She drew him to talk of his hopes. "I'll fess up, Katie," he said, when warmed to it by her sympathy, "that I fear I do have rather a poetic notion about it. I want to _do_ something--something that will count, something set in the direction of the future. And I like the idea of going back to that old frontier--place where I was born--and where mother went through so much--and where father fought--and because of which he died. And serving out there now in a way that is just as live--just as vital--as the way he served then."

He paused; they were both thinking of their father and mother, of how they might not have understood, of the sadness as well as the triumph there is in change, that tug at the heart that must so often come when the new generation sees a little farther down the road than older eyes can see, the ache in hearts left behind when children of a new day are called away from places endeared by habit into the incertitude and perhaps the danger of ways unworn.

"Life seems too fine a thing, Katie, to spend it making instruments of destruction more deadly. It's not a very happy thought to think of their being used; and it's not a very stimulating one to think of their not being. In either case, it doesn't make one too pleased with one's vocation. And life seems a big enough thing," he added, a little diffidently, "to try pretty hard to get one's self right with it."

He did not understand the way Katie was looking at him as she replied: "Yes, Wayne; I know that. I've been thinking that myself."

Something moved her to ask: "Wayne, do you think you would have done it, if it had not been for Ann?"

"I think," he replied quietly, "that possibly that is still another thing I have to thank her for." His face and voice gave Katie a sharp sense of loneliness, that loneliness which came in seeing how poorly she had understood him, how little people knew each other.

They talked of a number of things before he suddenly exclaimed: "Oh Katie, I must tell you. That fellow--what's his name? Mann? The mythical being known as the man who mends the boats is a fellow you'll have to avoid, should you ever see him again--which of course is not likely."

She had turned and was looking out at the lights in the street below. "Yes?"

"Who do you suppose the scoundrel _is_?"

"I'm sure I don't know," she faltered.

"A military _convict_. Attacked an officer. Served time at Leavenworth."

Katie was intent upon the lights down below.

"And what do you suppose he was prying around the Island for?"

"I'm sure I have no idea," she managed to say.

"Going to write a _play_--a play about the _army_! Now what do you think of that? Darrett found out about it. Oh just the man, you see, to write a play about the army! And some sensationalists here are going to put it on. It's the most damnable insolence I ever heard of! They ought to stop it."

"Oh, I don't know," said Katie, still absorbed in the cabs down below; "a man has a right to use his experiences--in a play."

"Well a fine view he'll give of it! It's the most insufferable impertinence I ever knew of!"

She turned around to ask oddly: "Why, Wayne, why all this heat? You're not in the army any more."

"Well, don't you think I'm not _of_ it, when an upstart like that turns up to rail at it!"

"But how do you know he'll rail?"

"Oh he'll rail, all right. I know his type. But we'll see to it that it's pretty generally understood it's military life as presented by a military _convict_."

"Perhaps you can trust him to make that point clear himself," said Katie rather dryly.

"The _coward_. The _cur_."

She turned upon him hotly. "Look here, Wayne, I don't know why you're so sure you have a right to say that!"

"I'd like to know why I haven't! Attacked an officer without the slightest provocation whatsoever! Some kind of a hot-headed taking sides with a deserter, I believe it was. I suppose this remarkable play is to be a glorification of desertion," he laughed.

"Well," said Katie with an unsteady laugh, "perhaps there are worse things to glorify than desertion."

He stared at her. "Come now, Katie, you know better than that."

But Katie was looking at him strangely. "Wayne," she said quietly, "you're a deserter, yourself."

He flushed, but after an instant laughed. "Really, Katie, you have a positive genius for saying preposterous things."

"In which there may occasionally lurk a little truth. You _are_ deserting. Why aren't you?"

"I call that about as close to rot as an intelligent person could come,"

he replied hotly. "I'm resigning my commission. It's perfectly regular."

"Yes; being an officer and a gentleman, you _can_ resign your commission, and have it perfectly regular. Being that same officer and gentleman, you never were mugged--treated as a prospective criminal; no four thousand posters bearing your picture will now be sent broadcast over the country; no fifty dollars is offered lean detectives for your capture; you're in no chance of being thrown into prison and have your government do all in its power to wring the manhood out of you! Oh no--an officer and a gentleman--you resign your commission and go ahead with your life. But you're leaving the army, aren't you? Deserting it. And why? Because you don't like the spirit of it. And yet--though you're too big for it--though it's _time_ for you to desert--you're enough bound by it not to let the light of your intelligence fall for one single second on the question of desertion!"

She had held him. He made no reply, looking in bewilderment at her red cheeks and blazing eyes.

Suddenly her face quivered. "Wayne," she said, "I don't use the term as a hard name. I'm not using it in just its technical sense, our army sense. But mayn't desertion be a brave thing? A fine thing? To desert a thing we've gone beyond--to have the courage to desert it and walk right off from the dead thing to the live thing--? Oh, don't mind my calling you a deserter, Wayne," she added, her eyes full of tears, "for the truth is I'd like to be a deserter myself. But perhaps one deserter is enough for a family--and you beat me to it." She laughed and turned back to the cabs.

He wanted to go on with the argument; show her what it was in desertion that army men despised, make the distinction between deserting and resigning. But the truth was he was more interested in the things Katie had said than in the things which could be called in refutation.

And Katie puzzled him; her heat, feeling, not only astonished but worried him a little. She was standing there now beating a tattoo on the window pane. He wondered what she was thinking about. The experience as to Ann revealed Katie to him as having thought about things he would not have dreamed she was thinking about. What in the world did she mean by saying she'd like to be a deserter herself? One of her preposterous sayings--but it was true that considerable truth had often lurked at the heart of Katie's absurd way of talking.

Watching her, he was drawn to thought of her attractiveness and that made him wonder whom Katie would marry. He had always been secretly proud of his sister's popularity; it seemed she should make a brilliant marriage.

Live brilliantly. It was the thing to which she was adapted. Katie was unique. Distinctive. Secretly, unadmittedly, he was very ambitious for her. And with a little smile he considered that seemingly Katie was just shrewd enough to be ambitious for herself. She had steered her little bark safely past the place where she would be likely to marry a lieutenant. Was she heading for a general?

So he reflected with humor and affection, watching Katie beat the tattoo on the window.

Thought of what some one had said of her as the army girl suggested something that changed his mood, bringing him suddenly to his feet.

"Katie," he demanded, "how much did you ever talk to this fellow? You don't think, do you, that he was trying to get you for his 'army girl'--or some such rot? If I thought that--You don't think, do you, Katie, that that was what he was trying to work you for?"

Katie suddenly raised her hands and pushed back her hair, for the minute covering her eyes. "No, Wayne," she said, "I don't think that was what he was trying to 'work me' for."

And unable to bear more, she told him that she was very tired and asked him to go.

CHAPTER XL

Katie Jones was very gay that winter. She made her home at her uncle's, near Washington, though most of the time she was in Washington itself, with various cousins and friends; there were always people wanting Katie, especially that winter, when she had such unfailing zest for gayety.

They wondered that she should not be more broken up at her brother's absurd move in quitting the army--just at the time the army offered him so much. She seemed to take it very easily; though Katie was not one to take things hard, too light of spirit for that. And they wondered about his marriage to a girl whom nobody but Katie knew anything about. Katie seemed devoted to her and happy in the marriage.

"Why, naturally I am pleased," she said to a group of army people who were inquiring about Wayne's bride. "She is my best friend. The girl I care most about."

Major Darrett was one of the group. Some one turned to him and asked if he had met her when she visited Katie at the Arsenal the summer before.

He replied that he had had that pleasure and that she was indeed beautiful and very charming.