With savage pity Marjorie regarded a sobbing girl whose face was distorted, and whose palsied hands were trying to straighten her veil and push back stray wisps of hair. Marjorie thought: “What a fool she is to cry like that! Her nose is red; she’s a sight. I can control myself. I can control myself.”

An elderly man with an austere face, standing beside Marjorie, started to light a cigarette. His hands trembled violently and the match flickered and went out.

Marjorie’s heart was beating so fast that it made her feel sick.

A locomotive shrieked, adding its voice to the roar of traffic at Victoria Station. There came the pounding hiss of escaping steam. The crowd pressed close to the rails and peered down the foggy platform. A train had stopped, and the engine was panting close to the gate-rail. A few men in khaki were alighting from compartments. In a moment there was a stamping of many feet, and above the roar and confusion in the station rose the eager voices of multitudes of boys talking, shouting, calling to each other.

Marjorie saw Leonard before he saw her. He was walking with three men joking, laughing absent-mindedly, while his eyes searched for a face in the crowd. She waited a moment, hidden, suffocated with anticipation, her heart turning over and over, until he said a nonchalant good-bye to his companions, who were pounced upon by eager relatives. Then she crept up behind and put both her hands about his wrist.

“Hello, Len.”

Joy leaped to his eyes.

“Marjie!”

Impossible to say another word. For seconds they became one of the speechless couples, standing dumbly in the great dingy station, unnoticed and unnoticing.

“Where’s the carriage?” said Leonard, looking blindly about him.

“Outside, of course, Len.”

A crooked man in black livery, with a cockade in his hat, who had been standing reverently in the background, waddled forward, touching his hat.

“Well, Burns, how are you? Glad to see you.”

“Very well, sir, and thank you, sir. ’Appy, most ’appy to see you back, sir. Pardon, sir, this way.” His old face twitched and his eyes devoured the young lieutenant.

A footman was standing at the horses’ heads, but the big bays, champing their bits, and scattering foam, crouched away from the tall young soldier when he put out a careless, intimate hand and patted their snorting noses. He swaggered a little, for all of a sudden he longed to put his head on their arching necks and cry.

“You’ve got the old pair out; I thought they had gone to grass,” he said in his most matter-of-fact tone to the pink-faced footman, who was hardly more than a child.

“Well, sir, the others were taken by the Government. Madam gave them all away except Starlight and Ginger Girl. There is only me and Burns and another boy under military age in the stables now, sir.”

Inside the carriage Leonard and Marjorie were suddenly overawed by a strange, delicious shyness. They looked at each other gravely, like two children at a party, dumb, exquisitely thrilled. It was ten months ago that they had said a half-tearful, half-laughing good-bye to each other on the windy, sunny pier at Hoboken. They had been in love two months, and engaged two weeks. Leonard was sailing for England to keep a rowing engagement, but he was to return to America in a month. They were to have an early autumn wedding. Marjorie chose her wedding-dress and was busy with her trousseau. She had invited her brides-maids. It was to be a brilliant, conventional affair flowers, music, countless young people dancing under festoons and colored lights. In August the war broke out. Leonard had been in training and at the front from the first. Marjorie crossed the precarious ocean, to be in England for his first leave. It was now May: they were to be married at last.

“Marjie.”

“Len.”

“I have just four days, you know, darling. That’s all I could get. We’ve been transferred to the Dardanelles; else I wouldn’t have got off at all.”

“Four days,” murmured Marjorie. She looked up, and met his eyes, and stared, and could not look away. “It’s a long, long time, four days,” she said, without knowing what she was saying. All at once she put her hands over her eyes, and, pressing her head fiercely against Leonard’s arm, she began to cry and to laugh, continuing to repeat, senselessly, “It’s a long, long time.”

And Leonard, trembling all over, kissed her on the back of her head, which was all he could reach.

They drew near to Richmond, the familiar avenues and the cool, trim lawn, and the great trees. Marjorie’s tongue all at once loosened; she chattered whimsically, like an excited child.

