than the brute fact.
There weren't any extenuating circumstances."

Then she sat erect and faced him. He was amazed to see a flush of color
come creeping into her cheeks. Her eyes brightened, the brows drew down a
little, her voice steadied itself and the words came swiftly.

"I think I must make sure you understand that it isn't the sort of story
that you usually find enveloping that particular brute fact. I wasn't
deceived nor betrayed by anybody. There isn't anybody you can take as a
villain. Just a nice, rather inarticulate boy, whom I met at a dance the
evening before he went overseas."

She broke off there to ask him shortly, "When was it that you went over?"

"Not until September," he said, "when it looked like a very long chance
if we ever got to the front at all. Of course, you know, we didn't. But
this was a lot earlier, wasn't it?"

"The seventeenth of April," she said. "We'll never forget those weeks,
any of us, who were in New York doing what we called war work, but it's
hard not to feel that we weren't different persons somehow. I don't mean
that to sound like making excuses. We were more our real selves perhaps
than we will ever be again. Anyhow, we worked harder all day long, and
never felt tired, and in the evening most of the people I knew went out a
lot, to dinners and dances.

"We could always make ourselves believe, of course, that we were doing
that to cheer up the men who were going to France--and were very likely
never coming back. Like the English women one read about. The only thing
that used to trouble me in those days was a perfectly scorching
self-contempt that used to come when I realized that I was enjoying it
all; enjoying the emotional thrill of it. I knew I was getting off cheap.

"I suppose I needn't have told you all that. You'd have understood it
anyhow. But that was how I felt when I went to that dance. As if it would
be a relief to do something--costly.

"It was a uniform dance as far as the men were concerned. We made
ourselves, of course, as--attractive as we knew how. Somebody introduced
this boy to me with just the look that said, 'Do be kind to him,' and
that's what I set out, very resolutely and virtuously, to be. He couldn't
talk much beyond monosyllables and he couldn't dance,--even with me. I
mean, I've danced so much ..."

"I've seen you dance, my dear," he reminded her, and saw how, with a
deep-drawn breath, the memory of that night at Hickory Hill came
back to