With that she threw her head up and looked very straightly at her caller whose visage shaded ever so slightly in spite of himself. 

 “Have his wounds proved serious?” he asked, smiling, but unable to altogether do away with a species of parenthetical inflection in his voice. 

 “It wasn’t over his wounds that I cried.” 

 “Did you really cry at all for him?” 

 “I cried more for him than I did for Bob,” she admitted boldly. 

 “He is a fortunate boy! But why the tears in his case?” 

 “I felt so badly to be disappointed in him.” 

 “Did you expect to work a miracle there, my dear? Did you think to reform such an inveterate young reprobate with a glance?” 

 “I’m not sure that I ever asked myself either of those questions,” she replied, slowly; “but he promised me something, and I expected him to keep his word.” 

 “Men don’t keep such promises, Bertha,” the visitor said. “You shouldn’t have expected it.” 

 “I don’t know why not.” 

 “Because a man who drinks will drink again.” 

 “I didn’t refer to drinking,” she said quietly. “It was quite another thing.” 

 “Ah!” 

 She looked down at her rings and seemed to consider how much of her confidence she should give him, and the consideration led her to look up presently and say: 

 “He promised me that if he could not call any week he would write me a line instead. He came to town last week, and he neither called nor wrote. That wasn’t like the man I saw in him. That was a direct breaking of his word. I can’t understand, and I’m disappointed.” 

 Holloway took out his cigarette case and turned it over and over thoughtfully in his hands. 

 “He’s nothing but a boy,” he said at last, with an effort. 

 “He’s no boy,” she said. “He’s almost twenty-two years old. He’s a man.” 

 “Some 

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