into the fog.

"What?" said Bobs, at his elbow.

"Wraith, where did you drop from?" he demanded.

"Out of the fog to answer your question. What was it?"

"How can a woman be an artist and a human being at the same time?"

She peered at him before she replied.

"She can't. She can only be them in relays. Artist awhile, human awhile.
Living takes too much from her. Loving, wiving, mothering are too
devouring. Men manage their part of it, but women cannot; that is my
decision."

"You think she must choose between them?"

"No, that is too big a price to pay for either."

"How, then?"

"She must have both some of the time, neither all the time."

"But isn't that increasingly difficult with a man to consider, possibly
a child or two?"

"Difficult? Do you think there is anything more difficult than being a
woman to-day? I don't," she answered bitterly.

"The most difficult thing I know is being a man."

"Why do we bother with it at all, when just a little plop out there in
the fog would end it?"

"Would it, though?"

"Don't you think souls are ever allowed to rest? Do they plunge us into
some new form the minute we leave the old?"

"It's the doubt about it that is salutary."

"If you go out, you're a coward. If you stay on, it's because you're
afraid to go out," she cried.

"Even so. Therefore you come to grips with life, and prove yourself a
good soldier."

"Like Jane," Bobs said. "Isn't she fine?"

"She is a very rare human."

"She's the best friend I ever had."

"I think I can say that, too," he said.

"Does she understand your problems just as she does mine?"

"Yes."

"You remember the hymn that talks about 'being at rest in God?' That's
the way I feel about Jane."

"You should do a study of her. You owe us Jane's broad, God-like
beneficence to offset your 'Woman.'"

"I am going to do her, as soon as I grow up to her."

"That's a tribute to our friend."

"Aren't those fog shapes startling?" she said, pointing with her stick.
"No wonder the soldiers saw miracles on the field of Mons."

"But the real miracle that happened there, they did not see," he
answered.

"What was that?"

"The Christmas truce in the trenches was the miracle of our times--the
great hope of our future. If men can respect one another as enemies,
instead of hating one another, some day we may have an end of war."

"I cannot dream nor philosophize war out of life, Mr. Christiansen. If
it is not between nation