eeches, the
cheers. But no, it was not to be thought of. With this silent war going on
in his house he knew he must stay neutral. Watchful waiting was his course.
If he went out with Deborah, Edith would be distinctly hurt, and sitting
all evening here alone she would draw still deeper into herself. And so it
would be night after night, as it had been for many weeks. He would be
cooped up at home while Deborah did the running about.... In half the time
it takes to tell it, Roger had worked himself into a state where he felt
like a mighty badly used man.

"I wish you _would_ speak to her," he said. "I wish you could manage to
find time to be here more in the evenings. Edith worries so much and she's
trying so hard. A little sympathy now and then--"

"But she doesn't seem to want any from me," said his daughter, a bit
impatiently. "I know it's hard--of course it is. But what can I do? She
won't let me help. And besides--there are other families, you
know--thousands--really suffering--for the lack of all that we have here."
She smiled and kissed him quickly. "Good-night, dad dear, I've got to run."

And the door closed behind her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

After dinner that night, in the living room the two older children studied
their lessons and Edith sat mending a pair of rompers for little Tad.
Presently Roger came out from his den with the evening paper in his hand
and sat down close beside her. He did this conscientiously almost every
evening. With a sigh he opened his paper to read, again there was silence
in the room, and in this silence Roger's mind roamed far away across the
sea.

For the front page of his paper was filled with the usual headlines,
tidings which a year before would have made a man's heart jump into his
throat, but which were getting commonplace now. Dead and wounded by the
thousands, famine, bombs and shrapnel, hideous atrocities, submarines and
floating mines, words once remote but now familiar, always there on the
front page and penetrating into his soul, becoming a part of Roger Gale, so
that never again when the war was done would he be the same man he was
before. For he had forever lost his faith in the sanity and steadiness of
the great mind of humanity. Roger had thought of mankind as mature, but
there had come to him of late the same feeling he had had before in the
bosom of his family. Mankind had suddenly unmasked and shown itself for
what it was--still only a precocious child, wit