g the stars. But neither his
natural bent nor his mental training inclined him to mechanical or
administrative explicitness. Much more was his dream a vision of
men inwardly ennobled and united in spirit. He saw history growing
reasonable and life visibly noble as mankind realized the divine aim.
All the outward peace and order, the joy of physical existence finely
conceived, the mounting power and widening aim were but the expression
and verification of the growth of God within. Then we would bear
children for finer ends than the blood and mud of battlefields. Life
would tower up like a great flame. By faith we reached forward to that.
The vision grew more splendid as it grew more metaphorical. And the
price one paid for that; one gave sham dignities, false honour, a
Levitical righteousness, immediate peace, one bartered kings and
churches for God.... He looked at the mean, poverty-struck room, he
marked the dinginess and tawdriness of its detail and all the sordid
evidences of ungracious bargaining and grudging service in its
appointments. For all his life now he would have to live in such rooms.
He who had been one of the lucky ones.... Well, men were living in
dug-outs and dying gaily in muddy trenches, they had given limbs and
lives, eyes and the joy of movement, prosperity and pride, for a smaller
cause and a feebler assurance than this that he had found....

(19)

Presently his thoughts were brought back to his family by the sounds of
Eleanor's return. He heard her key in the outer door; he heard her move
about in the hall and then slip lightly up to bed. He did not go out to
speak to her, and she did not note the light under his door.

He would talk to her later when this discovery of her own emotions no
longer dominated her mind. He recalled her departing figure and how she
had walked, touching and looking up to her young mate, and he a little
leaning to her....

"God bless them and save them," he said....

He thought of her sisters. They had said but little to his clumsy
explanations. He thought of the years and experience that they must
needs pass through before they could think the fulness of his present
thoughts, and so he tempered his disappointment. They were a gallant
group, he felt. He had to thank Ella and good fortune that so they were.
There was Clementina with her odd quick combatant sharpness, a harder
being than Eleanor, but nevertheless a fine-spirited and even more
independent. There was