He did not hear Betty Gower until she was beside him.  Her foot clicked on a stone and he looked up.  Betty was all in white, a glow in her cheeks and in her eyes, bareheaded, her reddish-brown hair shining in a smooth roll above her ears.

“I hear you have lost your father,” she said simply.  “I’m awfully sorry.”

Some peculiar quality of sympathy in her tone touched MacRae deeply.  His eyes shifted for a moment to the uneasy sea.  The lump in his throat troubled him again.  Then he faced her again.

“Thanks,” he said slowly.  “I dare say you mean it, although I don’t know why you should.  But I’d rather not talk about that.  It’s done.”

“I suppose that’s the best way,” she agreed, although she gave him a doubtful sort of glance, as if she scarcely knew how to take part of what he said.  “Isn’t it lovely after the storm?  Pretty much all the civilized world must feel a sort of brightness and sunshine to-day, I imagine.”

“Why?” he asked.  It seemed to him a most uncalled-for optimism.

“Why, haven’t you heard that the war is over?” she smiled.  “Surely some one has told you?”

He shook his head.

“It is a fact,” she declared.  “The armistice was signed yesterday at eleven.  Aren’t you glad?”

MacRae reflected a second.  A week earlier he would have thrown up his cap and whooped.  Now the tremendously important happening left him unmoved, unbelievably indifferent.  He was not stirred at all by the fact of acknowledged victory, of cessation from killing.

“I should be, I suppose,” he muttered.  “I know a lot of fellows will be—­and their people.  So far as I’m concerned—­right now—­”

He made a quick gesture with his hands.  He couldn’t explain how he felt—­that the war had suddenly and imperiously been relegated to the background for him.  Temporarily or otherwise, as a spur to his emotions, the war had ceased to function.  He didn’t want to talk.  He wanted to be let alone, to think.

Yet he was conscious of a wish not to offend, to be courteous to this clear-eyed young woman who looked at him with frank interest.  He wondered why he should be of any interest to her.  MacRae had never been shy.  Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness.  Being free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl’s sight.  Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself.  A man cannot live through manifold chances of death, face great perils, do his work under desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds being manifest in his bearing.  Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and it shows in their eyes.  Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four, clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in uniform.  But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a girl’s fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded his eyes made Betty Gower want to comfort him.