It was at this point that he found himself most baffled in his relations with Wilmer. She made him think, but she parried every thought. She made him feel, but she checked every expression of that emotion. There were moments when he felt he could break through that reserve, but he never quite dared to try after his one attempt. Then, too, he was held in check by the conditions under which he was a guest here. Unvouched for, he was under even deeper obligations to his host than one accepted under the conventions. He was in honor bound not to violate the trust imposed upon him. He could advance no farther than he was asked. And Wilmer was not always easy to interpret. To-night he was more bewildered by her than ever. The net result of this evening had been to increase the tension between them while leaving everything at loose ends. He could not fairly blame her alone for that, however, while he was ragged in his own thinking. It began to look as though this clarifying process which had appeared so simple during the first few days of his flight from home was becoming decidedly complicated. If he had succeeded in clearing his mind of one kind of jumble, that of troop trains and transports, and the braggart tyranny of superior officers, it was only to fill it with another kind dominated by quite as autocratic a type of tyranny. It seemed that a woman’s eyes could, in their way, bully as effectively as any uniformed overlord with his jingling spurs. Allston began to pace the floor again. The wind was increasing in volume and driving scattered raindrops against the windows with the velocity of bullets. An occasional flash of lightning cut a blazing path through the dark like star shells, though the light was not held. And from a distance, beyond the mountains, he heard the low rumble of thunder so like the heavy guns that used to growl through the night over Flanders that at moments it was difficult for him not to believe he was back there again. This might have been one of those deserted houses in that old French town in which he had been billeted except that it lacked the marks of age. But it is the mood that counts in a picture; not the details. The Huns were attacking over Green Mountain and he was here to do his little part to drive them back. Barbarism was in a new clash with civilization. He felt this so keenly that his hand as another star shell burst went back to his automatic. And then came the voice again. This time it was more individualized. It sounded like the voice of Roxie Kester. That was absurd, of course, but the notion gave him a start. The girl had acted strangely when she came back to the kitchen from across the fields. It was queer that she had been out there at all except that young women were subject to odd spells of that sort. He had not been satisfied when he left her and might have been considerably worried had not other matters come in to occupy his attention.