She looked at the straggling lines of jaunty men, lacking uniform, lacking bearing, lacking everything that goes to make the soldier, but a something which was invisible to her eyes and to Cantor's eyes, but which is the thing, when all else is judged and weighed, that carries a man steadfastly, unflinchingly, into a hell of carnage. "A regiment of Prussians would annihilate an army of them," Cantor said. "Wait six months, a year," she retorted. "Then talk." "In a year," he said, "the game will be played out. America's men don't signify. Nothing she can do signifies, beyond her money and her munitions.... And those..." "It's your business to deal with," she said, quickly. He turned around and said, suddenly, "Are you going to marry me?" "I don't know." "I'd as soon you didn't," he said, significantly. She stared at him, perplexed; then she comprehended. She was not outraged, was not even angry. The thing she had read in his eyes more than once was not the desire which urges a man to take a wife. Her lips curled. "I suppose the next step would be to use me in your trade," she said. "Spy literature is full of attractive women used as--shall we say bait?" His eyes darkened. "If I were interested in such things," he said, "I'd say you could fit the part." "It's one I'll never play," she said, shortly. "The future is--the future," he said. He turned again to the window; left her brooding, frightened, staring toward to-morrow and the cargo of good or ill which to-morrow was freighting toward her.... She had never considered herself as good or bad in the way of morals. She had taken herself for granted, as one who would not be touched by certain things. They had seemed romantic, fictitious.... She realized that they were real; that no one is born into the world shielded from them by some mystic immunity. What other women had been she might be. She was flesh of their flesh, breathing the same air, endowed with the same intelligence, swayed by the same temptations, compelled by the same events.... To what might not overwhelming events compel her?... She shrank from the thought; it was of hideous aspect, and unwholesome. It was an unequal struggle--one slender girl against the covetous forces of evil. If evil fixed its eyes upon her, if malevolent events hustled and jostled her toward their ends, as events had been jostling her--what refuge had she? She was conscious of a strength of resolution, of a righteous aversion, but would their strength prevail against such potence as would be arrayed against them? It was a question she could not answer until the future demanded an answer from her. Only the conflict could make manifest the truth. It lay with her own soul, and she could not inventory her own soul. Nothing but the pressure of the event itself could do that. Cantor turned to her again. "The parade is over," he said. "Where shall we go?" "Home," she said, in a low tone--a frightened, lonely tone. "I've offended you?"