doubt would be easily understood by other people. "How could I be expected to think of the regiment?" asked Winnie pathetically. "I declare I thought of everything else--that's why I told him. He doesn't mind all the great world, but he does mind half a dozen women and a dozen boys somewhere in India! People are queer, aren't they, Mrs. Lenoir?" But by now Mrs. Lenoir had been schooled; talks with both father and son had made her understand better, and, since the thing had to be thus, it was desirable that Winnie should understand also. "Well, Winnie, that may be all his regiment is to you--a pack of women and boys in India; indeed that's pretty much what I called it myself. But, in justice to Bertie, we must remember that to him it's a great--a great----" "A great what?" Winnie was looking malicious over her friend's hesitation. "Well, a great institution," Mrs. Lenoir ended, rather lamely. "An institution! Yes!" Winnie nodded her head. "That's it--and I'm absolutely fated to run up against institutions. They wait for me, they lie in hiding, they lurk round corners. And what a lot of them there are, to break one's shins over!" "They all come back to one in the end, I think," said Mrs. Lenoir, smiling. She was glad to hear Winnie's philosophizing. It was a fair proof that neither here was there a broken heart, though there might be some disappointment and vexation. "I was very hurt at first," she went on, "and it made me rude to the General. It's no use being hurt or angry, Winnie. We bring it on ourselves, if we choose to go our own way. Whether it's worth taking the consequences--that's for each of us to decide." "Worth it a thousand times in my case," said Winnie. "All the same I didn't in the least understand what it would be like. Only--now I do understand--I'm going to face it. Fancy if I'd had fewer scruples, and effected a furtive entrance into the regiment! What mightn't have happened?" Three days had elapsed from the date of Winnie's confession to the Major; they had changed the relative attitudes of the two women. Mrs. Lenoir had got over her disappointment and returned to her usual philosophy, her habitual recognition of things as they were, her understanding that with men their profession and their affairs must come first. Winnie had hardened towards her late suitor. Ready to be rejected on her own account, she could not bring herself to accept rejection on account of the regiment with meekness. After the great things she had defied, the regiment seemed a puny antagonist. All the same, little thing as it was, a mere dwarf of an institution compared with her other giant antagonists, it, not they, now vanquished her; it, not they, now held Bertie Merriam back.