sleeve. With her dark eyes, her dark, rather coarse
hair, which she wore parted in the middle over a low forehead, and her
white, unusually colorless skin, she suggested a foreigner.
Nevertheless, although her mother and father were born in Russia, Vera
Lagerloff was not a foreigner. However, at this moment she was talking
quietly to herself in a foreign tongue, yet the language she was making
an attempt to practice was French and not Russian. Since the entry of
the United States into the world war, New York City had been exchanging
peoples as well as material supplies with her Allies to so large an
extent that _one_ language was no longer sufficient even for the
requirements of one's own country.

Finally, still reciting her broken sentences almost as if she were
rehearsing a part in a play, Vera walked over to a front window and
stood gazing expectantly out into the Square as if she were looking for
some one.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon and the neighborhood was
almost deserted. In the paths beyond the Washington Arch a few children
were playing. Now and then an occasional man or woman passed along the
street, to vanish into a house or apartment building.

A few taxis and private cars rolled by, but not one made even a pretence
of stopping before the rose-colored brick house.

After about five minutes of waiting, sighing and then, smiling at her
own folly, the girl turned away and began slowly to climb up the old
colonial stairs leading to the second floor.

"When will human beings cease demanding the impossible?" she asked of
herself, yet speaking aloud. "I know that Mrs. Burton and Bettina cannot
arrive for another half hour, nevertheless I am wasting both time and
energy watching for their appearance."

During the past month Vera Lagerloff had been the guest of Mrs. Richard
Burton in her New York home. Together they had been closing the house
for an indefinite period and making their final arrangements for sailing
for France. Within a few days the American Sunrise Camp Fire unit, with
Mrs. Burton as their guardian, was to set sail to help with the work of
reclamation in the devastated area of France and also to establish the
first group of Camp Fire girls ever recognized upon French soil.

Since their summer "Behind the Lines" in southern California, Vera had
been studying with these two purposes in mind.

In the front of the house on the second floor Mrs. Burton's private
sitting-room was