Then come privations, suffering, winter in the trenches—Franz on one side, young George on the other, and Michel; then fighting—fear——
Geoffrey stopped there. "Shall I have them afraid?"
"I think they would be afraid. But they would keep on fighting, and that would be heroic."
She added, "How well you do it!"
"This part is easy. It will be the last of it that I shall find hard—when I deal with their souls."
"Oh, you must show at the last that it is because of their souls that they are brothers. Each man has had a home, he has had love, each of them has had his hopes and dreams for the future, for his middle-age and his old age, and now there is to be no middle-age, no old age—and in their knowledge of their common lot their hatred dies."
"I am afraid I can't do it," he said, moodily. "I should have to swing myself out into an atmosphere which I have never breathed."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, I am of the earth—earthy. I have sold my birthright, I have yearned for the flesh-pots, I have fed among—swine. I have done all of the other things which haven't Biblical sanction. And now you expect me to write of souls."
"I expect you to give to the world your best. You speak of your talent as if it were a little thing. And it is not a little thing."