cing it squarely.

The things she had said to her father were not true. She didn't want
him to go to France. She didn't want Derry to go. She was glad that
Derry's mother had made him promise. She didn't care who called him a
coward. She cared only to keep her own.

There wasn't any sense in it, anyhow. Why should Daddy and Derry be
blown to pieces--or made blind--or not come back at all? Just because
a barbarian had brought his hordes into Belgium? Well, let Belgium
take care of herself--and France.

She shuddered deeper down into the bed. She wasn't heroic. Hilda had
been right about that. She was willing to knit miles and miles of
wool, to go without meat, to go without wheat, to wear old clothes, to
let the furnace go out and sit shivering in one room by a wood fire,
she was willing to freeze and to starve, but she was not willing to
send her men to France.

She found herself shaking, sobbing--.

Hitherto war had seemed a glorious thing, an inspiring thing. She had
thrilled to think that she was living in a time which matched the days
of Caesar and Alexander and of Napoleon, of that first Richard of
England, of Charlemagne, of Nelson and of Francis Drake, of Grant and
Lee and Lincoln.

Even in fiction there had been Ivanhoe and--and Alan Breck--and even
poor Rawdon Crawley at Waterloo--fighters all, even the poorest of
them, exalted in her eyes by their courage and the clash of arms.

But there wasn't any glory, any romance in this war. It was machine
guns and bombs and dirt, and cold and mud; and base hospitals, and men
screaming with awful wounds--and gas, and horrors, and nerve-shock
and--frightfulness. She had read it all in the papers and in the
magazines. And it had not meant anything to her, it had been just
words and phrases, and now it was more than words and phrases--.

When the hordes of people had swept into Washington, changing it from
its gracious calm into a seething and unsettling center of activities,
she had been borne along on the wings of enthusiasm and of high
endeavor. She had scolded women who would not work, she had scorned
mothers and wives who had sighed and sobbed because their men must go.
She had talked of patriotism!

Well, she wasn't patriotic. Derry would probably hate her when she
told him. But she was going to tell him. She wouldn't have him blown
to pieces or made blind or not come back at all. And in the morning,
she would beg Daddy--she would beg an