“You look a bit rich,” her father retorted.

“Rather—­for the moment,” was her cheerful answer.

“And you still like living in Italy?”

“Tremendously!  Rome is wonderful now!”

“Reborn, eh.  Wings of the Eagles.”

“Yes, and we’re doing rather well.”

“I haven’t noticed it,” Roger said.  “Why don’t you send a few of your troops to help those plucky Frenchmen?”

“Because,” she replied, “we have a feeling that this is a war where we had much better help ourselves.”

“High ideals,” he snorted.

“Rome reborn,” she remarked, unabashed.  And her father scowled at her whimsically.

“You’re a heathen.  I give you up,” he declared.  Laura had risen, smiling.

“Oh, no, don’t give me up,” she said.  “For you see,” she added softly, “I’m a heathen with a great deal of love in her heart for thee, my dearest dad.  May I bring him down, my husband?”

“Yes—­”

“I’ll telephone to Deborah to-morrow and arrange it.”

When she had gone he returned to his chair and sat for a long time in a daze.  He was still disturbed and bewildered.  What a daughter of his!  And what did it mean?  Could she really go on being happy like this?  Sinning?  Yes, she was sinning!  Laura had broken her marriage vows, she had “run off with another fellah.”  Those were the plain ugly facts.  And now, divorced and re-married, she was careering gayly on!  And her views of the war were plain heathenish!  And yet there was something about her—­yes, he thought, he loved her still!  What for?  For being so happy!  And yet she was wrong to be happy, all wrong!  His thoughts went ’round in circles.

And his confusion and dismay grew even deeper the next night when Laura brought her new husband to dine.  For in place of the dark polished scoundrel whom Roger had expected, here was a spruce and affable youth with thick light hair and ruddy cheeks, a brisk pleasant manner of talking and a decidedly forcible way of putting the case of his country at war.  They kept the conversation to that.  For despite Deborah’s friendly air, she showed plainly that she wanted to keep the talk impersonal.  And Laura, rather amused at this, replied by treating Deborah and Allan and her father, too, with a bantering forbearance for their old-fashioned, narrow views and Deborah’s religion of brotherhood, democracy.  All that to Laura was passe.

From time to time Roger glanced at her face, into her clear and luminous eyes so warm with the joy of living with this new man, her second.  How his family had split apart.  He wrote Edith the news of her sister, and he received but a brief reply.  Nor did Deborah speak of it often.  She seemed to want to forget Laura’s life as the crisis in her own drew near.

CHAPTER XLI