CHILDREN OF FATE
 
 " 'He put his shoulder to the figure of Christ and 
 pushed... I saw it topple and crash down.' " Page 157
 
 CHILDREN 
 OF FATE 
 
 BY 
 
 MARICE RUTLEDGE 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY 
 J. HENRY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of translation 
 into foreign languages
 
 TO 
 
 THE WISER WOMEN OF ALL COUNTRIES 
 
 FORE-RUNNERS OF UNIVERSAL 
 
 PEACE 
 
 2138105
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 JEAN 1 BOURDON, the father, folded 
 his napkin and rose slowly from the 
 round table. Obeying his signal, the 
 family shifted in their places, hesitant, as 
 if reluctant to break the circle. And in 
 the big dining room, where the furniture 
 seemed to have sprouted from the floor in 
 massive familiar shapes, these men and women 
 of several generations fitted into the space like 
 plants that have grown in the same climate for 
 years. 
 
 The air was charged with the heat of midday, 
 mingled with reminiscent odors. The table 
 was covered with the remains of a plentiful 
 meal. But there was never any waste in the 
 Bourdon family. Such as was left of wine,
 
 2 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 cheese and fruit had the conservative look of 
 provisions still to be reckoned with. And 
 Grandmother Bourdon's bottle of tonic stood 
 guard over an untouched chunk of bread, as if 
 assuring the company that, in this household, 
 bread was respected. 
 
 "Come, . . . come, my children," said Jean 
 Bourdon in a loud reassuring voice. "They 
 will see this time what good Frenchmen can 
 do! Ah, my friends, what they will get . . . !" 
 The accompanying gesture was significant. 
 
 He was a plump little man, shaped like a 
 bell. His voice boomed above the murmur of 
 resumed conversation. "We will see that !" and 
 he brought his hand down with a jovial slap 
 on the shoulder of his eldest son. "Eh, Ray- 
 mond?" 
 
 The women flocked ahead, Grandmother 
 Bourdon leading the way. She was very old. 
 She looked like a wizened leaf, held to the ro- 
 bust tree by a thin sappy thread. She walked 
 leaning on a cane, and she blocked the door for 
 a measurable time, wavering on the threshold,
 
 CHILDREN OF, FATE 3 
 
 her head with its black-beaded cap nodding the 
 uneven rhythms of age. 
 
 Her daughter-in-law, next in place, offered 
 an arm. But the old lady refused any help. 
 
 "Leave me, . . . leave me," she quavered, 
 with a gesture of impatience. "I am still val- 
 iant." 
 
 Jean Bourdon, surrounded by his sons and 
 relatives, moved solidly through the door. The 
 faces of the men, with the exception of Pierre, 
 the youngest son, were flushed and damp. Jean 
 Bourdon's round face emerged from a bushy 
 growth of mustache and beard like an over- 
 ripe fruit. He wore with authority a red rib- 
 bon in his buttonhole. 
 
 There was about the men a mobile bluster 
 that blew over the surface of their reunion like 
 a fitful wind. Beneath their assurance ran 
 currents of uneasiness and anguish that linked 
 them tacitly. They dominated the women, as 
 if called upon by their rank as the male mem- 
 bers of the family to assert sufficiency under 
 present conditions. Struck at the heart of
 
 4 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 their cult for home and country, they reacted 
 with the instant combativeness of democratic 
 citizens. 
 
 Jean Bourdon represented industry. 
 
 He owned a brick factory in Paris and two 
 others in the North. He called the great ovens 
 in which the reddish brown bricks were baked 
 "The Light of the Hearth." For on these 
 bricks he had based his social status, the fu- 
 ture of his sons, the security of his ripening 
 years. Bricks were the symbols of society, the 
 stauncli bodies with which were constructed 
 communities. They were earth utilized as a 
 protection. They were solid and stable and 
 honest. He believed in them as he believed 
 in the traditions that had built up past and 
 future generations. 
 
 In the midst of his prosperity the war had 
 exploded, demolishing the structure of years. 
 His factories in the North were in danger. 
 Most of the men were called. Orders would 
 be countermanded, business halted.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 5 
 
 And he was one of many. Now that France 
 was menaced by invasion, and the core of na- 
 tional pride emperiled, the people had risen as 
 one host to defend what was most precious to 
 them: their homes. All other considerations 
 must be laid aside, all personal opinions sacri- 
 ficed, all material consequences endured. 
 
 Raymond Bourdon, the oldest son and part- 
 ner, was a stalwart florid man, who wore his 
 opinions like his expensive rings, well in evi- 
 dence. He was his father amplified, accentu- 
 ated, with the wit, the prejudices, the caution 
 and the generosity of his race. He was adored 
 by those upon whom he imposed his will. His 
 abundant vitality found vent in the present 
 situation. He roared his challenge and con- 
 tempt of the enemy. 
 
 Planted in the middle of an attentive circle, 
 he bellowed his views. 
 
 "It was time ! A year ago I could have told 
 you what we were laying up for ourselves. 
 We've been fools, my friends. . . . We
 
 6 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 French are really too naive! What . . . ! 
 They infested the country like rats, nibbling 
 at our commerce. They stole our credit. They 
 grabbed our business, our art, our money . . . 
 and we sat like a crowd of imbeciles, seeing 
 nothing. When shall we learn that foreigners 
 undermine a country? A fine lesson we'll have 
 now. I, for one, am enchanted! I'll crunch 
 one or two of them with pleasure. . . . Then 
 perhaps we'll have peace." 
 
 His wife looked up at him with admiration. 
 The loose coat she wore did not hide a promis- 
 ing contour. She was paying her toll to 
 France for the fourth time. 
 
 "Eh, it is not such a bad thing," remarked 
 Jean Bourdon, tugging at his mustache. "The 
 socialists and their agitations announced noth- 
 ing good to me. We should have had trouble 
 with them and their eight-hour laws. Work- 
 men are not what they used to be. ... This 
 will give them something to do, and to think 
 about." 
 
 Doctor Lejeune, Madame Bourdon's cous-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 7 
 
 in, shrugged his pointed shoulders, and mut- 
 tered wisely, "A party postponed." 
 
 "Pooh!" snorted Raymond, snapping his 
 fingers. "Let them leave us alone." 
 
 The Bourdons were assembled in the salon, 
 which was used only on formal occasions. It 
 was a big light room encumbered with furni- 
 ture and ornaments. There were collected the 
 most valuable household gods in profusion 
 and diversity, dating the family history. 
 Where they had been placed in the beginning, 
 there they stayed, with the rigidity of petrifac- 
 tion. 
 
 Most of the furniture Jean Bourdon had 
 bought at an exhibition of modern interior 
 decoration. He was proud of it as an expres- 
 sion of his progressive views. It clashed with 
 the other objects in the room by its tendencies 
 to outrage all the established lines of comfort 
 and symmetry. Made of light wood and en- 
 crusted in pretentious colored designs, the 
 chairs and sofa undulated in exasperated
 
 8 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 curves and patterns. Mingling with this ex- 
 pensive set, in unfriendly dignity, were plush 
 chairs backed with lace, Grandmother Bour- 
 don's armchair, and a crop of embroidered 
 stools. The piano was forever closed and 
 smothered beneath a piece of tapestry made 
 by Madame Jean Bourdon when she was a 
 girl. Two ponderous Japanese vases crammed 
 with artificial leaves flanked a collection of 
 photographs. China animals and china chil- 
 dren congregated on a small gilt table. In a 
 solemn looking cabinet were gathered precious 
 relics of the family a fan, a locket, a string 
 of Venetian beads, a snuff-box that had de- 
 scended from Jean Bourdon's father, a jade 
 bottle and an Oriental box. 
 
 The old grandmother settled in her arm- 
 chair, her cane resting against her knees. Her 
 hands and lips moved incessantly, as if by 
 puerile movements she kept an illusion of life. 
 The others clustered around her in protective 
 attitudes. Now and then one of them would 
 bend forward and shout:
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 9 
 
 "What did you say, Mother?" 
 
 "Eh ... eh ... yes," she would croak, 
 blinking her filmy eyes. 
 
 The talk would mount again, covering her 
 mumbling. Then she would peer out in an 
 anxious cunning way, a hand behind her ears 
 in order to hear better. 
 
 "Eh, the miserable ones. ... I remember 
 in '70 . . ." 
 
 Pierre, the youngest son, wandered to the 
 window as if to efface himself from the group. 
 He seemed of another breed. A gentle air 
 of abstraction misted his pale face, set it apart 
 in an atmosphere of dreams. He looked like 
 some ascetic apostle, stepped from a primitive 
 painting. He had not spoken during the meal. 
 His pale blue eyes had been fixed on his plate 
 as if he saw there visions that removed him 
 from actuality. No one noticed him. 
 
 But presently Lorraine, his aunt, joined 
 him, and they two stood close together like 
 strangers inadvertently admitted to a family
 
 10 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 council. Pierre slipped a hand in her arm, 
 linking them. 
 
 "Poor little Pierre," she whispered. 
 
 Her young blonde face shone up at him wist- 
 fully. She smoothed his hand with her thin 
 fingers, one of which carried a golden band. 
 She was the widow of Raoul, Jean's brother. 
 She moved among this family as if she did not 
 belong to them. Her face had the look of 
 early spring with lingering frosts and a sweet- 
 ness that was delayed. But when she smiled 
 at Pierre, it was as if the sun had thawed the 
 last crusts. 
 
 "It is terrible," she added. And he agreed, 
 "It is indeed." 
 
 Their voices were lowered. They withdrew 
 to a world which contained secrets concerning 
 themselves. 
 
 Pierre said, "For me it is nothing. But I 
 am thinking of Natalie. How will it be for 
 her?" 
 
 "She will be like the others."
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 11 
 
 His face contracted in pain. "But she is 
 American, Lorraine. This is not her coun- 
 try." 
 
 "She loves it ... and you." 
 
 "Ah, yes, but it is not the same. ... It will 
 be harder for her." 
 
 "She loves you," softly repeated Lorraine. 
 
 The blue of his eyes lightened. "That is 
 why . . ." 
 
 And it seemed, as they stood there, that the 
 anguish of another had entered the room, was 
 pressing between them like a wounded creature 
 asking pity. Their hands dropped. 
 
 "One can do nothing,'' sighed Lorraine. 
 
 The same fatality weighed upon them, bend- 
 ing their heads to the pose of surrender. 
 
 The voices of the others jangled in their ears 
 like so many peremptory bells striking an hour. 
 
 Robert de Gency, Germaine Bourdon's 
 fiance, stood by the young girl, his pink face 
 expanding in a patronizing smile. He was 
 neatly molded in a blue uniform that bore the 
 recent impress of the tailor. He held his nar-
 
 12 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 row shoulders with a newly acquired assertive- 
 ness. 
 
 "They did not think to find us so solid. 
 Never fear . . . we'll get them in a very short 
 time. I, for one, predict that we shall be in 
 Berlin by the autumn." 
 
 Germaine gazed at him with her soul in her 
 round highly colored face. None was so brave 
 as Robert de Gency. Not one of her brothers 
 could compare with this dauntless lover of 
 hers, who, only a few days ago, had been a 
 mild, good-mannered young man, creditably 
 embarked on his career as an engineer. 
 
 Doctor Lejeune caressed his golden beard 
 with thoughtful fingers. 
 
 "Not so fast, Monsieur de Gency," he op- 
 posed. "They are strong . . . those people." 
 
 Henri, the second son, a tall thin youth, 
 swaggered across the floor, his hands in his 
 pockets. "We will get them," he pronounced. 
 
 His mother, her hands folded in her lap, al- 
 lowed herself the luxury of a sigh. "For me, 
 I wish it were over."
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 13 
 
 She was in her best dress a black satin af- 
 fair, profusely trimmed with lace and jet. Dia- 
 mond earrings twinkled in her ears. Her pep- 
 per-colored hair was elaborately done in rolls 
 and puffs. Her eyes kept an investigating 
 look, as if she were continually examining de- 
 tails of domestic economy. 
 
 Louise Bourdon's children trotted into the 
 room. The two boys, Jean Paul and Henri, 
 strutted ahead, dressed in tiny uniforms that 
 gave them the grotesque appearance of ani- 
 mated tin soldiers. Their cheeks bulged with 
 the effort to look martial. They held miniature 
 swords whose scabbards dangled around their 
 chubby legs. Their infant sister toddled after 
 them excitedly, clutching a trumpet. 
 
 They halted in the middle of the room and 
 saluted to the accompaniment of applause and 
 laughter. 
 
 Jean Bourdon swung Paul in the air. 
 
 "Here is one of our future defenders!" he 
 cried.
 
 14 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Stimulated by the attention they created, 
 the three mites became boisterous. Their shrill 
 play pierced the air. They paraded, casting 
 sly glances at their elders to detect further ap- 
 preciation. Rose Marie blew her trumpet un- 
 til the clamor of mimicked warfare evoked re- 
 monstrances. Their mother's fretful voice rose 
 sharply, seconded by Raymond Bourdon's im- 
 perious rebuke : 
 
 "Enough, children ... do you hear me?" 
 
 They subsided to a cowed little group in the 
 corner, where they held a consultation, inter- 
 rupted by involuntary outbursts. 
 
 "When are you off, Robert?" Jean Bour- 
 don asked of his future son-in-law. 
 
 "I must be at my depot to-morrow." 
 
 Germaine's eyes filled with tears. But she 
 made no protest. She and Robert moved aside 
 and stood whispering, gazing at one another 
 with shy adoration. 
 
 "I leave to-night," cried Raymond. 
 
 "So soon?" came a low distressed exclama- 
 tion from his wife.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 15 
 
 He patted her kindly on the shoulder. "Ah 
 well. . . . Yes, my poor Louisette." 
 
 "And I to-morrow," said Henri. 
 
 Jean Bourdon drew a long breath. "The 
 business will suffer!" Caught in a sudden gust 
 of anger, he shook his fist. "Oh, the miserable 
 ones! to have brought us to this! See you, if 
 I were younger, and could leave the factory, 
 I would be off with you." 
 
 His wife eyed him keenly. "You have 
 enough to do here," she said. 
 
 "And where is our Pierre in all this?" 
 observed Doctor Lejeune suddenly. He had 
 been watching Pierre and Lorraine. 
 
 "Hola, Pierre, my young friend, and thou?" 
 
 Pierre turned quickly from the window and 
 as if in spite of himself, was drawn into the 
 center of the room. 
 
 "We have not heard from you to-day," con- 
 tinued the Doctor, rubbing his hands together 
 softly. 
 
 Pierre gave him a faint smile. "I have noth- 
 ing to say. I go with the others."
 
 16 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "And when is that?" 
 
 Raymond interrupted importantly. "Prob- 
 ably the day after to-morrow, isn't it, Pierre?" 
 
 "Perhaps." His long arms hung limply at 
 his sides. He seemed to be staring beyond 
 them, past the walls of the house, out into the 
 city . . . 
 
 His father said with a slight accent of an- 
 noyance, "Come, my boy ... a little more 
 heart." 
 
 "Leave him alone!" exclaimed Madame Jean 
 Bourdon. "Because he does not roar with the 
 rest of you is no reason to find in him a lack 
 of heart." 
 
 "He was to have taken his diploma at the 
 Beaux Arts this Autumn," explained Jean 
 Bourdon to the Doctor. "It is a pity, but what 
 would you?" 
 
 The children were at Pierre's heels. The 
 others, ranged in a semicircle, drew closer, 
 their eyes claiming him. The room seemed 
 smaller, full to overflowing with Bourdons.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 17 
 
 They were his kin. And they were gathered 
 together, perhaps, for the last time. A senti- 
 ment of fate was in all their hearts. The next 
 day and the next and the next were so many 
 roads leading from the home to those red fields 
 where men were to fall like poppies beneath 
 the threshing machines. 
 
 Pierre stepped forward, consulting his 
 watch. 
 
 "I am sorry; I must go," he said in a con- 
 strained voice. 
 
 There was a murmur of protest. 
 
 "Ah, no!" declared his mother with sudden 
 energy. "You are not polite ..." 
 
 "But, Maman, I have another engagement." 
 
 Henri broke in mockingly, "I know! . . . 
 You're going to see your American friends!" 
 
 Pierre gave him a steady look. "Precisely." 
 
 "You are always hanging around those peo- 
 ple," complained Madame Bourdon. "Can 
 you not stay with us these last days? One
 
 18 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 would think that you did not love your fam- 
 
 ay." 
 
 "I have promised," said Pierre gently. 
 
 "Let the boy go to his friends," interceded 
 the Doctor with a droll wink. "We have all 
 been young. There must be a pretty woman, 
 hein, Pierre?" 
 
 "Always strangers," grumbled Raymond, 
 and leaning his bulk against the mantelpiece 
 turned his back on his brother. 
 
 "They say Americans are the most beauti- 
 ful of all women," cried Henri in a roguish 
 way. "For me, I prefer our own. They have 
 more chic." 
 
 As each of the men began offering opinions 
 of the subject, Pierre slid up to his mother, 
 kissed her and gained the door. Her voice 
 followed him. 
 
 "When will you be home, Pierre?" 
 
 "In a few hours, Maman." 
 
 "Really it is not nice of you!" 
 
 Lorraine glided from the window and, edg- 
 ing the room, reached Pierre.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 19 
 
 "Do not argue . . . Go," she whispered. 
 He smiled at her gratefully. 
 
 "Good-by, every one," and with decision he 
 opened the door and was gone. 
 
 "Pierre has strange manners," murmured 
 Louise Bourdon sourly. "Jean Paul, keep 
 still, or you will he punished." 
 
 "Jean Paul!" echoed Raymond's warning 
 voice. 
 
 "He met many strangers at the Beaux 
 Arts," pronounced Jean Bourdon gravely. 
 "But all that will be over now." 
 
 With the air of a man who has settled a 
 problem he leaned above his mother's armchair. 
 "What do you say, Mother?" 
 
 Grandmother Bourdon wagged her head, 
 stirring vaguely, as if a familiar voice had sum- 
 moned her from sleep. 
 
 "Eh ... eh ... to be sure," she muttered, 
 and her hands fluttered in her lap like wizened 
 little animals that have been disturbed.
 
 II 
 
 THE doors and windows of the studio 
 were open. Natalie Shaw wandered 
 from the sunny little balcony to the 
 couch upon which her brother sprawled, im- 
 mersed in smoke and reflection. 
 
 "Felix, I've tried and tried to realize what 
 it all means. But I feel dazed. I can't be- 
 lieve it!" 
 
 Felix raised himself on a bony elbow, frown- 
 ing at his lowered pipe. 
 
 "Nobody can," he remarked gloomily, but 
 as his sister stood looking down with a plead- 
 ing expression, he lifted his lank figure from 
 the cushions. 
 
 "Poor old girl!" 
 
 She turned away quickly as if to escape his 
 sympathy. "You mustn't mind me to-day, 
 dear," she apologized. He followed her to the 
 
 balcony, flinging an arm over her shoulder. 
 
 20
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 21 
 
 "Buck up, Natalie!" 
 
 The thin iron railings were swathed in ivy. 
 Geraniums and daisies in green boxes bordered 
 the ends. The wide open door on the studio 
 was framed with climbing nasturtiums. 
 
 "I don't see how I'm ever going to stand it," 
 cried Natalie. "It is hard ... it is brutal! 
 And men like Pierre are going to suffer for 
 it." 
 
 "Brutal indeed," muttered Felix, and added 
 insincerely that perhaps governments would 
 return to their senses before the entire world 
 was plunged into confusion. 
 
 But Natalie shook her head and gazed out 
 at the city, as if she were seeing it for the last 
 time. 
 
 Felix struggled with trite words of cheer. 
 But his own heart was heavy. For he also 
 loved Pierre. Presently they two stood in 
 silence, their tall thin bodies outlined against 
 roof and sky. 
 
 The studio was perched high, overlooking 
 roofs. They were very old roofs that seemed
 
 22 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 to have lived a long while and grown wise and 
 mellow. Their quaint pattern was a seal 
 of the city set in the sky. The dome of the 
 Institut and the tower of Saint Jacques peered 
 over a fringe of chimneys. And far away on 
 its peak hovered the Sacre-Cceur. The bells of 
 Saint-Germain pealed the hour like a theme, 
 taken and repeated by distant bells calling and 
 answering. . . . 
 
 The life of the city hidden among the roofs 
 drifted upwards, a medley of interwoven dis- 
 cords. A hollow cooing of doves sounded near 
 by. The smoke from chimneys unfurled gos- 
 samer draperies. And below in the shadow- 
 less old courtyard a little boy was playing at 
 war. He pranced on an imaginary steed from 
 one end to the other of the courtyard. He blew 
 a toy trumpet and beat the air with an imagi- 
 nary whip. His elbows were raised and 
 rounded. He lifted high his bare knees as 
 he galloped. He was a brave General at the 
 head of his troops. The courtyard was peo- 
 pled with enemies. Battles were raging. . . .
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 23 
 
 Natalie thrust out her hands with a hope- 
 less gesture. "What is the use of this, if men 
 are going to break what they have built?" 
 
 The sun bore down on the roofs, spread in a 
 tangle of gold, enmeshing her in its dazzle, 
 lighting her dark hair. She threw back her 
 head to receive the shine full in her eyes. But 
 when she spoke her voice sounded as if it came 
 from shadows. 
 
 "Life has been a very simple affair for us, 
 hasn't it, Felix? You have had your archi- 
 tecture, I my landscape gardening . . . and 
 Pierre. We have been happy. There was 
 no reason why we shouldn't be. We asked so 
 little. When we thought about the world 
 and its ways, we found theories that fitted hu- 
 manity. We considered ourselves identified 
 with an emancipated generation. And we took 
 smugly for granted a process of evolution that 
 included us. If people were vain, ugly, am- 
 bitious, envious, we consoled ourselves with our 
 pet dreams. . . ." Her voice mounted in 
 gathering passion. "And all the time we were
 
 24 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 rolling on ... millions and millions of us 
 I . . to this immeasurable catastrophe. Why, 
 we don't even know what has happened! 
 We're too shaken by immediate emotions to 
 realize. . . . But later, when we see where our 
 science, our reforms, our prattle of govern- 
 ments, our . . . civilization has led us, we shall 
 sicken for shame. Then it will be too late. Do 
 you think the men who are hurled in to this 
 madness of destruction are going to remember 
 why they kill, why they die? As they fall, 
 they will think of their women, of their 
 homes, of their broken dreams and crushed 
 youth ..." She broke off with a sobbing in- 
 take of her breath. 
 
 "Don't . . . don't take it so hard, Natalie. 
 There have been other wars." 
 
 "Not like this one. We have spent years 
 and years stocking up horror . . . and we 
 called it other names. Look . . ." She point- 
 ed. A workman in a white blouse crawled over 
 a roof and started hammering. The sun flat- 
 tened him against the blue tiles, as if the force
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 25 
 
 of heat pinioned him in place. He sang as he 
 hammered, and the duet of his labor and his 
 tenor voice seemed louder than anything else. 
 
 "They will take him away too," said Natalie. 
 "They will put a gun in his hand and send him 
 out to kill. Oh, the pity of it!" 
 
 Below, the trees in a garden spread their 
 heavy foliage in crushed blots of green. The 
 odor of flowers stirred the air. 
 
 Felix said gently: "Little comrade, all this 
 is true. But there is no way out. And so we 
 must make the best of it. . . ." 
 
 Pierre came into the studio so quietly that 
 neither of them heard. He paused and looked 
 at them as they stood on the balcony like two 
 lovers. And he gave no sign until he had fixed 
 the image of them in his heart. Whatever came 
 to him thereafter, he would have this image 
 intact. 
 
 Then he called "Natalie . . . Felix!" and 
 they turned and were with him. 
 
 Natalie went straight to his arms as she had
 
 26 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 never done before. "Peter, I thought you 
 would never come !" 
 
 "Oh, my beloved . . ." was all he could say. 
 
 Felix took his hand in a warm steady clasp. 
 "Old fellow, we're . . . we're mighty glad to 
 see you." 
 
 "Must you go too?" Her voice wavered. 
 "Does this mean that you must go?" 
 
 He nodded, smiling bravely. 
 
 She controlled herself with effort. "But you 
 are not strong enough. You were never meant 
 to be a soldier." 
 
 "I have two eyes, two arms, two legs," he 
 answered. They stayed, looking at one an- 
 other. Her eyes were dark with tragic vision. 
 
 Then, "It will not be for long," he consoled, 
 quoting his brothers, and he added without con- 
 viction, "It had to be." 
 
 She answered, "If it were only for a day, it 
 would be too long. It does not take a day to 
 kiU." 
 
 "I have no hate in my heart," he told her. 
 
 "Armies have no hate," she reflected drear-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 27 
 
 ily. "But they kill just the same. I shall 
 never be resigned to it . . . never!" 
 
 Felix busied himself bringing out a siphon, 
 a bottle, cigarettes. He could not do enough 
 for his friend. He circled about Pierre, setting 
 things before him. His lean good-natured 
 face was animated with an imposed cheerful- 
 ness. "Have a drink, old man. Isn't it too 
 warm in here? Natalie and I are lizards. Shall 
 I draw the curtains?" 
 
 "Leave them," said Pierre quickly. "I love 
 to look out." 
 
 It seemed to the three of them as if nothing 
 had changed. They sat close together, relax- 
 ing into a habit of intimacy that soothed them 
 like a shared illusion. 
 
 The room was a beloved place and wore its 
 shabbiness as a lovely woman wears homemade 
 clothes. Faded blue stuffs hung softly on either 
 side of the window. The old wicker chairs 
 and the couch had borrowed hollows and curves. 
 Two high stools claimed relationship with two 
 pleasantly littered work tables, one belonging
 
 28 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 to Felix, the other to Natalie. Books, flowers, 
 architect's implements, watercolors and plans 
 for houses and for gardens were strewn about. 
 The notched gray walls were decorated with 
 plans and sketches. 
 
 Felix clung to his pipe. He lolled in an 
 easy chair, one bony leg propped over the 
 other; and gazing benevolently at nothing in 
 particular, talked about things he and Pierre 
 loved: the Beaux Arts, pranks of comrades, 
 the last competition. But he spoke of days 
 that were finished, dwelling upon them as upon 
 past joys. There was no mention of the fu- 
 ture. And gradually his talk slackened. So 
 they stayed in silence, until Pierre, drawing a 
 deep sigh, wandered over to the balcony. 
 
 Natalie followed him there. Her eyes in 
 the sunlight were the color of first lilacs in 
 Spring. Her face was very still, like a flower 
 on a hot day. 
 
 "I shall always think of you on this balcony," 
 said Pierre. "You are a High Priestess of 
 the city. Tell me how it can be so quiet, when
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 29 
 
 all the elements that go to make up humanity 
 are ebbing and flowing through those laby- 
 rinths ? Life, after all, makes very little sound. 
 To-day men and women are heavy with destiny, 
 and the city holds them as a field does its seeds. 
 We do not see the truth from here. The roofs 
 are strong lids muffling the passions of men. 
 The smoke that drifts so peacefully from the 
 chimneys is cast-off dreams. And the win- 
 dows . . . count them . . . you cannot. As 
 soon count leaves on a tree. Yet behind each 
 window life lies in ambush. To think, Natalie, 
 that I am a builder of cities ! I can cover the 
 land with houses in which men can hide and 
 scheme and love. . . ." He turned swiftly, his 
 hand on her arm. His face was ardent with 
 unfulfilled vision. 
 
 "Oh, my beloved, what gods we are! You 
 the maker of gardens, and I the builder of 
 cities. We will work together, -von't we? Al- 
 ways together. Every house shall have its gar- 
 den, where men may gather sweetness and rest 
 for a while. The world will be the better for
 
 30 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 it. Houses are the images of their century. 
 We will make them live in noble places even 
 if their hearts are ugly . . ." His rapture 
 slid from him like a receding wave. He stood 
 brooding. "But now we shall have to wait." 
 Natalie echoed the word drearily, "Wait?" 
 "Until I come back," he said, and, with his 
 hands lying on her shoulders and his eyes meet- 
 ing hers, he promised : 
 "I will come back." 
 
 The bells of Saint-Germain were ringing. 
 They rang as if they would never stop, as if 
 their voices must reach the ends of the earth, 
 awakening sleepers. They told men there was 
 no way of escaping fate. They told women 
 there was no use in weeping. 
 
