By this time I had lost all hopes of hearing from the Captain. I often thought of him and worried my poor brains trying to imagine what had happened to him; I kicked myself for not telling him flatly that night how much I loved him, because then I would have known by his silence that he wasn’t interested at all. But this ignorant suspense was bewildering and devastating and I escaped from it all by reverting to my previous type—I projected myself into Leon’s place and revived my never-dead tomboyish attitude and its interests. That was the frame of mind I was nourishing when the news of Leon’s confinement to camp arrived. I sympathized with Vyvy and tried to cheer up Auntie, who thought that going to France meant going to certain death, and my efforts were helped considerably that night when a second letter came from Leon, saying that he couldn’t possibly get away because “orders are orders in this damnable place, although we surely won’t go for a good many days yet and I’ll be lying around here all the week-end doing nothing at all when I could just as easily be enjoying myself in Wakeham!” You see, as soon as we learned that he probably wouldn’t be going overseas yet, we all began to wonder how his getting away could possibly be arranged, if only for a few hours. I felt sorry for the poor kid, and for Vyvy, with her party all planned for the next night and both of them so eager for this last farewell meeting. It didn’t seem reasonable to me that he could be only a hundred miles away and still be unable to spend just one evening in Wakeham with his Vyvy. She had got him into the War and now he couldn’t even get away long enough to collect a farewell kiss in reward. I decided that there had to be some way out.... Leon had to get to that party, if someone had to die for it! The next morning I drove down to the camp, carrying a suitcase containing one of his suits of civies, with cap, socks, shoes, shirts and everything. I planned to get there by noontime, find out what could be done and if worst came to worst, put my brilliant “last resort” idea into action, at the cost of my curly locks and perhaps my personal freedom. I would have had the haircut in Wakeham, but I decided that it would be bad luck: if I had it cut, Leon would manage to get a pass of some kind just to make my sacrifice in vain, for that was my luck. Not that I really wanted to carry out my great idea—I just entertained sneaking hopes. And besides I had to work very circumspectly in order that Aunt Elinor wouldn’t get suspicious, for I figured that although she could be depended upon after the deed was done, she wouldn’t approve of it beforehand. As it was, she thought I was insane to drive down there in a snowstorm on what had every indication of being a wild-goose chase.