countered Captain Vane
Thesel, with Helen Wrapp on his arm. Her red hair, her green eyes, and
carmined lips, the white of her voluptuous neck and arms, united in a
singular effect of allurement that Lane felt with scorn and
melancholy.

Helen nodded to Blair and Lane, and evidently dragged at her escort's
arm to hold him from passing on.

"Look who's here! Daren, old boy--and Blair," she called, and she
held the officer back. The malice in her green glance did not escape
Lane, as he bowed to her. She gloried in that situation. Captain
Thesel had to face them.

It was Blair's hand that stiffened Lane. They halted, erect, like
statues, with eyes that failed to see Thesel. He did not exist for
them. With a flush of annoyance he spoke, and breaking from Helen,
passed on. A sudden silence in the groups nearby gave evidence that
the incident had been observed. Then whispers rose.

"Boys, aren't you dancing?" asked Helen, with a mocking sweetness.
"Let me teach you the new steps."

"Thanks, Helen," replied Lane, in sudden weariness. "But I couldn't go
it."

"Why did you come? To blow us up again? Lose your nerve?"

"Yes, I lost it to-night--and something more."

"Blair, you shouldn't have left one of your legs in France," she said,
turning to Blair. She had always hated Blair, a fact omnipresent now
in her green eyes.

Blair had left courtesy and endurance in France, as was evinced by the
way he bent closer to Helen, to speak low, with terrible passion.

"If I had it to do over again--I'd see _you_ and _your_ kind--your
dirt-cheap crowd of painted hussies where you belong--in the clutch of
the Huns!"

CHAPTER IX

Miss Amanda Hill, teacher in the Middleville High School, sat wearily
at her desk. She was tired, as tired as she had ever been on any day
of the fifteen long years in which she had wrestled with the problems
of school life. Her hair was iron gray and she bent a worn, sad,
severe face over a mass of notes before her.

At that moment she was laboring under a perplexing question that was
not by any means a new one. Only this time it had presented itself in
a less insidious manner than usual, leaving no loophole for charitable
imagination. Presently she looked up and rapped on her desk.

"These young ladies will remain after school is dismissed," she said,
in her authoritative voice: "Bessy Bell--Rose Clymer--Gail
Matthews--Helen Tremaine--Ruth Winthrop.... Also any other girls who
are honest