NOT far from Lyons, on the main line from Paris to Marseilles, is a small junction point where passengers for Aix-les-Bains leave the express and take a little train which jerks them enthusiastically east to the shore of Lake Bourget. Each permissionnaire train out of Paris brought its quota of American soldiers bound for their seven days in the leave-area at Aix. Most of them were privates or noncoms who would, if they dared, have stayed on the express all the way to the Cote d'Azur, where it was commonly believed Romance was disporting herself with peculiar abandon. "Go south for warmth and wickedness" is perhaps not solely a soldier's maxim, but it appealed with special force to these doughboys fresh from the northern trenches. Nice, Cannes, Marseilles, Monte Carlo---ah, yes, Monte Carlo!

"Ho, Buck! You'd be a heller at Monty Carlo, wouldn't you? Bust the bank with them thirty frogskins per that Uncle Sam gives you---sometimes. Monty Carlo! Chee sus! Why . . ."

"Bank nothin'. Nice for mine, or mebbe Marsales. Beaucoup vinn blawnk n' Connyack n' jolies mad'm'selles ......."

"Now you're talkin'! To hell with gamblin', I say, but lead me among the French floosies. . ."

"With no M.P.'s or God damn Y.M.C.A. guys stickin' around. That's the main thing. What good's a leave if you can't be free? That's why I hate to go to Aix. . ."

"You're in the army now! Our passes says Aix-lees-Banes-so quit belly-achin' and . . ."

So with what philosophy they could muster these thwarted epicureans, laden with musette bags, stood on the junction platform and regretfully watched the express pull out.

Oblivious to the talk about him John Malleson watched with the others. His reluctance to lose sight of the vanishing train rose from causes not so carnal, perhaps, as those of the doughboys, but after all much the same. Listless with the deep weariness that follows months of pain, he longed for rest which would be voluptuous in its completeness. He wanted to forget the dreary, immaculate, nickel-and-white automatism of the hospital, its peering, cool-eyed doctors, its gliding nurses, its endless beds, its odors, its monotony, its sudden screams. Something deep within him cried for beauty once again---the faithful beauty of the sea and the flowers and the sunshine. As his time for convalescent leave drew near, he had dreamed extravagantly of the Riviera, investing it with an opulence of blessings winch would have outdone even the fancies of its hotel agents. Then, three days before his contemplated departure, came a long-delayed letter from Kempton, asking him to come to Aix-les-Bains.

He had left the hospital in Neuilly in a mood more buoyant than any he had experienced in many weeks past. His unwholesome preoccupation and worry left him, and he was able to take pleasure in the parting words of the doctor, a cruel old Major:

"Ha! cheering up, eh? Decided not to die? Well, your own affair. I've told you all along to quit remembering. Yes I know about your brother . . . . Cut it out. Remembering is gutless business."

But during the long ride from Paris a strange timidity moved him to avoid conversation with the four friendly Belgian officers who shared his compartment. His mind turned in upon itself, prowling, peering, maliciously probing, touching the sore spot and standing back to sneer.

He knew nothing about Aix-les-Bains and felt no curiosity. He had, however, an indefinite notion that Kempton would he good for him . . . . Yet after all, he didn't want people; even Kempton seemed vague and depersonalized.

"Beg pardon, sir, but would you like me to get you a sandwich? Everybody's rushing the lunch-counter over there."

The speaker was a fresh-faced young sergeant, with the caduceus of the Medical Corps on his collar. Before those frank eyes Malleson felt queerly uncomfortable, as one who is pitied.

"Why, do I look helpless?" He smiled wearily.

"Not helpless, Lieutenant, of course. But I've not put in fourteen months in half a dozen hospitals as medical sergeant without learning to recognize a man who's just out. Better let me bring the grub. I'm going for myself anyway--and you don't want to fight that mob." Without waiting for an answer he strode toward the crowded little restaurant.

"Well, I must look pretty useless," thought Malleson despondently. He pulled his coat tighter about him, and involuntarily glanced down at his arm. The wound had been abominably troublesome; even yet his hand was inept and weak as a child's.

It was long after dark when the train reached Aix.

"They say it's like summer here in the daytime," remarked the Sergeant as they made their way through the crowd at the station, "but it sure is snappy now."

"Do you feel chilled to the bone as I do?" asked John, with the curiosity of an invalid. Having never known bodily weakness he could not get rid of the exasperating sense of inferiority his present condition engendered. He envied his companion the vigor of his step, and the snug fit of his clothes. His own uniform, he knew, hung loose over his thin shoulders. Oh well, a few weeks' rest here, or at Nice. . . . Perhaps at home. Indeed, probably at home. The war could scarcely last through another winter. Austria already out of it, the Germans making frantic offers, Wilson, backed by Allied sentiment, firm for complete German capitulation.

The thought of home became suddenly close and precious. It was turning persistently in his mind that night before he fell asleep---a pleasant thought with one troublesome flaw; a bright and gracious fabric disfigured by one indelible stain . . . . Many a time since his wounding Malleson had thought of poor Dick Tildesly, haunted by his hideous battle visions. And he had devoutly thanked God that that curse had been withheld from him. Some toughness of mental fiber, some ultimate insensibility, perhaps, had helped him blur the ghastly image of Dave, so that except at first he had kept it out of his dreams.

Kempton had told little in his letter beyond that he was leading a sedentary life in a little chalet on the border of the lake, recuperating from damage done him by gas, some months before.

"It doesn't sound exciting, but it is," he had written. "You see, at last I'm working. Yes, the story . . . I’m anxious to see you, and maybe get your literary condemnation; but chiefly anxious just to see you."

