"I can't afford to let myself go," said Julian, "even to the extent of a polar bear—with you."
"Just because I'm a woman?" asked Stella, regretfully.
"If you like, you may put it that way," agreed Julian; "and as to the rest of the world, it's very busy just at present fighting Germans. All the men I like are either dead or will be soon. What's the use of getting 'em down here to look at a broken sign-post? I'd rather keep to myself till I've got going. I will get going again, and you'll help me, if you'll try to remember what I've just told you."
"Oh, I shall remember it," replied Stella, hurriedly; "only I don't quite know what it is. Still, I dare say, if I think it over, I shall find out. At any rate, I'm very, very glad you'll let me help you. Of course I think you're all wrong about the other men. You think too much of the outside of things. I dare say it's better than thinking too little, as we do in our family. Besides, you have such a lovely house and live so tidily. Still, I think it's a mistake. The men wouldn't see your crutches half as much as they'd see you. The things that matter most are always behind what anybody sees. Even all this beauty isn't half as beautiful as what's behind it—the spirit of the life that creates it, and brings it back again."
"And the ugliness," asked Julian, steadily, "the ugliness we've just been talking about over there, that long line of it cutting through France like a mortal wound, drawing the life-blood of Europe,—what's behind that?"
"Don't you see?" she cried, leaning toward him eagerly. "Exactly the same thing—life! All this quietness that reproduces what it takes away, only always more beautifully. Don't you think, while we see here the passing of the great procession of spring, behind in the invisible, where their poured-out souls have rushed to, is a greater procession still, forming for us to join? That even the ugliness is only an awful way out into untouched beauty, like a winter storm that breaks the ground up for the seed to grow?"
"I can see that you see it," said Julian, gently. "I can't see anything else just now. You'd better cut along back to the house; you'll be late for lunch. Tell my mother I'm not coming—and—and try not to think I'm horrid if I'm not always friendly with you. I sha'n't be so unfriendly as I sound."
"I don't believe you know," said Stella, consideringly, "how very nice I always think you—"
"That," said Julian, "happens to be exactly one of the things you'd better refrain from telling me. Good-by."