r with him. Of course, the same thing must
have tormented thousands of them,--the terror of being afraid. He felt
pretty sure he was a coward.

"Mostly, I think, that fear was pretty sensibly dealt with in this war.
It got talked out openly. But he must have been a terribly lonely
person. He came from Iowa, but somehow he got sent to one of the southern
cantonments, and had his officer's training, such as it was, down there.
Then he was sent along to fill in somewhere else. I don't remember all
the details. He'd come to New York alone. The men he had gone to the
dance with he had only met that afternoon.

"I tried to help him. I told him how some of the officers in the French
and English armies, who had the highest decorations for courage, had
suffered most horribly, in advance, from fear. I could tell him two or
three that I knew about personally; men who had told their own stories to
me. Well, that helped a little, roused him out of his daze, gave him a
little gleam of hope perhaps. But it wasn't much; words can't be,
sometimes.

"He wanted more than that. He wanted me. He didn't want to go back alone
to that hotel. So I kept him. Early in the morning, about six o'clock, I
cooked his breakfast and ate it with him and kissed him good-by."

She made a sudden savage gesture of impatience. "I didn't mean to make it
sound like that. That sounds noble and self-sacrificial and sickening. I
suppose because that's the half of the truth that is easiest to tell. I
_did_ want to make an end of perpetually getting off cheap. I did have a
sort of feeling of establishing my good faith with myself. I wanted to
comfort him and make him happy. But it's also true that I'd been
attracted to him from the very first minute, and that it thrilled me when
I first touched his hand, there by the park railing, and afterward when
he took me in his arms."

Since his last interruption he had sat motionless, even breathing small
in the extremity of his effort not to hinder. But now he rose and without
speaking, came to her and bending down, kissed her forehead, her eyes,
her mouth. Then he seated himself on the table close beside her and took
possession, thoughtfully, of one of her hands.

"Did you ever hear anything more of him?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I don't think he remarked my name at all when we
were introduced," she said, "nor asked what it was afterward. I think it
must all have seemed afterward a little unreal to him. The gi