's the treatment going to
be?" she asked.

"Why," he said, "as soon as I'm done tucking you up properly in this
eiderdown quilt, I'm going out to your icebox and try to find the makings
of an egg-nog. Incidentally, I shall scramble up all the rest of the eggs
I find and eat them myself. And then I'll find something dull to read to
you until you go to sleep. When it's dark enough so that my evening
clothes won't attract too much attention, I'll go back and get into
uniform; then I'll buy two tickets for Chicago on the fast train
to-morrow, and two tickets for a show to-night; and then I'll come back
and take you out to dinner. Any criticisms on that program?"

"Not just for this minute," she said contentedly. "I don't know whether
I'm going to Chicago with you, tomorrow, or not."

"That's all right," he said. "I know all about that." He added, "I
hope the other girl won't mind--the one who lives here with you. What
was her name?"

"Ethel Holland? Oh, she went over to France with the Y.M.C.A. just
about a year ago. I've tried to find somebody to take her place, but
there didn't seem to be any one I liked well enough. So I've been
living alone."

She saw his face stiffen at that but his only comment was that that
simplified matters.

CHAPTER IV

THE PICTURE PUZZLE

There was a good quarter of an hour beginning with the tear-blurred
moment when Mary caught sight of her father looking for her and Rush down
the railway station platform, during which the whole fabric of misgivings
about her home-coming dissolved as dreams do when one wakes. It had not
been a dream she knew, nor the mere concoction of her morbid fancy. He
had not looked at her like this nor kissed her like this--not once since
that fatal journey to Vienna five years ago. Had something happened
between him and Paula that made the difference? Or was it her brother's
presence, that, serving somehow to take off the edge, worked a mysterious
catalysis?

When John, after standing off and gazing wordless for a moment at this
new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with
bits of ribbon on the breast of it,--tried to say how proud he was and
choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious,
embracing arm, the emotion which would not go into words finding an
outlet for itself that way.

When they got out to the motor and old Pete, once coachman, now
chauffeur, his eyes gleaming over the way Rush had all