 Natalie and Pierre walked out together, 
 driven by the same need of mingling with the 
 people this day. It was as Sunday. The 
 streets were bright with flags that glowed like 
 promises of glory, showing men why they 
 should die. It was as if the same curiosity, the
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 31 
 
 same anguish, the same pride had entered into 
 the people as into a heart, and sent them out 
 to seek one another and to share a universal 
 experience. In a night their faces had been 
 stamped by a common destiny. There was no 
 class. There were no strangers. The throng 
 moved like a deep sea with hidden eddies and 
 currents. 
 
 Pierre and Natalie sat on the terrace of the 
 Deux Magots, opposite Saint-Germain-des- 
 Pres. They ordered beer, but they could not 
 drink. They were conscious of the minutes 
 like little matches flaring and burning out, 
 until there should be no more. They did not 
 look at one another. Pierre's face slanted to- 
 wards the sun. He stared at the sky as at a 
 rare flower that is fading. Natalie watched 
 the people flocking past, with an increasing 
 sense of helplessness. Her identity was sub- 
 merged in the compelling unity of the crowd. 
 Their loss was her loss, their hope her own. 
 
 There was a newsstand in front of the ter-
 
 32 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 race. The people fastened to it like flies. Men 
 and women shouldered one another, greedy for 
 morsels of news. Papers were shuffled from 
 hand to hand. A fat wheezy man posted near 
 the dwindling stock gave out his opinions like 
 pamphlets. He was listened to respectfully. 
 "They will never dare touch Belgium," he was 
 saying. A peaked looking woman in shabby 
 clothes pressed nearer, gaping up at him as if 
 he were an oracle. A man with a purple rib- 
 bon in his bottonhole exchanged views with a 
 bulky workman in corduroys. Street urchins 
 nosed inquisitively in and out of the shifting 
 group. Whenever a uniform gleamed it drew 
 women like a magnet. 
 
 "You will not forget me?" Pierre said. 
 
 She turned and put her hand over his. The 
 gesture fitted in with the hour. As he leaned 
 towards her, she moved her chair, lessening the 
 distance between them. 
 
 "I will wait for you," she told him. 
 
 "Natalie, I love you so. I cannot believe 
 that we have only a little while longer to-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 33 
 
 gether. When I am with you my heart feels 
 like a clear fountain gushing up to the sky. 
 All I do, all I am, belongs to you. There are 
 times in a man's life when he comes to cross- 
 roads. Whichever way I look I see you, the 
 sweet companion. How can I go on without 
 you?" 
 
 "But I shaU be with you." She felt very 
 calm and strong as if there were no such thing 
 as parting. 
 
 A squad of men marched by. They wore 
 their patriotism like a loaded gun. There was 
 a serious concentrated look in their faces, as if 
 they were memorizing a long poem. 
 
 The gray square of Saint-Germain blazed in 
 the heat. The church loomed with open doors 
 and dusky vistas. Vendors peddled little paper 
 flags and red, white and blue ribbons. Every 
 one wore some symbol of France. Little men 
 in new, ill-fitting uniforms, burdened with 
 knapsacks and bulky parcels, hurried along, 
 flinging a word or a nod at the women who
 
 34 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 stared at them with moist eyes. A bewildered 
 old couple tottered past, clinging to one an- 
 other. Every pace or so they would stop and 
 peer about anxiously, muttering and shaking 
 their heads. Motors packed with excited young 
 soldiers flew up the Boulevard. An ambulance . 
 passed, gliding silently, like a gray bird. 
 
 "It is the unknown that is so terrible," Pierre 
 said. "A few days ago life was arranged in 
 a certain way. We had our own problems, our 
 work, our play. We made our lives as a 
 sculptor models an image. We felt safe 
 enough safe in our beds, safe in the streets, 
 among our friends. We could not look beyond 
 a given point, but we could plan. . . . Now 
 all that is different. We belong to a national 
 destiny. We are its chessmen, to win or lose. 
 These men and women around us have lost 
 their right to act independently. They must 
 obey. There is no love that counts or 
 serves. . . ." 
 
 "I can hardly bear it," murmured Natalie. 
 "It is so unreal. The city is the same. Even
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 35 
 
 this little cafe is the same as it was a week ago. 
 It goes on serving drinks. Soon it will be 
 dinnertime, and people will eat. Dogs bark 
 and bells ring and there are funerals and chil- , 
 dren are born. Why don't they leave us 
 alone?" 
 
 "Unreality is the only reality after all," re- 
 flected Pierre, touching his glass as if it were 
 a bubble. "What we call unreality is what 
 we have never experienced. Once it is thrust 
 upon us, we become associated with it more re- 
 lentlessly than with our past illusions. Soon 
 war will be the only reality." 
 
 A dull humming overhead drew their atten- 
 tion. Circling in the blue sky like a gull was 
 an aeroplane. Its long wings were sheathed 
 in light. It seemed beyond the reach of any 
 earthly anguish. Those below stopped and 
 pointed, as people who in bondage suddenly 
 see something free. 
 
 "A month ago that would have been a beau- 
 tiful sight, another proof of man's mastery over 
 the elements," murmured Pierre dreamily.
 
 36 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "To-day it means an item of destruction, an 
 instrument of warfare. Who knows where it 
 is going?" 
 
 Natalie shuddered. "For a moment I en- 
 vied it. It seemed a tiny part of our best selves, 
 escaping. Must we turn all our visions into 
 forces of destruction? Peter, there will be 
 death in the sky too, then?" 
 
 He nodded. "There will be death every- 
 where." 
 
 The great bird soared on its trackless way. 
 The burry drone grew fainter. 
 
 A drunken man reeled by shouting the 
 Marseillaise, flinging his arms about in crazy 
 gestures. He slanted across the square grin- 
 ning foolishly at the groups that elbowed him 
 aside. 
 
 "Natalie, suppose I don't come back?" 
 
 "Pierre . . . please!" 
 
 "We must think of it," he said. "It may 
 happen. When so many men go, my beloved, 
 they cannot all come back. Should it be so, 
 you must not grieve too much. You must al-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 37 
 
 ways remember how happy I have been. I 
 shall have left my youth and love with you as 
 eternal things. You will go on working. You 
 will create beautiful gardens ... so many 
 shrines to our love." 
 
 At the sight of her stricken face and wet 
 eyes, he hastened on, "But I will come back, 
 Natalie." Then as both of them were shaken 
 by emotion for he had lifted a veil and shown 
 dark places they braced themselves in re- 
 newed effort and smiled as if their faith were 
 invincible. 
 
 "I know you will," she assured him. "We 
 are foolish to fear." 
 
 "I want to tell you about my family," he 
 began, stroking her hand as it lay on the small 
 white table. "I have always avoided speaking 
 about them. Now I see that I was wrong. 
 They should have met you before. ... I have 
 never been free, dear free as you understand 
 it in your country. Here in France our ways 
 are different." He smiled wanly. "Our fam- 
 ilies are little monarchies. The children can-
 
 38 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 not settle their lives as they will. You see, 
 Natalie, we are taught to obey our parents 
 even when we are grown up. In questions of 
 career . . . and marriage we must consult 
 our fathers and mothers. Most often it is they 
 who decide. I wanted to be a painter, and my 
 father made me an architect. But he was 
 wise. . . ." 
 
 Natalie wrinkled her forehead and moved 
 suddenly aside. "But, Peter, that seems a ter- 
 rible thing. Where then is your individu- 
 ality?" 
 
 "In our world that is not considered neces- 
 sary," he said simply. "We are supposed to 
 go on in the same way keeping up the tradi- 
 tions of our elders, modeling our lives on the 
 lives of our fathers. We are supposed to 
 marry to suit them." 
 
 "Suppose they don't like me then?" broke in 
 Natalie. 
 
 "When they know you as I do, they can- 
 not help loving you. But . . ." 
 
 "But what?"
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 39 
 
 He hesitated. "It may be difficult at first, 
 dear. They do not like strangers. But we 
 must be patient." His voice grew apologetic. 
 "They are good honest people with old-fash- 
 ioned ideas. They may be afraid of you, Nat- 
 alie. You are not like our young girls. You 
 are a worker . . ." 
 
 "Wouldn't they be glad of that?" 
 
 He shook his head. "They would not ap- 
 prove of it, nor of your living here alone with 
 dear Felix. But the war will change many 
 things. They cannot refuse me when I come 
 back." 
 
 "And if they should?" 
 
 "They will not!" he cried. "They must give 
 in. To marry at all it is necessary to have 
 their written consent. If they will not give 
 it there are legal proceedings of course. . . . 
 But they will not force me to resort to such 
 things." 
 
 "I think it is all wrong and absurd!" ex- 
 claimed Natalie. "How can you stand it?" 
 
 He showed his distress. "Beloved, don't
 
 40 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 condemn them. Remember it has always been 
 so. For example, take my Aunt Lorraine. 
 You will love her. She is very unhappy. Her 
 husband, my father's brother, died two years 
 ago. And Lorraine loves a young Polish 
 sculptor. She dares not tell the family. They 
 would feel bitter and hostile about her mar- 
 riage, especially to a foreigner and an artist." 
 
 "She will not give him up for that, will she?" 
 Her voice rose sharply. It was as if she were 
 questioning Pierre about herself. 
 
 "It is harder now. They would never for- 
 give her for marrying a man who is not going 
 to fight. Poor Lorraine !" He bowed his head, 
 and Natalie felt a dull pain in her heart be- 
 cause she realized that it never occurred to him 
 that Lorraine might claim her freedom in spite 
 of them. Resentment against them kept her 
 quiet. She did not wish to hurt Pierre by an 
 impulsive expression of an attitude. But for 
 the first time in their relationship she saw him 
 as a man of another race, other traditions, other
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 41 
 
 cults, and it was as if suddenly he had become 
 a stranger. 
 
 He leaned forward, divining her reticence. 
 His face was young and tender. "Natalie, do 
 not blame them. They are good people and 
 they love me." 
 
 "But they own you," she said in a hard little 
 voice. "You spirit is not your own, my Peter. 
 You are going out now to fight, because they 
 expect it of you. They expect you to work and 
 to marry as they wish. I don't see any free- 
 dom in a life like that." 
 
 "There are other things," he answered sob- 
 erly. "It is beautiful to be one of a clan. 
 The children of past generations, our children, 
 their children, compose a protective social 
 force. The strength of France lies in its con- 
 servatism. Selfishness is a disintegrating in- 
 fluence." He spoke with the voice of his 
 father. 
 
 "Pierre, I cannot understand. Every human 
 being should have the right of choice. We 
 have brains and hearts to use according to our
 
 42 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 vision and the place we elect in society. We 
 need not be destructive elements because of 
 that. . . . But do not let us talk of these 
 things now. We have so little time . . ." 
 
 There was so little time. It seemed so with 
 every one around her. Women clung to their 
 men, children to their fathers. It was the 
 solemn prelude to separation, the consciousness 
 of impending drama and the disbanding of 
 homes. Beyond stretched the unknown. The 
 enemy was in the city ... an alien presence 
 sounding a tocsin. 
 
 Then she and Pierre spoke of precious 
 fragile things. And every look seemed the 
 supreme one.
 
 Ill 
 
 PIERRE was to leave early one morn- 
 ing. 
 Natalie and Felix drove together to 
 the station at Charenton to see him off. It 
 was a long way. Felix held Natalie's hand 
 very tightly. His old slouch hat was pulled 
 over his eyes. His lean brown face held an 
 expression of inarticulate tenderness. Every 
 once in a while he glanced at his sister, ventur- 
 ing a comment or a question. But the words 
 trailed into silence. And he ended with an 
 unlit pipe between his teeth. 
 
 Natalie did not seem aware of his presence. 
 She sat in the open motor, swaying to its mo- 
 tion like a pliable reed. She was quiet as 
 women are who renounce appeal. A mo- 
 notonous rhythm ticked in her head: "He must 
 go he must go." But beyond that there was 
 no sense of reality. The city claimed her, car- 
 
 43
 
 44 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 rying her forward on resistless waves of fa- 
 tality. 
 
 It was a radiant day one of those days that 
 pour light and fragrance from a golden urn. 
 It did not seem possible that any living crea- 
 ture should suffer. But through the streets 
 sounded the hum of departure. The city was 
 giving, and giving its youth. The people of 
 Paris streamed from their homes, obeying a 
 call. Over the bridges, over the broad high- 
 ways pointing to the stations, on foot or in car- 
 riage, in a steady exodus, went fathers, hus- 
 bands, lovers, brightly dressed in the colors of 
 war. Beside them, dumb or weeping, stoic or 
 rebellious, were their women. These men, feel- 
 ing the tragic eyes upon them, rehearsed their 
 role for the drama. Some of them sang, others 
 wagged bold tongues, others whispered words 
 of comfort and hope. The gestures of yes- 
 terday were not those of to-day. All that had 
 gone before counted for nothing. Men and 
 women had loved, deceived, slaved, planned 
 and desired in every intimate phase of exist-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 45 
 
 ence, to reach this result : to yield up the weap- 
 ons of life for the weapons of death. 
 
 It seemed to Natalie that she saw an image 
 of Pierre and herself in every human couple 
 she passed. She wanted to cry out to them 
 "Go back! . . . Go back to your homes. Oh, 
 what are we all doing? ..." But it was too 
 late. They were possessed by national dis- 
 aster. 
 
 The motor sped onwards, along the quais, 
 past the Institut, past the blue and gold 
 cupolas of the Samaritaine, the Palais de Jus- 
 tice, Notre Dame. The Seine slid like quick- 
 silver under the glistening bridges. And as 
 each familiar silhouette of the city dropped 
 away, it was like a relinquished hope. 
 
 They were two of an endless procession 
 traveling to the brink of sacrifice. They delved 
 into a sordid quarter where slovenly houses 
 squatted along the dingy streets, where the air 
 was laden with the odors of poverty. Even here 
 the wage-earners were setting out from one 
 task to another. Families tramped to the part-
 
 46 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 ing place, dumbly conscious of impending loss. 
 Hatless women in calico, heavy with child, 
 trudged beside the wage-earners, their broods 
 straggling behind. As the motor brayed its 
 warning they stepped aside. 
 
 A young workman waved and shouted: 
 "Vive la France!" 
 
 The cry swelled suddenly, bursting from 
 many throats in united challenge: 
 
 "Vive la France!" 
 
 They flung it superbly to the winds, ac- 
 claiming the symbol for which they were will- 
 ing to die. 
 
 Natalie, wakened as if by a bugle, leaned far 
 out of the motor, echoing, "Vive la France!" 
 until the uplifted fervent faces were lost to 
 view. Then she turned to Felix for the first 
 time that morning. 
 
 "How wonderful they are!" She was 
 vibrant as a string that has been touched by 
 a master hand. 
 
 "Why, certainly they are!" cried Felix 
 warmly. "It's a great country. Just look at
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 47 
 
 that! It must be one of those German shops 
 we read about. Not much left of it, is there?" 
 His manner was conversational, but he eyed 
 Natalie anxiously as if not certain of her re- 
 sponse. 
 
 She stared in the direction of his forefinger 
 at a little white milk-shop which was crushed 
 like an egg shell. It cowered among the other 
 houses, a beaten alien thing, wrecked and 
 despised by the mob. In its desolation and 
 helplessness it sounded the awesome theme of 
 war. There would be no mercy anywhere, on 
 land, on sea, under the sea, in the sky. The 
 little shop was the beginning and end of the 
 drama. 
 
 "How can they!" broke from her. 
 
 Felix answered phlegmatically, "It's all in 
 the game." 
 
 "What a game!" Her eyes rebuked human- 
 ity. 
 
 The city dwindled to ragged suburbs. The 
 motor halted at the foot of a hill, where houses 
 were scarce and dust lay thickly over meager
 
 48 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 leaves and grass. At the top of the hill was 
 a barrier, beyond it the little station. 
 
 Up the steep road with lagging steps toiled 
 the people. Their faces were turned towards 
 one another, their arms linked. They spoke 
 in low voices of the homely problems that made 
 up their hard working lives, and they raised 
 their voices to predict swift victory. 
 
 Then there was Pierre surrounded by his 
 family. But it was a new Pierre in a blue 
 coat and red trousers, who stood very straight, 
 staring down the hill with strained eyes that 
 hunted for and found Natalie. 
 
 Next he was saying timidly, "My American 
 friends, Natalie and Felix Shaw! . . . Nata- 
 lie, here is my father and mother my brother 
 Henri, who leaves to-morrow my sister my 
 sister-in-law. . . . And here is Lorraine." 
 
 Natalie smiled at them with impulsive ten- 
 derness. They faced her in a compact little 
 group, their hands automatically tendered in 
 turn. They were very courteous. Monsieur
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 49 
 
 Bourdon, the spokesman, told her how often 
 they had heard Pierre speak of his friends, and 
 how kind it was of her and her brother to come 
 so far to say good-by to his son. Madame 
 Bourdon apologized for the place and the hour, 
 as if she were a hostess under difficult circum- 
 stances, adding that they had three sons going 
 to fight, and that the war was a terrible but 
 unavoidable thing. France must annihilate 
 once and for all an inherited enemy. 
 
 Their formal manner dismayed Natalie. She 
 had been prepared to share with them the 
 anguish of parting. Instead, her coming 
 seemed to have tightened a closed circle. They 
 encompassed Pierre, claiming a prior right 
 over him. A tacit understanding linked them 
 against an intruder. They bore their kinship 
 to one another as the parts of a small strong 
 machine are fitted into an integral unity. 
 Their courtesy set her in an established scheme 
 of society from which she was not supposed to 
 move. The occasion dictated control and dig-
 
 50 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 nity, for as an institution they must be an ex- 
 ample to those around them. 
 
 But Pierre did not appear conscious of their 
 attitude. A little smile fastened to his finely 
 drawn lips seemed to have been put there a 
 long while ago and forgotten. It ranged 
 from Natalie to the others, and back again, 
 as if he were trying to connect them in his com- 
 prehensive love. Blue shadows lay beneath 
 his eyes, forming sensitive hollows. He was 
 pale and calm. 
 
 His father stood importantly beside him, 
 with rounded chest and hands clasped behind 
 his back. The red ribbon burned in his button- 
 hole. He seemed absorbed in weighty expecta- 
 tion, like a man waiting his turn to deposit 
 gold in a bank. Louise Bourdon, sallow in 
 the morning shine, whispered to Germaine, 
 whose mild brown eyes showed traces of weep- 
 ing. Henri, encased in a Zouave uniform, 
 smoked Oriental cigarettes and chatted with 
 Felix. Madame Bourdon, posted in front of 
 Pierre, addressed him at intervals in a crisp
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 51 
 
 decided voice. Her black suit fitted her neatly. 
 But wisps of hair straggling from her veil gave 
 her a vaguely disheveled look. 
 
 "You have plenty of chocolate. ... I hope 
 you are warm enough. . . . One never knows 
 in this weather. ... I will send you the prop- 
 er things if it gets colder. . . . You will re- 
 ceive a package every week." She bent to 
 remove a spot of caked mud on his sleeve, 
 scratching it off with her black-gloved finger. 
 Her forehead was creased in an effort to re- 
 member final instructions. 
 
 Lorraine Bourdon drooped in the back- 
 ground. Natalie looked at her with wistful 
 sympathy. Once she met Lorraine's eyes 
 transmitting a message, and she felt less lonely. 
 
 The group shifted. Natalie found Pierre 
 beside her, and they two walked away, turning 
 their backs on the Bourdons. 
 
 She slipped a small parcel in his hand, whis- 
 pering, "Here is my picture, dear . . . and 
 a little gold cross. May they keep you from 
 harm."
 
 52 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 With a swift eager gesture he thrust them 
 in his coat, over his heart. "I shall wear them 
 always, beloved." Then as if he were afraid 
 that he would not have time to tell her all that 
 he had to say he began to speak very quickly. 
 From his manner she divined suddenly that 
 supreme issues were at stake. 
 
 He said: "Natalie, I want you to know. 
 You must know what has happened to me. 
 Yesterday I was afraid. I could have killed 
 myself to escape what lay before me. I was 
 not afraid of danger or even death. I am 
 no coward. But it was the mind . . . my 
 mind, Natalie. They could not expect me to 
 go out like a savage and kill without ques- 
 tion. I had to have a reason stronger than my 
 instincts, a reason that linked humanity and 
 its manifestations with evolution and God. 
 The thought was too terrible . . . the thought 
 of millions of men hurled murderously against 
 one another in lust and hate, the thought of 
 ravaged land, wrecked homes, desolate women 
 . . . the thought of millions of brains wasted,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 53 
 
 of the art, the science, the youth of Europe 
 sacrificed. For what? There are the obvious 
 motives for which men will fight . . . country 
 and honor. But go deeper. Analyze these 
 motives, and you will find men fighting because 
 other men fight, or because they are afraid not 
 to fight, or to acquire glory and power. I don't 
 want to kill. I don't want to throw away any 
 of the gifts civilization has given me, unless in 
 offering my life I am benefiting future human- 
 ity. If I had been left alone I would have 
 created, built, justified my place in a construc- 
 tive society. Or else I should have been a sol- 
 dier from the beginning ... an automaton 
 with a gun. But at first there seemed no rea- 
 son. I was like a man battling in the dark 
 with an unknown enemy. Then . . . then it 
 came to me." 
 
 His voice was low and urgent, as if he were 
 pleading a vital cause. When he told Natalie 
 that he had been afraid, he bowed his head, but 
 gradually he was lifted by the torrent of his 
 words, until he stood in a kind of mystic ex-
 
 54 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 pectancy, his face turned towards her with 
 fathomless yearning. 
 
 He paused for an intake of breath, and Na- 
 talie waited, in tense immobility, her mind 
 scouting ahead in treacherous zones of doubt 
 and anguish. 
 
 Pierre continued as if reciting a profession 
 of faith: "War is the outcome of the eternal 
 forces of life good and evil. These forces 
 mingle cunningly with social evolution until 
 such a time as, crashing through established 
 elements, they take their primitive forms. We 
 are the instruments composing the armies. We 
 fight in sublime obedience to the law of good 
 against evil. Do you not see, Natalie, that we 
 are not only saving our national ideals ; we are 
 preserving the immortal functions of good? 
 When I kill, I shall not be killing for a tempo- 
 rary advantage of boundary lines. I shall be 
 suppressing just so much evil. In this gigan- 
 tic duel, governments are symbols of greater 
 adversaries. It could not be otherwise, could 
 it? Think, that men of all classes, all religions,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 55 
 
 are massed together to-day for the purpose of 
 destruction. It comes to that, whether we call 
 it an offensive or a defensive war. There must 
 be a deep significance in our sacrifice . . . 
 What am I? My bayonet is a blade of grass, 
 my mind a seed in the field. But if by adding 
 my life to the millions I can assist a natural 
 terrific manifestation of good, I must consider 
 myself enrolled in an eternal cause. 
 
 "You love me, Natalie. You would not wish 
 me to be untrue to myself. Tell me, have I not 
 reasoned well? Have I not conquered my 
 fear? We have only a few moments more. 
 Tell me, beloved, am I deceiving myself? No 
 . . . that cannot be. I feel so confident. . . . 
 Look at your Pierre how calm and confident 
 he is? You believe too, don't you, that it is 
 worth while? I am not a mindless atom being 
 used for profit? I am not defending my coun- 
 try because there is no other way out of it? I 
 am fighting in a final war. Our land will be 
 sullied for the last time." 
 
 They were face to face in a supreme moment
 
 56 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 where the being wavers on a perilous edge. 
 Natalie heard the secret voice that speaks at 
 such moments, saying to her, "You know he 
 has found what he wished to find. He has 
 made the universe speak his language, that he 
 might kill in peace. But all this will go for 
 nothing, if you, the woman, cannot sanction 
 his great illusion. Words, words! He needs 
 a prop." 
 
 Then his voice rang sharply, like a creature 
 calling out in the darkness : "Beloved, answer 
 me!" 
 
 She answered: "You are justified, Peter 
 the Knight." 
 
 His face was flooded with light. His eyes 
 still probed, but there were now places in her 
 heart where he might not look. All had not 
 been well with him. But she had given him 
 what he required in order that he might spill 
 blood or die, convinced of a sacred mission. 
 The facts of death were cruder than that. 
 
 She smiled bravely, knowing that she had 
 appeased his torment at cost of her own good
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 57 
 
 faith. For she did not believe the things he 
 told her. 
 
 Still the people swarmed up the hill, gather- 
 ing before the Buvette. A facile comradeship 
 linked them. Their loud voices, interlarded 
 with jests and scraps of song, mounted above 
 the fretful whine of children, the muffled sob- 
 bing of women. 
 
 "Who would have thought it, old man, hein?" 
 
 "We'll get them." 
 
 "I could eat one or two for breakfast." 
 
 "They would taste too badly." 
 
 "It is hard on the women. My wife cried 
 like a little calf when I left her." 
 
 "Well, you are lucky. My woman pushed 
 me out of the house and ordered me not to show 
 my face until I won a medal." 
 
 On a bench at the entrance of the Buvette, 
 a woman crouched, weeping drearily. Every 
 once in a while her grief was cut by fits of 
 hollow coughing. Two bow-legged children
 
 58 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 tugged at her skirts. Her husband, an anxious 
 peaked-looking little man, was talking very 
 fast, glancing furtively at his comrades. 
 
 "Come now, my girl no squawling! You 
 promised me. We can do nothing about it." 
 
 "What will become of us!" moaned the 
 woman, as if she had not heard him. 
 
 "Well, well, we'll see." 
 
 A tall fellow strode over to her and said 
 kindly: "Your man will come back. Don't 
 take on so." 
 
 "She is just out of the hospital," explained 
 the husband in a low voice. "We have a sick 
 baby at home. It is hard." The two men stood 
 staring down at her with perplexed faces. 
 
 "Well, that is too bad," said the big man 
 awkwardly. "But the Mayor will take care of 
 her. There will be things arranged. . . ." 
 
 A pink-cheeked girl swayed towards him, 
 offering him a flower. As she laughed up at 
 him, he caught her around the waist and kissed 
 her on the mouth.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 59 
 
 The Bourdon family, to escape the sun, had 
 assembled in the Buvette. The air was rank 
 with the smell of cheap alcohol. Among 
 wooden tables and chairs a noisy crowd jos- 
 tled one another amicably, while coffee, and 
 marre, a strong drink of the people, were 
 served. 
 
 A lively little man who smiled easily, show- 
 ing bad teeth, stood in the center of a group, 
 brandishing his glass. 
 
 "Friends, let us drink to France!'* 
 
 "To France!" 
 
 "To our meeting in Berlin!" 
 
 The voices mounted in jubilant confidence, 
 clamoring victory. 
 
 Felix ordered marre, but only Henri, 
 Pierre and Natalie would touch it. The Bour- 
 dons studied Natalie disapprovingly, as, with 
 flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes, she raised her 
 glass. 
 
 "To your return, Peter." 
 
 "To France," he replied, emptying his glass 
 with a reckless motion. He had become sud-
 
 60 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 denly animated, as if contact with this ebul- 
 lient humanity had kindled his imagination. 
 He moved restlessly from one to another, join- 
 ing in the toasts, exchanging opinions with 
 good-natured fellows who treated him already 
 like an old friend. Natalie watched him with a 
 brooding pity settling in her eyes. But he in- 
 cluded her in his mood as if expecting her to 
 share his enthusiasm. 
 
 "Are they not wonderful?" he kept exclaim- 
 ing. "What a people!" 
 
 The little room seemed to contain all the 
 emblems of life. A woman sat in a corner 
 nursing her baby. She curved over the child 
 with the beautiful unconsciousness of a simple 
 creature. 
 
 "He will make a fine soldier some day," com- 
 mented a friendly onlooker. 
 
 She smiled proudly. "I have two others." 
 
 "Every one does his duty," remarked the 
 father in a complacent voice. An outburst of 
 crude humor greeted his statement. 
 
 Near by a young man and woman sat locked
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 61 
 
 in one another's arms. The woman's face was 
 pillowed on her lover's shoulder. His head 
 was bent over hers. They stayed so, in rapt 
 immobility, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. 
 
 A sullen looking man stood alone staring 
 vacantly at his empty glass. When he was 
 spoken to he mumbled and shook his head. His 
 eyes were set and glassy, his cheeks highly col- 
 ored. An open locket, dangling from a cheap 
 watch chain, held the picture of a young 
 woman. 
 
 The train was late. 
 
