, that's all. I'm going up there with Stell this week."

They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his apartment
when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his
master home to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva arranged
to meet Stell in town. They would drive to Jo's apartment together, and
wait for him there.

When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of the
American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard
was a billowing, surging mass: Flags, pennants, banners crowds. All the
elements that make for demonstration. And over the whole--quiet. No
holiday crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient
hours to see the khaki-clads go by. Three years of indefatigable reading
had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to.

"Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped.

"Nicky Overton's only nineteen, thank goodness."

Their car was caught in the jam. When they moved at all it was by
inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed,
nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they waited.

No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the
relieved houseman.

Jo's home has already been described to you. Stell and Eva, sunk in
rose-coloured cushions, viewed it with disgust, and some mirth. They
rather avoided each other's eyes.

"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of
the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings,
and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, restlessly. She picked up
a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and
wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she
turned and passed into Jo's bedroom. And there you knew Jo for what he
was.

This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the
clean-minded and simple-hearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury
with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any
house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual
furniture was panelled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been
the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that
stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a
pink tarleton _danseuse_ who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of
those wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed