a hard laugh, "I am nothing so glorious as a
veteran."

He felt the hand in his grow cold. She drew it away and rose; turned away
and was picking the leaves from a plant.

But she found another thing to reach out to. "Well I suppose"--this she
ventured tremulously, imploringly--"you went to West Point--and were--
didn't finish?"

"No, Katie," he said, "I never went to West Point."

"Well then what did you do?" she demanded sharply.

He laughed harshly. "Oh I was just one of those fools roped in by a
recruiting officer in a gallant-looking white suit!"

"You were--?" she faltered.

"In the ranks. One of the men." The fact that she should be looking like
that drove him to add bitterly: "Like Watts, you know."

She stood there in silence, held. The radiance had all fallen from her.
She was looking at him with something of the woe and reproach of a child
for a cherished thing hurt.

"Why, Katie," he cried, "_does_ it matter so? I thought it was only when
we were _in_ that we were so--impossible."

But she did not take the hands he stretched out. She was held.

It drove him desperate. "Well if _that's_ so--if to have been in the army
at all is a thing to make you look like _that_--Heaven knows," he threw
in, "I don't blame you for despising us for fools!--But I don't know what
you'll say when I tell you--"

"When you tell me--what?" she whispered.

"That I have no honorable discharge to lay at your feet. That I left your
precious army through the noble gates of a military prison!"

She took a step backward, swaying. The anguish which mingled with
the horror in her face made him cry: "Katie, let me tell you! Let me
show you--"

But Katie, white-faced, was standing erect, braced for facing it. "What
for? What did you do?"

Her voice was quick, sharp; tenseness made her seem arrogant. It roused
something ugly in him. "I knocked down a cur of a lieutenant," he said,
and laughed defiantly.

"You _struck_--an officer?"

"I knocked down a man who ought to have been knocked down!"

"_Struck_--your superior officer?"

"Katie," he cried, "that's your way of looking at it! But let me tell
you--let me show you--"

But she had turned from him, covered her face; and before Katie there
swept again those pictures, sounds: her father's voice ringing out over
parade ground--silent, motionless regiment; the notes of retreat--those
bugle notes, piercing, compelling, thing before which all other things
must fall away-