“We’re being a sort of spiritual Bolsheviki, I suppose, going through a transition period of confusion and lawlessness and wild thinking.... But, just as something better than the old Russian Empire with its czars and grand dukes and Siberias and its—its _Rasputins_—is bound to follow Bolsheviki-ism, so something better than the narrowness of the sewing-circles and the Pilgrims and the viciousness of blindly accepted conventions and codes.... This has turned into something bigger than a World War—it is turning into a Greater Reformation.... Not the reformation of a religion, but a reformation in the basic _thought_ of the world—surely of America....” “Whew!” exclaimed Kendall. “I follow you, I guess, but my feet are off the bottom ... and I can’t swim.” “You can think, can’t you?” she said, a trifle tartly. “I guess I _feel_ more than I _think_,” he said. “We all do.... We have to feel in order to think, and we have to feel in order to understand. Cold logic isn’t worth a snap of the fingers—really.... You’ve been getting something out of Paris, haven’t you? Feeling something? I think you get it there more than any place else.... I love Paris.” “My mother wouldn’t love it,” he said, gravely. “And you’re like her—sometimes—aren’t you?... But aren’t you growing more tolerant—more able to see the other person’s point of view?” “I—hang it all!—I can’t get away from the notion that good is good and bad is bad.” She shook her head. “But you are beginning to see that America hasn’t the right to legislate for the world, and to define what is good and what is evil.... I know you are.... Now don’t be shocked, please. I’m American, of course, and the American code is for me—until it is altered. Whatever I may think about it, still it is the code and accepted by the majority. That binds me to a degree.... But I can still believe we are narrow and prudish.... It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that eating pork may be a sin to an orthodox Jew. It is a sin because he believes it is a sin. It is no sin for you because you think it is nonsense.... When you get down to essentials, the thing that is a _sin_ is doing a thing you _think_ to be a sin. It isn’t the _thing_, but the thinking....” “I suppose that’s it.” “Of course it is.... And that’s enough of this sort of talk, isn’t it? I don’t always talk this way, really. I’m quite pleasant and frivolous most of the time.... You’re not to be stationed here by any chance?” “No such luck.” She laughed. “I wouldn’t have time to bother with you, anyhow, if you were meaning that as a compliment.... I’ve got at least a regiment of young men, and I sha’n’t be partial.... Besides, there’s that pretty little French girl.... I liked her looks.... Tell the truth, you’d be heartbroken if you were sent away from Paris and her.”