She hesitated.
“Of course, you know one thing that would save him, Clay?”
“What?”
“Our getting into the war.”
“I ought not to have to lose my boy in order to find him. But—we are going to be in it.”
He had risen and was standing, an elbow on the mantel-piece, looking down at her.
“I suppose every man wonders, once in a while, how he'd conduct himself in a crisis. When the Lusitania went down I dare say a good many fellows wondered if they'd have been able to keep their coward bodies out of the boats. I know I did. And I wonder about myself now. What can I do if we go into the war? I couldn't do a forced march of more than five miles. I can't drill, or whatever they call it. I can shoot clay pigeons, but I don't believe I could hit a German coming at me with a bayonet at twenty feet. I'd be pretty much of a total loss. Yet I'll want to do something.”
And when she sat, very silent, looking into the fire: “You see, you think it absurd yourself.”
“Hardly absurd,” she roused herself to look up at him. “If it is, it's the sort of splendid absurdity I am proud of. I was wondering what Natalie would say.”
“I don't believe it lies between a man and his wife. It's between him and his God.”