"It doesn't matter," said her husband, who was first a man and then a dean. He waved a hand in benign dismissal of the argument. "It's a great mercy," said he, "that she has married the man she loves instead of--well ... Marmaduke has turned out a capital fellow, and a credit to the family--but I never was quite easy in my mind over the engagement.... And yet," he continued, after a turn or two about the room, "I'm rather conscience-stricken about Marmaduke, poor chap. He has taken it like a brick. Yes, my dear, like a brick. Like a gentleman. But all the same, no man likes to see another fellow walk off with his sweetheart." "I don't think Marmaduke was ever so bucked in his life," said Mrs. Conover placidly. "So----?" The Dean gasped. His wife's smile playing ironically among her wrinkles was rather beautiful. "Peggy's word, Edward, not mine. The modern vocabulary. It means----" "Oh, I know what the hideous word means. It was your using it that caused a shiver down my spine. But why bucked?" "It appears there's a girl in France." "Oho!" said the Dean. "Who is she?" "That's what Peggy, even now, would give a good deal to find out." For Doggie had told Peggy nothing more about the girl in France. Jeanne was his own precious secret. That it was shared by Phineas and Mo didn't matter. To discuss her with Peggy, besides being irrelevant, in the circumstances, was quite another affair. Indeed, when he had avowed the girl in France, it was not so much a confession as a gallant desire to help Peggy out of her predicament. For, after all, what was Jeanne but a beloved war-wraith that had passed through his life and disappeared? "The development of Marmaduke," said the Dean, "is not the least extraordinary phenomenon of the war." * * * * * Now that Doggie had gained his freedom, Jeanne ceased to be a wraith. She became once again a wonderful thing of flesh and blood towards whom all his young, fresh instinct yearned tremendously. One day it struck his ingenuous mind that, if Jeanne were willing, there could be no possible reason why he should not marry her. Who was to say him nay? Convention? He had put all the conventions of his life under the auctioneer's hammer. The family? He pictured a meeting between Jeanne and the kind and courteous old Dean. It could not be other than an episode of beauty. All he had to do was to seek out Jeanne and begin his wooing in earnest. The simplest adventure in the world for a well-to-do and unattached young man--if only that young man had not been a private soldier on active service.