Out in the open a boy rushed up to us, a Slavic creature with huge questioning eyes. "Peace, mister! Peace, miss! Buy one! Great historic ’casion!" They were like doves, all up and down the avenue, white, fluttering, bearing the one blessed, magical word. They were in motor-cars, carriages, and on the tops of omnibuses—all white, all fluttering, all blessed, and all magical. Up and down and everywhere the cry burst from hundreds of raucous little throats: "Peace! _Peace_! PEACE!" "It’s like coming out into a new world, isn’t it?" I said. "It _is_ a new world, for me. Do you remember saying that day when you first came home that the new world made the war? Now it’s made something else, in which it seems to me there’ll be just as much struggle called for, only with a difference. Then the hard things were done to break us down; now they may be just as hard, only they’ll be to build us up. The East isn’t farther from the West, is it, than these two motives? I’ve never wanted to build up anything in my life; but now I feel as if—" Once more we walked silently among the doves, listening to that throaty, lusty cry that was sheer music: "Peace! _Peace_! PEACE!" We had come to that avenue in the park sacred to little boys and girls, when she said: "He’s a darling, Lulu Averill’s baby; and they—quite understand each other—now." This second reference prompted me to give her a long sidewise look, but she did not return it. "Perhaps—" I ventured. "Oh, Billy!" It was barely a sigh, but for the minute it was enough for me, as she pressed forward, with veiled profile set, like one gazing into the future. THE END