He wrote when he could to his mother and Miss Latimer, and at rare intervals was sometimes fortunate enough to hear in turn from them.  His mother was ill; the strain of his absence and danger was telling on her enfeebled constitution; she said she could not have got along at all had it not been for Miss Latimer’s great kindness.  It seemed that the old maid was her constant visitor, bringing her flowers, taking her drives, comforting her in the dark hours when her courage was nigh spent.  “A good and noble woman,” wrote the old lady, “and very much in love with my boy.”

That line rang in Raymond’s head long afterwards.  He read it again and again, bewildered, tempted and yet afraid to believe it true, moved to the depths of his nature, at once happy and unhappy in the gamut of his doubts.  It could not be possible.  No, it could not be possible.  Standing at the breech of his gun, his eyes on a Spanish gunboat they had driven under the shelter of a fort, he found himself repeating:  “And very much in love with my boy.  And very much in love with my boy.”  And then, suddenly becoming intent again on the matter in hand, he slammed the breech-mechanism shut and gave the enemy a six-inch shell.

Then there came the news of his mother’s death.  As much a victim of the war as any stricken soldier or sailor at the front, she was numbered on the roll of the fallen.  The war had killed her as certainly, as surely, as any Mauser bullet sped from a tropic thicket.  Raymond had only the consolation of knowing that Miss Latimer had been with her at the last and that she had followed his mother to the grave.  Her letter, tender and pitiful, filled him with an inexpressible emotion.  His little world now held but her.

This was the last letter he was destined to receive from her.  The others, if there were others, all went astray in the chaotic confusion attendant on active service.  The poor quartermaster, when the ship was so lucky as to take a mail aboard, grew accustomed to be told that there was nothing for him.  He lost heart and stopped writing himself.  What was the use, he asked himself?  Had she not abandoned him?  The critical days of the war were over; peace was assured; the victory won, the country was already growing forgetful of the victors.  Such were his moody reflections as he paced the deck, hungry for the word that never came.  Yes, he was forgotten.  There could be no other explanation of that long silence.  He was forgotten!

He returned in due course to New York and was paid off and mustered out of the service.  It was dusk when he boarded an uptown car and stood holding to a strap, jostled and pushed about by the unheeding crowd.  Already jealous of his uniform, he felt a little bitterness to see it regarded with such scant respect.  He looked out of the windows at the lighted streets and wondered whether any of those hurrying thousands cared a jot for the men that had fought and died for them.  The air, so sharp and chill after the tropics, served still further to dispirit him and add the concluding note of depression to his home-coming.  He got off the car and walked down to Fifth Avenue, holding his breath as he drew near the Quintans’ house.  He rang the bell:  waited and rang again.  Then at last the door was unlocked and opened by an old woman.