der
water. The inventors don't seem able to devise any cure for the
submarines except to find 'em and fight 'em. They're hard to find, and
they won't fight. But they keep popping up and stabbing our pretty
ships to death. And now the great game is on, the greatest game that
civilized men ever fought with hell."

"What's that?"

"We're going to try to build ships faster than the Hun can sink 'em.
Isn't that a glorious job for you? Was there ever a--well, a nobler
idea? We can't kill the beast; so we're going to choke him to death
with food." He laughed to hide his embarrassing exaltation.

She was not afraid of it: "It is rather a stupendous inspiration,
isn't it?"

"Who was it said he'd rather have written Gray's 'Elegy' than taken
Quebec? I'd rather have thought up this thought than written the
Iliad. Nobody knows who invented the idea. He's gone to oblivion
already, but he has done more for the salvation of freedom than all
the poets of time."

This shocked her, yet thrilled her with its loftiness. She thrilled to
him suddenly, too. She saw that she was within the aura of a fiery
spirit--a business man aflame. And she saw in a white light that the
builders of things, even of perishable things, are as great as the
weavers of immortal words--not so well remembered, of course, for
posterity has only the words. Poets and highbrows scorn them, but
living women who can see the living men are not so foolish. They are
apt to prefer the maker to the writer. They reward the poet with a
smile and a compliment, but give their lives to the manufacturers, the
machinists, the merchants. Then the neglected poets and their toadies
the critics grow sarcastic about this and think that they have
condemned women for materialism when they are themselves blind to its
grandeur. They ignore the divinity that attends the mining and
smelting and welding and selling of iron things, the hewing and sawing
and planing of woods, the sowing and reaping and distribution of
foods. They make a priestcraft and a ritual of artful language, and
are ignorant of their own heresy. But since they deal in words, they
have a fearful advantage and use it for their own glorification, as
priests are wont to do.

Marie Louise had a vague insight into the truth, but was not aware of
her own wisdom. She knew only that this Davidge who had made himself
her gallant, her messenger and servant, was really a genius, a giant.
She felt that the roles should be rever