I am going away!"

"Away--where?" Kathryn became rigid.

"Overseas."

"Overseas? What for, in heaven's name?"

"Oh! anything they'll let me do. I'm going as soon as I can be
sent--but----"

"You mean, without any reason whatever, you're going to go over
there?"

"Hardly without something that stands for reason, Kathryn."

"But no one, not even Doctor Manly, thinks that it is our fight,
Brace. The men who have gone are simply adventurers; men who love
excitement or men who want to cut responsibilities and don't dare
confess it."

Kathryn's face flamed hot.

"Their lives must be pretty damnable," Northrup broke in, "if they
take such a method to fling them aside. Do try to understand, dear;
our women must, you know." There was pleading in the words.

Then by one of those sudden reversions of her nimble wits, Kathryn
recalled things she had heard recently--and immediately she took the
centre of her well-lighted stage, and horrible as it might seem, saw
herself, a ravishing picture in fascinating widow's weeds! While this
vision was holding, Kathryn clung to Northrup and was experiencing
actual distress--not ghoulish pleasure.

"Oh! you must not leave me," she quivered.

"You will help me, Kathryn; be a woman like my mother?" Again Northrup
pleaded. This was unfortunate. It steadied Kathryn, but it hardened
her.

"You want me to marry you at once, Brace?" she whispered.

"No, dear. That would not be fair to you. I want you to understand; I
want to know that you will--will keep Mother company. That is all,
until I come home. I could not feel justified in asking a woman to
marry such a--such a chance as I am about to be."

Now there was cause for what Kathryn suddenly felt, but not the cause
she suspected. Had Northrup loved deeply, faithfully, understandingly,
he might, as others did, see that to the right woman the "chance," as
he termed himself, would become her greatest glory and hope, but as it
was Northrup considered only Kathryn's best good and, gropingly, he
realized that her interests and his were not, at the present,
identical.

But Kathryn, her ever-present jealousy and apprehension rising, was
carried from her moorings. She recalled the evidences of "duty" in
Northrup's attitude toward her since his return from King's Forest;
his abstraction and periods of low spirits.

"He cannot stand it any longer," she thought resentfully; "he's
willing to do anything, take any chance."

A hot wave o