"I am trying to be calm," said Nancy. "You know all we had hoped and planned, but—but I don't want to be foolish; there must be deeper reasons than those you mentioned the other day. I do not think you can have realised the circumstances. Since you left, I have done nothing but read—and try to understand. I have been very ignorant about such matters, and I thought, perhaps, my ignorance kept me from understanding you. I have read all the papers which father has been able to obtain, all the miserable story which led up to this war. Have you?"
"Yes," said Bob; "all!"
"Then surely you do not hold to what you said?"
"I am afraid I do."
"Then perhaps you will explain."
"That is what I want to do," cried Bob. "Oh, Nancy, you don't know what I have been through since I left you!—you don't know how I have longed to enlist, longed to take part in the fray—but—there it is. Look here, Nancy, I was never one to talk much about these things, but you knew my father, knew that he was a Quaker, a Christian, in a very real sense of the word. When he died, my mother and others told me they hoped I should be worthy of him, and—I have tried to be. It is difficult to talk about such matters, Nancy, and I am not one of those fellows who parade their piety and that sort of thing. I would not say what I am going to now, but for the circumstances. I have tried to understand what Christianity means. I have read the New Testament, especially the Gospels, again and again. I have tried to realise what Jesus Christ said, what He lived for, what He died for, and I think I have tried to follow him. No, I am not namby-pamby, and this is not empty talk. I expect there are hundreds of young fellows who never talk about religion, but who are trying, honestly and squarely, to live Christian lives. Anyhow, that is what I have tried to do. When this war seemed to be inevitable, I went into the whole business. I read everything I could,—newspapers, state papers, correspondence between the ambassadors, and all that kind of thing. You see, I felt what was coming; and, Nancy, I simply cannot square Christianity with war. Either Jesus Christ was mistaken, and Christianity is an empty dream; or war is wrong—wrong under any circumstances. It is hellish, and I can't stand for it—I can't!"
The girl looked at him with wide open eyes, and her lips trembled, but she did not speak.
"Yes," he went on, "I know what it means. I shall be boycotted, sneered at, called a coward, and all that; but that is nothing, is it? What is much more terrible to me is the fact that I shall—that I shall lose you! You drove me away the other day, Nancy. You did not mean it, did you? You would not have me go against my conscience?"
"Conscience!" there was a world of scorn in her voice. She seemed to be hesitating whether she should not open the door and tell him to leave the house. Perhaps there was something in the tone of his voice, in the expression of his eyes, which kept her from doing this. "Perhaps you have not thought of the other side," she tried to say calmly. "Have you ever thought what it would mean if Germany conquered England—Germany with her militarism and her savagery? Have you thought how she would treat us, what would become of us, and all that we hold most dear?"
"Yes, I have thought of that."