rl I
care most about."

Major Darrett was one of the group. Some one turned to him and asked if
he had met her when she visited Katie at the Arsenal the summer before.
He replied that he had had that pleasure and that she was indeed
beautiful and very charming.

Katie hated him the more for having to be grateful to him.

She knew that he was sorry for her and grew more and more gay. She could
not talk of it, so was left to disclaim tragedy in frivolity. It was
royally disclaimed.

There were a few serious talks with older army men, men who had known her
father and who were outraged at Wayne's leaving the army when he was
worth so much to it and it to him. In her efforts to make them see, she
was forced to remember what the man who mended the boats said of their
lack of hospitality. They were unable to entertain the idea of there
being any reason for a man's leaving the army when he was being as well
treated in it as Wayne was. Katie's explanations only led them to shake
their heads and say: "Poor Wayne."

It was impossible to bury certain things in her, for those were the
things she must use in defending Wayne. And in defending him, especially
to her uncle, she was forced to know how far those things were from being
decently prepared for burial. She was never more gay than after one of
her defenses of her brother.

The winter had passed and it was late in April, not unlike that May day
just the year before when she had first seen her sister-in-law. Try as
she would she could not keep her thoughts from that day and all that it
had opened up.

She had received a letter from her sister-in-law that morning. It was
hard to realize that the writer of that letter was the Ann of the
year before.

Her thoughts of Ann led seductively to the old wonderings which Ann had
in the beginning opened up. She wondered how many of the people with whom
things were all wrong, people whom good people called bad people, were
simply people who had been held from their own. She wondered how many of
those good people would have remained good people had life baffled them,
as it had some of the bad people. The people whom circumstances had made
good people were so sure of themselves. She had observed that it was from
those who had never sailed stormy waters came the quickest and harshest
judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas.

Ann had met Helen and did not seem to know just what to think about her.
"She's nice, Katie," she wrote, "b