midnight
He had joined the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard , and it absorbed a vast amount of his time . He had gone to the Plattsburg encampment the summer before and had kept up with the correspondence-school work in map problems , and finally he had obtained a second lieutenancy in the Seventh Regiment . It was his little protest against the unpreparedness of the nation as it toppled on the brink of the crater where the European war boiled and smoked . One midnight after a drill he found Kedzie crying bitterly . He took her in his arms , and his tenderness softened her pride so that she wept like a disconsolate baby and told him how lonely she was . Nobody called ; nobody invited her out ; nobody took her places . She had no friends , and her husband had abandoned her for his old regiment .