ext.'

The decent pretext came in due course, and Gideon said, 'So that's that.'

He added to the Potters, 'For once I am in agreement with your father's
press. We should be lunatics to stand out of this damnable mess.'

Juke also was now, painful to him though it was to be so, in agreement
with the Potter press. To him the war had become a crusade, a fight for
decency against savagery.

'It's that,' said Gideon. 'But that's not all. This isn't a show any
country can afford to stand out of. It's Germany against Europe, and if
Europe doesn't look sharp, Germany's going to win. _Germany._ Nearly as
bad as Russia.... One would have to emigrate to another hemisphere....
No, we've got to win this racket.... But, oh, Lord, what a mess!' He fell
to biting his nails, savage and silent.

Jane thought all the time, beneath her other thoughts about it, 'To have
a war, just when life was beginning and going to be such fun.'

Beneath her public thoughts about the situation, she felt this deep
private disgust gnawing always, as of one defrauded.

CHAPTER III

OPPORTUNITY

1

They did not know then about people in general going to the war. They
thought it was just for the army and navy, not for ordinary people. That
idea came a little later, after the Anti-Potter party had broken up and
gone home.

The young men began to enlist and get commissions. It was done; it was
the correct idea. Johnny Potter, who belonged to an O.T.C., got a
commission early.

Jane said within herself, 'Johnny can go and I can't.' She knew she was
badly, incredibly left. Johnny was in the movement, doing the thing that
mattered. Further, Johnny might ultimately be killed in doing it; her
Johnny. Everything else shrank and was little. What were books? What was
anything? Jane wanted to fight in the war. The war was damnable, but it
was worse to be out of it. One was such an utter outsider. It wasn't
fair. She could fight as well as Johnny could. Jane went about white and
sullen, with her world tumbling into bits about her.

Mr. Potter said in the press, and Mrs. Potter in the home, 'The people of
England have a great opportunity before them. We must all try to rise to
it'--as if the people of England were fishes and the opportunity a fly.

Opportunity, thought Jane. Where is it? I see none. It was precisely
opportunity which the war had put an end to.

'The women of England must now prove that they are worthy of their men,'
said the Po