"Profession?"

"Member of the firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue."

Slightly startled, a fairly youthful product of West Point twisted on the uncomfortable orderly room chair, and glanced from the name on George's card to the tall, well-built figure in a private's uniform facing him. George knew he looked like a soldier, because some confiding idiot had blankly told him so coming up on the train; but he hadn't the first knowledge to support appearances, didn't even know how to stand at attention, was making an effort at it now since it was clearly expected of him, because he had sense enough to guess that the pompous, slightly ungrammatical young man would insist during the next three months on many such tributes.

"I see. You're the Morton."

George was pleased the young man was impressed. He experienced again the feelings with which he had gone to Princeton. He was being weighed, not as skilfully as Bailly had done it, but in much the same fashion. He had a quick thought that it was going to be nice to be at school again.

"Any special qualifications of leadership?"

The question took George by surprise. He hesitated. A reserve officer, sitting by to help, asked:

"Weren't you captain of the Princeton football team a few years ago?"

"Yes, but we were beaten."

"You must learn to say, 'sir,' Mr. Morton, when you address an officer."

George flushed. That was etching his past rather too sharply. Then he smiled, and amused at the silly business, mimicked Simpson's servility.

"Very well, sir. I'll remember, sir."

The West Point man was pleased, he was even more impressed, because he knew football. He made marks on the card. When George essayed a salute and stepped aside for the next candidate he knew he wasn't submerged in this mass of splendid individualities which were veiled by the similarity of their uniforms.

Lambert, Goodhue, and he were scattered among different companies. That was as well, he reflected, since his partners already wore officers' hat cords. The spare moments they had, nevertheless, they spent together, mulling over Blodgett's frequent reports which they never found time thoroughly to digest. Even George didn't worry about that, for his confidence in Blodgett was complete at last.

He hadn't time to worry about much, for that matter, beyond the demands of each day, for Plattsburgh was like Princeton only in that it aroused all his will power to find the right path and to stick to it. At times he wished for the nearly smooth brain with which he had entered college. He had acquired too many wrinkles of logic, of organization, of efficiency, of common-sense, to survive these months without frequent mad desires to talk out in meeting, without too much humorous appreciation of some of the arbiters of his destiny. Regular army officers gave him the impression of having been forced through a long, perpetually contracting corridor until they had come out at the end as narrow as one of the sheets of paper work they loved so well. But he got along with them. That was his business. He was pointed out enviously as one of the football captains. It was a football captains' camp. All such giants were slated for company or battery commander's commissions at least.

If he got it, George wondered if he would hate a captain's uniform as much as the private's one he wore.

With the warm weather the week-ends offered sometimes a relief. Men's wives or mothers had taken little houses in the town or among the hills, and the big hotel on the bluff opened its doors and welcomed other wives and mothers, and many, many girls who would become both a little sooner than they had fancied because of this.

Betty arrived among the first, chaperoned for the time by the Sinclairs. George dined with them, asked Betty about Sylvia, and received evasive responses. Sylvia was surely coming up later. Betty was absorbed, anyway, in her own affairs, he reflected unhappily. He felt lost in this huge place where nearly everyone seemed to be paired.

After dinner Lambert remained with Betty and Mrs. Sinclair, but George and Mr. Sinclair wandered, smoking, through the grove above the lake. George had had no idea that the news, for so long half expected, would affect him as it did.

"I suppose," Sinclair muttered, "you've heard about poor Blodgett."

"What?" George asked, breathlessly. "We've little time for newspapers here."

"I'm not sure," Sinclair answered, "that it's in the papers, but in town everybody's talking about it. Sylvia's thrown him over."

II

George paused and considered the glowing end of his cigar. Instead of vast relief he first of all experienced a quick sympathy for Blodgett. He wanted to say something; it was expected of him, but he was occupied with the effort to get rid of this absurd sympathy, to replace it by a profound and unqualified satisfaction.

"Why? Do you know why?" was all he managed.

That was what he wanted, her private reason for this step which all at once left the field quite open, and shifted their struggle back to its old, honest basis. It was what he had told her would happen, must happen. Since she had agreed at last why had she involved poor old Blodgett at all? Had that merely been one of her defences which had become finally untenable? Had George conceivably influenced her to its assumption, at last to its abandonment?

He stared at the opaque white light which rose like a mist from the waters of the lake. He seemed to see, as on a screen, an adolescent figure with squared shoulders and flushed cheeks tearing recklessly along on a horse that wasn't sufficiently untamed to please its rider. He replaced his cigar between his lips. Naturally she would be the most exigent of enthusiasts. Probably that was why Blodgett had been so pitifully anxious to crowd his bulk into the army. She had to be untrammelled to cheer on the younger, stronger bodies. That was why she had done it, because war had made her see that George was right by bringing her to a stark realization of the value of the younger, stronger bodies.

Sinclair had evidently reached much the same conclusion, for he was saying something about a whim, no lasting reason——

"I've always cared for Sylvia, but it's hard to forgive her this."

"After all," George said, "Blodgett wasn't her kind. She'd have been unhappy."

In the opaque light Sinclair stared at him.

"Not her kind! No. I suppose he's his own kind."

Temporarily George had driven forth his sympathy. Blodgett, after all, hadn't been above some sharp tricks to win such liking and admiration. Sinclair, of all people, suffering for him!

"I mean," George said, "he'd bought his way, hadn't he, after a fashion, to her side?"

Sinclair continued to stare.

"I don't quite follow. If you mean Josiah's wanted to play with pleasant people—yes, but the only buying he's ever done is with his amazing generosity. He's pulled me for one out of a couple of tight holes after I'd flown straight in the face of his advice. Nothing but a superb good nature could be so forgiving, don't you think?"

George walked on, keeping step with Sinclair, saying nothing more; fighting the old instinct to reach forward, to grasp Blodgett's hand, to beg his pardon; realizing regretfully, in a sense, that the last support of his jealous contempt had been swept away. He was angry at the blow to his self-conceit. It frightened him to have that attacked. He couldn't put up with it. He would rid himself again of this persistent sympathy for a defeated rival. Just the same, before accepting any more favours from Blodgett, he desired to clasp the pudgy hand.

Betty didn't know any more than Sinclair, nor did she care to talk about the break.

"I can't bear to think of all the happiness torn from that cheerful man."

George studied her face in the light from the windows as they paced up and down the verandah. There was happiness there in spite of the perplexing doubt with which she glanced from time to time at him. There was no question. Betty's kindness had been taken away from him. He tried to be glad for her, but he was sorry for himself, trying to fancy what his life would have been if he had permitted his aim to be turned aside, if he had yielded to the temptation of an unfailing kindness. It had never been in his nature. Why go back over all that?

"One tie's broken," he said, "and another's made. We're no longer the good friends we were, because you haven't told me."

Her white cheeks flooded with colour. She half closed her eyes.

"What, George?"

"That the moon is made of honey. I'm really grateful to Lambert for these few minutes. Don't expect many more. I can't see you go without a little jealousy, for there have been times when I've wanted you abominably, Betty."

They had reached the end of the verandah and paused there in a light that barely disclosed her wondering smile; her wistful, reminiscent expression.

"It's funny," she said with a little catch in her voice, "to look back on two children. I suppose I felt about the great George Morton as most girls did."

"You flatter me," he said. "Just what do you mean?"

"It's rather tearful one can laugh about such things," she answered. "So long ago! The great athlete's become a soldier!"

"The stable boy's become a slave," he laughed. "Oh, no. Most girls couldn't feel much sentiment about that kind of greatness."

"Hush!" she whispered. "You know the night you told me all that I thought it was a preliminary to your confessing how abominably you wanted me."

"Now, really, Betty——"

"Quite true, George."

"And you ran away."

