“Hello, mother!” he said, striding quickly through the chairs and over to where she sat.

“Edwin!”

“Thought I’d sleep home to-night, mother.”

He kissed her lightly, perking up her shoulder butterflies of green sequins, and standing off to observe.

“Got to hand it to my little mother for quiet and sumptuous el-e-gance!  Some classy spangy-wangles!” He ran his hand against the lay of the sequins, absorbed in a conscious kind of gaiety.

She moistened her lips, trying to smile.

“Oh, boy,” she said—­“Edwin!”—­holding to his forearm with fingers that tightened into it.

“Mother,” he said, pulling at his coat lapels with a squaring of shoulders, “you—­you going to be a dead game little sport?”

She was looking ahead now, abstraction growing in her white face.

“Huh?”

He fell into short strides up and down the length of the couch front.

“I—­I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, but—­but—­oh, hang!—­when a fellow’s a senior it—­it’s all he can do to get home once in a while and—­and—­what’s the use talking about a thing anyway before it breaks right, and—­well, everybody knows it’s up to us college fellows—­college men—­to lead the others and show our country what we’re made of now that she needs us—­eh, little dressed-up mother?”

She looked up at him with the tremulous smile still trying to break through.

“My boy can mix with the best of ’em.”

“That’s not what I mean, mother.”

“You got to be twice to me what you been, darling—­twice to me.  Listen, darling.  I—­Oh, my God!”

She was beating softly against his hand held in hers, her voice rising again, and her tears.

“Listen, darling—­”

“Now, mother, don’t go into a spell.  The war is going to help you out on these lonesome fits, mother.  Like Slawson put it to-day in Integral Calculus Four, war reduces the personal equation to its lowest terms—­it’s a matter of—.”

“I need you now, Edwin—­O God! how I need you!  There never was a minute in all these months since you’ve grown to understand how—­it is between your father and me that I needed you so much—­”

“Mother, you mustn’t make it harder for me to—­tell you what I—­”

“I think maybe something has happened to me, Edwin.  I can feel myself breathe all over—­it’s like I’m outside of myself somewhere—­”

“It’s nervousness, mother.  You ought to get out more.  I’m going to get you some war-work to do, mother, that ’ll make you forget yourself.  Service is what counts these days!”

“Edwin, it’s come—­he’s leaving me—­it—­”

“Speaking of service, I—­I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, but—­but—­when war was declared the other day, a—­a bunch of us fellows volunteered for—­for the university unit to France, and—­well, I’m accepted, mother—­to go.  The lists went up to-night.  I’m one of the twenty picked fellows.”