" commented Johnny. "It's a wonder, but there is. Must be
his mother."

Albert made no particular impression, however, on Althea herself. A
dozen other young fellows had been more demonstrative and more fluent.
He simply slid over the surface of her mind and fell away again. She had
known him--intermittently--for years as a somewhat inexpressive boy;
now, as a potential gallant, he was negligible, as compared with others.
But Albert, speaking in a sense either specific or general, did not mean
to remain negligible.

He soon forgot most of the details of the day at the horse-show. He had
hardly a greater affinity for sport than his father had had. He began
his sophomore year with no interest in athletics. The compulsory
gymnasium-work bored him. He made no single team--put forth not the
least effort to make one. The football crowd, the baseball crowd, even
the tennis crowd, gave him up and left him alone.

Yet his bodily energies and his mental ambitions were waxing daily; his
passions too. There must be an outlet for all this vigor--business, or
matrimony, or war. In one short twelvemonth he compassed all three.

By the end of Albert's second year, the day had come when a
self-respecting young man of fortune and position found it hard if he
must confess: "I have taken all yet given nothing." The Great War waged
more furiously than ever, and came more close. The country had first
said, "You may," and, later, "You must." Albert did not wait for the
"must." He closed his year a month or so in advance--as he had done once
before--and enrolled in a college-unit for service abroad.

Raymond gave his consent--a matter of form, a futility. In fact, Albert
enrolled first and asked (or advised) later. His mother, of a mixed
mind, would have interposed an objection. McComas hushed her down. "Let
him go. He has the makings of a man. Don't cut off his best chance."

McComas had a right to speak. Tom McComas was going too, and going with
his father's warm approval. If he could leave a young wife and a
three-year-old boy, need a young bachelor student be held back?

Albert came West for a good-bye. His father held his hand and gave him a
long scrutiny--part of the time with eyes wide open, part of the time
with eyes closed to a fine, inquiring, studious line. But he never saw
what there was to see. In his own body there was not one drop of martial
blood; in his being not an iota of the bellicose spirit. Why men fight,
even why