For peace had dangers—­men and women had been worshipping false gods.  They had set up a Golden Calf and had bowed before it—­and their children, lured by luxury, emasculated by ease of living, had wanted more ease, more luxury, more time in which to—­play!

And now life had become suddenly a vivid Crusade, with everybody marching in one direction, and the young men were manly in the old ways of strength and heroism, and the young women were womanly in the old way of sending their lovers forth, and in a new way, when, like Drusilla, they went forth themselves to the front line of battle.

To have children in these days, meant to have something to give.  One need not stand before suffering humanity empty-handed!

War was a monstrous thing, a murderous thing—­but surely this war was a righteous one—­a fire which would cleanse the world.  Men and women, because of it, were finding in themselves something which could suffer for others, something in themselves which could sacrifice, something which went beyond body and mind, something which reached up and touched their souls.

So, in the midst of darkness, Miss Emily had a vision of Light.  After the war was over, things could never be as they had been before.  The spirit which had sent men forth in this Crusade, which had sent women, would survive, please God, and show itself in a greater sense of fellowship—­of brotherhood.  Might not men, even in peace, go on praying as they were praying it now in war, the prayer of Cromwell’s men, “Oh, Lord, it’s a hard battle, but it’s for the rights of the common people—­” Might not the rich young men who were learning to be the brothers of the poor, and the poor young men who were learning in a large sense of the brotherhood of the rich—­might these not still clasp hands in a sacred cause?

Yes, she was sorry that she had no son.  Slim and gray-haired, a little worn by life’s struggle, her blood quickened at the thought of a son like Derry.  The warmth of his handclasp, the glimpse of that inner self which he had given her, these were things to hold close to her heart.  She had known on that first night that he was—­different.  She had not dreamed that she should hold him—­close.

Rather pensively she arranged her window.  It was snowing hard, and in spite of the fact that Christmas was only three days away, customers were scarce.

The window display was made effective by the use of Jean’s purple camels—­a sandy desert, a star overhead, blazing with all the realism of a tiny electric bulb behind it, the Wise Men, the Inn where the Babe lay, and in a far corner a group of shepherds watching a woolly flock—­

Her cyclamen was dead.  A window had been left open, and when she arrived one morning she had found it frozen.

She had thanked Ulrich Stoelle for it, in a pleasantly worded note.  She had not dared express her full appreciation, lest she seem fulsome.  Few men in her experience had sent her flowers.  Never in all the years of her good friendship with Bruce McKenzie had he bestowed upon her a single bloom.