hat's what I couldn't make
Martin Whitney understand. He's one of the war's sacrifices precisely as
much as if he had had his leg shot off. He needs support; will go on
needing it for two or three years, financial as well as moral. He mustn't
be allowed to fail. That's the essence of it. He's--spent, you see;
depleted. One speaks of it in figurative terms, but it's a physiological
thing--if we could get at it--that's behind the lassitude of these boys.
It all comes back to that. That they're restless, irresolute. That they
need the stimulus of excitement and can't endure the drag of routine.
They need a generous allowance, my dear,--even for an occasional failure
in self-command, those two boys out at Hickory Hill."

She had nothing to say to that, though his pause gave her opportunity. A
sudden surmise as to the drift of that last sentence, silenced her. And
it was a surmise that leaped, in the next instant, to full conviction. He
was pleading Graham's cause with her! Why? Was it something that had been
as near his heart as that, all along? Or had some one--Rush--or even
Graham himself--engaged his advocacy?

She said at last, rather breathlessly (it was necessary to say something
or he would perceive that his stratagem had betrayed itself): "Well, at
the gloomy worst, Rush is taken care of. And as for me, I'm not a war
sacrifice, anyhow. That's not a possible conception--even for a worried
convalescent. Did you ever _see_ anything as gorgeous as that tree, even
in an Urban stage setting?"

"No," he said, "the war wasn't what you were sacrificed to."

She held her breath until she saw he wasn't going on with that. But he
seemed willing to follow her lead to lighter matters, and for the rest
of their excursion they carried out the pretense that there was nothing
like a cloud in their sky.

That evening, though, after she had bidden him good night, she changed
her mind and came back into his room. There had been something wistful
about his kiss that, determined her.

"Which of them wrote to you about me?" she asked.

"Both," he told her. "Of course I should have known you'd guess. Forgive
me for having tried to--manage you. I'll show you both their letters if
you like. It's a breach of confidence, of course, but I don't know that I
could do better."

"I'll read Rush's," she said. "Not the other."

She carried it over to the lamp, and for a while after she had taken in
its easily grasped intent she went on turni