“Did he, Carlyle, ever come to this church?” asked Joan. “Just by that tree that leans forward,” he answered, pointing with his cane a little way ahead. “I thought that in America I’d get another chance. I might have if your father hadn’t come along. I wonder if he remembers me.”!

“Why can’t you help him in his own house, instead of wandering all about the country?” Flossie wanted to know. “Yes,” said Joan. “We are founding the League of Youth. You’ve got to be in it. We are going to establish branches all round the world.”

“There’s something bigger coming,” he said. “Here everything seems to be going on much the same, but over there you feel it. Something growing silently out of all this blood and mud. I find myself wondering what the men are staring at, but when I look there’s nothing as far as my field-glasses will reach but waste and desolation. And it isn’t only on the faces of our own men. It’s in the eyes of the prisoners too. As if they saw something. A funny ending to the war, if the people began to think.” “Oh, don’t come the kid,” advised Flossie. “If you don’t mind being talked about yourself, you might think of him. If Carleton gets hold of it, he’s done for.” She never quite remembered what the talk was about. Men were brought up and presented to her, and hung about her words, and sought to please her. She had spoken her own thoughts, indifferent whether they expressed agreement or not; and the argument had invariably taken another plane. It seemed so important that she should be convinced. Some had succeeded, and had been strengthened. Others had failed, and had departed sorrowful, conscious of the necessity of “thinking it out again.”