uld remember this moment
with a pang, as something Jerome had dowered him with, not something he
had attained unaided. Marshby faced them from the canvas, erect,
undaunted, a soldier fronting the dawn, expectant of battle, yet with no
dread of its event. He was not in any sense alien to himself. He
dominated, not by crude force, but through the sustained inward strength
of him. It was not youth Jerome had given him. There was maturity in the
face. It had its lines--the lines that are the scars of battle; but
somehow not one suggested, even to the doubtful mind, a battle lost.
Jerome turned from the picture to the man himself, and had his own
surprise. Marshby was transfigured. He breathed humility and hope. He
stirred at Wilmer's motion.

"Am I"--he glowed--"could I have looked like that?" Then in the
poignancy of the moment he saw how disloyal to the moment it was even to
hint at what should have been, without snapping the link now into the
welding present. He straightened himself and spoke brusquely, but to
Mary:

"I'll go back and write that letter. Here is the one I wrote last
night."

He took it from his pocket, tore it in two, and gave it to her. Then he
turned away and walked with the soldier's step home. Jerome could not
look at her. He began moving back the picture.

"There!" he said, "it's finished. Better make up your mind where you'll
have it put. I shall be picking up my traps this morning."

Then Mary gave him his other surprise. Her hands were on his shoulders.
Her eyes, full of the welling gratitude that is one kind of love, spoke
like her lips.

"Oh!" said she, "do you think I don't know what you've done? I couldn't
take it from anybody else. I couldn't let him take it. It's like
standing beside him in battle; like lending him your horse, your sword.
It's being a comrade. It's helping him fight. And he _will_ fight.
That's the glory of it!"

The Bitter Cup

BY CHARLES B. DE CAMP

Clara Leeds sat by the open window of her sitting-room with her fancy
work. Her hair was done up in an irreproachable style, and her
finger-nails were carefully manicured and pink like little shells. She
had a slender waist, and looked down at it from time to time with
satisfied eyes. At the back of her collar was a little burst of chiffon;
for chiffon so arranged was the fashion. She cast idle glances at the
prospect from the window. It was not an alluring one--a row of brick
houses with an annoying irregu