Sabinsport took the fate of Serbia more to heart because just before Nikola came home in March of 1916, with his thrilling personal tales, Verdun had knocked her growing hardness and indifference toward the war to splinters. That sudden fierce flood, breaking at a point in the long line of which she had never heard, threatening as it did to engulf the defenders and sweep over Paris, marked an epoch in Sabinsport's war history. Not since the invasion of Belgium had feeling run as high as now. There was a keen personal anxiety lest her chosen side should be beaten, for the attack revealed to Sabinsport that she had a chosen side, that she cared--cared for the Allies; and, above all, cared for France. Verdun broke a crust that had formed over the town; a curious crust which had grown thicker and thicker through the winter of 1915-16, justifying much of Ralph's bitterness and filling Dick with increasing dread. Half of this was reluctance to going into war--not fear, mind you, not at all. There was no fear in Sabinsport's heart of anything that she made up her mind she must do, but there was a strong feeling that she ought not to have to go into this war, that it was not her business, that there ought to be a way out. It was clinging to this reluctance through a growing consciousness that the things which she stood for were being attacked, that hardened her. She did not see clearly yet, it is true, that it was her ideas of life that were at stake on the earth; but she every day more strongly suspected that was the case, and she was reluctant to admit it.