en brought up to play fair. But never with the top of my mind. You
know yourself, all anybody wanted was a good time. If anybody had told
me, when I was seventeen--I was seventeen when the war started, wasn't
I?--that I'd care more about standards than about fun, I'd have just
thought they were lying, or they didn't know. And right and wrong have
come to matter in the most curious way."

"I think perhaps," he answered her--they had quite forgotten that they
were enemies by now--"that the war was in the air. Maybe the world
felt that there wouldn't be much chance for good times for it--for our
generation--again, and snatched at it. You know, for a good many years
things won't be the same, even for us in America, who suffered less,
perhaps, than any other nation in the world. Life's harder, and it
will be."

"Oh, always?" demanded Marjorie. "You know, Francis, I always wanted
good times worse than anything in the world, but that isn't saying I
had them. I didn't. Won't I ever have any more? That few weeks when
I raced around with you and Billy and Lucille was really the first time
I'd been free and had fun with people I liked, ever since I'd been
born. And--and I suppose it went to my head a little bit."

She looked up at him like a child who has been naughty and is sorry,
and he looked over at her, his face going tense, as it did when he felt
things.

"I don't think we were exactly free agents," he said musingly.
"Something was pushing us. I'm not sorry . . . except that it was
hardly fair to you----"

She leaned toward him impulsively, holding out her hand. He bent
toward her, flushing. They were nearer than they had been since that
day when his summons to war came. And then Fate--as Mr. Logan might
have said--knocked at the door.

CHAPTER IX

The two on the balcony moved a little away from each other. Then
Marjorie, coloring for no reason whatsoever, stepped down the toy
stairs that wound like a doll's-house staircase, and went to the door.

It was Peggy O'Mara, no more and no less, but what a Peggy! She looked
like an avenging goddess. But it was not at Marjorie that her
vengeance was directed, it was plainly to be seen, for she swept the
smaller girl to her bosom with one strong and emotional arm, and said,
"You poor abused little lamb! I've come to tell you that I know all
about it!"

Marjorie jerked herself away in surprise. For one thing, she had been
very much interested in