“We won!” he said.  And the smile accompanying his words was one of gentle raillery, and suggested nothing of the real tragedy of the thing that had happened.

The girl’s eyes widened.  She strove to understand the dreadful lightness with which Bull spoke.  Victory?  Defeat?  At that moment they were the two things furthest from her mind.

Bull drew forward a chair, and gently insisted.  And Nancy, accepting it, realised in a dull sort of way that it was the chair she had occupied at the time of her first visit, which now seemed so far, far back in her memory.  Bull sat again in his rocker.  He leant forward.

“Sure,” he went on, “we’ve won out.  Your Skandinavia’s beaten.  Beaten a mile.  We’ve won, too, at less cost than I hoped.  Does it grieve you?”

There was no softness or yielding in his tone.  It was as he intended; the tone of a man who cares only that victory has been won.  Nancy shook her head.

“I’m—­I’m glad,” she said desperately.

“Glad?” Bull was startled.

The girl made a little involuntary movement.  She averted her gaze to the window through which the wintry sunlight was pouring.

“Oh, don’t you understand?  Can’t you?  Is the victory so much to you that you have no thought, no feeling, for the suffering it has brought?  Are you so hard set on your purpose of achievement that nothing else matters?  Oh, it’s all dreadful.  I used to feel that way.  I counted no cost.  Achievement?  It was everything to me.  And now, now that I know the thing it means I feel I—­I want to die.”

Bull took a strong hold upon himself.

“I know,” he said slowly.  “You see, Nancy, you’re just a woman.  You’re just as tender and gentle—­and—­womanly, as God made you to be.  He gave you a beautiful woman’s heart, and a courage that was quite wonderful till it came into conflict with your heart.  You had no right to be flung into this thing.  And only a man of Peterman’s lack of scruple could have done such a thing.  Well, I’m not going to preach a long sermon, but I want to tell you some of the things I’ve got in my mind before I get the sleep I need.  God knows that none of this thing you’re blaming yourself for lies at your door.  It would all have happened without you.  Peterman designed it, and put it through for all he was worth.  Now I want to say I’m glad—­glad of it all.  I’ve no pity for the Bolshevic dregs of Europe he employed.  They were out for loot, they were out to grab the things and the power that other folks set up.  Any old death that hit them they amply deserved.  As for our folk who’ve gone under—­well, we mustn’t think too deeply that way.  We all took our chances, and some had to go.  I was ready to go.  So was Bat.  So were we all.  We wanted victory, and we wanted it for those who survived.  We honour our dead, but our lives must not be clouded by their going.  It’s war—­human war.  And just as long as the world lasts that war will always be.  Good and bad men will die, and good and bad women will suffer at the sight.  But for God’s sake have done with the notion that you—­you have anything to take to yourself, except that you’ve fought a good fight, and—­lost.  It sounds like the devil talking, doesn’t it?  Maybe you’ll think me a monster of heartlessness.  I’m not.”