by the record-table.

"He can sing some, can't he!" she said.

"He has a beautiful voice." The Nurse's eyes were shining.

Liz moved off. Then she turned and came back.

"I--I know you'll tell me I'm a fool," she said; "but I've decided
to keep the kid, this time. I guess I'll make out, somehow."

Behind the screen, Rosie had lighted a cigarette and was smoking,
sublimely unconscious of the blue smoke swirl that rose in telltale
clouds high above her head. The baby had dropped asleep, and
Claribel lay still. But her eyes were not on the ceiling; they were
on the child.

Al leaned forward and put his lips to the arm that circled the baby.

"I'm sorry, kid," he said. "I guess it was the limit, all right. Do
you hate me?"

She looked at him, and the hardness and defiance died out of her
eyes. She shook her head.

"No."

"Do you--still--like me a little?"

"Yes," in a whisper.

"Then what's the matter with you and me and the little mutt getting
married and starting all over--eh?"

He leaned over and buried his face with a caressing movement in the
hollow of her neck.

Rose extinguished her cigarette on the foot of the bed, and, careful
of appearances, put the butt in her chatelaine.

"I guess you two don't need me any more," she said yawning. "I'm
going back home to bed."

"ARE WE DOWNHEARTED? NO!"

I

There are certain people who will never understand this story,
people who live their lives by rule of thumb. Little lives they are,
too, measured by the letter and not the spirit. Quite simple too.
Right is right and wrong is wrong.

That shadowy No Man's Land between the trenches of virtue and sin,
where most of us fight our battles and are wounded, and even die,
does not exist for them.

The boy in this story belonged to that class. Even if he reads it he
may not recognise it. But he will not read it or have it read to
him. He will even be somewhat fretful if it comes his way.

"If that's one of those problem things," he will say, "I don't want
to hear it. I don't see why nobody writes adventure any more."

Right is right and wrong is wrong. Seven words for a creed, and all
of life to live!

This is not a war story. But it deals, as must anything that
represents life in this year of our Lord of Peace, with war. With
war in its human relations. Not with guns and trenches, but with
men and women, with a boy and a girl.

For only in the mass is war vast. To the man in the trench it
r