" said Peter. "Do you think I ought to be?"

"Well, Shad's--he's what they call a Hellion around here."

"What's a--er--Hellion?"

"A--a scrapper."

"Oh, a fighting man?"

"Yes."

Peter sat down at the piano and struck loudly some strident discords in
the bass. "Like this!" he laughed. "Isn't it ugly, Beth--that's what
fighting is--I had it day and night for years. If Shad had been in the
war he wouldn't ever want to fight again."

"Were you in the war?" asked Beth in amazement.

"Of course. Where would I have been?" And before she could reply he had
swept into the rumbling bass of the "Revolutionary Etude." She sank into
a chair and sat silent, listening, at first watching the door, and then
as the soul of the artist within her awoke she forgot everything but the
music.

There was a long silence at the end when Peter paused, and then he heard
her voice, tense, suppressed.

"I could see it--you made me see it!" she gasped, almost in a whisper.
"War--revolution--the people--angry--mumbling--crowding, pushing ... a
crowd with guns and sticks howling at a gate ... and then a man trying
to speak to them--appealing----"

Peter turned quickly at the words and faced her. Her eyes were like
stars, her soul rapt in the vision his music had painted. Peter had
lived that scene again and again, but how could Beth know unless he had
made her see it? There was something strange--uncanny--in Beth's vision
of the great drama of Peter's life. And yet she had seen. Even now her
spirit was afar.

"And what happened to the man who was appealing to them?" he asked
soberly.

She closed her eyes, then opened them toward him, shaking her head.
"I--I don't know--it's all gone now."

"But you saw what I played. That is what happened."

"What do you mean?" She questioned, startled in her turn.

Peter shrugged himself into the present moment. "Nothing. It's
just--revolution. War. War is like that, Beth," he went on quietly after
a moment. "Like the motif in the bass--there is no end--the threat of it
never stops--day or night. Only hell could be like it."

Beth slowly came out of her dream.

"You fought?" she asked.

"Oh, yes."

Another silence. "I--I think I understand now why you're not afraid."

"But I _am_ afraid, Beth," he said with a smile. "I was always afraid in
the war. Because Death is always waiting just around the corner. Nobody
who has been in the war wants ever to fight again."

He turned to the piano. "