Though Malleson had literally no interest but Kempton in Aix, he dawdled over his omelette and café au lait in the sunny dining room the next morning. He had risen early to avoid the throng of doughboys who were taking a boisterous, animal delight in the luxuries of the big hotel, former playground of cosmopolites and now chartered by the United States Government. He envied them and at the same time scoffed at himself for his melancholy. Ridiculous, and yet---there was Dave. The war near an end, and then home---and a story to tell. Oh well---hell! He rose from his breakfast impatiently, hurried to the street and hailed a carriage. The vehicle was an ancient, open affair, with a driver who seemed part of it, and a horse which moved in a blissful, witless trance.

The morning was rarely lovely; the air thickened by honey-colored sunshine; the surface of Lake Bourget a marvelous stretch of amethyst, curbed sharply on the farther side by the ridge which drew its bulk up through brown and green to the white prong of snow-capped Dent du Chat.

Kempton's retreat lay back from the road, at the end of a winding path, bordered by small stones neatly placed. The house, low and white, fronted on a little paved court. A trellis ran from the side doorway to a small summer-house, roofed with vines. A table stood in the summer-house a thick layer of old carpet stretched along the stone seat, and on the carpet sat Kempton.

Just before it reached the summer-house the path swung near the front of the chalet, so that John approached his friend from the side. His feet crunched on the gravel; ten yards from the arbor he paused. Kempton's trance was unbroken. His face, startlingly thin, was turned slightly upward; the low collar lay back revealingly from the pitiful neck; his fingers toyed with a number of white cards which seemed covered with fine handwriting.

'Kemp!" said John, unconsciously lowering his voice as one does to avoid startling a sick man.

Kempton turned, and Malleson stifled an exclamation at sight of that well-remembered smile playing so incongruously over the changed features.

They talked of their experiences; or rather of John's experiences. Disagreeable though the recollections were to him, Malleson found it easier to dwell upon them than to ask Kempton about himself. He told briefly of his varied service with the Wolves; of his wounding; briefly, very briefly, of Dave's death; of his own struggle through the woods, and of how the Frenchmen had found him unconscious, one hand extended over the edge of a narrow communication trench through which the litter-bearers passed on their way to the front line.

"After that it was simple enough. Four months in the hospital at Neuilly, counting about six weeks at the Annex, where I was sent because they thought the nerve of my arm was cut, and would need splicing. Luckily it wasn't. But it seems that I did a crazy lot of rolling out there in the woods, and made the wound pretty bad. I think it's coming out all right."

He stretched out his hand, working the fingers gingerly. Kempton watched him curiously.

"Still weak, but getting stronger, eh?"

"Yes . . . And now-that's your fix, too, isn't it, old man? Still weak, but getting stronger."

Under his false cheerfulness Malleson could not meet the other's eyes. But Kempton only nodded and said in a matter-of-fact tone:

"Gas in the lungs is hard to get out, you know. I mean---it takes a long time, and a lot of quiet sitting round. And this is an admirable place to do it. Of course I couldn't manage it if I were in the regular army. But I'm pretty much my own boss . . . . Look---see those tiny white sails against the blue. And up there---the impossible brilliance of the sun on the snow of Cat's Tooth! No painter would dare spill his colors like that . . . . Unreal. . . A dreamer's playing ..........

Unwittingly Kempton had interpreted the whole situation as John saw it, except that for him Kempton himself was part of the unreality. No effort of his reasoning faculty could aid Malleson to identify this smiling, ghastly wisp of a man with the Kempton he had known of old. In an effort to break through the wall of futility he cried:

"But the story! Let's not forget the story. How's it coming?" His words echoed in his ears as the perfect utterance of hypocrisy.

Again Kempton smiled, this time pensively.

"Ah yes," he murmured, "the story ........"

His fingers fluttered the scribbled cards; his eyes rested on them with a gleam of mockery. The long hands ceased their play; Kempton seemed lost in reverie. His head bowed slightly; the tell-tale red patch burned over each cheekbone.

A fluttering little breeze whispered and whispered again through the vine-leaves of the arbor; on the paved court sparrows were hopping, devouring crumbs thrown them by the care-taker. In spite of the altitude the sun-warmed air was laden with a strange, lush fragrance, a Mediterranean fragrance of flowers and earth and life. The snow of the distant peak glimmered in silver and crystal; far below, on the opposite border of the lake, two tiny dark objects moved along the white road like flies on a tape-two of the ancient carriages, holding sightseers from Aix. . . . And Malleson found himself watching them through a haze of tears.

The silence continued until it seemed to press in upon his breathing. As the stillness grew intolerable, something deep in Malleson's nature roused and gathered strength.

"Kempton," he said abruptly, "enough of this. You're dying, man, and you know it. Why should we blink it?"

To his amazement Kempton laughed outright and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Good old John!" he exclaimed. "I wondered how long you'd keep up the bluff. Of course I'm dying. Do you suppose that's news ?" His fingers clutched John's arm for an instant and drew away. It was not a grasp for support; it was rather the bestowal of an approving pinch upon a pupil who had solved a difficult problem.

Instantly the tension of false relationship vanished. Malleson's feelings bubbled forth in a furious tirade upon the war---its waste, its senseless choosing of its victims.

"Some good men are getting through alive, though, remember," protested Kempton mildly, "yourself, for instance. You'll soon be going home fit as a fiddle . . ."

"Don't, Kemp !" exclaimed Malleson huskily. "Cut that out." Perversely his thoughts and the words centered on himself again.

"Yes, I suppose I'll be going home, whole in body. But by God above! I don't know what else may have happened to me. Since the night Dave was killed I've been in the depths. I'm timid as a child; all trust in myself is gone."

Gradually Malleson became calmer, and, caught in the intricacies of his problem, found relief in confession.