 As the moments slid by an atmosphere of 
 protracted suspense grew heavier. All had 
 been said ; all had been done. The same words 
 and gestures had been used over and over 
 again. There remained only the final act of 
 parting. These people moving about on the 
 brink of separation had been driven into ex- 
 pressions of feverish intimacy, and in supreme 
 eruptions of emotion they had emptied their 
 laden hearts. 
 
 Monsieur Bourdon kept looking at his watch
 
 62 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 with the mechanical gesture of a man awaiting 
 an event. 
 
 Felix was talking in a high excited voice, 
 clasping Pierre's arm as if arguing matters of 
 life and death. 
 
 "Nothing doing in the old school until you 
 come back. It's going to be pretty lonely. All 
 the fellows are leaving. I saw Bretel at the 
 Deux Magots. He's crazy to be off. And 
 Chauvin? Poor old Chauvin ! Remember how 
 he used to squirm if he saw a mouse. I wonder 
 what he'll do now . . . Say, next year we'll 
 have to work hard. . . . Here, take another 
 cigarette take the whole package. Go on, 
 Peter, old boy I've got plenty. You'll write 
 us, won't you? If there's ever anything I can 
 do . . ." 
 
 Suddenly Natalie wished that Pierre would 
 go quickly. Her control was slipping from 
 her. The room grew blurred. She saw, as 
 through a haze, Madame Bourdon, Germaine 
 and Louise, a compact silent trio, staring at
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 63 
 
 her stolidly. She saw Henri haranguing a 
 small audience. His voice rose in high-pitched 
 vehemence. The pressure of life in the low- 
 ceilinged room was unbearable. 
 
 She made her way quietly to the door. The 
 sun struck her like a golden shield. Overhead 
 a blue sky spread its blue napery. 
 
 Pierre's words sounded again in her ears 
 like the cry of a lost creature in the night. He 
 had asked her: "Is this the road?" She had 
 answered: "Yes, this is the road." And the 
 road led away from her. Suppose she called 
 him back now and said: 
 
 "Pierre, you asked me to help you deceive 
 yourself, and I did. But I was wrong, because 
 I could have lost you in this way. How could 
 I know the truth? How could I explain the 
 folly of the world by calling it wisdom? We 
 are poor wistful beings following a dangerous 
 illusion. You with the millions are about to 
 demolish what you have built, labeling your 
 deed honor, glory, goodness. Poor little men, 
 you have traveled too far and not far enough.
 
 64 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "Pierre, why not kill without reason then, if 
 weapons are put in your hands? Why call a 
 slaughter-house a cathedral? Good and evil 
 are eternal, you say; therefore one can never 
 suppress the other. There are greater battle- 
 fields than those drenched with blood, sullied 
 by men's trampled brains. 
 
 "Pierre, I believe that war begets war. It 
 does not matter who strikes the first blow. 
 Lust and hate are quickly conceived. The men 
 who are killed will rot away and that will 
 be an end to them. They will have shown 
 other men how to kill and die at a word from 
 a government. Men kill for the easiest reason, 
 that they may be absolved. They die to save 
 their land, to save future generations. But 
 when the strong have perished, the weak will 
 survive. Then what will become of our civili- 
 zation? The newly born will be children of 
 anguish, of hate, of disease. How can I tell 
 you it is worth while?" 
 
 She would have cried out these things to him, 
 but it was too late. She could not alter his
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 65 
 
 destiny. She could not stop his going any 
 more than she could stop the mighty machine 
 set in motion. Her work was done. 
 
 Then Lorraine was by her side, a hand on 
 her arm saying, "I know." 
 
 She looked at her strangely. "You know?" 
 
 Lorraine's low passionate voice wakened 
 echoes. "The world has gone mad." 
 
 The touch of Pierre's hand on their shoul- 
 ders linked them. 
 
 "Lorraine, is she not wonderful?" 
 
 Lorraine smiled gently. "She is all you have 
 told me." 
 
 Pierre's face brightened to adoration. "But 
 you cannot know how wonderful ! You cannot 
 know what she has given me this day." 
 
 Then the moment was upon them. 
 
 The tension cracked in a paroxysm of fare- 
 wells. A clamor of life wrenched from life 
 rose in mingled sounds of weeping, blessings 
 and song. Parting, like a sharp knife, cut,
 
 66 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 smote, mangled men and women, severing heart 
 from heart, eye from eye, hand from hand. 
 
 Pierre was saying the words. 
 
 "Good-by, Papa!" His arms were around 
 his father's neck. He kissed him twice. 
 
 "Good-by, my son. Do thy duty I" 
 
 "Good-by, Maman." 
 
 "God bless thee, Pierre!" 
 
 "Good-by, my little Germaine. Don't cry 
 your pretty eyes out. Your Robert will come 
 back soon." 
 
 "Good-by, Henri. Good luck to you!" 
 
 "Good-by, Lorraine. I will think of you 
 often." 
 
 He was coming nearer. Each word was like 
 a dislodged stone rattling down a precipice. 
 
 "Good-by, my good Felix. Take care of 
 her.'" 
 
 She stood with downcast eyes staring at a 
 patch of green. The rumble of farewells was 
 about her. She felt him coming, and put out 
 her hand.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 67 
 
 "Good-by, Natalie. I will not disappoint 
 you." He kissed her once. 
 
 She lifted her eyes and saw his face. There 
 was nothing left in the world but his face 
 shining down at her. There were only his eyes 
 and eternity. Her lips moved, framing the 
 final word in a smile. 
 
 Pierre was walking away resolutely, past the 
 barrier, where the women might not follow, 
 across the road, to the train. The red and blue 
 of his uniform gleamed in the sun. He looked 
 very small and bright. How easily the thing 
 was done! He had gone and nothing could 
 call him back. 
 
 Felix was whispering, "Buck up, little com- 
 rade!" 
 
 The ground beneath her was crumbling. She 
 would slide with it into some bottomless pit 
 and lie there quietly until he should call her. 
 
 "Natalie, Madame Bourdon wants to say 
 good-by." 
 
 How dared they use that same word! She 
 put out her hand as if she had learned the ges-
 
 68 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 ture long ago. They filed before her one after 
 the other. But she did not hear what they 
 said. Even Lorraine passed on like a ghost. 
 
 When they had gone she looked and saw 
 them picking their way down the hill. Madame 
 Bourdon leaned on Monsieur Bourdon's arm. 
 The others walked close together. They 
 seemed to be turning their backs on a finality, 
 marching gravely away like people returning 
 from church. 
 
 Felix took her arm and guided her. And 
 she stumbled down the hill among desolate 
 women and children.
 
 IV 
 
 PIERRE wrote: 
 "Beloved, we are still waiting orders. 
 The days are long and monotonous. 
 But there is not a moment when your dear 
 image is not with me giving me courage. I 
 have gone with you, Natalie, along the way 
 that leads to victory. You will never know 
 what our last talk meant to me. Through you 
 I have found faith. And I can go ahead now, 
 without a backward look. What was I before 
 this test of manhood? A weak creature dream- 
 ing of accomplishment, dreaming of building 
 cities. I admit they were beautiful dreams, and 
 long ago they seemed foundation enough for 
 my existence. Mutilated dreams now, Na- 
 talie! I am a unit of an army ... no more, 
 perhaps less than the lusty fellow marching by 
 my side. If his back is stronger than mine, his 
 legs sturdier, his mind less perceptive, then he 
 
 69
 
 70 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 is the stronger soldier, the more cheerful com- 
 rade. I envy his fitness for the job. 
 
 "I do not know men yet. They are not as 
 I imagined. But it seems to me that they are 
 made of counter instincts, always battling ; the 
 creative instinct and the destructive instinct. 
 I have seen eyes blind to sunrise, heavy heels 
 crunching flowers under foot, heavy hands 
 mauling a butterfly for sport. I have heard 
 crude oaths and cruder stories that soil sacred 
 things. I have also seen these men tenderer 
 to one another than my mother has ever been 
 to me. I have seen them divide their rations 
 with a starving mongrel, stoop to pat a beg- 
 gar's child, weep over a letter from home. Yet 
 so few of them have grasped the spirit of this 
 great crusade. They are ready enough for 
 battle, although they do not yet know what 
 battles mean. Many of them are born war- 
 riors. I say God help the others! Why was 
 I not born a warrior? Then it would be simple. 
 Enemies are easily found. But when the day's 
 discipline is over, and I close my eyes, I never
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 71 
 
 think of enemies. I see the dear School, and 
 the faces of my comrades. I see the flowered 
 balcony, the sloping roofs, the white breast of 
 the Sacre Coeur. I see the bridges and the 
 river and the little boats. And I forget why I 
 am here. Then the breathing of the men, the 
 silhouette of a sentry, the loneliness of the 
 night sky, remind me of the land to be de- 
 fended at cost of life. And I trace over and 
 over again the last moments with you. I hear 
 you saying, 'You are justified.' Write me, 
 Beloved. Write me often that I am justified. 
 Let me feel your hand on my shoulder. Let 
 me hear your voice speaking, as my own, ex- 
 plaining this topsy-turvy world. You will not 
 smile when I tell you that every night I look 
 at the little gold cross with the Christ and 
 wonder what He would do in the world to- 
 
 day " 
 
 This letter and many others brought to Na- 
 talie his urgent need. She could only shape 
 her answers like so many staffs upon which he 
 might lean. But she sickened at what she was
 
 72 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 doing. For with every red day that passed, 
 she became more conscious of the cost of her 
 complicity. If the women of the universe could 
 have risen shoulder to shoulder in mighty uni- 
 son opposing the crime, if the awesome voices 
 of mothers, wives, working-women had been 
 lifted in a supreme cry for peace, uncovering 
 their men's blind purpose, there would not now 
 be death and desolation in the land. What 
 had they done? The unborn might well weep 
 in their foolish mothers' wombs, at prescience 
 of their destiny. For such a war, made by men 
 and upheld by women, menaced generations. 
 
 Graves instead of homes, crepe instead of 
 orange-blossoms, maimed men instead of mates, 
 and devastated countries crushed by debt all 
 this was the price they would pay for their 
 heroes. The thing saved would hardly be 
 worth the thing lost forever. Could all the 
 willing martyrs and the nimble fingers and 
 the flooded eyes put one brain back into its 
 smashed shell? Could all the prayers and 
 blessings of stoic widows restore the youth of
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 73 
 
 the century, revive a trampled field, build up a 
 demolished village? 
 
 These men sent out to kill, for one reason 
 or another, killed in the name of women. Such 
 women as she, Natalie, were responsible for 
 their deeds; in the intricate workings of their 
 minds, they themselves labeled their killing 
 with fair names. 
 
 Subtly linked by separate weaknesses, she 
 and Pierre groped in a wilderness of doubt, lit 
 by the uneasy torch of her love, while the pro- 
 digious madness of leagued men and women 
 shattered the foundations of society. And as 
 an unleashed mass rolled onwards bellowing 
 God's sanction, it was met by unleashed masses 
 calling their countries' names and liberty. 
 Then life was counted no more than a poppy 
 beneath a threshing machine. The factories of 
 the world vomited death-dealing shells. The 
 land became a trampled hunting ground where 
 men and beasts were merged. Frontiers were 
 in smoke, villages flamed, churches toppled, 
 cities were besieged, forests uprooted, harvests
 
 74 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 wrecked. The tortured roads were black with 
 homeless exiles fleeing from friend and enemy. 
 Panic swept broadcast like a devastating hur- 
 ricane. 
 
 Pierre wrote: 
 
 "Beloved, we may be called any moment. 
 We are ready. The life of the congregated 
 male is simple. It has a bold brave appear- 
 ance, beneath which lurk all the human weak- 
 nesses. There are men here whom I pity, be- 
 cause they have no loves, no women to spur 
 them on to victory. When letters come, they 
 sit and mope, eying us defiantly as if they did 
 not need the reenforcing words. War is a 
 trade. But, I should say, a trade not invented 
 for imaginations unless plied in regions of 
 madness. The real life is apart from the trade. 
 And a troubled heart and a reeling brain 
 turn to the creature best able to supply what 
 strength is needed at a crisis. Where should I 
 be without your letters, Natalie ? That is why 
 I beg from you the privilege of sharing parts 
 of them with less fortunate comrades. You
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 75 
 
 know how sacred they are to me. But I feel 
 them so inspiring, so stimulating, that I should 
 be a poor patriot to keep them for myself alone. 
 Since you, a woman of brains and heart, judge 
 with me that our armies represent right over 
 wrong in a universal sense, you render our job 
 of killing and dying sublime. If I do my duty, 
 Beloved, you will have written it in letters of 
 gold. . . ." 
 
 Then Natalie went out into the city and 
 hunted for beauty that she might send it to 
 Pierre and his fellows. The beauty she found 
 in sacrifice, in generosity, in patriotism, was 
 more poignant than anything she had ever 
 seen. It was absorbed in the pitiless moment 
 as spilt blood is sucked into the ground. 
 The fretting multitudes were playthings of an 
 implacable illusion. Their resignation doomed 
 them. People of all classes, jolted from their 
 grooves, were struggling through a process of 
 readjustment; but it did not alter raw nature 
 such as it has always been under stress. An-
 
 76 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 guish ennobled or poisoned according to hidden 
 traits grown rusty from disuse. 
 
 They huddled together, drawn close by a 
 jealous racial instinct of preservation which 
 blinded them to universal issues. War was 
 with them, upon them, disintegrating, intract- 
 able. They might squirm or pray, lose bravely 
 or inveigh against fate; a national disaster 
 paralyzed their judgment and riveted them, 
 helpless victims of a stupendous irreparable 
 blunder involving their country's youth. As 
 they proclaimed, it was indeed not their fault. 
 The initial fault was graver than the deeds en- 
 tailed, less perishable. For it was rooted in the 
 immeasurable ambition of mankind, and its 
 shoots, nourished by unscrupulous capital, men- 
 aced the world. What could the peasant 
 wrenched from his fields, or the day laborer, 
 or. the scholar do, once drawn into the out-v 
 spreading tentacles ? 
 
 Now the ponderous machine of relief work 
 began to grind out red tape, petty officials, 
 Utopians, ambitious organizers, and experi-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 77 
 
 mental philanthropists. The remedy for mis- 
 eries lay pat. Soup kitchens and canteens 
 sprouted plentifully over the city. Daily food 
 and pennies were doled out to the poor, the 
 sick, the bereaved. Men were mended, women 
 and children were clothed and fed. What 
 more hopeful proof of awakened responsibility 
 could there be than this ready response to ex- 
 haustless need? 
 
 Natalie was moved to glowing pride by the 
 spontaneous example set by her country. A 
 source of limitless bounty, it gave and gave and 
 never ceased giving to an enduring humanity. 
 The upturned palms of Europe met no re- 
 fusal. To the grateful eye such prodigal be- 
 neficence, such gracious gestures from the pa- 
 cific millions, indicated a marked preference, a 
 choice of distress to be succored. 
 
 Natalie found here a theme to gladden 
 Pierre's heart. She wrote : "There is nothing 
 we can do that we will not do. If neutrality 
 means an uncrippled power of service, and an 
 unprejudiced conscience, then it seems fortu-
 
 78 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 nate we still retain our freedom to give where 
 need is most. Feel this with me : the wounded 
 and the homeless are cared for by devoted 
 women and provided for by the sacrifice of 
 our people. What do you make of it ? Hands 
 and brains are backing you, my Pierre." 
 
 But she did not write him of the nearer view - 
 of charitable institutions, nor of how consist- 
 ently she was defeated when she looked for 
 beauty through a crimson lens. 
 
 There were moldy labyrinths in the city be- 
 neath the fair Christian show. And in these 
 murky corridors sneaked ugly things like rats, 
 nosing for spoils. The festering envy and 
 ambition of little politicians, scheming great 
 ladies, smug financiers and sentimental old 
 maids and virgins scuttled from dark shadow 
 to shadow, nibbling at foundations. Now and 
 then an edifice built for the salvation of man 
 would crack and, through the yawning wound, 
 betray the noisome habitants of these dark 
 places at their furtive work. But as quickly 
 covered, hungry men and women would tread
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 79 
 
 again the mended spot, judging themselves se- 
 cure because they were benefactors or victims 
 of a social system. And prowling through the 
 city on padded claws went other man-made 
 things : suspicion that sniffed out innocent citi- 
 zens and made criminals of them to satisfy a 
 doubt, denunciations of an anonymous breed 
 that stained the undesirable stranger within the 
 gates, intrigue that tangled motives into webs 
 and caught the unwary humanitarian, lies, 
 ruthlessly wielded power, misspent coins, sly 
 plots among sly women and discontent that 
 gnawed at the vitals of charity. Passions and 
 emotions were magnified. The noblest and 
 the basest human beings worked side by side 
 with separate vision, to regenerate, mend, sat- 
 isfy, a scarred, sad world. 
 
 Meanwhile the hostile forces crossed a 
 forbidden border, hurtled against fortresses, 
 grabbed cities, wrecked, ravaged, tore a little 
 country to shreds, and plunged on their re- 
 lentless way into France. The thunder of guns
 
 80 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 from Mulhouse to Liege sounded in dreadful 
 monotony. 
 
 Cruel birds, harbingers of invasion, circled 
 over the city, casting messages of death. But 
 they were mocked at by a spirited population 
 who flocked to the public squares and high- 
 ways, there with uplifted noses and taunting 
 fists to fling their defiance skywards. The 
 enemy offered them a spectacle worth hooting 
 at. Women who had seen their men go, wel- 
 comed fiercely the fleeting glimpse of danger 
 which seemed to link them with the fighting 
 millions. The city was so immense and vital; 
 the war birds were no more than impotent vul- 
 tures. 
 
 And again Natalie wrote : "The courage of 
 the people your people, Pierre is beautiful. 
 No gunners at their posts can rival the little 
 trades-people guarding their business, the stoic 
 active women, the patient old men who cling to 
 life waiting the victory. And I could tell you 
 also about the street urchins whose sharp 
 tongues aim as straight as a bullet. Yesterday
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 81 
 
 afternoon, when our usual visitor was flying 
 overhead, and the usual bombs mussed up a 
 house or two, a funeral passed. The ragged 
 lively boy standing near me cocked a knowing 
 eye and exclaimed, 'There goes one who has 
 no curiosity!' He hit the keynote. Call it 
 curiosity or courage, there are no signs of fear 
 among the people. They wear their mourning 
 like a symbol of hope." 
 
 But as she wrote her heart was sad and bitter. 
 She wondered why the staunch stuff that was 
 in these people must be shaped into garlands 
 for graves and images of hate. Sprung from 
 a Revolution and Napoleonic wars, their spirit 
 might well have led them through brilliant gen- 
 erations to bloodless victories in art, science, 
 industry. The mischief was farther back than 
 the present evil. A race attacked centers upon 
 itself, suspecting treachery in every stranger's 
 smile, barring jealously its schools and com- 
 merce from the divined enemy of to-morrow. 
 Hereditary hate engenders distrust, shapes 
 future wars. War breeds covetousness. It is
 
 82 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 like a fence between a hungry man's spring 
 and a thirsty man's vegetable garden. The 
 hungry man may not satisfy his appetite 
 though his neighbor's vegetables are near, nor 
 may the thirsty man drink at his neighbor's 
 spring. And so they glare across the fence, 
 plotting stealthily to acquire by force a portion 
 of earth's bounty denied them. It soon be- 
 comes matter for a quarrel. One vegetable or 
 a cupful of water does not suffice. Each de- 
 sires to keep what he has, adding to it his 
 neighbor's bit. 
 
 Grim news reached the city. 
 
 Natalie saw another exodus, less affecting 
 than the first. She saw hysterical women 
 crowding to the banks and clamoring for gold ; 
 she saw embassies besieged by assertive pa- 
 triots scrambling for passports. The bright- 
 plumaged birds whose chiffons bore the marks 
 of French artists, whose manners and preten- 
 sions glittered with cosmopolitan veneer, whose 
 social ambitions thrived best on foreign soil,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 83 
 
 deserted the menaced city in jabbering dis- 
 array. Trains and boats were loaded with their 
 lamentations. More comprehensible were the 
 mothers and invalids who sought to remove 
 their children and their ailments from the range 
 of guns. 
 
 But there were others who remained and 
 went about their business of relieving miseries, 
 for which Natalie gave them great credit ; more 
 so as in the end, unless they were very wealthy 
 or very clever, they encountered an amount of 
 ingratitude proportionate to their good will. 
 The consciousness, however, of realizing a part 
 in the humanitarian drama compensated those 
 idealists whose contact with co-workers proved 
 a disillusioning experiment. Natalie on her 
 quest for beauty found an expensive imitation 
 of it in conspicuous places and a comforting 
 measure of it among the untempted humble 
 classes. She pitied them all, rich and poor, for 
 their blind obedience to a century's folly. But 
 this she could not write to Pierre.
 
 84 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 One day she and Felix received a visit of a 
 young American journalist, Maxwell Clark, 
 whose appearance she greeted with wistful ex- 
 pectancy. Surely this man of facts would have 
 weighed questions of loss and gain, and would 
 become to her a spokesman of her inner rebel- 
 lion. Natalie reflected, with a wry conscious- 
 ness of irony, that she looked to this casual 
 acquaintance for moral support in her brain's 
 torment, exactly as Pierre had turned to her, 
 placing his conscience in her keep. 
 
 Maxwell Clark was a keen wiry young man 
 loaded with enthusiasms. He had rushed 
 through war zones, noting accurately the im- 
 pressions which were to be presented in influ- 
 ential sheets as summaries of the European 
 situation. A valuable guest and mouthpiece, 
 he had been handed preciously along the Ger- 
 man lines, and later, escaping from Teutonic 
 courtesy, had transferred himself and his pro- 
 Ally sympathies to the French and Belgian 
 front. 
 
 He began in the usual way, by proclaiming
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 85 
 
 a civilized distaste for war ; then launched into 
 a panegyric of it, using such glib sophisms as 
 were best calculated to enliven his imagination 
 and enhance his manhood. Thrilled by the 
 dashing spectacle, fed on tales of heroism, he 
 had risen to the bait. Still warm with the hos- 
 pitality of fine men, intoxicated by the racket 
 of death, swayed subtly by the show of medals 
 and uniforms, he discoursed fluently upon 
 democracy in the trenches, awakened virility, 
 healthful occupations, brotherly sacrifice, cour- 
 age rewarded, sport, glory, patriotism. And 
 he ended with a superb gesture which swept his 
 countrymen into the field, claiming in sonorous 
 words their fraternal duty to the Allies. 
 
 Felix puffed wisely at his pipe, meditating 
 upon these things. But Natalie, whose expres- 
 sion had altered from its first eagerness to 
 sharp disappointment, flung tartly at the 
 young journalist: 
 
 "Why then don't you enlist right away? I 
 hear the Foreign Legion is an excellent death 
 trap for criminals and neutrals." Felix low-
 
 86 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 ered his pipe and glanced at her with lifted 
 brows. 
 
 But Maxwell Clark, his fluency stemmed, 
 murmured uneasily "I ... I have my work." 
 
 "So had they!" She rose abruptly and 
 loomed above him with stern young face and 
 darkened eyes. Then the floodgates swung 
 aside and gathered pain rushed out. 
 
 "So had every man in every warring country 
 to-day ! Beginning with the pretext of a mur- 
 dered tyrant and ending in a world's war a 
 pretty job they've made of it! They've given 
 fine words as sops, and when it was too 
 late for dozing diplomats to mend the mess, 
 they trumpeted a nation's danger. The thing 
 was done when the first fools took up their 
 guns and left their homes. France had to go. 
 Of course she had to go when governments de- 
 creed the killing!" 
 
 Her voice trembled upwards. "And you, 
 what do you know of it all? They've 
 shown you what they wanted to. You'll write 
 well -of democracies and sacrifice. But it's a
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 87 
 
 pity you can't give your readers a taste of shell. 
 We free people over there" her arm swung 
 eloquently in a direction "we free people, 
 young, naive, quixotic, will listen gladly to 
 the brave bright stories. Just as small boys 
 absorbing dime novels dream of imitating their 
 hero's exploits, knight or bandit, so the Ameri- 
 can people will soon be dreaming of trumpets 
 and uniforms and glory dreaming of pro- 
 tecting their great nation from a problematic 
 invader, filling their minds with military bra- 
 vado and their hearts with romantic notions, 
 while the government to please them taxes and 
 taxes. ... I Then some day they will be 
 caught. Oh, you all of you who can reach 
 them why not tell them the truth before it is 
 too late ? Why not draw aside the beloved flag 
 that hides dead sons and lovers and let the 
 women and the workers see a real battlefield, 
 read deep in the souls of men who kill?" 
 
 "She's right!" escaped from Felix. But 
 Natalie did not hear him. She was staring be- 
 yond the two men, out at the warm sky. She
 
 88 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 was listening to the distant thunder, to the 
 moaning of many women, and the hoarse cry of 
 the wounded. 
 
 "Why not tell our people of the men cooped 
 in the trenches through days of sweltering heat 
 . . . soon through days of cold and driving 
 rains ... to be trapped like dumb animals, 
 murdered by an unseen enemy? Our scientists 
 have thoughtfully provided long-range guns, 
 no doubt to spare the feelings of the enemy." 
 Her laugh was mirthless. "The democracy of 
 the trenches ? A democracy of prisoners ! Let 
 one of those democrats say to his officer, 'I've 
 got a sick wife and children at home. I need 
 to earn their bread. I must go back!' A 
 handy wall and a bullet would be his answer. 
 Sport? Football or elephants could supply 
 that need. Why not tell our people that the 
 men are filled with rum and ether before the 
 bayonet charges? . . . filled with madness to 
 make the killing easier! It is comforting to 
 know that noble work is accomplished under 
 such influence ! Why not tell our people of the
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 89 
 
 disease that hides its ugly face behind the paid 
 woman's smile; such few women as are smug- 
 gled inside the lines where wives may not go, to 
 appease a lusting regiment? Why not tell 
 them of the men who, with dreadful bodies torn 
 apart, lie rotting between friend and enemy 
 unrescued even in their final agony? Why not 
 tell them of putrid gases that decay lungs, of 
 maimed men, blind men, the wreckage of bat- 
 tles? Let our people see and hear the horror 
 and then judge if any cause is worth the thing 
 called war! Defended land? Look at it! 
 Honor? What of the fatherless offspring and 
 the heart-broken women? Glory? A tattered 
 uniform spotted with a fellow's blood. Pa- 
 triotism? A country crippled by debts." 
 
 Natalie paused for breath and Maxwell 
 Clark edged in a faint remonstrance: 
 "I thought you loved France?" 
 Her passion mounted to its climax: 
 "Love France? I love every stone in this 
 city! I love every blade of grass in the land! 
 I love every little poilu in red and blue! But
 
 90 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 do you ask me because of my love to acclaim a 
 calamity which reaches beyond frontiers and 
 includes the world ? For what they are beneath 
 their petty faults, I love the brave sweet heart 
 of this race. Their language is music to me. 
 I love the peasant and the woman who wheels 
 the flower cart and the honest fellow in cordu- 
 roys. Of all the armies out to-day, the French 
 army is most beloved. Their spirit is indomi- 
 table. But all women weep the same tears, and 
 the graves are shaped alike in every country. 
 It's war I hate . . . stupid, sordid war. How 
 can I know who will be the next enemy, while 
 there are armies and world markets? The 
 blood lust and greed is in them all now. They 
 prate of a last war and give their children uni- 
 forms, tin soldiers, toy swords. They speak of 
 an eventual peace and teach their children ven- 
 geance. They prattle of more armies ever 
 more, more battleships, more bombs. What 
 will all these things be doing then when war is 
 at an end ? Shall the people be supporting idle 
 forces ? What of the people ? May they never
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 91 
 
 learn their trades with any feeling of security? 
 Must mothers bear sons to offer up to future 
 enemies? I hate it! I hate it all!" She sank 
 shuddering in a chair, her passion spent. 
 
 Silence hung between them until Felix said 
 gently, "I didn't know you had it in you." 
 
 The comment roused in her a sense of self- 
 betrayal. She had voiced those hidden things 
 which even Felix should not hear because of 
 Pierre. 
 
 Maxwell Clark, released from hypnotized 
 attention, gave a low whistle. "As you de- 
 scribe it, it isn't pretty." 
 
 She managed a wan smile. "You must for- 
 give me. I forgot myself." 
 
 Visibly impressed, the American attempted 
 compliments upon her eloquence. But Felix, 
 perhaps to change the subject, burst out, "The 
 whole thing is a damn shame ! We have a dear 
 friend who's fighting now. Natalie and I 
 worry a lot about him." 
 
