“Good lord, no. Only been twenty-one a couple of weeks.” “How odd that must be! Twenty-one a couple of weeks ago. And you went to France and got shot. Singular child!” “Why singular?” “Oh, I’ve been amusing myself at Saranac--at a house party, with a social register and an army list. A war where eighty per cent. of the educated men--I mean the smart universities--the bloods under thirty all went and hid themselves. It’s not pretty.” “Aren’t you exag--” “Not in the least. I had fifty American officers convalescing at my husband’s place in Kent and half of them were freight clerks from Iowa. What can you expect when the American woman brings her son up to be a coward and his father makes him a thief? And naturally the women despise the men. Who on earth wants an American husband?” “They seem to find wives, somehow.” She coughed, rising, “Oh, travel’s expensive.” Then she gestured to the orange oblongs of the ballroom windows. “D’you think any one of those women would hesitate a minute between being the next lady of the White House or the mistress of the Prince of Wales? Of course not! Give Margot my love. Good-bye. Too chilly out here.” She rattled away. Gurdy dropped into the chair and stared after her. He should tabulate this woman at once with her romantic illusions of aristocracy and patriotism. Margot supervened and seemed to move across the moony stones of the terrace. He thought frantically of Colonel Dufford. He thought solidly of marriage for ten minutes. Beyond doubt he was in love with Margot. He stirred in the chair, repeating maxims. Passion wasn’t durable. He might tire of her. He argued against emotion and blinked at the gold lamps on the bastard French face of this house. He was too young to select sensibly, didn’t want to be sensible, suddenly. His pulse rose. He marvelled at love. In the morning he announced his present departure. At noon he had a special delivery letter from his youngest brother, Edward Bernamer, Junior, a placid boy of thirteen interested in stamp collecting. The scrawl was the worse for that complacency. “Dear Gurd, For the love of Mike come on home and help take care of Margot E. Walling. She has got mamma and the girls all up in the air. Grandfather is getting ready to shoot her. I heard him talking to dad about writing Uncle Mark to take her away. I sort of like her. Eggs and Jim think she is hell.” Gurdy came whirling east to New York and found Mark at the 45th Street Theatre, humming over the model for a scene of “Captain Salvador.” But plainly Mark knew nothing of any fissure in the sacred group at Fayettesville. He was busy rehearsing a comedy, had been to the farm only once. In any event Mark mustn’t be hurt. Gurdy took breath and delicately put forth, “I want you to do something damned extravagant, Mark.” “Easy, sonny. Just got the estimate for the mirrors at the Walling. Not more than ten thousand, please!”