* * * * * The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in coffin-like black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The candles were burned to the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all at once amazingly empty. The last half dozen people were standing and laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison around Percy Lavin while he told a final good story when one of the guests who had departed some time before returned. Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and white silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of laughers stood near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from the inner house door by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne hurried to the guest, whose reason for returning she wished to know, though it so easily might have been only his forgotten cane. That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset. "May I speak with you a moment?" he asked at once. They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but deserted. "What's the matter?" she inquired, prepared by his face for news of trouble. "Mrs. Hawthorne, we've done it!" said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was on the verge of laughing hysterically. "Oh!" Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder why they should not without further to-do rejoice and triumph. "Well? What's wrong with that?" "Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it's deadly!" he exclaimed with conviction. "If it were a simple solution, why shouldn't it have been suggested before?" "It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you know." "But you, dear lady, can't be supposed to understand. Oh, it's either too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear world of ours the probability is that it's too bad. He was taken off his feet by his emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to offer--a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn't it, that he does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything--his career, his family, his country--and offer them up! To cut his throat for a kiss." "You're quite right; I can't understand," she hurried in. "What makes you say 'cut his throat'? Couldn't he go into some other business just as well as the army?" "All in the world he's fitted for is the army. Do you see that beautiful fellow going to America, for instance, and earning a living as a teacher of Italian, or as the representative of some tobacco interest? There is no way of earning a proper living over here, you know. Oh, I'm afraid he will feel, when he wakes up, like a deserter toward his country and an ingrate toward his family and even toward Brenda like a misguider of her youth." "But, look here, isn't there a chance that having each other will make up to them for everything else?"