 "I see," murmured Clark. 
 
 "He's . . . he's an awfully clever chap,"
 
 92 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 continued Felix. "Studied with me in the 
 Beaux Arts. He and I were great pals." He 
 cleared his throat and put a hand on Natalie's 
 shoulder. "She can tell you. Why, as far as 
 that goes, Natalie's the one to keep up his 
 spirits." She felt the journalist's keen eyes 
 upon her as Felix blundered on. "She's always 
 writing him how wonderful the people are . . . 
 and how worth while it is to fight for his coun- 
 try. In his last letter he speaks of how beau- 
 tiful her letters are, how he couldn't do without 
 them." He fumbled in his pocket. "Thought 
 I had it here. I guess for all she says she be- 
 lieves in a man doing his duty. Don't you, old 
 girl?" 
 
 "Of course she does! We all do!" cried 
 Maxwell Clark heartily, sparing her an answer. 
 
 But when after other efforts at conversation, 
 which she discouraged, he took his leave as ex- 
 uberantly as he had come, Felix went up to her. 
 
 "You never told me you felt that way, little 
 comrade," he said. "If you do, really . . .
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 93 
 
 how can you ... ?" His anxious look finished 
 the question. 
 
 "How can I what?" Her smile was baffling. 
 
 "How can you give Pierre so much?" he 
 ended lamely. 
 
 "I give him what is in my heart." She could 
 not tell Felix at what cost she played her role. 
 The thin barrier of withheld confidence sepa- 
 rated them. His honest face showed per- 
 plexity. 
 
 "You're a strange kid, Natalie," he said at 
 last. "You got me going the way you talked. 
 And yet you write such different things to dear 
 old Pierre. What would he have said if he 
 had heard you?" 
 
 "He never will," Natalie answered drearily.
 
 THE women knitted. 
 They knitted like Destinies bending 
 fatefully over their everlasting skeins. 
 Their hands were never still: the coarsened 
 fingers of toil, the exquisite fingers of fashion 
 handled wool of many colors as if it were their 
 final task on earth. In the great homes, in the 
 stifled places of the poor, in theaters and shops, 
 gardens and streets, women of all classes knit- 
 ted, chattering of their absent heroes, boasting 
 in watchful rivalry of the wounded and the 
 dead, trading exploits that warranted their re- 
 lationship to the defenders of France. They 
 had achieved a cult which permitted, in noblest 
 form, the expression of lives stunted or en- 
 vious, yearning or vain, passionate, sentimental 
 or fanatical. Their men, who only a short 
 while ago were perfect or faulty sons or mates, 
 had with one sublime gesture of parting be- 
 
 94
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 95 
 
 come mysterious factors in a mighty struggle. 
 The man and the rascal shared the same super- 
 human virtues. In the armies they were mere 
 units; in the hearts of the tragic, rapturous 
 women they were the determining elements of 
 victory. Had they beaten their wives in peace 
 times, they were now beating an enemy; had 
 they loved indiscriminately, they were now 
 vowed to one cause; had they shirked their 
 duties as citizens, they were now accomplishing 
 a supreme duty. 
 
 The women knitted. And the clicking of 
 needles was a multitude of little tongues telling 
 tales. They told of the mothers who dreamed 
 about cradle days when the new male in their 
 arms was a godly specimen, fortunate in pros- 
 pects; dreamed about the uneasy boyhood, 
 where the shaping spirit wanders on forbidden 
 ground; dreamed of the youth thriven in spite 
 of hardships or indulgence, snatched now from 
 fruitful occupations and taught a warrior's 
 trade; dreamed of the blighted being which 
 might come limping, groping home to live on
 
 96 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 charity, another stone about the nation's neck. 
 There was a reward, as rewards go. The grati- 
 tude of a nation for a spent life remains an 
 inheritance, mortgaged perhaps, but neverthe- 
 less to be jealously guarded for the future. If 
 such gratitude does not ensure the safety of 
 generations to come at least it provides graves, 
 medals and archives in tribute to the beloved 
 dust. 
 
 The song of the needles told of women: 
 women who knitted because of housewifely 
 habit or economy, as once they had mended; 
 women who, consumed by tardy romance, re- 
 gretted bitterly their past unimaginative do- 
 mesticity, imaging their men as misunderstood 
 potential lovers; women who, helpless in their 
 unsolicited independence, prayed for the return 
 of the master ; women who, enchanted with an 
 unaccustomed freedom, discovering latent 
 natures and brains, prepared future problems 
 for their unsuspecting mates; women whose 
 sentimental craving, hitherto unsatisfied, found 
 passionate outlet in mothering armies.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 97 
 
 The House of the Bourdons gave all it had 
 to give. 
 
 Grandmother Bourdon, huddled in her arm- 
 chair, fumbled with wool and needles. But her 
 palsied fingers refused the task. Only the old 
 eyes behind the spectacles retained sparks of 
 will. She babbled weakly of the '70s, reiterat- 
 ing forgotten tales of heroism. Her memory 
 wandered in rusty battlefields, evoking ghosts. 
 Her quavering voice mounted in a tremolo of 
 hate, cursing the enemy. She saw her husband 
 at the head of his troops urging them on to vic- 
 tory. She heard the martial sounds of long 
 ago. And she was never quiet except when her 
 tired head on its wizened stem sank forward in 
 fitful doze over the unfinished work. 
 
 Louise Bourdon stayed in her bed and knit- 
 ted, with a querulous eye upon her children. 
 She worried when they were out of her sight; 
 she worried when they were with her. 
 
 "Wait until your father gets back," was the 
 constant refrain. A big black crucifix on the 
 wall reminded her of Christian resignation and
 
 98 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 other precepts borrowed from divine philos- 
 ophy. But she croaked constantly of lugubri- 
 ous possibilities, vowing to follow Raymond, 
 her husband, to the grave should he be sent 
 there. The fate of other men affected her su- 
 perficially. She mourned them with trite 
 phrases unwatered by tears. 
 
 Germaine Bourdon knitted pink and white 
 articles for her Robert, inwardly moved by the 
 intimacy she imagined involved in such service. 
 Her handiwork was for the male, her future 
 husband. She worshiped him inarticulately. 
 He was like no other man. He symbolized 
 France, the armies, victory. Her little room 
 was a shrine where on the table near the bed 
 stood his photograph draped with a small flag 
 and flanked by two narrow-throated vases al- 
 ways freshly filled. His letters, tied in tricol- 
 ored ribbons, were laid in a satin box. At night 
 she knelt by her immaculate bed and prayed 
 candidly to the Virgin that her lover might be 
 guarded from harm. But her romance lent to 
 the war a roseate glamor. She had never seen
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 99 
 
 death. And she thought that lovers were in- 
 vulnerable. Her dreams, untroubled by grim 
 visions, brought Robert to her, brave in a spot- 
 less uniform, his clean sword uplifted, gleam- 
 ing in the sun. 
 
 Madame Jean Bourdon knitted for two of 
 her sons and for those other sons of France 
 who were without mothers. She visited the 
 poor and the sick of the quarter, and helped 
 the wives of those who had left the factory at 
 the first call. She was never still. With 
 whitening hair and tightened lips she went 
 methodically about her business, accepting the 
 responsibilities her country had put upon her. 
 Once a day she sought the church as a haven, 
 and in the calm gray place among black kneel- 
 ing women prayed that her sons do their duty. 
 Inflexible pride dwelt in her heart. She had 
 given three men to France. She blessed them 
 from afar but never wished them back. She 
 held her head erect and when she talked to 
 other women, she spoke of her sons as gifts. 
 
 The little trades-people knew and respected
 
 100 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 her, united by a bond that loosened their 
 tongues. The unique topic held them all: 
 
 "Have you any news to-day, Madame Bour- 
 don?" 
 
 "Thank you, a letter from Pierre and one 
 from Raymond, my eldest son, who by the way 
 is doing finely. His Colonel congratulated 
 him last week on his valiant conduct. He and 
 four other men met an advance guard of 
 Uhlans and drove them off, though they were 
 outnumbered, killing three who it seems tried 
 to hide in a wood. You can imagine how 
 proud I was . . . And your son?" 
 
 "Jacques is always the same. He writes 
 only of victory. He says the men are mad to 
 get at the brutes. They will be well served, I 
 can tell you." 
 
 "Ah, yes! My second son Henri tells me 
 that there will be nothing left of them. When 
 I think what they have done to us! ... One 
 cannot have mercy with such people . . . 
 Well, we have learned our lesson."
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 101 
 
 "That we have, Madame Bourdon. But if 
 we had only known . . . the monsters!" 
 
 "We can have no peace until we beat them." 
 
 "When will that be?" 
 
 "Soon, soon, Madame. With such sons as 
 ours ... !" 
 
 "Sometimes I feel it is hard, Madame Bour- 
 don. Jacques is my only one. His father is 
 dead. The business is hard. ... I depend on 
 him." 
 
 "Come, come, Madame, you must not cry. 
 If he is taken, it will be in a fine cause. And 
 there will be no more wars." 
 
 "God hear you, Madame Bourdon! Well, 
 what is must be." 
 
 So with raised solemn voices the poor moth- 
 ers settled a world's destiny, consecrating their 
 sons to death in order that there might be no 
 future wars. 
 
 Meanwhile Jean Bourdon, whose ruddy face 
 showed signs of strain, yearned in silence for 
 Raymond, his eldest son and partner. He had 
 not only given his sons to France ; he was likely
 
 102 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 enough to give his snug fortune. Only a mir- 
 acle could save his factories in the North; 
 Judging from rapid tragic events such a mir- 
 acle would not happen. His factory in the city 
 was temporarily closed. The economies of 
 years upon which he had based his social status, 
 his family's prosperity, a comfortable old age, 
 must soon be utilized to tide over the crisis. 
 The principles of a thrifty life yielded beneath 
 the pressure of national disaster. But Jean 
 Bourdon fretted as if a vital organ had been 
 attacked. For though the Bourdon family 
 were sharing a common peril, according to 
 bourgeois precepts they might not reveal weak 
 spots in their stronghold. Whatever anxiety 
 they endured must remain within the enclosed 
 circle. 
 
 Madame Bourdon, with years of practical 
 experience behind her, managed the affairs of 
 the household expertly, resorting to ingenious 
 devices to keep up appearances without wast- 
 ing a penny. At all costs the children's dowry 
 must be saved. She did not forget that the
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 103 
 
 de Gencys had shrewdly bargained for Ger- 
 maine's marriage portion; and her pride for- 
 bade her failing an arrangement made before 
 the war. When the time should come their 
 petty title must be paid for according to its 
 value, in order that the race of the de Gencys 
 allied to the Bourdon's money should flourish 
 and prosper. 
 
 Two maids were dismissed and Germaine 
 and Lorraine set to work with good will mend- 
 ing, cleaning, and attending to Grandmother 
 Bourdon, Louise and the children. When the 
 family assembled for meals, each was conscious 
 of the advisability of a moderate appetite. The 
 best morsels went to Grandmother Bourdon, 
 who ate greedily, and to Jean Bourdon, the 
 head of the family. Lorraine was always 
 served last. But Lorraine, paler, more reticent 
 than ever, hardly touched her food. She seemed 
 consumed by some inner torment that dulled 
 her eyes and veiled her voice. Often when 
 Germaine spoke of Robert de Gency, she 
 looked at the young girl wistfully, as if the
 
 104 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 naive romance resolved some hidden chord in 
 her heart. But she said nothing. 
 
 During these meals, while Madame Bour- 
 don supervised the plentifully watered wine 
 and the jealously measured portions, they tried 
 to forget the gaps in the round table, dis- 
 sembling the ever present ache and fear. Then 
 Monsieur Bourdon talked of his sons. His 
 voice recovered its resonance and boomed the 
 exhaustless theme. The red ribbon marked his 
 rounded chest, a pompous reminder of a debt. 
 As he talked of Raymond's last exploit, of 
 Henri's reckless courage, of Pierre's gentle 
 spirit, it was as if the voice of France rang 
 through the room. It was the voice of sacri- 
 fice issuing from the hearth where lay smol- 
 dering ashes of past hate. It was France and 
 only France living in the Bourdon hearts. The 
 Belgians and the English and the Russians 
 were but the mighty chorus to the Marseillaise. 
 There was a sublime and tragic intention in the 
 chant of war that mounted from the Bourdon 
 throats, a concentrated essence of defiance that
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 105 
 
 included superbly international issues in this 
 one dramatic struggle for life. As the invaders 
 thundered past rivers and plains intoning the 
 "Wacht am Rhein," Jean Bourdon's voice 
 boomed louder in challenge, "Vive la France!" 
 
 His factories in the North were doomed. 
 The menace was tightening about the city. But 
 when Madame Bourdon suggested sending the 
 Grandmother, Louise and the children to a 
 place of safety, Jean Bourdon roared: 
 
 "Never! We all stay in our home, no matter 
 what happens. The Bourdons do not run 
 away. But I tell you they will never get here 
 unless it be over the bodies of every man in 
 France." 
 
 And Madame Bourdon, looking at his crim- 
 son face, his blazing eyes, his clenched fists, 
 bowed her head, saying: 
 
 "We will all stay then," and went to the 
 church to pray that her sons do their duty.
 
 VI 
 
 LORRAINE condemned herself for 
 loving the Polish sculptor. 
 Once at her timid question he had 
 answered in a harsh, wild voice, "Why should 
 I die for them? What have they done for 
 me?" and he had stared at her with the look 
 of his suppressed race, distrusting the con- 
 queror whoever he be. Then he had gone on 
 his knees, lifting his head with its red beard 
 and mystic eyes, and like a little child re- 
 peating a sad story had told her of the silent 
 peasants, his father and mother, of his exile, 
 the biting poverty in a strange country, of his 
 love of God and all beautiful things, and of 
 the arid loneliness until she had come to find 
 him. And she in turn had told him of her sad- 
 dened girlhood, her barren life with Raoul 
 Bourdon, his death and her present existence 
 marked with the Bourdon seal. They had wept 
 
 106
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 107 
 
 together that day, like two poor creatures in- 
 extricably tangled in a pitiless system. 
 
 Then she had gone back from the shabby 
 studio through the hushed city where the 
 shadow of loss lengthened already across the 
 thresholds : back to the House of the Bourdons 
 where the women knitted and talked of their 
 absent men. And she was ashamed. For it 
 was as if she had introduced a furtive enemy 
 into the house. She saw Raoul Bourdon's gray 
 eyes fixed upon her in cold rebuke. When the 
 land reeked of blood and the awful voices of the 
 women cried vengeance for the martyred youth, 
 how dared she cherish a male being, an alien, 
 who preferred cutting stone to cutting down 
 the invader? What right had the puny brain 
 to conceive beauty in the face of ordained de- 
 struction? 
 
 She thought of gentle Pierre marching for- 
 ward over crimson fields, and of Natalie, who 
 had sent him out with a smile on her lips. She 
 remembered that Pierre had said at the part- 
 ing, "You cannot know what she has given me
 
 108 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 this day," and she envied Natalie fiercely for 
 that which she had been able to give her soldier 
 lover. But Lorraine could not wrench from 
 her heart her love for the artist. She yearned 
 to go to him, to place herself by his side, bear- 
 ing all ills for his sake. He did not belong in 
 this day of violence. Yet he suffered for an 
 ideal, just as other men suffered for an ideal. 
 Why should he not be allowed to choose his 
 ideal and abide by it? She believed in him and, 
 believing, doubted herself. Women were giv- 
 ing and giving. Only she, a Frenchwoman, 
 was not giving what was most precious. 
 
 All day long in the House of the Bourdons 
 she worked like a slave that she might earn 
 peace of mind. No homely task was too heavy 
 for her. She listened patiently to Grandmother 
 Bourdon's senile mumblings, obeyed Louise 
 Bourdon's caprices, tended the children, put 
 herself at the beck and call of the family. But 
 at night, when weary of soul and body she 
 crept to her room, the image of the beloved 
 burned in the dark and she heard him say
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 109 
 
 again, "Why should I die for them?" His 
 thin face, the mystic torment of his eyes, the 
 ardent orange-red of his beard appeared be- 
 fore her, an intangible substance that formed 
 and dissolved in endless spectral moods, now 
 pleading, now stern ; as if in the night his long- 
 ing sought her out and, mysteriously embodied, 
 haunted the shadows near her bed. But in the 
 murky background other images floated sadly: 
 a host of young faces set in the agonized mold 
 of death. And she cried out to them in her 
 restless dreams "Pierre . . . Henri . . . what 
 are you doing? . . . where are you?" 
 
 Then in the daytime there was always Ger- 
 maine transfigured by hero-worship, talking 
 and thinking only of Robert de Gency. Lor- 
 raine drew near to the girl, feeding hungrily 
 on the ever-fresh romance that flowered so 
 easily on crimson soil. And one day she asked 
 Germaine : 
 
 "Are you never afraid . . . for him?" 
 With a rapt look Germaine answered,
 
 110 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "Nothing will ever happen to Robert. He is 
 so brave!" 
 
 Lorraine sighed and turned away. But later 
 when the loneliness became unbearable she 
 went to the girl and told about the Pole, end- 
 ing helplessly, "What do you think? Can I 
 tell them? Should I not go and live my own 
 life?" 
 
 Because Germaine loved, Lorraine hoped 
 for the comfort one woman can give another. 
 Moreover Germaine, though one of the Bour- 
 don blood, could still speak with the voice of 
 youth. And Lorraine, the older, stood blond 
 and pale before the girl as before a judge. 
 
 Robert de Gency's picture, circled with the 
 flag and flanked by flowers, looked on while 
 Germaine turned a shocked face to her aunt. 
 
 "I don't see how you can love any one like 
 that especially now. A man who lives here 
 and eats our bread. . . ." 
 
 "Very little bread," interposed Lorraine 
 drearily. 
 
 Germaine borrowed the brisk, impatient in-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 111 
 
 flections of her mother. The appeal had ren- 
 dered her important and self-conscious. 
 
 "I love Robert because he is doing his duty 
 as a patriot the duty all men have to-day! 
 You know that Papa would never hear of your 
 marrying a stranger ... an artist too . . . 
 who is not ready to prove his love for France. 
 Think of our brothers and Robert out there 
 fighting, while any other man is safe! How 
 can you?" 
 
 Lorraine humiliated herself further. She 
 would have committed any servile act to hear 
 from Germaine at that moment a comprehend- 
 ing word. And she argued: 
 
 "But he is an artist and belongs to a ... 
 different world of thought. He was very un- 
 happy as a child, and there are political reasons 
 why he should not have any sympathy with 
 governments. Why should he risk his life for 
 us? We have done nothing for him." 
 
 Rising dramatically, Germaine walked over 
 to Robert de Gency's picture as if to include 
 him in her answer.
 
 112 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "There is no excuse," she pronounced se- 
 verely. "It isn't a question of governments: 
 it's a question of ideals. And you, Aunt Lor- 
 raine, a Frenchwoman, a Bourdon by mar- 
 riage, you can tolerate such cowardice?" 
 
 "He isn't a coward!" 
 
 "Any man who won't fight these barbarians 
 is a coward." The young voice was uncom- 
 promising. "I have always respected you, 
 Aunt Lorraine. And I know what love is. 
 But who can love a man who is not with other 
 men to-day? There is only one cause. Noth- 
 ing else counts." 
 
 Lorraine swayed as if she had been hit. She 
 fingered her moist handkerchief, staring un- 
 happily at the accusing young creature, who, 
 savoring her advantage, became condescending. 
 "You had better not tell Mama and Papa. 
 They would never forgive you. I don't know 
 what they would say!" The Bourdon opinion, 
 thus evoked, seemed to fill the room. 
 
 Lorraine moaned, "What can I do?" 
 
 Germaine took a step forward and advised
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 113 
 
 in softened tones : "If he really loves you and 
 you tell him to, he will enlist. And when the 
 war is over, if you like, I will help you get the 
 family's consent." 
 
 Lorraine looked at her with distracted eyes, 
 "Enlist? Where?" 
 
 "There is always the Foreign Legion. It 
 counts." Her voice rose to a pitch of exalta- 
 tion. "Think how proud you will be, Aunt 
 Lorraine. He must go jf you tell him to. Of 
 course I didn't have to tell Robert to go. But 
 I suppose since your friend is a foreigner and 
 an artist, it is a little different. It is your duty 
 as a Frenchwoman to use your influence in the 
 right way. Tell him you won't love him unless 
 he goes. Tell him no woman to-day will look 
 at a shirker. Once he has fought for our coun- 
 try he can think of marrying a French- 
 woman . . ." 
 
 Lorraine covered her face with her hands. 
 "Oh, Germaine, if he should be killed! I 
 should have sent him to his death. . . ." 
 
 "You would have taught him his duty,"
 
 114 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 cried Germaine, with glistening eyes. "Yes, 
 that is the only way." 
 
 "The only way?" murmured Lorraine, and 
 shaken by the implacable verdict she sank into 
 a chair weeping bitterly. 
 
 Germaine stood over her. "You ought not 
 to cry if you love your country. I only cried 
 once when Robert said good-by. Think, Aunt 
 Lorraine! He can prove how much he loves 
 you. And you will see him in uniform. Robert 
 was so beautiful ! That is the way a real man 
 should be to-day." 
 
 And Lorraine, bowed and hopeless, saw the 
 thing she must do if she wished to keep her self- 
 respect. For the words of Germaine rang in 
 her ears like the tolling of Fate. She could 
 not help wondering if he loved her enough to 
 go at her bidding. The question settled deep 
 in her mind, deeper than her grief, and chal- 
 lenged her subtly to the test. 
 
 Shortly after the House of the Bourdons 
 received a mortal blow. Raymond, the eldest
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 115 
 
 son, was killed in action. It was as if the shell 
 that had shattered him had rent the founda- 
 tions of a stronghold, mangled the walls and 
 left dazed, stricken creatures kneeling to hide 
 their faces from God and man. And while 
 they knelt, huddled against one another, their 
 grief blended into a single image, came rever- 
 ent hands to lay a flag over the wreckage and 
 on it, as on an altar, to place a sword and a 
 Croix de Guerre, which was all that was left 
 of the Bourdons' son. The rest of him was 
 strewn on the defended land with a neat grave 
 stiffening in the tattered valley to remind 
 friends and enemy that a fine man had fought 
 his last battle. 
 
 Then the house was pierced by the dreadful 
 screams of Louise in throes of childbirth. Men 
 might die and men might conquer, cities split 
 like nuts beneath a heel, churches crumble to 
 ashes, but not all the groaning and vocifera- 
 tions of warring forces could alter the eternal 
 mystery of creation, not all the united powers 
 craving pardon for the harm done in the name
 
 116 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 of civilization could give back a father to the 
 newly born. 
 
 The woman writhing on her bed, with sweat- 
 ing brow and glazed eyes, cried out like an 
 agonizing animal. Her clamor was futile. 
 The one she called and called would never 
 answer anything again. 
 
 "Raymond . . . Raymond . . . what have 
 they done to you? Help . . . help . . . Ray- 
 mond, why did they kill you ? . . . God, where 
 is he? ... Raymond, if such things happen 
 to men I will not have a man child ... I will 
 not have a man child . . . They'll take him 
 from me too. . . . Raymond . . . why, why, 
 why, why . . .?" 
 
 Madame Jean Bourdon, decked in crepe, 
 stood rigidly beside the bed. Her lips moved 
 as if a hand were laid over them smothering 
 speech. 
 
 "Courage, my daughter. Raymond died for 
 France." 
 
 But Louise Bourdon only moaned the more. 
 "Poor France ! . . . Poor Raymond ! . . . Poor
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 117 
 
 me!" And, in another paroxysm, she raved, 
 "A flag! Bring me a flag to hold if I cannot 
 have Raymond's hand!" 
 
 They brought her a flag, and with wild 
 fingers she clutched it, closed upon it convul- 
 sively, shook it with the spasms that shook her 
 tortured body. She crumpled it to her breast 
 and wept over it, clinging to it as she would 
 have clung to Raymond's hand. 
 
 In the darkened salon, surrounded by his 
 household gods, sat Jean Bourdon, a weary 
 old man. He sat before a little table upon 
 which were placed a sword and a medal. His 
 dull eyes never left these relics. He sat there 
 immobile, while Louise Bourdon's shrieks rang 
 through the house. His bushy beard brushing 
 his chest, his chin sunk forward, his hands 
 heavy on the arms of his chair, he sat through 
 countless time keeping his vigil, brooding over 
 ruins. But he made no sound. 
 
 The things about him dated the Bourdon 
 history. They were rooted in the room like
 
 118 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 sturdy plants withstanding storms. There was 
 the hearth, the favorite background for Ray- 
 mond's vigorous bulk. How often he had 
 straddled that familiar place, booming his 
 opinions to the assembled family! The room 
 was like a tomb enclosing memories of his loud 
 good nature, his ready wit, his exuberant self- 
 confidence. 
 
 Jean Bourdon saw his son striding beside 
 him, a virile replica of his own pride; saw his 
 son and partner beside him in the factory man- 
 aging men with the magnetism that won obedi- 
 ence and efficiency ; saw the House of Industry 
 where the "lights of the heart," his great ovens, 
 glowed like robust hearts, where the bricks that 
 made the houses, that made the cities, that 
 made the nations, multiplied to suit men's 
 needs. He saw the wage-earners at their posts, 
 forceful units of the world's production. He 
 saw them working, he saw them paid, he saw 
 them in their homes, husbands and fathers. 
 
 He saw his son Raymond looming, a colossus 
 of the battlefield, with raised stained sword and
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 119 
 
 lusty voice, urging his men on through hell to 
 victory. 
 
 Quickened clods of native soil, they spring 
 from fire to fire. Then in an awesome lull, 
 when reddened clouds slink westward, over the 
 plain gutted with life fluid, sprawl lacerated 
 remnants of men and colored cloth. Crouch- 
 ing, stooping figures marked with the Red 
 Cross go fumbling among the mangled stuff, 
 ears strained for sign or groans, and pious 
 hands rescuing relics. The deed is done! A 
 bruised acre won to be lost again perhaps : and 
 Raymond still forever . . . 
 
 Now through the silence of the house echoed 
 Louise Bourdon's final scream of deliverance. 
 Raymond's son was born. And down the hol- 
 lowed cheeks of old Jean Bourdon from the 
 very fount of his mute despair rolled lonely 
 tears.
 
 VII 
 
 PIERRE wrote: 
 "When is man most genuine, Be- 
 loved? And what is heroism? Sup- 
 pose that spurred by primitive rivalries, or 
 caught in a climax of danger, the man responds 
 electrically to a moment's madness, becomes a 
 leader of men or saves an imperiled comrade, 
 does that action establish forever his worth in 
 society? Here men are often called heroes, 
 who under abnormal pressure perform fool- 
 hardy deeds. I suspect them in ordinary life 
 of being crude tyrants, close-fisted employers, 
 petty climbers. When they are removed from 
 excitement and the eyes of their comrades, will 
 they sustain the heroic standard? Should they 
 survive, perhaps their wives and partners will 
 consider it a privilege to be browbeaten by 
 them. I ask myself whether this training in 
 
 heroism will give men a permanent advantage, 
 
 120
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 121 
 
 whether it will sweeten homes, encourage 
 spiritual aspirations, strengthen industry, or 
 whether ruder methods of gaining an end, the 
 will to conquer of the untrammeled male, will 
 not destroy humanity ! Questions questions ! 
 I am made up of them. I shall never be a 
 hero, Natalie. Do you mind? Glory disdains 
 the plodder. Your letters save me. They lift 
 me from the drudgery of killing, from this tiny 
 area over which we see-saw, now up, now down. 
 I could not keep my ideals from the bog if I 
 could not dip them constantly in the pure foun- 
 tain of your faith. What do we see here, 
 hiding like animals behind our mounds? We 
 do not even see our millions of brothers battling 
 for the common cause. We only see ourselves, 
 dust-grimed, unshaven creatures moved like 
 pawns over a limited space of land. We sel- 
 dom see the enemy. He probably resembles 
 us in many ways, even though, as I must be- 
 lieve, he embodies a monstrous evil force, a 
 gigantic destructive machine threatening fu- 
 ture progress. The world is very small, be- 
 
 i
 
 122 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 loved, from where I am. The sky is an omi- 
 nous patch plastered over a festering wound 
 in the earth. I need you to be my eyes, my 
 ears, my inner voice. I need you to unloose 
 my troubled gaze and point to spacious regions 
 where sky and land in final harmony will one 
 day frame the virtue of a united mankind. 
 The map is cluttered with evil doers. I sup- 
 pose we must destroy them in order that our 
 descendants may delight in the world. Ex- 
 plain this to me, Natalie: Christ died to save 
 mankind, but He never killed. . . . 
 
