"I am trying to be calm," said Nancy. "You know all we had hoped and planned, but--but I don't want to be foolish; there must be deeper reasons than those you mentioned the other day. I do not think you can have realised the circumstances. Since you left, I have done nothing but read--and try to understand. I have been very ignorant about such matters, and I thought, perhaps, my ignorance kept me from understanding you. I have read all the papers which father has been able to obtain, all the miserable story which led up to this war. Have you?" "Yes," said Bob; "all!" "Then surely you do not hold to what you said?" "I am afraid I do." "Then perhaps you will explain." "That is what I want to do," cried Bob. "Oh, Nancy, you don't know what I have been through since I left you!--you don't know how I have longed to enlist, longed to take part in the fray--but--there it is. Look here, Nancy, I was never one to talk much about these things, but you knew my father, knew that he was a Quaker, a Christian, in a very real sense of the word. When he died, my mother and others told me they hoped I should be worthy of him, and--I have tried to be. It is difficult to talk about such matters, Nancy, and I am not one of those fellows who parade their piety and that sort of thing. I would not say what I am going to now, but for the circumstances. I have tried to understand what Christianity means. I have read the New Testament, especially the Gospels, again and again. I have tried to realise what Jesus Christ said, what He lived for, what He died for, and I think I have tried to follow him. No, I am not namby-pamby, and this is not empty talk. I expect there are hundreds of young fellows who never talk about religion, but who are trying, honestly and squarely, to live Christian lives. Anyhow, that is what I have tried to do. When this war seemed to be inevitable, I went into the whole business. I read everything I could,--newspapers, state papers, correspondence between the ambassadors, and all that kind of thing. You see, I felt what was coming; and, Nancy, I simply cannot square Christianity with war. Either Jesus Christ was mistaken, and Christianity is an empty dream; or war is wrong--wrong under any circumstances. It is hellish, and I can't stand for it--I can't!" The girl looked at him with wide open eyes, and her lips trembled, but she did not speak. "Yes," he went on, "I know what it means. I shall be boycotted, sneered at, called a coward, and all that; but that is nothing, is it? What is much more terrible to me is the fact that I shall--that I shall lose you! You drove me away the other day, Nancy. You did not mean it, did you? You would not have me go against my conscience?"