One day she received a card from an old schoolmate, a girl who had married out of Carley’s set, and had been ostracized.  She was living down on Long Island, at a little country place named Wading River.  Her husband was an electrician—­something of an inventor.  He worked hard.  A baby boy had just come to them.  Would not Carley run down on the train to see the youngster?

That was a strong and trenchant call.  Carley went.  She found indeed a country village, and on the outskirts of it a little cottage that must have been pretty in summer, when the green was on vines and trees.  Her old schoolmate was rosy, plump, bright-eyed, and happy.  She saw in Carley no change—­a fact that somehow rebounded sweetly on Carley’s consciousness.  Elsie prattled of herself and her husband and how they had worked to earn this little home, and then the baby.

When Carley saw the adorable dark-eyed, pink-toed, curly-fisted baby she understood Elsie’s happiness and reveled in it.  When she felt the soft, warm, living little body in her arms, against her breast, then she absorbed some incalculable and mysterious strength.  What were the trivial, sordid, and selfish feelings that kept her in tumult compared to this welling emotion?  Had she the secret in her arms?  Babies and Carley had never become closely acquainted in those infrequent meetings that were usually the result of chance.  But Elsie’s baby nestled to her breast and cooed to her and clung to her finger.  When at length the youngster was laid in his crib it seemed to Carley that the fragrance and the soul of him remained with her.

“A real American boy!” she murmured.

“You can just bet he is,” replied Elsie.  “Carley, you ought to see his dad.”

“I’d like to meet him,” said Carley, thoughtfully.  “Elsie, was he in the service?”

“Yes.  He was on one of the navy transports that took munitions to France.  Think of me, carrying this baby, with my husband on a boat full of explosives and with German submarines roaming the ocean!  Oh, it was horrible!”

“But he came back, and now all’s well with you,” said Carley, with a smile of earnestness.  “I’m very glad, Elsie.”

“Yes—­but I shudder when I think of a possible war in the future.  I’m going to raise boys, and girls, too, I hope—­and the thought of war is torturing.”

Carley found her return train somewhat late, and she took advantage of the delay to walk out to the wooded headlands above the Sound.

It was a raw March day, with a steely sun going down in a pale-gray sky.  Patches of snow lingered in sheltered brushy places.  This bit of woodland had a floor of soft sand that dragged at Carley’s feet.  There were sere and brown leaves still fluttering on the scrub-oaks.  At length Carley came out on the edge of the bluff with the gray expanse of sea beneath her, and a long wandering shore line, ragged with wreckage or driftwood.  The surge of water rolled in—­a long, low, white, creeping line that softly roared on the beach and dragged the pebbles gratingly back.  There was neither boat nor living creature in sight.