“I don’t believe it is,” said Ellen. “Poppa doesn’t believe in war any more.”
“Indeed!” said Breckon. “That is very interesting.”
“Sometimes when I’m helping him with it—”
“Ah, I knew you must help him!”
“And he comes to a place where there has been a dreadful slaughter, it seems as if he felt worse about it than I did. He isn’t sure that it wasn’t all wrong. He thinks all war is wrong now.”
“Is he—has he become a follower of Tolstoy?”
“He’s read him. He says he’s the only man that ever gave a true account of battles; but he had thought it all out for himself before he read Tolstoy about fighting. Do you think it is right to revenge an injury?”
“Why, surely not!” said Breckon, rather startled.
“That is what we say,” the girl pursued. “But if some one had injured you—abused your confidence, and—insulted you, what would you do?”
“I’m not sure that I understand,” Breckon began. The inquiry was superficially impersonal, but he reflected that women are never impersonal, or the sons of women, for that matter, and he suspected an intimate ground. His suspicions were confirmed when Miss Kenton said: “It seems easy enough to forgive anything that’s done to yourself; but if it’s done to some one else, too, have you the right—isn’t it wrong to let it go?”