This unexpected concession to Eleanor's weakness touched her deeply. She
flew into the hall to tell Quin, and then rushed upstairs to change her
dress.

"I believe the scheme is working!" she said joyously, as she and Quin sat
in the theater waiting for the curtain to rise. "Grandmother has been
peaches and cream to me all week. This morning she capped the climax by
giving me a check for a hundred dollars to buy a gold mesh bag."

"A _what!_" cried Quin, aghast.

"A mesh bag. But I am not going to get it. I sent the check to Rose. It
has nearly killed me not to have a penny to send them all summer, and
this came just in time. Have you heard about Myrna?"

"Being asked to spend the winter at Mrs. Ranny's? I should say I have!
She's the happiest kid alive."

"And grandmother has even stood for that! It's a perfect scream to hear
her bragging about 'my son's farm.' She will be talking about 'my
daughter's husband' next."

"Queen Vic's all right," Quin declared stoutly. "Her only trouble is that
she's been trying to play baseball by herself; she's got to learn
team-work."

The play happened to be "The Better 'Ole"; and from the moment the
curtain rose Eleanor was oblivious to everything but the humor and pathos
and glory of the story. She followed with ready tears and smiles the
adventures of the three Tommies; she thrilled to the sentimental songs
beside the stage camp fire; she laughed at the antics of the incomparable
Corporal Bill. It was not until the second act that she became conscious
of the queer behavior of her companion.

Quin sat hunched up in his wedding suit, his jaw set like a vise, staring
solemnly into space with an expression she had never seen in his face
before. He seemed to have forgotten where he was and whom he was with.
His hand had crushed the program into a ball, and his breath came short,
as it always did when he was excited or over-exerted.

Eleanor, whose emotions up to now had been pleasantly and superficially
stirred, suddenly saw the play from a new angle. With quick imagination
she visualized the great reality of which all this was but a clever sham.
She saw Quin passing through it all, not to the thunder of stage shrapnel
and the glare of a red spot-light, but in the life-and-death struggle of
those eighteen months in the trenches. Before she knew it, she too was
gazing absently into space, shaken with the profound realization that
here beside her, his shoulder touching hers, was