"And you," she said with a little laugh, "didn't follow."

"Maybe I was afraid of the dragons in the castle. If I'd followed——?"

"We'd have made the dragons angels."

Beneath their jesting he was aware of pain in his heart, in her eyes; a perception of lost chances, chances that never could have been captured. One couldn't have everything. She had Lambert. He had nothing. But he might have had Betty.

He stooped and pressed his lips to her forehead.

"That's as near as I shall ever come," he thought, sorrowfully, wondering, against his will, if it were true.

"It's to wish you and Lambert happiness," he said aloud.

She raised her fingers to her forehead and let them linger there thoughtfully. She sighed, straightened, spoke.

"I'm no longer a sentimental girl, but the admiration has survived, grown, George. Never forget that."

"And the kindness?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. "Why should that ever go?"

But he shook his head.

"All the kindness must be for Lambert. You wouldn't give by halves. When, Betty?"

"Let us walk back. I've left him an extraordinarily long time."

"When?" he repeated.

"I don't know," she answered. "After the war, if he comes home. Of course, he wants it before. Lambert hurries one so."

"It's the war," he said, gravely, "that hurries one."

III

"I've wormed it out of Betty," he said to Lambert on the way back to barracks.

He added congratulations, heartfelt, accompanied by a firm clasp of the hand; but Lambert seemed scarcely to hear, couldn't wait for George to finish before breaking in.

"You and Betty have always been like brother and sister. She says so. I've seen it myself."

George was a trifle uncomfortable.

"What of it?"

"If you get a chance point out to her in your brotherly way that the sooner she marries me the more time we'll have together outside of heaven. I can't very well go at her on that tack. Sounds slushy, but you know there's a good chance of my not coming home, and she insists on waiting."

With all his soul George shrank from such a task. He glanced at the other's long, athletic limbs.

"There are worse fates than widowhood for war brides," he said, brutally.

Lambert made a wry face.

"All the more reason for grabbing what happiness I can."

"Pure selfishness!" George charged him.

"You talk like a fond parent," Lambert answered. "I believe Betty is the only one who doesn't think in those terms. She has other reasons; ridiculous ones. When she tells them to you you'll come on my side."

"Perhaps," George said, vaguely.

Betty's obstinacy wasn't Lambert's only worry. Several times he opened his mouth as if to speak, and apparently thought better of it. George could guess the sense of those unexpressed phrases, and could understand why Lambert should find it difficult to voice them to him. It wasn't until they were in the sand of the company street, indeed, that Lambert managed to state his difficulty, in whispers, so that the sleeping barracks shouldn't be made restless. George noticed that the other didn't mention Sylvia's name, but it was there in every word, with a sort of apology for her, and a relief that she wasn't after all going to marry one so much older and less graceful than herself.

"I wish you'd suggest a way for me to pull out. I've thought it over. I can't think of any pretty one, but I don't want to be under obligations any longer to a man who has been treated so shabbily."

It amused George to find himself in the position of a Sinclair, fighting with Lambert to spare Blodgett's feelings. For Blodgett, Lambert's proposed action would be the final humiliation.

A day or two later, in fact, Lambert showed George a note he had had from Blodgett.

"Never let this come up again," a paragraph ran. "If it made any difference between me and the rest of the family I'd feel I'd got more than I deserve. I know I'm not good enough for her. Let it go at that——"

"You're right," Lambert said. "He's entitled to be met just there. I've decided it shall make no difference to the business."

George was relieved, but Lambert, it was clear, resented the situation, blamed it on Sylvia, and couldn't wholly refrain from expressing his disapproval.

"No necessity for it in the first place. Can't see why she picked him, why she does a lot of things."

"Spoiled!" George offered with a happy grin.

"Prefer to say that myself," Lambert grunted, "although God knows I'm beginning to think it's true enough."

IV

George doubted if he would see Sylvia at Plattsburgh at all, so frequently was her visit postponed. Perhaps she preferred to cloister herself really now, experiencing a sense of shame for the blow circumstances had made her strike at one who had never quite earned it; yet when she came, just before the end of camp, he detected no self-consciousness that he could trace to Blodgett. Lambert and he arrived at the hotel late one Saturday afternoon and saw her on the terrace with her mother and the Alstons. For weeks George had forecasted this moment, their first meeting since she had bought back her freedom at the expense of Blodgett's heart; and it disappointed him, startled him; for she was—he had never fancied that would hurt—too friendly. For the first time in their acquaintance she offered her hand willingly and smiled at him; but she had an air of paying a debt. What debt? He caught the words "Red Cross," "recreation."

"Rather faddish business, isn't it?" he asked, indifferently.

He was still intrigued by Sylvia's manner. A chorus attacked him. Sylvia and Betty, it appeared, were extreme faddists. Only Mrs. Planter smiled at him understandingly from her eminent superiority. As he glanced at his coarse uniform he wanted to laugh, then his temper caught him. The debt she desired to pay was undoubtedly the one owed by a people. He wanted to grasp her and shout in her ear:

"You patriotic idiot! I won't let you insult me that way."

"We have to do what we can," she was saying vehemently. "I wish I were a man. How I wish I were a man!"

If she were a man, he was thinking, he'd pound some sensible judgments into her excited brain. Or was all this simply a nervous reaction from her mental struggles of the past months, from her final escape—a necessary play-acting?

He couldn't manage a word with her alone before dinner. The party wandered through grass-floored forest paths whose shy peace fled from the approach of uniforms and the heavy tramp of army boots. He resented her flood of public questions about his work, his prospects, his mental attitude toward the whole business. Her voice was too kind, her manner too sweet, with just the proper touch of sadness. She wasn't going to spare him anything of the soldier's due. Since he was being fattened, presumably for the butcher, she would turn his thoughts from the knife——

He longed for the riding crop in her fingers; he would have preferred its blows.

If he got her alone he would put a stop to such intolerable abuse, but the chance escaped him until long after dinner, when the moon swung high above the lake, when the men in uniform and their women were paired in the ballroom, or on the terrace and balconies. He asked her to dance at last and she made no difficulty, giving him that unreal and provoking smile.

"You dance well," she said when the music stopped.

They were near a door. He suggested that they go outside.

"While I tell you that if you offer me any more of that gruel I'll publicly accuse you of treason."

She looked at him puzzled, hesitating.

"What do you mean?"

"When it comes to being killed," he answered, "I prefer the Huns to empty kindness. It's rather more useful for the country, too. Please come out."

She shook her head. Her eyes were a little uncertain.

"Yes, you will," he said. "You've let yourself in for it. I'm the victim of one of your war charities. Let me tell you that sort of thing leads from the dance floor to less public places. After all, the balcony isn't very secluded. If you called for help it would come promiscuously, immediately."

She laughed. She tried to edge toward her mother. He stopped her.

"Be consistent. Don't refuse a dying man," he sneered.

"Dying man!" she echoed.

"You've impressed me with it all evening. For the first time in your life you've tried to treat me like a human being, and you've succeeded in making me feel a perfect fool. Where's the pamphlet you've been reciting from? I'll guarantee it says the next move is to go to the balcony and be very nice and a little sentimental to the poor devil."

Her head went up. She walked out at his side. He arranged chairs close together at the railing where they seemed to sit suspended in limitless emptiness above the lake and the mountains flattened by the moonlight. Later, under very different circumstances, he was to recall that idea of helpless suspension. She caught it, too, evidently, and gave it a different interpretation. It was as if, engrossed by her own problems, she had for the moment forgotten him.

"This place is so high! It gives you a feeling of freedom."

He knew very well what was in her mind.

"I'm glad you can feel free. I'm glad with all my heart you are free again."

Caught by her sensations she didn't answer at once. He studied her during that brief period when she was, in a fashion, helpless before his eager eyes. Abruptly she faced him, as if the sense of his words had been delayed in reaching her, or, as if, perhaps, his frank regard had drawn her around, a little startled.

"I shall not quarrel with you to-night," she said.

"Good! Then you must let me tell you that while I'm sorry as I can be for poor old Blodgett, I'm inexpressibly glad for you and for this particular object of your charity."

"It does not concern you," she said.

"Enormously. I wonder if you would answer one or two questions quite truthfully."

She stirred uneasily, seemed about to rise, then evidently thought better of it. The orchestra resumed its labours. Many figures near by gravitated toward the ballroom, leaving them, indeed, in something very near seclusion. And she stayed to hear his questions, but she begged him not to ask them.

"You and Lambert are friends. What you are both doing makes me want to think of that, makes me want to make concessions, but don't misunderstand, don't force me to quarrel with you until after this is over."

He paid no attention to her.

"I suppose the war made you realize I was right about Blodgett?"

"You cannot talk about that."

"Has the war shown you I was right about myself?" he went on.

"Are you going to make my good resolutions impossible?" she asked.

Over his shoulder George saw the men in khaki guiding pretty girls about the dance floor. The place was full of a heady concentration of pleasure that had a beautiful as well as a pitiful side. About him the atmosphere was frankly amorous, compounded of multiple desires of heart and mind which strained for fulfilment before it should be too late. For him Sylvia was a part of it—the greater part. It entered his senses as the delightful and faint perfume which reached him from her. It became ponderable in her dark hair; in her lips half parted; in her graceful pose as she bent toward him attentively; in her sudden movement of withdrawal, as if she had suddenly realized he would never give her her way.

"Isn't it time," he asked, "that you forgot some of your childish pride and bad temper? Sylvia! When are you going to marry me?"

Her laughter wasn't even, but she arose unhurriedly. She paused, indeed, and sank back on the arm of the chair.

"So even now," she said, "it's to be quarrels or nothing."

"Or everything," he corrected her. "I shall make you realize it somehow, some day. What's the use putting it off? Let's forget the ugly part of the past. Marry me before I go to France."

He was asking her what he had accused Lambert of unjustifiably wanting Betty to do. All at once he understood Lambert's haste. He stretched out his hand to Sylvia. He meant it—with all his heart he meant it, but she answered him scornfully:

"Is that your way of saying you love me?"

The bitterness of many years revived in his mind, focusing on that question. If he should answer it impulsively she would be in a position to hurt him more than she had ever done. George Morton didn't dare take chances with his impulses, and the bitterness was in his voice when he answered:

"You've never let me fancy myself at your feet in a sentimental fit."

But it was difficult for him not to assume such an attitude: not to take her hand, both of her hands; not to draw her close.

"If you'd only answer me——" he began.

She stood up.

"Just as when I first saw you!" she cried, angrily.

She controlled herself.

"You shan't force me to quarrel. Come in. Let us dance once."

In a sense he put himself at her feet then.

"I'm afraid to dance with you to-night," he whispered.

She looked at him, her eyes full of curiosity. Her eyes wavered. She turned and started across the gallery. In a panic he sprang after her.

"All right. Let us dance," he said.

He led her to the floor and took her in his arms, but he had an impression of guiding an automaton about the room. Almost at once she asked him to stop by the door leading to the gallery. He looked at her questioningly. Her distaste for the civilian Morton was undisguised at last from the soldier Morton. But there was more than that to be read in her colourful face—self-distaste, perhaps; and a sort of fright, comparable with the panic George had just now experienced on the verandah. Her voice was tired.

"I've done my best. I can't keep it up."

"No more war kindness!" he said. "Good!"

He watched her, her draperies arranging themselves in perplexingly graceful folds, as she hurried with an air of flight away from him along the gallery.

V

The evening the commissions were awarded George appreciated the ingratitudes and cruelties of service rather more keenly than he had done even as a youngster at Oakmont.

"It's like tap day at New Haven," Lambert said, nervously.

He had paused for a moment to compare notes with George. He hurried now to his own organization for fear something might have happened during his absence. The suspense increased, reaching even George, who all along had been confident of success.

In the dusk the entire company crowded the narrow space between the barracks—scores of men who had been urged by passionate politicians to abandon family, money, everything, for the discomforts, sometimes the degradations, of this place, for the possible privilege of dying for a cause. It had had to be done, but in the hearts of many that night was the fancy that it might have been done rather differently. It was clear, for instance, that the passionate and patriotic politicians hadn't troubled to tear from a reluctant general staff enough commissions for the size and quality of these first camps. Many of the men, therefore, who with a sort of terror shuffled their feet in the sand, would be sent home, to the draft, or to the questioning scorn of their friends, under suspicion of a form of treason, of not having banged the drum quite hard enough. And it wasn't that at all.

George, like everyone else, had known for a long time there wouldn't be enough commissions to go around. Why, he wondered now, had the fellows chosen for dismissal been held for this public announcement of failure. And in many cases, he reflected, there was no failure here beyond the insolvency of a system. Among those who would go back to the world with averted faces were numbers who hadn't really come at all within the vision of their instructors, beyond whom they could not appeal. And within a year this same reluctant army would be reaching out eagerly for inferior officer material. And these men would not forget. You could never expect them to forget.

Two messengers emerged from the orderly room and commenced to thread the restless, apprehensive groups, seeking, with a torturing slowness finding candidates to whom they whispered. The chosen ran to the orderly room, entered there, according to instructions, or else formed a long line outside the window where sat the supreme arbiter, the giver, in a way of life and death, the young fellow from West Point.

Men patted George on the back.

"You'll go among the first, George."

But he didn't. He paced up and down, watching the many who waited for the whisper which was withheld, waited until they knew it wouldn't come, expressed then in their faces thoughts blacker than the closing night, entered at last into the gloomy barracks where they sat on their bunks silently and with bowed heads.

Was that fate, through some miracle of mismanagement, reserved for him? It couldn't be. The fellow had seen him at the start. George had forced himself to get along with him, to impress him. Somebody touched George on the arm. A curiously intense whisper filled his ear.

"You're wanted in the orderly room, Morton."

In leaving the defeated he had an impression of a difficult and sorrowful severance.

In the orderly room too many men rubbed shoulders restlessly. A relieved sigh went up. It was as if everyone had known nothing vital could occur before his arrival. The young West Pointer was making the most of his moment. The war wasn't likely to bring him another half so great.

Washington, he announced, had cut down the number of higher commissions he had asked for.

George's name was read among the first.

"To be captain of infantry, United States Reserve—George Morton."

There was something very like affection in the West Pointer's voice.

"I recommended you for a majority, Mr. Morton. Stick to the job as you have here, and it will come along."

Lambert and Goodhue found him as he crowded with the rest through the little door. They had kept their captaincies. Even Goodhue released a little of his relief at the outcome.

"Any number busted—no time to find out whether they were good or bad."

The dark, hot, sandy street was full of shadowy figures, calling, shouting, laughing neurotically.

"Good fellow, but I had you on my list." "My Lord! I never expected more than a private in the rear rank." "What do you think of Blank? Lost out entirely." "Rotten deal." "Not the only one by several dozens." "Hear about Doe? Wouldn't have picked him for a shave tail. Got a captaincy. Teacher's pet."

Brutally someone had turned on the barrack lights. Through the windows the successful ones could see among the bunks the bowed and silent figures, must have known how sacrilegious it was to project their happiness into this place which had all at once become a sepulchre of dead sacrifices.

"I hope," George muttered to his friends, "I'll never have to see quite so much suffering on a battlefield."

