"Of course it won't. But don't you think it's just as well?" She faced him smilingly. "There was so much that was all wrong, Derek; so much that was rotten."
"And do you think that four years' insanity is going to prove the remedy?" Vane laughed cynically. "Except that there are a few million less men to carry on the rottenness"—
Margaret shook her head. "We wanted something to wake us up; it's been drastic, but we're awake."
"And what most of us want is to go to sleep again. Don't you feel tired, Margaret, sometimes?"
"Yes—I suppose I do. But it's the tiredness that comes with doing—not drifting. . . . It's we who have got to make the new Heaven and the new Earth, Derek . . ."
Again Vane laughed. "Still as idealistic as ever, I see. Six months after peace we shall be scrambling and fighting and snarling again—after jobs and money and work."
Margaret Trent was silent, tracing a pattern in the sand with her finger. "The worry of scrambling after a job is not likely to hit you very hard," she said at length.
"Which is perhaps as well," he returned lightly; "for I'm certainly too weary to take the trouble. I shall go away, if I'm alive to do it, to the South Sea Islands and live on fruit. The only proviso is that it should be sufficiently ripe to drop into my mouth, and save me the trouble of picking it."
The girl turned and looked at him suddenly. "You've got it rather bad, old boy, haven't you?"
"Got what?" he asked slowly.