try--_my_ country!--as I had
never loved in all my life.... And I hated, too! I hated the men who
butchered them--more!--I hated the country where the men came from; I
hated race and country and the blows they dealt, and the evil they
wrought on France--_my France_! That is the truth; and I realize it!"

There was a silence; Buckhurst slowly unrolled the wrinkled paper he
had been fingering.

"And now?" he asked, simply.

"Now?" she repeated. "I don't know--truly, I do not know." She
turned to me sorrowfully. "I had long since thought that my heart was
clean of hate, and now I don't know." And, to Buckhurst, again: "Our
creed teaches us that war is vile--a savage betrayal of humanity by a
few dominant minds; a dishonorable ingratitude to God and country. But
from that window I saw men die for honor of France with God's name on
their lips. I saw one superb cuirassier, trapped down there in the
street, sit still on his horse, while they shot at him from every
window, and I heard him call up to a Prussian officer who had just
fired at him: 'My friend, you waste powder; the heart of France is
cuirassed by a million more like me!'" A rich flush touched her face;
her gray eyes grew brighter.

"Is there a Frenchwoman alive whose blood would not stir at such a
scene?" she said. "They shot him through his armor, his breastplate
was riddled, he clung to his horse, always looking up at the riflemen,
and I heard the bullets drumming on his helmet and his cuirass like
hailstones on a tin roof, and I could not look away. And all the while
he was saying, quietly: 'It is quite useless, friends; France lives!
You waste your powder!' and I could not look away or close my eyes--"

She bent her head, shivering, and her interlocked fingers whitened.

"I only know this," she said: "I will give all I have--I will give
my poor self to help the advent of that world-wide brotherhood which
must efface national frontiers and end all war in this sad world. But
if you ask me, in the presence of war, to look on with impartiality,
to watch my own country battling for breath, to stop my ears when a
wounded mother-land is calling, to answer the supreme cry of France
with a passionless cry, 'Repent!' I cannot do it--I will not! I was
not born to!"

Deeply moved, she had risen, confronting Buckhurst, whose stone-cold
eyes were fixed on her.

"You say I hold you unworthy," she said. "Others may hold me, too,
unworthy because I have not reached th