l whistles blowing from distant
villages, left her tired, dazed, indifferent. The later celebration,
based on official news, stirred her spiritually even less. And she
felt ill.

There was a noisy night celebration on Main Street, but she had no
desire to see it. She remained indoors reading the _Star_ in the
sitting room with Max, the cat. She ate no dinner. She cried herself
to sleep.

However, now that the worst had come--as she naively informed the
shocked Martha next morning--she began to feel relieved in a restless,
feverish way.

A healthful girl accumulates much bodily energy over night; Palla's
passionate little heart and her active mind completed a storage
battery very quickly charged--and very soon over-charged--and an
outlet was imperative.

Always, so far in her brief career, she had had adequate outlets. As a
child she found satisfaction in violent exercises; in flinging herself
headlong into every outdoor game, every diversion among the urchins of
her circle. As a school girl her school sports and her studies, and
whatever social pleasures were offered, had left the safety valve
open.

Later, mistress of her mother's modest fortune, and grown to restless,
intelligent womanhood, Palla had gone abroad with a married
school-friend, Leila Vance. Under her auspices she had met nice people
and had seen charming homes in England--Colonel Vance being somebody
in the county and even somebody in London--a diffident, reticent,
agriculturally inclined land owner and colonel of yeomanry. And long
ago dead in Flanders. And his wife a nurse somewhere in France.

But before the war a year's travel and study had furnished the
necessary outlet to Palla Dumont. And then--at a charity bazaar--a
passionate friendship had flashed into sacred flame--a friendship born
at sight between her and the little Grand Duchess Marie.

War was beginning; Colonel Vance was dead; but imperial inquiry
located Leila. And imperial inquiry was satisfied. And Palla became
the American companion and friend of the youthful Grand Duchess Marie.
For three years that blind devotion had been her outlet--that and
their mutual inclination for a life to be dedicated to God.

What was to be her outlet now?--now that the little Grand Duchess was
dead--now that God, as she had conceived him, had ceased to exist for
her--now that the war was ended, and nobody needed that warm young
heart of hers--that ardent little heart so easily set throbbing wit