“It’s home, home, home, and they’re all waiting for us mater and your father and all the family. He’s been in a perfect state all day, poor old dear, though he hasn’t an idea any one’s noticed it. Little Herbert’s the only one that’s behaved a bit natural and old Nannie. I’ve been rushing about your room, sitting in all the chairs, and saying, ’To-night he’ll be sitting in this chair; to-night he may be standing in this very spot before the fire; to-night he may be looking out of this window.’ O, Len, we’re to be married at half-past eight, and we’re going in motors so as not to waste any time. I haven’t even read over the marriage service. I haven’t the vaguest idea what to do or say. But what difference does that make! Do you see, Len? Do you see?” She stopped and squeezed Leonard’s hand, for she saw that he was suddenly speechless. “There they are,” lifting the blind, “mother and little Herbert; and see the servants peeking from the wing.”

They swept grandly around the bend in the avenue. The windows of the great house blazed a welcome. All the sky was mother-of-pearl and tender. In the air was the tang of spring. In the white light Marjorie saw Leonard’s lips quiver and he frowned. She had a sudden twinge of jealousy, swallowed up by an immense tenderness.

“There’s mother,” he said.

“Hello, Len, old boy.”

His father was on the steps. Leonard greeted him with the restraint and the jocose matter-of-factness that exist between men who love each other. He kissed his mother a little hungrily, just as he had when he was a small boy back from his first homesick term at Eton, and fluttered the heart of that frail, austere lady, who had borne this big, strapping boy a feat of which she was sedately but passionately proud.

Little Herbert, all clumsiness and fat legs and arms, did a good deal of hugging and squealing, and Miss Shake, Leonard’s old governess, wept discreetly and worshipfully in the background.

“Look at ’im! Ain’t he grand? Glory be to God bless ’im, my baby!” cried Irish Nannie, who had suckled this soldier of England; and loudly she wept, her pride and her joy unrebuked and unashamed.

At the risk of annoying Leonard, they must follow him about, waiting upon him at tea-time, touching him wistfully, wonderingly, for was it not himself, their own Leonard, who had come back to them for a few days? And instead of himself, it might have been just a name, Leonard Leeds, one among a list of hundreds of others; and written opposite each name one of the three words, Wounded, Missing, Dead.

Jealously his own family drew aside and let Marjorie go upstairs with him alone. She had the first right; she was his bride. Mr. Leeds plucked little Herbert back by his sailor collar and put his arm through his wife’s. Together they watched the two slender figures ascending the broad stair-case. Each parent was thinking, “He’s hers now, and they’re young. We mustn’t be selfish, they have such a short time to be happy in, poor dears.”

“Looks fit, doesn’t he?” said the father, cheerfully, patting his wife’s arm. Inwardly he was thinking, “How fortunate no woman can appreciate all that boy has been through!”

“Do you think so? I thought he looked terribly thin,” she answered, absently. To herself she was saying, “No one not even his father will ever know what that boy has seen and suffered.”

Little Herbert, watching with big eyes, suddenly wriggled his hand from his father’s grasp.

“Wait, Leonard, wait for me! I am coming!”

Upstairs old Nannie was officiating. She was struggling with Leonard’s kit, which resembled, she thought, more the rummage box of a gypsy pedler than the luggage of a gentleman.

The young officer had taken off his great-coat and was standing with his back to the hearth. He loomed up very big in the demure room, a slender, boyish figure, still too slim for his shoulder-width and height, clad in a ragged uniform, a pistol bulging from one hip at his belt. He looked about him at the bright hangings, with a wandering gaze that reverted to a spot of sunlight on Marjorie’s hair and rested there.

“I’m all spinning round,” he said with a puzzled smile, “like a dream.”

He continued to stare with dazed, smiling eyes on the sunbeam. His hair was cropped close like a convict’s, which accentuated the leanness of his face and the taut, rigid lines about his mouth. Under his discolored uniform, the body was spare almost to the point of emaciation. Through a rent in his coat, a ragged shirt revealed the bare skin. He looked at it ruefully, still smiling. “I’m rather a mess, I expect,” he said. “Tried to fix up in the train, but I was too far gone in dirt to succeed much.”

