"And you couldn't do that, John?"
"No--I tried. I went up to London once. We went to a night-club. All sorts of them were dancing there. I just couldn't, that's all. The fellow I was with, he went away with one of them. I envied him and I hated him. I don't know what I felt. I couldn't. It didn't make me feel sick of it all. I don't think I felt afraid. You kept on coming into my mind, but just you wouldn't have stopped me if I'd really wanted to. I did want to. I had wanted to. That's what we meant to do. But when I got there to that place, and one of those women kissed me, I felt there was something else I wanted more. I think I nearly went mad that night. I had a little bed in a stuffy little room in a poky little hotel. I couldn't sleep. I never slept a wink. I nearly went mad calling myself a fool for not doing what I'd wanted to do. There I'd have done it. Then I didn't care what I did. But it was too late then. I'd lost my chance. I was sorry I'd lost it."
He raised his head and looked at her.
"I'm not sorry now, Mater. I wasn't sorry for long. Aren't men beasts?"
"My dear--my dear," she whispered. "If they were all like you, what a world love could make for us to live in. Oh, keep it all, my dear. Never be sorry. It isn't the right or the wrong of it, John. It's the pity of it. If women had men like you to love them, think what their children would be! Don't tell her yet, John. Wait a little longer if you can."
"I can't!" he moaned. "I can't wait. She knows I care for her. I'm sure she does. I must tell her everything."
If only it had been Lucy he had shrunk from telling, then fear would have met with fear and mingled into love. It was not fear he would meet with in Dorothy. Too wise perhaps she might be to laugh at his timorousness, but swift enough would she turn it to the passion to possess.
* * * * *
That night as John lay in Mary's arms, there reposed with simple state in the Government House at Sarajevo, the two dead bodies of a man and a woman who had found rest in the shadow of the greatest turmoil the world had ever known, which through the minds of millions in central Europe were ringing the words--
"The great questions are to be settled--not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron."