ive a good deal to find out."

For Doggie had told Peggy nothing more about the girl in France.
Jeanne was his own precious secret. That it was shared by Phineas and
Mo didn't matter. To discuss her with Peggy, besides being irrelevant,
in the circumstances, was quite another affair. Indeed, when he had
avowed the girl in France, it was not so much a confession as a
gallant desire to help Peggy out of her predicament. For, after all,
what was Jeanne but a beloved war-wraith that had passed through his
life and disappeared?

"The development of Marmaduke," said the Dean, "is not the least
extraordinary phenomenon of the war."

* * * * *

Now that Doggie had gained his freedom, Jeanne ceased to be a wraith.
She became once again a wonderful thing of flesh and blood towards
whom all his young, fresh instinct yearned tremendously. One day it
struck his ingenuous mind that, if Jeanne were willing, there could be
no possible reason why he should not marry her. Who was to say him
nay? Convention? He had put all the conventions of his life under the
auctioneer's hammer. The family? He pictured a meeting between Jeanne
and the kind and courteous old Dean. It could not be other than an
episode of beauty. All he had to do was to seek out Jeanne and begin
his wooing in earnest. The simplest adventure in the world for a
well-to-do and unattached young man--if only that young man had not
been a private soldier on active service.

That was the rub. Doggie passed his hand over his hair ruefully. How
on earth could he get to Frelus again? Not till the end of the war,
at any rate, which might be years hence. There was nothing for it but
a resumption of intimacy by letter. So he wrote to Jeanne the letter
which loyalty to Peggy had made him destroy weeks ago. But no answer
came. Then he wrote another, telling her of Peggy and his freedom, and
his love and his hopes, and to that there came no reply.

A prepaid telegram produced no result.

Doggie began to despair. What had happened to Jeanne? Why did she
persist in ruling him out of her existence? Was it because, in spite
of her gratitude, she wanted none of his love? He sat on the railing
on the sea front of the south coast town where he was quartered, and
looked across the Channel in dismayed apprehension. He was a fool.
What could there possibly be in little Doggie Trevor to inspire a
romantic passion in any woman's heart? Take Peggy's case. As soo