an excuse to get away and she drove her little car
around by the way of John Cameron's home hoping perhaps to get a glimpse
of his mother again. But the house had a shut up look behind the vine
that he had trained, as if it were lonely and lying back in a long wait
till he should come--or not come! A pang went through her heart. For the
first time she thought what it meant for a young life like that to be
silenced by cold steel. The home empty! The mother alone! His ambitions
and hopes unfulfilled! It came to her, too, that if he were her knight he
might have to die for her--for his cause! She shuddered and swept the
unpleasant thought away, but it had left its mark and would return again.

On the way back she passed a number of young soldiers home on twenty-four
hour leave from the nearby camps. They saluted most eagerly, and she knew
that any one of them would have gladly occupied the vacant seat in her
car, but she was not in the mood to talk with them. She felt that there
was something to be thought out and fixed in her mind, some impression
that life had for her that afternoon that she did not want to lose in the
mild fritter of gay banter that would be sure to follow if she stopped
and took home some of the boys. So she bowed graciously and swept by at a
high speed as if in a great hurry. The war! The war! It was beating
itself into her brain again in much the same way it had done on that
morning when the drafted men went away, only now it had taken on a more
personal touch. She kept seeing the lonely vine-clad house where that one
soldier had lived, and which he had left so desolate. She kept thinking
how many such homes and mothers there must be in the land.

That evening when she was free to go to her room she read John Cameron's
letter again, and then, feeling almost as if she were childish in her
haste, she sat down and wrote an answer. Somehow that second reading made
her feel his wish for an answer. It seemed a mute appeal that she could
not resist.

When John Cameron received that letter and the accompanying package he
was lifted into the seventh heaven for a little while. He forgot all his
misgivings, he even forgot Lieutenant Wainwright who had but that day
become a most formidable foe, having been transferred to Cameron's
company, where he was liable to be commanding officer in absence of the
captain, and where frequent salutes would be inevitable. It had been a
terrible blow to Cameron. But now it su