So much of accomplishment lay behind him—­and he not yet thirty years old!  The confidence reposed in him by labor was eloquently testified to by the sending of him to this important post on the battle line.  Already he had justified that confidence.  With years and experience what heights might he not climb!...This was Ruth’s thought.  Beside Dulac’s belief in himself and his future it was colorless.

Dulac had been an inmate of the Frazer cottage two weeks.  In that time he had not once stepped out of his character.  If his attitude toward the world were a pose it had become so habitual as to require no objective prompting or effort to maintain.  This character was that of the leader of men, the zealot for the cause of the under dog.  It held him aloof from personal concerns.  Individual affairs did not touch him, but functioned unnoticed on a plane below his clouds.  Not for an instant had he sought the friendship of Ruth and her mother, not to establish relations of friendship with them.  He was devoted to a cause, and the cause left no room in his life for smaller matters.  He was a man apart.

Now he was awkwardly tugging something from his pocket.  Almost diffidently he offered it to Ruth.  It was a small box of candy.

“Here...” he said, clumsily.

“For me!” Ruth was overpowered.  This demigod had brought her a gift.  He had thought about her—­insignificant her!  True, she had talked with him, had even taken walks with him, but those things had not been significant.  It had seemed he merely condescended to the daughter of a martyr to his cause.  He had been paying a tribute to her father.  But a gift—­a personal gift such as any young man might make to a girl whose favor he sought!  Could it mean...?

Then she saw that he was embarrassed, actually embarrassed before her, and she was ashamed of herself for it.  But she saw, too, that in him was a human man, a man with fears and sensations and desires and weaknesses like other men.  After all, a demigod is only half of Olympus.

“Thank you,” she said.  “Thank you so much.”

“You’re not—­offended?”

He was recovering himself.  In an instant he was back again in character.

“We men,” he said, “who are devoted to the Cause have little time in our lives for such things.  The Cause demands all.  When we go into it we give up much that other men enjoy.  We are wanderers.  We have no homes.  We can’t afford to have homes. ...I,” he said, it proudly, “have been in jail more than once.  A man cannot ask a woman to share such a life.  A man who leads such a life has no place in it for a woman.”

“I should think,” she said, “that women would be proud to share such a life.  To know they were helping a little!  To know they were making one comfortable spot for you to come to and rest when you were tired or discouraged. ...”

“Comforts are not for us,” he said, theatrically, yet he did not seem theatrical to her, only nobly self-sacrificing.