and singly who looked
enviously at these little groups of the reunited, men who moved
haltingly on their way to the city above, perfunctorily greeted,
perfunctorily handshaken, and perfunctorily smiled upon by the official
welcomers.

He looked at this awhile, with a speculative, pitying air, and continued
his climb, passing at last through great doors into a waiting-room, a
place of high, vaulted ceilings, marble pillars, beautiful tiled floors.
He evaded welcoming matrons on the watch for unattached officers, to
hale them into an anteroom reserved for such, to feed them sandwiches
and doubtful coffee, and to elicit tales of their part in the grim
business overseas. This man avoided the cordial clutches of the socially
elect by the simple expedient of saying that his people expected him. He
uttered this polite fiction in self-defense. He did not want to talk or
be fed. He was sick of noise, weary of voices, irritated by raucous
sounds. All he desired was a quiet place away from the confusion of
which he had been a part for many days, to get speedily beyond range of
the medley of voices and people that reminded him of nothing so much as
a great flock of seagulls swooping and crying over a school of herring.

He passed on to the outer door which gave on the street where taxi
drivers and hotel runners bawled their wares, and here in the entrance
met the first face he knew. A man about his own age, somewhat shorter, a
great deal thicker through the waist, impeccably dressed, shouldered
his way through a group at the exit.

Their eyes met. Into the faces of both leaped instant recognition. The
soldier pressed forward eagerly. The other stood his ground. There was a
look which approached unbelief on his round, rather florid features. But
he grasped the extended hand readily enough.

"By jove, it _is_ you, Wes," he said. "I couldn't believe my eyes. So
you're back alive, eh? You were reported killed, you know. Shot down
behind the German lines. You made quite a record, didn't you? How's
everything over there?"

There was a peculiar quality in Tommy Ashe's tone, a something that was
neither aloofness nor friendliness, nor anything that Wes Thompson could
immediately classify. But it was there, a something Tommy tried to
suppress and still failed to suppress. His words were hearty, but his
manner was not. And this he confirmed by his actions. Thompson said that
things over there were going well, and let it go at that. He