"Until that night I had somehow always kept myself intact. I'd been in tight places, been afraid, but I never let go completely. I'd always, since I was a kid, listening to my father . . ." He stopped, and knit his brows, as if faced by a new puzzle. Kempton watched him quietly. Malleson continued:

"Yes---that was the beginning; listening to my father. He always said a man could never find help but in himself. . ."

"Had he ever been in tight places?" inquired Kempton quizzically.

"What? Oh yes, I suppose so. I believe he lives up to his conviction. I don't think all hell could change it. But I---well, when I had built up my faith in that private last ditch where a man could stand . . ."

"My boy, your pride is hurt, not your self-sufficient soul." There was something like impatience in the older man's tone. He went on:

"And here's the way you can cure it---perhaps. Just say to yourself, 'I was caught unprepared. It was really Dave's death that upset me. I wasn't myself; any one can get panic-stricken and yell' ... Hold on! What was the particular thing you did that worries you so?"

Malleson, in his earnestness, missed the mockery in Kempton's voice.

"Oh, went to pieces---groveled about---prayed . . ."

"So that's it. Prayed. Well, John, old man, that's bad. I'm afraid you're done for."

This time there was no mistaking the irony. Malleson looked up quickly and flushed.

"I've been talking like a fool, Kemp," he said quietly. "Forgive me."

Kempton nodded carelessly, but his tone was thoughtful:

"I've often wondered," he said, "if any of the theorists have hit upon the purpose of this little war. I suppose some of them have declared it the visitation of God upon a sinning world. Or perhaps just upon a thoughtless world---a gentle reminder, as it were . . ."

"What kind of a God would that be! . . . . . . . I know these are kindergarten questions, but go on."

"It's strange if nobody has advanced that theory," mused Kempton, "when you consider how many poor devils have been scared into faith. I mean---it's strange we don't recognize the old God. He's here with all the old marks. The ancient, bloody God of fear---the God the Hebrews knew . . ."

"'Known of old,'" muttered John. "Maybe you're right, Kempton."

"I also sometimes wonder if He was known of old.

There're some new things here. Not quite true to form---some comforting things . . .

Kempton's gaze had again become remote. Something told Malleson to say no more. He quietly bade his friend good-bye, promising to return each day during his weeks at Aix.

He had decided to walk back to the hotel. And as he made his way slowly along the bloom-scented lake-side he was amazed to find that the details of his visit with Kempton were being crowded from his consciousness by the trivial and sententious thought that at home the flowers must by this time have given place to the red of the turning maples, that certainly autumn lay lovely over the Campus, and that the willows were dropping their leaves on the black water of the St. Joe.

THE Chill of the April morning was still in the air when Emma Malleson opened the wide windows of the dining-room and tucked back the curtains to give the breeze full play through the silent house. She leaned for a moment over the sill, gazing down at the bed of tulips which caught the early sunlight just beneath the window. The plants had pushed their slender shafts through the soil, and a few were flowering. Faint, dewy fragrance penetrated Emma's senses like a subtle breath of faith and reassurance. For many Aprils past the flowers under the window had been tiny secret counselors. She watched for their appearance with a childish anxiety which amused her husband. When John was very small she used to hold him on the broad window-ledge till his restless baby eyes found the bright colors and grew wide with excitement.

"See, darlin'---see, down there! Biggy flowers!"

"Mm---mm---blah---mmblah---blah!" he would respond, reaching frantically and twisting every muscle in his wriggling little body.

"The child is spoofing you, Em," Harry Malleson would remark. "Stop that, sir, and be artistic!"

In those days Malleson, habitually oblivious to all sounds during his after-breakfast newspaper hour, could still hear with profound interest the slightest utterance of his little son . . . . This morning neither father nor son was on hand---but the flowers were there . . . . Emma smiled down at them gayly and turned back to the room.

She adjusted an apron, picked up her dustcloth, then paused to listen. No sound above stairs. A quizzical little frown wrinkled her forehead.

"Shall I start the breakfast, or shan't I?' she pondered. "I wonder when those two will be down?"

With a mock-heroic gesture of the dustcloth she went on with her task, stepping about lightly, flicking the cloth over the furniture, bending to rub a murky spot on the library table, stopping awhile before a squat little bookcase which contained the volumes John had collected long ago as his own, and had set apart as textbooks for the North Star Literary and Athletic Club. That set of "Frank Merriwell," bound in cloth! How she had been bamboozled by her husband in regard to them! She laughed aloud now at the recollection of her early worry to see John week after week bringing home lurid, paper-hacked "thrillers," and of her relief when he gave them up to peruse the sober-looking, brown volumes which Harry one day brought in. It was not for several weeks that she discovered that the brown tomes were merely the collected exploits of the identical worthies who figured so dubiously in the five-cent weeklies. She recalled how her husband had chuckled.

"See---there you are! The woman in literature. Bind up the devils in cloth and they become respectable."

"Well, they do change, just the same," she had protested, "just as you would change if you'd been going about in a red shirt, and I caught you and clapped you into tweeds and a collar."

"Maybe you think you've done that very thing---but look out!"

Emma paused in her rounds before a large map of France hung on the library wall. Many little white-headed pins were stuck in its surface; here and there in isolated spots, but chiefly in a straggly line north and south. A lone pin punctured St. Nazaire; several clustered round Verdun ; others at Toul, Nancy, Baccarat, Troyes, Picquigny, Esquennoy, Villers-Cotterets. About the Villers-Cotterets pin a bright red circle had been drawn with crayon, and inside the circle, in firm, small printing, ran the legend---"Here my boy was hurt."