 "When men are herded together for an or- 
 ganized purpose, they become animals and 
 philosophers. They adapt themselves to neces- 
 sity and are easily led. It is just as well, is it 
 not, Beloved? It is astonishing how much we 
 can endure. We all must have our portion of 
 sheep's blood along with the fiery liquid that 
 makes good soldiers. And here the male thing 
 is dominant. You ask me what is the male 
 thing? I find it hard to answer. But if a
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 123 
 
 woman such as you appeared suddenly among 
 us we should feel and act like school boys 
 caught in fault. Our manner would change. 
 I should say we should remember our manners. 
 We should all feel ill at ease until the readjust- 
 ment. They are honest fellows. I love them 
 well. And because I love them, sometimes I 
 pity them. They have not a Natalie to keep 
 the divine beacon lit. Though Heaven knows 
 few need my pity. I cannot forget, as they do, 
 the deeper issues at stake. I cannot forget the 
 potential prosperity they represent, the hope 
 of future international peace. Is the dream 
 too beautiful? I cannot talk of these things 
 here. They do not understand. They hate 
 one race, and they believe that with the ex- 
 tinction of that race the problem will be solved. 
 Can a race be extinguished, Natalie? If it is 
 true that, with the crippling of one race, peace 
 and good will can flourish in the rest of the 
 world forever, then our hate for these people 
 must be more than a local commotion. It must 
 be a holy mission that binds us with other na-
 
 124 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 tions in the making of a World Empire. We 
 must conquer; and then erase the word from 
 our vocabulary. It is a dangerous word. 
 
 "They are honest fellows. I could name 
 you a few who are dear to me. There is Lucien 
 Nassaud, for example, as warm-hearted as 
 freshly baked bread, and as naive as a child. 
 He is not handsome, poor Lucien! His face 
 looks as if God had begun to mold it in a kindly 
 humor and left off before it was finished, rather 
 than wreak an interrupting mood of Heavenly 
 irony upon a humble creature. Lucien's good- 
 ness multiplies like the loaves in the miracle. 
 There is enough for every one. And when 
 sometimes beneath the stars we find the heart 
 to talk of home, he speaks simply of his old 
 father and mother, modest loving people whose 
 sole support he was. They are not rich. Lu- 
 cien is an architect like his father. They two 
 have worked together at little jobs that show 
 the conscientious artisan. Our city is full of 
 such dull, inconspicuous bits, that stand for
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 125 
 
 earnest, unimaginative labor. Before the war 
 Lucien was keeping up the business alone, that 
 his father, after many years, might rest. But 
 now the old father has taken on the yoke again, 
 and every morning at seven, he is in his office 
 struggling patiently over odds and ends that 
 come his way, straining his tired eyes and urg- 
 ing on his trembling hands at the task of re- 
 placing his son. They never complain, though 
 life is hard and there must be the constant 
 fear in their hearts of losing their Lucien. 
 They send him packages from time to time with 
 little luxuries they can ill afford. I have seen 
 Lucien's eyes grow wet when he receives one 
 of these packages. He knows so well the cost. 
 Everything he receives must be divided among 
 his comrades. He is as generous as he is 
 modest. He never hopes to rise above medi- 
 ocrity. He has told me often how much the 
 vision fails him. But is it mediocrity? I often 
 think that the sweet kindliness of unpretentious 
 minds contains beauty unknown to brilliant 
 spirits. We need all sorts of builders to make
 
 126 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 a city. And Lucien has a distinct taste for 
 beauty, an eager appreciation for summits he 
 may never attain. He carries about a few post- 
 cards : pictures of Notre Dame, of the Parthe- 
 non, of the Taj Mahal. He says it makes 
 him happy to know such things exist. And he 
 tells me that he and his father used to spend 
 their evenings studying a collection of such 
 postcards, delighting in the monuments of the 
 past, imagining treasures they might never see. 
 Lucien's great dream has been a trip to Greece. 
 He often says, 'If I am killed, I shall never 
 have known Athens!' 
 
 "Then there is Brillaud de Granville, a 
 young painter whose modern portraits amused 
 the great ladies of his world. For him success 
 was easily attained. He is a dark, ardent per- 
 son with flippant speech that masks a dreamer. 
 He dreads ridicule and, dissembling that dread, 
 plays the fool to dodge the label of sentimen- 
 talist. He affects a skepticism concerning God 
 and man. But one day I caught him kneeling 
 in a wood, beside the body of his best friend.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 127 
 
 And he was praying then. Another time I 
 saw the look in his eyes when he handled our 
 
 "Jean Lodec is a peasant. He has that grave 
 serenity that comes to men who live close to 
 earth. He sits for hours and stares at the tor- 
 tured land over which we have fought and 
 refought. He does not talk much. But once 
 when I spoke of the harvest his heavy face lit 
 suddenly and he told me of his farm, his or- 
 chards, his wife and children. 'They have not 
 attacked my land,' he muttered; 'I would be 
 better back there.' And his huge hands that 
 are as sinewy as roots moved clumsily from his 
 gun to point beyond the hills. Patient son of 
 the soil, what fatality has brought him from 
 his fields to join with other men in this de- 
 struction! 
 
 "These men and many others have for me 
 a deep significance. They have changed for 
 bayonets, perhaps forever, their compasses, 
 their brushes, their hoes. Which is the best 
 weapon? Their dreams are shelved. They
 
 128 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 are useful only in as much as they can endure 
 and shoot straight. Yet I cannot see the 
 remedy. . . . 
 
 "Oh, Beloved, they have fallen all about me, 
 and I am still alive. Lucien Nassaud is dead. 
 Brillaud de Granville is dead. Jean Lodec is 
 dead, and so many others whose names you will 
 never know. A surprise attack, repulsed, but 
 at what cost ! They say that men grow accus- 
 tomed to death. Some do. I cannot. I try 
 . . . but I cannot. Afterwards there is always 
 the ghastly nausea, the f aintness, the sick heart. 
 And I count those who have gone and cannot 
 measure the loss. 
 
 "Poor Lucien knew he would never come 
 back, knew it several days ago with one of 
 those mysterious instincts men learn to have 
 out here. He gave me a little letter for his 
 father. But Natalie, how can I bear to go to 
 them and tell them how quickly it was done? 
 What will become of them? What will become 
 of all of us if this goes on? To have a comrade
 
 \ 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 129 
 
 there beside you, a living, aspiring creature, 
 linked by laws of kin to other creatures, to 
 have heard his voice day after day, taken his 
 hand and called him friend ; and in an instant 
 to see him a crushed, nameless thing with 
 spilled brains and stilled heart! 
 
 "Brillaud will never paint again. Who will 
 know what message he had to give ? And Jean 
 Lodec will never gather another harvest. The 
 soil he nurtured has claimed him. And these 
 are only three. What of the others with the 
 unfinished tasks, the ungarnered dreams, the 
 slaughtered genius! What of those who held 
 locked in the fastness of their brain the secrets 
 to come of science, of art? The chain is being 
 broken, Natalie, the chain that linked the past 
 with the future, whose every ring enclosed 
 knowledge. What research, what invention, 
 what cures for evils may not be dying with the 
 young thousands! . . . Tell me that nothing 
 is irrevocable, that from the dust of crumbled 
 dreams greater wisdom will arise to enlighten 
 generations. Tell me that we are saving man-
 
 130 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 kind in losing ourselves. The spoken words of 
 the young dead may be written on the tablets, 
 but, Natalie, who will ever know the embryonic 
 secrets never told, the unborn melodies, the 
 messages never to be delivered ... all doomed 
 with the broken shell that circled them. . . . 
 
 "Natalie, Natalie, they have written me. 
 Raymond is dead. I cannot believe it. Ray- 
 mond so strong, so sure of every thought and 
 act, so vital ! What will become of my father 
 now? They say he died gloriously. Since he 
 had to go, I am proud that it was with glory. 
 But what is glory after all, Natalie? It can- 
 not give life. 
 
 "The news has crushed my spirit . . . oh, 
 only for a while. With you beside me I can 
 face all things. But I remember when I was 
 a boy how kind Raymond used to be. I was 
 proud to be seen with him, especially when he 
 wore the uniform of his Lycee, and walked 
 among men even then as a man speaking their 
 language. I remember how good-naturedly
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 131 
 
 he laughed at me and my timid dreams. He 
 was always the first in father's heart. And 
 he is the first to go! Strange! My father 
 wrote me a beautiful letter. He said, 'Your 
 brother, our dear Raymond, died gloriously 
 for his country. We are very proud of him. 
 And a son, a second Raymond, has been born 
 to avenge his father. God's will be done.' 
 
 "But, Natalie, the word 'avenge' has filled 
 me with dread. This new baby will not 
 be a man for many years. Must he then be 
 brought to hate and kill, and must his son 
 avenge him too? Then there is no end. If all 
 the men of all the nations who die in this war 
 must be avenged by their sons, there will be 
 no rest in the world. I do not want to be 
 avenged if I die, Natalie. Remember that. 
 Do not let them avenge me." 
 
 Natalie answered: 
 
 "Pierre, they shall not avenge you, no, nor 
 the other millions. Their sons and the sons of 
 their sons will have other things to do, patch-
 
 132 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 ing up the world. There is a limit to evil. 
 You are the sacrificed ones at the threshold of 
 a new era. We are in the Dark Ages now, 
 fighting as we believe for the salvation of men. 
 It is a worthy cause. Raymond has died for 
 it. But you will not die. You must not, you 
 shall not. 
 
 "Pierre, here in the city the people wait and 
 hope serenely for the end. I have grown to 
 love the people as you loved Lucien Nassaud 
 and Jean Lodec. They do not look farther 
 than their homes. But each home has its hum- 
 ble shrine where women pray confidently. 
 Their confidence must reach you. The blood of 
 France is sweet, Pierre. From it will grow 
 poppies and roses. And as the testament of 
 any one who dies is sacred, why should not the 
 will of the slain thousands be sacred ! If they 
 could tell us now, they would demand, in pay- 
 ment for their lives, future peace on earth. 
 Peace would be their legacy. 
 
 "You are battling for many issues: for eco- 
 nomic freedom, prosperity, the right to live.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 133 
 
 The Governments tell us so. And they should 
 know the stakes better than short-sighted citi- 
 zens. They are showing us that culture must 
 defeat false culture, that the enemy's God is 
 not the real God, that this is a war of justice, 
 not of conquest. France is bleeding gener- 
 ously, Belgium is bleeding pierced by the sword 
 of conquest. What can they do but fight for 
 their lives? These nations who are welded to- 
 gether are noble unselfish righters of wrong. 
 They can have no ulterior motives. They 
 would not send their sons out to die for vulgar 
 gain. A long, long time ago even in Na- 
 poleonic days the aim was frankly conquest 
 and power. But to-day, our social conscious- 
 ness awakened, we can have no such back- 
 ward purpose. We fight against the Im- 
 perial idea, which in our language is evil. 
 Watch the socialists, Pierre : how quickly they 
 have adapted themselves to the crisis. Surely 
 had the leaders not been convinced that the 
 workingman was fighting to protect his free- 
 dom, they would never have ranged themselves
 
 134 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 with capitalists, Kings and Presidents. Think 
 of the Russian revolutionists who have declared 
 a truce, who are in the ranks. All these have 
 no profit in it. They work in cabinets and 
 councils for the good of man. Among the 
 Allies it is a reign of love, a disinterested co- 
 operation against a common enemy. Some day 
 when the smoke has cleared and the battle- 
 grounds are healed we shall see and know what 
 we have escaped. Meanwhile the people are 
 being excellently cared for. You cannot 
 imagine, Pierre dear, how kind every one is, 
 how eager to help. Women who have always 
 been sheltered from contact with the working 
 classes, are now handling miseries as delicately 
 as once they fingered chiffons. They too have 
 little to gain in return for the time and strength 
 they give to humanity. And then there ate 
 the humbler women, those whom I love, each 
 ready with a sacrifice. We shall never hear of 
 them when the war is over. But they will have 
 given more than their portion. Do you see, 
 my Pierre, how philosophical is the right half
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 135 
 
 of the world in dealing with its problems, and 
 what beauty emanates from this drama? Let 
 your heart be great, even in mourning. You 
 battle for civilization." 
 
 So did Natalie write. And her pen was 
 dipped in bitterness.
 
 VIII 
 
 NOW indeed was the world in a sad way. 
 The coil had loosened around the men- 
 aced city. A brilliant, desperate vic- 
 tory frustrated the enemy's design. But win- 
 ter lifted its icy fist and shook it at the armies. 
 Men wielded spades and dug holes to hide in. 
 The women knitted faster. The factories of 
 blood disgorged their products. And some men 
 grew rich; and many grew poor. Scientists 
 and economists worked hard upon the abiding 
 questions of death and debt, while in their set- 
 tled purpose uniforms crouched over the map 
 with fixed murderous eyes and lofty motives. 
 And the fair thoughts that beckon men to 
 death, those cunning servitors of governments, 
 flapped like so many little flags in men's 
 brains : a nation's honor, liberty, duty to cause. 
 Oh, naive instruments, Natalie thought, 
 played by the clever fingers of the Powers! 
 
 136
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 137 
 
 Beloved little men, with big ideals, with slum- 
 bering common sense ! The hymns that one day 
 lull you to security awaken you the next to 
 a ferocious exaltation, wherein the things you 
 hold the home, the field, the business of earn- 
 ing bread crumble in your nervous fingers, 
 while you listen to the tune the Piper plays. 
 The instincts that make you godly trick you 
 into such irrevocable deeds that ever afterwards 
 your sons shall bear the brunt of your folly, 
 and perhaps curse you for it. 
 
 "An enemy! An enemy! Bring me an 
 enemy!" you shout as boys clamor for tin sol- 
 diers. The government, an indulgent parent, 
 goes out and buys you one or two. And sud- 
 denly you are engaged in a game you did not 
 bargain for. Enemies are more easily bought 
 than wisdom. Then all your other playthings 
 are destroyed: the puzzle of democracy, the 
 mechanical toys of inventions, your picture 
 books of funny laws, your farm houses and 
 your doll houses, the merry-go-round where 
 wealthy children ride proudly on the golden
 
 138 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 geese, the honest trading with your little 
 neighbor. 
 
 Felix went to Natalie and said: 
 "Little comrade, is there anything you 
 haven't told me? You're not the same girl 
 lately. We used to talk things over, but now 
 you never tell me anything. Are you just 
 worried about Peter? Or have I hurt you in 
 any way? Perhaps you think I'm not acting 
 right? I know how much you respect Peter 
 for what he's doing. I'll never forget how fine 
 you were when he left. And I know what your 
 letters mean to him now. You told Maxwell 
 Clark a few things. You were pretty hard on 
 him, but I guess you didn't mean most of 
 them. . . . Look here, Natalie, you and I have 
 always been pals. And I want you to speak 
 out straight to me. I wonder if you haven't 
 held it up against me because I haven't done 
 my part with the others. Perhaps I'm a 
 coward. I'd hate to fight. I don't see how 
 Peter stands it. But I don't want to be a
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 139 
 
 shirker. What do you say, old girl? Hadn't 
 I better enlist?" He stood before her much 
 as Pierre had done. His honest face was set 
 in a stern mold with inquiring eyes and salient 
 jaw. 
 
 "These fellows are great," he went on, lower- 
 ing his gaze. "I'm almost ashamed when I 
 pass them on the street. What do you suppose 
 they think of me a hulking mass of flesh and 
 bones just as fit as they are, if not fitter, hang- 
 ing around here fiddling with architecture, 
 while they get shot to hell? I thought I'd 
 talk it over with you first. But it's been on my 
 mind. And perhaps you've been thinking of 
 it too. If I go in I'm going hard. It won't 
 be any easy job for me, you understand." His 
 eyes rested in a moment's longing upon the 
 scattered drawings. 
 
 Then Natalie, who had stayed rigidly listen- 
 ing to his halting words, stretched out her 
 hands with a passionate motion. 
 
 "Felix . . . you too?" The cry broke from 
 her with such violence that he turned short.
 
 140 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Natalie had sunk into a chair, her hand shield- 
 ing her eyes. Her huddled figure expressed 
 despair. Felix reached her with a stride. 
 
 "I didn't know you'd take it this way." 
 
 "Wait . . . wait," she whispered. 
 
 His kind hand on her shoulder seemed 
 heavier than any weight. It pressed her down 
 into the regions where only one may go at a 
 time. She heard his voice groping uncertainly 
 with the phrases she had grown to dread. 
 
 "We all agree that it's an unholy mess. But 
 what's a man to do? Why should I be spared? 
 These chaps don't want to fight any more than 
 I do. But they know they've got to win. Isn't 
 it a world- job for every one? How am I 
 different from them?" 
 
 She murmured, "But this isn't your coun- 
 try." 
 
 "They may be attacking our country next 
 unless they're stopped," he cried in a strong 
 voice. "You can't tell what they'll do." 
 
 She was thinking that she was a poor crea- 
 ture nipped between the thumb and forefinger
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 141 
 
 of a grinning monster and dangled over a pit. 
 She struggled to escape from the monster's 
 grin. And there was Felix saying earnestly, 
 "You'd care a lot more about me if I went. 
 Now . . . wouldn't you?" 
 
 But then Natalie found the strength to break 
 the paralyzing spell. She sprang to her feet. 
 
 "I would not!" The parry was sudden. His 
 hand dropped to his side. Perplexity tied his 
 features into a comic knot. 
 
 "I would not," she repeated energetically, 
 and with recovered speech found a desperate 
 alertness. "Felix, don't be a fool!" She 
 brushed aside his stammered rejoinder and 
 motioned to a chair. "Sit down and listen 
 to me." He obeyed her. 
 
 Then bracing herself for an effort Natalie 
 began : 
 
 "Felix, you and I are babes in a burning 
 wood. Unless we keep our wits and judgment 
 clear we'll be destroyed. We can't alter the 
 course of events to-day. A few people have 
 tried and they have been called traitors. The
 
 142 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 time for free speech has passed. War has its 
 prescribed vocabulary. And leaders entrench 
 themselves behind it, if they wish to remain 
 leaders. But when I see you standing under 
 a burning tree, crying out that there's a boa- 
 constrictor living in the wood and that it must 
 be got rid of, I'm willing to bet that, while you 
 catch on fire, the boa-constrictor is sneaking 
 from the dangerous place and crawling off to 
 other hunting grounds. World-violence has 
 as many skins as a snake, and changes them 
 as often. It is the Hydra of Civilization. But 
 we have still to discover how to rid the world 
 of it once and for all. The throned tyrant is 
 only one head, the munition maker is another. 
 And there are thousands of heads !" She gave 
 him a moment to answer, but he nibbled at 
 his pipe and watched her with troubled eyes. 
 Her voice grew gentle. "Felix, why do you 
 want to go? Because you are a man? Look 
 squarely into your motives. Your vanity is 
 perhaps at stake. You are ashamed, you say, 
 to pass a soldier on the street. I wonder if
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 143 
 
 he isn't often envying you. But suppose he 
 is despising you? Will you be driven by fear 
 of his disdain into a uniform?" 
 
 "Give me credit for some decency!" pro- 
 tested Felix. 
 
 She accorded it, continuing, "Well, then, 
 eliminate any suggestion of human weakness. 
 You believe that Imperialism must be defeated. 
 So do I. You believe that war is an effective 
 remedy? I do not. Look farther than the 
 present struggle ... if you can. Look at 
 the education of children, the increased armies 
 and navies, the readjusted map, the watchful 
 eyes of nations each glistening on a neighbor's 
 gain, vowing friendship while they scheme 
 and hunt for profit. Where you find it, there 
 you will find the causes for future Imperial- 
 ism. Look closely at your own country, Felix. 
 We are young. Our history is in the making. 
 And a hydra-head is quickly grown. What 
 are the capitalists doing to-day? Where is 
 there profit for some of them? Don't forget 
 it is in war; but not the greatest war of all,
 
 144 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 the war of Democracy. They could not sell 
 munitions to strikers, or lend vast sums to the 
 people. But they can feed the cannons for a 
 price, and buy the products of their land, resell- 
 ing them as they see fit, and they can tinker 
 with conquered colonies. You prate of enemies 
 
 . . . attacks! The enemy is within our gates, 
 
 p 
 
 snugly hidden behind his purpose. It does not 
 need a uniform to sniff him out ... It is noble 
 to give your life for a cause. But when all the 
 lives of honest men are given, the monster will 
 still survive. France is a sublime martyr. Ger- 
 many to-day is the hydra-head. But when that 
 head is severed, another will grow. Then 
 what? Not until united races break their sword 
 and starve the monster while they feed them- 
 selves will there be a useful victory. What 
 am I saying? It comes to nothing !" Her ges- 
 tures demolished theories. She turned away 
 wearily, as if she had defeated her own ends 
 in defending them. 
 
 But Felix questioned in a dull voice, "What's 
 to be done then?"
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 145 
 
 "Nothing! This may be the prelude to an 
 ended world," she said with a faint smile. 
 
 He jumped to his feet and started pacing 
 the studio, flinging at her, "What's got into 
 you, Natalie ? You're beyond me. Why didn't 
 you talk this way to Peter?" 
 
 She took the question squarely, shooting an 
 answer, "Because it would have killed his faith 
 in everything." Then with renewed vigor she 
 burst out. "Can't you see how helpless I am? 
 I who love this country and love Pierre, I can 
 save neither! Their fate is joined. I mean to 
 speak of nations, not of a nation of races, 
 not of a race of people, not of one creature. 
 For when I speak of France and Pierre my 
 heart is sick. The valiant little men, the pa- 
 tient women, represent to me the tragic ro- 
 mance of the world. Their tortured land is 
 stricken, their homes are emptied, and their 
 spirit remains unquenchable. In the whole 
 dreary drama of our epoch, where loss wears 
 the same mask, my love mourns most over the 
 bitter red river that carries the blood of France
 
 146 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 to the great ocean where all blood is merged." 
 She shivered as if an icy wind had touched her; 
 then she stretched out her arms to Felix. "But 
 you ! You must be saved for saner work. You 
 must be brave enough not to kill, wise enough 
 not to be killed. I tell you there must be men 
 left to build the houses, till the fields, to up- 
 hold the wage-earners, to sing the songs of 
 labor and creation. There must be some youth 
 left to dream of dawns and sunsets, of suns 
 and moons, of happy things. The stalwart 
 sons of our mothers would do well to stay at 
 home and offer their health and brains to better 
 service than that of the cannon. Now I have 
 no more to say. You can go or stay as you 
 see fit." 
 
 Felix turned his back on her and stood a 
 long while staring out at the roofs. She sat 
 as if she had forgotten him, as if she had for- 
 gotten all things and had finished her work of 
 living. Her mind was white as an unwritten 
 sheet. 
 !>-, Finally he moved. He came over and knelt
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 147 
 
 beside her, encircling her with his arms. His 
 voice was choked. 
 
 "'I won't go, Natalie . . . I won't go." He 
 repeated it over and over again, clinging to 
 her like a child. And without joy she held him, 
 murmuring his name as if she were calling 
 some one else.
 
 IX 
 
 NATALIE was alone when Lorraine 
 came to her. 
 It was late afternoon. The houses 
 of the city were huddled one against the other, 
 their stony faces veiled by the long shadows, 
 like women waiting for their widowhood. The 
 bells of St. Germain sounded deep as they rang 
 a dusky hour. Against the darker horizon 
 hung clouds like lurid flowers burst from the 
 cannon's seed. On the silent balcony where 
 Natalie stood staring out, the solemn essence 
 of the twilight had gathered the last lingering 
 scents of summer, and a haunting sadness that 
 seemed to have traveled from afar. 
 
 Natalie's melancholy was broken by a wild 
 knocking at the door. And when with startled 
 haste she went to open, she found Lorraine 
 swathed in crepe, a haggard woman whose 
 ravaged face bore fresh marks of tears. Her 
 
 148
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 149 
 
 blond hair framed her with indifferent shine. 
 Her black-gloved hands went out to Natalie 
 as she swayed forward. 
 
 Natalie gave a little cry. 
 
 "Pierre . . . ?" 
 
 But Lorraine shook her head, and with un- 
 certain steps reached the couch, muttering in- 
 coherent words. "He's gone ... I sent him 
 . . . But she said it was the only way . . . 
 and now he hates me. Oh, my God, it's my 
 fault! I had to come to you . . . you're the 
 only one. . . ." 
 
 Natalie stood over her anxious and per- 
 plexed, her own heart slowly resuming its nor- 
 mal beat. 
 
 "Tell me, dear Lorraine, what is it? Have 
 you lost any one?" 
 
 "Oh, yes . . . oh, yes!" 
 
 "You poor, poor thing. Has . . . another 
 of Pierre's brothers been killed?" 
 
 "No." She looked up at Natalie pitifully. 
 The light was washed from her eyes. Her 
 hands fumbled with the folds of her heavy veil.
 
 150 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 She did not seem strong enough to support 
 the weight of the crepe. 
 
 Natalie sat down beside her. 
 
 "Now tell me." 
 
 Then with an effort at control that con- 
 tracted her body into a rigid pose, Lorraine 
 began, and each word was like a lonely thing 
 groping its way. 
 
 "I love some one . . . he's a Polish sculp- 
 tor. He . . . when this war broke out, he 
 never thought of going. There were political 
 reasons, and he was not made ... to fight. 
 I understood at first. No one has ever done 
 anything for him to help him along. He is 
 very poor. Why should he fight for them?" 
 her voice sank to a whisper. 
 
 "Well?" said Natalie gently. 
 
 "Well, soon I felt ashamed. When all the 
 Bourdon men went off, it seemed ... a re- 
 proach. They would have despised me for lov- 
 ing a man who was not doing his share. I 
 didn't dare tell them. I didn't dare be happy. 
 I thought of you and Pierre. And it shamed
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 151 
 
 me to think that you, a stranger, were giving 
 all that you had dearest to France, that you 
 were so noble and convinced of the worth of 
 sacrifice, while I, a Frenchwoman, was a cow- 
 ard. Oh, Natalie, what must you think of 
 me?" She bowed her head. Her voice went 
 on in dreadful monotony. "I saw the other 
 women in mourning ... I saw the wounded 
 men . . . and the dead. I knew the country 
 was in danger. And all this time there was 
 Sacha, half starving, but . . . safe, working, 
 dreaming, loving me. I was afraid to come to 
 you. But I had to go to some one, as I was 
 in such a state. So I asked Germaine. She 
 is engaged, you know, to Robert de Gency. 
 She is young. She loves too. I thought she 
 would clear my conscience for me and tell me 
 to be glad because he was safe. But she judged 
 me severely. Oh, she was merciless !" 
 
 Natalie put a hand on Lorraine's knee. "I 
 wish I had known." Shadows crept across the 
 studio floor, touching Lorraine's crepe with 
 furtive fingers.
 
 152 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "She said he ought to go. She said he must 
 go if he loved me. And I listened to her . . . 
 It seemed the only way!" she wailed in sudden 
 anguish. "Then I wondered if he really cared 
 enough for me to make this sacrifice for me 
 and for my country. I doubted him ... I 
 doubted myself. It was horrible. When Ray- 
 mond was killed Germaine came to me. I 
 never thought she could be so pitiless. She 
 told me if I could go on loving a man who was 
 not doing his duty that she would consider me 
 disloyal to them all, disloyal to Raymond's 
 memory, and that she would tell the family. I 
 could not have stood that. Every night I 
 dreamed of Raymond and Pierre . . . and all 
 the others. At last I went to Sacha." 
 
 "You went to send him out?" asked Natalie 
 in a low voice. 
 
 She nodded. For a moment she could not 
 speak. Dusk stole into the room, enveloping 
 them with its quiet mist. Lorraine's pale face 
 shone out like a lost, wilted flower drifting on 
 turgid waters.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 153 
 
 "I shall never forget that day. It was yes- 
 terday. I shall never forget until I die. Ger- 
 maine took me to his door and left me there. I 
 told him quickly. I was standing beside a big 
 figure of the Christ he has been working on 
 ever since the war broke out. I remember it 
 towered above me. And I remember the feel 
 of the damp clay once when I touched it ... 
 it was clammy as a corpse. I told him quickly 
 that I must give him up unless he enlisted. I 
 told him ... I could not love a coward." Her 
 voice rose to a shriek. "Oh, God, I shall never 
 forget him! He didn't move while I talked. 
 But his eyes lost all their dreams, all their hope, 
 and blazed at me as if a furnace lit within 
 him were burning everything I threw into it. 
 He looked so deeply and so fiercely at my poor 
 naked soul that I felt it shriveling up. Yet I 
 went on. His face was white. His beard 
 flamed from it like a red banner. When I had 
 finished, he said, 'Is this your last word?* Then 
 it was too late. I thought of them: of Ray- 
 mond, Germaine . . . and you and Pierre.
 
