rge had just now experienced on the
verandah. Her voice was tired.

"I've done my best. I can't keep it up."

"No more war kindness!" he said. "Good!"

He watched her, her draperies arranging themselves in perplexingly
graceful folds, as she hurried with an air of flight away from him along
the gallery.

V

The evening the commissions were awarded George appreciated the
ingratitudes and cruelties of service rather more keenly than he had
done even as a youngster at Oakmont.

"It's like tap day at New Haven," Lambert said, nervously.

He had paused for a moment to compare notes with George. He hurried now
to his own organization for fear something might have happened during
his absence. The suspense increased, reaching even George, who all along
had been confident of success.

In the dusk the entire company crowded the narrow space between the
barracks--scores of men who had been urged by passionate politicians to
abandon family, money, everything, for the discomforts, sometimes the
degradations, of this place, for the possible privilege of dying for a
cause. It had had to be done, but in the hearts of many that night was
the fancy that it might have been done rather differently. It was clear,
for instance, that the passionate and patriotic politicians hadn't
troubled to tear from a reluctant general staff enough commissions for
the size and quality of these first camps. Many of the men, therefore,
who with a sort of terror shuffled their feet in the sand, would be sent
home, to the draft, or to the questioning scorn of their friends, under
suspicion of a form of treason, of not having banged the drum quite hard
enough. And it wasn't that at all.

George, like everyone else, had known for a long time there wouldn't be
enough commissions to go around. Why, he wondered now, had the fellows
chosen for dismissal been held for this public announcement of failure.
And in many cases, he reflected, there was no failure here beyond the
insolvency of a system. Among those who would go back to the world with
averted faces were numbers who hadn't really come at all within the
vision of their instructors, beyond whom they could not appeal. And
within a year this same reluctant army would be reaching out eagerly for
inferior officer material. And these men would not forget. You could
never expect them to forget.

Two messengers emerged from the orderly room and commenced to thread the
restless, apprehensive groups, seek