regions, to draw his bath and lay out his things and generally make himself a nuisance. He will not permit Mrs. O'Garrity to dress him."

"Oh, now, Captain Leeds—well then, Leonard dearie, you bad boy," wailed the old woman reproachfully. "Mr. Jakes has gone to the war, as has likewise all the men in the house, and a good riddance it is, too. There was a time when you weren't too grand to let your poor old Nannie wait on you. Why, Miss Marjorie, I remember the time when he couldn't—"

"No reminiscences!" broke in Leonard, eyeing Nannie suspiciously. "You have had so much experience with men you ought to know how they hate it. Why, Marjorie, do you realize that Nannie has had five husbands?"

"Oh, Master Leonard, indade, it is only three!" cried Nannie, horrified.

"Seven," Leonard insisted; "it's a compliment. It only shows how fascinating you are with the polygamous sex. It was seven, only two never showed up after the wedding. I was to be the eighth, Marjie, only you came in between us."

"Master Leonard, I could smack you for talking like that! Don't listen to 'im, Miss Marjorie."

"Cheer up, old Nannie," continued Leonard; "there's still Kitchener. He's a bachelor and a woman-hater, but then, he's never met you, and he's even a greater hero than I am."

Nannie, aghast but delighted, advanced toward Leonard, shaking her gray curls. "H'm, h'm. Woman-haters, you say. I never met one, indade." Then, very coaxingly, "Didn't you bring your old Nannie a souvenir from the war?"

"Rather," said Leonard, indicating with his chin the rent on his shoulder. "How about this?"

"How about that?" said Nannie, her old eyes in their deep furrows gleaming with malice.

From behind her broad back she drew forth a round metal object that flashed in the firelight.

"It's a German helmet!" cried Marjorie.

"I want it!" shouted Herbert, stretching up his arms for the flashing plaything.

"It's mine," coaxed Marjorie, trying to wrest it from Nannie.

Leonard put out a swift hand, and held it aloft by the spike.

"Let me try it on," wheedled Marjorie, coaxing down his arm.

"You look like a baby Valkyrie," said Leonard, placing the helmet on her head; but he frowned.

Marjorie regarded herself in the mirror.

"This belonged to an officer of the Prussian guard," she said.

"It did. How did you know?"

Marjorie continued to stare at herself in the mirror as if she saw something there behind her own reflection. "The very first man who was ever in love with me wore a helmet like this," she said, suddenly, lifting enigmatic and mischievous eyes to Leonard.

"How many have there been since?" Leonard smiled, lazily.

"I can remember only the first and the last," said Marjorie.

Leonard laughed, but he could not see Marjorie's face. She was standing looking down at the gold eagle-crest, holding the helmet in both hands, carefully, timidly, as if it were a loaded weapon that might go off.

"Where did you get it, Len?" she asked, gravely.

"There's a crop of them coming up in France this summer," said Leonard.

"But seriously, Len?"

"Seriously, Marjorie." He took the helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. "Lord knows, I'm not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly packed it in my kit."

Marjorie drew a deep breath. "Oh, Len," she whispered, staring at the helmet. "How does it feel to kill a man?"

Leonard, smiling, shifted his position and answered, "No different from killing your first rabbit, if you don't sit down on the bank and watch it kick, and write poetry. Besides, you always have the pleasure of thinking it's a German rabbit."

"Oh, Len!"

"You're just one in a great big machine called England. It isn't your job to think," Leonard said. "For God's sake, lamb, don't cherish any fool Yankee pacifist notions. We are going to beat the Germans till every man Fritz of them is either dead or can't crawl off the field." His black fingers closed over Marjorie's. "Remember, after to-night you're an Englishwoman. You can't be a little American mongrel any more; not until I'm dead, anyway. Now I've got you, I'll never let you go!" He showed his teeth in a fierce, defiant smile, in which there was pathos. He knew what a life in the Dardanelles was worth. He put his cropped head close to Marjorie's. "Do you hate me for that, Marjie?"

Marjorie, pressing against him, felt the strength of his gaunt shoulder through his coat. A sense of delicious fear stole over her, and the savage which lies close to the surface in every woman leaped within her.

"I love you for it!" she cried.

"Don't rub your head against my coat," murmured Leonard; "there's bugs in it."

They both laughed excitedly.

II

Two hours later the wedding took place in the church where Leonard had been baptized and confirmed. Little Herbert thought he had never been to such a strange party. He didn't care if he never went to one again. No one was dressed up but himself. His mother and father and Marjorie wore their everyday clothes, but their faces were different. He wouldn't have believed it was a party at all, except for their faces, which wore an expression he associated with Christmas and birthdays.

The church was dark, and it seemed to Herbert so vast and strange at this late hour. Candles gleamed on the altar, at the end of a long, shadowy aisle. Their footsteps made no sound on the velvet carpet as they walked under the dim arches to the front seat. His aunts and his uncles and his brother's big friends from the training camp seemed suddenly to appear out of the shadows and silently fill the front rows. In the queer light he kept recognizing familiar faces that smiled and nodded at him in the dimness. Even Miss Shake and Nannie looked queer in the pew behind. Nannie was dressed in her "day-off" clothes. She was crying. Herbert looked about him wonderingly: yes, Miss Shake was crying, too—and that lady in the black veil over there: oh, how she was crying! No; he didn't like this party.

Through a little space between his father's arm and a stone pillar he could see Leonard's back. Leonard was standing on the white stone steps, very straight. Then he kneeled down, and Herbert heard his sword click on the stone floor. The minister, dressed in a white and purple robe, with one arm out-stretched, was talking to him in a sing-song voice. Herbert couldn't see Marjorie, the pillar was in the way; but he felt that she was there. Leonard's voice sounded frightened and muffled, not a bit like himself, but he heard Marjorie's voice just as plain as anything—

"Till death us do part."

Presently the choir began to sing, and his mother found the place in the hymn-book. Herbert couldn't read, but he knew the hymn. Each verse ended,—

Herbert looked on the hymn-book and pretended he was reading. The book trembled. Leonard and Marjorie were passing close to the pew. They looked, oh, so pleased! Leonard smiled at his mother, and she smiled back. She lifted Herbert up on the seat and he watched them pass down the dark aisle together and out through the shadowy doorway at the very end. The little boy felt a vague sensation of distress. He looked up at his mother and the distress grew. She was still singing, but her mouth kept getting queerer and queerer as she came to the line,—

He had never seen his mother cry before. He didn't suppose she could cry. She was grown up. You don't expect grown-up people, like your mother, to cry—except, of course, Nannie and Miss Shake.