“Might be!” he repeated. “Has more to be rightly proud of than anyone else! And not alone because America is in the war now, but because--at the cost of staying out so long--our country came in when and how she did! You understand I say nothing against our allies--nothing like what you have said against our own country! Belgium got the first attack of the Germans and fought back, oh, so nobly, and so bravely, and hopelessly; but Belgium was invaded! France fought, as everyone knows, in self-defense and for a principle; England fought in self-defense, too, as well as for a principle--for were not the German guns almost at her shores? But we have gone in for a principle--and in self-defense, too, perhaps; but for the principle first! Oh, there is a difference in that! A hundred million people safe and unthreatened--for whether or not we really were safe and unthreatened, we believed we were--going into a war without idea of any possible gain or advantage solely for a principle! Oh, I don’t mean to make a speech to you.” “Go on!” he ordered. “I’ve just made one; you go on now.” “You spoke about the Kaiser’s order to us about how to paint our ships, as if the insult of that was what at last brought us in! How little that had to do with it for us! It merely happened to come at the time we could at last go in--when a hundred million people, not in danger which they could see or feel, decided to go in, knowing even better than those who had decided earlier what it was going to mean. For the war was different then from what it was at first; the Russia of the Czar and of the empire was gone; and in France and in England there was a difference, too. Oh, I don’t know how to say it; just France, at first, was fighting as France and for France against Germany; and England, for England, was doing the same. And America couldn’t do that--I mean fight for America; she couldn’t join with allies who were fighting for themselves or even for one another. The side of the allies had to become more than that before we could go in; and it is and we’re in! Oh, I don’t know how or when it will appear; but I know--know that before long you will be prouder to be an American than you ever dreamed you could be if we had gone in like the others when you thought we should.” She had been gazing at him and, for a few moments, he had been staring in bewilderment at her; but now he was turned away and she could see from the set of his lips, from the pulse throbbing below his temple as the muscles of his face pulled taut, how she had offended him. “Thank you,” he said to her shortly. “I’ve hurt you!” “Didn’t you mean to?” “Not this way.” “You told what you thought; I asked to know it. How do you happen to be here, Miss Gail?” he asked with sudden directness after a pause.