“Did you? Why did you say that?”
“Oh, because I knew you don’t believe in any of the things that he likes.”
“My dear girl, how can you know that? What don’t I believe in?”
“I mean his kind of religion, and rectitude, and making oneself uncomfortable about nothing, and all that misunderstanding of everybody and looking out for badness.”
“You don’t need to look far,” said Mrs. Vachell.
“Do you think so?” said Evangeline, surprised. “Now that is just what I don’t. I think there would be hardly any badness if people didn’t make it by believing in it. But why do you think men are so stupid? You can’t have thought so in the war——” She became suddenly indignant.
“If men had not been what they are there would have been no war,” said Mrs. Vachell.
“Oh, but—good gracious! Look how women fight!” Evangeline exclaimed in amazement, “and all about nothing! Men fight for something, and—I can’t bear to hear you say beastly things about them when they did——” Her voice broke and she stopped. Her eyes were bright and troubled as she looked at Mrs. Vachell in the hope of having mistaken her words.
“Don’t take what I say so much to heart,” Mrs. Vachell said gently. “You are a very feminine woman. You ought to turn your sympathies on to your own sex, who have to endure seeing their lovers and sons killed because countries are governed by brutes and knaves and idiots. When your baby goes to war and your husband urges him on with applause and he leaves a wife and probably two or three ruined women behind him——”
Evangeline’s tears had vanished in utter astonishment at the novelty of this view and her own fundamental disbelief in its reality. There was nothing in it to stir her passion as it was remote from anything she could ever feel and she did not believe anyone else felt it either.