“I thought: ‘She’s bored with her husband and she’s trying to vamp me. I’ll have to be careful.’” Paula laughed delightedly. “That’s nice and frank . . . What else?” “I thought my coat didn’t fit very well and I wished I could afford to have Peel make my next one.” “You can,” said Paula. XVI As it turned out, Dirk was spared the necessity of worrying about the fit of his next dinner coat for the following year and a half. His coat, during that period, was a neat olive drab as was that of some millions of young men of his age, or thereabouts. He wore it very well, and with the calm assurance of one who knows that his shoulders are broad, his waist slim, his stomach flat, his flanks lean, and his legs straight. Most of that time he spent at Fort Sheridan, first as an officer in training, then as an officer training others to be officers. He was excellent at this job. Influence put him there and kept him there even after he began to chafe at the restraint. Fort Sheridan is a few miles outside Chicago, north. No smart North Shore dinner was considered complete without at least a major, a colonel, two captains, and a sprinkling of first lieutenants. Their boots shone so delightfully while dancing. In the last six months of it (though he did not, of course, know that it was to be the last six months) Dirk tried desperately to get to France. He was suddenly sick of the neat job at home; of the dinners; of the smug routine; of the olive-drab motor car that whisked him wherever he wanted to go (he had a captaincy); of making them “snap into it”; of Paula; of his mother, even. Two months before the war’s close he succeeded in getting over; but Paris was his headquarters. Between Dirk and his mother the first rift had appeared. “If I were a man,” Selina said, “I’d make up my mind straight about this war and then I’d do one of two things. I’d go into it the way Jan Snip goes at forking the manure pile—a dirty job that’s got to be cleaned up; or I’d refuse to do it altogether if I didn’t believe in it as a job for me. I’d fight, or I’d be a conscientious objector. There’s nothing in between for any one who isn’t old or crippled, or sick.” Paula was aghast when she heard this. So was Julie whose wailings had been loud when Eugene had gone into the air service. He was in France now, thoroughly happy. “Do you mean,” demanded Paula, “that you actually want Dirk to go over there and be wounded or killed!” “No. If Dirk were killed my life would stop. I’d go on living, I suppose, but my life would have stopped.” They all were doing some share in the work to be done.