that night, after she was dressed and was
waiting, hurt did come in the thought of his feeling for the army. She
must talk to him again about the army, make him see that thing in it
which was dear to her.

Though could she? She did not seem able to tell even herself just what
there was in her feeling for the army.

Instead of arguments, came pictures--pictures and sounds known from
babyhood: Men in uniform--her father in uniform, upon his horse--dress
parade--the flag--the band--from reveille to taps things familiar and
dear swept before her.

It would seem to be the picturesque in it which wove the spell; but would
her throat have tightened, those tears be springing to her eyes at a
thing no deeper than the picturesque? No, in what seemed that fantastic
setting were things genuine and fine: simplicity, hospitality,
friendship, comradeship, loyalty, courage in danger and good humor in
petty annoyances.

Those things--oh yes, together with things less admirable--she knew
to be there.

She got out her pictures of her father and mother; her father in
uniform--that gentle little smile on her mother's face. She thought of
what her mother had endured, of what hosts of army women had endured,
going to outlandish spots of the earth, braving danger and doing without
cooks! She was proud of them, proud to be of them.

She lingered over her father's picture. A soldier. Perhaps he was of a
vanishing order, but she hoped it would be long--very long--before the
things to be read in his face vanished from the earth.

Through memories of her father there many times sounded the notes of the
bugle--now this call, now that, piercing, compelling, sounding as _motif_
of his life, thing before which all other things must fall away. She
seemed to hear now the notes of retreat--to see the motionless
regiment--then the evening gun and the band playing the Star Spangled
Banner and the flag--never touching the ground--coming down for the
night. She answered it in the things it woke in her heart: those ideals
of service, courage, fidelity which it had left her.

She would talk to him--to Alan (absurd she should think it so
timidly--so close in the big things--so strange in some of the little
ones)--about her father and mother. To make them real to him would make
him see the army differently. It hurt her to think of his seeing it as he
did, hurt her because she knew how it would have hurt them. To them, it
had been the whole of their liv