Joan was about to reply when the maid’s announcement of “Mrs. Denton” postponed the discussion. “She’ll only pawn it,” said the girl, “to buy him grapes and port wine.”!

“I do not think we women have the right to discuss war,” she confided to Joan in her gentle, high-bred voice. “I suppose you think that out of date. I should have thought so myself forty years ago. We talk of ‘giving’ our sons and lovers, as if they were ours to give. It makes me a little angry when I hear pampered women speak like that. It is the men who have to suffer and die. It is for them to decide.” “He is so afraid you may not be able to wear it—that it will not fit you,” said Mary, “but I told him I was sure it would.”

“What do they say?” he demanded. She wanted votes for women. But she wanted them clean—won without dishonour. These “monkey tricks”—this apish fury and impatience! Suppose it did hasten by a few months, more or less, the coming of the inevitable. Suppose, by unlawful methods, one could succeed in dragging a reform a little prematurely from the womb of time, did not one endanger the child’s health? Of what value was woman’s influence on public affairs going to be, if she was to boast that she had won the right to exercise it by unscrupulousness and brutality? “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.”