The restaurant had been steadily emptying. Monsieur Gustav and his ample-bosomed wife were seated at a distant table, eating their own dinner. “What is it you want me to do?” she faltered!

And suddenly a great peace came to her. One was not alone in the fight, God was with us: the great Comrade. The evil and the cruelty all round her: she was no longer afraid of it. God was coming. Beyond the menace of the passing day, black with the war’s foul aftermath of evil dreams and hatreds, she saw the breaking of the distant dawn. The devil should not always triumph. God was gathering His labourers. “It may have been,” he answered carelessly, “though the gulf was wider then than it is now. I’ll try and think. Perhaps it is only your fancy.”

“It makes me laugh,” he was saying, “all this newspaper talk. Every nation, properly led, fights bravely. It is the male instinct. Women go into hysterics about it, because it has not been given them. I have the Croix de Guerre with all three leaves, and I haven’t half the courage of my dog, who weighs twelve kilos, and would face a regiment by himself. Why, a game cock has got more than the best of us. It’s the man who doesn’t think, who can’t think, who has the most courage—who imagines nothing, but just goes forward with his head down, like a bull. There is, of course, a real courage. When you are by yourself, and have to do something in cold blood. But the courage required for rushing forward, shouting and yelling with a lot of other fellows—why, it would take a hundred times more pluck to turn back.” “I’m so awfully sorry,” he said. “I’ve been talking to you as if you were a public meeting. I’m afraid I’m more used to them than I am to women. Please forgive me.” “Yes,” she answered. “Will you be coming alone?”