In the street she paused a moment and looked back through the railings. It seemed even still more sordid in the daylight: the sooty grass and the withered shrubs and the asphalte pathway strewn with dirty paper. And again a laugh she could not help broke from her. Her Garden of Gethsemane! “I know he’ll come back,” he said. “I won’t tell you why I am so sure. Perhaps you wouldn’t believe.” He was still holding her hands, looking into her eyes.!

“I said that,” answered Joan. “I wanted to do it and I talked and talked, so hard. I said everything I could think of. But that was the only answer: I mustn’t do it.” They were sitting in the hall of the hotel. It was the dressing hour and the place was almost empty. He shot a swift glance at her.

“Oh, give the devil his due, you fellows,” he said. “War isn’t a pretty game, but it does make for courage. We all know that. And things even finer than mere fighting pluck. There was a man in my company, a Jacques Decrusy. He was just a stupid peasant lad. We were crowded into one end of the trench, about a score of us. The rest of it had fallen in, and we couldn’t move. And a bomb dropped into the middle of us; and the same instant that it touched the ground Decrusy threw himself flat down upon it and took the whole of it into his body. There was nothing left of him but scraps. But the rest of us got off. Nobody had drugged him to do that. There isn’t one of us who was in that trench that will not be a better man to the end of his days, remembering how Jacques Decrusy gave his life for ours.” “It’s all right,” answered Madge. “She doesn’t really want our opinion of him—or rather she doesn’t want our real opinion of him. She only wants us to confirm hers. She’s engaged to him.” “Powerless to rule. Powerful only to serve,” he answered. “Powerful as Christ was powerful; not as Caesar was powerful—powerful as those who have suffered and have failed, leaders of forlorn hopes—powerful as those who have struggled on, despised and vilified; not as those of whom all men speak well—powerful as those who have fought lone battles and have died, not knowing their own victory. It is those that serve, not those that rule, shall conquer.”