hat He said--Christ."

Raven sat looking at her, wondering absently, in the unregarded depths
of his mind, how they could go on with a talk that was ploughing deeper
and deeper and yet could get nowhere in the end. For certainly they were
both mercifully bent on saving Anne, and Anne, under this shadow of her
latest past, herself would not let them.

"She absolutely forbade my going to France," said Nan, this with no
special feeling, but as if she had dwelt on it until there was no
emotion left to put into it. "She said it was notoriety I wanted. I told
her I'd scrub floors over there, if they wanted me to. It proved I did,
too, you know. I did it remarkably well. And then she said she forbade
me, and I reminded her I was of age and had my own money. And I went."

Raven nodded. He thought they had said enough, but Nan's calm
impartiality did rest him. It was something he could not himself attain.

"And now," said Nan, "she wants you to keep on doing the fool things
she'd have done then, if they'd let her. She probably wants to get up a
big scheme of propaganda and put it into the schools. And every blessed
boy and girl in this country is to be taught not to serve the truth and
do his job but--safety first."

"Yes," said Raven, drearily "I suppose that's about it."

"But actually," said Nan, suddenly aware that he had not told her, "what
does she say? Does she specify? What does she say?"

"She says," Raven answered, in a toneless voice, glancing at the letter
but making no movement toward sharing it with her more definitely, "that
her money is to build a Palace of Peace--she doesn't say where--for
lectures, demonstrations of the sort I know she approves, all the
activities possible in the lines she has been following--for the
doctrine of non-resistance and the consequent abolishment of war."

Again he ended drearily.

"Well," said Nan, "what are you going to do about it? going to spend
your life and the lives of a lot of more or less intelligent pacifists
teaching children to compute the number of movies they could go to for
the money spent on one battleship----"

"But, good God, Nan!" Raven broke in, "you and I don't want to preach
war."

"No," said Nan, "but we can't let Aunt Anne preach peace: not her brand,
as we've seen it. O Rookie! what's the use of taking the world as it
isn't? Why don't we see if we can't make something of the old thing as
it is and has been? and blest if I don't believe as it alway