“It is my self-respect, Jean-Joan.”

She admitted that.  “But—?”

“I can’t stay out of the fighting and call myself a man.  It has come to that with me.”

She knew that it had come to that.  She had thought a great deal about it.  She lay awake at night thinking about it.  She thought of it as she sat by the General’s bed, day after day, holding his hand.

The doctor’s report had been cautious, but it had amounted to this—­the General might live to a green old age, some men rallied remarkably after such a shock.  He rather thought the General might rally, but then again he might not, and anyhow he would be tied for months, perhaps for years, to his chair.

The old man was giving to his daughter-in-law an affection compounded of that which he had given to his wife and to his son.  It was as if in coming up the stairs in her white gown on her wedding day, Jean had brought a bit of Edith back to him.  For deep in his heart he knew that without her, Derry would not have come.

So he clung pathetically to that little hand, which seemed the only anchor in his sea of loneliness.  Pathetically his old eyes begged her to stay.  “You won’t leave me, Jean?” And she would promise, and sit day after day and late into the night, holding his hand.

And as she sat with him, there grew up gradually within her a conviction which strengthened as the days went by.  She could tell the very moment when she had first thought of it.  She had left the General with Bronson while she went to dress for dinner.  Derry was waiting for her, and usually she would have flown to him, glad of the moment when they might be together.  But something halted her at the head of the stairs.  It was as if a hand had been put in front of her, barring the way.

The painted lady was looking at her with smiling eyes, but back of the eyes she seemed to discern a wistful appeal—­“I want you to stay.  No matter what happens I beg that you will stay.”

But Jean didn’t want to stay.  All the youth in her rebelled against the thing that she saw ahead of her.  She yearned to be free—­to live and love as she pleased, not a prisoner in that shadowed room.

So she pushed it away from her, and so there came one morning a letter from her father.

“Drusilla went over on the same boat.  It was a surprising thing to find her there.  Since I landed, I haven’t seen her.  But I met Captain Hewes in Paris, and he was looking for her.

“I had never known how fine she was until those days on the boat.  It was wonderful on the nights when everything was darkened and we were feeling our way through the danger zone, to have her sing for us.  I believe we should all have gone to the bottom singing with her if a submarine had sunk us.