she entered the door, and of how his face shone when she talked to him. After all, she told herself, there was something thrilling in having hands that had captured a machine-gun laboriously threading tiny beads for her, in having a soldier who had been decorated for courage stammer and blush in her presence.

"Well," said the Captain, who had been lazily observing her, "aren't you about through with your mental monologue?"

Eleanor roused herself with a start.

"Oh, I am sorry! I was thinking about my boys at the hospital. You can't imagine how I hate to leave them!"

The answer was evidently not what the Captain had expected. As long as his company of feminine admirers marched in adoring unison he was indifferent to their existence; but let one miss step and he was instantly on the alert.

"I haven't noticed any tears being shed over leaving me," he said, and the aggrieved note in his voice promptly stirred her humor.

"Why should I mind leaving you? You don't need me."

"How do you know?"

She looked at him scoffingly.

"You don't need anything or anybody. You've got all you want in yourself."

"I'll show you what I want!" he said, and, quickly bending toward her, he kissed her on the cheek.

It was the merest brush of his lips, but it brought the color flaming into her face and the lightning into her eyes. She had never been so angry in her life, and it seemed to her an age that she sat there rigid and indignant, suffocated by his nearness but powerless to move away. Then she got the car stopped, and announced with great dignity that she was nearly home and that she would have to ask him to get out.

Captain Phipps lazily descended from the car, then stood with elbows on the ledge of the door and rolled a cigarette with great deliberation. Eleanor, in spite of her wrath, could not help admiring the graceful, conscious movement of his slender hands with their highly polished nails. It was not until he had struck his match that he looked at her and smiled quizzically.

"What a dear little goose you are! Do you suppose that stage lovers are going to stand in the wings and throw kisses to you?"