A middle-aged sergeant, who had a wound in the stomach and was sitting up in his bed, looked across. “There was a line of Germans came upon us,” he said, “at Bras. I thought I must be suffering from a nightmare when I saw them. They had thrown away their rifles and had all joined hands. They came dancing towards us just like a row of ballet girls. They were shrieking and laughing, and they never attempted to do anything. We just waited until they were close up and then shot them down. It was like killing a lot of kids who had come to have a game with us. The one I potted got his arms round me before he coughed himself out, calling me his ‘liebe Elsa,’ and wanting to kiss me. Lord! You can guess how the Boche ink-slingers spread themselves over that business: ‘Sonderbar! Colossal! Unvergessliche Helden.’ Poor devils!” “I suppose it would mean stagnation,” admitted Madge. “And yet I don’t know. Are there not forces moving towards right that are crying to us to help them, not by violence, which only interrupts—delays them, but by quietly preparing the way for them? You know what I mean. Erasmus always said that Luther had hindered the Reformation by stirring up passion and hate.” She broke off suddenly. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, if God would only say what He wants of us,” she almost cried; “call to us in trumpet tones that would ring through the world, compelling us to take sides. Why can’t He speak?”!

“No, it wasn’t,” answered the child. “Most of them were against it. And then there was Mama,” she added in a lower tone. “It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

“It’s rather a delicate business,” she told Joan. She was lying on a couch in her great library, and Joan was seated by her side. “I want someone who can go into private houses and mix with educated people on their own level; and especially I want you to see one or two women: they count in France. You know French pretty well, don’t you?” “Let me think of you,” she said, “as taking my place, pushing the outposts a little further on.” She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.