but only on the avenue, when we girls were walking in a long line, dressed alike, two by two, guarded by dragons of teachers. But I'd lie awake every night and think of all kinds of things—his look, and the way his sword clanked against his boots. And twice I saw him at the opera, looking at me from one of the boxes filled with officers. You can't think how big I felt having him notice me—and you can't think how beautiful I thought he was. Little thrills ran up and down my spine every time I looked at him. Is that the way you felt when you looked at your silly actresses?"

"Maybe," said Leonard, grinning with the corner of his mouth unoccupied by the pipe, and staring out into the shadowy darkness. "Was that all?"

They were drawing near to London.

"Mostly," answered Marjorie, fingering the buttons on Leonard's sleeve. "Last time I saw him it was in the garden on the same bench in the sun. He came over the fence, and he told me that his regiment had been ordered to Berlin the next day."

"You knew more German then?" asked Leonard.

"Yes, I suppose so; but I didn't need to understand. It was all in the sun, and the air was all warm from the cut clovers, and his eyes were, oh, so blue! And—I don't know. He took off his helmet and put it on my head, and he took his sword out of the scabbard and he put it in my hand, and he said, oh, all kinds of things in German that I couldn't understand very well."

"He was probably asking you how much your dowry was."

"Maybe, but his eyes didn't ask me that. And that was all. I never saw him again, and I don't ever expect to."

"Should rather think not."

"Would you mind?"

"Certainly," said Leonard.

"They're horrible tyrants, English husbands," said Marjie, kissing his arm.

"Not so bad as German ones," he replied, putting his head down to hers.

The casements rattled. Into the little dark square of the compartment window peered a confusion of lights, the myriad eyes of a great city.

"Why, it's London!" cried Marjorie. "I'd lost all track of time. Hadn't you, Leonard?"

"No," he answered laconically, slamming down the lid of the tea-basket.

But Marjorie squeezed up against him and gave a little laugh. "Supposing it could be the same man, Leonard," she said.

"What man?" asked Leonard, snapping the lock.

"Why, the man of the Helmet—the Dying Gaul—and my man I've been telling you about."

Leonard looked at her, and for some reason his eyes flinched. "What difference would that make? He was German," was all he said.

It was a sultry evening. Flowers were being sold in profusion on street corners. Hurdy-gurdies played war tunes in the gutter. The streets were filled with soldiers in khaki and florid civilians in their summer clothes. Suddenly she remembered a passage in the Bible that always seemed beautiful to her, but now it seemed to have been specially written for her:—

"Where thou goest, I will go, And where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, And thy God, my God."

She walked as close to Leonard as she dared: "Thy people shall be my people, And thy God, my God."

The passers-by smiled at her and turned and stared after. "Awfully hard on a girl," they thought, touched by the rapt look on the young face.

"Oh, Len," she whispered, pulling at his arm, "I love all these people; I love England."

He smiled indulgently.

"They're all right," he assented; "I don't mind strangers, but I hate the thought of all the relatives we've got to face when we get back. There'll be Aunt Hortense and Uncle Charles. Mater'll have all the uncles and the cousins and the aunts in to bid me a tender farewell. Think of spending my last evening with you answering questions about how deep the mud is in the trenches, and what we get to eat, and what the names of all the officers in my mess are."

"And then they'll spend the rest of our precious time connecting them up to people of the same name in England," said Marjorie.

"Exactly," agreed Leonard. "Aren't grown-up relations beastly?"

"Horrible," said Marjorie, "but they've been awfully decent about letting me have you all of these four days."

To put off the evil moment of arrival they stopped at every shop-window and stared in, their faces pressed close to the glass.

All the way home, with eyes that neither saw nor cared where they were going, they talked to each other of their childhood. The most trivial incidents became magnified and significant when exchanged.

"That's just the way I used to feel, that's just the way I used to feel," they kept repeating, over and over again. The sweet, misty memories of their happy, happy lives, came gliding back into consciousness. The thoughts and yearnings, the smells, the sights and sounds, all the serenity of the immaculate, long childhood days. Walking side by side in the reverent dimness, intensely conscious of each other, they had that mysterious sensation of having done this before, of living a second time. The world was transfigured; they were aware of measureless rapture brooding close about them in the twilight of which they were a part—a rapture, a sense of enchantment, that people are only conscious of as children or when they are in love or in dreams.

Finally, deliciously weary, and full of the languor of the summer night, they retraced their steps and took the two-penny tube.

They arrived home late. The family were at dinner.

"We've missed two courses," said Leonard gleefully; "the aunts must be raging."

"Shall I dress up?" said Marjorie.

"Good God!" answered Leonard, "I go to-morrow at five. Don't wear anything that will make them think we're going to sit round and converse with Aunt Hortense all the evening. I'm going up to say good-bye to the boy."

Marjorie found him there, stretched out on Herbert's little cot, completely covering the little mound under the pink coverlet.

"Don't you come near, Marjorie; I've got Leonard all to myself," cried Herbert, who, like all the others, was jealous of Marjorie, but did not scruple to show it.

"Ha-ha! Who's jealous now?" said Leonard, putting his head down on Herbert's. Marjorie lay down on the quilt at the foot of the bed. Her restless eyes watched a light from the driveway scurry across the bed and zig-zag over the faces of the two brothers. Like a sudden flame struck from a match it lit a metal object on the shelf over the bed. Ah, it looked grim and incongruous in that peaceful English nursery! Once it had been one among a golden sea of helmets, sweeping across a great plain like a river. The sun smote upon gleaming bayonets, passing with the eternal regularity of waves. Last autumn the world had shaken under the tread of the feet marching toward Paris.

The light clung to the glittering object, and then scudded away. Marjorie's eyes kept closing. Suddenly, and oh, so vividly, there came the memory of another garden; the cold, brooding stillness of the winter air, and the sun sifting through the diamond windows of the summer-house, and shining on the dancing letters of the lesson-book and on his yellow hair. Then she heard Leonard's laughter and was back again in the present. How could he laugh like that! It was because he was so young. They were all so young!

"Good night, old man," said Leonard, pulling himself up from Herbert's bed; "don't forget me."

Three times Herbert called him back, and when Leonard returned and stood beside him, the little boy wriggled apologetically.

"Play with me," he said, plaintively.

"Play with you! I'll stand you on your head instead," said Leonard, and put his arm around Marjorie.

But Herbert continued to call to the emptiness.

Leonard and Marjorie paused on the landing, and he reached up and spread his hand over the face of the clock.

"Stop moving!" he said.

"You're just about three years old to-night," said Marjorie.

"I know—I know," he said. Suddenly, with an impulse and gesture of