This novel was written in the early nineteen twenties as a tribute to the fallen American soldiers of the Great War. It tells the story through the medium of an only child, the apple of his mother's eye, who on being able to enlist does so immediately. Even as he says goodbye to his mother there is a sense of the inevitable. Much earlier he had been encircled by a cloud of yellow butterflies ( the symbol of immortality) and his mother had marveled at the sight.