Colonel Fortescue sent word to Mrs. Lawrence that she could occupy her quarters until she was able to make some plan for the future. It seemed, however, utterly indefinite when Mrs. Lawrence would be able to plan anything. She lay in her bed or sat in her chair, silent, pale, and as weak as a child. The blow of her husband's desertion seemed to have stopped all the springs of action. Neither the chaplain, the post-surgeon, nor Mrs. McGillicuddy, singly or united, could rouse Mrs. Lawrence from the deadly lassitude of a broken heart. Both the chaplain and the surgeon had seen such cases, and nothing in the pharmacopoeia could cure them. Mrs. Fortescue, whose heart was not less tender from long dwelling on the airy heights of happiness and perfect love, was full of sympathy for Lawrence's unfortunate wife, and would have gone to see her, but Mrs. McGillicuddy, who delivered the message, brought back a discouraging reply. "She says, mum, as she don't need nothin' at all, and I think, mum, she kinder shrinks from the orficers' wives more than from the soldiers' wives." Anita, who was sitting by, went to her mother and, putting her arms around Mrs. Fortescue's neck, whispered: "Mother, let me go to see Mrs. Lawrence. I don't think she will mind seeing me. You and daddy are always telling me that I am only a child." Mrs. Fortescue took Anita in her lap, as if the girl were indeed the age of the After-Clap. "Do what you like, dear child," she said. "Girls like you can do some things that women can't, because you have the enormous advantage of not knowing anything." CHAPTER VI SOME LETTERS AND KETTLE'S ENLISTMENT Anita, who could plan things quite as well as if she were forty instead of eighteen, bided her time until the hour when Mrs. McGillicuddy was putting the After-Clap to bed. Then the girl slipped away and took the road to the long street of the married men's quarters. An icy fog swept from the Arctic Circle, enveloped the world, hiding both moon and stars, and made the great arc lamps look like little points of light in the great ocean of white mist. Every step of the way Anita's heart and will battled fiercely together. Broussard knew Mrs. Lawrence in some mysterious way. Perhaps he had loved her once; Anita was all a woman, and at seventeen was learned in the affairs of the heart. This woman, however, between whom and Broussard some strong link was forged, Anita knew not when, nor how, nor where, was ill and poor and suffering, and Anita's natural inclinations were merciful. Besides, she had been taught by her father and mother the great lessons of life in kindness and tenderness. She had seen her father give up a party of pleasure to walk behind the pine coffin of a private soldier, and her mother had robbed her greenhouse of its choicest blossoms to lay a wreath on a soldier's grave. By instinct, rather than sight, Anita stopped in front of the right door and met the chaplain coming out.