She brushed the starting tears from her eyes; they filled again. She said miserably: "We women all inherit sorrow, it seems, the moment our girlhood leaves us. A few days ago I didn't know what it was to be afraid. Then you came. And with you came friendship. And with friendship came fear--fear for _you_!... And then, very swiftly, love came; and my girlhood was gone--gone--like yesterday--leaving me alone in the world with you and love and war!" He drew her face against his shoulder: "This world war is making us all feel a little lonely," he said. "The old familiar world is already changing under our bewildered eyes. It is a totally new era which is dawning; a new people is replacing the inhabitants of earth, born to new thoughts, new ideals, new ambitions. "I think the old tyranny is already beginning to pass from men's souls and minds; the old folk-ways, the old and out-worn terrors, the tinselled dogmas, the old false standards, the universal dread of that absolute intellectual freedom which alone can make a truly new heaven and a new earth. "All this is already beginning to pass away in the awful intellectual revelation which this world war is making hour by hour. "What wonder that we feel the approaching change, the apprehension of that mortal loneliness which must leave us stripped of all that was familiar while the old order passes--vanishes like mist at dawn." He bent and touched her hand with his lips: "But there will be a dawn, Karen. Never doubt it, sweet!" "Shall our children see it--if God is kind to us?" she whispered. "Yes. If God is very kind, I think that we shall see it, too." The girl nodded, pressing her cheek against his, her eyes clear and sweetly grave. He said: "No man ever born, since Christ, has dared to be himself. No woman, either.... I think our children will begin to dare." She mused, wide-eyed, wondering. "And he who takes up a sword," he said in a low voice, "shall find himself alone like a mad dog in a city street, with every living soul bent upon his extermination. "Thus will perish emperors and kings. Our children's children shall have heard of them, marvelling that we had lived to see them pass away into the mist of fable." After a while she lifted her face and looked at him out of wistful eyes: "Meanwhile _you_ fight for them," she said. "I am of today--a part of the mock mystery and the tarnished tinsel. That grey old man of Austria quarrels with his neighbour of Servia, and calls out four million men to do his murders for him. And an Emperor in white and steel buckles on his winged helmet summons six million more in the name of God. "That is a tragedy called 'Today.' But it is the last act, Karen. Already while we hold the stage the scene shifters are preparing the drama called 'Tomorrow.'