"That sounds like jealousy! I'll wager you can beat him in most games, unless he is better than the youngsters I know."
"I can, in some," she admitted, "but Phil is a great oarsman. He's on the crew at Harvard, you know," she added with a pride which amused Cosden; "he will probably row against Yale again this year. But Phil doesn't go at other sports as hard as I do. I have to go at them hard. I simply must be doing something. Mother calls it restlessness and Father says it's because I haven't grown up yet. Perhaps they are both right; but whatever it is I just can't help it."
"I hope you will never grow up, if to lose your enthusiasm is the penalty."
"Then you don't think it's unwomanly?" she asked, grateful for his approval.
"On the contrary," Cosden asserted. "It is enthusiasm which wins in everything to-day. Confidence in one's self, belief in one's subject, enthusiasm in its presentation; that is my daily creed."
"But you are a man," Merry protested. "You have made your success, so you have a right to have confidence in yourself—"
"My success is only partially complete," Cosden interrupted, quick to seize the easy opening. "When I left college I undertook to make money: I did make it. Then I undertook to compel that money to earn me a place in the business world: I made that dream come true. Now I have reached the third effort. My money is of value only so far as it secures for me what I want, and a part of what I want I can't get alone: that is a home, with the right woman in it. A man can make his clubs and all that sort of thing by himself, but it takes a woman to secure for him the social life which he ought to have. I'm looking for that woman now, and I intend to get her."
A smile crossed Merry's face as Cosden concluded his matter-of-fact statement. "You are demonstrating your daily creed," she said.
"Of course I am. If I didn't you would accuse me of inconsistency."
"Have you found the woman you—intend to get?"