owed black and white
like a great wash drawing.

He turned as she came toward him. "I heard you go down," he said. "I've
been writing all night--and I've written--perfect rot." His hands went
out in a despairing gesture.

Composed and quiet in her crisp linen, she looked up at him. "Write about
the war," she said; "take three soldiers,--French, German and English.
Make their hearts hot with hatred, and then--let them lie wounded
together on the field of battle in the darkness of the night--with death
ahead--and let each one tell his story--let them be drawn together by the
knowledge of a common lot--a common destiny----"

"What made you think of that?" he demanded.

"Peggy's pussy cat." She told him of the staring eyes and the tinkling
bell. "But I mustn't stay. Peggy is waiting for her soup."

He gazed at her with admiration. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Dictate a heaven-born plot to me in one breath, and speak of Peggy's
soup in the next. You are like Werther's Charlotte."

"I am like myself. And we mustn't stay here talking. It is time we were
both in bed. I am going to wake Beulah when I have fed Peggy."

He made a motion of salute. "The princess serves," he said, laughing.

But as she passed on, calm and cool and collected, carrying the tray
before her like the famous Chocolate lady on the backs of magazines, the
laugh died on his lips. She was not to be laughed at, this little Anne
Warfield, who held her head so high!

CHAPTER VII

_In Which Geoffrey Writes of Soldiers and Their Souls._

EVE CHESLEY writing from New York was still in a state of rebellion.

"And now they all have the _measles_. Richard, it needed only your letter
to let me know what you have done to yourself. When I think of you,
tearing around the country on your old white horse, with your ears tied
up--I am sure you tie up your ears--it is a perfect nightmare. Oh, Dicky
Boy, and you might be here specializing on appendicitis or something
equally reasonable and modern. I feel as if the world were upside down.
Do children in New York ever have the measles? Somehow I never hear of
it. It seems to me almost archaic--like mumps. Nobody in society ever has
the mumps, or if they do, they keep it a dead secret, like a family
skeleton, or a hard-working grandfather.

"Your letters are so short, and they don't tell me what you do with your
evenings. Don't you miss us? Don't you miss me? And our good times? And
the golden ligh