f it impaired physically and with mind still
clouded. These will pass, and therefore I beg of you don't grow fixed in
absolute acceptance of the facts of evolution and materialism. They
cannot be denied, I grant. I see that they are realities. But also I see
beyond them. There is some great purpose running through the ages. In
our day the Germans have risen, and in the eyes of most of the world
their brutal force tends to halt civilization and kill idealism. But
that's only apparent--only temporary. We shall come out of this dark
time better, finer, wiser. The history of the world is a proof of a slow
growth and perfection. It will never be attained. But is not the growth
a beautiful and divine thing? Does it now oppose a hopeless prospect?...
Life is inscrutable. When I think--only think without faith--all seems
so futile. The poet says we are here as on a darkling plain, swept by
confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by
night.... Trust me, my husband! There is something in woman--the
instinct of creation--the mother--that feels what cannot be expressed.
It is the hope of the world."

"The mother!" burst out Dorn. "I think of that--in you.... Suppose I
have a son, and war comes in his day. Suppose he is killed, as I killed
that poor boy!... How, then, could I reconcile that with this, this
something you feel so beautifully? This strange sense of God! This faith
in a great purpose of the ages!"

Lenore trembled in the exquisite pain of the faith which she prayed was
beginning to illumine Dorn's dark and tragic soul.

"If we are blessed with a son--and if he must go to war--to kill and be
killed--you will reconcile that with God because our son shall have been
taught what you should have been taught--what must be taught to all the
sons of the future."

"What will--that be?" queried Dorn.

"The meaning of life--the truth of immortality," replied Lenore. "We
live on--we improve. That is enough for faith."

"How will that prevent war?"

"It will prevent it--in the years to come. Mothers will take good care
that children from babyhood shall learn the _consequences_ of fight--of
war. Boys will learn that if the meaning of war to them is the wonder of
charge and thunder of cannon and medals of distinction, to their mothers
the meaning is loss and agony. They will learn the terrible difference
between your fury and eagerness to lunge with bayonet and your horror of
achievement when the dise