"I wouldn't. Not for all the world must
you miss your chance to help. It's a sacred privilege, Kearn. I
shouldn't wonder if all of us, men and women, will have to put our
shoulder to the wheel, but if we can only help to get the world out of
this hideous rut of wholesale oppression and savagery it will be
gloriously worth it all. No, I wouldn't keep you back if I could, but
I'm glad, somehow, to feel that I couldn't, anyway."

"And you will be with my sister," he reminded her. "She's coming
to-morrow, you know, to take you back with her as soon as you are able
to travel. She liked you from the start, dear, and when I tell her
what is going to be, some day, she will take you quite to her heart."

"I shall be so glad to see her again!" Willa sighed happily. "It is
dear of her to offer to take me into her home. The Ripley Halsteads
suggested, of course, that I should go back to them, but I couldn't
think of it! It would recall too much that I must try to forget, and
poor Angie's face would give me no peace. I know that in her heart she
must blame me still for the tragic end of her romance."

"Angie is no longer there," Kearn remarked. "She is taking a
nursing-course in some hospital, preparatory for work in France, and
Vernon writes me that she seems earnest and sincere for the first time
in her life. Verne himself is off for Plattsburg, and Winthrop North
is already across the water, driving an ambulance on the western front.
My sister will put you to rolling bandages as soon as you can lift your
hands. Life is getting pretty serious for all of us."

"And wonderful, too," Willa amended. "It is as if we were all just
finding ourselves, isn't it? As if this supreme struggle were to bring
out all our hidden strength, the deepest, most-enduring, best part of
us!--And isn't it strange, too, that I should be going to make my home
with your sister, after all? That was what you first suggested to
me--do you remember?--when you thought me just Gentleman Geoff's
Billie, before ever Mr. North came."

"Yes, dear." He pressed his lips to her hand. "Everything works out
all right in time. And when I come back----"

"There is every indication that I'll be over myself before then,
nursing or something. I'm not the kind to sit at home when there's
work to be done. But, Kearn----?"

"What, Billie?"

"I don't mean to complain, for everyone has been wonderfully good to me
since I was a wee bit of a thing, but