friend and classmate, Jack Strawn, had presented him to his sister. No
comrade knew Dru better than Strawn, and no one admired him so much.
Therefore, Gloria, ever seeking a closer contact with life, had come to
West Point eager to meet the lithe young Kentuckian, and to measure him
by the other men of her acquaintance.

She was disappointed in his appearance, for she had fancied him almost
god-like in both size and beauty, and she saw a man of medium height,
slender but toughly knit, and with a strong, but homely face. When he
smiled and spoke she forgot her disappointment, and her interest
revived, for her sharp city sense caught the trail of a new experience.

To Philip Dru, whose thought of and experience with women was almost
nothing, so engrossed had he been in his studies, military and economic,
Gloria seemed little more than a child. And yet her frank glance of
appraisal when he had been introduced to her, and her easy though
somewhat languid conversation on the affairs of the commencement,
perplexed and slightly annoyed him. He even felt some embarrassment in
her presence.

Child though he knew her to be, he hesitated whether he should call her
by her given name, and was taken aback when she smilingly thanked him
for doing so, with the assurance that she was often bored with the
eternal conventionality of people in her social circle.

Suddenly turning from the commonplaces of the day, Gloria looked
directly at Philip, and with easy self-possession turned the
conversation to himself.

"I am wondering, Mr. Dru, why you came to West Point and why it is you