rope can afford to make war without our consent.
We shall be the arbiters of international dissensions. We shall command
peace--yes, the peace of force, of fact! If it could be won in any other
way I should not be here on this veranda in command of an army of
invasion. That was my idea--for that I planned." He was making up for
having overshot himself in his confession that he had brought on the war
as a final step for his ambition.

"You mean that you can gain peace by propaganda and education only when
human nature has so changed that we can have law and order and houses
are safe from burglary and pedestrians from pickpockets without
policemen? Is that it?" she asked.

"Yes, yes! You have it! You have found the wheat in the chaff."

"Perhaps because I have been seeing something of human nature--the human
nature of both the Browns and the Grays at war. I have seen the Browns
throwing hand-grenades and the Grays in wanton disorder in our
dining-room directly they were out of touch with their officers!" she
said sadly, as one who hates to accept disillusionment but must in the
face of logic.

Westerling made no reply except to nod, for a movement on her part
preoccupied him. She leaned forward, as she had when she had told him he
would become chief of staff, her hands clasped over her knee, her eyes
burning with a question. It was the attitude of the prophecy. But with
the prophecy she had been a little mystical; the fire in her eyes had
precipitated an idea. Now it forged another question.

"And you think that you will win?" she asked. "You think that you will
win?" she repeated with the slow emphasis which demands a careful
answer.

The deliberateness of his reply was in keeping with her mood. He was
detached; he was a referee.

"Yes, I know that we shall. Numbers make it so, though there be no
choice of skill between the two sides."

His tone had the confidence of the flow of a mighty river in its
destination on its way to the sea. There was nothing in it of prayer, of
hope, of desperation, as there had been in Lanstron's "We shall win!"
spoken to her in the arbor at their last interview. She drew forward
slightly in her chair. Her eyes seemed much larger and nearer to him.
They were sweeping him up and down as if she were seeing the slim figure
of Lanstron in contrast to Westerling's sturdiness; as if she were
measuring the might of the five millions behind him and the three
millions behind Lanstron. She le