burnt out man.  But through you I seem to be reborn.  Still, I shall hate Germans all my life, and in the after-life, what ever that may be.  I could give you a thousand reasons.  One ought to suffice.  You’ve read, of course, about the regiment of Frenchmen called Blue Devils.  I met some of them—­got friendly with them.  They are great—­beyond words to tell!  One of them told me that when his regiment drove the Huns out of his own village he had found his mother disemboweled, his wife violated and murdered, his sister left a maimed thing to become the mother of a Hun, his daughter carried off, and his little son crippled for life! ...  These are cold facts.  As long as I live I will never forget the face of that Frenchman when he told me.  Had he cause to hate the Huns?  Have I?...  I saw all that in the faces of those Huns who would have killed me if they could.”

Lenore covered her face with her hands.  “Oh—­horrible! ...  Is there nothing—­no hope—­only...?” She faltered and broke down.

“Lenore, because there’s hate does not prove there’s nothing left....  Listen.  The last fight I had was with a boy.  I didn’t know it when we met.  I was rushing, head down, bayonet low.  I saw only his body, his blade that clashed with mine.  To me his weapon felt like a toy in the hands of a child.  I swept it aside—­and lunged.  He screamed ‘Kamarad!’ before the blade reached him.  Too late!  I ran him through.  Then I looked.  A boy of nineteen!  He never ought to have been forced to meet me.  It was murder.  I saw him die on my bayonet.  I saw him slide off it and stretch out....  I did not hate him then.  I’d have given my life for his.  I hated what he represented....  That moment was the end of me as a soldier.  If I had not been in range of the exploding shell that downed me I would have dropped my rifle and have stood strengthless before the next Hun....  So you see, though I killed them, and though I hate now, there’s something—­something strange and inexplicable.”

“That something is the divine in you.  It is God!...  Oh, believe it, my husband!” cried Lenore.

Dorn somberly shook his head.  “God!  I did not find God out there.  I cannot see God’s hand in this infernal war.”

“But I can.  What called you so resistlessly?  What made you go?”

“You know.  The debt I thought I ought to pay.  And duty to my country.”

“Then when the debt was paid, the duty fulfilled—­when you stood stricken at sight of that poor boy dying on your bayonet—­what happened in your soul?”

“I don’t know.  But I saw the wrong of war.  The wrong to him—­the wrong to me!  I thought of no one else.  Certainly not of God!”

“If you had stayed your bayonet—­if you had spared that boy, as you would have done had you seen or heard him in time—­what would that have been?”

“Pity, maybe, or scorn to slay a weaker foe.”

“No, no, no—­I can’t accept that,” replied Lenore, passionately.  “Can you see beyond the physical?”