not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, but that general optimism
which insists on believing in a loophole of possibility through which
things can slip and somehow turn out right after all.

* * * * *

The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in
coffin-like black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The
candles were burned to the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all
at once amazingly empty. The last half dozen people were standing and
laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison around Percy Lavin while
he told a final good story when one of the guests who had departed some
time before returned.

Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and
white silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of
laughers stood near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from
the inner house door by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of
the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne hurried to the guest, whose reason for
returning she wished to know, though it so easily might have been only
his forgotten cane.

That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset.

"May I speak with you a moment?" he asked at once.

They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but
deserted.

"What's the matter?" she inquired, prepared by his face for news of
trouble.

"Mrs. Hawthorne, we've done it!" said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that
he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was
on the verge of laughing hysterically.

"Oh!" Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder why they should not
without further to-do rejoice and triumph. "Well? What's wrong with
that?"

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it's deadly!" he exclaimed with conviction. "If it
were a simple solution, why shouldn't it have been suggested before?"

"It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you know."

"But you, dear lady, can't be supposed to understand. Oh, it's either
too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear world of ours
the probability is that it's too bad. He was taken off his feet by his
emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to
offer--a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn't it, that he
does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything--his
career, his family, his country--and offer them up! To cut his throat
f