st be great enough to
rise to the new citizenship of the world even if martyrdom be the
condition of enrolment. It is far, far harder than snatching a musket
and sweeping on with the mob, but it is for people like you and me to
have the courage to try to stem this flood of ignorance, to stop this
butchery of women's hearts.'

'Women's hearts!' She laughed hysterically. 'And you believe that you
understand women! Do you think war appals us? Do you think because we
may shed tears that it is from self-pity? Rubbish! There are thousands
of us to-night who could almost shout for joy.'

'Elise!'

'I mean it. Don't you see that to-night our whole life has been changed?
Men are going to die--horribly, cruelly--but they're going to play the
parts of men. Don't you understand what that means to us? _We're part
of it all_. It was the women who gave them birth. It was the women who
reared them, then lost them in ordinary life--and now it's all justified.
They can't go to war without us. We're partners at last. Do you think
women are afraid of war? Why, the glory of it is in our very blood.'

'But,' cried Selwyn, 'you can't think what you are saying.'

'I don't want to. All I know is that I could sing and dance and go mad
for the wonder of it all.'

He took a step forward and grasped both her wrists in his hands.

'Listen to me,' he said, his jaw stiffening as he spoke; 'some of us have
got to keep our sanity in this crisis. You know better than I, for you
have described it to me, that this country has been darkened with
ignorance just as Germany and the rest have been. This is the climax of
it all--and you're going to help it on, instead of having the courage to
take your stand. Elise, to-night I pledged my whole life to a crusade
against the darkness that men are forced to endure. It is going to be a
long fight, and perhaps a hopeless one, although some day, somehow, the
cause must win. And I need your inspiration. Oh, my dear, my dear, you
must know how much I love you. Every minute that you're away I'm hungry
for you. When we were together that evening by the stream I longed so to
take you in my arms that my heart ached with the repression I forced on
myself. I have known that there were a thousand difficulties in the way,
and I was not going to speak, but the other night when you met your
brother by the oak'----

'Oh! you were spying.'

'It was an accident. I said nothing to you about it, but