"He is as straight and square as he is delightful. His mother is charming; his younger brother is everything you'd expect him to be after knowing Kervyn. Theirs is a very united family, but, do you know I am as certain as I am of anything that his mother absolutely approves of what he is about to do. She is that sort. It may kill her, but she'll die smiling."
Mrs. Courland's serious, sweet eyes rested on him, solemn with sympathy for the mother she had never met.
"The horrid thing about it all," continued Darrel, "is that Kervyn is one man in a million;—and in a more terrible sense that is all he can be in this frightful and endless slaughter which they no longer even pretend to call one battle or many.
"He's a drop in an ocean, only another cipher in the trenches where hell's hail rains day and night, day and night, beating out lives without distinction, without the intelligence of choice—just raining, raining, and beating out life!... I can scarcely endure the thought of Kervyn ending that way—such a man—my friend——"
His voice seemed hoarse and he got up abruptly and walked to the window.
Ashes of roses lingered in the west; the forest was calm; not a leaf stirred in the lilac-tinted dusk.
Karen, who had been listening, stirred in the depths of her chair and clasped her fingers over her sewing.
Mrs. Courland said quietly:
"It is pleasant for any woman to have known such a man as Mr. Guild."
"Yes," said Karen.