“Why can’t you help him in his own house, instead of wandering all about the country?” Flossie wanted to know. “You thought I would take advantage of it,” she suggested.!

“Tell the other women,” he said. “Open their eyes. Tell them of their sons that you have seen dead and dying in the foolish quarrel for which there was no need. Tell them of the foulness, of the cruelty, of the senselessness of it all. Set the women against War. That is the only way to end it.” “No,” said Joan. “I don’t think I’ve got what you call the artistic temperament. I have never felt drawn towards anything of that sort.”

“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.” He turned to her with his last flicker of passion. “I want you to be just yourself,” said Joan; “a kind, good woman of the people, who will win their respect, and set them an example.” She moved across and seating herself on the arm of Mrs. Phillips’s chair, touched lightly with her hand the flaxen hair and the rouged cheek. “I want you to get rid of all this,” she whispered. “It isn’t worthy of you. Leave it to the silly dolls and the bad women.”