hed. "Really, Katie, you have a
positive genius for saying preposterous things."

"In which there may occasionally lurk a little truth. You _are_
deserting. Why aren't you?"

"I call that about as close to rot as an intelligent person could come,"
he replied hotly. "I'm resigning my commission. It's perfectly regular."

"Yes; being an officer and a gentleman, you _can_ resign your commission,
and have it perfectly regular. Being that same officer and gentleman, you
never were mugged--treated as a prospective criminal; no four thousand
posters bearing your picture will now be sent broadcast over the country;
no fifty dollars is offered lean detectives for your capture; you're in
no chance of being thrown into prison and have your government do all in
its power to wring the manhood out of you! Oh no--an officer and a
gentleman--you resign your commission and go ahead with your life. But
you're leaving the army, aren't you? Deserting it. And why? Because you
don't like the spirit of it. And yet--though you're too big for
it--though it's _time_ for you to desert--you're enough bound by it not
to let the light of your intelligence fall for one single second on the
question of desertion!"

She had held him. He made no reply, looking in bewilderment at her red
cheeks and blazing eyes.

Suddenly her face quivered. "Wayne," she said, "I don't use the term as
a hard name. I'm not using it in just its technical sense, our army
sense. But mayn't desertion be a brave thing? A fine thing? To desert a
thing we've gone beyond--to have the courage to desert it and walk right
off from the dead thing to the live thing--? Oh, don't mind my calling
you a deserter, Wayne," she added, her eyes full of tears, "for the
truth is I'd like to be a deserter myself. But perhaps one deserter is
enough for a family--and you beat me to it." She laughed and turned back
to the cabs.

He wanted to go on with the argument; show her what it was in desertion
that army men despised, make the distinction between deserting and
resigning. But the truth was he was more interested in the things Katie
had said than in the things which could be called in refutation.

And Katie puzzled him; her heat, feeling, not only astonished but worried
him a little. She was standing there now beating a tattoo on the window
pane. He wondered what she was thinking about. The experience as to Ann
revealed Katie to him as having thought about things he would not have
dreamed