TH

PART III

HE next day was January twentysecond of the "year of grace" 1917. On that day a controlling mind put its hand to the helm of an agonizing world, and on the morning after, Mr. Marks met Norah as she came from the breakfast-room. He met her with evident design and put into her hands the newspaper containing the American President's first great message to his Senate on America's relations and duties to the other hemisphere.

She read the message alone in the great library, which was now empty, fireless, and cold. Icy tricklings of wind filtered in through the north windows and smote her ankles so that she tucked them under her, and, tightly curled up in the corner of a leathern sofa, she read the message and then read it again, unconscious of chill.

Her heart beat fast, and once sudden tears stung her eyes. Here was the "high and honorable hope" and purpose of her land redefined, reënforced, rehung upon the heights for all men on the earth to see. Here was the now famous phrase, "Peace without victory," interpreted to mean that when peace was made no victor's terms should be imposed upon the vanquished to leave behind hates and plans for future wars. Here was a great man saying some of the things Norah so stumblingly and immaturely thought.

The telephone rang on a table across the room and she rose to answer it with the conviction that Henry was calling her.

Afterward she realized that during the moment which passed before hearing his voice, she had been afraid of what it would say about the message.

The voice was immediately perceived to be gloomy. Everything downtown was upset, said Henry. Stocks had begun to go to "Bally Hack." Nobody had

any confidence. How could they have, with a man at the country's head entangling it with European affairs and notions about human rights?

Norah was so much excited that she argued with Henry.

"But every one has wanted us to get entangled," she said. "Every one has said we were disgraced because we were not entangled. And it is not fair to talk of fanciful notions now, when they are the very same which we all stood for last year in the 'League to Enforce Peace.' You stood for them yourself, Henry. You sat on the platform at the great meeting. It is n't fair to go back on the idea now just because it would mean supporting the President."

Norah became aware that she was speaking unheard. Henry had hung up the receiver, and their meeting after this was almost unbearable to look forward to and endure.

Apart from her personal misery, Norah's mind suffered from bewilderment.

She had quite passionately admired both of the President's winter notes. She tried to explain that it seemed to her a just and simple thing for him to have requested agonizing nations to state upon what terms they would consider the cessation of agony. This caused her to be accused of being pro-German. Norah wondered why. She defended the President's support of a world "League to Enforce Peace." She remembered that this League had been quite a pet among Republicans until a day on which a Democratic President proposed to lift it from ideal to action. Then the support seemed to crumble. Why the mass meetings? Norah asked herself. Why the hours of listening to burning speeches while people sat on uncomfortable chairs? Why the collections of money for the League if it was never intended as a working ideal? if it became fanciful and unsound the moment it was proposed for practical use?

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When she tried to express herself upon

this subject she was accused of being a pacifist. Again she wondered why.

Once she asked the tutor, and he said that in order to understand it would be necessary to compare unrelated things, such as east wind and a blue bottle!

About this time Norah began to see her love in peril. She knew that it was for her to guard it. Henry could not endure things as well as she. Her father and brothers had been like that. She wondered if all men were, and if they did not more often have their way because it hurt them so terribly not to.

Norah was not sure that it hurt her less than Henry to stop upholding and explaining her point of view about the war; but she could submit and he could not. It was hardly thinkable that another such flaming question could stand in their path, and if they passed through this fire in safety they would be out of danger. "For what is love," asked Norah of herself, "what is love, if it cannot survive disagreement?"