VI

It wasn't pleasant to face Blodgett, but it had to be done, for all three of the partners had determined out of necessity to spend the greater portion of their leaves at the office. George slipped in alone the morning he got back to New York. Blodgett looked up as if he had been struck, taking in each detail of the uniform and its insignia, symbols of success. The face seemed a little less round, infinitely less contented. Sitting back there in his office he had an air of having sought a corner. If Sylvia didn't, he clearly appreciated the shame of the situation. George took the pudgy hand and pressed it, but he couldn't say anything and Blodgett seemed to understand and be grateful. He failed, however, to hide his envy of the uniform.

"I'd give my money and something besides," he said, "to be able to climb into that."

"You're lucky you can't," George answered, half meaning it.

As a substitute Blodgett spoke of some dollar-a-year work in Washington.

"But don't worry, George. I'll see everything here is looked after."

George was glad Blodgett had so much to take care of, for it was clear that the more work he had the better off he would be. In Blodgett's presence he tried not to think of Sylvia and his own intentions. He wrote her, for the first time, boldly asking, since he couldn't suggest such a visit to Lambert, if he might see her at Oakmont. She didn't keep him in suspense. He smiled as he read her brief reply, it had been so obviously dictated by the Sylvia who was going to be good to soldiers no matter how dreadful the cost.

"I thought I made you understand that what you proposed at Plattsburgh can never become less preposterous; my response less determined. So of course it wouldn't do for you to come. When we see each other, as we're bound to do, before you sail, I shall try to forget the absolute lack of any even merely friendly ground between us. It would hurt Lambert——"

"Damn Lambert!" he muttered.

But he didn't tear her letter up. He put it in the pocket of his blouse. He continued to carry it there.

Instead of going to Oakmont, consequently, he spent a Sunday at Princeton, vastly amused at the pacifist Bailly. Minute by minute the attenuated tutor cursed his inability to take up a gun and pop at Germans, interspersing his regrets with:

"But of course war is dreadful. It is inconceivable in a healthy brain——" and so forth.

He had found a substitute for his chief ambition. He was throwing himself heart and soul into the efforts of the Y.M.C.A. to keep soldiers amused and fed.

"For Princeton," he explained, "has become an armed camp, a mill to manufacture officers; nothing more. The classics are as defunct as Homer. I had almost made a bad pun by suggesting that of them all Martial alone survives."

Before he left, George was sorry he had come, for Lambert took pains to leave Betty alone with him as they walked Sunday evening by the lake. More powerful than Lambert's wishes in his mind was the memory of how Betty and he had skated here, or come to boat races, or walked like this in his undergraduate days; and she didn't take kindly to his interference, letting him see that to her mind a marriage with Lambert now would be too eager a jump into the house of Planter; too inconsiderate a request for the key to the Planter coffers.

"For Lambert may not come back," she said.

"That's just it," he urged, unwillingly. "Why not take what you can be sure of?"

"What difference would it make?" she asked. "Would I love Lambert any more? Would he love me any more?"

"I think so," he said.

She shook her head.

"But the thought of a wife might make a difference at the front; might make him hesitate, or give a little less. We all have to give everything. So I give Lambert—entirely—if I have to."

George didn't try to say any more, for he knew she was right; yet with the opening of Camp Upton and the birth of the division the rather abrupt marriages of soldiers multiplied. During the winter Officers' House sheltered excited conferences that led to Riverhead where licenses, clergymen, and justices of the peace could be found; and there was scarcely a week-end that didn't see the culmination in town of a romance among George's own friends and acquaintances.

The week-ends he got were chiefly valuable to him because they offered chances of seeing Sylvia. Few actually developed, however, for there were not many general parties, since men preferred to cling, not publicly, during such brief respites to those they loved and were on the point of quitting.

The Alstons had taken a house for the winter, and George caught her there once or twice, and would rather not have seen her at all, she was so painfully cordial, so bound up in her war work of which he felt himself the chief victim. He began to fear that he would not see her alone again before he sailed; that he might never be with her alone again.

He didn't care either for the pride she took in Dalrymple's presence at the second camp.

"He's sure to do well," she would say. "He's always had all sorts of possibilities. Watch the war bring them out."

Why did women like the man? There was no question that they did. They talked now, in ancient terms, of his permanent exit from the field of wild oats. He could be so fascinating, so thoughtful—of women. But men didn't like him. Dalrymple's fascinating ways had caught them too frequently, too expensively. And George didn't believe in his reform, saw symptoms, as others did, of its true value when, at the close of the second camp, Dalrymple got himself assigned to the trains of the division. It was rumoured he had left Plattsburgh a second lieutenant. It was fact that he appeared at Upton a captain. Secret intrigues in Washington by fond parents, men whispered; but the women didn't seem to care, for Dalrymple hadn't shown himself before any of them carrying less than the double silver bars of a captain.

George received his prophesied majority at the moment of this disagreeable arrival. That did impress Sylvia to the point of making her more cordial in public, more careful than before not to give him a word in private. As the day of departure approached he grew increasingly restless. He had never experienced a sensation of such complete helplessness. He was bound by Upton. She could stand aside and mock him with her studied politenesses.

Blodgett ran down a number of times, to sit in George's quarters, working with the three partners over figures. They made tentative lists of what should be sold at the first real whisper of peace.

"But there'll be no peace for a long time," Blodgett promised. "There's a lot of money for you boys in this war yet."

They laughed at him, and he looked a little hurt, apparently unable to see anything humorous in his cheerful promise.

Dalrymple was aware of these conferences, for he was frequently about the regimental area. George wasn't surprised, when he sat alone one night, to hear a tap on his window pane, to see Dalrymple's face at the window.

"Hesitate to disturb a major, and all that," Dalrymple said as he entered. "Two rooms. You're lucky."

"Not luck; work," George said, shortly. "What is it? Didn't come here to envy my rank, did you?"

Although he was in far better shape nervously and physically than he had been that day in George's office, Dalrymple bore himself with much the same confused and hesitant manner. It recalled to George the existence of the note which the other had made no effort to redeem.

"You know," Dalrymple began, vaguely, "there's a lot of—what do you call it—bunk—about this hurrah for the dear old soldier business. Fact is, the more chance there is of a man's getting blown up the nastier some people become."

George laughed shortly.

"You mean when you owe them money."

"As Driggs used to say," Dalrymple answered, "'you're a very penetrating person.'"

He hesitated, then went on with an increasing difficulty:

"You're one of the people I owe money to."

Wandel had taken George's hint, evidently. George was sorry he had ever let it drop. But was he? Mightn't it be as well in the end? In spite of all this talk of people's leaving their bones in France, there was a fair chance that both Dalrymple and he would bring theirs, unaltered, back to America.

"Don't worry," George said. "I shan't press you."

"Handsome enough," Dalrymple thanked him in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "But everybody isn't that decent. It's this talk of the division sailing that's turned them nasty."

George fingered a pamphlet about poison gases. He didn't much blame debtors for turning nasty.

"You want to borrow some more money from me," he said.

Dalrymple's face lightened.

"If you'd be that good; but it's a lot."

"Why," George asked, quietly, "don't you go to someone you're closer to?"

Dalrymple flushed. He wouldn't meet George's eyes.

"Dicky would give it me," he said, "but I can't ask him; I've made him too many promises. So would Lambert, but it would be absurd for me to go to him."

"Why absurd?" George asked, quietly.

"Wholly impossible," was all Dalrymple would say. "Quite absurd."

There came back to George his ugly sensations at Blodgett's, and he knew he would give Dalrymple a lot of money now, as he had given him a little then, and for precisely the same reason.

"I'm afraid I've been a bit hard on my friends," Dalrymple admitted. "As a rule they've dried up."

"So you come to one who isn't a friend?" George asked.

"Now see here, Morton, that's scarcely fair."

"You haven't forgotten that day in my office," George accused him, "when you made a brutal ass of yourself."

"Said I was sorry. Don't you ever forget anything?"

