"HE MEANS FIGHT" Winston remained staring blankly at the closed door behind which she had so swiftly vanished, his mind a chaos of doubt.

He assuredly never purposed saying what he had said under the spur of deprivation, yet he regretted no single word that he had uttered.

That he earnestly worshipped this briefly known woman was a fact borne in upon him suddenly; yet now, the fact once completely realized, he surrendered unconditionally to the inevitable.

For a moment his thought of her obscured all lesser things; he saw nothing else in the wide world really worth striving after--every aroused impulse thrilled to the fair face, the soft voice of Beth Norvell.

He was no "quitter," no faint-heart either in love or in war, and he was now far too deeply in earnest to accept as final a stingless rejection spoken by lips that were so openly contradicted by the smiling eyes above.