“Well?” prompted his wife.

“But won’t it be rather a—­a waste?” he asked.  And again he smiled, this time with some hidden meaning.

“Of course it won’t be a waste,” declared Honora.  “Aren’t women to serve their city as well as men?  It’s a practical form of patriotism, according to my mind.”

Kate broke into a nervous laugh.

“I hope I’m to be of some use,” she said.  “Work can’t come a moment too soon for me.  I was beginning to think—­”

She paused.

“Well?” supplied Fulham, still with that watchful regard of her.

“Oh, that I had made a mistake about myself—­that I wasn’t going to be anything in particular, after all.”

* * * * *

They were interrupted.  A man sprang up the outside steps and rang the doorbell imperatively.

“It’s Karl Wander,” announced Fulham, who had glanced through the window.  “It’s your cousin, Honora.”

He went to the door, and Kate heard an emphatic and hearty voice making hurried greetings.

“Stopped between trains,” it was saying.  “Can stay ten minutes precisely—­not a second longer.  Came to see the babies.”

Honora had arisen with a little cry and gone to the door.  Now she returned, hanging on to the arm of a weather-tanned man.

“Miss Barrington,” she said, “my cousin, Mr. Wander.  Oh, Karl, you’re not serious?  You don’t really mean that you can’t stay—­not even over night?”

The man turned his warm brown eyes on Kate and she looked at him expectantly, because he was Honora’s cousin.  For the time it takes to draw a breath, they gazed at each other.  Oddly enough, Kate thought of Ray McCrea, who was across the water, and whose absence she had not regretted.  She could not tell why her thoughts turned to him.  This man was totally unlike Ray.  He was, indeed, unlike any one she ever had known.  There was that about him which held her.  It was not quite assertion; perhaps it was competence.  But it was competence that seemed to go without tyranny, and that was something new in her experience of men.  He looked at her on a level, spiritually, querying as to who she might be.

The magical moment passed.  Honora and David were talking.  They ran away up the stairs with their guest, inviting Kate to follow.

“I’ll only be in the way now,” she called.  “By and by I’ll have the babies all to myself.”

Yet after she had said this, she followed, and looked into the nursery, which was at the rear of the house.  Honora had thrust the two children into her cousin’s big arms and she and David stood laughing at him.  Another man might have appeared ridiculous in this position; but it did not, apparently, occur to Karl Wander to be self-conscious.  He was wrapped in contemplation of the babies, and when he peered over their heads at Kate, he was quite grave and at ease.

Then, before it could be realized, he was off again.  He had kissed Honora and congratulated her, and he and Kate had again clasped hands.