“Don’t you dare, Jim, you’re the bravest—­bravest—­”

The words died in a sharp break.  “Why, Jim it was a hundred thousand times pluckier to be afraid and then go.  Can’t you see that, you big stupid?”

“But, Mary, you said you admired it when—­when you thought I was a lion of courage.”

“Of course.  I admired you.  Now I adore you.”

“Well,” summed up, Barlow bewildered, “if women aren’t the blamedest!”

And Mary squealed laughter.  She put hands each side of his face.  “Jim—­listen.  I’ll try to explain because you have a right to understand.”

“Well, yes,” agreed Jim.

“It’s like this.  I thought you’d enlist and I never dreamed you were balky.  I didn’t know you hated it so.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Go on,” urged Jim.

“I thought you were mad to be going, like—­like these light-headed boys.  That you didn’t mind leaving me compared to the adventure.  That you didn’t care for danger.  But now—­now.”  She covered his eyes with her fingers, “Now Jim, you need me.  A woman can’t love a man her best unless she can help him.  Against everything—­sorrow, mosquitoes, bad food—­drink—­any old bother.  That’s the alluring side of tipplers.  Women want to help them.  So, now I know you need me,” the soft, unsteady voice wandered on, and Jim, anchored between, the hands, drank in her look with his eyes and her tones with his ears and prayed that the situation might last a week.  “You need me so, to tell you how much finer you are than if you’d gone off without a quiver.”

Barlow sighed in contentment.  “And me thinking I was the solitary ’fraid-cat of America!”

“Solitary!  Why, Jim, there must be at least ten hundred thousand men going through this same battle.  All the ones old enough to think, probably.  Why Jim—­you’re only one of them.  In that speech the other night the man said this war was giving men their souls.  I think it’s your kind he meant, the kind that realizes the bad things over there and the good things over here and goes just the same.  The kind—­you are.”

“I’m a hero from Hero-ville,” murmured Barlow.  “But little Mary, when I come back mangled will you feel the same?  Will you marry me then, Mary?”

“I’ll marry you any minute,” stated Mary, “and when you come back I’ll love you one extra for every mangle.”

“Any minute,” repeated Barlow dramatically.  “Tomorrow?”

And summed up again the heaven that he could not understand and did not want to, “Search me,” he adjured the skies in good Americanese, “if girls aren’t the blamedest.”

THE V.C.

I had forgotten that I ordered frogs’ legs.  When mine were placed before me I laughed.  I always laugh at the sight of frogs’ legs because of the person and the day of which they remind me.  Nobody noticed that I laughed or asked the reason why, though it was an audible chuckle, and though I sat at the head of my own dinner-party at the Cosmic Club.