Emma gazed with a curious mingling of hostility and tenderness at the scarlet ring. She remembered how long she had waited, even after she knew the spot, to draw that circle; how it was not until after she had positive assurance that John was safe that she had printed the words. It was one evening in September. Mattie was with her. Together they had laboriously and little by little charted John's course from the cryptic information he had been able to smuggle past the censor. Much of their operation had been guesswork, later revised. On that hot September night they had met in a sort of leashed excitement. John's blunt, convincing letter lay open before them, and they could not doubt.

"He's safe, Mattie," said Emma, in a low, exultant voice, "and I pray God that it'll all be over before he's well enough to go back."

The girl, pale and tired, remained silent as Emma drew the crayon over the green shading which meant "woodland," and with steady fingers pushed the pin into place.

"We must write something," added John's mother. After a moment's thought she carefully set down the words.

"My boy was hurt," she murmured; then with a strange little smile said softly:

"That can do for us both, if you wish, can't it, Mattie?" But the girl drew a quick breath like a sob, and ran from the room.

It was not until hours later that Emma had realized her amazing oversight. John was hurt there, but there Dave was killed! . . . Yet she had let the inscription stand without additions.

This morning, looking at the map, Emma mused:

How many like it there must be, each pretending to mark great battles, and each marking only the tiny personal battles of our sons! As if anything else mattered!"

She went hastily to the kitchen and, picking up a broom, returned through the house to the front porch. Early workers were on their way. As Emma swept she was interrupted by the shrill voice of Miss Tussey, who kept a little tea and coffee store by the Orpheum Theater, and who was a champion bore. But now her words were welcome.

"Heard your boy has got home. Isn't it glorious!"

"Yes," replied Emma happily, "last night. No sign of him yet." She pointed upstairs.

"Let him sleep--he deserves it! . . . The returned soldier!" Miss Tussey went fluttering by in an Indian Summer glow of sentimentality.

"I wonder which one will show up first," Emma speculated, and for the first time that morning a shadow lay over her brightness. Of late Harry Malleson had needed more and more rest.

As it happened John first descended the stairs. He kissed his mother boyishly.

"I think I smelled that coffee in my sleep, Mother. It has the old-time perfume! Not much like the burnt stuff you get in France . . . . Here-let me carry the toast in."

As she sat opposite him, pouring the coffee, buttering the toast, his mother struggled against the numbing sense of unreality. That this lean young man was her son, that he sat within arm's reach, that he was safe.

"But, Mother, how does it happen that you're doing the work? Where's Mary? Are we broke?"

She looked up with a quick smile.

"No, not quite, though you know we're never rich. But Mary has gone to stay with her mother till her brother comes back from France, or Germany, or wherever he is. . . They don't know . . . " Could no topic be small enough to hide from this leering eye of war?

John munched his toast, while Emma watched him, trying to disguise the avidity in her gaze.

"He's thinner," she thought, "and older, and---sadder. But he's here!"

Suddenly John set down his cup, and as if for the first time noting something wrong, demanded:

"Where's Dad? He's an early bird. Has he gone already?"

Emma found his straight gaze hard to meet. At length she responded slowly, shaking her head:

"I'm a little afraid, John. He's tired, but he swears he's all right. Yet you know how unlike him sleep is---especially on a morning like this. . ."

It was the son's turn to be troubled, and he found sufficient cue in the worry on his mother's averted face. Irrelevantly he noticed that a hint of gray had crept into her heavy dark hair. For almost the first time in his life he felt, with a flash of insight, the pitiableness of women; their need, their heroism, their reticence. Involuntarily he reached and took his mother's hand. Her fingers closed on his, and for a moment they sat in silence.

She murmured something that he did not understand, freed her hand, and spoke cheerily of his plans.

"First to get out of uniform," he declared. "Until that's done I can't view anything without a squint."

"Oh---I'd like people to see you before you change! Everybody. But I suppose that's impossible. But, John--- Mattie, at least. Don't you want her to see you in your regimentals?"

He managed a wry smile, and became instantly serious.

"Mother, how is---what has she been doing? . . . I might as well confess I've not heard from her for months. Only a letter---a cool one at that---after I'd been wounded."

Emma stifled an impulse to tell of Mattie's evenings with her, over the map; of her double duty on the Journal and at the Red Cross rooms; of her trouble with her cranky old mother; of her recent work as a subordinate nurse at Camp Benjamin Harrison. No. After all, John and Mattie were no longer children. She had no right to try to interpret life for them.

"That's a story you must get from Mattie herself," she responded at last. "I could tell you only the unimportant things. Just now she's not at home. But she comes from Indianapolis frequently over the week-end, and I think she'll be done with her work soon. Her mother, of course, wants her to come home for good."

He nodded, absently. How quickly things, once seen as remote, drew into near vision and importance. Already the desire to see Mattie had become insistent. Oh well.

The week-end? This was Tuesday---and meanwhile he had much to do. Yet when he tried to define the "much" he found himself puzzled. At any rate one duty was obvious---to get out of uniform.

DURING the next few days John spent many hours in his father's office, browsing among the books, or tilted back in the old rocker, heedlessly letting the minutes slip by. His mind meandered idly among purposes and resolutions, but veered from them all into a curious indecision that seemed to be becoming chronic. He had seen some of his old friends, heard their various stories, and found himself churlishly indifferent. His own experiences he told with the same sense of flatness. Only when questioned persistently about Dave did this devitalization vanish, and leave him irritated and troubled.

As if to corroborate the ironic unchangeableness of existence he fell in with Milt Steffins, and was forced to listen to that worthy effervesce about the "good old days in France." By some miracle Steffins had escaped death on that bloody June morning, and was back in his "home town" with all his vulgarity intact. Yet John could not despise him; in the back of Malleson's mind lingered the vision of a pudgy figure lumbering down a dark path to the gunfire.

