George was relieved, but Lambert, it was clear, resented the situation, blamed it on Sylvia, and couldn't wholly refrain from expressing his disapproval. "No necessity for it in the first place. Can't see why she picked him, why she does a lot of things." "Spoiled!" George offered with a happy grin. "Prefer to say that myself," Lambert grunted, "although God knows I'm beginning to think it's true enough." IV George doubted if he would see Sylvia at Plattsburgh at all, so frequently was her visit postponed. Perhaps she preferred to cloister herself really now, experiencing a sense of shame for the blow circumstances had made her strike at one who had never quite earned it; yet when she came, just before the end of camp, he detected no self-consciousness that he could trace to Blodgett. Lambert and he arrived at the hotel late one Saturday afternoon and saw her on the terrace with her mother and the Alstons. For weeks George had forecasted this moment, their first meeting since she had bought back her freedom at the expense of Blodgett's heart; and it disappointed him, startled him; for she was--he had never fancied that would hurt--too friendly. For the first time in their acquaintance she offered her hand willingly and smiled at him; but she had an air of paying a debt. What debt? He caught the words "Red Cross," "recreation." "Rather faddish business, isn't it?" he asked, indifferently. He was still intrigued by Sylvia's manner. A chorus attacked him. Sylvia and Betty, it appeared, were extreme faddists. Only Mrs. Planter smiled at him understandingly from her eminent superiority. As he glanced at his coarse uniform he wanted to laugh, then his temper caught him. The debt she desired to pay was undoubtedly the one owed by a people. He wanted to grasp her and shout in her ear: "You patriotic idiot! I won't let you insult me that way." "We have to do what we can," she was saying vehemently. "I wish I were a man. How I wish I were a man!" If she were a man, he was thinking, he'd pound some sensible judgments into her excited brain. Or was all this simply a nervous reaction from her mental struggles of the past months, from her final escape--a necessary play-acting? He couldn't manage a word with her alone before dinner. The party wandered through grass-floored forest paths whose shy peace fled from the approach of uniforms and the heavy tramp of army boots. He resented her flood of public questions about his work, his prospects, his mental attitude toward the whole business. Her voice was too kind, her manner too sweet, with just the proper touch of sadness. She wasn't going to spare him anything of the soldier's due. Since he was being fattened, presumably for the butcher, she would turn his thoughts from the knife---- He longed for the riding crop in her fingers; he would have preferred its blows.