and twenty dollars! That would have bought a young
ocean of milk over there for the refugee kids I saw starving."

He jerked himself up suddenly and sat huddled over, his eyes kindling with
a vision of purging the world. Sheila knew it was useless to stop him, so
she propped him up with pillows and let him go on.

"And that wasn't all. Between the lulls in the fighting they moved us
along to a quiet sector, to freshen up, where we were so close to the
German side that we could look into one of their captured villages. There
we could see the French girls they'd carried off going out to work, saw
them corralled at night like--" He broke off, hesitated, then went
doggedly on. "With field-glasses we could see them plainly, the loads
they had to lift and carry, the beatings they got, the look in their
faces. Their shoulders were crooked, their backs bent from the long
slaving. They were wraiths, most of them--and some with babies at their
breasts. After I got back from seeing that, I found another letter from
Clarisse. She said the girls just couldn't buckle down to much Red Cross
work; it was so hard to do anything much in summer. They'd no sooner get
started than some one would say tennis or a swim. _And I saw women dying
over there--and bearing Boche babies!_"

All the agony of soul that youth can compass was poured forth in those
last words. The boy leaned back on his pillows, weary unto death with the
hopelessness of it all. So Sheila let him lie for a while before she
answered him.

"Do the boys want their girls to know the full horror of it all? I thought
that was one of the things you were fighting for, to keep as much of it
away from them as you could."

The boy raised a hand in protest, but Sheila silenced him. "Wait a minute;
it's my turn to talk now. I know what's in your mind. You think that
Clarisse--and the girls like her--are showing unforgivable callousness
and flippancy in the face of this world tragedy. Instead of becoming women
as you have become men, they stay silly, unthinking, irresponsible
creatures who dance and play and laugh while you fight and die. The
contrast is too colossal; it all seems past remedy. Isn't that so? Well,
there's another side, a side you haven't thought of. The girls are giving
you up. The little they know of life, as it is now, looks very
overwhelming to them. Perhaps it frightens them. And what do frightened
children do in the dark?"

The boy did not try to answer; he w