idden orchestra
blared and the oblong polished space of which their own table formed
part of the border was thronged with dancing couples. Winona glowingly
surrendered to the evil spell. Wilbur merely looked an invitation and
she was dancing as one who had always danced. She tapped him with her
fan as he led her back to the table where their first course had
arrived. She trifled daintily with strange food, composing a sentence
for her journal: "The whole scene was of a gayety hitherto unparalleled
in the annals of our little town."

There was more food, interspersed with more dancing. Later Winona, after
many sidewise perkings of her brown head, discovered Merle and Patricia
Whipple at a neighbouring table. She nodded and smiled effusively to
them. Patricia returned her greeting gayly; Merle removed a shining
cigarette holder of remarkable length and bowed, but did not smile. He
seemed to be aloof and gloomy.

"He's got a lot on his mind," said Wilbur, studying his brother
respectfully.

Merle's plenteous hair, like his cigarette holder, was longer than is
commonly worn by his sex, and marked by a certain not infelicitous
disorder. He had trouble with a luxuriant lock of it that persistently
fell across his pale brow. With a weary, world-worn gesture he absently
brushed this back into place from moment to moment. His thick eyeglasses
were suspended by a narrow ribbon of black satin. His collar was low and
his loosely tied cravat was flowing of line.

"Out of condition," said Wilbur, expertly. "Looks pasty."

"But very, very distinguished," supplemented Winona.

Patricia Whipple now came to their table with something like a dance
step, though the music was stilled. She had been away from Newbern for
two years.

"Europe and Washington," she hurriedly explained as Wilbur held a chair
for her, "and glad to get back--but I'm off again. Nurse! Begin the
course next week in New York--learning how to soothe the bed of pain. I
know I'm a rattlepate, but that's what I'm going to do. All of us mad
about the war."

Wilbur studied her as he had studied Merle. She was in better condition,
he thought. She came only to his shoulder as he stood to seat her, but
she was no longer bony. Her bones were neatly submerged. Her hair was
still rusty, the stain being deeper than he remembered, and the freckles
were but piquant memories. Here and there one shone faintly, like the
few faint stars showing widely apart through cloud crevic