Dalrymple was angry enough himself now, but his worry apparently forced him on.

"I wouldn't have come to you at all, only Driggs said—and you said yourself once, and you can spare it. I know that. See here. Unless somebody helps me these people will go to Division Headquarters or Washington. They'll stop my sailing. They'll——"

"Don't cry," George interrupted. "You want money, and you don't give a hang where it comes from. That's it, isn't it?"

"I have to have money," Dalrymple acknowledged.

"Then you ought to have sense enough to know the only reason I'd give it to you. Do you think I'd care if they held you in this country for your silly debts? What you borrow you have to pay back in one way or another. Don't make any mistake. If I give you money it's to be able to make you pay as I please. You've always had a knife out for me. I don't mind putting one in my own hands. If you want money on those terms come to my office with your accounts Saturday afternoon. We'll see what can be done."

Dalrymple was quite white. He moistened his lips. As he left he muttered:

"I can't answer back. I have to have money. You've got me where you want."

VII

Dalrymple's necessities turned out to be greater than George had imagined. They measured pretty accurately the extent of his reformation. George got several notes to run a year in return for approximately twenty thousand dollars.

"Remember," he said at the close of the transaction, "you pay those back when and how I say."

"I wouldn't have come to you if I could have helped it," Dalrymple whined. "But don't forget, Morton, somebody will pull me out at a pinch. I'm going to work to pay you if I live. I'm through with nonsense. Give me a chance."

George nodded him out, and sent for his lawyer. In case of his death Dalrymple's notes would go back to the man. Everything else he had divided between his mother and the Baillys. He wrote his mother a long letter, telling her just what to do. Quite honestly he regretted his inability to get West to say good-bye. The thought of bringing her to New York or Upton had not occurred to him.

For during these days of farewells everyone flocked to Upton, sitting about the hostess houses all day and evening for an occasional chat with their hurried men. Then they let such moments slip by because of a feeling of strangeness, of dumb despair.

The Alstons and the Baillys were there, and so, of course, was Sylvia, with her mother, more minutely guarded than she had ever been. His few glimpses of her at luncheon or supper at Officers' House increased the evil humour into which Dalrymple had thrown him. Consequently he looked at her, impressing upon his morose mind each detail of her beauty that he knew very well he might never study again. The old depression of complete failure held him. She was going to let him go without a word. Even this exceptional crisis was without effect upon her intolerant memory. He would leave her behind to complete a destiny which he, perhaps, after all, had affected only a very little.

With the whispered word that there would be no more meetings at Officers' House, that before dawn the regiment would have slipped from Upton, George turned to his packing with the emotions of a violently constricted animal. He wouldn't even see her again. When Lambert came to confer with him about some final dispositions he watched him like such an animal, but Lambert let him see that he, too, was at a loss. He had sent word by an orderly that he couldn't get to Officers' House that evening.

"I couldn't make it any plainer. If they've any sense they'll know and hunt me up."

They were wise, and a little of George's strain relaxed, for they found Lambert in his quarters, and they made it clear that they had come to say good-bye to George, too. After many halting efforts they gave up trying to express themselves.

"The Spartans were better at this sort of thing," Bailly said at the last as he clasped George's hand.

"Every Hun I kill or capture, sir, I'll think of as your Hun."

Without words, without tears, Mrs. Bailly kissed his lips. George tried to laugh.

Betty wouldn't say good-bye, wouldn't even shake hands.

"I shan't think of killing," she said. "Just take care of yourselves, and come back."

George stared at her, alarmed. He had never seen her so white. Lambert followed her from the room. The Baillys went out after them. Why did Mrs. Planter linger? There she stood near the door, looking at George without the slightest betrayal of feeling. He had an impression she was going to say:

"We've really quite enjoyed Upton."

At least she held Sylvia a moment longer, Sylvia who had said nothing, who had not met his eyes, who had seemed from the first anxious to escape from this plank room littered with the paraphernalia of battle. Mrs. Planter held out her hand, smiling.

"Good-bye, Major. One doesn't need to wish you success. You inspire confidence."

He was surprised at the strength of her white hand, felt it draw him closer, watched her bend her head, heard her speak in his ear so low that Sylvia couldn't hear—a whisper intense, agonized, of a quality that seemed like a white-hot iron in his brain:

"Take care of my son. Bring him back to me."

She straightened, releasing his hand.

"Come, Sylvia," she said, pleasantly.

Without looking back she went out.

"Good luck, Major," Sylvia said, and prepared to follow.

Quickly George reached out, caught her arm, and drew her away from the door.

"You're not going to say good-bye like this."

In her effort to escape, in her flushed face, in her angry eyes, he read her understanding that no other man she knew could have done just this, that it was George Morton's way. Why not? He had no time for veneer now. It was his moment, probably his last with her.

With her free hand she reached behind her to steady herself against the table. Her fingers touched the gas mask that lay there, then stiffened and moved away. Some of the colour left her face. Her arm became passive in his grasp.

"Let me go. How do you want me to say good-bye?"

He caught her other arm.

"Give me something to take. Oh, God, Sylvia! Let me have my kiss."

VIII

Never since he had walked out of the great gate with Sylvia's dog at his heels to a wilful tutoring of his body and brain had George yielded to such untrammelled emotion, to so unbounded a desire. This moment of parting, in which he had felt himself helpless, had swept it all away—the carefully applied manner, the solicitous schooling of an impulsive brain, the minute effort to resemble the class of which he had imagined himself a part. Temporarily he was back at the starting point, the George Morton who had lifted Sylvia in his arms, blurting out impossible words, staring at her lips with an abrupt and narrow realization that sooner or later he would have to touch them.

Sylvia's quick action brought some of it back, but he had no remorse, no feeling of reversion, for the moment itself was naked, inimical to masquerade.

"Lambert!" she called.

Her voice didn't suggest fright or too sharp a hurry. Looking at her face he could understand how much her control had cost, for her expression was that of the girl Sylvia, filled with antipathy, abhorrence, an inability to believe. It appeared to tell him that if he had ever advanced toward her at all, he had just now forced himself back to his own side of the vast space dividing them.

"Don't be a fool," he whispered. "I could take it, but you have to give."

Her lips were pressed tight as if in a defence against the possible approach of his. They both heard a quick step outside. He let her arms go, and turned to the door where Dalrymple stood, unquestionably good to look upon in his uniform. He frowned at this picture which might have suggested to him a real intimacy between George Morton and Sylvia Planter.

"Lambert's gone on with Betty and the others. What's up?"

Sylvia's voice wasn't quite steady.

"The Major can't leave the area. I want somebody to take me to Officers' House."

George nodded. He had quite recovered his control, and he knew he had failed, that there was nothing more to be done. The thought of the doubtful days ahead was like a great burden on his soul.

"I've one more word for the Major," she said at the door, motioning Dalrymple on.

George went close to her.

"It's only this," she said. "I'm sorry it had to come at the last minute."

He laughed shortly.

"It was the last minute that made it. I'm not sorry."

Her face twisted passionately, as if she were on the point of angry tears.

"I hope I shall never see you again. Do you understand that?"

"Quite," he said, dryly. "To George on going to the wars!"

"I didn't mean just that," she cried, angrily.

"It's your only chance," he said, "and I can understand how you can wish I shouldn't come back."

"I didn't mean it," she repeated.

"Don't count too heavily on it," he went on. "I can't imagine dying before having had what I have always wanted, have always sooner or later intended to get. If I come back I shall have it."

Without another word she turned and left him. He watched her walk side by side with Dalrymple out of the area.

