He was sitting on the front seat, facing her. “I’m glad I went,” he said with sudden vehemence. “I loved watching you, moving about among all those people. I never knew before how beautiful you are.” “It’s the thing that gives me greatest hope,” she continued. “The childishness of men and women. It means that the world is still young, still teachable.”!

“Hanged if I can see how we are going to get out of it,” he answered Joan cheerfully. “The moment there is any threat of war, it becomes a point of honour with every nation to do nothing to avoid it. I remember my old duelling days. The quarrel may have been about the silliest trifle imaginable. A single word would have explained the whole thing away. But to utter it would have stamped one as a coward. This Egyptian Tra-la-la! It isn’t worth the bones of a single grenadier, as our friends across the Rhine would say. But I expect, before it’s settled, there will be men’s bones sufficient, bleaching on the desert, to build another Pyramid. It’s so easily started: that’s the devil of it. A mischievous boy can throw a lighted match into a powder magazine, and then it becomes every patriot’s business to see that it isn’t put out. I hate war. It accomplishes nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before. But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan the conflagration. Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon. Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war. Most of us do: it’s our opportunity. There’s some excuse for us. But these men—Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the Ménades of the Commune. They care nothing if the whole of Europe blazes. They cannot personally get harmed whatever happens. It’s fun to them.” “Oh, just a Christian gentleman,” she answered. “You will love him when you know him.”

The nurse shot her a swift glance. “I’m glad of that,” she said dryly. She let Joan go upstairs. Joan murmured her thanks. “Your mother’s,” he answered. “I built them the year I came back from America and gave them to her. I thought it would interest her. Perhaps it would, if I had left her to her own ways.”