 154 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 And I answered that it was. He strode over 
 to me and seized my wrists so brutally that I 
 could not move. And he said in a voice that I 
 can never forget, 'Yes, I will go. But I will 
 not go because I love you, but because you have 
 killed love. I will go and you will never see 
 me again. I shall never come back. You have 
 taught me enough now what life is worth !' . . . 
 I was afraid of him and tried to get away. But 
 he held me fast. 'You are a coward/ he said 
 and laughed as I have never heard a man laugh. 
 'You put a fine price on your love. You bar- 
 gain well. And I who believed that on this 
 earth there still remained a remnant of the 
 spirit of Christ, I who trusted in you, I have 
 been a fool. Yes, I will go. But I go hating 
 man ... all men . . . and such women as 
 you.' ' Lorraine covered her face with her 
 hands and began weeping. "Then he turned 
 and put his shoulder to the figure of the Christ 
 and pushed. I saw the veins in his neck bulge 
 out. I heard him breathe like a man who has 
 been running. Then I saw the thing topple
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 155 
 
 and crash down. Oh, the noise! It broke a 
 little vase of flowers. I remember he stepped 
 on a rose that rolled to his feet. . And it 
 dragged chairs and the table over with it and 
 lay face downwards in a litter of stuff. He 
 pointed to it still laughing. 'That's what 
 you've done. Now go !' I went on my knees, 
 Natalie. I prayed and begged him to forgive 
 me. But I was afraid of him. He told me if 
 I did not go at once he would kill me. So I 
 left him. Now it is all over. He will never, 
 never come back." 
 
 "You did this?" said Natalie in a hushed 
 voice. Lorraine threw her arms around the 
 younger woman's neck. "Oh, help me . . . 
 help me. You are the only one who will un- 
 derstand. You will think I was right, won't 
 you ? You would have done the same. I shall 
 go mad unless you help me." 
 
 Natalie wrenched herself free. "You have 
 done a dreadful thing," she said. 
 
 Lorraine collapsed on the couch, sobbing 
 frantically. But Natalie stood before her cold
 
 156 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 and stern, staring down at the crumpled 
 mourning. 
 
 "You have done a dreadful thing." 
 
 "You say that?" came from Lorraine in bro- 
 ken sounds. 
 
 "You listened to Germaine, that romantic 
 child? You took your love and threw it away 
 because you were not brave enough to keep it ! 
 Oh, Lorraine, how could you? You sent a man 
 out to die because you were afraid to let him 
 live! Oh, Lorraine! You dared go to a 
 man and say, 'If you love me, go out and take 
 a gun and kill.' You deserve the suffering that 
 must be yours to the end of your life. You 
 deserve it." She saw the fallen Christ, the 
 red-bearded artist standing among the ruins; 
 she saw deep into his outraged heart. And 
 her anger sank to pity. She looked sadly at 
 Lorraine: "What have you done?" 
 
 And in a sudden shriek that tore through the 
 gathering darkness Lorraine answered: "You 
 tell me that, Natalie? . . . You? I had put 
 all my faith in you! I know what your love
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 157 
 
 has made of Pierre. I know what Pierre was 
 the night before he left. And I know what he 
 was after you had talked to him that morning. 
 He has written me how you inspire him. How 
 can you condemn me?" 
 
 Natalie thrust out her hand as if to protect 
 herself. But Lorraine, raising herself on her 
 elbow, her tear-stained face contracted in a pas- 
 sion of despair, raved on : 
 
 "He's gone. Yes, I sent him! But all the 
 other women were sending their men. You 
 sent yours!" 
 
 "I never sent Pierre." 
 
 "No, but you believed that he had to go. 
 And if he had failed, you would not have loved 
 him as much. I saw your face when he said 
 good-by." 
 
 Then Natalie dropped on her knees before 
 Lorraine, and hid her face in the limp veil. 
 The crepe smelt of musty, dead things. The 
 stale odor mounted through her nostrils and 
 filled her being with a sense of suffocation. 
 Deep in the dark behind her closed lids glim-
 
 158 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 mered awful visions of men with blazing eyes 
 and men with tragic eyes and open wounds 
 and pale upraised hands pointing . . . 
 
 Lorraine's sobs strangled and ceased. The 
 room was profoundly quiet and dark. And 
 the bells of Saint-Germain rang as if they 
 would never stop, as if their voices must reach 
 the ends of the earth awaking sleepers. They 
 told men that there was no way of escaping 
 fate. They told women that there was no use 
 in weeping. 
 
 The two women lay immobile in the gloom. 
 At last Natalie raised her head. 
 
 "Poor Lorraine," she murmured. 
 
 Lorraine's hand crept out and found a 
 friend's hand ready. 
 
 "Poor Natalie." 
 
 So clasping each other's hands as if the 
 human contact saved them they clung a while 
 longer, each separate in her hopeless introspec- 
 tion. What had been broken could never be 
 mended.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 159 
 
 "He will not come back," Lorraine whis- 
 pered once. 
 
 "No, he will not come back." 
 
 "Do you think he will forgive me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What have I done?" 
 
 Natalie answered: "What have we all 
 done?" 
 
 "You have Pierre." 
 
 "Yes, I have Pierre. But he may never 
 come back." 
 
 "At least he will have loved you." 
 
 "I would rather he lived." 
 
 "He will live, Natalie. I know he will live." 
 
 They wept in one another's arms. 
 
 Pierre wrote : 
 
 "I don't know why, Beloved, but I am happy 
 to-day. I have not been so happy for a long 
 time. Or perhaps it is that I am quiet, because 
 there is so much death around me. There are 
 men here who have learned to hate, and men 
 who will never know how to hate. They are
 
 160 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 the saddest of all, because they kill the enemy 
 pitying the man. But it is not to talk of war 
 that I write you now. Last night I was on 
 watch. The feeling of the Thing was there. 
 I knew it stalked close by, with squinting eye 
 and cocked gun ready to reach the heart. The 
 Hunter hunted. But the universe repudiated 
 him. Like a grave parent who rebukes an 
 erring son, not with angry words but with ma- 
 jestic disdain of indifference, the earth with- 
 drew in a stately secrecy. The sky had re- 
 ceded until it no longer seemed to cover us, but 
 stretched unattainable, remote, an Elysian field 
 flowered with gold, beyond the reach of our 
 reddened feet. The land was mute and cold 
 and scentless, as if it had locked in its being, 
 out of sight or touch of man, all its life-giving 
 fruits. The withered silhouettes of trees were 
 skeletons from which the spirit has gone. And 
 we were left to forge over a frozen surface 
 unchided and unloved. 
 
 "But I found peace in this awesome solitude. 
 You will understand, Beloved, when I tell you
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 161 
 
 that the link between me and God, between me 
 and man, slackened until I no longer felt kin- 
 ship with either. And there alone, I was a tiny 
 machine ticking away a mindless record of a 
 thing called life, without regret or desire. Had 
 a bullet found me then I should have fallen 
 passively, satisfied to lie unburied on the calm 
 surface of the universe. I thought how strange 
 it was that man has two eyes, two ears, two 
 arms and legs, but only one heart. I was as 
 solitary and unique as my heart and would 
 have ended with it, a perishable image of a 
 deathless God. 
 
 "Natalie, the entity that is me, that is Pierre 
 masquerading in a uniform, can never solve 
 the riddle, or change the world, or quicken the 
 dead, or save himself. 
 
 "To-night we have a night attack. What 
 will the night say? And will the stars draw 
 nearer to match with the cannon's glare or will 
 they be so many closed eyes, masked, that they 
 may not see our deeds? Adieu, Beloved."
 
 X 
 
 NEWS came to Natalie that Pierre was 
 badly wounded and had been sent to 
 a hospital in the city. 
 
 Then there were terrible days. 
 
 Felix, awkwardly tender in his solicitude, 
 and pale, tragic Lorraine circled about her dis- 
 pensing comfort. But Natalie did not need 
 their comfort. She had a refrain of her own 
 "He will get well . . . he will get well." And 
 in this reiteration she found a surer message 
 than in all their cautious words. Deep in her 
 heart she felt relief: such a relief as she could 
 not share with any one. The broken thing was 
 well out of it, with still a spark of life to do 
 the mending. And now he could not die. She 
 willed his spirit to conquer tortured flesh 
 during the grim weeks when she might not 
 even see him. She sent her thought driving 
 through space to reach his bedside and keep a 
 
 162
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 163 
 
 sleepless vigil. Things and people moved about 
 her with vague silhouettes and vaguer voices. 
 She saw and heard realities as if they were 
 figments of dull dreams. She knew only one 
 thing : that Pierre no longer stood in the crim- 
 son trenches, a target for the enemy. The 
 jealous egoism of the lover blotted out all other 
 issues but the fate of this one love. Fighting 
 millions might fill the universe with their up- 
 roar, if their din spared that high, thin line 
 upon which Pierre lay struggling with mor- 
 tality. Let them fight! Let them tear the 
 earth to pieces and put it together again. The 
 armies no longer wore Pierre's face. They 
 were poor strangers marked and doomed. His 
 return from the treacherous regions was omen 
 enough of his destiny. He would survive. 
 
 Then one day when the slender thread that 
 held his spirit to the shell was at the snapping 
 point, and Natalie knelt at the narrow gate- 
 way through which he might soon pass never to 
 return, a blighting sense of her selfishness came 
 upon her. And she was ashamed because in
 
 164 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 her supreme confidence she had presumed to 
 separate Pierre from his agonizing comrades. 
 If he died or lived he was after all no more 
 than a blade of grass before the relentless 
 thresher. The red plain was thick with such 
 as he. She prayed that he might live, vowing 
 her vision to a broader consciousness of issues 
 should he be spared. The immense drama in- 
 cluded him and herself. She could not map 
 out her peace of mind upon her private hopes. 
 Should he go or stay, the questions depending 
 on his course were farther reaching than one 
 man saved or lost. Or so Natalie came to be- 
 lieve as she struggled with the problems that 
 confronted her. 
 
 The crisis passed in his favor. Still secluded 
 on the misty island of pain where she might not 
 follow him, he could not see or know her for 
 many weeks. She was left to beckon his weak 
 spirit back to the main shore without hearing 
 his answer. But she was left also to hear the 
 unquelled thunder of sullen forces battling for
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 165 
 
 supremacy. And because Pierre was merci- 
 fully removed from the iron ranks that held 
 the land, because one battered soldier was 
 taken from the masses, the unleashed violence 
 of men was' none the less ready to worry and 
 to maul the things they had once prized. 
 
 She felt that Pierre's need of her would 
 emerge from this trial, more urgent than ever. 
 And again she faced the fear that he might see 
 in her unquiet spirit a reflection of his own. 
 She grew to dread the meeting, when with 
 yearning eyes he would probe the happy shal- 
 lows and go deeper towards the dark places, 
 where the lie, such as it was, lay enshrined. 
 If in discovering it, he found himself, the creed 
 he had built up on her assurances would crack 
 and fall, leaving him dismayed among his 
 broken gods. He would have fought and lost 
 for nothing. And their love, the prop, would 
 have received a mortal blow. Yet try as she 
 would, she could not believe that a single death 
 could bring about the miracle of a regenerated 
 humanity. She had told Pierre that there was
 
 166 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 beauty in a bloody cause, and that all the youth 
 of his martyred country would by their sacrifice 
 save civilization. She had humored his illusion, 
 calling it nobler names. Now he was back, 
 and if there were to be a reckoning, his faith 
 would be at stake. 
 
 Then came the day she had been waiting for, 
 when that beloved heart took courage, and the 
 frail spark burned higher, lighting the mind. 
 And Lorraine, smiling for the first time in 
 many weeks, said to her: 
 
 "You can see Pierre to-day. He's asking 
 for you. I have arranged things so that he 
 will be alone. The family have worn him out. 
 Now he needs you." 
 
 Natalie prepared tremulously for the visit, 
 and she was beautiful. The grace of early 
 Spring was in her eyes. She wore her joy 
 mysteriously, but it gleamed from the bright 
 curve of her lips, through the pallor of her face, 
 infusing a faint pink into her cheeks. It flowed 
 from the dusky mass of her hair down the long
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 167 
 
 nervous lines of her body. It transformed 
 her into a sentient creature freed temporarily 
 from the strain that had so long drained her 
 vitality. 
 
 She carried a great armful of narcissus. 
 Their milky blossoms sang of fields and of blue 
 sky. They discoursed in perfumes of love, and 
 life, and beauty, ignoring the mid-winter chill 
 that could not freeze their purity. 
 
 And as she passed the women on the street, 
 she would have flung her happiness at them, 
 as a child tosses a rose to a friendly stranger. 
 She lived the moment passionately, for once 
 without an intruding doubt. But when she 
 reached the House of Pain she faltered in her 
 swift winging, a quick clutch at her heart. 
 There in the white domain of steel instruments 
 the air was laden with unfamiliar smells. In 
 discreet corners a daub of red betrayed a cast 
 off bandage. A glimpse of white figures has- 
 tening on their way, a keen passing glance from 
 a bearded doctor, a sense of shrouded expecta- 
 tion, brought her sudden consciousness of hov-
 
 168 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 ering danger held at bay. She climbed the 
 stairs hugging her narcissus, to the door that 
 separated her from Pierre. And there the gen- 
 tle nurse left her, telling her to knock and 
 enter. 
 
 She paused to breathe, then, with a steady 
 hand, knocked. And the voice that had said 
 good-by eternities ago answered her. She 
 stood in the little room. She saw as through 
 a mist the face on the pillow, and stumbled 
 forward, her milky blossoms dropping on the 
 white spread. 
 
 "Pierre!" 
 
 "Natalie!" 
 
 His hand was safe within hers, held as one 
 holds a treasure never to be released. The 
 weaker fingers nestled in her palm. She looked 
 into the dear wasted face, where hollows dug 
 by the grim sculptor lay between the salient 
 bones, and where like freshly lit torches the 
 eyes burned into hers their wordless gratitude. 
 And in the imperceptible hush that followed 
 their first greeting she found her Pierre. The
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 169 
 
 little smile of parting was still there, moored 
 to his lips. His voice, as she had imagined it, 
 traveling from the past, reached her. 
 
 "Beloved, is it you? . . . really you?" 
 
 "It is really me." 
 
 "It has been so long!" 
 
 "Too long!" 
 
 "I thought I should never see you again. 
 How beautiful you are ! Natalie, you are beau- 
 tiful." He touched the blossoms. "And these ! 
 . . . You remember that I loved them !" 
 
 "Oh, Pierre!" 
 
 "I have so much to tell you. Your letters, 
 Beloved . . . you will never know what they 
 meant to me." 
 
 "Brave Peter the Knight." 
 
 His voice rose to a troubled note. "But 
 I'm not brave, Natalie. I must tell you that 
 I'm not brave." And now she saw strange 
 ghosts brooding in his eyes, things that had not 
 been there before. She saw the bandaged 
 head, the bandaged shoulder, and the long still 
 outlines of his body beneath the covering. She
 
 170 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 would have cried out then "Oh, Pierre, what 
 have they done to you?" But the gladness in 
 his face arrested her. 
 
 And she waited to unburden her heart. 
 
 Then, as if he were afraid that he would not 
 have time to tell her all he had to say, he began 
 to speak quickly. He looked to her with mystic 
 expectancy, and his eyes were filled with 
 yearning. 
 
 "Beloved, you remember my last letter to 
 you? I told you I was happy. But I did 
 not tell you why. I was happy because I 
 knew that night was the last for me . . . out 
 there. I was so tired. I had given all I could." 
 The clasp of his fingers tightened around hers. 
 "Without you, I could not have given so much. 
 I didn't want to fail you. Listen, Natalie, 
 and try not to despise me. Towards the end 
 I felt so useless. I was there with the others 
 doing all I could . . . but it was not enough. 
 The men I loved the best died giving more. 
 You remember poor old Nassaud?" he said in a 
 sad voice.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 171 
 
 She nodded, stroking his hand. 
 
 "Well, they were such fine fellows. And I 
 kept wondering if their death had settled any- 
 thing. I couldn't get accustomed to the fight- 
 ing. The noise and the stench of it sickened 
 me. The waiting in the trenches with life re- 
 duced to its elemental instincts that was the 
 hardest. Our point of view was limited to the 
 tiny area stretched between ourselves and them. 
 There seemed nothing left of the rest of the 
 world. Only your letters told me of the big 
 cause ..." His voice trailed off, then he re- 
 sumed: "The Germans were nothing but men 
 as bored with it all as we were. One day we 
 took a prisoner, and when he talked, it was as 
 if he were taking words out of our mouths. 
 Strange that an enemy should speak our lan- 
 guage ! But of course I knew that between the 
 men and the Idea of evil there was a world. 
 Our spirits were at war . . . our bodies paid. 
 We had to kill them ... we had to . . ." He 
 made a wild movement, winced with pain, and 
 sank back among the pillows.
 
 172 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "Be quiet, Pierre," she soothed. 
 
 But red spots glowed on his cheeks; his 
 hands trembled in hers. "The fate of the world 
 depended on us. Didn't it? I thought it all 
 out . . . some day I'll tell you. Men were the 
 pawns. But I was too tired that night even 
 to be a pawn. When I ... climbed out of 
 the trench, I thought I'd go running straight 
 ahead, and I prayed to God, Natalie, that I 
 should drop. I had my bayonet ready. I held 
 it as if it were your hand. It would have 
 stabbed the first man in my way. The sky, the 
 earth were on fire. The whistle and the screech 
 of shells . . . the madness . . . the night, 
 the dripping blood and smoke, and I a lonely 
 desperate soul racing through it, stumbling 
 over bodies, crying aloud, 'God, God, God!' 
 as I ran. I think I killed once. I didn't seem 
 to be touching earth or to be ... the thing 
 called man. The evil of hell was on us ... 
 In all the raging, awful place there wasn't one 
 sane eye, one lucid brain. Then, it was as if 
 I were suddenly forced into sleep, violently
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 173 
 
 thrust into unconsciousness. ... I don't re- 
 member. . . . Only long afterwards I woke 
 to dreadful pain and saw a dead German's face 
 close to mine, twisted in a petrified scream of 
 hate. And around his neck hung a locket 
 with a picture of three children in it. His . . . 
 legs were torn off." 
 
 "Don't!" broke from Natalie, and she cov- 
 ered her eyes. 
 
 "Forgive me ... I wanted you to know 
 ... I was not brave. I fainted then. They 
 must have found me." Little beads of sweat 
 stood out on his forehead beneath the rim of his 
 bandage. He tried to smile, but there was no 
 more strength left in him. 
 
 "You shouldn't ... you shouldn't remem- 
 ber," groaned Natalie. 
 
 "Beloved, did I do my duty?" 
 
 "Yes, you did your duty . . . and it's over." 
 
 He closed his eyes, as if she had told him 
 what he wanted most to hear. She thought he 
 was asleep and sat very still, holding his damp 
 hand.
 
 174 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 It was over then. He was back from the 
 awful sunless land. He had not forgotten to 
 smile or to call her his beloved. But his mind 
 was a fragile, sick thing that must be coaxed 
 back to health. She saw the things she would 
 have to do if she wished to save the faith he 
 had kept immaculate for her sake. More than 
 ever she must uphold him, keep him from the 
 horror and despair that filled her own heart. 
 She would talk to him of beauty. She would 
 preach life and joy. She would make him and 
 herself forget. For they had earned their 
 peace. 
 
 She saw his lips move and bent closer. 
 
 "Speak to me, Beloved . . . Tell me about 
 the city. It is so long . . ." 
 
 She began as if she were telling a fairy story. 
 "The city is a soft gray. Even the stones look 
 gray as if they were made of mist. The gar- 
 dens have deep purple places, rich as plums, 
 where dreamers go and listen for the Spring. 
 The Seine is the color of crushed grapes. It 
 flows slowly ... so slowly beneath the
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 175 
 
 bridges, as if it were carrying heavy secrets 
 tangled in the hidden currents like dark fish in 
 nets. And all along the Quais old women sell 
 old brown books. The streets are gray and 
 often glisten with wet. But on the corners 
 flower-stalls like little fires spring up to warm 
 the heart, and there we find the violets, tulips 
 colored like parrakeets, daffodils and narcissus 
 . . . friends whose faces always smile at some 
 approaching summer. And next to them 
 squats the chestnut-man roasting chestnuts all 
 day long. The air is full of spicy roast and 
 burning charcoal. Then there are the oranges ! 
 Can you see them in the winter twilight? They 
 burst out from the dusk like little balls of gold 
 ... a heaped treasure guarded by an old fairy 
 godmother. Some of them wear funny peaked 
 caps. They tell us of fruit trees far away in 
 sun-soaked lands. They make us think of 
 southern seas as blue as jewels. And the old 
 fairy godmother sits and nods beside the or- 
 anges. Any one could steal her treasure." 
 Her voice grew singsong like a lullaby. .
 
 176 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Pierre said drowsily, "Tell me more ... I 
 like to hear . . . you . . ." She went on 
 "People of all kinds hurry through the streets, 
 so quickly you can hardly see their eyes. Each 
 has something to do more important than any- 
 thing else. They are telling themselves fairy 
 tales from morning to night. The pretty 
 woman is thinking that no other woman is as 
 pretty, that the new dress she has ordered will 
 be the loveliest dress in the city, that her lover 
 will tell her all her life how beautiful she is. 
 The young man is thinking that he will pass his 
 examinations and be famous very soon and 
 wear a decoration. All the women will want 
 him to love them. But he will not be so easily 
 caught. The stout, pompous man with the red 
 ribbon in his buttonhole is thinking that surely 
 he will be made a minister before he dies, or 
 that he has invested his fortune with astonish- 
 ing foresight, or that his wines are better than 
 any others, or that he can really not afford to 
 know So-and-So. The mothers are thinking 
 that their children are the most beautiful and
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 177 
 
 the most brilliant creatures of their generation, 
 that they will be Princesses and Generals and 
 Presidents. All these people pass and pass 
 one another on the streets, thinking how clever, 
 how good, how wise they are." She ended in 
 a whisper. 
 
 The little wrinkles and lines in Pierre's face 
 were smoothed out. He lay breathing quietly, 
 the hand in hers relaxed. She lifted it as if it 
 were a fragile thing and put it on the bed. 
 He stirred but did not wake. He looked like 
 a young monk after a long fast. His thin 
 upraised face was whiter than the circling ban- 
 dages, and infinitely pure with an ascetic grace 
 that softened angles and hollows. 
 
 As Natalie studied him her tears brimmed 
 over as from a full cup, rolling silently down 
 her cheeks. She wept to find him so gentle, 
 so resigned. If he were as men were meant to 
 be, then other men were miserable examples of 
 a distorted humanity. But he was rare, and 
 could never fit his wistful spirit to flagrant 
 crudities. Then what must be his fate?
 
 The state of men was savage, covered thinly 
 by a decent disguise. Their deeds sprang from 
 primeval instincts, deformed by scheming 
 brains. In cycles to come she saw them still 
 battling for illusions, felling one another with 
 prodigious weapons yet to be invented, squab- 
 bling over the earth that so often confuted 
 their cunning arguments. Children of nature 
 . . . yes: but nature that took no account of 
 season, nature that warred eternally with har- 
 mony. What were they after? What did they 
 want? She saw their goodness thwarted, their 
 wickedness extolled. She saw dreamers snared 
 and simple souls confused. The lumbering 
 mass that flapped and squirmed over disputed 
 ground, squeaking their puny ambitions to a 
 patient God, could never resolve the gigantic 
 problems risen from their megalomania. Was 
 man to be forever the enemy of man until 
 through centuries of slaughter and weaken- 
 ing, in dwindling hosts, they reached the end,' 
 where the two last mortals, debilitated rem- 
 nants of proud races, stood glaring at one
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 179 
 
 another across a last frontier: Cain and Abel 
 torn with savage rivalry over the last illusion, 
 there to meet and grapple murderously! 
 
 The present talk of nations was fine and 
 promising. It rolled in victorious nouns from 
 mouth to mouth, it swelled in alien languages 
 from pole to pole, changing its accent to suit 
 a race. Economists computed while popula- 
 tions fought. And the result was sullied money 
 and dead men. The Christ idea haunted 
 choked cathedrals, seeking a disciple among 
 the kneeling crepe. But Christ had ceased 
 to be a practical Master. He was the gentle 
 Consoler who had died in vain to save man- 
 kind. Suffering was His message, and their 
 excuse. 
 
 Pierre woke to break the melancholy reflec- 
 tions of his Natalie, and to melt her with his 
 smile. 
 
 "You've cured me already," he said in a 
 stronger voice. And everything forgotten but 
 his need of her, she turned a recovered radi- 
 ance full upon him.
 
 XI 
 
 PIERRE was back in the House of the 
 Bourdons. Then began his convales- 
 cence. But all was not as before. 
 Seven tragic months had passed between his 
 going and his return. And his homecoming 
 was not as he had imagined it. The Bourdons 
 applied themselves to a strict observance of 
 national disaster, including death and financial 
 loss. They were ready for any sacrifice if in 
 the making of it they could uphold a patriotic 
 standard. When Pierre was wounded they 
 considered they had made a just donation to 
 France. They had given only one son. They 
 would give another if it were necessary. 
 
 Pierre was in no mood to play the martial 
 hero. But he felt constrained to take the cue. 
 He had never resisted their wishes, much 
 less so now when the shadow of mourning was 
 upon the house. He was grateful to them also 
 
 180
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 181 
 
 for their efforts to surround him with every 
 care and consideration, though their assiduous 
 attendance too often interfered with his free- 
 dom. He felt them, in an inarticulate way, 
 striving to express their pride in him. He 
 would have told them how unwarranted their 
 pride was, but feared to hurt them deeply ; and 
 they had grown old since Raymond's death, 
 though they would not have acknowledged it. 
 With his son Pierre's return, Jean Bourdon 
 found again the booming notes of confidence, 
 the stiff carriage of his shoulders, the rounded 
 chest and assured gestures that ranked him as 
 head of the House. Madame Bourdon loos- 
 ened the pinched lines around her lips, relaxed 
 the devout resignation of her manner, resumed 
 a brisk show of competency. But Pierre saw 
 that they were only mimicking their broken 
 selves, replacing vanished personalities by a 
 fictitious display of optimism. And his heart 
 was sad. 
 
 He wanted to talk to them of Natalie. 
 When he mentioned her, however, he encoun-
 
 182 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 tered sudden reserve. It was as if he had in- 
 troduced a stranger, without regard for their 
 feelings, into the closed circle of their mourn- 
 ing. He was disconcerted by the unspoken re- 
 buke and not yet strong enough to argue with 
 them. But Lorraine, to whom he went at last 
 for advice, said with a cheerless little smile, 
 "Wait, dear Pierre, before you speak to them. 
 They are not ready. . . . See your Natalie as 
 often as you can, and then some day when you 
 are stronger, go to them and tell them your 
 plans. . . . Not now." 
 
 Pierre thought that she was wise. They 
 were not ready, and he dreaded giving them 
 more pain. But he suffered from this thing 
 that lay between them, and he was only happy 
 when he could be with Natalie. 
 
 The first weeks he could not often escape 
 from the family. He felt the habit of duty 
 towards them, and he knew what they ex- 
 pected of him. Germaine hung about him, 
 volubly affectionate, disserting on her unique 
 theme: Robert de Gency's perfection. The
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 183 
 
 children, Jean Paul, Henri and Rose Marie, 
 wide-eyed, timid, stared at their wounded uncle 
 until, their awe dissipated, they filled the rooms 
 with noisy mimic warfare for his benefit. 
 Grandmother Bourdon accepted his presence 
 as one of the unquestioned events in her 
 shriveling world, where sight and sound were 
 failing, and young faces were reflections of a 
 ghostly past. Only Louise Bourdon, an ab- 
 sorbed joyless mother, nursed her newly born 
 with blank side-glances at intruders. She 
 barely acknowledged Pierre's return. It was 
 as if, with Raymond's going, a nerve had 
 snapped, disconnecting her with the rest of 
 the world. She lived in twilight. 
 