IX

There were moments on the voyage, in the training area in Flanders, even at the front, when he was sorry he had tried to take something of Sylvia with him to battle; for, as it was, he had of her nothing whatever except a wish that she should never see him again. There was a deep irony, consequently, in his official relations with her brother, for it was Lambert who saluted him, who addressed him perpetually as "sir," who wanted to know if the major would approve of this, that, or the other. It was grotesque. He wanted to cry aloud against this necessary servility of a man whose sister couldn't abide the inferiority of its object.

And he hated war, its waste, its bad management, its discomforts, its dangers. Was it really true he had involved himself in this filth because of Sylvia? Then that was funny. By gad, he would see her again! But he watched his chances dwindle.

While the battalion was in reserve in Lorraine Lambert and he ran into Dalrymple at the officers' club beneath division headquarters in Baccarat. George saw him first.

"The intrepid warrior takes his ease," he muttered.

Dalrymple left three staff men he was with and hurried across the room.

"New York must be a lonesome place," he said. "Everybody here. Had a letter from Sylvia, Lambert."

Why should she write to him? Far from women's eyes he was back at it. One of the staff men, in fact, wandered over and whispered to George.

"Either you chaps from the trains? Somebody ought to take him to his billet. General or chief-of-staff might drift through. Believe he'd slap 'em on the shoulder."

"Not a bad idea," George said, contemptuously.

Dalrymple didn't even try to be cordial to him, knowing George wasn't likely to make trouble as long as they were in France. Lambert took care of him, steered him home, and a few days later told George with surprised laughter that the man had been transferred to a showy and perfectly safe job at G.H.Q.

"Papa, and mama, and Washington!" Lambert laughed.

"Splendid thing for the war," George sneered.

But he raved with Lambert when Goodhue was snatched away by a general who chose his aides for their names and social attainments.

"Spirit's all through the army," Goodhue complained, bitterly. "Why doesn't it occur to them to get the right men for the right places?"

He sighed.

"Suppose we'll get through somehow, but there'll be too much mourning sold at home."

All along that had been in George's mind, and, in his small way, he did what he could, studying minutely methods of accomplishing his missions at the minimum cost to his battalion; but on the Vesle he grew discouraged, seeing his men fall not to rise; or to be lifted to a stretcher; or to scramble up and stagger back swathed with first-aid rolls, dodging shells and machine-gun spirts; or, and in some ways that was hardest of all to watch, to be led by some bandaged ones, blinded and vomiting from gas.

He had no consecutive sleep. He never got his clothes off. He snatched food from a tin can. He suffered from the universal dysentery. He was under constant fire. He lay in shallow funk holes, conferring with his company and platoon commanders. At best he sat in the cellar of a smashed house, poring, by the light of a candle, over maps and complicated orders. Most of the time he wore a gas mask which had the advantage, however, of shutting out the stifling odour of decay. He never had time to find out if he was afraid. He reached a blessed state of indifference where getting hit appeared an inevitable and restful prospect.

Driggs Wandel arrived surprisingly on the day the Germans were falling back to the Aisne, at a moment when most of the artillery fire was coming from the American side, when it was possible to sit on a sunny bank outside the battalion dugout breathing only stale souvenirs of last night's gas shells.

"Bon jour, most powerful and disreputable of majors!"

George held out his hand.

"Bring any chocolate, Driggs? Sit down, you idiot. Jerry's never seen such a nice new uniform."

Suddenly he lost his temper. Why the devil couldn't he get some pleasure out of this extraordinary reunion? Why did he have to greet Wandel as if he had seen him daily since their parting more than three years ago on a dusky pier in New York? He had heard that Wandel, with the declaration of war, had left the ambulance for a commission in the field artillery. He saw him now wearing the insignia of a general staff major.

"Just attached to your corps headquarters," Wandel said. "Didn't want the job, would rather have been a fighting man with my pretty guns. Suppose some fool of a friend of the family brought the usual influence without consulting me."

"Glad to see you, Driggs," George muttered, "although I don't seem able to tell you so. How did you get here?"

"Guide from regimental headquarters. Wanted to see how the submerged heroes live. Nasty, noisy, smelly spot to be heroic in."

"A picnic to-day."

"I've always suspected," Wandel said, "that picnics were unhealthy."

"Better have come," George grinned, "any other day we've been here the past few weeks."

Wandel laughed.

"Don't think I didn't pick my day. The general staff takes no unnecessary risks. Tell me, my George, when did you shave last? When did you wash your pretty face last? When did you take your swank clothes off last?"

"I think when I was a very little boy," George sighed.

Wandel became abruptly serious, turned so, perhaps, by a large shell fragment, still warm, which he had picked up. As he fingered it he stared at George.

"I know," George said, "that I point a moral, but even little boys would be glad to be made clean if they got like this. Don't rub it in."

"To the contrary," Wandel said, thoughtfully, "I'm going back over a lot of years. I'm remembering how that most extraordinary man, Freshman George Morton, looked. I'm thinking that I've always been right about you."

The warm sun, the diminution of racket, this sudden companionship, had drawn George a little from his indifferent, half-dazed condition. He, too, could look back, and without discomfort. On the Vesle it was only death that counted. Birth didn't amount to a hill of beans, or money, or education, except in that it made a man an officer. So George answered frankly:

"All along you've guessed a lot about me, Driggs."

"Known, George."

"Would you mind telling me how?"

"It would be a pleasure to point out to you," Wandel drawled, "that a lot of people aren't half as big fools as you've credited them with being. You looked a little what you were at first. You've probably forgotten that when you matriculated you put down a place of residence, a record easily available for one who saw, as I did, means of using you. Even a fool could have guessed something was up the night Betty was good enough to make herself a part of the beau monde. I gathered a lot from Lambert then."

"Yet," George said, almost indifferently, "you went on being a friend."

"Your political manager, George," Wandel corrected. "I'm not sure it would have gone much further if it hadn't been for Dicky."

George was thoroughly aroused at last.

"Did Dicky know?"

"Not mere facts," Wandel answered. "What difference did they make? But he could see what you had started from, how great the climb you were taking. That's why he liked and admired you, because of what you were, not because of what you wanted people to think you were. That's really what first attracted me to you, and it amused me to see you fancying you were getting away with so much more than you really were."

"Extraordinary!" George managed. "Then the heights are not so well guarded?"

"Ah, yes—guarded," Wandel said, "but not against great men."

George kicked at the ground with his heel.

"Funny how unimportant it all seems here," he muttered.

It wasn't only the surroundings that made it seem unimportant; it was his remembrance of Sylvia who had known more than Wandel, more than anybody, yet had never opened the gate.

"You've taken all my conceit away," he went on. "Once it might have made me want to put myself out. Now I'm quite content to let Jerry do it."

Wandel's voice warmed, was less affected than George had ever heard it.

"What are you talking about? You've won a great victory. You should carry laurels on your brow. You've climbed to the top. You've defined for us all a possible socialism."

George smiled.

"A hell of a thing to talk about here! But tell that to Squibs, will you, little man, when you get back? We've had some rare battles over it."

Wandel hurried on.

"You've made yourself one of us, if it's any satisfaction. You're as good as the best of us—of the inheritors."

George folded his arms on his knees and bowed his head. Wandel's voice was startled.

"What's up?"

"Maybe I'm crying," George mumbled. "Ought to be, because I'm so filthy tired, and I know you're wrong, Driggs. I'm rotten inside. I haven't even started to climb."

But when he looked up there were no tears in his eyes, and his dirty face had altered with its old whimsical smile.

"Besides, it's enough to make me cry to know you wouldn't say all this unless you were certain I'm going to be killed."

"Hope not," Wandel laughed, "but picnics are full of germs. What's this?"

A grimy figure approached like a man fantastically imitating some animal. His route was devious as if he were perpetually dodging something that miraculously failed to materialize. He stopped, straightened reluctantly, and saluted George.

