nnie was officiating. She was struggling with Leonard's
kit, which resembled, she thought, more the rummage box of a gypsy
pedler than the luggage of a gentleman.

The young officer had taken off his great-coat and was standing with his
back to the hearth. He loomed up very big in the demure room, a slender,
boyish figure, still too slim for his shoulder-width and height, clad in
a ragged uniform, a pistol bulging from one hip at his belt. He looked
about him at the bright hangings, with a wandering gaze that reverted to
a spot of sunlight on Marjorie's hair and rested there.

"I'm all spinning round," he said with a puzzled smile, "like a dream."

He continued to stare with dazed, smiling eyes on the sunbeam. His hair
was cropped close like a convict's, which accentuated the leanness of
his face and the taut, rigid lines about his mouth. Under his discolored
uniform, the body was spare almost to the point of emaciation. Through a
rent in his coat, a ragged shirt revealed the bare skin. He looked at it
ruefully, still smiling. "I'm rather a mess, I expect," he said. "Tried
to fix up in the train, but I was too far gone in dirt to succeed much."

Marjorie, with the instinct of a kitten that comforts its master, went
up to him and rubbed her head against the torn arm.

"Don't," he said, hoarsely; "I'm too dirty." He put out a hand, and
softly touched her dress. "Is it pink?" he asked, "or does it only look
so in this light? It feels awfully downy and nice."

She noticed that two of his nails were crushed and discolored, and the
half of one was torn away. She bent down and kissed it, to hide the
tears which were choking her. She felt his eyes on her, and she knew
that look which made her whole being ache with tenderness--that numb,
dazed look. She had seen it before in the eyes of very young soldiers
home on their first leave--mute young eyes that contained the
unutterable secrets of the battlefield, but revealed none. She had seen
them since she came to England, sitting with their elders, gray-haired
fathers who talked war, war, war, while the young tongues--once so
easily braggart--remained speechless.

What had they seen, these silent youngsters--sensitive, joyous children,
whom the present day had nurtured so cleanly and so tenderly? Their
bringing-up had been the complex result of so much enlightened effort.
War, pestilence, famine, slaughter, were only names in a history book to
them. They thought hardship was