ed
by what he had done. When he rushed away into the woods I think it was
just beginning to dawn on him, to fill him with horror. He'll never
come back. You'll see. He'll either go mad, or in the reaction of
feeling he'll kill himself."

They went into Lawanne's cabin. Lawanne brought out a bottle of
brandy. He looked at the shaking of his fingers as he poured for
Hollister and smiled wanly.

"I don't go much on Dutch courage, but I sure need it now," he said.
"Isn't it queer the way death affects you under different
circumstances? I didn't see such an awful lot of action in France, but
once a raiding party of Heinies tumbled into our trench, and there was
a deuce of a ruction for a few minutes. Between bayonets and bombs we
cleaned the lot, a couple of dozen of them. After it was all over, we
stacked them up like cordwood--with about as much compunction. It
seemed perfectly natural. There was nothing but the excitement of
winning a scrap. The half-dozen of our own fellows that went west in
the show--they didn't matter either. It was part of the game. You
expected it. It didn't surprise you. It didn't shock you. Yet death is
death. Only, there, it seemed a natural consequence. And here
it--well, I don't know why, but it gives me a horror."

Lawanne sat down.

"It was so unnecessary; so useless," he went on in that lifeless tone.
"The damned, egotistic fool! Two lives sacrificed to a stupid man's
wounded vanity. That's all. She was a singularly attractive woman. She
would have been able to get a lot out of life. And I don't think she
did, or expected to."

"Did you have any idea that Mills had that sort of feeling for her?"
Hollister asked.

"Oh, yes," Lawanne said absently. "I saw that. I understood. I was
touched a little with the same thing myself. Only, _noblesse oblige_.
And also I was never quite sure that what I felt for her was sympathy,
or affection, or just sex. I know I can scarcely bear to think that
she is dead."

He leaned back in his chair and put his hands over his eyes. Hollister
got up and walked to a window. Then on impulse he went to the door.
And when he was on the threshold, Lawanne halted him.

"Don't go," he said. "Stay here. I can't get my mind off this. I
don't want to sit alone and think."

Hollister turned back. Neither did he want to sit alone and think. For
as the first dazed numbness wore off, he began to see himself standing
alone--more alone than ever--gazing into a bottomles