Along the quiet English lane they walked, but though the closeness of the girl beside him was ministering to the senses, his mind remained so clutched in the grip of thought that his head throbbed with pain with each step of his foot jarring upon the road. They had reached the entrance to the estate and were nearing the house, when his reverie was broken by the sound of a quivering breath and a trembling of the hand on his arm. Like a conflagration that is already out of control, his brain flared into further revolt with the stimulus of a new resentment--he had not thought of woman's part in the thing. 'Elise,' he cried, 'this is monstrous. It is only the vile selfishness of men that makes it possible. They are not giving a thought to the women, yet you are the real sufferers. Now I know what you meant when you said that women don't have their place in the world. If they did, this never could have happened; for their hearts would never permit the men that are born of women to slaughter each other like bestial savages. Now is the time for you to speak. This is the hour for your rebellion. Let the whole world of women rise in a body and denounce this inhuman, insufferable wrong. If your rebellion is ever to come, let it come now.' The hand on his arm was wrenched free, and Elise stood facing him with fury in her eyes. 'Are you mad, Mr. Selwyn? Or is this your idea of a joke?' He stared at her, dumbfounded. Her eyes were glowing, and her lips were parched with the fever of the breath passing through them. 'A joke?' he said. 'Great heavens! Do you think I would jest on such a subject?' 'But---- You mean that we women should organise, rise up, to hinder our men from going to war?' 'Doesn't your heart tell you how infamous war is?' 'What does that matter?' 'But, Elise,' he pleaded desperately, 'some one must be great enough to rise to the new citizenship of the world even if martyrdom be the condition of enrolment. It is far, far harder than snatching a musket and sweeping on with the mob, but it is for people like you and me to have the courage to try to stem this flood of ignorance, to stop this butchery of women's hearts.' 'Women's hearts!' She laughed hysterically. 'And you believe that you understand women! Do you think war appals us? Do you think because we may shed tears that it is from self-pity? Rubbish! There are thousands of us to-night who could almost shout for joy.' 'Elise!' 'I mean it. Don't you see that to-night our whole life has been changed? Men are going to die--horribly, cruelly--but they're going to play the parts of men. Don't you understand what that means to us? _We're part of it all_. It was the women who gave them birth. It was the women who reared them, then lost them in ordinary life--and now it's all justified. They can't go to war without us. We're partners at last. Do you think women are afraid of war? Why, the glory of it is in our very blood.'