Fliss leaned on two unwrinkled elbows and looked at him. “Look here, Dick, if you’d been killed over there----” “Instead of hanging around on this side nearly killing myself.” “Poor Dick! It was rotten luck. But it wasn’t your fault they wouldn’t send you over. Or maybe it was; you were too useful on this side. But listen! If you had gone over and been killed do you think your soul would still be hanging around glooming because a few people were trying to amuse themselves? You would not!” “I would not!” grinned Dick cheerfully. “That’s what I told Cecily once. Cecily is in grave danger of getting too serious. With all those babies----” “Don’t over-count, now.” “Oh, Dick!” said Fliss, patting his hand ever so lightly with her slim glove. “Come on and play once in a while! You really mustn’t drop us, Dick, even if I am frivolous. For Matthew’s sake you ought to stand by. He considers you and Cecily the high spots in our whole list of friends.” “Oh, I see Matthew every day,” protested Dick. “I suppose you do, but Matthew doesn’t see Cecily and he misses it when he doesn’t. He says so. He likes to talk to her. I’ve always been jealous of her and rather glad you saw her first.” “Don’t be foolish, Fliss.” “As you say. Well, it’s been nice to see you. No, I must pay for my own lunch. It makes our lunching together so definitely respectable.” It ran through Dick’s mind that afternoon at intervals that perhaps he and Cecily were getting a bit too domestic. He decided to take the matter up with her. There had been a time, immediately after his disappointing war service--a service which had kept him from going overseas because he was found to be immensely useful in training camps on his own side of the ocean--when Dick had felt like plunging into society a bit more deeply than he had ever done since his marriage; when the allurement of light talk and loose manners had been strong for a few months. But the imminent coming of their third child had been announced and Cecily herself was too thoroughly out of sympathy with moods of lightness to even have him suggest that she join in them. She herself had been willing to make any necessary sacrifice during the war. She had waited, during the year and a half when the United States was at war, to see Dick go at any moment to France and to death. She had maintained herself in a continual state of sacrifice. The evils of the world and the crusading spirit had pressed upon her. That she had not been called upon for personal sacrifice did not mean that she could alter the attitude in which she was ready for sacrifice. And the seriousness of childbearing again had weighed her down. “Yes,” thought Dick, “we’re getting a bit heavy.”