It will be too much for her." Mrs.Lawrence turned her dark eyes, once tragic but now brimming with light, full on Broussard.

Broussard said to Lawrence: "These angelic women are very obstinate." "Would your mother, of whom my husband has told me so much, go away if she were in my place ?" Both Broussard and Lawrence remained silent.
"Then," said Mrs.Lawrence, "can you blame me if I act as your mother would act ?" Broussard took her hand and kissed it; the marks of toil upon it went to his soul.
"But the boy must be sent away," cried Lawrence.
"Yes, he may go," replied Mrs.Lawrence, "but I shall stay." It was nearly seven o'clock, the hour for dinner at the officers' club, before Broussard left the Lawrences' quarters.

All the men at the club were delighted to see Broussard, and all of them told him he looked seedy and every one who had served in the Philippines and had caught the jungle fever proposed a different regimen for him, but all agreed that Fort Blizzard was a good place to recuperate and that the "old man," as the commanding officer is always called, was rather a decent fellow, and might let him stay, and then they plunged into garrison news and gossip.
Broussard was thoroughly glad to be back once more at the handsome mess table, with the bright faces of the subalterns around him and the cheery talk and honest laughter, but his heart was full of other things--Anita Fortescue, for instance, and Lawrence and his wife and the little boy.
Some questions were asked him about Lawrence.

Broussard replied briefly that he found the man in San Francisco trying to get back to Fort Blizzard; he wanted to give himself up at the scene of his crime and Broussard had paid for his railway ticket.
"And brought him with you to keep him from getting away," said Conway, "very judicious thing to do with men like Lawrence." "I think he would have given himself up anyway," Broussard replied quietly.
Military justice is short and simple and severe.

Within forty-eight hours the court-martial sat.