"Survival of the fittest!" exclaimed Lenore, in earnest bitterness. "Kurt, we have changed. You are facing realities and I am facing the infinite. You represent the physical, and I the spiritual. We must grow into harmony with each other. We can't ever hope to learn the unattainable truth of life. There is something beyond us--something infinite which I believe is God. My soul finds it in you.... The first effects of the war upon you have been trouble, sacrifice, pain, and horror. You have come out of it impaired physically and with mind still clouded. These will pass, and therefore I beg of you don't grow fixed in absolute acceptance of the facts of evolution and materialism. They cannot be denied, I grant. I see that they are realities. But also I see beyond them. There is some great purpose running through the ages. In our day the Germans have risen, and in the eyes of most of the world their brutal force tends to halt civilization and kill idealism. But that's only apparent--only temporary. We shall come out of this dark time better, finer, wiser. The history of the world is a proof of a slow growth and perfection. It will never be attained. But is not the growth a beautiful and divine thing? Does it now oppose a hopeless prospect?... Life is inscrutable. When I think--only think without faith--all seems so futile. The poet says we are here as on a darkling plain, swept by confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.... Trust me, my husband! There is something in woman--the instinct of creation--the mother--that feels what cannot be expressed. It is the hope of the world." "The mother!" burst out Dorn. "I think of that--in you.... Suppose I have a son, and war comes in his day. Suppose he is killed, as I killed that poor boy!... How, then, could I reconcile that with this, this something you feel so beautifully? This strange sense of God! This faith in a great purpose of the ages!" Lenore trembled in the exquisite pain of the faith which she prayed was beginning to illumine Dorn's dark and tragic soul. "If we are blessed with a son--and if he must go to war--to kill and be killed--you will reconcile that with God because our son shall have been taught what you should have been taught--what must be taught to all the sons of the future." "What will--that be?" queried Dorn. "The meaning of life--the truth of immortality," replied Lenore. "We live on--we improve. That is enough for faith." "How will that prevent war?"