“In our home over there she had interests.  In this great town she can only nurse her grief against me.  Ah! this war!  It seems to me we are all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent.  We lie there, being digested.  In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not.  It is wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have beaten the Boche; that is curious and it is very great.  Did Barra tell you how, when they come back—­all these fighters—­they are going to rule, and manage the future of the world?  But it will not be so.  They will mix in with life, separate—­be scattered, and they will be ruled as they were before.  The tongue and the pen will rule them:  those who have not seen the war will rule them.”

“Oh!"’ cried Noel, “surely they will be the bravest and strongest in the future.”

The painter smiled.

“War makes men simple,” he said, “elemental; life in peace is neither simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace.  It is pathetic, the belief of those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs.”

“He said, a strange thing,” murmured Noel; “that they were all a little mad.”

“He is a man of queer genius—­Barra; you should see some of his earlier pictures.  Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced in one direction.  I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice, courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice—­all are being forced and forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then—­Psum!  Presto!  The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and stink.  But we who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are so few.  The natural shape of things is lost.  There is a mist of blood before all eyes.  Men are afraid of being fair.  See how we all hate not only our enemies, but those who differ from us.  Look at the streets too—­see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this forcing-house.  Is it not natural that Youth about to die should yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?”

Noel stared up at him.  ‘Now!’ she thought:  I will.’

“Yes,” she said, “I know that’s true, because I rushed, myself.  I’d like you to know.  We couldn’t be married—­there wasn’t time.  And—­he was killed.  But his son is alive.  That’s why I’ve been away so long.  I want every one to know.”  She spoke very calmly, but her cheeks felt burning hot.

The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had been jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly: