map
of the country around Verdun that would have satisfied a chief of staff.

"If the Germans capture Verdun the spirit of France will be broken,"
Miss Oliver said bitterly.

"But they will not capture it," staunchly said Susan, who could not eat
her dinner that day for fear lest they do that very thing. "In the
first place, you dreamed they would not--you dreamed the very thing the
French are saying before they ever said it--'they shall not pass.' I
declare to you, Miss Oliver, dear, when I read that in the paper, and
remembered your dream, I went cold all over with awe. It seemed to me
like Biblical times when people dreamed things like that quite
frequently.

"I know--I know," said Gertrude, walking restlessly about. "I cling to
a persistent faith in my dream, too--but every time bad news comes it
fails me. Then I tell myself 'mere coincidence'--'subconscious memory'
and so forth."

"I do not see how any memory could remember a thing before it was ever
said at all," persisted Susan, "though of course I am not educated like
you and the doctor. I would rather not be, if it makes anything as
simple as that so hard to believe. But in any case we need not worry
over Verdun, even if the Huns get it. Joffre says it has no military
significance."

"That old sop of comfort has been served up too often already when
reverses came," retorted Gertrude. "It has lost its power to charm."

"Was there ever a battle like this in the world before?" said Mr.
Meredith, one evening in mid-April.

"It's such a titanic thing we can't grasp it," said the doctor. "What
were the scraps of a few Homeric handfuls compared to this? The whole
Trojan war might be fought around a Verdun fort and a newspaper
correspondent would give it no more than a sentence. I am not in the
confidence of the occult powers"--the doctor threw Gertrude a
twinkle--"but I have a hunch that the fate of the whole war hangs on
the issue of Verdun. As Susan and Joffre say, it has no real military
significance; but it has the tremendous significance of an Idea. If
Germany wins there she will win the war. If she loses, the tide will
set against her."

"Lose she will," said Mr. Meredith: emphatically. "The Idea cannot be
conquered. France is certainly very wonderful. It seems to me that in
her I see the white form of civilization making a determined stand
against the black powers of barbarism. I think our whole world realizes
this and that is why we all await the is