morning of tender unreality, they little dreamed that in her womb the
world was breeding a hellish massacre of God's highest creatures, a
wholesale slaughter of His children; that that same summer's sun was to
fall on fields of crimson, dyed with the blood of civilized nations,
precious blood drawn from the veins of patriots and heroes by the lies
and lust of a war-mad king.

Ischia, lost in its ancient sleep, cradled in the beauty of the world's
fairest waters, was to be waked with the bugles of war. From her
mountain heights and her seagirt fields she was to send forth her sons,
to fight until they became drunk with the smell of blood.

How little did either Margaret or Freddy dream that they were gazing
for the last time together upon a land of dreams, upon a world of
peace! As they sat and marvelled at a world which under a summer sun
seemed as fair as heaven and as pure as an angel's dream, they little
realized that Europe nursed and flattered a people more steeped in
iniquity and eager for licentious cruelty than any nation recorded in
the world's darkest story. The primitive barbarities of uncivilized
races, and the war-atrocities of ancient Egypt and Assyria, which were
familiar to Margaret, and against which Akhnaton had come to preach his
mission of peace, were as nothing compared to the acts which were to be
committed by a nation which had preached the mission of Jesus for a
thousand years, and had carried His doctrines into the farthest corners
of the earth.

In the years to come that journey from Alexandria to Marseilles was to
be one of the greatest consolations of Margaret's life.

In the days to come, when Margaret, knowing all things and enduring all
things, looked back upon the journey, it comforted her to think of how
much Freddy had enjoyed his well-earned rest and how eagerly he had
looked forward to his holiday in Scotland.

* * * * * *

The war, which has set a date in England from which every event of
importance counts and will be counted by her people for generations to
come, had not been whispered or dreamed of by ordinary people. Like
Ischia, England was still dreaming and trusting. Her ideals of honour
forbade that she should doubt the honour of a sister-nation, bound to
her by the closest ties of blood and sympathy.

When Freddy and Margaret landed in England they went their separate
ways.

Margaret, at the outbreak of the war, at once offered her