“There’s a long, long trail that’s leading
    To No Man’s Land in France
  Where the shrapnel shells are bursting
    And we must advance.”

* * * * *

And then: 

  We’re going to show old Kaiser Bill
  What our Yankee boys can do.

Jim Barlow, his hands in his pockets, backed up against a house and listened to the clear, high, little voices.  “No Man’s Land in France—­We must advance—­What our Yankee boys can do.”

As if his throat were gripped by a quick hand, a storm of emotion swept him.  The little girls—­little girls who were the joy, each one, of some home!  Such little things as the Germans—­in Belgium—­“Oh, my God!” The words burst aloud from his lips.  These were trusting—­innocent, ignorant—­to “What our Yankee boys can do.”  Without that, without the Yankee boys, such as these would be in the power of wild beasts.  It was his affair.  Suddenly he felt that stab through him.

“God,” he prayed, whispering it as the little girls passed on singing, “help me to protect them; help me to forget myself.”  And the miracle that sends an answer sometimes, even in this twentieth century, to true prayer happened to Jim Barlow.  Behold he had forgotten himself.  With his head up and peace in his breast, and the look in his face already, though he did not know it, that our soldier boys wear, he turned and started at a great pace down the street to the recruiting office.

“Why, you did come.”

It was nine o’clock and he stood with lighted face in the middle of the little library.  And she came in; it was an event to which he never got used, Mary’s coming into a room.  The room changed always into such an astonishing place.

“Mary, I’ve done it.  I’m—­” his voice choked a bit—­“I’m a soldier.”  He laughed at that.  “Well not so you’d notice it, yet.  But I’ve taken the first step.”

“I knew, Jim.  You said you were going to enlist.  Why did you telephone you couldn’t come?”

He stared down at her, holding her hands yet.  He felt, unphrased, strong, the overwhelming conviction that she was the most desirable thing on earth.  And directly on top of that conviction another, that he would be doing her desirableness, her loveliness less than the highest honor if he posed before her in false colors.  At whatever cost to himself he must be honest with her.  Also—­he was something more now than his own man; he was a soldier of America, and inside and out he would be, for America’s sake, the best that was in him to be.

“Mary, I’ve got a thing to tell you.”

“Yes?” The sure way in which she smiled up at him made the effort harder.

“I fooled you.  You think I’m a hero.  And I’m not.  I’m a—­” for the life of him he could not get out the word “coward.”  He went on:  “I’m a blamed baby.”  And he told her in a few words, yet plainly enough what he had gone through in the long afternoon.  “It was the kiddies who clinched it, with their flags and their hair ribbons—­and their Yankee boys.  I couldn’t stand for—­not playing square with them.”