Dick and Ralph were curious about Patsy's encounter, for they long ago had discovered that Nancy Cowder was one of Sabinsport's standing subjects of gossip, that the town considered her highly improper. There seemed to be two reasons: one was the general disapproval of anything that belonged to Reuben Cowder, and then the notion that "a girl who raised dogs and horses and took them east, even to England, could not be 'nice.'" Dick was much amused when he learned that the Sabinsport skeleton, as Ralph had always called Nancy Cowder, was visiting the Barstows. "She must be all right," he mused, "or she would not be in that house." You see, Dick had known Lady Barstow's brother at Oxford and more than once had passed a week-end with him at his sister's place. But Nancy Cowder was quickly forgotten in Patsy's return. She came a new Patsy, thin and pale, with the energy and the spirit of a Crusader in her blazing eyes. Belgium and her wrongs had been burnt into Patsy's soul. It was her first great unselfish passion. It had made her tender beyond belief with her father and mother. The two restrained, inexpressive old people were almost embarrassed by the tears and the kisses she showered on them. This was not their business-like, assertive girl, absorbed in her own plans and insisting on her own ways. It was a girl who watched them with almost annoying persistence, who wanted to save them steps, guard them from imaginary danger, give them pleasures they had never even coveted. What they did not realize was that, as Patsy looked into their faces, visions of distracted, homeless Belgian women, of broken, wounded Belgian men, floated before her eyes, that she found relief in doing for them even unnecessary services since she could do nothing for those others. Patsy's passion made her hard on the town. She demanded that it champion Belgium's cause as she had, with all its soul and all its resources; that it think of nothing else. But this it could not do. Sabinsport, ignorant and distant as it was, had developed something of a perspective and was sensing daily something of the complexity of the elements in the war. It could not think singly of Belgium. Ralph, bitter in spirit at finding Patsy so changed, so absorbed in her conception of her own and her friends' duty, took her to task for emotionalism. He forced arguments on her: that Germany was the only bulwark between civilization and the Russian peril; that she had been hampered by an envious England; that if Germany had not violated Belgium, France would. If Ralph had not been stung to jealousy by Patsy's interest in something outside himself he would never have been as stupid and as unreasonable as he proved. He knew he was wrong. He knew that he admired her for the unselfish passion she showed. He knew he hurt her, but he _wanted_ to hurt her!