Terrible years, years of bulletins, years of want, hard times, years
when all the future was at stake, until finally that day in New York
when she saw the remnant returning, marching up Broadway between the
black crowds and the bunting, the drums beating, the fifes playing,

"Returning, with thinned ranks, young, yet very old,
worn, marching, noticing nothing."

Henry Blaine was one of these and he came to her a cripple, an emaciated
and sick man. Then had followed, as Joe knew, the marriage, the hard
pioneer life in the shanty on the stony hill, the death, and the long
widowhood....

Had she not a right to speak to him?

"Understand?" she ended. "I think, Joe, I ought to understand.... I sent
your father into the war...."

Depth beneath depth he was discovering her. He was amazed and awed. He
asked himself where he had been all these years, and how he had been so
blind. He felt very young then. It was she who actually knew what the
word social and the word patriotism meant.

He looked down on the floor, and spoke in a whisper:

"And ... would you send me off, too? The new war?"

She could scarcely speak.