into the fire with unseeing eyes. “I am not sure that I know why,” she said at length. “You couldn’t marry me. It was your second chance. You should have taken it.”
“Would that be playing the game fairly—with her?”
She rested her fingers lightly on the back of his hand, extending them gently down until they fell between his own.
“Denny, you big, big boy!” she murmured. “Do you suppose every man marries his first choice?”
“It has always seemed to me that a second choice is a makeshift. It doesn’t seem quite square—”