he will mind
seeing me. You and daddy are always telling me that I am only a child."

Mrs. Fortescue took Anita in her lap, as if the girl were indeed the
age of the After-Clap.

"Do what you like, dear child," she said. "Girls like you can do some
things that women can't, because you have the enormous advantage of not
knowing anything."

CHAPTER VI

SOME LETTERS AND KETTLE'S ENLISTMENT

Anita, who could plan things quite as well as if she were forty instead
of eighteen, bided her time until the hour when Mrs. McGillicuddy was
putting the After-Clap to bed. Then the girl slipped away and took the
road to the long street of the married men's quarters. An icy fog
swept from the Arctic Circle, enveloped the world, hiding both moon and
stars, and made the great arc lamps look like little points of light in
the great ocean of white mist. Every step of the way Anita's heart and
will battled fiercely together. Broussard knew Mrs. Lawrence in some
mysterious way. Perhaps he had loved her once; Anita was all a woman,
and at seventeen was learned in the affairs of the heart.

This woman, however, between whom and Broussard some strong link was
forged, Anita knew not when, nor how, nor where, was ill and poor and
suffering, and Anita's natural inclinations were merciful. Besides,
she had been taught by her father and mother the great lessons of life
in kindness and tenderness. She had seen her father give up a party of
pleasure to walk behind the pine coffin of a private soldier, and her
mother had robbed her greenhouse of its choicest blossoms to lay a
wreath on a soldier's grave.

By instinct, rather than sight, Anita stopped in front of the right
door and met the chaplain coming out.

"Glad to see you, Anita," said the chaplain, who was muffled up to his
eyes. "Go in and talk to that poor lady. We all want to help her, but
we find it hard, for she will tell nothing of herself, of her family,
or anything, except that she knows Lawrence didn't mean to desert, and
will yet report himself."

In the plain little bedroom Mrs. Lawrence lay on her bed, the shaded
electric light by her bedside showing her thin face, made more pallid
by the great braids of lustrous black hair that fell about her. A look
of faint surprise came into her languid eyes as Anita drew a chair to
her bed and took her hand.

"My mother sent me," Anita said, gently, "to ask if I could do anything
for you."

Mrs. Lawrence murmured h