John did not try to analyze his liking for the purposeless hours spent in the musty old law office. Now, as always when troubled, his spirit recoiled upon itself, and looked rather to the past than to the future for solace.

And certainly the furnishings with which Harry Malleson equipped his rooms were of the past. The walls were lined high with dusty, calf-bound Reports; the long baize-covered table was ink-spotted and mangy; a huge black safe stood in a corner; on the safe rested a heavy, old fashioned letter press, with its iron wheel. The chairs were straight and uncomfortable, save the one cane-seated rocker with its wide table-arm. Backed against the wall near a window was the unwieldy roll-top desk in which Malleson kept papers which should have been in the safe. On the wall over the desk hung a motto, worked in dull green on a brown background---"We'll be damnably mouldy a hundred years hence."

As long as John could remember, the office had presented the same uninspiring aspect. The early attempts of Emma to brighten it got no encouragement from her husband.

"Don't worry about the dust, Em," he said. "Dust means precedents, and that's what the law is built on."

"What will your clients think?"

"Nothing, probably. Or if they notice that I don't take down the books they'll think that I've got it all in my head." And in truth Harry Malleson did have all that he ever seemed to need.

He kept no regular office hours now. Indeed his practice seemed to be forgotten. He slept late in the mornings, rarely left the house until after the lunch hour, and then as often as not spent the afternoon in a solitary ramble along the river. Emma told John of a curious whim in which her husband had indulged only the week before.

"He came in one evening with a great ball of strong twine, and about a hundred fishhooks. He worked for hours that night rigging what he called a 'trout-line.' It's against the law to use such a thing, but he said that didn't matter---he'd do it in the dark. And he was determined that I go with him about two in the morning to that broad stretch of the river near Leeper Island to see him set the line. I positively refused, but I did go back with him at daylight the next day to pull the line in. He'd boasted so about what he'd catch that he had me interested. It was downright funny! For when he hauled at the line only about a third of it came. It had caught on a snag or something and cut. And not a single fish! He swore horribly, but I couldn't help laughing."

The third day after his return John climbed the worn stairs to the office, and found his father at the desk, writing furiously. The pen leaped and darted over the paper at incredible speed. John recognized the method. Malleson had never hired a secretary; his letters were always personal, and whatever formal typing he required he had done for him by a public stenographer in the office below. She had with great difficulty learned to decipher his script, for his reports were never dictated.

"If I've something to say that matters," he had once explained, "I commit it to the tolerant silence of paper. If I heard the words I'd begin to disbelieve them."

His arguments in court or his public addresses were prepared in the same way---dashed off, white-hot, mordant, and then forgotten. When he spoke, his utterance had usually no resemblance to the written draft.

"Why do you waste your time writing at all, then?" Emma used to ask.

"I write the poetry of the case and talk the prose."

"All of which means just exactly nothing!" she retorted belligerently. But he only grinned.

For some minutes John watched his father, knowing that any attempt to interrupt would be futile. On the rare occasions when the lawyer found composition necessary, his attention streamed through a hermetically sealed channel to the scrawl before him.

The son found himself wondering a little at Emma's worry over her husband's health. The head that bent over the desk was gray, true enough, but with the dependable grayness of steel. From the lowered eyes an occasional glitter escaped, some errant spark from the hidden coil which at such moments shot its energy to the long facile fingers and tensed the cords of the thin wrist. Harry Malleson seemed a man not worn out by life, but worn into it, fitting its grooves perfectly, or aptly cutting new grooves of his own.

With a last fierce scratch he tossed the pen aside, and leaned back in the chair.

"Dad," remarked John, "you're a great relief to me. I'm glad you're here. You're the first man I've met since my return who hasn't said, 'Well, I suppose home will seem tame. You'll never be quite the same again.'"

Malleson grunted and asked:

"Why does that annoy you? Because it's true or because it's reiterated?"

"Well----I don't like to believe it's true. I'm already old enough to think that the best things were in the past."

To John's surprise his father nodded acquiescence.

"Besides," added the son, "I'm fed up with the romantic notion that returned soldiers are recreated souls, from whom all triviality has, been purged. I have never in all my days felt so completely trivial as now."

"A healthy conviction," remarked his father drily. "But it can be carried too far. You must set your egotism to work again, spinning illusions. Principally the illusion that you're of pressing importance to society. Your mother, for instance. That's what all women, and most men live by---the illusion of social necessity."

"From which I gather," replied John with a grin, "that you advise me to hump myself about and hunt a job."

"Oh, not immediately. But decide."

His son's answer was prompt.

"I've already decided. For good or bad I select this moth-eaten sanctum as my goal. I'll study some more law and trail along after you."

Genuine pleasure showed in Harry Malleson's face. He had never exercised his authority to influence John toward the law. His admonitions had at best been half-bantering bits of advice which left the boy doubtful of his real wishes. But now Malleson's tone was thoughtful and sober.

"I think that's right. You have a start, and I believe you have a sense of proportion---that is, of humor. Indispensable to the good lawyer, just as it is fatal to the good minister. You must realize always that what you're arguing is probably wrong, or at best incomplete, but that the same is true of the other fellow's argument. Remember it, and keep it to yourself, and you win your case."

"Well, offhand I'd say that doctrine's dubious," remarked John, "but I'll accept it. It's the way I feel---more than half wrong. Ever since . . . Say, Dad, does Mother grieve much about Dave?"

"No," responded Malleson deliberately, "not now, and not much actual grieving, even at first. You see, Dave was like one appointed to just the fate he encountered. There would have been something unnatural about his coming through alive. You might pity him---we did, of course---but we could hardly rebel at his death, as we would at yours, boy."

There was an unaccustomed measure of emotion in the last words.

