"Just don't bother calling my attention to that, Wayne," she said sharply. "Please credit me with the intelligence to see it for myself."

Then she went right to the heart of it. "Oh Wayne--think of Major Barrett's _knowing_."

The dull red that came quickly to his face told how bitterly he had thought of it, though he only said quietly: "Damn Barrett."

"But you can't damn him. Suppose you were to be stationed at the same place!"

He laughed shortly. "Well that, at least, is something upon which I can set your fears at rest."

She looked up quickly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, Katie, that my army days are over."

She stared at him. "I don't understand you."

"It shouldn't be so difficult to comprehend. I have resigned my commission."

"Wayne," she asked slowly, "what do you mean?"

"Just what I say. That I have resigned my commission. That I am out of the army."

It made it seem that the whole world was whirling round and round and that there was nothing to take hold of. "But you can't do that. Why your whole life is there--friends--traditions--work--future."

"Not my future," he said briefly.

His calm manner made it the more bewildering. "Wayne, I don't see how you can--in such a light manner--give up such a big thing!"

He turned upon her in manner less calm. "What right have you to say that it is done in a 'light manner'!"

The words had a familiar sound and she recalled them as like something she had said to Mrs. Prescott the day before; just the day before, when she had been so sure of things, and of herself.

"But where is your future then, Wayne?" she asked appealingly. "We know, don't we, how hard it is for army men to find futures as civilians?"

"I'm going into the forest service."

Katie never could tell why, for the moment, it should have antagonized, infuriated her that way. "So that's it. That's what got--a poetic notion!

And I suppose," she laughed scornfully, "you're going into the ranks?

What is it they call them? Rangers? Starting in at your age--with your training--to 'work from the bottom up'--is that it?"

"No," he replied coldly, "that is not it. You have missed it about as far as you could. I have no such picturesque notion. I am doing no such quixotic thing. I value my training too highly for that. It should be worth too much to them. I don't even scorn personal ambition, or the use of personal pull, so you see I'm a long way from a heroic figure. I know I've a brain that can do a certain type of thing. I know I'm well equipped. Well, so far as the equipment goes, my country did it for me and I mean to give it back; only I've got to do it in my own way."

"Why, Katie," he resumed after a pause, "I never was more surprised in my life than to find you so out of sympathy with this. I knew what most people would think of it, but I quite took it for granted that you would understand."

"It seems a little hard," replied Katie with a tearful laugh, "to understand the fine things other people do. And, Wayne, I'm so afraid it will lead to disappointment! Aren't you idealizing this forest service?

Remember Fred's tales of how it's almost strangled by politics. And you know what that means. Let us not forget Martha Matthews!"

It was a relief to be laughing together over a familiar thing. Martha Matthews was the daughter of a congressman from somewhere--Katie never could remember whether it was Texas or Wyoming. She had been asked to "take her up" at one time when the army appropriation bill was pending and Martha's father did not seem to realize that the country needed additional defense. But when Martha discovered that army people were "perfectly fascinating--and _so_ hospitable" Martha's parent suddenly awakened to the grave dangers confronting his land. Katie had more than once observed a mysterious relationship between the fact of the army set being fashionable in Washington and the fact that the country must be amply protected, further remarking that army people were just clever enough to know when to be fascinating.

"No," he came back to it in seriousness, "I don't think I have many illusions. I know it's far from the perfect thing, but I see it as set in the right direction. It seems to me that that, in itself, ought to mean considerable. It's the best thing I know of--for what I have to offer. Then I want to get out of cities for awhile--get Ann away from them." He paused over that and fell silent. "Osborne offered me a job,"

he came back to it with a laugh. "Seemed to think I was worth a very neat sum a year to his company--but that was scarcely my notion. In fact I doubt if I would have so much confidence in the forest service if it weren't for his hatred of it. You can judge a thing pretty well by the character of its enemies. Then I'm enough the creature of habit to want to go on in a service; I'm schooled to that thing of the collectivity.

But I'll be happier in a service that--despite the weak spots in it--is in harmony with the big collectivity--rather than hopelessly discordant with it. And perhaps it needs some more or less disinterested fellows to help fight for it," he added with a touch of embarrassment, as if fearing to expose himself.

He had come close enough to self-betrayal for Katie, despite her fear and confusion, to feel proud of him as he looked then.

"Wayne," she asked, "have you felt this way a long time? Out of sympathy with the army?"

He did not at once reply, thinking of the night he had sat beside Ann, night when the whole world was shaken and things he had regarded as fixed loosened and fell. Just how much had been loosening before that--some, he knew--just how much would have more or less insecurely held its place had it not been for that night, he was not prepared to say--even to himself.

"Longer than I knew, I think," he came back to Katie. "One night last fall I went to a dinner and they drank our toast." He repeated it, very slowly. "'My country--may she always be right--but right or wrong--my country.'

"I used to have the real thrill for that toast. That night it almost choked me. That 'right or wrong' is a spirit I can thrill to no longer.

I'm more interested in getting it right.

"Though I'll own it terrified me, just as it seems to you, to feel it slipping from me. Recently I had occasion to go up to West Point and I spent a whole day deliberately trying to get back my old feeling for things--the whole business that we know so well and that I used to love so much.

"And, in a way, I could; but as for something gone. That day up at the Point was one of the saddest of my life. I still loved the trappings.

They still called to me. But I knew that, for me, the spirit was dead.

"Oh I have no sensational declarations to make about the army. I wouldn't even be prepared to say what I think about disarmament. It's more complex than most peace advocates seem to see. I only know that the army's not the thing for me. I can't go on in it, simply because my feeling for it is gone."

He had been speaking slowly and seriously; his head was bent. Now he looked up at her. "It was at the close of that day--day up at West Point--that I resigned my commission. And if you had seen me that night, Katie, I doubt if you would reproach me with 'doing it lightly.'"

The marks of struggle had come back to his face with the story of it.

They told more than the words.

"Forgive me," she said in her impetuous way. "No, I didn't know. How awful it is, Wayne, that we _don't_ know--about each other."

She was forced to turn away; but after a moment controlled herself and turned back to add: "Wayne dear, I think you're right. I'm proud of you."

"Oh, I'm entitled to no halo," he hastened to say. "It's the fellow who would do it without an income might be candidate for that."

"But you _would_ do it without an income, Wayne," she insisted warmly.

"I don't know. How can I tell whether I would or not?

"And you'll be good to Ann?" he took advantage of her mood to press, as though that were the one thing she could do for him. "You know, how much she needs you, Katie."

"I shall certainly want to be good to Ann," she murmured. "Though I don't think she needs me much--any more."

Something about her went to his heart. "Why, Katie--we all need you."

She shook her head; there were tears, but a smile with them. "Not much, Wayne. Not now. I'm not--indispensable. Though pray why should one wish to be anything so terrifying as indispensable?"

"Will you take Worth?" she asked after a little while. "He goes--with you and Ann?"

"We want him. And Katie, we want you. We're to go to Colorado and fight the water barons," he laughed. "Aren't you coming with us?"

She shook her head. "Not just now. I want to flit round in the East a little first. Be gay--renew my youth," she laughed, choking a little.