He ran up to Eglantine that afternoon—to Eglantine all rosy in its mass of flowers. He took her off alone this time. They motored up the hill and then made their way on foot to a hollow beneath a spreading thorn tree. They sat down, and he took her hand. She made no objection, but lifted his left hand and studied it. “Marvin, you have the quickest, finest left hand that ever was.” “Gratia, I’m going to enlist.” She tightened her clasp on both hands. “You are doing right. I don’t care what my father says about this war. You are doing right, and I’m proud of you.” “Dear, I shall not see you again till the war is over. May I write?” “I shall be heartbroken if you don’t.” “And will you marry me when I come back?” “How can I tell? Some day I may have a great responsibility. Father’s business must go on after he is gone, and I want to keep it together. Do you love me very much?” “Gratia, I worship you. I’ve been too presuming with other girls. I think a man ought to look up to the woman he marries.” She gently drew both hands away. “We’re not a very loving couple, are we? But I’m only nineteen. By the time you get back I may feel very differently. Please ask me then.” Chapter 12. Magnesium If ever a girl had need of courage, it was Jean during the spring of 1916, for her father sat by the hour staring at that old haircloth sofa, and sometimes at a tiny gunboat made of wood, a piteous perfect thing that Horatio had whittled out as a child. So she had to do most of the planting herself, and tend the garden until it picked up its green and grew lusty. But when the day’s work was done and the supper dishes were washed, she would steal away to the Tarpeian, and bathe her aching soul in stars. She knew that her mother was safe, but she was trying to make sure that God loved her brother. The inquiry is an old one. Sisters made it long ago beside the Aegean, looking out from the hill of Pelion and the white Magnesian shore, remembering brothers slain across the sea. And out of sad longings they built up their own hero, the swift-footed Achilles, whose mother tried to hide him from the military draft. She strove to render him invulnerable with holy water and immortal with holy fire. Like all the rest he fell, but they pictured him as living on. He survived in a white island with an immortal girl more fair than the rosy slave he had lost. Jean was too much of a Christian to believe that there is marriage in heaven, and yet her mind lingered on Achilles safe in the white island at the mouth of Danube, there married to sweet Iphigenia. Horatio was not like that, but was as the angels, perchance as those who came with Lancelot to the vision of the bishop.