When he went home for the Christmas holidays everybody was sending toys and sugar-plums to the Belgian war-orphans, with little notes from "Happy American children" requesting to have their gifts acknowledged. "It makes us so _happy_ to help," beaming young women declared with a kind of ghoulish glee, doing up parcels, planning war-tableaux and charity dances, rushing to "propaganda" lectures given by handsome French officers, and keeping up a kind of continuous picnic on the ruins of civilization. Mr. and Mrs. Belknap had inevitably been affected by the surrounding atmosphere. "The tragedy of it--the _tragedy_--no one can tell who hasn't seen it and been through it," Mrs. Belknap would begin, looking down her long dinner-table between the orchids and the candelabra; and the pretty women and prosperous men would interrupt their talk, and listen for a moment, half absently, with spurts of easy indignation that faded out again as they heard the story oftener. After all, Mrs. Belknap wasn't the _only_ person who had seen a battlefield! Lots and lots more were pouring home all the time with fresh tales of tragedy: the Marne had become--in a way--an old story. People wanted something newer ... different.... And then, why hadn't Joffre followed up the offensive? The Germans were wonderful soldiers after all.... Yes, but such beasts ... sheer devils.... Here was Mr. So-and-so, just back from Belgium--such horrible stories--really unrepeatable! "Don't you want to come and hear them, my dear? Dine with us to-morrow; he's promised to come unless he's summoned to Washington. But do come anyhow; the Jim Cottages are going to dance after dinner...." In time Mrs. Belknap, finding herself hopelessly out-storied, out-charitied, out-adventured, began insensibly to take a calmer and more distant view of the war. What was the use of trying to keep up her own enthusiasm when that of her audience had flagged? Wherever she went she was sure to meet other ladies who had arrived from France much more recently, and had done and seen much more than she had. One after another she saw them received with the same eagerness--"Of course we all know about the marvellous things you've been doing in France--your wonderful war-work"--then, like herself, they were superseded by some later arrival, who had been nearer the front, or had raised more money, or had had an audience of the Queen of the Belgians, or an autograph letter from Lord Kitchener. No one was listened to for long, and the most eagerly-sought-for were like the figures in a movy-show, forever breathlessly whisking past to make way for others.