New York, and she steadfastly declined to serve on any of
the relief committees.

Never until now had she appreciated how thin-skinned she was. It is not to
be inferred that she shut herself up and affected a life of seclusion. As
a matter of fact, she went out a great deal, but invariably among friends
and to small, intimate affairs.

Not once in the months that followed the scene in Lutie's sitting-room did
she encounter Braden Thorpe. She heard of him frequently. He was very
busy. He went nowhere except where duty called. There was not a moment in
her days, however, when her thoughts were not for him. Her eyes were
always searching the throngs on Fifth Avenue in quest of his figure; in
restaurants she looked eagerly over the crowded tables in the hope that
she might see actually the face that was always before her, night and day.
Be it said to her credit, she resolutely abstained from carrying her quest
into quarters where she might be certain of seeing him, of meeting him, of
receiving recognition from him. She avoided the neighbourhood in which his
offices were located, she shunned the streets which he would most
certainly traverse. While she longed for him, craved him with all the
hunger of a starved soul, she was content to wait. He loved her. She
thrived on the joy of knowing this to be true. He might never come to her,
but she knew that it would never be possible for her to go to him unless
he called her to him.

Then, one day in early January, she crumpled up under the shock of seeing
his name in the headlines of her morning newspaper.

He was going to the front!

For a moment she was blind. The page resolved itself into a thick mass of
black. She was in bed when the paper was brought to her with her coffee.
She had been lying there sweetly thinking of him. Up to the instant her
eyes fell upon the desolating headline she had been warm and snug and
tingling with life just aroused. And then she was as cold as ice,
stupefied. It was a long time before she was able to convince herself that
the type was really telling her something that she would have to believe.
He was going to the war!

Thorpe was one of a half-dozen American surgeons who were going over on
the steamer sailing that day to give their services to the French. The
newspaper spoke of him in glowing terms. His name stood out above all the
others, for he was the one most notably in the public eye at the moment.
The others, just as brave and self-s