“Why, there’s nothing to say about me,” she began in compliance with his gayety, and then she fell helpless from it.

“Well, then, about Tuskingum.  I should like to hear about Tuskingum, so much!”

“I suppose we like it because we’ve always lived there.  You haven’t been much in the West, have you?”

“Not as much as I hope to be.”  He had found that Western people were sometimes sensitive concerning their section and were prepared to resent complacent ignorance of it.  “I’ve always thought it must be very interesting.”

“It isn’t,” said the girl.  “At least, not like the East.  I used to be provoked when the lecturers said anything like that; but when you’ve been to New York you see what they mean.”

“The lecturers?” he queried.

“They always stayed at our house when they lectured in Tuskingum.”

“Ah!  Oh yes,” said Breckon, grasping a situation of which he had heard something, chiefly satirical.  “Of course.  And is your father—­is Judge Kenton literary?  Excuse me!”

“Only in his history.  He’s writing the history of his regiment; or he gets the soldiers to write down all they can remember of the war, and then he puts their stories together.”

“How delightful!” said Breckon.  “And I suppose it’s a great pleasure to him.”

“I don’t believe it is,” said Ellen.  “Poppa doesn’t believe in war any more.”

“Indeed!” said Breckon.  “That is very interesting.”

“Sometimes when I’m helping him with it—­”

“Ah, I knew you must help him!”

“And he comes to a place where there has been a dreadful slaughter, it seems as if he felt worse about it than I did.  He isn’t sure that it wasn’t all wrong.  He thinks all war is wrong now.”

“Is he—­has he become a follower of Tolstoy?”

“He’s read him.  He says he’s the only man that ever gave a true account of battles; but he had thought it all out for himself before he read Tolstoy about fighting.  Do you think it is right to revenge an injury?”

“Why, surely not!” said Breckon, rather startled.

“That is what we say,” the girl pursued.  “But if some one had injured you—­abused your confidence, and—­insulted you, what would you do?”

“I’m not sure that I understand,” Breckon began.  The inquiry was superficially impersonal, but he reflected that women are never impersonal, or the sons of women, for that matter, and he suspected an intimate ground.  His suspicions were confirmed when Miss Kenton said:  “It seems easy enough to forgive anything that’s done to yourself; but if it’s done to some one else, too, have you the right—­isn’t it wrong to let it go?”

“You think the question of justice might come in then?  Perhaps it ought.  But what is justice?  And where does your duty begin to be divided?” He saw her following him with alarming intensity, and he shrank from the responsibility before him.  What application might not she make of his words in the case, whatever it was, which he chose not to imagine?  “To tell you the truth, Miss Kenton, I’m not very clear on that point —­I’m not sure that I’m disinterested.”