een
killed. . . . Well, she had a week longer, anyway. You can do a great
deal with yourself in a week if you bully hard. And the ships were
almost always a much longer time getting in than anybody said they
would be, and then they sent you to camps first.

Marjorie had the too many nerves of the native American, but she had
the pluck that generally goes with them. She forced herself to sit
quietly down and work at her task, and wished that she could stop being
angry at herself for telling Lucille that Francis had written he was
coming home. Because Lucille worked where she did, and had promptly
spread the glad tidings from the top of the office to the bottom, and
her morning had been a levee. Even poor little Mrs. Jardine, whose boy
had been killed before he had been over two weeks, had spoken to
Marjorie brightly, and said how glad she was, and silent, stiff Miss
Gardner, who was said never to have had any lovers in her life, had
looked at her with an envy she tried to hide, and said that she
supposed Marjorie was glad.

"Well, it's two weeks, maybe. Two weeks is ages."

Marjorie dived headfirst into the filing cabinet again, and was saying
to herself very fast, "Timmins, Tolman, Turnbull--oh, dear,
_Turnbull_----" when, very softly, the swinging-door that shut her off
from the rest of the office was pushed open again, and some one crossed
sharply to her side. She flung up her head in terror. Suppose it
should be Francis--

Well, it was.

She had no more than time for one gasp before he very naturally had her
in his arms, as one who has a right, and was holding her so tight she
could scarcely breathe. She tried to kiss him back, but it was
half-hearted. She hoped, her mind working with a cold, quick
precision, that he could not tell that she did not love him. And
apparently he could not. He let her go after a minute, and flung
himself down by her in just the attitude that the knock on the door,
fifteen months ago, had interrupted. And Marjorie tried not to stiffen
herself, and not to wonder if anybody was coming in, and not to feel
that a perfect stranger was doing something he had no right to.

It was to be supposed that she succeeded more or less, because when he
finally let her go, he looked at her as fondly as he had when he
entered, and began to talk, without much preface, very much as if he
had only been gone a half hour.

"They'll let you off, won't they, for the rest of the day? But of