"Good Lord!" he thought. "If the war ends, have I got to go back to
that!----"

The family were at breakfast when he walked in on them--only two--his
father and mother.

In his mother's arms he suddenly felt very young and subdued, and very
glad to be there.

"Where the devil did you come from, Jim?" repeated his father, with
twitching features and a grip on his son's strong hand that he could
not bring himself to loosen.

Yes, it was pretty good to get home, after all-- ... And he might not
have come back at all. He realised it, now, in his mother's arms,
feeling very humble and secure.

His mother had realised it, too, in every waking hour since the day
her only son had sailed at night--that had been the hardest!--at
night--and at an unnamed hour of an unnamed day!--her only son--gone
in the darkness----

On his way upstairs, he noticed a red service flag bearing a single
star hanging in his mother's window.

He went into his own room, looked soberly around, sat down on the
lounge, suddenly tired.

He had three days' leave before reporting for duty. It seemed a
miserly allowance. Instinctively he glanced at his wrist-watch. An
hour had fled already.

"The dickens!" he muttered. But he still sat there. After a while he
smiled to himself and rose leisurely to make his toilet.

"Such an attractively informal girl," he thought regretfully.

"I'm sorry I didn't learn her name. Why didn't I?"

Philosophy might have answered: "But to what purpose? No young man
expects to pick up a girl of his own kind. And he has no business with
other kinds."

But Shotwell was no philosopher.

* * * * *

The "attractively informal girl," on whom young Shotwell was
condescending to bestow a passing regret while changing his linen,
had, however, quite forgotten him by this time. There is more
philosophy in women.

Her train was now nearing Shadow Hill; she already could see the
village in its early winter nakedness--the stone bridge, the old-time
houses of the well-to-do, Main Street full of automobiles and farmers'
wagons, a crowded trolley-car starting for Deepdale, the county seat.

After four years the crudity of it all astonished her--the stark
vulgarity of Main Street in the sunshine, every mean, flimsy
architectural detail revealed--the dingy trolley poles, the telegraph
poles loaded with unlovely wires and battered little electric light
fixtures--the uncompromising, u