Marjorie, with the instinct of a kitten that comforts its master, went up to him and rubbed her head against the torn arm.

“Don’t,” he said, hoarsely; “I’m too dirty.” He put out a hand, and softly touched her dress. “Is it pink?” he asked, “or does it only look so in this light? It feels awfully downy and nice.”

She noticed that two of his nails were crushed and discolored, and the half of one was torn away. She bent down and kissed it, to hide the tears which were choking her. She felt his eyes on her, and she knew that look which made her whole being ache with tenderness that numb, dazed look. She had seen it before in the eyes of very young soldiers home on their first leave mute young eyes that contained the unutterable secrets of the battlefield, but revealed none. She had seen them since she came to England, sitting with their elders, gray-haired fathers who talked war, war, war, while the young tongues once so easily braggart remained speechless.

What had they seen, these silent youngsters sensitive, joyous children, whom the present day had nurtured so cleanly and so tenderly? Their bringing-up had been the complex result of so much enlightened effort. War, pestilence, famine, slaughter, were only names in a history book to them. They thought hardship was sport. A blithe summer month had plunged them into the most terrible war of the scarred old earth. The battlefields where they had mustered, stunned, but tingling with vigor and eagerness, were becoming the vast cemeteries of their generation. The field where lay the young dead was their place in the sun. The still hospital where lay the maimed was their part in a civilization whose sincerity they had trusted as little children trust in the perfection of their parents.

Beside the army of maimed and fallen boys was another shadowy army of girls in their teens and sweet early twenties the unclaimed contemporaries of a buried generation.

There was a fumbling at the door-handle and a small, muffled voice came from the corridor:

“I say, Len; I say, Marjorie, can I come in?” And in he walked, spotless and engaging, in a white sailor suit with baggy long trousers, his hair still wet from being tortured into corkscrew curls. “I’m all dressed for the party,” he announced; “I’m not going to bed at all to-night.”

Marjorie tried to draw him into her lap, but he eluded her with a resentful wiggle, and walking up to Leonard, whacked him on the thigh and looked up with a sly, beseeching glance which said, “Whack me back. You play with me. You notice me. I love you.”

His eyes were on a level with Leonard’s pistol; he put his little pink face close to it lovingly, but drew back again, puckering up his small nose.

“Oh, Leonard, you smell just like a poor man!” he exclaimed.

Leonard grinned. “You never got as near as this to any poor man who is half as dirty as I am, old dear.”

“You’ve got just half an hour to dress for dinner, and we’re due in the church at eight,” said Marjorie.

She paused in the doorway, a slim figure in a crumpled white dress.

Leonard stared at her blankly, and then put out a bony arm and drew her to his side.

“It’s awfully tough on you, honey, to have it this way; no new clothes or anything fixed up, and,” he added, smiling and closing his eyes, “coming away across the ocean full of dirty little submarines to a bridegroom smelling like a poor man! Jove! I want a bath!”

“Just as I was about to take the liberty of remarking myself,” old Nannie said. She was standing in the doorway, her arms akimbo and her sleeves rolled up. “Captain Leeds, it’s all ready.”

Leonard’s arms were still about Marjorie. “Captain Leeds, otherwise known as Lieutenant Leeds,” he said, “once known as Leonard, presents his compliments to Mrs. Bridget O’Garrity, nee Flannagan, and wishes her to request Mr. Jakes, in the culinary regions, to draw his bath and lay out his things and generally make himself a nuisance. He will not permit Mrs. O’Garrity to dress him.”

“Oh, now, Captain Leeds well then, Leonard dearie, you bad boy,” wailed the old woman reproachfully. “Mr. Jakes has gone to the war, as has likewise all the men in the house, and a good riddance it is, too. There was a time when you weren’t too grand to let your poor old Nannie wait on you. Why, Miss Marjorie, I remember the time when he couldn’t ”

“No reminiscences!” broke in Leonard, eyeing Nannie suspiciously. “You have had so much experience with men you ought to know how they hate it. Why, Marjorie, do you realize that Nannie has had five husbands?”

