r life before. The Marjorie of a year ago would not have answered
the challenge of her husband to prove herself an honorable woman by
taking over a long, hard, uncongenial task. She would have picked up
her skirts and fled back to New York with Logan.

"I suppose it's the war," said Marjorie uncomfortably. "Dear me, I did
think that when the war was over it would be over. And everything
seems so _real_ yet. I wonder if when I'm an old, old lady talking to
Lucille's grandchildren I shall tell them, 'Ah, yes, my dears, your
Grand-aunt Marjorie was a very different person in the days before the
war! In those days you didn't have to be in earnest about anything.
You didn't even to have any principles that showed. Life wasn't real
and earnest a bit. People just went to tea-dances and talked
flippantly, and some of the men had drinks. And everybody laughed a
great deal, and it was decadent, and the end of an era, and a lot of
shocking things--but it wasn't half as hard as living now, because
there weren't standards, except when they were had by aunts and
employers and such people. Ah, them was the days!' And the
grand-nieces, or whatever relation they'll be to me, will look shocked,
because they'll be children of their time, and it will still be
fashionable to be earnest, and they'll say, 'Dear me, what a terrible
time to have lived in!' And they'll be a little bit envious. And
they'll say, 'And were even you frivolous?' And I'll sigh, and say,
'Yes, indeed, my dears! I married a worthy young man (as young men
went then) in a thoughtless moment, and then when he came back I
wouldn't stay married to him. But by that time the war was over, and
we'd all stopped being flippant and frivolous. So I washed dishes for
him three months before I went and left him.' And they'll commend me
faintly for doing that much, and go away secretly shocked."

Marjorie was so cheered up by her own fervent imaginings by this time
that she stopped to sit down on the arm of a chair, all by herself, and
laugh out loud. And so Francis saw her, as he came in for something,
and looked up, guided by her laugh. He had scarcely heard her laugh
before for some time. She was perched birdlike on the arm of the chair
at the foot of his couch, just to be glimpsed between the draperies of
the balcony. She looked, to his eyes, like something too fragile and
lovely to be real. And she was laughing! That did not seem real,
either. She might