He tried to tell her, wavered a little and spoke the truth. "The hardest thing was leaving her. I don't mind the fighting. I don't mind anything but the fact that she's over there and I'm over here. But it had to be—of course."
"Yes, everything had to be, Derry. I am believing that more and more. When my Captain went—I found how much I cared. I hadn't always been sure. But I am sure now, and I am sure, too, that he knows—"
"Love—in these times, Derry—isn't building a nest—and singing songs in the tree tops on a May morning; it goes beyond just the man and the woman; it even goes beyond the child. It goes as far as the future of mankind. What the future of the world will be depends not so much on how much you love Jean or she loves you, or on how much I loved and was loved, but on how much that love will mean to the world. If we can't give up our own for the sake of the world's ideal then love hasn't meant what it should to you and to me, Derry—"
She rose as a group of men approached. "They want me to sing for them. You won't mind?"
"My dear girl, I have heard of you everywhere. I believe that some of the fellows say their prayers to you at night—"
She stood up and sang. Her hair caught the light from the room back of her. She gave them a popular air or two, a hymn, "The Marseillaise—"
He missed nothing in her then. In spite of her paleness, the old fire was there, the passion of patriotism—there was, too, a new note of triumphant faith.
She needed no candles now, no red and white and blue for a background—she did not even need her beauty, her voice was enough—
When she sat down and the men had gone she said to Derry, "Do you remember when I last sang the 'Marseillaise' for you?"
"Yes."