to beat the draft, too. Nothing on earth can make me not want you to go."

"Why, Gert--you're kiddin'!"

"Honey, you want to go, don't you? You want to square up those shoulders
and put on khaki, don't you? Tell me you want to go!"

"Why--why, yes, Gert, if--"

"Oh, you're going, Jimmie! You're going!"

"Why, girl--you're crazy! Our flat! Our furniture--our--"

"What's a flat? What's furniture? What's anything? There's not a firm in
business wouldn't take back a boy's furniture--a boy's everything--that's
going out to fight for--for dem-o-cracy! What's a flat? What's anything?"

He let drop his head to hide his eyes.

Do you know it is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of Sorrento,
and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest? There is an
iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and Carrara
façade that is sheer light distilled to its utmost.

On one such day when, standing on the high slope of Fifth Avenue where it
rises toward the Park, and looking down on it, surging to and fro, it was
as if, so manifest the brilliancy, every head wore a tin helmet, parrying
sunlight at a thousand angles of refraction.

Parade-days, all this glittering midstream is swept to the clean sheen of