"I understand the point," replied John thoughtfully. "It's cruel but logical. I wish I could settle the question so easily with myself. You know---you know, Dad, that I deliberately took the kid to meet that shell? I mean, we had no need to go. It's that that I can't get rid of."

"That's balderdash. You took the same chance yourself. And it's better to be killed in an escapade outside the line of duty than in the rut where you have to move. Lay that unction to your soul. Such extra-curriculum activities have been the source of whatever little glory the race has gained, when all is said and done."

"I never knew you were such a romanticist," said his son, in surprise. Malleson looked up quickly, then responded with a hint of grimness:

"The vaporings of old age." His gaze wandered about the book-lined walls, in a strange, thwarted restlessness that contrasted sharply with his habitual calm. The son, watching, felt in his father the moving of some uneasy spirit toward its crisis or its rest.

"Dad, are you well?" he asked presently.

Harry Malleson hesitated, then muttered, "No---I'm not. But don't worry."

For a time they sat in silence. The noise of the street penetrated but faintly; an occasional step on the stair approached, passed and receded, heating its measure through stillness like a trivial but inexorable metronome. To John’s troubled fancy the sound seemed to be clicking off the minutes of his father's life, while he sat by, helplessly waiting. An impulse to vehement denial stirred him, and he recoiled from its absurdity. In spite of their instinctive companionship, which now seemed deeper than ever, John knew that any word or act of his could touch the man only as youth can touch age---falteringly, saddeningly. He saw for the first time clearly, that the relationship would remain unchanged, no matter how many years might pass. His father's maturity was not to be approached by simply growing wing older; it was a more mysterious thing than accumulated experience. The conviction brought no humiliation, but rather a humble content. It was good to have before one's eyes an idol whose face was familiar, whose words were intimate, and whose eremite soul remained unexplored.

As he pondered on the matter, many of his father's common sayings seemed to take on new significance. Above all, he realized how incompletely he, the disciple, had grasped the doctrine of spiritual self-sufficiency. He had made it a catchword, a melodramatic slogan for his emotions to rally about. And he had understood it not at all. A sophomoric, self-important young fool. Thought complacently of himself as an atheist! Made an issue of the matter between himself and God! And why? Simply because his father quite sincerely was an atheist, so far as profession of faith was concerned . . . . Well, one thing at least seemed to be clearing up: a man of his age had better begin to believe and doubt, accept and reject, for himself. The other way lay laughter!

Again in civilian clothes, walking the familiar streets, meeting old friends, he found that the comforting normality of existence was losing its savor because of one conspicuous lack. He did not conceal from himself the knowledge that much of his indifference of the past week had been disguised impatience to see Mattie. She had suddenly become the vitalized point from which the future stretched on. Her long silence lost its menace and only made her the more desirable, through the challenge of perversity and the added charm of strangeness.

Early Saturday evening he rang the bell of the Joyce home. After an interminable wait, the door opened slowly, paused, and remained set at an inhospitable width. In the aperture appeared a face that hung against the gloom within like a pale, unwholesome vegetable. Stifling his disappointment, John spoke with unintentional gentleness. He was shocked at the old woman's physical deterioration and surprised by the malignant hostility in the dull eyes. It was incredible that this was the same considerate mother who used to desert the porch swing in the interests of young love, on spring evenings only a few years before.

"She isn't here."

Mrs. Joyce spoke with a note of triumph, and moved the door toward its closing.

"Does Mattie know I have come back?" The question was hasty, and as he realized, not calculated to soothe. He added:

"Mother thought she would be home for the week-end."

In Mrs. Joyce's expression both the hostility and the triumph increased. She pushed the door nearly shut, and delivered her shot with venomous satisfaction:

"Yes, she knows you're here. I wrote her not to come. And she wrote back that she didn't intend to." The door closed with a snap.

He said nothing that evening of his experience, partly because his disappointment was keener than he would admit, and partly because he still half expected that Mattie would come. She did not. Sunday passed quietly. John and his mother went to church, leaving Mr. Malleson slouched in his easy chair, surrounded by newspapers. Such shirking was a rare occurrence. He continued his reading while Emma adjusted her hat, with pats and tugs, before the mirror over the mantelpiece.

To John the little scene suddenly took on the symbolism of a pantomime, half meaningless, half revealing. On her way to the door Emma leaned over and kissed her husband lightly on the temple, and the son read into the simple act a sort of benedicite:

"There; I understand. You've been faithful ...."

The church was decked for the Easter service. Flanking the pulpit, lilies raised their bland, creamy faces above a row of humbler flowers. The choir-loft was swathed in an interlaced fabric of green. Light from the rose and gold window behind the organ poured a flood of gracious color over the heads of the choir and transfigured for the brief hour the waning, serious countenances of the elders, seated magisterially among the Easter plumage and fluttering fans of the first few rows.

For a time the familiar service impinged upon John's senses with a queer, blurred inconsequentiality; a subdued ceremoniousness remote from thought and purpose. It was like a half-forgotten fairy-play of childhood-gentle, naive, bloodless; something to be listened to and watched with a willing but indulgent mind. The tepid fragrance of the flowers, the tranquil tempo of the music, the soft rustle of hymnal pages, the careful, hushed movement of heads and hands, the guarded and unthreatened sanctity of the whole proceeding came to him as from a misty distance. His perceptions were still those of the soldier, deaf to undertones. Such insensitiveness is, in a way, a benefit from violence. There is a brutality in war beyond bloodshed; a brutality that is yet a blessing, for it lashes the soul awake. In the agonized recoil from man-made horrors the roughest soldier may for flitting instants attain a certain clairvoyance. At such times, when all about him humanity seems swirling in a ghastly, senseless doom, he is saved by the sudden miraculous revelation of innocent things that never change. Tree, bird and flower, the sea, the sky and the hills take on an arresting and passionate significance. Men and their little gestures become nonsensical, and the watcher is allowed to gaze with curiously intimate directness into the serene and deathless realities of the world about him. Doubtless for a time the faculty lingers. While it remains, perception is primitive. Shades, nuances, refinements mean nothing; truth exists only in what is simple and genre . . . . Worlds removed, John would have said, from the regulated propriety of the Presbyterian Easter service.

