withdrew her eyes and looked across
the table with an expression which Nicholas Colcord could have
interpreted had he not been engrossed with Sybil Latham. Evelyn studied
him with admiring tenderness as he lounged in his chair, toying idly
with a fork, smiling at something his partner was saying, while her mind
ran lovingly over the dominant traits of a personality which was so
strong, so keenly alive, so sensitive to decent, manly things, so
perfectly balanced.

Failing to catch his eye, Evelyn turned to her plate filled with a
subtle melancholy. When would there be another dinner like this? Not, at
all events, until the war was over. Nick had spoken about this--very
definitely; there would be no more entertaining. She had agreed with
him, of course, not, however, escaping the conviction that her husband's
viewpoint was more or less in keeping with a certain unusual sombreness
which she had caught creeping into his mood in the past year or so.

Still, everybody who amounted to anything was pulling up on the bit and
doing something or talking of doing something or other for the country.
It was already assured that the season would be insufferably dull--from
a social standpoint at least. Evelyn could not suppress a certain
resentment. She was not one of those who had found an element of thrill
in the suddenly altered perspectives. Her plans for the spring season
had been laid; engagements had been accepted or declined, as functions
promised to be worth while or uninteresting; all the delicate
interlocking machinery of the life in which Evelyn Colcord moved,
somewhat prominently, was in motion--then the sudden checking of the
wheels: war.

Now there were memories of her husband's sober words; now there was
young Jeffery Latham at her elbow--he had been almost shot to pieces in
France--now there was Simec, the genius of diabolical achievement....
What were things coming to? Even the weather had gone wrong. Outside, an
unseasonable cold rain, lashed by a northeast gale, was driving against
the panes of the French windows, and the sizzling effulgence of an
arc-lamp revealed pools of water lying on the asphalt of the avenue....

The dry, softly modulated voice of Captain Latham at her left lifted
Evelyn from her trend of sombre revery.

"Nick is looking uncommonly fit--he'll go in for the cavalry, I
suppose."

The young British officer spoke more with a half-humorous effort at
conversation than any other motive, but sh