line trait to want to be a sort of hero in the eyes of the woman
you love. When she doesn't look at it that way, your plumes droop!"

And now the bugles rang with a clearer note--not, "You will go, you
will go--" but, "Do not wait, do not wait, do not wait."

The cry from abroad was Macedonian. "Come over and help us!" It was
to America that the ghosts of those fighting hordes appealed.

"Take up our quarrel with the foe,
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch--be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' field--"

Gradually there had grown up in the hearts of simple men a flaming
response to that sacred charge. Men whose dreams had never reached
beyond a day's frivolity, found springing up in their souls a desire to
do some deed to match that of the other fellow who slept "in Flanders
field."

"To you from falling hands we throw the torch--be yours to hold it
high--," the little man who had measured cloth behind a counter, the
boy who had sold papers on the streets, the bank clerk who had bent
over his books, the stenographer who had been bound to the wheel of
everlasting dictation, were lighted by the radiance of that vision, "to
hold it high--."

"Gee, I never used to think," said Tommy Tracy, "that I might have a
chance to do a stunt like that."

"Like what?" Derry asked.

Tommy found it a thing rather hard to express. "Well, when you've been
just a common sort of chap, to die--for the other fellow--"

So men's bodies grew and their muscles hardened. But their souls grew,
too, expanding to the breadth and height of the things which were
waiting for them to do across the sea.

And one morning Derry was granted a furlough, and started home. He
sent no word ahead of him. He wanted to come upon them unawares. To
catch the light that would be on Jean's face when she looked up and saw
him.

There was rain and more rain when at last he arrived in Washington.
The trees as his taxi traversed the wide avenues showed clear green,
melting into vistas of amethyst and gray. The parks as he passed were
starred with the bright yellow and pinks of flowering shrubs.
Washington, in spite of the rain, was as lovely as a woman whose color
blooms behind a veil.

He came into the great house unannounced, having his key with him. The
General was out for a ride, the children with him, Margaret and Emily
and Jean away, the se