red to say--even to himself.

"Longer than I knew, I think," he came back to Katie. "One night last
fall I went to a dinner and they drank our toast." He repeated it,
very slowly. "'My country--may she always be right--but right or
wrong--my country.'

"I used to have the real thrill for that toast. That night it almost
choked me. That 'right or wrong' is a spirit I can thrill to no longer.
I'm more interested in getting it right.

"Though I'll own it terrified me, just as it seems to you, to feel it
slipping from me. Recently I had occasion to go up to West Point and I
spent a whole day deliberately trying to get back my old feeling for
things--the whole business that we know so well and that I used to
love so much.

"And, in a way, I could; but as for something gone. That day up at the
Point was one of the saddest of my life. I still loved the trappings.
They still called to me. But I knew that, for me, the spirit was dead.

"Oh I have no sensational declarations to make about the army. I
wouldn't even be prepared to say what I think about disarmament. It's
more complex than most peace advocates seem to see. I only know that the
army's not the thing for me. I can't go on in it, simply because my
feeling for it is gone."

He had been speaking slowly and seriously; his head was bent. Now he
looked up at her. "It was at the close of that day--day up at West
Point--that I resigned my commission. And if you had seen me that night,
Katie, I doubt if you would reproach me with 'doing it lightly.'"

The marks of struggle had come back to his face with the story of it.
They told more than the words.

"Forgive me," she said in her impetuous way. "No, I didn't know. How
awful it is, Wayne, that we _don't_ know--about each other."

She was forced to turn away; but after a moment controlled herself and
turned back to add: "Wayne dear, I think you're right. I'm proud of you."

"Oh, I'm entitled to no halo," he hastened to say. "It's the fellow who
would do it without an income might be candidate for that."

"But you _would_ do it without an income, Wayne," she insisted warmly.

"I don't know. How can I tell whether I would or not?

"And you'll be good to Ann?" he took advantage of her mood to press, as
though that were the one thing she could do for him. "You know, how much
she needs you, Katie."

"I shall certainly want to be good to Ann," she murmured. "Though I don't
think she needs me much--any more."

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