Jean ate her duckling in flaming silence, ate her salad, ate her ice, drank her coffee, and was glad when the meal ended.

The war from the beginning had been for her a sacred cause.  She had yearned to be a man that she might stand in the forefront of battle.  She had envied the women of Russia who had formed a Battalion of Death.  Her father had laughed at her.  “You’d be like a white kitten in a dog fight.”

It seemed intolerable that tongues should be busy with this talk of young Drake’s cowardice.  He had seemed something so much more than that.  And he was a man—­with a man’s right to leadership.  What was the matter with him?

The night before she had slept little—­Derry’s voice—­Derry’s eyes!  She had gone over every word that he had said.  She had risen early in the morning to write in her memory book, and she had drawn a most entrancing border about the page, with melting strawberry ice, lilies of France, Cinderella slippers, and red-ink lobsters, rather nightmarishly intermingled!

He had seemed so fine—­so—­she fell back on her much overworked word wonderful—­her heart had run to meet him, and now—­it would have to run back again.  How silly she had been not to see.

After dinner they danced in the Long Room, which was rather famous from a decorative point of view.  It was medieval in effect, with a balcony and tapestries, and some precious bits of armor.  There was a lion-skin flung over the great chair where Mrs. Witherspoon was enthroned.

Between dances, Jean and Ralph sat on the balcony steps, and talked of many things which brought the red to Jean’s cheeks, and a troubled light into her eyes.

And it was from the balcony-steps that, as the evening waned, she saw Derry Drake standing in the great arched doorway.

There was a black velvet curtain behind him which accentuated his fairness.  He did not look nineteen.  Jean had a fleeting vision of a certain steel engraving of the “Princes in the Tower” which had hung in her grandmother’s house.  Derry was not in the least like those lovely imprisoned boys, yet she had an overwhelming sense of his kinship to them.

As young Drake’s eyes swept the room, he was aware of Jean on the balcony steps.  She was in white and silver, with a touch of that heavenly blue which seemed to belong to her.  Her crinkled hair was combed quaintly over her ears and back from her forehead.  He smiled at her, but she apparently did not see him.

He made his way to Mrs. Witherspoon.  “I was so sorry to get here late.  But my other engagements kept me.  If I could have dined at two places, you should have had at least a half of me.”

“We wanted the whole.  You know Dr. McKenzie, Derry?”

The two men shook hands.  “May I dance with your daughter?” Derry said, smiling.

“Of course.  She is up there on the stairs.”

Jean saw him coming.  Ever since Derry had stood in the door she had been trying to make up her mind how she would treat him when he came.  Somebody ought to show him that his millions didn’t count.  She hadn’t thought of his millions last night.  If he had been just the shabby boy of the Toy Shop, she would have liked his eyes just as much, and his voice!