All the time he was bathing his tired, dirty face and cold, rough hands in the warm, sweet-scented soap-suds, and wiping them on the fragrant towel, even while he stood in front of the mirror all polished to reflect the visage of Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, and brushed his close-cropped curls till there was not a hint of wave left in them, he was hardening himself to meet Girl in the concrete and get back a return for what she had done to his life. Then, with a last final polish of the brush and a flick of the whisk-broom over his discouraged-looking uniform, he set his lips grimly, and went down-stairs, taking the precaution to fold his cap and put it into his pocket, for he might want to escape at any minute, and it was best to be prepared. CHAPTER III Mary Amber was bearing in the great platter of golden-brown turkey when he first saw her, and had not heard him come down. She was entirely off her guard, with a sweet, serious intentness upon her work and a stray wisp of gold hair set afloat across the kitchen-flushed cheek. She looked so sweet and serviceable and true, with her lips parted in the pleasure of the final completion of her task, that the soldier was taken by surprise and thrown entirely off his guard. Was this the false-hearted creature he had come to fight? Then Mary Amber felt his eyes upon her as he stood staring from the open hall door, and, lifting her own clear ones, froze into the opponent at once. A very polite opponent, it is true, with all the grace of a young queen, but nevertheless an opponent, cold as a young icicle. Miss Marilla with bright eyes and preternaturally pink cheeks spoke into the vast pause that suddenly surrounded them all, and her voice sounded strangely unnatural to herself. “Dick, this is Mary Amber; I suppose you don’t remember her.” And the young soldier, not yet quite recovered from that first sweet vision of Mary Amber, went forward with his belligerence to woman somewhat held in abeyance. “You--have changed a good deal since then, haven’t you?” he managed to ask with his native quickness to say the right thing in an emergency. “A good many years have passed,” she said, coolly putting out a reluctant hand to please Miss Marilla. “You don’t look at all as you did. I never should have known you.”