 Lorraine, carrying her incurable regret like 
 a secret disease, served Pierre as if she loved 
 him but could not share her pain with him or 
 any man. At his first question she had an- 
 swered briefly, "He's gone," and would say 
 no more. But Germaine told Pierre a version 
 of the story, and Pierre was infinitely tender 
 to Lorraine afterwards.
 
 184 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Sometimes at night, when 'he had not seen 
 Natalie during the day, he would write her, 
 because he was very lonely and only she could 
 understand. "I should be happy, Beloved," he 
 wrote, "I am getting well. To-day I could 
 lift my arm higher than yesterday. I feel life 
 renewing, as if the fountain, clear of all im- 
 purities, lifted me on its sunny jet. And in 
 my heart the birds who used to sing are sing- 
 ing fresh songs. Youth is like a beautiful day. 
 The body partakes of its delight, even when 
 the mind remains aloof, sharpened by some 
 private sorrow. My physical sensations are 
 numberless. The homely details of living have 
 become great adventures upon which I embark 
 each morning when I open my eyes. I am 
 alive. That is the first sensation. I undergo 
 it to its uttermost, sometimes with a hand on 
 my heart, conscious of each breath drawn from 
 the deep wells of being. My eyes take in the 
 light. You will laugh at me, Beloved, but I 
 count the furniture in my little room as a miser 
 counts his gold to be sure none has been stolen
 
 during the night. I touch the book beside my 
 bed, the flowers in a vase. I dress slowly, us- 
 ing my good arm as a musician does a cher- 
 ished instrument with an increasing sense of 
 power. My breakfast seems to me a wonderful 
 thing, to be savored as if it were a new fra- 
 grance. My mother watches me with her kind 
 smile and calls me 'gourmand.' It isn't the 
 food; it is the idea that I can eat, that I am 
 alive. The city is a magic place. How can I 
 tell you the acute impressions that strike my 
 eyes, my ears, my nostrils ? I am like any fool- 
 ish woman lingering in front of shop windows. 
 I am drawn by their glitter. Who would be- 
 lieve, Natalie, that there are so many things 
 for sale? I gape at a jeweler's shop like any 
 savage. I am drunk with the odors of damp, 
 of humanity, of stray scents that bring me the 
 moldy smell of fields and stables. I am dizzy 
 with the spectacle of motors, horses, people 
 tangled, moving in unfinished circles that 
 never close. I tingle with the discords that 
 strike notes of life, an incomprehensible jargon
 
 186 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 no one stops to translate. This then is the 
 city; And I am part of it. This then is the 
 chief, the visible manifestation of life: a med- 
 ley of man and his playthings, his necessities 
 renewed endlessly, endlessly productive. 
 
 "If it were so ! But when I have drunk to 
 its last sweet drop the sensation of life, I be- 
 gin to think. Then my eyes change, Natalie, 
 as with a click the machine adjusts itself to 
 another vision. I still see the city, but it is 
 bleeding as if it had been pierced by a thou- 
 sand javelins. The women wear black. Their 
 faces are like little mirrors in which I see al- 
 ways the same grave. Those who wear brighter 
 colors look like flowers out of season, costly, 
 self-conscious. The uniforms go by like bits of 
 a flag that is growing smaller as the pieces are 
 torn off. Who will put it together again? 
 The infirm, the diseased, the anemic, the old 
 men, display their weaknesses as if to explain 
 why they are still alive. Where is the youth 
 of France? Where is France in this city that
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 187 
 
 is being drained? The external appearances of 
 life are here. There are people who buy and 
 people who sell. The show is fair, as if a few 
 miles away the soul of a nation were not being 
 riddled with shots. But the sound of killing 
 mingles with the hubbub of traffic. In sneaks 
 among the living, humming its monotone. It 
 raps on the shop windows, mocking the fu- 
 tility of wares. What use is this jewel, this 
 flower? 
 
 "Humanity is more inaccessible than God, 
 Natalie. We are of it : it is never with us . . . 
 always beyond on its mad race. Sometimes 
 I think we never meet it face to face, even in 
 the enemy. We fight an elusive evil. You 
 say it is tyranny we fight. Then must we crush 
 humanity . . . our friend, our enemy? . . . 
 There is no good in my reasoning. I am an 
 atavic animal. I owe my life to the Bourdons 
 and to France. I have not yet paid my debt. 
 I am alive. But, Beloved, am I happy? Only 
 you can make me believe I am."
 
 188 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Pierre was right. He was an atavic animal. 
 The Bourdon blood was in him, the Bourdon 
 spirit urged him on. His mind alone pleaded 
 separate functions that kept him an awakened 
 entity struggling against the confining bonds 
 of a race. But at times he yielded to the pres- 
 sure of kinship, adopting a cause with the 
 phrases and gestures of his father. 
 
 When, as often happened, he and Jean Bour- 
 don went out to walk, they merged identities in 
 a single pace, a single expression. They 
 walked as owner and heir treading their land. 
 Each represented the other's worth in society. 
 Pierre was the army, Jean Bourdon the bour- 
 geoisie, the industrial who has profited and 
 now pays a citizen's fee. They walked with 
 the manner of men who are acquitting them- 
 selves honorably of a duty. They talked poli- 
 tics. They were of the same opinion. Jean 
 Bourdon tore down governments and put them 
 up again. Pierre echoed without much con- 
 viction. Pierre pointed out the beauty of a 
 monument, a building. His father agreed
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 189 
 
 importantly. France was their refrain, France 
 before the war and after: what prospects would 
 attend victory, what art, industry, commerce, 
 would follow the annihilation of the "Bar- 
 barians." And in their golden plans, built 
 with the ardent heart of a people, from ruins 
 burst cities, from graves prosperity. The spirit 
 of France surrounded them reassuringly. Its 
 history loomed in stone. The plumes of an- 
 cient chivalry waved on the blue helmets of 
 modern warriors. The wit of generations 
 sparkled in the mouths of urchins. France was 
 everywhere. And in the tragic epoch where 
 world issues were at stake, where human mis- 
 ery, ambition, grandeur and folly ran riot 
 among men, the people of France, true to their 
 greater selves, fought for their Latin heritage, 
 in the only way they knew how. 
 
 Jean Bourdon believed in his sons just as 
 he believed in France. One son was dead, one 
 wounded, one in daily peril. But behind them 
 came Jean Paul, Henri and the newly born 
 Raymond. As he had lived, so they would
 
 190 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 live, and die if necessary. He did not see 
 them or France any mightier, any wiser at 
 dealing with economic problems once the strug- 
 gle ended; he saw Alsace-Lorraine recon- 
 quered, and the sons of his sons upholding the 
 name of Bourdon throughout shifting genera- 
 tions. 
 
 As he walked with his son Pierre, he counted 
 the sympathetic looks of strangers, and, se- 
 cure beside the uniform, he reaped the benefits 
 of sacrifice. But Pierre had no such innocent 
 vanity. He walked as he had been taught to 
 do beside his father, sweetly conscious of the 
 worthy man, his truant thoughts returning ever 
 to Natalie, whose image he sought now to as- 
 sociate with that of his family. 
 
 One day in the early Spring, a letter, his 
 last, reached Germaine from Robert de Gency. 
 It was his farewell. He had v6lunteered to 
 go upon a mission from which there was little 
 chance of his return. 
 
 He wrote: "My little Germaine, forgive
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 191 
 
 me. If I never see you again, believe that I 
 have done my duty as a soldier, putting my 
 country first, even before you. You would 
 not have it otherwise. We might have been 
 very happy. But if I had failed to give my 
 best to France, we should never have been 
 happy; and if, in giving my best, I lose my 
 life, you must also give your best and bear 
 the loss as I would have you with pride and 
 honor. You are young, my dearest. I have 
 grown old since the war. I have dreamed of 
 our home, of our children. Many others have 
 dreamed and gone dreaming to a glorious 
 death. Perhaps it was never to be. Our coun- 
 try is in such danger that perhaps we can- 
 not save it. But before I go, I want to tell 
 you, Germaine, that I respect my enemies. 
 In the beginning I, with the others, despised 
 them. We covered them with vulgar abuse. 
 We gave them no credit for courage. We were 
 wrong. They are poor men like ourselves, 
 good and bad, fighting because they have to. 
 If they had known what war is to-day, many
 
 192 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 of them would not have gone. But it is too 
 late. They are fed with lies. They tell each 
 other lies to keep their spirit up. The world 
 is a sad place to-day. Who would have thought 
 it? We are poor beings, forced to he heroes 
 or to die cowards. In a few hours Robert de 
 Gency may have ceased to exist. Yet the war 
 will go on. Be good to my family, little Ger- 
 maine. They will need you. Do not cry. 
 Keep me in your heart and remember that I 
 died for France." 
 
 Germaine lay on her bed tearlessly, clasp- 
 ing the letter to her breast. Beside her Robert 
 de Gency 's photograph stood draped with a 
 small flag. She lay in dreadful silence, with 
 closed eyes. And no one knew the mystery 
 of her virgin grief. No one could read the 
 stricken young face, nor break the gates closed 
 on her loss. 
 
 Robert de Gency, brave in a spotless uni- 
 form, his clean sword uplifted in the sun, rode 
 backwards and forwards in her empty brain. 
 He was not dead. The secret dreams of youth,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 193 
 
 the worship of the hero, rose between him and 
 the telling shot. Beloved life was not clipt in 
 a moment, leaving nothing. Robert would 
 come back, brave and young, to speak to her 
 of victory. Victory dwelt only in his return. 
 Death came to older men. 
 
 The enemy, who had hitherto been a vague 
 threatening nightmare, invisible and alien, a 
 counter-force against which, magnificently, 
 France in the image of Robert de Gency had 
 tilted her clean vanquishing steel, became a 
 concrete monster, a giant crouching on the land 
 with ^weapon aimed murderously at Robert's 
 heart: a monster whose hate for Germaine di- 
 rected the blow. Robert had said, "Poor men !" 
 No man was poor who wantonly destroyed 
 love. And so hate entered Germaine's soul. 
 
 Still she did not cry. She lay among the 
 ruins of her youth, cursing in strange form- 
 less names the poor thing men called war. 
 
 On the second evening, Pierre tiptoed into 
 the dark little room and took her hand. At 
 the touch of a man's hand she shivered as if a
 
 194 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 blade had found her, and rising like a young 
 fury from her despair, hurled wild phrases 
 at him. 
 
 "Kill . . . Kill back!" she screamed. "Kill 
 them . . . every one! You must . . . you 
 must. I tell you to." Her shrill voice brought 
 the Bourdons, haggard with her pain, rushing 
 into the room. They found her facing Pierre, 
 her fists clenched, her face twisted in demented 
 grimace. She stamped a bare foot on the 
 ground. Her loosened hair stirred as if a wind 
 were in it. 
 
 "No mercy! You . . . you go out and find 
 the man," she raved to Pierre, who was trying 
 in vain to calm her. "Or else bring Robert 
 back. No ... he can't come back. Kill . . . 
 kill them. I'll be glad." 
 
 Madame Bourdon leaned against the wall, 
 a hand to her heart. 
 
 "Dear God, the child is mad. My poor little 
 Germaine is mad!" 
 
 Lorraine went forward, her arm out- 
 stretched. "Germaine!"
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 195 
 
 Germaine turned on her and began to laugh. 
 "Oh, it's you, is it? Well, you sent your love 
 out too ... I told you it was the only way. 
 You fool to have listened to me. . . . He 
 won't come back now." Her voice mounted. 
 "Well, if he doesn't . . . what do I care? Tell 
 him to find the man and kill. . . . Let them 
 all kill." 
 
 Lorraine's lips moved, but she made no 
 sound, and fell back, her hand over her eyes. 
 
 Then suddenly the crazy laughter broke. 
 Germaine staggered, fell on her knees beside 
 the bed and wept as children do in a first parox- 
 ysm of pain. 
 
 "Thank God," whispered Jean Bourdon. 
 "She will be better now." 
 
 Louise Bourdon walked into the room. Her 
 thin figure, weighed down by crepe, moved 
 slowly like Fate, straight over to Germaine. 
 Only once she spoke: 
 
 "Leave me with her." 
 
 Their eyes signaled and, with tacit accord, 
 they obeyed. One after the other, they stole
 
 196 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 out of the room. Pierre was the last to go. 
 Still Germaine wept hopelessly, her body given 
 over to the spasms that racked her like a frail 
 branch in a storm. 
 
 Louise knelt beside her, and Pierre left the 
 two. Soon there was silence. And all that 
 night there was silence, while Louise Bour- 
 don kept mysterious watch over the girl. 
 
 Pierre could not sleep. Germaine's mad 
 cries rang in his ears. 
 
 "Kill them ... kill every one!" 
 And the horror was upon him. For the 
 greater was his grief, the less he wanted to kill. 
 These things could not be mended. Yet the 
 cry was there, so thrilling that it pierced him 
 like a mortal wound. His arm, still lifeless, 
 strove to rise, as if the weight of a gun were 
 on it. He heard the voices of his comrades 
 in the night, saw their strained red eyes fixed 
 on a distant line of fire. He feared to hear 
 them call him, and drew the sheets over his 
 head, that he might evoke Natalie's image to
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 19T 
 
 his rescue. But as he saw her, she too appeared 
 an avenging spirit pointing to the smoking 
 chaos where among poisonous gases men reeled 
 and died. He reached out like a sick child, 
 begging a life-giving cup to quench his thirst. 
 Fever consumed him. 
 
 He lived again the parting when on the 
 threshold of the unknown he had turned to 
 Natalie, received her blessing, and gone out 
 to accomplish a sacred duty to mankind. He 
 felt that he had failed. Even his death could 
 not have redeemed humanity. Yet he re- 
 mained an atom and a factor in the mighty 
 struggle that was raging even now over land 
 and sea and air. He could never detach him- 
 self from it. He tried to build a crystal ca- 
 thedral from the remnants of the battlefield. 
 He tried to build a shrine where, helpless and 
 disabled, he might still pray for future genera- 
 tions. But the obsession of death was with him : 
 death in myriad forms. He dared not tell 
 this to Natalie. Her vision was the surer.
 
 198 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 i 
 She sensed the nobler issues and she shamed 
 
 him. 
 
 He groped there in the night reconstructing 
 his faith as in the beginning, born from her 
 love. And like a child inventing a fairy story, 
 he wove from his own yearning an ideal world 
 risen from sacrifice. 
 
 The enemy of mankind was defeated. The 
 land, freed from an invader, lifted its crushed 
 fruits in fecund bloom. The patient labor of 
 men and women reconstructed villages, erected 
 new churches to a grateful God; governments 
 reformed laws, shifted unjust taxes, welded 
 industries in friendly cooperation, mingled 
 arts, shared the seas, profited fairly by one 
 another's products, encouraged free thought in 
 little countries, and by generous consent set 
 a limit to armies and navies. In a solemn union 
 joined together on the wreckage of battlefields, 
 nations, with fraternal accord, banished for- 
 ever the beast they had conceived, and set to 
 evolving a final and ultimate civilization. For 
 this, Raymond, Robert de Gency, Nassaud,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 199 
 
 Lodec and millions of others had died. For 
 this he would have died gladly. 
 
 So shaping an exultant vision of peace, and 
 dedicating it to Natalie, when dawn came, 
 Pierre closed his eyes and slept quietly.
 
 XII 
 
 ABOVE everything Natalie wanted 
 Pierre to be happy. If she could 
 have done so, she would have removed 
 from his mind all thoughts of war. His mis- 
 sion was accomplished; his life, once risked, 
 was given back to her. But with the gather- 
 ing of fresh sap in his veins, the rejuvenescence 
 of the body, his spirit halted on the brink of 
 a complete joy. The smiles and dreams Nat- 
 alie coaxed from him were like bewildered 
 birds on the threshold of an opened cage, fear- 
 ing flight. At times his eyes were set on her 
 with a strange questioning fixity that probed 
 inner shrines. It was as if these two souls, 
 his and hers, were two stars pursuing one an- 
 other on the same orbit, within sight but never 
 fused, condemned to travel like twin aspira- 
 tions divided by a mysterious law. 
 
 200
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 201 
 
 Natalie's voice was harnessed to a phantom 
 she called hope. 
 
 "It will soon be over," she kept telling 
 Pierre. "And then we'll see races united, dis- 
 armament, a lasting peace." 
 
 She could not unburden her heart. 
 
 But when Pierre answered: "France will 
 rise from this bitter test like a man purified by 
 a long illness," she thought sadly of the wars 
 to come, the sickness for which sometimes there 
 is no cure. She wanted to say: "Pierre, every 
 nation to-day is ailing with the malady called 
 nationalism. The remedy lies among the peo- 
 ple, but they do not know hqw sick they are. 
 They listen to the munition maker's diagnosis 
 and they take the government's medicine." 
 
 Since he had come back to the House of the 
 Bourdons, general issues had faded from 
 Pierre's mind. He spoke of evil and named 
 it Prussia; he spoke of good and named it 
 France. The united races fought for the sub- 
 lime cause of France: not for supremacy of 
 seas, commercial advantage, colonies, or pro-
 
 202 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 tection of wealth. The people fought for the 
 people, not for a powerful minority. And 
 Natalie listening to him had no heart for con- 
 tradiction. 
 
 "Look how we are," he said. "Before the 
 war we squabbled among ourselves. Nothing 
 was good. We ridiculed each other in a pother 
 of small revolutions that got nowhere. Art 
 wrangled with art, people with administrations, 
 the State with God. We were tangled in a 
 muddle of petty officials, intrigue, prejudices 
 . . . words, phrases, gesticulations. We cari- 
 catured our rivals and called it wit. Progress 
 was a question of bribes, taxes, decorations. 
 The socialists fought against the army. The 
 man who roared the loudest became a national 
 idol on a tottering pedestal. But now look at 
 us! One nation, one voice, one ideal ... an 
 heroic vision of a loyal race united in a single 
 purpose . . ." 
 
 To which Natalie might have replied : "Ro- 
 mantic, sublime children, your France is in 
 your hearts, the banner of an illusion. You
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 203 
 
 are saving your land to give it to the man 
 who put a gun in your hand. Your earnings 
 are the price of the gun you hold. When will 
 you see that? And not you alone are blind. 
 It is not France alone who will win or lose 
 uselessly in this war. It is the people of every 
 nation." 
 
 Instead she answered : "The blood of France 
 is a costly wine and what will become of fu- 
 ture grapevines?" 
 
 Pierre cried: "There will always be more 
 vines!" 
 
 The armies never wavered. Nor did the 
 death of brave men postpone the coming of 
 Spring. The stir of laboring earth thrilled 
 across the mutilated frontiers, imperceptible as 
 the ripening of fruit. The exiled birds, return- 
 ing, sailed over ruins to fertile spots where, 
 behind the smoking line, nature went through 
 its eternal images in the mystery of travail. 
 Sunny villages gave an illusion of safety. The 
 gestures of life were the same. Cities strove
 
 204 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 to conquer anguish. There were certain things 
 that went on, while the fate of Europe hung 
 solemn and significant over trampled land and 
 treacherous seas. 
 
 The Seine glittered across the city, riveting 
 it with a silver band. In the gardens green 
 eyes tipped every branch. The alleys warmed 
 slowly, and over the soft gray streets streamed 
 humanity in supple, livelier forms as if their 
 crusted hearts had burst like tiny seeds. The 
 surface of the season lay lightly over drama. 
 Sun stole through the windows of the hundred 
 hospitals where mummied figures lay in rows 
 and rows on beds of pain. Endless lines of 
 gray ambulances, branded with the red symbol 
 of the Divine Martyr, sped down white roads 
 lined with sweet fruit blossoms. Crippled men, 
 clad in their worn raiment of glory, limped, 
 groped and hopped from warming ray to ray, 
 like maimed birds of brilliant plumage seek- 
 ing a friendly ledge. And the women in 
 black uncovered their sad faces to look for 
 memories of happier Aprils.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 205 
 
 Natalie went out again and hunted for 
 beauty that she might give it to Pierre and 
 quiet her own torment. She thought: "Surely, 
 after nine months of bloodshed, human nature 
 will be sadder and wiser. Sacrifice will have 
 ennobled the people. Something will come 
 out of it. I must find an indication of the 
 utility of such protracted butchery." 
 
 She found an exasperated condition of vir- 
 tue and wickedness. Elemental nature had 
 not changed, would not change. But it was 
 as if a powerful lens had been applied to human 
 beings, magnifying their motives and their acts. 
 They handled drama with the serious airs of 
 experts pronouncing on the value of common 
 goods. They patronized each other's miseries. 
 They spent their love and hate as from an ex- 
 haustless fund, when all the time credit was 
 getting lower. 
 
 Beauty lay among the humble whose sacri- 
 fice merged into an ungilded thing called the 
 spirit of the people, and whose habits of obedi- 
 ence now served them well: transformed into
 
 206 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 a philosophic patriotism. They gave their 
 best with the simple pride of realized force nec- 
 essary to their country, a free gift to the gov- 
 erning classes. They believed that in giving 
 now they would not have to give later. By 
 protecting their homes they were lending their 
 good will and faith to a government. They 
 worshiped their own men, whose sublime cour- 
 age and patience traced again in letters of gold 
 the spirit of France. But Natalie, as she 
 looked deeper, saw the tragic futility of that 
 beauty which, in stemming a hostile tide, ex- 
 hausted its very essence. It was a beauty that 
 lifted the people but did not remedy evil. It 
 was a beauty risen from emergency. Griev- 
 ances were not exterminated: they were post- 
 poned. The wage-earners, the socialists, the 
 idealists, in yielding to a crisis had merely pro- 
 claimed a truce. There would be a reckoning 
 day. 
 
 Natalie could not forget the others whose 
 love for suffering humanity found fat profit in 
 exploiting it. They were the men and women
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 207 
 
 whose philanthropic impulse had run its term, 
 and who, continuing a decorative show of good, 
 relapsed into secret weariness, or plotted for 
 rewards, sustained their reputations as bene- 
 factors as an advertisement for future refer- 
 ence. There were those, too, who mended men 
 and fed the hungry with a terrible efficiency 
 that hid their empty hearts. And there were 
 those who, sincerely convinced of their own 
 disinterestedness, glowed comfortably with a 
 sense of importance and virtue easily paid for. 
 The supply of good done, apart from motives, 
 simply filled the demand, as commodities are 
 circulated to fit a public need, as labor is meas- 
 ured by capital. There was no credit in it. 
 Natalie could not see why relief work should 
 be glorified. It fulfilled its functions, not even 
 balancing disaster. The debt to society was 
 a larger one than philanthropists could ever 
 settle. 
 
 Pierre watched wistfully the slow birth of 
 the season his longing matching Natalie's,
 
 208 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 but his mind more easily diverted from somber 
 themes. His youth and convalescence sought 
 outlet in the love of one woman, the love of 
 life. 
 
 "Beloved, I should like to run away with you 
 and forget everything!" he exclaimed one day. 
 
 Natalie smiled and answered: "Well, we 
 will go, you and I and Felix, and forget every- 
 thing for a little while." 
 
 The next day was a Sunday : a day destined 
 to remain with her forever after, set in her 
 heart. They three were deliberately young 
 and happy, conspirators with the sun and sky. 
 When Natalie saw Pierre early that morn- 
 ing she knew that it would be a cloudless day. 
 His eyes were lit in boyish expectancy, his 
 face was bright with joy of greeting her. 
 
 "How beautiful you are, Beloved!" 
 
 Good, kind Felix beamed. He wore his old 
 Norfolk jacket, its pockets bulging with odds 
 and ends. A Panama hat was tilted over his 
 humorous face. Carrying a little luncheon- 
 basket he lounged beside the lovers, in a holi-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 209 
 
 day mood. The city basked beneath a prema- 
 ture warmth. The river, glistening, caught 
 their eyes and decided their course. 
 
 "Let us go with the people to Vincennes," 
 suggested Pierre joyously. 
 
 It was one of those days when gentler 
 thoughts come to human beings, when laws 
 of harmony strike eye and ear. "What is the 
 use of living?" growls the misanthropist, to be 
 met with an answer, "For this !" For the sheer 
 thrill of being, of inhaling air that is like a 
 promise, of seeing the smooth river glide away 
 heavy with sunlight, carrying colorful little 
 boats to unknown destinations, of feeling the 
 quickening of sap in stem and bark, of breath- 
 ing the spicy dreams that hide in the first green 
 blades. There is nothing behind, there is noth- 
 ing ahead : only the present consciousness of as- 
 piring life. 
 
 They paused on a dock near the Pont des 
 Arts, and sniffed deliciously a faded smell of 
 fish and humid moss. Beside them clustered 
 the people, lively products of a generous na-
 
 210 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 tion, ready with good-natured sallies, swift and 
 shrewd of tongue and glance, able to keep their 
 heart brave on this Sunday because there were 
 enough weekdays to work and suffer in. Pres- 
 ently a little boat slid beneath the bridge, and 
 bustled up to the dock to take on Pierre and 
 Natalie and Felix. There were no empty 
 seats. But an old red-cheeked woman, built in 
 cheerful curves, rose alertly to offer her place 
 to the wounded poilu. Pierre's smile of re- 
 fusal encouraged her to voluble confidences. 
 And she was soon telling her neighbors of the 
 three sons she had given to France. 
 
 Pierre's uniform answered for Felix and 
 Natalie. They shared the general good will 
 of unshaven honest little soldiers, hatless 
 women, pink-faced fathers of families, children 
 and dogs. The boat seemed to be carrying 
 them all away from anguish, as if its progress 
 past the mellow quais, melodious domes and 
 graceful bridges was an effortless part of the 
 day. The city belonged to the people : Sunday 
 belonged to them. The Garden of Henri IV,
 
 , CHILDREN OF FATE 211 
 
 advancing like the prow of a ship, was span- 
 gled with green. The bronze statue of Henri 
 IV, towering on the bridge, rode ever forward 
 on his full-chested charger, a brave gentleman, 
 ageless in his gallantry. The river curved 
 softly around the He Saint-Louis, lined with 
 beloved old houses, dappled with pale gold. 
 On the lower banks, quaint symbols of the sea- 
 son, stood patient fishermen dangling their thin 
 lines. 
 
 Pierre and Natalie stood very close to one 
 another, leaning against the boat's railing. 
 Their faces reflected tenderness and gratitude. 
 They seldom spoke. But when Pierre turned 
 to Natalie, or she to him, the simple phrase 
 in the framing was answered almost before it 
 was pronounced. And their smiles met. 
 
 Pierre said: "In all the world there is noth- 
 ing like this." 
 
 Natalie said: "See how the sky is melted in 
 the river, and how soft the light is. There are 
 no edges anywhere." 
 
 Honest Felix stood behind them puffing at
 
 212 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 his pipe, chuckling companionably at the antics 
 of a puppy, content to ruminate and leave the 
 lovers free. His delighted expression when 
 Natalie turned to him showed clearly his whole- 
 hearted rapture at his sister's mood. 
 
 As the boat nosed farther up the river, fac- 
 tories lifted their lean nozzles from robust quar- 
 ters of toil. And the sleeping industries reared 
 ungainly silhouettes, oddly unfamiliar in their 
 inactivity. 
 
 Pierre pointed to the chimneys. 
 
 "They look like cannons." 
 
 Natalie touched his arm quickly. "No! . . . 
 No, we want to forget to-day." 
 
 Then the little boat, with a great show of im- 
 portance, drew up at Vincennes and the surge 
 of a vivacious crowd swept them onwards to the 
 shore. Immediately the people scattered in 
 noisy groups or sentimental couples, spreading 
 from populous districts on the roads that led 
 to the woods. 
 
 The three friends stood momentarily bewil- 
 dered, their eyes consulting.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 213 
 
 "This is the first time I've done anything 
 like this since the war," escaped from Natalie, 
 and she added gayly to offset the reference, 
 "Let's go adventuring!" She felt stimulated, 
 warmed by the presence of the people. They 
 taught her how to relax. Then there was 
 Pierre, his thin face flushed and boyish, his 
 voice eagerly raised as echo to her slightest 
 wish. 
 
