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.”