Four times she had passed the door of the shop, waiting for a dull moment in its traffic.  Now but two women were left, and they seemed to be waiting only for change.  Her resolution did not falter; she was merely practising a trained discretion.  She was going to buy a pair of satin dancing slippers though the whole world should look upon her as lost.  Too long, she felt, had she dwelt among the untrodden ways.  As she had confided to her journal, the placid serenity of her life had become a sea of mad unrest.  Old moorings had been wrenched loose; she floated with strange tides.  And Wilbur Cowan, who was going to war, had invited her to be present that evening at the opening of Newbern’s new and gorgeous restaurant, where the diners, between courses and until late after dinner, would dance to the strains of exotic and jerky music, precisely as they did in the awful city.

Winona had not even debated a refusal.  The boy should be gratified.  Nor did she try to convince herself that her motive was wholly altruistic.  She had suddenly wished to mingle in what she was persuaded would be a scene of mad revelry.  She had definitely abandoned the untrodden ways.  She thought that reading about war might have unsettled her ideals.  Anyway, they were unsettled.  She was going to this place of the gay night life—­and she was going right!

It was while she still waited, perturbed but outwardly cool, that the absorbed Sharon Whipple brushed her shoulder.  She wondered if her secret purpose had been divined.  But Sharon apparently was engrossed by other matters than the descent into frivolity of one who had long been austere.

“Well,” he said, beaming on her, “our boy is going over.”

Winona was relieved.

“Yes, he’s off, but he’ll come back safe.”

“Oh, I know that!  Nothing could hurt him, but I’ll miss the skeesicks.”  He ruminated, then said pridefully:  “That boy is what my son would have been if I’d had one.  You can’t tell me any son of my get and raising would have talked about his reactions when this time come!”

Winona winced ever so slightly at this way of putting it, but smiled valiantly.

“Publishing magazines full of slander about George Washington, and this new kind of stubby-ended poetry!”

“It is very different from Tennyson,” said Winona.

“The other one’s a man,” went on Sharon.  “You remember when you was worried because he wouldn’t settle down to anything?  Well, you watch him from now on!  He hasn’t got the book knowledge, but he’s got a fine outdoors education, and that’s the kind we need most.  Don’t you see that fine look in his eye—­afraid of nothing, knowing how to do most anything?  His is the kind makes us a great country—­outdoor boys from the little towns and farms.  They’re the real folks.  I’m awful proud of him, though I ain’t wanting that to get out on me.  I been watching him since he was in short pants.  He’s dependable—­knows how.  Say, I’m glad he took to the outdoors and didn’t want to dress up every day and be a clerk in a store or a bank or some place like that.  Wasn’t it good?”