“I did not mean that.”
She did not turn her glance from the horizon, but her head nodded twice, and a rare smile touched the corners of her lips.
For the last days the air had been growing clearer, vibrant with the vitality of younger skies: skies that had not been drenched in the suffering of many multitudes. In the west, the sun was falling below the green-blue horizon that wavered in sharp outline; a magnificent sweep of golden reds was spreading across the cloud-strewn skies; colors of hope and exaltation, colors of action. I, who had walked in doubts, felt the boundless youth and opportunity which came streaming towards me from the world of the future.
“It has been a privilege to meet you,” I said warmly. “I wish I could talk over—so many things with you.”
“Yes, I feel what is in your mind: you are torn between two ideas—”
“Two? Twenty! I listen to every one; to Magnus, who sometimes convinces me; to Brinsmade, whom I want to believe; to twenty different points of view I pick up in the smoking room. I want to see my way clear as an American, to something that stands out and thrills me as the one word ‘France’ thrills you. I want to have some beautiful ideal of my country to live for, and I can’t yet see what we stand for. I’ve lost all the smug, complacent ideas I had, and I don’t see anything else clearly.”
“I have felt that,” she said, in her simple way, unconscious of the intimacy into which we were drifting. “Yes, I have felt that often as I watched your face when you were listening to Mr. Magnus and Mr. Brinsmade.”
“They debate what’s going to happen to America in a hundred years! What interests me is what’s going to happen now.”
“Do you believe you will get into the war?”