"God help the young things--those of them who never meet again--and
perhaps, also, some of those who do. The nation ought to take care of
the children. If there is a nation left, God knows they will be needed,"
the Duchess said. "One of my footmen who 'joined up' has revealed an
unsuspected passion for a housemaid he used to quarrel with, and who
seemed to detest him. I have three women in my household who have
soldier lovers in haste to marry them. I shall give them my blessing and
take care of the wives when they are left behind. One can be served by
old men and married women--and one can turn cottages into small
orphanages if the worst happens."

There was a new vigour in her splendid old face and body.

"There is a reason now why I am the Dowager Duchess of Darte," she went
on, "and why I have money and houses and lands. There is a reason why I
have lived when it sometimes seemed as if my usefulness was over. There
are uses for my money--for my places--for myself. Lately I have found
myself saying, as Mordecai said to Esther, 'Who knowest whether thou art
not come to the kingdom for such a time as this.' A change is taking
place in me too. I can do more because there is so much more to do. I
can even use my hands better. Look at them."

She held them out that he might see them--her beautiful old-ivory
fingers, so long stiffened by rheumatism. She slowly opened and shut
them.

"I can move them more--I have been exercising them and having them
rubbed. I want to be able to knit and sew and wait on myself and perhaps
on other people. Because I have been a rich, luxurious old woman it has
not occurred to me that there were rheumatic old women who were forced
to do things because they were poor--the things I never tried to do. I
have begun to try."

She let her hands fall on her lap and sat gazing up at him with a rather
strange expression.

"Do you know what I have been doing?" she said. "I have been praying to
God--for a sort of miracle. In their terror people are beginning to ask
their Deity for things as they have never done it before. We are most of
us like children waking in horror of the black night and shrieking for
some one to come--some one--any one! Each creature cries out to his own
Deity--the God his own need has made. Most of us are doing it in
secret--half ashamed to let it be known. We are abject things. Mothers
and fathers are doing it--young lovers and husbands and wives."

"What miracle are y