plenty who wanted to fight--why not let them? It was
the old slacker's argument; the man was ashamed as he caught himself
using it; he had the grace to see its selfishness and cowardice. Yet his
soul was in revolt as he drove his body to the recruiting office, and
the thoughts that filled him were not of the joy of giving but of the
pain of giving up. With that he stood on the steps of the building and
here was Charlie Thurston hurrying by on the sidewalk.

"Hello, Jim! Going in to enlist? So long till you come back with one leg
and an eye out."

It was Thurston's idea of a joke. He would have been startled if he had
known into what a trembling balance his sledge-hummer wit cast its
unlucky weight. The balance quivered at the blow, shook back and forth
an instant and fell heavily. Jim Barlow wheeled, sprang down the stone
steps and bolted up the street, panting as one who has escaped a wild
beast. Thurston had said it. That was what was due to happen. It was now
three o'clock; Barlow fled up State Street to the big hotel and took a
room and locked his door and threw himself on the bed. What was he to
do? After weeks of hesitation he had come to the decision that he would
offer himself to his country. He saw--none plainer--the reasons why it
was fit and right so to do. Other men were giving up homes and careers
and the whole bright and easy side of life--why not he? It was the
greatest cause to fight for in the world's history--should he not fight
for it? How, after the war, might he meet friends, his own people, his
children to come, if he alone of his sort had no honorable record to
show? Such arguments, known to all, he repeated, even aloud he repeated
them, tossing miserably about the bed in his hotel room. And his mind at
once accepted them, but that was all. His spirit failed to spring to his
mind's support with the throb of emotion which is the spark that makes
the engine go. The wheels went around over and over but the connection
was not made. The human mind is useful machinery, but it is only the
machine's master, the soul, which can use it. Over and over he got to
his feet and spoke aloud: "Now I will go." Over and over a repulsion
seized him so strongly that his knees gave way and he fell back on the
bed. If he had a mother, he thought, she might have helped, but there
was no one. Mary--but he could not risk Mary's belief in his courage.
Only a mother would have understood entirely.

With that, sick at heart