Lord, don't they have it easy though?"

CHAPTER VI

It would indeed seem so. Men looking from the windows of the big
shops--those great shops where army supplies were manufactured--noticed
them with much the same thought, some of them admiringly, some
resentfully, as they chanced to feel about things. They drove past
building after building, buildings in which hundreds of men toiled on
preparations for a possible war. The throb of those engines, sight of the
perspiring faces, might suggest that rather large, a trifle extravagant,
a bit cumbersome, was the price for peace. But these girls did not seem
to be thinking of the possible war, or of the men who earned their bread
thwarting it by preparation. One would suppose them to be just two
beautifully cared for, careless-of-life girls, thinking of what some man
had said at the dance the night before, or of the texture of the plume on
some one's hat, or, to get down to the really serious issues of life,
whether or not they could afford that love of a dinner gown.

They left the main avenue and were winding in and out of the by-roads,
roads which had all the care of a great park and all the charm of the
deep woods. Here and there were soldiers doing nothing more warlike than
raking grass or repairing roads. It seemed far removed from the stress
and the struggle, place where the sense of protection but contributed to
the sense of freedom. There would come occasional glimpses of the river,
the beautiful homes and great factories of the busy, prosperous,
middle-western city opposite. To the other side was a town, too, a little
city of large enterprises; to either side seethed the questions of steel,
and all those attendant questions of mind and heart whose pressure grew
ever bigger and whose safety valves seemed tested to their uttermost. To
either side the savage battles of peace, and there in between--an
island--the peaceful preparations for war.

And in such places, sheltered, detached, yet offered all she would have
from without, had always lived Katie Jones, a favorite child of the
favored men whom precautions against war offered so serene a life;
surrounded by friends who were likewise removed from the battles of peace
to the peace of possible war, knowing the social struggle only as it
touched their own detached questions of pay and rank, pleasant and stupid
posts, hospitable and inhospitable commandants.

And into this had rushed a victim of the battles of