CHAPTER XVIII.
Wally was the first to go.
On a wonderful moonlight night in May he called to bid Mary good-bye.

He had received a commission in the aviation department and was already in uniform--as charming and romantic a figure as the eyes of love could ever wish to see.
But Mary couldn't see him that way--not even when she tried--making a bold little experiment with herself and feeling rather sorry, if anything, that her heart beat no quicker and not a thrill ran over her, when her hand rested for a moment on Wally's shoulder.
"I wonder if I'm different from other girls," she thought.

"Or is it because I have other things to think about?
Perhaps if I had nothing else on my mind, I'd dream of love as much as anybody, until it amounted to--what do they call it ?--a fixed idea ?--that thing which comes to people when they keep turning the same thing over and over in their minds, till they can't get it out of their thoughts ?" But you mustn't think that Mary didn't care that Wally was going--perhaps never to return.

She knew that she liked him--she knew she would miss him.

And when, just before he left, he sang The Spanish Cavalier in that stirring tenor which always made her scalp tingle and her breast feel full, she turned her face to the moonlit scene outside and lived one of those minutes which are so filled with beauty and the stirring of the spirit that pleasure becomes poignant and brings a feeling which isn't far from pain.
"I'm off to the war--to the war I must go, To fight for my country and you, dear; But if I should fall, in vain I would call The blessing of my country and you, dear--" All their eyes were wet then, even Wally's--moved by the sadness of his own song.