"I thought you wanted to see it," the friendly commissioner repeated. "Rails, guns, gun-stocks, wire, a thousand sundries--and every car your eye can see straight from the Adamsville mills. There's enough steel railing there to triple-track from the Marne to Berlin, with lots to spare!" They drew together at the vastness of the spectacle. "The metallic sinews of war, my boy--just as the boys of Adamsville and the country are the human sinews. I understand your feelings, Judson; but can't you see that they are spreading the same ideal of democracy that your comrades work for?" "I hope some good will result; it's not easy to see clearly," Pelham answered slowly. As the commissioner left, the son of Adamsville placed his arm around Jane. "And our mountain did all of this! What pawns it made of us! We flung up here, the miners scattered, endless change and turmoil.... I used to say the mountain mothered me; but it flung me out like my father too. Perhaps it embodied all of us. Perhaps"--a sudden surge of bitter memory turned the drift of his thinking--"perhaps autocracy would suit the mountain, as well as democracy." "I think not," Jane replied slowly. "When its products are washed away by the streams, they quicken the whole soil. Humanity can afford culture now for all; all must win their chance at it." "The war sets us back...." "And pushes us on too. After it is over, these metallic and human sinews will rebuild a world democracy at peace. Men have failed; the women come to their tasks now." "Yes; the aching past surely has taught us something. We must build right, now. Old standards are gone; the world furnace of war has quickened all the people...." "We've done our small part." "With the biggest part still to do. We are to see the beginning of the building of the New World in the hearts and souls of men.... For that is the final building." They walked out to the jutting end of the vast pier, studying the aimless restlessness of the ocean drift sloshing against the clustered piles. She turned to stroke a raveling from his coat. Upon the bright flush of her cheek he brushed a fleeting kiss. A resting gull flopped heavily from a water-swung stake, skimmed low over the gray sparkle, and lessened on beating wings into the sun-glitter to the west. XXXI Spring on the mountain. Over the eastern rim of sand hills the sturdy sun of May flared up. The neutral gray pooled in the valleys woke to a rustling flame of green; the wind whipped from the crest the last shred of clinging cloud, and dried the wet kiss of the mist upon cottage and bungalow, rumpling the summit as far as eye could cover.