Yet gradually through his apathy a voice penetrated, going deeper with every word. It was not a lovely voice. The tones now and then grew husky, the syllables rolled and slurred. But profound sincerity was in it, and the indefinable note of authority that for years had made the congregation respect the ugly, pompous, toiling Dr. Thompson, both in his utterances from the pulpit and in his ministrations among his flock. And to-day he was reading the matchless story of the Death and the Resurrection.

As John listened the familiar words seemed to fall one by one with inexorable precision upon chords of memory, stirring them to a low, sad music. He forgot the puffing little man in the pulpit, the hushed congregation, the scent of the flowers, and was borne unresistingly back to a far place, where he seemed to be alone. A mysterious homesickness came upon him, and yet a comforting sense of familiarity hovered about like a guardian presence.

With wonder and pain the questionless heart of his childhood stirred. And the man, alien and humbled, watched as from beyond a garden wall the little boy within.

Harry Malleson tossed his cigar butt over the porch railing, and rose wearily to his feet.

"I'm going to turn in, my dears," he said, with a yawn.

"What, Dad! Only one cigar?"

"I’ve had a hard day," responded Malleson whimsically. "All those newspapers to read."

He kissed Emma's cheek, dropped a hand on John's shoulder, and walked heavily along the porch to the side door. His wife's "Good-night" sank cheerily into the silence.

John waited for her to speak. He knew that his father was sick, and he knew she could hardly be deceived. But he shrank from talking about it. The subject was like an ugly, obtrusive stranger, pushing his way into the tranquil household, upsetting its happiness, casting his shadow across its unguarded floors.

The May night whispered caressingly; the honey-suckle on the pillar shed its fragrance along the dim veranda; the bar of shadow cast by the ancient catalpa fell over the steps, darkening as of old the spot where he used to sit and dream, when his mother had called him in. The return of the past, which had so possessed him that morning, still lay strong on his heart. How like this night to long-ago nights! ---How like, and how different!

"You're weak and sentimental," his mind told him, but the pull at his heart remained. The absence of his father seemed to invalidate the scheme of things. It took on the nature of an ironic withdrawal, which left him, the son, in a place not his own. And the small figure of his mother, frail but somehow indomitable, grew close and comforting.

"Other things go, but she will remain," he thought, and again scoffed at himself for his softness.

If Emma worried about her husband she said nothing of it. Instead she talked of Mattie. And having heard John's account of his cool reception by Mrs. Joyce, she told him much that helped to explain it.

"The grudge she seems to hold against you, John, is the result of many things that you've nothing to do with. I think I understand it, from what she has often confided to me. You know years ago her husband left her. For a long time she grieved, but for Mattie's sake bore it bravely. She told me she never mentioned Mr. Joyce's name until Mattie was in her 'teens, and then only rarely. Meanwhile she lived a lonesome life, was sick lots of the time, and gradually her sorrow must have changed to a half-rational resentment that made her hard to get along with, and suspicious of people. But somehow she always trusted me. Finally, one time, I discovered why. She felt sorry for me, too! Do you know, she'd somehow got the crazy notion that I was lonesome and unhappy because"---Emma paused an instant, then went on resolutely ---"because Harry had the name of being an atheist and of making fun of all religion. She didn't see how I could live with such a man---and she began to hate him."

"Why, Mother, all that's simply crazy! What reason had she to?"

"I know, John, it's crazy---literally. I think she's been obsessed ever since---well, you know some women get queer at a certain time in their life and never recover."

John smiled in the darkness at his mother's old-fashioned reluctance to name the menopause.

"I begin to see why she looks upon the innocent me with such distaste," he remarked. "I'm my father's son, and I’m in love with Mattie. Ergo---unless she can stave me off somehow I'm sure to marry her daughter, convert her to godlessness, and probably desert her. It's an inevitable sequence."

Emma laughed with him, but protested:

"Don't be too hard. It's pitiable, too, you know ... And how about it, John? Are you going to marry Mattie ?"

"Watch me," he responded grimly.

MAY drew toward its close. The days became dry and breathless, the nights but little cooler, as the first layer of prairie heat settled over the land. The men donned palm beach suits and at lunch hour hurried about the hot streets, their hats in their hands; the women at mid-afternoon emerged in cool white, started the sprinklers on the lawn, and reclined on the porches within scope of whatever breeze the spray might encourage. On Sundays people sought the shade of the willows in Leeper Park, or wandered halfheartedly along the paths by the St. Joe, where the river cut the sandy earth with its cold dark sheen. It was a stream that never warmed, never relented, but moved indifferently and with graceful majesty over its deeps and round its rippled curves, drawing with it the affection and dread of these Hoosier folk, like leaves and weed-stems caught in its current.

Near the end of the month Mattie came home, but only for over Sunday. John had had no word from her, though he had written, in half bantering fashion, reproving her for cruelty to old and wounded friends. He had been careful ---or thought he had---to avoid all suggestion of estrangement. He knew that whatever might be their status it would not be revealed through letters; meanwhile he must assume nothing.

When he returned from the office late Saturday afternoon Emma told him Mattie had stopped, for only a moment, on her way from the station. She always walked the few blocks, and never failed to look in upon Mrs. Malleson.

"Good!" exclaimed John, "I'll phone her at once."

