ries together."

"How delightful!" said Breckon. "And I suppose it's a great pleasure to
him."

"I don't believe it is," said Ellen. "Poppa doesn't believe in war any
more."

"Indeed!" said Breckon. "That is very interesting."

"Sometimes when I'm helping him with it--"

"Ah, I knew you must help him!"

"And he comes to a place where there has been a dreadful slaughter, it
seems as if he felt worse about it than I did. He isn't sure that it
wasn't all wrong. He thinks all war is wrong now."

"Is he--has he become a follower of Tolstoy?"

"He's read him. He says he's the only man that ever gave a true account
of battles; but he had thought it all out for himself before he read
Tolstoy about fighting. Do you think it is right to revenge an injury?"

"Why, surely not!" said Breckon, rather startled.

"That is what we say," the girl pursued. "But if some one had injured
you--abused your confidence, and--insulted you, what would you do?"

"I'm not sure that I understand," Breckon began. The inquiry was
superficially impersonal, but he reflected that women are never
impersonal, or the sons of women, for that matter, and he suspected an
intimate ground. His suspicions were confirmed when Miss Kenton said:
"It seems easy enough to forgive anything that's done to yourself; but
if it's done to some one else, too, have you the right--isn't it wrong
to let it go?"

"You think the question of justice might come in then? Perhaps it ought.
But what is justice? And where does your duty begin to be divided?" He
saw her following him with alarming intensity, and he shrank from the
responsibility before him. What application might not she make of his
words in the case, whatever it was, which he chose not to imagine? "To
tell you the truth, Miss Kenton, I'm not very clear on that point--I'm
not sure that I'm disinterested."

"Disinterested?"

"Yes; you know that I abused your confidence at luncheon; and until I
know whether the wrong involved any one else--" He looked at her with
hovering laughter in his eyes which took wing at the reproach in hers.
"But if we are to be serious--"

"Oh no," she said, "it isn't a serious matter." But in the helplessness
of her sincerity she could not carry it off lightly, or hide from him
that she was disappointed.

He tried to make talk about other things. She responded vaguely, and
when she had given herself time she said she believed she would go
to Lottie; she was quite sure she cou