one has told you?"

He shook his head.

"It is a fact," she declared. "The armistice was signed yesterday at
eleven. Aren't you glad?"

MacRae reflected a second. A week earlier he would have thrown up his
cap and whooped. Now the tremendously important happening left him
unmoved, unbelievably indifferent. He was not stirred at all by the
fact of acknowledged victory, of cessation from killing.

"I should be, I suppose," he muttered. "I know a lot of fellows will
be--and their people. So far as I'm concerned--right now--"

He made a quick gesture with his hands. He couldn't explain how he
felt--that the war had suddenly and imperiously been relegated to the
background for him. Temporarily or otherwise, as a spur to his emotions,
the war had ceased to function. He didn't want to talk. He wanted to be
let alone, to think.

Yet he was conscious of a wish not to offend, to be courteous to this
clear-eyed young woman who looked at him with frank interest. He
wondered why he should be of any interest to her. MacRae had never been
shy. Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness. Being
free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not
thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl's sight.
Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself. A man cannot
live through manifold chances of death, face great perils, do his work
under desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds being