The light was gray that came down through the skylight. Abel and Poltneck and Fallows sat on the floor in the front end, because there were not chairs for all. Back in the shadows sat Berthe and Peter.  
“...I think we will be a little bewildered,” she was saying, “as one from a dream, as one awakening in the sunlight. One stirs, you know, and shuts the eyes again. The reality dawns slowly—if the house is quiet.... It will be very quiet. We have been used to the cannonading so long, and the cries in the night. It will take us a moment to realize that it is all over. I think I see just how it will be then. I will have that sense of the glad unknown—that something long anticipated is about to happen. You know how it comes to one upon awakening, when something perfect is to happen—the presence of it, before one remembers just what it is?”
 
Peter nodded in the shadow.
 
“And then I will remember. It will be you. I will really open my eyes—and you will be there!”
 
Something of her fire came to him.
 
“You are sure it will be like that—?” he repeated.
 
Her voice and lips trembled. “You ask just like a little child, Peter. It is the little child in you that strikes the heart. Don't you really believe in the afterward?”
 
“Yes, but I can't see it quite clearly, you know, as you do.”
 
“You don't think it is all wayward and stupidly arranged as the army would like to do it—do you?”
 
They laughed softly together, but she wanted him to see it, as she did, “Because,” she said, “if you do, we will be together more quickly. I would have to go and find you, if you didn't come——”
 
“I should want to come,” said Peter.
 
He followed her eyes beyond the from the roof, to the face of Fallows, seen indistinctly in the shadows. It was like the figure of a Hindu holy man sitting there so low, his hands raised palms upward, his voice just audible.
 
“Listen,” she said, her hand falling upon Peter's.
 
“It isn't so much their death that is the great wrong to the soldiers by the Fatherland. A man may do worse than die, at any time. It's the death of hate the Fatherland inspires—the fighting death—the going-down with blood-madness and for the men of another country—not enemies at all, no harm exchanged between them. It is such deaths that make the world hard to breathe in—the death of animals. But all that is passing. These battles had to come at the last to hurry it away....”
 
“That's what I wanted to say, Peter,” Berthe whispered eagerly.... “Fallows is greater than any,—an inspirer. He will go out with his dream for men, strong and bright. Do you think that is the same as dying the fighting death—with a curse and a passion for the death of men whom you have never seen face to face?”
 
“It's quite all right, you know,” said Peter. “I'm keen enough to see it through, but it's a closed door yet. However, there's something deathless about a woman like you—yes, I'm sure of that——”
 
Her hands pressed his swiftly. “Then you may be very sure, there's something deathless in the man she loves.... Listen, Fallows is talking about your country now:”
 
“... Russia is the , but America is the temple of the new spirit. America must reanimate the world after this war. I believe she is being born again now.... She was bred right. There is always that to fall back upon. She was founded upon the princip............