"I want you to look into them," said Robin. "I'll come."
He stood still a moment looking at her just as she wanted him to look. Then after a few more words he bent low and kissed her hands and then stood straight again and saluted and went away.
CHAPTER IV
There was one facet of the great stone of War upon which many strange things were written. They were not the things most discussed or considered. They were results—not causes. But for the stress of mental, spiritual and physical tempest-of-being the colossal background of storm created, many of them might never have happened; but the consequences of their occurrence were to touch close, search deep, and reach far into the unknown picture of the World the great War might leave in fragments which could only be readjusted by centuries of time.
The interested habit of observation of, and reflection on, her kind which knew no indifferences, in the mind of the Duchess of Darte, awakened by stages to the existence of this facet and to the moment of the writings thereupon.
"It would seem almost as if Nature—Fate—had meant to give a new impulse to the race—to rouse human creatures to new moods, to thrust them into places where they see new things. Men and women are being dragged out of their self-absorbed corners and stirred up and shaken. Emotions are being roused in people who haven't known what a real emotion was. Middle-aged husbands and wives who had sunk into comfortable acceptance of each other and their boys and girls are being dragged out of bed, as it were, and wakened up and made to stand on their feet and face unbelievable possibilities. If you have boys old enough to be soldiers and girls old enough to be victims—your life makes a sort of volte face and everyday, worldly comforts and successes or little failures drop out of your line of sight, and change their values. Mothers are beginning to clutch at their sons; and even self-centred fathers and selfish pretty sisters look at their male relatives with questioning, with a hint of respect or even awe in it. Perhaps the women feel it more than the men. Good-looking, light-minded, love-making George has assumed a new aspect to his mother and to Kathryn. They're secretly yearning over him. He has assumed a new aspect to me. I yearn over him myself. He has changed—he has suddenly grown up. Boys are doing it on every hand."
"The youngest youngster vibrates with the shock of cannon firing, even though the sound may not be near enough to be heard," answered Coombe. "We're all vibrating unconsciously. We are shuddering consciously at the things we hear and are mad to put a stop to, before they go further."
"Innocent little villages full of homes torn and trampled under foot and burned!" the Duchess almost cried out. "And worse things than that—worse things! And the whole monstrosity growing more huge and throwing out new and more awful tentacles every day."