ps this isn't much of a thought. But such as it is, there has
been light in it for me, on dark days. And as I owe it to you, I felt I
should like to tell you about it. It is going to make me realize more
than I could before, the brotherhood of all men in war time, even the
ones we call the enemy. Why, I used to be stupid and unseeing as a
mole! I hardly thought about common people, pasty-faced waiters and
weedy under-gardeners and grocer's boys, as _men_ at all. Now, out of
every town and village they are marching with their faces turned to the
front, brave and smiling. They are as glorious soldiers as any, and I
pray for them as I would pray for my own brothers. Is that a step for
me towards the great unity? I wonder--and hope.

"You see, I begin to warm myself at the fire your friendship has
kindled. Each letter you write will be a fresh log piled on to feed the
flame."

CHAPTER XII

When Denin wrote again he ventured to give Barbara the name that she
had given him, "Dear Friend." And he enclosed photographs of the
Mirador, with its flower-draped balcony, and of the "silver fountain."

"What you say about my helping you is wonderful to hear, and makes me
feel like a comet stuffed with stars," he wrote. "It is a great honor
for me that you care for my letters. It's true, as you surmise, that
others have written and do write to the author of 'The War Wedding,'
and that is an honor too, in its way. But it's an altogether different
way. I can't explain why. I won't try to explain why the call you have
sent half across the world is different from any other call. Yet I want
you to believe that it is so, that I count it an immense privilege to
write to you, and an immense delight to get your answers. What you call
your 'gratitude' is the highest compliment ever paid to me. In trying
to study out your problems, I have solved some of my own. In advising
you to be happy, I've found a certain happiness for myself; so you see
that I have far more cause to be grateful to you than you could
possibly have to me.

"For one thing--just a small instance--I had never taken a photograph
in my life, until you asked me for snapshots of the Mirador garden. In
order to make them for you myself, I learned how. Now I am deep in it.
Do you remember the little room that is half underground, yet not quite
a cellar? I've turned it into a dark room for developing my negatives.
I was up all one night watching the birth of my first work.