This afternoon, while she had sat awaiting from moment to moment the
appearance of her brother, or at least the sound of his voice over the
telephone, the pang had been prolonged into an agony. She had let herself
drift into a fantastic speculation of a sort that was perfectly new. What
if the boy who had shared that crazy adventure with her, himself an
officer bound overseas, had fallen in with Rush, made friends with him,
told him the story!

This was pure melodrama, she knew. There was, in any external sense,
nothing to be feared. The thing had happened almost a year ago. It had
had no consequences--except this inexplicable one that her brother's
approach brought back the buried memory of it. Why should it cling like
that? Like an acid that wouldn't wash off! She was not, as far as her
mind went, ashamed of it. Never had been. But, waiving all the
extenuating circumstances--which had really surrounded the act--admitting
that it was a sin (this thing that she had done once and had, later,
learned the impossibility of ever doing again), was it any worse than
what her brother had probably done a score of times?

What was this brother of hers going to be like? It wasn't possible, of
course, that she would find him the boy he had been five years ago,
before he went to France--though from some of his letters one might have
thought he hadn't changed a bit. Wasn't it likely that he'd turn out to
be some one she could cling to a little; confide her perplexities
to--some of them? Was there a chance that ripened, disillusioned, made
gentle and wise by the alchemy of the furnace he had come through, he
might prove to be the one person in the world to whom she could confide
everything? That would make an end to her nightmare, she felt sure.

The question whether he was or was not going to turn out like that was