Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully.  “Don’t you apologize!” she said. “I didn’t when I said it seemed to me that we’ve gone walking so often, when in reality it’s only four or five times altogether.  I think I can explain, though:  I think it came partly from a feeling I have that I can rely on you—­that you’re a good, solid, reliable sort of person.  I remember from the time we were little children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look in school; and you used to make a dent in your forehead—­you meant it for a frown—­whenever I caught your eye.  You hated me so honestly, and you were so honestly afraid I wouldn’t see it!”

“Oh, no—­no—­”

“Oh, yes—­yes!” she laughed, then grew serious.  “My feeling about you—­that you were a person to be relied on, I mean—­I think it began that evening in our freshman year, after the Lusitania, when I stopped you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn’t help crying, and you were so nice and quiet.  I hardly realized then that it was the first time we’d ever really talked together—­of course I did all the talking!—­and yet we’d known each other so many years.  I thought of it afterward.  But what gave me such a different view of you, I’d always thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just bursting for a fight; but you showed me you’d really never had a fight in your life and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my feeling about war.”  She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a sharp sigh.  “Ah, don’t you remember what I’ve told you all along?  How it keeps coming closer and closer—­and now it’s almost here!  Isn’t it unthinkable? And what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that we must stop it?”

“Well—­” Ramsey began uncomfortably.  “Of course I—­I—­”

“You can’t do much,” she said.  “I know.  None of us can.  What can any little group do?  There are so few of us among the undergraduates—­and only one in the whole faculty.  All the rest are for war.  But we mustn’t give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we must fight to the last breath!”

“’Fight’?” he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.

“Oh, as a figure of speech,” she said, impatiently.  “Our language is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages.  But, oh, Ramsey!”—­she touched his sleeve—­“I’ve heard that Fred Mitchell is saying that he’s going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the Canadian aviation corps.  If it’s true, he’s a dangerous firebrand, I think.  Is it true?”

“I guess so.  He’s been talking that way some.”

“But why do you let him talk that way?” she cried.  “He’s your roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else has.  Couldn’t you—­”

He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some surreptitious thought.  “Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, I don’t seem to be much of a talker exactly!”