"
Joan remained silent. It made her mad, that a man could be suddenly
robbed of fifteen years' labour: the weapon that his heart and brain had
made keen wrested from his hand by a legal process, and turned against
the very principles for which all his life he had been fighting.
"I'm almost more sorry for myself than for him," said Mary, making a
whimsical grimace. "He will start something else, so soon as he's got
over his first soreness; but I'm too old to dream of another child."
He came in a little later and, seating himself between them, filled and
lighted his pipe. Looking back, Joan remembered that curiously none of
them had spoken. Mary had turned at the sound of his key in the door.
She seemed to be watching him intently; but it was too dark to notice her
expression. He pulled at his pipe till it was well alight and then
removed it.
"It's war," he said.
The words made no immediate impression upon Joan. There had been
rumours, threatenings and alarms, newspaper talk. But so there had been
before. It would come one day: the world war that one felt was gathering
in the air; that would burst like a second deluge on the nations.
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