He answered her by asking an apparently irrelevant question.
"Did you ever meet Cuff Mackenzie? He was in the Scots Guards, and my regiment lay with his for some considerable time at the Front. Forgive a personal remark, but your eyes remind me of his, except perhaps that there was a graver light in his. A serenity that used to baffle me. He was shot, poor chap, close by my side. I helped carry him into his trench, and he only lived an hour. But he bequeathed me a legacy, and said with his dying breath that it was a key to the present history of the world. He asked me to study it. So I have been doing it. His copious notes on the margins have given me the clue to doing it. And I am intensely interested."
"It's a book? What's the name? Who's the author?"
"Oh, we all possess a copy of it. It's the Bible."
"The Bible!"
Rowena looked amused.
"Do you know, I don't possess a Bible! Granny was quite shocked. She has placed a fat black one on my chest of drawers. I used one at school, but somehow I lost it, and never replaced it. It has never come into my calculations. Of course one hears it in church."
"Mackenzie was very keen on prophecy. He got half the fellows in the Mess hanging on his words one night. He told them that Allenby's victory in the East was a triumphant fact for all Bible students, and proved it. I was there, and since I've owned his well-worn copy, I've been discovering a good deal."
"I thought the Bible was quite out of date in these days," said Rowena. "Even the preachers in London were always putting their knife into it, and trying to prove that most of it was fable."
"Yes, I suppose it's the way of the world. Well, I recommend it to you for study this next winter. You'll find yourself stepping into another world altogether before you've done with it."