mothers and wives who had sighed and sobbed because their men must go.
She had talked of patriotism!

Well, she wasn't patriotic. Derry would probably hate her when she
told him. But she was going to tell him. She wouldn't have him blown
to pieces or made blind or not come back at all. And in the morning,
she would beg Daddy--she would beg and beg!

As she sat up in bed and looked wildly about her, it seemed as if all
the corners of the little room were haunted by specters. A long time
ago she had seen Maude Adams in "L'Aiglon." She remembered now those
wailing voices of the dead at Wagram. And in this war millions of men
had died. It seemed to her that their souls must be pressing against
the wall which divided them from the living--that their voices must
penetrate the stillness which had always shut them out. "How dare you
go on with it? Are men made only for this?"

She remembered now the thing that her father had said on the night
after "Cinderella."

"If I had my way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
For every man that they have tortured, we must torture one of theirs.
For every child mutilated, we must mutilate a child--for every woman--"

Her Daddy had said that. Her kind and tender Daddy. Was that what the
war made of men? Would Daddy and Derry, when they went over, do that?
Torture and mutilate? Would they, would they? And would they come
back after that and expect her to love them and live with them?

Well, she wouldn't. She would _not_. She would be afraid of them--of