Margaret-Mary was too young to understand--she was easily comforted. Derry sang a little song and her eyes drooped. But downstairs the little son who was brave like his father, sat on the edge of the bed, and held his mother's hand. "He's in Paradise with the purple camels, Mother, and he's a shining soul--." It was a week before Jean went with Derry to see Margaret. It had been a week of strange happenings, of being made love to by Derry and of getting Daddy ready to go away. She had reached heights and depths, alternately. She had been feverishly radiant when with her lover. She had resolved that she would not spoil the wonder of these days by letting him know her state of mind. The nights were the worst. None of them were as bad as the first night, but her dreams were of battles and bloodshed, and she waked in the mornings with great heaviness of spirit. What Derry had told her of Margaret's loss seemed but a confirmation of her fears. It was thus that men went away and never returned--. Oh, how Hilda would have triumphed if she could have looked into Jean's heart with its tremors and terrors! She came, thus, into the room, where Margaret sat with her children. "I want you two women to meet," Derry said, as he presented Jean, "because you are my dearest--" "He has told me so much about you,"--Margaret put her arm about Jean and kissed her--"and he has used all the adjectives--yet none of them was adequate." Jean spoke tensely. "It doesn't seem right for us to bring our happiness here." "Why not? This has always been the place of happiness?" She caught her breath, then went on quickly, "You mustn't think that I am heartless. But if the women who have lost should let themselves despair, it would react on the living. The wailing of women means the weakness of men. I believe that so firmly that I am afraid to--cry." "You are braver than I--" slowly. "No. You'd feel the same way, dear child, about Derry." "No. I should not. I shouldn't feel that way at all. I should die--if I lost Derry--" Light leaped in her lover's eyes. But he shook his head. "She'd bear it like other brave women. She doesn't know herself, Margaret." "None of us do. Do you suppose that the wives and mothers of France ever dreamed that it would be their fortitude which would hold the enemy back?" "Do you think it did, really?" Jean asked her. "I know it. It has been a barrier as tangible as a wall of rock." "You put an awful responsibility upon the women." "Why not? They are the mothers of men." They sat down after that; and Jean listened frozenly while Margaret and Derry talked. The children in front of the fire were looking at the pictures in a book which Derry had brought. Teddy, stretched at length on the rug in his favorite attitude, was reading to Margaret-Mary. His mop of bright hair, his flushed cheeks, his active gestures spoke of life quick in his young body--. And his father was--dead--! Oh, oh, Mothers of men--!