ou mean. Four wasted centuries. Nothing will ever
be the same again."

"Of course it won't. But don't you think it's just as well?" She
faced him smilingly. "There was so much that was all wrong, Derek; so
much that was rotten."

"And do you think that four years' insanity is going to prove the
remedy?" Vane laughed cynically. "Except that there are a few million
less men to carry on the rottenness"--

Margaret shook her head. "We wanted something to wake us up; it's been
drastic, but we're awake."

"And what most of us want is to go to sleep again. Don't you feel
tired, Margaret, sometimes?"

"Yes--I suppose I do. But it's the tiredness that comes with
doing--not drifting. . . . It's we who have got to make the new Heaven
and the new Earth, Derek . . ."

Again Vane laughed. "Still as idealistic as ever, I see. Six months
after peace we shall be scrambling and fighting and snarling
again--after jobs and money and work."

Margaret Trent was silent, tracing a pattern in the sand with her
finger. "The worry of scrambling after a job is not likely to hit you
very hard," she said at length.

"Which is perhaps as well," he returned lightly; "for I'm certainly too
weary to take the trouble. I shall go away, if I'm alive to do it, to
the South Sea Islands and live on fruit. The only proviso is that it
should be sufficiently ripe to drop into my mouth, and save me the
trouble of picking it."

The girl turned and looked at him suddenly. "You've got it rather bad,
old boy, haven't you?"

"Got what?" he asked slowly.

"Mental jaundice," she answered. "Your world askew."

"Do you wonder?" he returned grimly. "Isn't the world askew?"

"And if it is, someone has got to put it back."

"That's what the little boy said when he pulled the chest of drawers
over on top of him and lay struggling under it. But he couldn't do it
himself. It's got beyond us, Margaret--and God seems to have
forgotten. There is just a blind, malignant Fate running the show."

She looked at him gravely. "You're wrong, Derek--utterly wrong. The
game is still in our hands, and we've got to keep it there. What are
you smiling at?"

"I was wondering," he answered, "whether the last time I was told I was
wrong, the sentence would have been concluded similarly.
Unfortunately, the speaker died in the middle, thereby proving his
contention."

"Oh! but you're little," she cried, striking her hands together.
"Don't you see th