“Oh, Master Leonard, indade, it is only three!” cried Nannie, horrified.

“Seven,” Leonard insisted; “it’s a compliment. It only shows how fascinating you are with the polygamous sex. It was seven, only two never showed up after the wedding. I was to be the eighth, Marjie, only you came in between us.”

“Master Leonard, I could smack you for talking like that! Don’t listen to ’im, Miss Marjorie.”

“Cheer up, old Nannie,” continued Leonard; “there’s still Kitchener. He’s a bachelor and a woman-hater, but then, he’s never met you, and he’s even a greater hero than I am.”

Nannie, aghast but delighted, advanced toward Leonard, shaking her gray curls. “H’m, h’m. Woman-haters, you say. I never met one, indade.” Then, very coaxingly, “Didn’t you bring your old Nannie a souvenir from the war?”

“Rather,” said Leonard, indicating with his chin the rent on his shoulder. “How about this?”

“How about that?” said Nannie, her old eyes in their deep furrows gleaming with malice.

From behind her broad back she drew forth a round metal object that flashed in the firelight.

“It’s a German helmet!” cried Marjorie.

“I want it!” shouted Herbert, stretching up his arms for the flashing plaything.

“It’s mine,” coaxed Marjorie, trying to wrest it from Nannie.

Leonard put out a swift hand, and held it aloft by the spike.

“Let me try it on,” wheedled Marjorie, coaxing down his arm.

“You look like a baby Valkyrie,” said Leonard, placing the helmet on her head; but he frowned.

Marjorie regarded herself in the mirror.

“This belonged to an officer of the Prussian guard,” she said.

“It did. How did you know?”

Marjorie continued to stare at herself in the mirror as if she saw something there behind her own reflection. “The very first man who was ever in love with me wore a helmet like this,” she said, suddenly, lifting enigmatic and mischievous eyes to Leonard.

“How many have there been since?” Leonard smiled, lazily.

“I can remember only the first and the last,” said Marjorie.

Leonard laughed, but he could not see Marjorie’s face. She was standing looking down at the gold eagle-crest, holding the helmet in both hands, carefully, timidly, as if it were a loaded weapon that might go off.

“Where did you get it, Len?” she asked, gravely.

“There’s a crop of them coming up in France this summer,” said Leonard.

“But seriously, Len?”

“Seriously, Marjorie.” He took the helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. “Lord knows, I’m not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly packed it in my kit.”

Marjorie drew a deep breath. “Oh, Len,” she whispered, staring at the helmet. “How does it feel to kill a man?”

Leonard, smiling, shifted his position and answered, “No different from killing your first rabbit, if you don’t sit down on the bank and watch it kick, and write poetry. Besides, you always have the pleasure of thinking it’s a German rabbit.”

“Oh, Len!”

“You’re just one in a great big machine called England. It isn’t your job to think,” Leonard said. “For God’s sake, lamb, don’t cherish any fool Yankee pacifist notions. We are going to beat the Germans till every man Fritz of them is either dead or can’t crawl off the field.” His black fingers closed over Marjorie’s. “Remember, after to-night you’re an Englishwoman. You can’t be a little American mongrel any more; not until I’m dead, anyway. Now I’ve got you, I’ll never let you go!” He showed his teeth in a fierce, defiant smile, in which there was pathos. He knew what a life in the Dardanelles was worth. He put his cropped head close to Marjorie’s. “Do you hate me for that, Marjie?”

Marjorie, pressing against him, felt the strength of his gaunt shoulder through his coat. A sense of delicious fear stole over her, and the savage which lies close to the surface in every woman leaped within her.

“I love you for it!” she cried.

“Don’t rub your head against my coat,” murmured Leonard; “there’s bugs in it.”

They both laughed excitedly.