face quivered and her knees shook. "I came--because--because
George--" She could go no further.

"Yes," the mother said, "he told me he had asked you to come if he got
killed. You didn't expect that, I suppose, when you sent him."

"I would rather have died myself than done it!" Editha said, with more
truth in her deep voice than she ordinarily found in it. "I tried to
leave him free--"

"Yes, that letter of yours, that came back with his other things, left
him free."

Editha saw now where George's irony came from.

"It was not to be read before--unless--until--I told him so," she
faltered.

"Of course, he wouldn't read a letter of yours, under the circumstances,
till he thought you wanted him to. Been sick?" the woman abruptly
demanded.

"Very sick," Editha said, with self-pity.

"Daughter's life," her father interposed, "was almost despaired of, at
one time."

Mrs. Gearson gave him no heed. "I suppose you would have been glad to
die, such a brave person as you! I don't believe _he_ was glad to die.
He was always a timid boy, that way; he was afraid of a good many
things; but if he was afraid he did what he made up his mind to. I
suppose he made up his mind to go, but I knew what it cost him by what
it cost me when I heard of it. I had been through _one_ war before.
When you sent him you didn't expect he would get killed."

The voice seemed to compassionate Editha, and it was time. "No," she
huskily murmured.

"No, girls don't; women don't, when they give their men up to their
country. They think they'll come marching back, somehow, just as gay as
they went, or if it's an empty sleeve, or even an empty pantaloon, it's
all the more glory, and they're so much the prouder of them, poor
things!"

The tears began to run down Editha's face; she had not wept till then;
but it was now such a relief to be understood that the tears came.

"No, you didn't expect him to get killed," Mrs. Gearson repeated, in a
voice which was startlingly like George's again. "You just expected him
to kill some one else, some of those foreigners, that weren't there
because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there,
poor wretches--conscripts, or whatever they call 'em. You thought it
would be all right for my George, _your_ George, to kill the sons of
those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would
never see the faces of." The woman lifted her powerful voice in a
psalmlike note. "I thank my