ning like
coals without a spark. "I"--she paused as she had before she broke out
with the first prophecy--"I will quote part of our children's oath: 'I
will not be a coward. It is a coward who strikes first. A brave man even
after he receives a blow tries to reason with his assailant, and does
not strike back until he receives a second blow. I shall not let a
burglar drive me from my house. If an enemy tries to take my land I
shall appeal to his sense of justice and reason with him, but if he then
persists I shall fight for my home. If I am victorious I shall not try
to take his land but to make the most of my own. I shall never cross a
frontier to kill my fellowmen.'"

Very impressive she made the oath. Her deliberate recital of it had the
quality which justifies every word with an urgent faith.

"You see, with that teaching there can be no war," she proceeded, "and
those who strike will be weak; those who defend will be strong."

"Perhaps," he said.

"You would not like to see thousands, hundreds of thousands, of men
killed and maimed, would you?" she demanded, and her eyes held the
horror of the sight in reality. "You can prevent it--you _can_!" Her
heart was in the appeal.

"The old argument! No, I should not like to see that," he replied. "I
only do my duty as a soldier to my country."

"The old answer! The more reason why you should tell the premier you
can't! But there is still another reason for telling him," she urged
gently.

Now he saw her not at twenty-seven but at seventeen, girlish, the
subject of no processes of reason but in the spell of an intuition, and
he knew that something out of the blue in a flash was coming.

"For you will not win!" she declared.

This struck fire. Square jaw and sturdy body, in masculine energy,
resolute and trained, were set indomitably against feminine vitality.

"Yes, we shall win! We shall win!" he said without even the physical
demonstration of a gesture and in a hard, even voice which was like that
of the machinery of modern war itself, a voice which the aristocratic
sniff, the Louis XVI. curls, or any of the old gallery-display heroes
would have thought utterly lacking in histrionics suitable to the
occasion. He remained rigid after he had spoken, handsome,
self-possessed.

There was no use of beating feminine fists against such a stone wall.
The force of the male was supreme. She smiled with a strange, quivering
loosening of the lips. She spread out her han