“Is she glad to have him go to Paradise?”

“Not exactly—­glad.”

“Was that why she was crying?”

“Yes.  Of course she will miss him, but it is a wonderful thing just the same, Teddy, when you think of it—­when you think of how your own father went over to France because he was sorry for all the poor little children who had been hurt, and for all the people who had suffered and suffered until it seemed as if they must not suffer any more—­and he wanted to help them, and—­and—­”

But here he stumbled and stopped.  “I tell you, Teddy,” he said, as man to man, “it is going to hurt awfully, not to see him.  But you’ve got to be careful not to be too sorry—­because there’s your Mother to think of.”

“Is she crying now?”

“Yes.  Down there on her bed.  Could you be very brave if you went down, and told her not to be sorry?”

“Brave, like my Daddy?”

“Yes.”

Margaret-Mary was too young to understand—­she was easily comforted.  Derry sang a little song and her eyes drooped.

But downstairs the little son who was brave like his father, sat on the edge of the bed, and held his mother’s hand.  “He’s in Paradise with the purple camels, Mother, and he’s a shining soul—.”

It was a week before Jean went with Derry to see Margaret.  It had been a week of strange happenings, of being made love to by Derry and of getting Daddy ready to go away.  She had reached heights and depths, alternately.  She had been feverishly radiant when with her lover.  She had resolved that she would not spoil the wonder of these days by letting him know her state of mind.

The nights were the worst.  None of them were as bad as the first night, but her dreams were of battles and bloodshed, and she waked in the mornings with great heaviness of spirit.

What Derry had told her of Margaret’s loss seemed but a confirmation of her fears.  It was thus that men went away and never returned—.  Oh, how Hilda would have triumphed if she could have looked into Jean’s heart with its tremors and terrors!

She came, thus, into the room, where Margaret sat with her children.

“I want you two women to meet,” Derry said, as he presented Jean, “because you are my dearest—­”

“He has told me so much about you,”—­Margaret put her arm about Jean and kissed her—­“and he has used all the adjectives—­yet none of them was adequate.”

Jean spoke tensely.  “It doesn’t seem right for us to bring our happiness here.”

“Why not?  This has always been the place of happiness?” She caught her breath, then went on quickly, “You mustn’t think that I am heartless.  But if the women who have lost should let themselves despair, it would react on the living.  The wailing of women means the weakness of men.  I believe that so firmly that I am afraid to—­cry.”

“You are braver than I—­” slowly.