r. Wheeler there?"

"No, but you can read the message to me."

Mrs. Wheeler said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver. She
felt her way softly to her chair. She had an hour alone, when
there was nothing but him in the room,--but him and the map
there, which was the end of his road. Somewhere among those
perplexing names, he had found his place.

Claude's letters kept coming for weeks afterward; then came the
letters from his comrades and his Colonel to tell her all.

In the dark months that followed, when human nature looked to her
uglier than it had ever done before, those letters were Mrs.
Wheeler's comfort. As she read the newspapers, she used to think
about the passage of the Red Sea, in the Bible; it seemed as if
the flood of meanness and greed had been held back just long
enough for the boys to go over, and then swept down and engulfed
everything that was left at home. When she can see nothing that
has come of it all but evil, she reads Claude's letters over
again and reassures herself; for him the call was clear, the
cause was glorious. Never a doubt stained his bright faith. She
divines so much that he did not write. She knows what to read
into those short flashes of enthusiasm; how fully he must have
found his life before he could let himself go so far--he, who was
so afraid of being fooled! He died believing his own country
better than it is, and France better than any country can ever
be. And those were beautiful beliefs to die with. Perhaps it was
as well to see that vision, and then to see no more. She would
have dreaded the awakening,--she sometimes even doubts whether he
could have borne at all that last, desolating disappointment. One
by one the heroes of that war, the men of dazzling soldiership,
leave prematurely the world they have come back to. Airmen whose
deeds were tales of wonder, officers whose names made the blood
of youth beat faster, survivors of incredible dangers,--one by
one they quietly die by their own hand. Some do it in obscure
lodging houses, some in their office, where they seemed to be
carrying on their business like other men. Some slip over a
vessel's side and disappear into the sea. When Claude's mother
hears of these things, she shudders and presses her hands tight
over her breast, as if she had him there. She feels as if God had
saved him from some horrible suffering, some horrible end. For as
she reads, she thinks those slayers of themselves were all so
like him; they