“Homesick?” he ventured, trying to see her face as he 63 drew a chair closer; “longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? Evilena certainly would enjoy the hubbub.”
“No, Kenneth,” she said at last: “it is not that. But I have been watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have helped win for Italy’s freedom––not their own. We have questions just as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same way; there seems no doubt of it––and then––”
“Then we will go out, have our little pass at each other, and come back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the Mexican campaign,” he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her head.
“Many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them.”
“Why, mother, what is it, dear? You’ve been crying, crying here all alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never happen; come! come!” He put his arm about her as if she were a child to be petted. Her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street.
“It was not the––the political justice or injustice of the wars,” she confessed after a little; “it was not of that I was thinking. But a woman screamed out there on the street. They––the people––had just told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the killed––poor woman! Her only son, Kenneth, and––”
“Yes, dear, I understand.” He drew her closer and lifting her head from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. She uttered a tremulous little sigh of content. And then, with his arms about her, the mother and son looked out on Paris after a victory, each thinking of their own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of battles to be in the future.