"She hasn't been here half an hour yet."

"No matter. I've been here nearly a month!"

His mother watched with a faint smile as he strode to the telephone. It was good to see his old directness back in play. She smiled still more as she overheard his talk, which seemed to her an echo of his old boyish self.

"Hello, Mattie . . . this is John . . . I’m coming to see you to-night . . . What? . . . I’m not? . . . Oh! you're coming here. Good! . . . To see Mother exclusively? . . . Try it! . . . Yes . . . All right . . . Good-bye."

He turned, complacent but puzzled.

"Well, I should say you wasted no breath," remarked Emma. "How did she sound?"

"Mm---don't quite know. Unusual. Gay, and determined as the devil. She didn't seem to care a continental whether I was here or not . . . . Now what do you suppose . . .?

"I s'pose nothing," laughed his mother, watching his perplexed expression. "Do your own supposing. An old woman like me can't understand you after-the-war-people anyway."

By the end of the evening John Malleson confessed to himself, freely and grimly, that his own understanding was no clearer, so far as Mattie was concerned. During her two hours with him and his mother he could only at flitting instances overcome the impression that the girl was an utter stranger.

At the outset he had flatly vetoed the suggestion that they remain on the veranda.

"Not on your life! It's too dark. I want to see you."

Her dark eyes mocked him as she turned to the lighted library.

"Ah, ha! Inspection. A military custom, I presume. Come in, then."

He stepped to the center of the room and drew herself rigidly erect, in exaggerated posture of attention. Her tensed breasts swelled the uniform to mature and seductive curves; her hair glimmered under the jaunty little cap; a smoky glow smoldered behind the fringe of lashes that lay across the uptilted face; her whole body expressed a leashed but passionate vitality. Involuntarily Malleson's hands moved toward her; he stifled a gasp and curbed himself sharply.

"At ease," he commanded, smilingly. "You pass inspection---bewilderingly. I---I wish I too was in uniform."

"Oh, you think it's only the uniform?"

His gaze glanced harmlessly off her sardonic armor of laughter.

"Chiefly," he replied deliberately, while his nerves tingled with a delicious sense of antagonism. He could have shouted for joy at the strange challenge.

Emma joined them. John talked little, but watched and listened, alert to catch the slightest clue to the girl's emotions. With Emma she was now serious, now gay, but always sincere; toward him she maintained the attitude of bold and mocking playfulness that angered and delighted him. Was it a pose? With a clinical coolness he set himself to decide. Only once during the evening did there recur a flash of the old, dependent fondness, and that flash was perilously sweet. Emma had mentioned his wound.

"It's well now---almost, though tiny slivers of bone still work their way out. I caught him bandaging it---didn't I, dear? And how awkward!"

Mattie leaned forward, her eyes grown suddenly wide and tender. But she saw him watching her, a quizzical little smile on his lips. A touch of color rose to her cheeks; she tossed back her head and laughed.

"You know I'm going to have you," he told her, as he bade her goodnight at her doorstep. "That's flat!"

"That's very flat, my lord!"

They shook hands. He had meant to be casual, but at the touch his fingers closed on hers roughly. She endured the pressure without protest or return.

"By all the gods!" he exclaimed; "look at me! Politely ---or at any rate, merely---shaking hands with you, when hundreds of times I've kissed you almost asleep---and will again."

"Oh, but not just now!" she begged, in feigned alarm.

He gazed at her soberly.

"No---not just now."

John had barely a word with Mattie the next day before she returned to Indianapolis. In spite of his impatience he had no stomach for the unpleasantness he would be sure to encounter from Mrs. Joyce if he called at the house. The woman's hostility was unreasoning, and therefore likely to run to recrimination, hysteria, God knew what. Any such exasperating and sordid business appeared doubly distasteful against the bloom of this strange new efflorescence which had kept the girl flaunting across his dreams through half the night.

He took her to the Sunday evening train. All the rationalizations in which he had indulged in the effort to orient himself to her attitude proved futile. In the matter-of-fact daylight, and engaged in the prosaic operation of catching a train, she remained the newcomer who had astonished him the night before.

"When are we going to have a chance to talk?" he demanded, as they scrambled from the taxi.

"What about?" Her eyes were full of a bland innocence which struck him as downright insulting.

"Damn it, Mattie, what's the sense in this? The pose gets tiresome---if it is a pose. And if it isn't---well, that's one of the things to talk about. Remember, I've known you since you could hardly toddle. You owe me sincerity at least."

She glanced down at the toe of her shoe, tapping the sidewalk.

"Oh---old times," she murmured, her voice charged with a contemptuous flippancy that contrasted oddly with the deep stillness of her eyes.

"Yes," he responded, gently again. "Old times and new. I want to talk about both. We must."

The toe continued to tap. She did not look up. A casual observer would have judged her a demure coquette, deliberately ringing the ancient changes. Doubtless the baggage-man, who was not only casual but impudent, did so observe her, as he stood grinning, hands on hips, waiting for the two to move from the path of his truck. Finally, muttering---"Dead to the world. Slush!"---he ostentatiously swung the shaft and dragged the creaking wagon past, casting them a side-glance of masculine contempt.

But John, in curious suspense watching the girl's expression, saw no flirtatiousness in it, but remoteness, and a veiled trouble. Again, as for the brief moment the night before, she became the familiar companion of his memories. Her woman's maturity vanished; the natty little uniform covered a child's body, and the hands that clasped the blue-beaded purse were thin and humble.

They stood silently while the train drew along the platform. Hurriedly she thanked him for bringing her to the station.

"I'll see you soon again," he muttered in her ear, as he helped her up the step. "This isn't going to do, you know."

With hands thrust deep in his pockets he stood scowling after her coach as it diminished down the track.