She did not distrust God, for her star still hung in heaven, and God was taking care of it. But had God intended to end the line of the Riches? Horatio had gone to war to help make the world safe for babies, but that meant having no wife and babies himself. This was the thing called sacrifice, and she should have to think about it. She was eighteen now, and some day someone might possibly ask her to marry him. One very important fact she had to begin with. She knew from her mother’s dying lips that up to the age of forty-six her father had not intended to marry. And one June evening she mustered up courage to ask him about that. He merely smiled and said, “I’m very thankful that I married your mother, but can any man say why he’s a laggard in love?” Ambrose Rich was a wise man, but even the wisest make mistakes. He did not know that he was driving his darling to theft. Nor did he miss from his library certain works that he no longer had a use for, such as Malthus on Population. Chapter 13. Aluminum About the time that Jean began to worry concerning population, Marvin was preparing to reduce the population of Germany. He handed in his notes on lead, sold his car, went home, enlisted in the National Guard, broke the news to his mother, and was called by his father a lucky dog. His regiment pulled out for the border, and there he sweated with the rest throughout July. Near the end of the month the death of Ramsay, the glorious discoverer of helium and neon, reminded him that he was only common clay, and in August he took his examination along with the rest of the common clay. By Thanksgiving, 1916, he was home again, and next day received his commission. In January of 1917 he was sent to Fort Leavenworth to be trained. In April, when war was declared, he found himself once more en route for the border. But that summer he was transferred to the mobilization camp at Syracuse and made a first lieutenant. After some weeks on the drill ground he was taken off and attached to headquarters. Once a month he was receiving a nice letter signed “Yours truly. Gratia.” He always answered it promptly, and felt very much like a married man. Gratia was his treasure, his sapphire. If she aroused but little passion within him, that was proper. Marriage, whatever else it is, should be a polite business. As assistant adjutant, he had opened a telegram from which he inferred that he was to be given a captaincy. He knew what he would do when the regimental adjutant should grant him the choice of rifle or machine gun. He would choose the latter and learn how to deal death by the swath. He desired to send the Germans plenty of lead, as a reminder of what their allies had done to Moseley.