After Mrs. Kent had gone, the younger woman sat looking around her flat with a queer feeling of discontent.  A half-eaten box of chocolates was on the table and a new silk sweater coat lay across the lounge.  In the tiny kitchenette a tap dripped with weary insistence, and unwashed dishes filled the sink.  She got up suddenly and began to wash the dishes, and did not stop until every corner of her apartment was clean and tidy.

“I am getting dippy,” she said as she looked at herself in the mirror in the buffet; “I’ve got to get out—­this quiet life gets me.  I’ll go down to the dansant this afternoon—­no use—­I can’t stand being alone.”

She put on her white suit, and dabbing rouge on her cheeks and penciling her eyes, she went forth into the sunshiny streets.

She stopped to look at a display of sport suits in a window, also to see her own reflection in a mirror placed for the purpose among the suits.

Suddenly a voice sounded at her elbow:  “Some kid, eh?  Looking good enough to eat!”

She turned around and met the admiring gaze of Sergeant Edward Loftus Brown, recruiting sergeant of the 19-th, with whom she had been to the theater a few nights before.  She welcomed him effusively.

“Come on and have something to eat,” he said.  “I got three recruits to-day—­so I am going to proclaim a half-holiday.”

They sat at a table in an alcove and gayly discussed the people who passed by.  The President of the Red Cross came in, and at a table across the room hastily drank a cup of tea and went out again.

“She came to see me to-day,” said Mrs. Tweed, “and gave me to understand that they were not any too well pleased with me—­I am too gay for a soldier’s wife!  And they do not approve of you.”

Sergeant Brown smiled indulgently and looked at her admiringly through his oyster-lidded eyes.  His smile was as complacent as that of the ward boss who knows that the ballot-box is stuffed.  It was the smile of one who can afford to be generous to an enemy.

“Women are always hard on each other,” he said soothingly; “these women do not understand you, Trixie, that’s all.  No person understands you but me.”  His voice was of the magnolia oil quality.

“Oh, rats!” she broke out.  “Cut that understanding business!  She understands me all right—­she knows me for a mean little selfish slacker who is going to have a good time no matter what it costs.  I have been like a bad kid that eats the jam when the house is burning!  But remember this, I’m no fool, and I’m not going to kid myself into thinking it is anything to be proud of, for it isn’t.”

Sergeant Brown sat up straight and regarded her critically.  “What have you done,” he said, “that she should call you down for it?  You’re young and pretty and these old hens are jealous of you.  They can’t raise a good time themselves and they’re sore on you because all the men are crazy about you.”