With this sense of release came a sense of energy. I was given back to my mission; my mission was given back to me. That which for lack of a more humble term I can only call the spirit of consecration took hold of me again and made me its own. The aims for which the war was being fought were my aims; I had no others. When these objectives were won my life, it seemed to me, would be over. It would melt away in that victory as dawn into sunrise. It would not be lost; it would only be absorbed—a spark in the blaze of noonday. And as for love—well, after all, there was the moratorium of love. My lot in this respect—if it was to be my lot—would be no harder than that of millions of other men the wide world over. Love was no longer the first of a man’s considerations, not any more than the earning of a living could be the first. It might be a higher thing for her—a higher thing for me—to give it up. Turning these things over in my mind and wondering vaguely what might be awaiting me at the apartment, I said nothing to Lovey as we trundled homeward in a taxicab; nor did Lovey say anything to me. It was only when we got out of the lift and he had turned the key in our own door that he said, with sudden energy: “Slim, I’ll be yer servant right down to the very ground.” “Oh no, you won’t be, Lovey,” I returned, deprecatingly. “We’re fellas together. We’re buddies. We’ll be buddies as long as we live.” He slapped his leg with a cackle that was, as nearly as his old lungs could make it, a heartfelt, mirthful laugh. “There! Didn’t I tell you? That’s what I’ve been a-waitin’ for; and the Lord has give it to me at last. He can’t do much more for me now—not till He takes me ’ome, like.” He raised his sharp profile and sniffed. “I smell it, Slim—a kind o’ stuffy smell it is now—but I ain’t mistook in it. And now, Slim,” he went on, triumphantly, as he threw the door open and entered before me to turn on the lights—“and now, Slim, what you’re a-waitin’ for is—is waitin’ ’ere for you.” I knew it couldn’t be Regina that Lovey was caging in these overheated rooms, since she wouldn’t be sitting in the dark. _CHAPTER XXVIII_ It was not Regina Barry who was waiting for me, but it was the next best thing. Lovey stood off and pointed to it as it lay, white and oblong, on the sitting-room table. “Give it to me with ’er own ’and,” he said, mysteriously. “Druv up to the door and asked the janitor to call me down. Told me to tell you that it wouldn’t be at ’alf past four, as she says in the note, but at five, and ’oped you wouldn’t keep ’er waitin’.”