de
any difference between me and the rest of the family I'd feel
I'd got more than I deserve. I know I'm not good enough for
her. Let it go at that----"

"You're right," Lambert said. "He's entitled to be met just there. I've
decided it shall make no difference to the business."

George was relieved, but Lambert, it was clear, resented the situation,
blamed it on Sylvia, and couldn't wholly refrain from expressing his
disapproval.

"No necessity for it in the first place. Can't see why she picked him,
why she does a lot of things."

"Spoiled!" George offered with a happy grin.

"Prefer to say that myself," Lambert grunted, "although God knows I'm
beginning to think it's true enough."

IV

George doubted if he would see Sylvia at Plattsburgh at all, so
frequently was her visit postponed. Perhaps she preferred to cloister
herself really now, experiencing a sense of shame for the blow
circumstances had made her strike at one who had never quite earned it;
yet when she came, just before the end of camp, he detected no
self-consciousness that he could trace to Blodgett. Lambert and he
arrived at the hotel late one Saturday afternoon and saw her on the
terrace with her mother and the Alstons. For weeks George had forecasted
this moment, their first meeting since she had bought back her freedom
at the expense of Blodgett's heart; and it disappointed him, startled
him; for she was--he had never fancied that would hurt--too friendly.
For the first time in their acquaintance she offered her hand willingly
and smiled at him; but she had an air of paying a debt. What debt? He
caught the words "Red Cross," "recreation."

"Rather faddish business, isn't it?" he asked, indifferently.

He was still intrigued by Sylvia's manner. A chorus attacked him. Sylvia
and Betty, it appeared, were extreme faddists. Only Mrs. Planter smiled
at him understandingly from her eminent superiority. As he glanced at
his coarse uniform he wanted to laugh, then his temper caught him. The
debt she desired to pay was undoubtedly the one owed by a people. He
wanted to grasp her and shout in her ear:

"You patriotic idiot! I won't let you insult me that way."

"We have to do what we can," she was saying vehemently. "I wish I were a
man. How I wish I were a man!"

If she were a man, he was thinking, he'd pound some sensible judgments
into her excited brain. Or was all this simply a nervous reaction from
her mental struggles of th