he project. Numbers of the girls she knew down
here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things
like that--or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do
so. Only they were cleverer than she at that sort of thing and could hope
for better jobs. They were in luck. They liked it--looked forward to a
life of it as one full of engaging possibilities. But to Mary it was
nothing, she hardly pretended, but a forlorn last shift. If one couldn't
draw nor write nor act nor develop some clever musical stunt, what else
was there for a girl to do?

"Well, of course," said Rush, in a very mature philosophical way and
lighting a cigarette pretty deliberately between the words,--"of course,
what most girls do, is--marry somebody." Then he stole a look around at
his sister to see how she had taken it.

There was a queer look that almost frightened him in her blue eyes. Her
lips, which were trembling, seemed to be trying to smile.

"That's father's idea," she said raggedly. "He's as anxious now that I
should marry somebody--anybody, as he was that I shouldn't five years
ago--before he found Paula. You see I am so terribly--left on his hands."

There was, no doubt, something comical about the look of utter
consternation she saw on her brother's face, but she should not have
tried to laugh at him for a sob caught the laugh in the middle and swept
away the last of her self-control. She flung herself down upon the divan
and buried her face in one of the pillows. He had seen men cry like that
but, oddly enough, never a woman. What he did though was perhaps as much
to the point as anything he could have done. He sat down beside her and
gathered her up tight in his arms and held her there without a word until
the tempest had blown itself out. When the sobs had died away to nothing
more than a tremulous catch in each indrawn breath, he let her go back
among the pillows and turn so that she could look up at him. By that time
the sweat had beaded out upon his forehead, and his hands, which had
dropped down upon her shoulders, were trembling.

"Well," she asked unsteadily. "What do you think of me now?"

He wanted to bend down and kiss her but wisely he forbore. "It's easy to
see what's the matter," he said. "This war business you have been doing
has been too much for you. You're simply all in." Then happily he added,
"I'd call you a case of shell-shock."

She rewarded that with a washed-out smile. "What