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“I thought so. That being the case, you’re coming home along o’ me, young ‘ooman.”

“Can’t do it. I’m on my way to the Ritz to meet a dashing delegation from Serbia. You never saw such gorgeous creatures. All gold and green and red, with swords, and snake-work, and glittering boots. They’d make a musical-comedy soldier look like an undertaker.”

There came a queer little look into his eyes. “But this isn’t a musical comedy, dear. These men are–Look here, Emma. I want to talk to you. Let’s walk home together and have dinner decently in our own dining room. There are things at the office–“

“S’impossible, Mr. Buck. I’m late now. And you know perfectly well there are two vice-commandants ready to snatch my shoulder-straps.”

“Emma! Emma!”

At his tone the smiling animation of her face was dimmed. “What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything. At least, nothing that I can discuss with you at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street. When does this Serbian thing end? I’ll call for you.”

“There’s no telling. Anyway, the Fannings will drive me home, thanks, dear.”

He looked down at her. She was unbelievably girlish and distingue in the blue uniform; a straight, slim figure, topped by an impudent cocked hat. The flannel shirt of workaday service was replaced to-day by a severely smart affair of white silk, high-collared, stitched, expensively simple. And yet he frowned as he looked.

“Fisk got his exemption papers to-day.” With apparent irrelevance.

“Yes?” She was glancing sharply up and down the thronged street. “Better call me a cab, dear. I’m awfully late. Oh, well, with his wife practically an invalid, and all the expense of the baby’s illness, and the funeral–The Ritz, dear. And tell him to hurry.” She stepped into the cab, a little nervous frown between her eyes.

But Buck, standing at the curb, seemed bent on delaying her. “Fisk told me the doctor said all she needs is a couple of months at a sanitarium, where she can be bathed and massaged and fed with milk. And if Fisk could go to a camp now he’d have a commission in no time. He’s had training, you know. He spent his vacation last summer at Plattsburg.”

“But he’s due on his advance spring trip in two or three weeks, isn’t he?… I really must hurry, T.A.”

“Ritz,” said Buck, shortly, to the chauffeur. “And hurry.” He turned away abruptly, without a backward glance. Emma’s head jerked over her shoulder in surprise. But he did not turn. The tall figure disappeared. Emma’s taxi crept into the stream. But uppermost in her mind was not the thought of Serbians, uniforms, Fisk, or Ritz, but of her husband’s right hand, which, as he turned away from the cab, had been folded tight into a fist.

She meant to ask an explanation of the clenched fingers; but the Serbians, despite their four tragic years, turned out to be as sprightly as their uniforms, and it was past midnight when the Fannings dropped her at her door. Her husband was rather ostentatiously asleep. As she doffed her warlike garments, her feminine canniness warned her that this was no time for explanations. Tomorrow morning would be better.

But next morning’s breakfast turned out to be all Jock.

A letter from Grace, his wife. Grace McChesney had been Grace Gait, one of the youngest and cleverest women advertising writers in the profession. When Jock was a cub in the Raynor office she had been turning out compelling copy. They had been married four years. Now Jock ruled a mahogany domain of his own in the Raynor suite overlooking the lake in the great Michigan Avenue building. And Grace was saying, “Eat the crust, girlie. It’s the crust that makes your hair grow curly.”

Emma, uniformed for work, read hasty extracts from Grace’s letter. Buck listened in silence.

“You wouldn’t know Jock. He’s restless, irritable, moody. And the queer part of it is he doesn’t know it. He tries to be cheerful, and I could weep to see him. He has tried to cover it up with every kind of war work from Red Crossing to Liberty Loaning, and from writing free full-page national advertising copy to giving up his tobacco money to the smoke fund. And he’s miserable. He wants to get into it. And he ought. But you know I haven’t been really husky since Buddy came. Not ill, but the doctor says it will be another six months before I’m myself, really. If I had only myself to think of–how simple! But two kiddies need such a lot of things. I could get a job at Raynor’s. They need writers. Jock says, bitterly, that all the worth-while men have left. Don’t think I’m complaining. I’m just trying to see my way clear, and talking to someone who understands often clears the way.”