“That is fatalism! Perhaps it is the right soldier spirit,” she murmured. Then she turned to face him again and her countenance was quietly radiant. “But why should we who stop at home add to your burdens? We should send you away with a smile.” “I wonder!” he exclaimed. “I wonder if we fellows ought not to go away with a smile--to furnish those we leave behind with courage? Those we leave behind must do our work. War is waste, you know, when all is said and done. I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things straight here,” and he smiled warmly again as his hand once more sought hers. “Write to me,” and he told her how to address him through the War Department. “Good-bye!” He wheeled swiftly and marched to the door. His upright carriage and squared shoulders made his back look almost strange to her. She stood before the desk leaning against it, her hands clinging tightly to its edge. Her knuckles were perfectly white from the pressure of her hands upon the wood--that grasp which actually kept her from falling. But her face showed none of her terror and weakness. He turned at the door to smile and nod to her again. The image he took away in his mind was of her perfectly composed, smiling face. And again it was the memory of Ethel Clayton, not of Helen Fuller, that he carried away as the Girl He Left Behind. CHAPTER XIII THE AWAKENING Frank Barton had gone to the Front. He would be where there was battle, murder, and sudden death! War had become a horrid, living reality to Ethel Clayton. She heard that Morrison Copley had been in town to bid his mother good-bye and had gone away, too, bound for the transport. Likewise that Charlie Bradley, that hulking fellow who had been so notorious about town, supposedly had sailed at the same time Barton had gone to France. Ethel had occasion to pass the Fuller house within the week. It was shuttered and empty looking. The _Clarion_ had told, in a column and a half, of the last reception tendered Helen Fuller and her mother before their departure. Grandon Fuller was living at the Bellevue and seemed rather relieved than otherwise, so people said, that his wife and daughter had gone abroad. But Ethel did not scoff now--she had never done so openly--at the idea of flighty Helen Fuller settling down to Red Cross work. Secretly she wished that she, too, were on the way to France. Suppose Frank Barton should be wounded! Some woman would attend him in the hospital. It might even fall to Helen’s lot. Had Ethel gone to France it might be her fate to nurse Barton. She felt a sudden and bitter distaste for her work in the offices of the Hapwood-Diller Company. The drab business affairs of every day disgusted her. Although she neglected nothing, Ethel had no satisfaction in what she did.