When the guests were gone and Anita was lying wide awake in her little white bed, thinking of Broussard, Colonel Fortescue, in the pride of his heart, was telling Mrs. Fortescue about it, as he smoked his last cigar in his office.

“It was great!” said the Colonel.  “The child knew her subject wonderfully.  She sat there, talking with men who had served in the Philippines, and they said she knew as much as they did.”

“Broussard is in the Philippines,” replied Mrs. Fortescue quietly.

Colonel Fortescue dashed his cigar into the fireplace and remained silent for five minutes.

“At any rate,” he said presently, “The child’s love affair hasn’t made a fool of her.  She is actually learning something from it.  That’s where she is so far ahead of most young things of her age.”

“She will be eighteen next spring,” said Mrs. Fortescue.

The mention of Anita’s age always made the Colonel cross; so nothing more was said between the father and mother about Anita that night.  But the Colonel yearned over the beloved of his heart, nor did he classify Anita’s silent and passionate remembrance of Broussard with the idle fancies of a young girl; it was like Anita herself, of strong fibre.

The winter wore on, and the whirlpool of life surged in the far-distant post, as in the greater centres of life.  The chaplain, an earnest man, found men and women more willing to listen to him, than in any spot in which he had ever spoken the message entrusted to him.  Perhaps the aviation field had something to do with it; the people in the fort were always near to life and to death.  The chaplain disliked to find himself watching particular faces in the chapel when he preached the simple, soldierly sermons on Sundays, and was annoyed with himself that he always saw, above all others, Anita Fortescue’s gaze, and that of Mrs. Lawrence, as she sat far back in the chapel.  Anita’s eyes were full of questionings, and dark with sadness; but Mrs. Lawrence, in her plain black gown and hat, sometimes with Lawrence by her side, always with the beautiful boy, sitting among the soldiers and their wives, embodied tragedy.  The chaplain sometimes went to see Mrs. Lawrence; she was a delicate woman, and often ill, and the chaplain was forced to admire Lawrence’s kindness to his wife, although in other respects Lawrence was not a model of conduct.  As with Mrs. McGillicuddy, and everybody else at the fort, Mrs. Lawrence maintained a still, unconquerable reserve.  One day, the chaplain said to Anita: 

“I hear that Lawrence’s wife is ill.  Could you go to see her?  You know she isn’t like the wives of the other enlisted men, and that makes it hard to help her.”

Anita blushed all over her delicate face.  She felt a deep hostility to Mrs. Lawrence; she had seen Broussard with her twice, and each time there was an unaccountable familiarity between them.  But women seek their antagonists among other women, and Anita felt a secret longing to know more about this mysterious woman.