"Captain sent me on, sir. I've located Jerry opposite at——"

He rattled off some coordinates. George looked him over.

"How did you find that out?" he snapped.

"Ran across Jerry——"

The dirty young man recited jerkily and selflessly a story of fear and risks overcome, of cunning stealth, of passionate and promiscuous murder——

"Report back," George said.

When he had gone George called for his adjutant and turned to Wandel.

"Before anything happens to me," he said, "I'll recommend that dirty young assassin for a citation."

Wandel laughed in a satisfied way.

"I'm always right about you, great man. Don't you see that? Never think about your own citation——"

George stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Citation! A thousand citations for a bed!"

He watched Wandel uneasily when, at the heels of a guide, he dodged down the slope in search of Lambert, calling back:

"Don't swallow any germs."

"That's very fine, Driggs," he thought, "but why all that and not the rest? I'd give a good deal to guess what you know about me and Sylvia Planter."

X

George hoped Wandel would find Lambert. Day by day he had dreaded bad news. Other officers and men got hit every hour; why not himself or Lambert? For he had never forgotten Mrs. Planter's unexpected and revealing whisper. It had shown him that even beneath such exteriors emotion lurks as raw, as desirous, as violent as a savage's. The rest, then, was habit which people inherited, or acquired, or imitated with varying success. It had made him admire her all the more, had forced on him a wish to obey her, but what could he do? It was not in him to play favourites. One man's life was as good as another's; but he watched Lambert as he could, while in his tired brain lingered a feeling of fear for that woman's son.

During the peaceful days dividing the Aisne and the Argonne he looked at Lambert and fingered his own clothing, stained and torn where death had nearly reached, with a wondering doubt that they could both be whole, that Mrs. Planter in her unemotional way could still welcome guests to Oakmont. And he recalled that impression he had shared with Sylvia on the bluff above Lake Champlain of being suspended, but he no longer felt free. He seemed to hang, indeed, helplessly, in a resounding silence which at any moment would commence giving forth unbearable, Gargantuan noises; for, bathed and comfortable, eating in leisure from a mess-kit, he never forgot that this was a respite, that to-morrow or the next day or the day after the sounding board would reverberate again, holding him a deafened victim.

Wandel caught up with them one evening in the sylvan peace that preceded the fatal forest uproar. The Argonne still slumbered; was nearly silent; offered untouched trees under which to loaf after a palatable cold supper. The brown figures of enlisted men also lounged near by, reminiscing, wondering, doubtless, as these officers did, about New York which had assumed the attributes of an unattainable paradise.

George hadn't been particularly pleased to see Wandel. What Wandel knew made more difference in this quiet place, and George had a vague, shamed recollection of having accused himself of being rotten inside, of not having even started to climb.

"Must have had a touch of shell shock without knowing it," he mused as he stared through the dusk at the precise, clean little man.

Indifferently he listened to Lambert's good-natured raillery at the general staff, then he focussed his attention, for Lambert's voice had suddenly turned serious, his hand had indicated the lounging figures of the enlisted men.

"With all your ridiculous fuss and feathers at nice headquarters chÂteaux, I don't suppose you ever get to know those fellows, Driggs."

"I don't see why not," Wandel drawled.

"Do you love them, everyone?"

"Can't say that I do, but then my heart is only a small organ."

"I do," Lambert said, warmly. "And you'll find George does. You can't help it when you see them pulling through this thing. They're real men, aren't they, George?"

George yawned.

"Are they any more so," he asked, dryly, "than they were when they lived in the same little town with you? I mean, if all you say about them is true why did you have to wait for war to introduce you to unveil their admirable qualities?"

Lambert straightened.

"It's wrong," he said, defiantly, "that I should have waited. It's wrong that I couldn't help myself."

"And you once tried to take a horse whip to me," George whispered in his ear.

It was Lambert's absurd earnestness that worried him. Did Lambert, too, have a touch of shell shock? Wandel was trying to smooth out his doubts.

"I think what you mean to say is that war, aside from military rank, is a great leveller. We can leave that out altogether. You know the professional officer's creed: 'Good Colonel, deliver us.' 'We beseech ye to hear us, good General,' and so on up to the top man, who begs the Secretary of War, who prays to the President, who, one ventures to hope, gets a word to God. You mean, Lambert, that out here it never occurs to you to ask these men who their fathers were, or what preps they went to, or what clubs they're members of. It's the war spirit—aside from military rank—this sham equality. Titled ladies dine with embarrassed Tommies. Your own sister dances with doughboys who'd be a lot happier if she'd leave them alone. It's in the air, beautiful, gorgeous, hysterical war democracy which declares that all men are equal until they're wounded; then they're superior; or until they're dead; then they're forgotten."

George grunted.

"You're right, Driggs. It won't survive the war."

"Paper work!" Wandel sneered.

"It ought to last!" Lambert cried. "I hope it does."

"Pray that it doesn't," Wandel said. "I fancy the real hell of war comes after the war is over. We'll find that out, if we live. As for me, even now when we're all beloved brothers, I'd give a good deal to be sitting in a Fifth Avenue club looking out on lesser men."

"I would, too," George said, fervently.

Lambert spoke with abysmal seriousness.

"I'd rather have some of the splendid lesser men sitting on the same side of the window with me."

George stared at him. What had happened to this aristocrat who had once made a medieval gesture with a horse whip? Certainly he, the plebeian victim of that attack, had no such wish. Put these men on the same side of a club window, or a factory window, for that matter, and they'd drag the whole business down to their level, to eternal smash fast enough. Why, hang Lambert! It amounted to visualizing his sister as a slattern. He smiled with a curious pride. Reddest revolution couldn't make her that. She wouldn't come down off her high horse if a dozen bayonets were at her throat. What the deuce was he thinking about? Why should he be proud of that? For, if he lived, he was going to drag her off himself, but he wouldn't make her a slattern.

"You talk like Allen," he said, "and you haven't even his excuse."

"I've seen the primeval for the first time," Lambert answered.

"I'll admit it has qualities," Wandel yawned. "Anyway, I'm off."

Mrs. Planter came back to George's mind, momentarily as primeval as a man surrendered to the battle lust. What one saw, except in self-destructive emergencies, he told himself, was all veneer. Ages, epochs, generations, merely determined its depth. The hell after war! Did Wandel mean there was danger then of an attempt to thin the veneer? Was Lambert, of all people, going to assist the Allens to plane it away?

"It would mean another dark ages," he mused.

His own little self-imposed coat he saw now had gone on top of a far thicker one without which he would have been as helpless as a bushman or some anthropoidal creature escaped from an unexplored country.

He laughed, but uncomfortably. Those two had made him uneasy, and Squibs, naturally, was at Lambert's folly. There had been a letter a day or two ago which he had scarcely had time to read because of the demands of an extended movement and the confusion of receiving replacements and re-equipping the men he had. He read it over now. "Understanding," "Brotherhood."

"You are helping to bring it about, because you are helping to win this war."

In a fit of irritation he tore the letter up. What the devil was he fighting the war for?

The question wouldn't let him asleep. Lambert, Wandel, and Squibs between them had made him for the first time in his life thoroughly, uncomfortably, abominably afraid—physically afraid—afraid of being killed. For all at once there was more than Sylvia to make him want to live. He didn't see how he could die without knowing what the deuce he was fighting this man's war for, anyway.

XI

He hadn't learned any more about it when Lambert and he were caught on the same afternoon a week later.

In the interminable, haggard thicket the attack had abruptly halted. Word reached George that Lambert's company was falling back. To him that was beyond belief if Lambert was still with his men. He hurried forward before regimental headquarters had had a chance to open its distant mouth. There were machine-gun nests ahead, foolish stragglers told him. Of course. Those were what he had ordered Lambert to take. The company was disorganized. Little groups slunk back, dragging their rifles as if they were too heavy. Others squatted in the underbrush, waiting apparently for some valuable advice.

