who smiled into his coffee cup.

"Why," cried the Critic, in anger, "one would think you held a brief for them!"

"I do not," snapped the Doctor, "but I don't dislike them any more than I do—well," catching himself up with a laugh, "lots of other people."

"And you mean to tell me," said the gentle voice of the Divorcée at his elbow, "that you calmly face the idea of the hundreds of thousands of men,—well and strong to-day—dead to-morrow,—the thought of the mothers who have borne their sons in pain, and bred them in love, only to fling them before the cannon?"

"For what, after all, are we born?" said the Doctor. "Where we die, or when is a trifle, since die we must. But why we die and how is vital. It is not only vital to the man that goes—it is vital to the race. It is the struggle, it is the fight, which, no matter what form it takes, makes life worth living. Men struggle for money. Financiers strangle one another at the Bourse. People look on and applaud, in spite of themselves. That is exciting. It is not uplifting. But for men just like you and me to march out to face death for an idea, for honor, for duty, that very fact ennobles the race."

"Ah," said the Lawyer, "I see. The Doctor enjoys the drama of life, but he does not enjoy the purely domestic drama."

"And out of all this," said the Trained Nurse, in her level voice, "you are leaving the Almighty. He gave us a world full of beauty, full of work, full of interest, and he gave us capacities to enjoy it, and endowed us with emotions which make it worth while to live and to die. He gave us simple laws—they are clear enough—they mark sharply the line between good and evil. He left us absolutely free to choose. And behold what man has made of it!"

"I deny the statement," said the Doctor.

"That's easy," laughed the Journalist.

"I believe," said the Doctor, impatiently, "that no good comes but through evil. Read your Bible."

"I don't want to read it with your eyes," replied the Journalist, and marched testily down the path toward the house.

"Well," snapped the Doctor, "if I read it with yours, I should call on the Almighty to smite this planet with his fires and send us spinning, a flaming brand through space, to annihilation—the great scheme would seem to me a failure—but I don't believe it is." And off he marched in the other direction.

The Lawyer shrugged his shoulders, and suppressed, as well as he could, a smile. The Youngster, leaning his elbows on his knees, recited under his breath:

"Exactly," said the Lawyer.

"What's that?" asked the Violinist.

"Only the last three lines of a great little poem by a little great Irishman named Stephens—entitled 'What Satan Said.'"

"After all," said the Lawyer, "the Doctor is probably right. It all depends on one's point of view."

"And one's temperament," said the Violinist.

"And one's education," said the Critic.

Just here the Doctor came back,—and he came back his smiling self. He made a dash down the path to where the Journalist was evidently sulking, went up behind him, threw an arm over his shoulder, and led him back into the circle.

"See here," he said, "you are all my guests. I am unreasonably fond of you, even if we can't see Life from the same point of view. Man as an individual, and Man as a part of the Scheme are two different things. I asked you down here to enjoy yourselves, not to argue. I apologize—all my fault—unpardonable of me. Come now—we have decided to stay as long as we can—we are all interested. It is not every generation that has the honor to sit by, and watch two systems meet at the crossroads and dispute the passage to the Future. We'll agree not to discuss the ethics of the matter again. If the men marching out there to the frontier can agree to face the cannon—and there are as many opinions there as here—surely we can look on in silence."

And on that agreement we all went to bed.

But on the following day, as we sat in the garden after dinner, our attempts to "keep off the grass" were miserably visible. They cast a constraint on the party. Every topic seemed to lead to the forbidden enclosure. It was at a very critical moment that the Sculptor, sitting cross-legged on a bench, in a real Alma Tadema attitude, filled the dangerous pause with:

"It was in the days of our Lord 1348 that there happened in Florence, the finest city in Italy—"

And the Violinist, who was leaning against a tree, touched an imaginary mandolin, concluding: "A most terrible plague."

The Critic leaped to his feet.

"A corking idea," he cried.

"Mine, mine own," replied the Sculptor. "I propose that what those who, in the days of the terrible plague, took refuge at the Villa Palmieri, did to pass away the time, we, who are watching the war approach—as our host says it will—do here. Let us, instead of disputing, each tell a story after dinner—to calm our nerves,—or otherwise."

At first every one hooted.

"I could never tell a story," objected the Divorcée.

"Of course you can," declared the Journalist. "Everybody in the world has one story to tell."

"Sure," exclaimed the Lawyer. "No embargo on subjects?"

"I don't know," smiled the Doctor. "There is always the Youngster."

"You go to blazes," was the Youngster's response, and he added: "No war stories. Draw that line."

"Then," laughed the Doctor, "let's make it tales of our own, our native land." And there the matter rested. Only, when we separated that night, each of us carried a sealed envelope containing a numbered slip, which decided the question of precedence, and it was agreed that no one but the story-teller should know who was to be the evening's entertainer, until story-telling hour arrived with the coffee and cigarettes.

I

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

IT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT

The Tale of a Bride's New Home

The daytimes were not ever very bad. Short-handed in the pretty garden, every one did a little work. The Lawyer was passionately fond of flowers, and the Youngster did most of the errands. The Sculptor had found some clay, and loved to surprise us at night with a new centre piece for the table, and the Divorcée spent most of her time tending Angéle's baby, while the Doctor and the Nurse were eternally fussing over new kinds of bandages and if ever we got together, it was usually for a little reading aloud at tea-time, or a little music. The spirit of discussion seemed to keep as far away before the lights were up as did the spirit of war, and nothing could be farther than that appeared.

The next day we were unusually quiet.

Most of us kept in our rooms in the afternoon. There were those stories to think over, and that we all took it so seriously proved how very much we had been needing some real thing to do. We got through dinner very comfortably.

There was little news in the papers that day except enthusiastic accounts of the reception of the British troops by the French. It was lovely to see the two races that had met