y, not caring to confess her real
motive, since her companion would have been distressed by it.

"If you are all right, Sonya, suppose you stay down here in the living
room with me. I have just found a wonderful poem in an American magazine
which I meant to save to read to you. Somehow I think it may comfort
you. For it shows that there is a big design in this old universe, which
works itself out somehow, in spite of all the tragedies and failures of
human beings."

In a big chair in the half shadow Sonya sat down, folding her hands
together loosely in her lap. It was a fashion which had come to be
almost a habit with her recently. Curious that it should express a kind
of resignation!

Nona began reading at once. "The poem is called 'At the Last' and is by
George Sterling, a Californian, I believe.

"Now steel-hoofed War is loosened on the world,
With rapine and destruction, as the smoke
From ashen farm and city soils the sky.
Earth reeks. The camp is where the vineyard was.
The flocks are gone. The rains are on the hearth,
And trampled Europe knows the winter near.
Orchards go down. Home and cathedral fall
In ruin, and the blackened provinces
Reach on to drear horizons. Soon the snow
Shall cover all, and soon be stained with red,
A quagmire and a shambles, and ere long
Shall cold and hunger dice for helpless lives.
So man gone mad, despoils the gentle earth
And wages war on beauty and on good.

"And yet I know how brief the reign shall be
Of Desolation. But a little while,
And time shall heal the desecrated lands,
The quenchless fire of life shall take its own,
The waters of renewal spring again.
Quiet shall come, a flood of verdure clothe
The fields misused. The vine and tree once more
Shall bloom beside the trench, and humble roofs
Cover again the cradle and the bed.
Yea! Life shall have her way with us, until
The past is dim with legend, and the days
That now in nightmare brood upon the world
Shall fold themselves in purples of romance,
The peace shall come, so sure as ripples end
And crystalline tranquillity returns
Above a pebble cast into a pool."

When Nona had finished neither she nor her companion made any comment
for a moment.

Yet when the girl looked across at the older woman for her opinion, she
discovered that Sonya's cheeks had flushed and that her eyes were
shining.

"Thank you, Nona; I shall not forget that," she then said,