CHAPTER XX
“Mother, I must go!”
Helen Northrup did not tremble, but she looked white, thin-lipped.
“You have given me the twenty-four hours, son. You have weighed the question––it is not emotional excitement?”
“No, Mother, it is conscience. I’m not in the least under an illusion. If I thought of this thing as war––a mere fight––I know I would be glad to avail myself of any honourable course and remain here. But it’s bigger than war, that Thing that is deafening and blinding the world. Sometimes”––Northrup went over to the window and looked out into the still white mystery of the first snowstorm––“sometimes I think it is God Almighty’s last desperate way to awaken us.”
Helen Northrup came to the window and stood beside her son. She did not touch him; she stood close––that was all.
“I cannot see God in this,” she whispered. “God could have found another way. I have––lost God. I fear most of us have.”
“Perhaps we never had Him,” Northrup murmured.