George found the senior lieutenant, crouched behind a fallen log, getting the company in hand again through runners.

"Where's Captain Planter?"

The lieutenant nodded carelessly ahead.

"Hundred yards or so out there. He ran the show too much himself," he complained. "Bunch of Jerries jumped out of the thicket and threw potato mashers, then crawled back to the guns. When the captain went down the men near him broke. Sort of thing spreads like a pestilence."

"Dead?" George asked.

"Don't know. Potato mashers!"

"Why haven't you found out?" George asked, irritably.

The complaining note increased in the other's voice.

"He's at the foot of that tree. Hear those guns? They're just zipping a few while they wait for someone to get to him."

"Pull your company together," George said with an absurd feeling that he spoke to Mrs. Planter. "I'll go along and see that we get him and those nests. They're spoiling the entire afternoon."

The lieutenant glanced at him, startled.

"I can do it——"

"You haven't," George reminded him.

He despatched runners to the flank companies and to regimental headquarters announcing that he was moving ahead. When the battalion advanced, like a lot of fairly clever Indians, he was in the van, making straight for the tree. He had a queer idea that Mrs. Planter quietly searched in the underbrush ahead of him. The machine guns, which had been trickling, gushed.

"You're hit, sir," the lieutenant said.

George glanced at his right boot. There was a hole in the leather, but he didn't feel any pain. He dismissed the lieutenant's suggestion of stretcher bearers. He limped ahead. Why should he assume this risk for Lambert? Sylvia wouldn't thank him for it. She wouldn't thank him for anything, but her mother would. He had to get Lambert back and complete his task, but he was afraid to examine the still form he saw at last at the base of the tree, and he knew very well that that was only because Lambert was his friend. He designated a man to guide the stretcher bearers, and bent, his mind full of swift running and vicious tackles, abrupt and brutal haltings of this figure that seemed to be asleep, that would never run again.

Lambert stirred.

"Been expecting you, George," he said, sleepily.

"Anything besides your leg?" George asked.

"Guess not," Lambert answered. "What more do you want? Thanks for coming."

George left him to the stretcher bearers and hurried on full of envy; for Lambert was going home, and George hadn't dared stop to urge him to forget that dangerous nonsense he had talked the other night. Nonsense! You had only to look at these brown figures trying to flank the spouting guns. Why did they have to glance continually at him? Why had they paused when he had paused to speak to Lambert? Same side of the window! But a few of them stumbled and slept as they fell.

He had just begun to worry about the blood in his right boot when something snapped at the bone of his good leg, and he pitched forward helplessly.

"Some tackle!" he thought.

Then through his brain, suddenly confused, flashed an overwhelming gratitude. He couldn't walk. He couldn't go forward. He wouldn't have to take any more risks beyond those shared with the stretcher bearers who would carry him back. Like Lambert, he was through. He was going home—home to Sylvia, to success, to the coveted knowledge of why he had fought this war.

The lieutenant, frightened, solicitous, crawled to him, summoning up the stretcher bearers, for the advance had gone a little ahead, the German range had shortened to meet it.

"How bad, sir?"

George indicated his legs.

"Never learned how to walk on my hands."

The lieutenant straightened, calling out cursing commands. George managed to achieve a sitting posture. By gad! This leg hurt! It made him a little giddy. Only once before, he thought vaguely, had he experienced such pain. What was the trouble here? The advance had halted, probably because the word had spread that he was down.

What was it Lambert had said about putting the rank and file on the same side of the window? The rank and file wanted an officer, and the higher the officer the farther it would go. That was answer enough for Lambert, Squibs, Allen——And he would point it out to them all, for the stretcher bearers had come up, had lifted him to the stretcher, were ready to start him back to decency, to safety——

Thank God there wasn't any multitude or an insane trainer here to order him about.

"They've stopped again," the lieutenant sobbed. "Some of them are coming back."

That sort of thing did spread like a pestilence, but there was nothing George could do about it. He had done his job. Good job, too. Soft billet now. Decency. Sylvia. No Green. No multitude——

"You make a touchdown!"

And he became aware at last of the multitude—raving higher officers in comfortable places; countless victims of invasion, waiting patiently to go home; myriads in the cities, intoxicated with enthusiasm and wine, tumbling happily from military play to patriotic bazaar; but most eloquent of all in that innumerable company were the silent and cold brown figures lying about him in the underbrush.

His brain, a little delirious, was filled with the roaring from the stands. The crowd was commanding him to get ahead somehow, to wipe out those deadly nests, to let the regiment, the army, tired nations, sweep on to peace and the end of an unbelievable madness.

Once more he glanced through blurred eyes at his clothing and saw livery, and this time he had put it on of his own free will. He seemed to hear Squibs:

"World lives by service."

"I'm in the service," he thought. "Got to serve."

It impressed him as quite pitiful that now he would never know just why.

"Where you going?" he demanded of the stretcher bearers who had begun to carry him back.

They tried to explain, hurrying a little. He threatened them with his revolver.

"Turn around. Let's go—with the battalion."

The lieutenant saw, the men saw, these frightened figures running with loping steps, carrying a stretcher which they jerked and twitched so that the figure lying on it with arm raised, holding a revolver, suffered agonies and struggled not to be flung to the ground. And the lieutenant and the men sprang to their feet, ran forward, shouted:

"Follow the Major!"

The German gunners, caught by surprise, hesitated, had trouble, therefore, shortening their ranges; and as panic spreads so does the sudden spirit of victory.

"Same side of the window!" George grumbled as the bearers set him down behind the captured guns.

"Just the same," he rambled, "fine fellows. Who said they weren't fine fellows?"

He wanted to argue it angrily with a wounded German propped against a shattered tree, but the lieutenant interrupted him, bringing up a medical orderly, asking him if he had any instructions. George answered very pleasantly:

"Not past me, Mr. Planter! Rank and file myself!"

The lieutenant glanced significantly at the medical orderly. He looked sharply at George's hair and suddenly pointed.

"They nicked him in the head, too."

The orderly knelt and examined the place the lieutenant had indicated.

"Oh, no, sir. That's quite an old scar."

XII

"Lost a leg or two?" Allen asked.

"Not yet. Don't think I shall. Planter's not so lucky, but he'll get home sooner."

Allen brought George his one relief from the deadly monotony of the base hospital. He had sent for him because he wanted his opinion as to the possibility of an armistice. Blodgett, however, hadn't waited for the result of the conference. The day Allen arrived a letter came from him, telling George not to worry.

"King Ferdy along about the last of September whispered I'd better begin to unload. It's a killing, George."

With his mind clear of that George could be amused by Allen. The friend of the people wore some striking clothes from London tailors and haberdashers. He carried a cunning little cane. He had managed something extremely neat in moustaches. He spoke with a perceptible West End accent. But in reply to George's sneering humour he made this astonishing remark:

"It isn't nearly as much fun being a top-hole person as I thought it was going to be."

"You're lucky to have found it out," George said, "for your job's about over. Of course I could get you something in Wall Street."

"Doubt if I should want it," Allen said. "I've always got my old job."

George whistled.

"You mean you'd go back to long hair, cheap clothes, and violent words?"

"Why not? I only took your offer, Morton, because I was inclined to agree with you that in the outside world's anxiety to look at what was going on over the fence people'd stop thinking. Russia didn't stop thinking, and after the armistice you watch America begin to use its brain."

"You mean the downtrodden," George sneered.

"That's the greater part of any country," Allen said, his acquired accent forgotten, his perfectly clean hands commencing to gesture.

But George wouldn't listen to him, got rid of him, turned to the wall with an ugly feeling that he had gone out of his way to nurture one of the makers of the hell after war.