were left, and they seemed to
be waiting only for change. Her resolution did not falter; she was
merely practising a trained discretion. She was going to buy a pair of
satin dancing slippers though the whole world should look upon her as
lost. Too long, she felt, had she dwelt among the untrodden ways. As she
had confided to her journal, the placid serenity of her life had become
a sea of mad unrest. Old moorings had been wrenched loose; she floated
with strange tides. And Wilbur Cowan, who was going to war, had invited
her to be present that evening at the opening of Newbern's new and
gorgeous restaurant, where the diners, between courses and until late
after dinner, would dance to the strains of exotic and jerky music,
precisely as they did in the awful city.

Winona had not even debated a refusal. The boy should be gratified. Nor
did she try to convince herself that her motive was wholly altruistic.
She had suddenly wished to mingle in what she was persuaded would be a
scene of mad revelry. She had definitely abandoned the untrodden ways.
She thought that reading about war might have unsettled her ideals.
Anyway, they were unsettled. She was going to this place of the gay
night life--and she was going right!

It was while she still waited, perturbed but outwardly cool, that the
absorbed Sharon Whipple brushed her shoulder. She wondered if her secret
purpose had been divined. But Sharon apparently was engrossed by other
matters than the descent into frivolity of one who had long been
austere.

"Well," he said, beaming on her, "our boy is going over."

Winona was relieved.

"Yes, he's off, but he'll come back safe."

"Oh, I know that! Nothing could hurt him, but I'll miss the skeesicks."
He ruminated, then said pridefully: "That boy is what my son would have
been if I'd had one. You can't tell me any son of my get and raising
would have talked about his reactions when this time come!"

Winona winced ever so slightly at this way of putting it, but smiled
valiantly.

"Publishing magazines full of slander about George Washington, and this
new kind of stubby-ended poetry!"

"It is very different from Tennyson," said Winona.

"The other one's a man," went on Sharon. "You remember when you was
worried because he wouldn't settle down to anything? Well, you watch him
from now on! He hasn't got the book knowledge, but he's got a fine
outdoors education, and that's the kind we need most. Don't you see that
fine look