“Well, I don’t know. Considering the hordes of disillusioned veterans I’ve met this winter--” “At least they had a chance to get disillusioned in action. Something for their money. With me it’s just two years--practically three years--gone to pot, and a sort of feeling it isn’t worth while to go back at all. To college, I mean.” “You couldn’t start this time of year, could you?” “I suppose I could do something.” “It would be fun having you around until Fall--like old times.” Hal laughed shortly. “You’d care?” “I’ve had a good long spell of Thornhill alone, you know. Next year I shan’t mind, because I’ll be away at school myself.” “My Lord, Moira, have you anything more to learn?” “Oh, yes, I could learn to be useful, for instance.” “You manage to be most anything, if the notion strikes you.” “I’m not so crazy to go,” she mused. “I imagine it’ll be rather awful. Formalities, lady lecturers, highbrow girls with shell-rimmed glasses. They’ve been cramming education down the throats of the fashionable young for a generation and what’s the result? Country clubs, prohibition, and a beastly war.” “Cynical, eh?” “No more than you would be, if you’d done nothing but read newspapers these last two years. I suppose now they’ll all combine and squeeze everything out of Germany that she has left--just as the Persians and the Greeks did, and the kings in the Bible. And there’ll be a lot of moralizing--more than ever. Of course, you’ll be glad. The victor is always spoiled.” “Pooh,” he laughed. “You’ve got me wrong. I don’t give a damn what they do. Say, the only principles I have left are principles of horsemanship. I’m highly interested in the way you sit Elfin.” “Isn’t she a beauty!” “She’s a pretty horse. But I wasn’t referring entirely to the equine part of the combination.” It was the first real day they had had together since Hal’s discharge from camp the week before. The weather was like an Indian summer afternoon, one of those exceedingly mild days of February between spells of stiff cold. They had been galloping along the high road, when Moira suddenly pulled up and turned her horse into a meandering lane, so narrow that the stripped branches met in sharply accentuated patterns overhead against the sky. The fields were a monotonous, hard stubbly brown, except where pockets of soiled snow lay in the holes and under the protecting sides of hillocks. “Is Selden Van Nostrand coming out to-morrow?” asked Hal, after they had ridden a hundred yards in silence. “Yes.” “Does he come out often?” “Yes ... let’s go as far as Corey’s Inn for a bite. I’m famishing, aren’t you?” “I don’t like him. I suppose you know that.” “You’re not going to be like the rest of the patriots, are you? Get so you despise anybody with a critical mind?”