Patsy was very personal about it. "That settles it," she told Dick. "I shall never see Ralph Gardner again. He might just as well tell me to my face that I'm uncivilized." "She is uncivilized," Ralph shouted when Dick reported on his questioning how personal Patsy was over his article. "Emotionalism has made her harsh, cruel, unseeing. It is horrifying that any woman should want war--contrary to their nature. There would be no wars if women could have their way." "You read that in a book, Ralph. Patsy is a perfectly normal woman--that is, she cries to defend those that suffer. She has the natural feminine anger towards those that caused the hurt, and she wants to fight them, to hurt them in turn. There are as many women as men in Sabinsport to-day eager to get into the war. There'll be more and more of them, and when we do go in they will be as vindictive and merciless as the men." But Ralph hooted at the notion. "You are thinking of a cave woman, Man--not of her of the twentieth century. Women never will support war. I tell you, Patsy is not normal. Her whole nature is distorted by what she saw in Belgium. Sometimes I think she is a bit crazy." "Jealous," said Dick to himself. "Jealous of Belgium! Lord, was there ever such a courtship!" There were to be many of them before the war was over. Something greater in meaning was sweeping through the hearts of men and women than even their most precious personal desires. They could not have told from whence it came or what it was--this fierce, overwhelming necessity to sacrifice themselves; but they could not escape. That way only was peace and safety and honor. The loves of men and women bent before the flood. Patsy had been caught in the onrush. She could not escape--would not, though her heart was breaking over Ralph's contempt for her great, consuming passion. What she did not realize at all, and what Dick could not make her see, was that Ralph himself had in these last years been swept away by a splendid, unselfish ideal akin to her own, that all his efforts in Sabinsport had been to realize his hopes, that the war had stripped him of his cause, and that he had not as yet found his way out of the ruins. It was all meaningless to Patsy. She could not realize that he could no more abandon his great cause than she hers, and, as he resented Belgium, she resented his absorption in interests which had never stirred her soul. Ralph had one refuge left at this moment. It was that the party, to which four years before he had given an allegiance that was little short of a dedication, would at its convention in June again sound the high note it had struck four years before. He went to Chicago with a despairing hope that he would there hear some hearty, strong expression of faith in the things which were his passion, some definite plan for rescuing them from the maw of the war. If he did not--"Well," he told himself, "there's no place for me in the world."