“Do you mind?” he said. “We shall get there so much quicker.” They grew less and less afraid of looking at one another as they felt that darkened room further and further behind them.!

Her going was the signal for the breaking up of the party. In a short time Joan and Madge found themselves left with only Flossie. “Poor Mary!” he said. “I should not have talked before her if I had thought. Her horror of war is almost physical. She will not even read about them. It has the same effect upon her as stories of cruelty.”

She concluded by giving Joan a hug, accompanied by a sloppy but heartfelt kiss. Years afterwards, listening to the overture to Tannhäuser, there came back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims’ onward march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the Song of Life. Through the dim aeons of man’s savage infancy; through the centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages of tyranny and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through hate; heedless of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale’s song: “I love you. I love you. I love you. We will build a nest. We will rear our brood. I love you. I love you. Life shall not die.” She stood beneath the withered trees, beside the shattered fountain. The sad-faced ghosts peeped out at her from the broken windows of the little silent houses.