The newsboy’s eerie eyes re-focused to the soldier’s vision. It had come to him that this boy, other boys, loved the Abbey as he had. For an instant he realized the linked chain of life. He saw a passing torch. Then he got into his overcoat. Shrinking a little as one does who leaves home for the darkness and the cold, the young soldier passed out from Westminster. Snow was falling over London; a great blur of zig-zagging flakes.... [5] Copyright, 1922, by _The Junior League Bulletin_. Copyright, 1923, by Susan M. Boogher. THE HELPLESS ONES[6] By FREDERICK BOOTH (From _Broom_) Eddie Gordon sprawled face upward on the living-room couch, asleep. His head was at the foot of the couch, hanging partly over the edge, and his shod feet lay nearly buried where the pillows and his overcoat were jumbled together. One arm hung over the side of the couch, and his hand, crumpled against the floor, lying limp in the shadow, resembled a cast-off gray glove. He lay so still with his clothes all tumbled and his head turned and hanging back against one shoulder, one might have thought him dead. But he only slept. At six o’clock a lively step sounded in the hall. A key snapped in the lock. The door opened and Sally Gordon came in. She turned her head deliberately toward the couch as she closed the door. A sigh, rather tremulous but brief, whispered in the gloom. She went quickly to the table in the middle of the room, felt about for a match, and lighted the gas chandelier. Without looking again toward the couch she removed her overcoat and hat, went into the bathroom, turned high the gas and washed her face and hands, vigorously brushing the ink-stains from her fingertips. She turned from the bathroom into the bedroom, turned up the light there, and brushed her hair with soft, slow strokes. She touched her face rather indifferently with a powder-puff, and stood then stroking her eyebrows with the tips of her fingers, looking long into the mirror. She gazed at her reflection and her face wore a look of pleasure. Once with her palm she smoothed back the hair from her forehead with a slow, caressing stroke, as one would stroke back the hair from the forehead of a child. She regarded herself steadily with the unaffected and unconcealed tenderness with which she would have regarded a child. At last, reluctantly, she turned down the light and walked back into the living room.