"

An hour afterward, she said to her mother: "I'll make out one check to you
covering everything, mother. It will look better if you pay them yourself.
Thirty-seven thousand four hundred and twelve dollars. That's everything,
is it,--you're sure?"

"Everything," said Mrs. Tresslyn, settling back in her chair. "I will not
attempt to thank you, Anne. You see, I didn't thank Lutie when she threw
her money in my face, for somehow I knew that I'd give it all back to her
again. Well, you may have to wait longer than she did, my dear, but this
will all come back to you. I sha'n't live forever, you know."

Anne kissed her. "You are a wonder, mother dear. You wouldn't come off of
your high-horse for anything, would you? By Jove, that's what I like most
in you. You never knuckle."

"My dear, you are picking up a lot of expressions from Lutie."

The early evenings at Anne's place in the country were spent solely in
discussions of the great war. There was no other topic. The whole of the
civilised world was talking of the stupendous conflict that had burst upon
it like a crash out of a clear sky. George came home loaded down with the
latest extras and all of the regular editions of the afternoon papers.

"By gemini," he was in the habit of saying, "it's a lucky thing for those
Germans that Lutie got me to reenlist with her a year ago. I'd be on my
way over there by this time, looking for real work. Gee, Anne, that's one
thing I could do as well as anybody. I'm big enough to stop a lot of
bullets. We'll never see another scrap like this. It's just my luck to be
happily married when it bursts out, too."

"I am sure you would have gone," said Lutie serenely. "I'm glad I captured
you in time. It saves the Germans an awful lot of work."

The smashing of Belgium, the dash of the great German army toward Paris,
the threatened disaster to the gay capital, the sickening conviction that
nothing could check the tide of guns and men,--all these things bore down
upon them with a weight that seemed unbearable. And then came the battle
of the Marne! Von Kluck's name was on the lips of every man, woman and
child in the United States of America. Would they crush him? Was Paris
safe? What was the matter with England? And then, the personal element
came into the situation for Anne and her kind: the names of the officers
who had fallen, snuffed out in Belgium and France. Nearly every day
brought out the name of some one she had known, a few of