rs that burnt so prettily might yet do damage.

For Helen, having known this girl, found it not any too easy to
believe that her son could have relinquished her completely in so
disturbingly brief a time.

Had she been a young man she knew that she would not have done so.
And, knowing it, she was troubled.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, her only son was troubled, too, as he walked slowly
homeward through the winter fog.

And by the time he was climbing his front steps he had concluded to
accept this girl as she was--or thought she was--to pull no more long
faces or sour faces, but to go back to her, resolutely determined to
enjoy her friendship and her friends too; and give his long
incarcerated sense of humour an airing, even if he suffered acutely
while it revelled.

CHAPTER XIII

Palla's activities seemed to exhilarate her physically and mentally.
Body and brain were now fully occupied; and, if the profit to her soul
were dubious, nevertheless the restless spirit of the girl now had an
outlet; and at home and in the Combat Club she planned and discussed
and investigated the world's woes to her ardent heart's content.

Physically, too, Red Cross and canteen work gave her much needed
occupation; and she went everywhere on foot, never using bus, tram or
taxicab. The result was, in spite of late and sometimes festive hours,
that Palla had become something more than an unusually pretty girl,
for there was much of real beauty in her full and charming face and in
her enchantingly rounded yet lithe and lissome figure.

About the girl, also, there seemed to be a new freshness like
fragrance--a virginal sweetness--that indefinable perfume of something
young and vigorous that is already in bud.

* * * * *

That morning she went over to the dingy row of buildings to sign the
lease of the hall for three evenings a week, as quarters for Combat
Club No. 1.

The stuffy place where the Red Flag Club had met the night before was
still reeking with stale smoke and the effluvia of the unwashed; but
the windows were open and a negro was sweeping up a litter of defunct
cigars.

"Yaas'm, Mr. Puma's office is next do'," he replied to Palla's
inquiry; "--Sooperfillum Co'poration. Yaas'm."

Next door had been a stable and auction ring, and odours characteristic
still remained, although now the ring had been partitioned, boarded over
and floo