come to your house in the evening as usual. Is that all right?"

The car sped into Albany and the man went to her door with the girl and
left her with few words more and those about commonplace subjects. As
he swung down the street he went over the episode in his mind, and
dissected it and dwelt on words and phrases and glances, and drew
conclusions as lovers have done before, each detail, each conclusion
mightily important, outweighing weeks of conversation of the rest of the
world together. At last he shook his head and set his lips.

"It's not honest." He formed the words with his lips now, a summing up
of many thoughts in his brain. The brain went on elaborating the text.
"She thinks I'm brave; she thinks it's easy for me to face enlisting,
and the rest. She thinks I'm the makeup which can meet horror and
suffering light-heartedly. And I'm not. She admires me for that--she
said so. I'm not it. I'm fooling her; it's not honest. Yet"--he groaned
aloud. "Yet I may lose her if I tell her the truth. I'm afraid. I am. I
hate it. I can't bear--I can't bear to leave my job and my future, just
when it's opening out. But I could do that. Only I'm--Oh, damnation--I'm
afraid. Horror and danger, agony of men and horses, myself wounded
maybe, out on No Man's Land--left there--hours. To die like a dog. Oh,
my God--must I? If I tell it will break the little hold I have on her.
Must I go to this devil's dance that I hate--and give up her love
besides? But yet--it isn't honest to fool her. Oh, God, what will I do?"
People walking up State Street, meeting a sober-faced young man, glanced
at him with no particular interest. A woman waiting on a doorstep
regarded him idly.

"Why isn't he in uniform?" she wondered as one does wonder in these days
at a strong chap in mufti. Then she rebuked her thought. "Undoubtedly