"There is more than the _Maine_ affair," Thaine assured her. "You know, just off our coast, almost in sight of our guns, Spain has held Cuba for all these centuries in a bondage of degradation and ignorance and cruel oppression. You know there has been an awful warfare going on there for three years between the Spanish government and the rebels against it. And that for a year and a half the atrocities of Weyler, the Captain General of the Spanish forces, make an unprintable record. The United States has declared war, not to retaliate for the loss of the _Maine_ alone, awful as it was, but to right wrongs too long neglected, to put a twentieth century civilization instead of a sixteenth century barbarity in Cuba." Thaine was reciting his lesson glibly, but Leigh broke in. "But why must you go? You, an only child?" She had never seen a soldier. Her knowledge of warfare had been given her by the stories Jim Shirley and Dr. Carey had told to her in her childhood. "It's really not my fault that I'm an only child. It's an inheritance. My father was an only child, too. He went to war at the mature age of fifteen. I'll be twenty-one betimes." Thaine stood up with military stiffness. "Your father fought to save his country. You just want gold lace and a lark. War is no frolic, Thaine Aydelot," Leigh insisted. "I'm not counting on a frolic, Miss Shirley, and I don't want any gold lace till I have earned it," Thaine declared proudly. "Then why do you go?" Leigh queried. "I go in the name of patriotism. Wars don't just happen. At least, that is what the professor at the University tells us. Back of this Spanish fuss is a bigger turn waiting than has been foretold. Watch and see if I am not a prophet. This is a war to right human wrongs. That's why we are going into it." "But your father wants you here. The Sunflower Ranch is waiting for you," Leigh urged. "His father wanted him to stay in Ohio, so our family history runs. But Mr. Asher heard the calling of the prairies. His wilderness lay on the Kansas plains, and he came out and drove back the frontier line and pretty near won it. At least, he's got a wheat crop in this year that looks some like success." Thaine smiled, but Leigh's face was grave. "Leighlie, my frontier is where the Spanish yoke hangs heavy on the necks of slaves. I must go and win it. I must drive back my frontier line where I find it, not where my grandfather found it. I must do a man's part in the world's work." His voice was full of earnestness and his dark eyes were glowing with the fire of inspiration. By the patriotism and enthusiasm of the youth of twenty-one has victory come to many a battlefield. "But I don't want you to go away to war," Leigh pleaded. "You don't want me here." Thaine let his hand rest gently on hers for a moment as it lay on top of the easel; then hastily withdrew it.