Free Sound of the Trumpet by Grace Livingston Hill

quickly showed that.
    Or did it? Would he come again someday when John least expected him? What approach would he use the second time? And what should be his own reaction? Apparently interested, or not? And how much could he count on the police? They had asked a good many questions, but would they be on hand when needed?
    These and other questions relating to fifth columnists kept thrashing themselves over in John’s mind until his brain grew weary and his eyes heavy with sleep. After listening to his grandmother’s steady breathing and making sure she was as comfortable as could be expected, he slipped into the small adjoining room. It was little more than a big closet, only large enough to hold a cot and a small pine table, and the only place he could call his own. Yet it was just right, for lying here he could hear if his grandmother needed him and could watch over her in the night.
    He was soon ready for sleep, and as he dropped down on his hard little cot and drew the covers up, strangely there came to him the face of that beautiful girl he had seen on the street that day, that girl whose glance had met his own. Why did she so continually haunt him with her pleasant beauty? She was no one he would ever be likely to know, nor even speak to. And yet, since he saw her early in the day, there had not passed a minute when the memory of her had not come to haunt him, to taunt him as with something unattainable. He was half angry with her for having made such a strong impression upon him and wholly angry with himself for allowing the vision of her to come and go in his memory this way. He thought he had conquered it, swept it out of his mind. But just tonight he had happened to glimpse an item in the society column of the newspaper—a subject in which he had no interest whatsoever and never consciously looked at—that linked her name with Victor Vandingham’s. Vandingham, the man who had been his particular adversary in college. The man who had been the cause of more than one offense during their scholastic years in the same institution. The one who had assumed the right to ignore him, to discount him on every possible occasion, to sneer at him because he did not have the money to finance the various enterprises in which Vandingham had been interested. The one who had prevented his being elected to membership in the finest fraternity and whose deciding vote had kept him from a number of honors his fellow students were ready to give him. And this young man was a close friend of the girl whose face and glance kept coming back to him! This must not go on! The paper even hinted very plainly that she was engaged to Victor Vandingham! And he was haunted by her vision as if in some subtle way her spirit belonged to him.
    Fiercely he frowned and turned away from the thought of her. No woman should tempt him to let his thoughts dwell on her, no matter how brave or beautiful a vision she might be. She was not born into his world. And he doubted if he would ever find one who would fit into his life. He was fashioned of harder clay, meant to fight and die for freedom perhaps, that others might enjoy. Not meant to live at ease for happiness.
    So again and again he disciplined his thoughts, until he felt he had almost forgotten how she looked and the thought of her was far away. A moment of weakness, he told himself, the result of longings that sometimes came over him for his mother, whom he could just remember. A beautiful mother, sweet and tender with him, and gentle to everyone. Beautiful, too. For even a child knows beauty, and to the little one who first judges womanhood by the face of his smiling mother, his ideal grows great, so that he is not easily satisfied by one who does not measure up.
    The man did not appear for some days, and John began to feel that he must have dreamed the whole occurrence. Several times he had seen a policeman friend of his hovering on the outskirts of the group where he was working, giving a wink and a