I must have shown in my sudden abstraction something of the indecision in my mind for, to my surprise, a note of friendly sympathy came into her voice.
“Mr. Littledale, I am afraid you are going to be unhappy, just at first. You hope for too much. Don’t be impatient. How can your people know what we know? You will learn, as we learned, to stand together—by suffering.”
At this moment, the voice of Peter Magnus broke in on our new mood.
“Then, you are glorifying war; you’ve come to that. Admit it.”
Brinsmade rose from his rugs and stood before us with an expression of utter helplessness.
“Here is a man who has been three months in France and brings back nothing but war is horrible. What am I to do with him?”
Peter Magnus ensconced himself in Brinsmade’s chair, so that we formed a group. He took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair, which was like a mane.
“When you speak of the glory of war,” he said, addressing Mademoiselle Duvernoy directly, “I see only the women in black, the cripples, the men who will grope in blindness, the station filled with the agony of parting, the homes swept by sorrow. Glory! Where is the glory in it, if you do not wear a crown? No, no, war is horrible, unthinkable!”
“Yet war is as inevitable a condition to a nation as death is to a human being,” she said quietly. “And is death so horrible?”