Helen paused--her pen held lightly--then she rose and came toward him. Her face Northrup was never to forget. So might a face look that welcomed the dead back to life. Just for one, poor human moment, they could not speak, they simply clung close. After that, life caught them in its common current. The afternoon, warm and sunny, made it possible for the windows to be open wide; there were flowers blooming in a window-box and a cool breeze, now and again, drew the white curtains out, then released them with a little sighing sound. The peacefulness and security stirred Northrup's imagination. "It doesn't seem possible, you know!" he said. "Being home, dear?" Helen watched him. Every new line of his fine brown face made her lips firmer. "Yes. I'd given up hope, and then when hope grew again I was afraid to crawl back. You'll laugh, but I was afraid to come home and find things just the same! I couldn't have stood it, after what I learned. I would have felt like a ghost. A lot of fellows feel this way. It's all a mistake for our home folks to think they're doing the best for us by trying to fool us into forgetting." "Brace, we've tried, all of us, to be worthy of you boys. Even they who attempt the thing you mention are doing it for the best. Often it is the hardest way." They were both thinking of Kathryn. Monstrous as it might seem, Brace recalled her as she looked that day--pulling the shades of the automobile down! That ugly doubt had haunted him many times. Helen was half sick with fear of what would occur when Brace saw Kathryn. "I ought not keep you, son," she said weakly. "You ought to go to Kathryn. No filial duty toward me, dear! I'm a terribly self-sufficient woman." "Bully! And that's why I want to have dinner with you alone. I've got used to the self-sufficient woman--I like her." It was long after eight o'clock, that first evening, when Northrup left his mother's house. So powerfully hypnotic is memory that as he walked along in the bland summer night he shivered and recalled the snowstorm that blotted him out after his last interview with Kathryn. With all earnestness he had prepared himself for this hour. He was ready to take up his life and live it well--only so could he justify what he had endured. His starved senses, too, rose to reinforce him. He craved the beauty, sweetness, and tenderness--though he was half afraid of them. They had so long been eliminated from his rugged existence that he wondered how he was again to take them as his common fare. He paused before touching the bell at the Morris house. Again that hypnotic shiver ran over him; but to his touch on the bell there was immediate response. "Will you wait, sir, in the reception-room?" The trim maid looked flurried. "I will tell Miss Kathryn at once." Northrup sat down in the dim room, fragrant with flowers, and a sense of peace overcame his doubts.