"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"
"Then why—"
"Why do I laugh?"
"Well—yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."
At that he laughed again—laughed so whole-heartedly, so delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.
"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.
"I don't know. It seems so funny—those Huns, those Boches, already smeared from hair to feet with blood—pausing in their wholesale butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"
His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:
"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're belly-deep in it—Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it. They're destroying souls by millions!… Mine is already damned."
Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!" she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"