ause there's your Mother to think
of."

"Is she crying now?"

"Yes. Down there on her bed. Could you be very brave if you went
down, and told her not to be sorry?"

"Brave, like my Daddy?"

"Yes."

Margaret-Mary was too young to understand--she was easily comforted.
Derry sang a little song and her eyes drooped.

But downstairs the little son who was brave like his father, sat on the
edge of the bed, and held his mother's hand. "He's in Paradise with
the purple camels, Mother, and he's a shining soul--."

It was a week before Jean went with Derry to see Margaret. It had been
a week of strange happenings, of being made love to by Derry and of
getting Daddy ready to go away. She had reached heights and depths,
alternately. She had been feverishly radiant when with her lover. She
had resolved that she would not spoil the wonder of these days by
letting him know her state of mind.

The nights were the worst. None of them were as bad as the first
night, but her dreams were of battles and bloodshed, and she waked in
the mornings with great heaviness of spirit.

What Derry had told her of Margaret's loss seemed but a confirmation of
her fears. It was thus that men went away and never returned--. Oh,
how Hilda would have triumphed if she could have looked into Jean's
heart with its tremors and terrors!

She came, thus, into the room, where Margaret sat with her children.

"I want you two women to meet," Derry said, as he presented Jean,
"because you are my dearest--"

"He has told me so much about you,"--Margaret put her arm about Jean
and kissed her--"and he has used all the adjectives--yet none of them
was adequate."

Jean spoke tensely. "It doesn't seem right for us to bring our
happiness here."

"Why not? This has always been the place of happiness?" She caught
her breath, then went on quickly, "You mustn't think that I am
heartless. But if the women who have lost should let themselves
despair, it would react on the living. The wailing of women means the
weakness of men. I believe that so firmly that I am afraid to--cry."

"You are braver than I--" slowly.

"No. You'd feel the same way, dear child, about Derry."

"No. I should not. I shouldn't feel that way at all. I should
die--if I lost Derry--"

Light leaped in her lover's eyes. But he shook his head. "She'd bear
it like other brave women. She doesn't know herself, Margaret."

"None of us do. Do you suppose that the wives