It should have warned Sergeant Gray, lying sulkily on his cot through that bright spring day, the beef over his eye and attracting a multitude of flies, that no one else had suffered visible injury. The boys came and went blithely, each intent on his own affairs. United action had cleaned up the hallway and the stairs. But Sergeant Gray, picked out as Fate’s victim, lay and dozed and struck at flies and—waited. By night the swelling had gone, but a deep bluish shadow encircled the right eye. Frequent consultation of his shaving mirror told him that he would have the mark for days, but at least he could see. That was something. He got up after dusk and dressed in the new uniform. Then he wandered about the camp. He felt very lonely. Most of his intimates were on leave. Round the camp the men lounged negligently. Some one with a mandolin was strumming it, and from the theatre, where a movie show was going on, came the rattle of clapping hands. Sergeant Gray hesitated at the door, then he moved on. What he wanted was some one to talk to, a girl preferably. He wandered past division headquarters, where the chief of staff stood inside a window rolling a cigarette; past the bull pen, surrounded by its fifteen feet of barbed wire and its military police. At the edge of the camp he halted. From there one could see a brilliance reflected in the sky—the lights of the port of embarkation, ten miles away. Sergeant Gray sighed and sat down on the road near an automobile. And somebody spoke to him. “Can I take you anywhere?” asked the voice. It was young and feminine. Something that had been aching in Sergeant Gray’s deep chest suddenly stopped aching and leaped. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere in particular.” “I just thought”—explained the voice—“I’m waiting for the—for a relative and I might as well be taking people to the street-car line. The taxis have stopped.” A car leaving the camp threw its lights on her. She was small and young and had a pointed chin. Sergeant Gray got up. “It’s awfully good of you,” he said. “If it isn’t too much trouble I’ll go to the end of the line.” “Get in,” she said briefly. Sergeant Gray sat back in the little car and drew a long breath. “It’s rather small for you, isn’t it?” asked the girl, throwing in the clutch. “My brother has to fold up too. He’s in France,” she added. “That’s why I like to do things for the soldiers here. It’s like doing something for him.” Sergeant Gray pondered this. He considered it rather an unusual thing for a girl to have thought of. He considered that she was as nice as she was pretty. He also considered that she drove well. Sergeant Gray, who in his leisure hours practiced running a motorcycle with the side car in the air, paid her tribute of approval. “We’ll be over soon,” he said with a touch of pride. “You’d better not tell anybody that.” “Why? I rather think our being here tells the story.”