at least," she added, with a flash of intensity, "we're
going to be some day."

"So you put on your war-paint!"

"It must be the pollen from the hydrangeas!" She flicked her
handkerchief from her belt and passed it to him. "Show that you know how
to be useful!"

He performed the task with deliberate care.

"Heavens! You even have some on your ear and some on your hair; but
I'll leave it on your hair; it's rather becoming. There you are!" he
concluded.

"Off my hair, too!"

"Very well. I always obey orders."

"I oughtn't to have asked you to do it at all!" she exclaimed with a
sudden change of manner as they started up to the house. "But a habit of
friendship, a habit of liking to believe in one's friends, was
uppermost. I forgot. I oughtn't even to have shaken hands with you!"

"Marta! What now, Marta?" he asked.

He had known her in reproach, in anger, in laughing mockery, in militant
seriousness, but never before like this. The pain and indignation in her
eyes came not from the sheer hurt of a wound but from the hurt of its
source. It was as if he had learned by the signal of its loss that he
had a deeper hold on her than he had realized.

"Yes, I have a bone to pick with you," she said, recovering a grim sort
of fellowship. "A big bone! If you're half a friend you'll give me the
very marrow of it."

"I am ready!" he answered more pathetically than philosophically.

"There's not time now; after luncheon, when mother is taking her nap,"
she concluded as they came to the last step and saw Mrs. Galland on the
veranda.

X

A LUNCHEON AT THE GALLANDS'

Seated at the head of the table at luncheon, Mrs. Galland, with her
round cheeks, her rather becoming double chin, and her nicely dressed
hair, almost snow-white now, suggested a girlhood in the Bulwer Lytton
and Octave Feuillet age, when darkened rooms were favored for the
complexion and it was the fashion for gentlewomen to faint on occasion.
She lived in the past; the present interested her only when it aroused
some memory. To-day all her memories were of the war of forty years ago.

"I remember how Mrs. Karly collapsed when they brought word of the death
of her son, and never recovered her mind. And I remember Eunice Steiner
when they brought Charles home looking so white--and it was the very day
set for their wedding! And I remember all the wounded gathered at the
foot of the terrace and being carried in here, while the guns were
roaring ou