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Lincoln in a letter to Mrs. Hamill at York Harbor, "he is entirely happy. Tickled with what he's doing and the way he's living. Bennett tells me he spends every waking minute with the girl . . . he seems as enthralled as ever" . . .

Which he was. Yvonne's was a lure that did not wane with proximity, a luster that the passage of months did not rub dull. And if occasionally there were incidents, perceptions, that vexed him—little things she did and said, little surprising streaks of alloy—he forgot them all in a second when she smiled. He kissed her countless times a day, hungrily . . . with a mounting hunger that tore at him. . . . He could have satisfied the hunger, and knew it, but he would not, and wished that he did not know. That was one of the things that vexed him. His love for Yvonne transcended flesh, for the time being anyway. He wanted very much to believe that hers for him did also.

They would be married in late February, when their year was over. No sooner. Jock had long since abandoned the struggle to dissuade Yvonne from her stand, for she was adamant. They agreed to stay on at Terrace Tavern until the first of the month, at which time Jock would secure for himself a position in some advertising office (he had decided that advertising was to be his ultimate vocation) and Yvonne would buy her trousseau. Regarding this last, Jock gave implicit instructions. "Not a damn stitch in it that you had—before," he commanded; the closest approach he had ever made to reference to her life with Demorest.

He talked incessantly of February, so absorbed in plans and prospects that he failed to notice how often Yvonne tried to change the subject, how wistfully,