 Felix dug his hands in his pockets and strode 
 off, choosing a hill. He whistled a little tune 
 in syncopated rhythm. And as if he had known 
 it would be so, this road wound away from 
 the people and led to quiet places. Natalie 
 and Pierre followed slowly, their arms linked. 
 All along the way ran a low rustic fence. The 
 earth and trees, buoyantly fragrant, gave out 
 young sprigs of green. As they mounted, 
 the hill billowed away. Below coiled other 
 white roads, a line of silver marking the river, 
 and other softly etched hills. Fruit blossoms 
 sprang in the distance like white birds fly- 
 ing. All about them it was very quiet, except
 
 214 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 for the uneven rustle of wings and insect 
 voices. 
 
 "We were made for this and this was made 
 for us," sighed Natalie. "After all, Peter, 
 here is the truth. Why don't we confess our- 
 selves beaten and be as happy as we could 
 be?" 
 
 "I should love to live in the country with 
 you, but then I couldn't build houses," said 
 Pierre quaintly. 
 
 "You could build cottages!" she joked. 
 
 "Many cottages would make a city." 
 
 "And many cities make wars," she mused. 
 "Well, there you have it. Let us find an 
 island, Peter, and you build just one house 
 on it." 
 
 Entering into the spirit of her dream, he 
 said earnestly, "It will be the most beautiful 
 house in the world . . . white, Natalie, and 
 built like a tower, covered with rose-vines and 
 honeysuckle. And the island will be a gar- 
 den." 
 
 "The garden," decided Natalie, "is my af-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 215 
 
 fair. It must be all white and gold, with spots 
 of purple among the green, and cypress trees 
 marking the alleys. And there will be a 
 special wild meadow filled with buttercups, 
 where little white goats and sheep may graze." 
 
 "And the sea around us," interrupted Pierre, 
 "will be blue as children's eyes." 
 
 "And there will be fruit trees . . . oranges 
 and olives." 
 
 "And there will be a young shepherd who 
 will play his pipes at sunset." 
 
 "You people, I see a bit of something that 
 looks like grass and a brook," Felix called 
 back at them. "Suppose we picnic here." 
 
 Felix, who was deft at service, soon arranged 
 a pleasant feast that beckoned to their appe- 
 tites. Pierre leaned against a tree and sighed, 
 "Arcadia!" 
 
 Natalie, looking at him, thought how simple 
 and wise was this manner of living, and drew 
 from her imagination happy dreams of the 
 magic island. Some day they would go there. 
 
 Not far away squatted a merry family like-
 
 216 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 wise preparing their meal. The children 
 romped over the ragged grass, sniffing the air 
 like young animals. The father, a soldier back 
 on leave, lazed at full length, his elbows 
 crooked, his hands clasped behind his neck. 
 His old mother and his wife busied themselves 
 with a lunch-basket. Farther along, a couple 
 strolled, amorously inclined one towards the 
 other, the young soldier's arm around the girl. 
 An old man and woman passed, dressed in 
 deep mourning. They walked gravely as if 
 they were retracing past joys. 
 
 "Fall to, friends! What's the matter with 
 this?" cried Felix. His kindly smile envel- 
 oped them. "Say, isn't this some life?" He 
 sat Turkish-fashion in front of Natalie. 
 
 The brook was slim and gurgled a cool little 
 song as it tripped over the stones. A few dead 
 leaves crumpled in final surrender. Hidden 
 among the foliage were late violets. Voices 
 sounded in hollow resonance from an invisible 
 road. 
 
 They ate their bread and cheese and eggs,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 217 
 
 drank the red wine, and chattered of the pres- 
 ent. When they had finished Felix pro- 
 duced his pipe, Pierre a cigarette, and they 
 sat in the sunshine, their silences more fre- 
 quent. 
 
 Pierre looked at the passersby, the people 
 who, old and young, trod the blossoming earth 
 as if it were a gift, mingling their talk and 
 laughter in brisk dissonances that could not 
 break the charm. 
 
 "How we need this thing," he said, and toyed 
 with a handful of uprooted green. "The peo- 
 ple go to the country as naturally as sheep to 
 pasture. They are satisfied with so little, too. 
 Within sight of roofs and chimneys, dressed 
 in the cumbersome clothes of the city, they pre- 
 tend that they are free, one day a week, be- 
 cause they walk across a patch of grass, pick 
 a flower or two, take off their coats and hats 
 and feel the earthy mold beneath their feet. 
 They need to get away from streets, from 
 stuffy shops and stuffy homes and the constant 
 plagues of everyday existence. And they have
 
 218 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 that spark in them that brings them, without 
 reasoning, in tune with this." He buried his 
 face suddenly in a clump of green. 
 
 "They're children," said Felix. "Look at 
 that man playing with his kids." An elderly 
 bald person, followed by a noisy brood in joy- 
 ous chase, raced past. He was breathing 
 hard, his red, shining face set in the excitement 
 of the game. 
 
 "Papa . . . Papa ... eh, Papa!" panted 
 his young sons, galloping after him. He gave 
 Natalie a neighborly comprehensive look as 
 he allowed himself to be caught. 
 
 "These people do understand beauty," Nat- 
 alie murmured. "They find it in such simple 
 things. Our people are more self-conscious. 
 They can't amuse themselves in the same way. 
 We are children, too, but of a cruder type. 
 We never forget our strength. Do you re- 
 member what an imp you used to be, Felix, 
 when you were a boy?" 
 
 Felix chuckled reminiscently. 
 
 "We lived in the country," she went on.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 219 
 
 "We lived in an old house near a lake. We 
 were always risking our necks climbing trees 
 and other deviltries. And we always turned 
 up for meals with bruises, torn clothes and 
 appetites." 
 
 Pierre showed immediate interest. "Tell me 
 more, Natalie. You've never spoken much 
 about your family. Would they like me?" 
 
 "Sure!" broke heartily from Felix. 
 
 "When Father died," continued Natalie, 
 "the old house had to be sold. It was terrible. 
 Felix hid in the stable and refused to leave. 
 We found him buried in the hay." 
 
 "I thought you'd forget me and I'd stay on," 
 said Felix. 
 
 "He wouldn't cry. In fact I believe he 
 whistled all the way to the station. Didn't 
 you?" 
 
 "It was that or bust," was the laconic an- 
 swer. 
 
 "My mother tried to keep her courage up. 
 I remember she told us fairy tales all the way 
 to the city. She didn't want us to realize. But
 
 220 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 life was changed. We lived in a tiny flat, 
 and Mother slaved and slaved, depriving her- 
 self of everything in order that we might have 
 an education. She sent us here because she 
 felt that a year or two in Europe would give 
 us more chances." 
 
 "I guess we can take care of her now," said 
 Felix, chewing the end of his pipe. 
 
 Natalie looked at him cheerfully, "Yes, we 
 can." 
 
 Pierre was silent. He was imaging the 
 mother who would send her children so far 
 away that they might work out their own 
 lives. 
 
 "It is different," he said at last. 
 
 "Your mother wouldn't understand that?" 
 cried Natalie quickly. 
 
 He shook his head. "It's different. t To us 
 the home is more important than individual 
 freedom." 
 
 Natalie stared at him with a puzzled expres- 
 sion. "But suppose you had to earn your liv- 
 ing?"
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 221 
 
 "We should not need to leave home for that 
 . . . especially the women," he explained 
 gently. "When we are married, Beloved, you 
 will not have to earn your living." 
 
 "But I should want to!" 
 
 "My mother would not understand. . . . 
 When the war is over, we shall see." 
 
 Natalie rose, straightening her shoulders. 
 "Yes, we shall see." Their voices had taken 
 graver notes. Pierre sprang to his feet and 
 put a hand on her arm. 
 
 "You shall always do what you want, Be- 
 loved!" 
 
 The afternoon glowed ripely. A few soft 
 clouds like great flowers floated in the sky. 
 Felix began packing away the remnants of the 
 feast. And soon they started walking again, 
 he in advance as if he were exploring, they be- 
 hind, with slow pace and lowered eyes. 
 
 Pierre said, "Beloved, we shall be happy." 
 
 She answered, "Yes," her heart inexplicably 
 heavy. The people around her seemed in- 
 truders to this mood. There were too many
 
 222 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 people. They swarmed among the trees in 
 holiday attire. 
 
 Pierre went on, "Some day soon I am going 
 to tell my father and mother about you. I 
 am getting strong." He lifted his arm to show 
 her. "And then you will be considered as my 
 fiancee. When the war is over we will marry." 
 
 Natalie wanted to ask why they need wait 
 until the end of the war. The horrid thing 
 kept coming back like the fateful tolling of a 
 bell. She saw no escape from it. But his face, 
 turned towards her, was rapt and full of hope. 
 She could not trouble him. 
 
 Felix turned and waved his arms. "It's tea- 
 time. I want a beer. What do you say to go- 
 ing in here ?" He pointed to a little restaurant. 
 It was a modest place built on the side of a 
 hill, with tables and benches set out beneath 
 a rustic arbor, and steps leading down to a 
 leafy terrace overlooking the country. An 
 old swing hung between two trees. A moldy 
 looking sea-saw lifted a long arm as if in 
 invitation. The gleam of distant fruit trees,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 223 
 
 of the river, of dreaming hills, tempted Natalie. 
 An old-fashioned sweetness lingered about the 
 place. The girl who served them smiled at 
 Pierre. 
 
 As they sat there the magic of the hour held 
 them enmeshed in waning lights, in circling 
 shadows, in the aromas of earth cooling beneath 
 the dusk. The city seemed far away. Noth- 
 ing existed beyond this lost, nameless spot 
 where thoughts became secretive and gestures 
 slow. Again the sadness crept over Natalie. 
 She strove in vain to push it away. Pierre was 
 near her, safe beside her. He was getting well. 
 But a sense of impending danger persisted. 
 The end of all things must come, struggle as 
 one would. The end of a lovely day was the 
 relinquishment of just one more illusion. She 
 would have summoned the sun back. But it 
 slipped through her fingers and fluttered in 
 elusive flames on the edge of the horizon. This 
 day of forgetfulness was then finished, never 
 to return. 
 
 She shivered, and Pierre, with loverlike so-
 
 224 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 licitude, suggested home-going. In his tender 
 eyes she read the confidence she did not feel. 
 
 They walked down the hill, the three of them 
 abreast. Felix, his head hunched forward, his 
 hands in his pockets, the lunch-basket strung 
 over his shoulders, appeared immersed in inner 
 speculation. The road dipped in blue shadows 
 that lengthened always ahead of them. They 
 seemed to be leaving something forever. 
 
 "What a short day!" said Pierre. 
 
 On the boat, returning, she leaned again as 
 she had done that morning, close to him. The 
 people around them, packed tightly, still 
 smiled and jested. But their jests and smiles 
 were older, as if they too sensed a change. The 
 river had grown gray and still. It hardly 
 seemed to move. The lean chimneys of fac- 
 tories looked like the masts of bulky ships. 
 Pink streaked the sky. The city swam in mist, 
 rearing its silhouettes like ghosts. Lights 
 burned unsteady vigils high in the blurred win- 
 dows. The bridges stretched taut and myste- 
 rious from bank to bank.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 225 
 
 Natalie felt Pierre's hand in hers, the only 
 warm link between herself and the vanished 
 morning. He did not speak. But as they 
 neared the Pont des Arts, where the little 
 parting would come, she whispered passion- 
 ately, "Oh, Peter, don't leave me !" 
 
 "Why should I, Beloved?" 
 
 "I don't know. Everything is so cruel. If 
 every day were only like to-day! Oh, Peter, 
 I wish it were this morning." 
 
 He smiled down at her. "There will be 
 many mornings." 
 
 But joy he could not give her back, as si- 
 lently they landed on the little dock and stood 
 for a moment with the dark city towering above 
 them.
 
 XIII 
 
 IT seemed sometimes to Pierre that his fam- 
 ily were watching him stealthily, cherish- 
 ing him the more as his health returned, as 
 if each fresh sign of physical fitness drew from 
 them almost imperceptible emotions of an- 
 guish and relief. The dull eyes of Louise 
 Bourdon never left him when she was in the 
 room. He was aware of her fixed mournful 
 gaze, first with a sentiment of pity, then with 
 self-confessed discomfort. When during meals 
 his natural effervescence lifted some enthusi- 
 asm, brought a lighter word or smile to the 
 surface, her usual abstracted glance sharpened 
 to rebuke, and she stared at him silently, re- 
 minding him of loss. At times it flashed across 
 him that she hated him for being alive, that 
 she resented the accident that had brought him 
 back instead of Raymond. Germaine had be- 
 come her shadow. The two women were al- 
 
 226
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 227 
 
 ways together, wordless in their cult of the 
 dead, passionately absorbed in Raymond, the 
 newly born. Louise had yielded a share of her 
 jealous motherhood to the girl. And Ger- 
 maine's aching arms held the baby as if it were 
 her own. 
 
 The House of the Bourdons remained dark 
 and dignified, a living altar to the fallen sons of 
 France. There was no place in it for youth 
 and gayety. Jean Bourdon sat most of the 
 time in the room which held the relics of his 
 eldest born. Only Pierre's voice roused him 
 to a semblance of his jovial self. He spoke 
 to the boy of his factories, with rare moods of 
 hope when he saw the men back in their places 
 and the great ovens red with the heat of toil. 
 Pierre felt the unvoiced suggestion that it 
 would be well if, instead of building houses, he 
 followed the traditions of the Bourdons and 
 some day took the place Raymond had left 
 vacant. He dared not face the problem he 
 foresaw. 
 
 Madame Bourdon continued her tireless
 
 228 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 rounds among the poor and sick, reducing 
 household expenses with rigid efficiency, un- 
 bending in her self-discipline, praying to God 
 that she might do her duty to the end. Only 
 Lorraine clung humanly to Pierre, listened to 
 his love for Natalie, shared his hopes and 
 dreams, and encouraged his natural tendencies 
 to creative work. It was she who urged him 
 to take up again his interrupted plans, open 
 his sketch-books, study the profession he be- 
 Jieved in above all things. 
 
 But one day, when in his room he bent hap- 
 pily over his papers, sorting out old projects, 
 noting ideas on the sheet he had tacked to a 
 board, Louise Bourdon suddenly opened the 
 door and walked in. He raised his face, flushed 
 with the thrill of thought, a smile ready on 
 his lips, to find her standing there staring at 
 the scattered contents of a portfolio. She made 
 no comment. She simply looked at them and 
 at him; then as he started to speak, a visible 
 embarrassment altering his expression, she
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 229 
 
 shook her head and glided out, a long black 
 figure stiff with resentment. 
 
 He sat for a long time staring at the things 
 which represented life and work, his impulse 
 checked by troubling questions that flung him 
 again into a world of sickening doubt. Louise 
 Bourdon's look condemned. It said, "If you 
 are well enough for this, you should not be 
 here." He cast away the thought, only to have 
 it return like some treacherous enemy who 
 crawls and hides in underbrush, and sends tor- 
 menting darts to strike a vulnerable spot. 
 
 Why should he not build up again that which 
 he had considered lost? Was there less credit 
 in whole-hearted work than before? He was 
 not a coward. He had done his part of the 
 killing. And he had been pronounced unfit. 
 His absence did not alter the destiny of na- 
 tions. On the other hand, his was a useful 
 brain employed at a task of reconstruction. He 
 could not mourn forever. His mind traveled 
 ahead to devastated regions where such men 
 as/he would be needed to put together again
 
 230 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 the homes men had wrecked. This was his 
 life, his duty. Louise Bourdon had no right 
 to judge him. Her vision was darkened by 
 Raymond's grave. 
 
 His pencil hovered over the sheet. He saw 
 communities risen from ashes, saw lines and 
 colors forming. He saw the peaceful smoke 
 from many chimneys. He saw windows that 
 let in the light, and doors through which men 
 and women on their several missions came and 
 went, freed from the nightmare. Then his 
 eyes, sweeping over the clean expanse to be 
 covered with the work of his hands and brain, 
 struck the color of his uniform. He was still 
 clad in the livery of war. Of what use his 
 dreams ? The muffled roar of cannon sounded 
 in his ears, the sharper rattle of machine guns. 
 The din of battle reached him there was no 
 other noise that held against it. He buried 
 his face in his hands but could not hide the aw- 
 ful vision of ruins. His schemes were puerile. 
 He could have wept to find them so lost in 
 catastrophe.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 231 
 
 Henri's return on leave wakened the house 
 to another welcome. But his coming was dif- 
 ferent from Pierre's. He brought the clamor 
 of war, the lust of adventure, the loud comrade- 
 ship of good fellows. He filled the place with 
 his honest boasting. And when, in the even- 
 ing, the family circle formed around Grand- 
 mother Bourdon's armchair, he straddled the 
 hearth where once Raymond had stood, tell- 
 ing heroic anecdotes of the trenches, of night 
 attacks, of perilous missions. Then the women 
 would lay aside their work. Except Lorraine, 
 who drooped inconspicuously in a corner, they 
 listened avidly. Their eyes brightened, re- 
 flecting Henri, the Warrior. Louise, kindled 
 by his tales, glowed with strange fitful fevers 
 that burned through her mask, quickened her 
 breathing and held her tensely, as if at a signal 
 her bloodless lips would take up the cry of 
 vengeance and thrill it over graves. Old Jean 
 Bourdon rounded his chest with a look of reso- 
 lute pride. Every once in a while he nodded 
 approvingly and glanced at his wife. Here
 
 232 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 was something worth the Bourdon traditions! 
 
 Henri's manner to his brother was patroniz- 
 ing and friendly. He included him in his 
 stories with a "Of course, Pierre, you know 
 what it is," "You must have seen this . . . 
 or that," "We'll get them, my boy, never 
 fear!" Pierre would smile a trifle sadly. He 
 did not feel at his ease. When Henri turned 
 to him, the rest of the family turned also, look- 
 ing at him expectantly, as if they were sound- 
 ing the value of his echo and waiting for rival- 
 ing tales. 
 
 Once Henri asked exuberantly, "How is 
 your little American?" At the implied light- 
 ness of his consideration for Natalie, Pierre 
 flushed hotly and answered with sudden im- 
 pulse, "Mademoiselle Shaw and her brother are 
 quite well!" He felt his mother's eyes upon 
 him as Henri tossed the question and reply 
 aside, to attack a less sensitive topic. He might 
 have blurted out the love with which his heart 
 was laden, had not Lorraine laid a hand 
 on his arm and drawn him aside, pretending a
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 233 
 
 diverting comment. Later Henri, as if to 
 prove his good will, tapped Pierre on the shoul- 
 der. "Well, you'll soon be back with us," he 
 said. Madame Bourdon started forward but 
 restrained herself with obvious effort. Louise 
 and Germaine watched as if the innocent ques- 
 tion uncovered a riddle. Pierre's delay in an- 
 swering was hardly perceptible. He was taken 
 by surprise. Yet he realized that he must al- 
 ways have known that such a question would 
 arise. 
 
 "I suppose so," he murmured. 
 
 Evidently Henri detected the hesitancy, for 
 during the last few days of his stay he referred 
 often to Pierre's health, taking for granted 
 his eagerness to rejoin his regiment. 
 
 "As for me," he would cry, "as long as I 
 can hold a gun, I stay with the comrades!" 
 His eye challenged Pierre. But Pierre refused 
 gently to be drawn into an argument. Henri's 
 vigorous combativeness dismayed him. There 
 was more than love of France in Henri's man- 
 ner; there was a discovered, an indulged ag-
 
 234 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 gressiveness. He did not conceal his admira- 
 tion for certain young bloods of English of- 
 ficers he had met. He quoted them important- 
 ly at every opportunity. 
 
 "War is a sport," was his refrain. 
 
 Pierre was not sorry to see him go, although 
 the women wept and the House was plunged 
 again in dignified gloom. He could not think 
 quietly while Henri's martial voice dinned in 
 his ears. And he needed to think. The prob- 
 lems of life and death loomed again before 
 him in all their stark simplicity. Henri had 
 spoken of a gun. Pierre was now strong 
 enough to lift a gun. But there was something 
 else more elusive than physical fitness. His 
 mind was still involved in tenebrous specula- 
 tions, lit by gleams from Natalie's clear gaze. 
 He dreaded confessing to her his uncertain- 
 ties. In her occasional melancholy he thought 
 he divined reproach. For what? Her tender- 
 ness encompassed him, yet there were secret 
 corners in his soul where she might not go. 
 He himself had not explored those corners
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 235 
 
 fully. Such pain as he had endured seemed 
 mean in contrast to the increasing tor- 
 ment of his spirit. He stood again at the 
 beginning of a nightmare, as if the months 
 behind him counted only as confused memories 
 of a like horror, dissipated then by his exalted 
 will. But now the tocsin rang. Should he 
 obey ? He intended to fight the problem with- 
 out consulting Natalie. He imagined her dis- 
 appointment at any exposed weakness. 
 
 And for several days he stayed cloistered 
 in his room, pretending an indisposition, dur- 
 ing which time he wrote to Natalie, laying the 
 letters away and marking them as hers, in 
 case death should strike him. 
 
 He wrote: "Beloved, I am questioning 
 roots. I have gone below the surface and 
 felt the clammy mysterious matter from which 
 all things grow. And I find there a tenacious 
 love of life. Not selfish life, though all life 
 is a form of egoism. But life that seeks ex- 
 pression in its noblest essence. Where am I 
 most useful? Or am I useful in any way?
 
 236 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 I started yesterday to plan a model village. 
 I put into it my love of life. The implements 
 at hand were my old belongings dating back 
 to the happy Beaux Arts days. I had left 
 something of myself in them. They are in- 
 telligent, animate. The village sprang into 
 being. I could build it to-morrow. But when 
 is that to-morrow? Alas! Yet it must come. 
 And I wonder if I am to see its dawn. I am 
 here now quivering with the creative force 
 that drives me ever to accomplishment. I 
 stand a pigmy on the edge of God's de- 
 struction and my heart is great with longing. 
 Which is the truth ? The masses have spoken. 
 There is no place for my village to-day. 
 Then . . . ?" 
 
 He wrote: "Beloved, if I go, you will un- 
 derstand. If I stay, you will understand. A 
 night of fever when in my head a thousand 
 devils tore and raged, mauling my inner 
 shrines, profaning my prayers. I dressed in 
 my uniform, took out my gun, and stood by 
 the open window, spying for Satan to ride
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 237 
 
 past. Yes, I was mad. Then the fever left 
 me, and I was emptied of all passions. But 
 dreams are quicksand, Natalie. Since I see 
 no end to anything I have decided to go and 
 find the end. It is our last privilege. If my 
 death could only settle the affairs of the 
 universe and free my country from the curse 
 I would gladly die. But Christ's death did 
 not save mankind. I have examined my heart. 
 I find you and France there and other name- 
 less longings I do not recognize. Did you put 
 them there? The invader is in our land, and 
 the invader is Evil. That is what you and I 
 decided. But, once vanquished, where will 
 Evil hide? In what lofty Hell will Evil find 
 hospitality? It is not a trifling diseased thing 
 to be kicked into the nearest gutter. Evil is 
 powerful as any nature force is powerful. The 
 plans for my village lie close to me. I have 
 not looked at them. Of what use if I go? For 
 I shall never come back." 
 
 He wrote: "Beloved, I dreamed you came 
 to me with your arms outstretched. They
 
 238 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 were so long and white, they stretched beyond 
 me far into the world. And you said, 'Do not 
 go.' I tried to promise I would not, but the 
 words choked in my throat. I woke sobbing 
 like a child. What is this mystery? I am 
 well. But my spirit is not quiet. It moves 
 and moves like an imprisoned bird. The earth 
 is an aviary, Natalie. It holds all our strug- 
 gling souls. 
 
 "There was one day a long while ago when I 
 stood on a mountain. I was alone with God. 
 I did not know you then. God meant the 
 things I worshiped: the sky, the mountains, 
 the valley, all impregnated with a divine sig- 
 nificance, a message men might read if they 
 chose. As I looked, up the steep road labored 
 a heavy cart drawn by one horse. A man 
 was flogging the horse, the whip whistling 
 through the air with an ugly, snaky sound. 
 Further down the hill a woman was beating a 
 child. The child cried meekly, as if it were ac- 
 customed to pain. And down in the valley 
 two sportsmen hunted birds. I could hear
 
 CHILDREN OE FATE 239 
 
 the sharp snap of the guns. From the neigh- 
 boring wood I could hear the clang of an ax. 
 A man was cutting down a tree. Below, in 
 a field, two men quarreled. I saw one strike 
 the other. The nature-things about me had 
 not changed. But I had changed. For this 
 incessant destruction sounded a note of life. 
 Was it the only one? I could not believe it. 
 And, as I looked, I saw the smoke from the 
 chimney of a cottage curling away in lovely 
 spirals. I heard the bells of a distant church 
 ringing the vespers, I saw two lovers wind- 
 ing their way up a hill. I heard a man sing- 
 ing. I saw a man tilling the ground. And 
 here again was life. Then I wondered which 
 was my way. Perhaps it was not to kill, Be- 
 loved, under any pretext! Perhaps it is to 
 build. Men may take me for a coward. Braver 
 souls than I have been branded with that name. 
 But what will you call me? Nothing in your 
 manner to me lately has revealed your wishes 
 or your convictions. But I have reread your 
 wonderful letters to me, out there . . . and
 
 240 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 I find in them a knowledge of wider causes 
 than our own individual problems. Are these 
 causes directly dependent on our actions or 
 are they evolved from inevitable world situa- 
 tions which put us at the mercy of an epoch? 
 Natalie, I am going to my mother now, and 
 I am going to tell her of you, of my desire to 
 marry you immediately. Then I shall tell 
 her that I do not want to kill again. And 
 we will see what she says. I am a Bourdon. 
 I cannot help it; I am as caught by it as a 
 leaf on a tree. I cannot break with them. 
 Their honor is my honor. But, oh, Be- 
 loved . . . 1" 
 
 Pierre went to his mother. She was in her 
 room, kneeling on her prie-dieu before a ma- 
 hogany crucifix. She fingered her rosary de- 
 voutly, her head bowed, her lips moving. She 
 did not turn to greet him, and he waited. The 
 atmosphere of the room closed about him. It 
 had never changed since he could remember. 
 The bed was draped suffocatingly in red plush
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 241 
 
 with a lace cover made by Grandmother Bour- 
 don in her younger days. Nailed at the head 
 of the bed was a sprig of faded green. A mas- 
 sive Breton wardrobe loomed in a corner as 
 impregnable as a fortress. A little table held 
 Madame Bourdon's glasses, her watch and a 
 prayer book. The air was close and dull, as 
 if nothing had happened in this room for cen- 
 turies. The windows never seemed to have 
 been opened. Pierre, looking down at the rigid 
 figure of his mother, was seized with a swift 
 misgiving. There was something terrifying in 
 her immobility. At last her fingers traced 
 the symbol in final punctuation of her devo- 
 tions and she rose slowly, as one whose knees 
 are weak, her face austere in its communion 
 with duty. 
 
 "Thou, Pierre?" 
 
 "Mother, I want to speak to you," he be- 
 gan quickly. "I want to tell you many 
 things." 
 
 She sank into a chair at the foot of the bed c 
 He noticed that she looked old and tired.
 
 242 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "What is it, my son?" she said kindly. 
 
 He stood before her, his eyes direct in glance, 
 his arms at his sides. 
 
 "It is this way. I love the American girl, 
 Natalie Shaw. I have not told you before. 
 But, Maman, she means more to me than all 
 the world, except you and Papa. She has 
 been my strength, my inspiration, during these 
 months. She has been my comrade, my dear 
 sister, my love. Maman, I cannot live with- 
 out her. I ask your blessing. I want to marry 
 her soon, very soon. You will love her." His 
 eyes, grown anxious, studied the inflexible 
 lines of his mother's face. She seemed turned 
 to stone. She sat, her hands in her lap, as if 
 in grave meditation. And she waited. 
 
 He went on passionately. "She will be a 
 good daughter to you, Maman. She is not 
 of our race, but she is well brought up. She 
 and Felix have spoken often to me of their 
 family. She . . . she has no dowry, Maman. 
 But I am young and strong now. I can work 
 for her. I will keep her. And we Bourdons
 
 CHILDREN OF^ FATE 243 
 
 know, don't we, that a loyal heart is greater 
 than a fortune? She is intelligent, Maman. 
 I could not love a stupid girl. Ah, Maman, 
 I know you will understand. . . ." He sank 
 on his knees before her, inviting the maternal 
 gesture. 
 
 Madame Bourdon spoke with sudden harsh- 
 ness that broke his appeal like a blow. "And 
 your duty as a Frenchman?" 
 
 He lifted himself to his feet as if he had 
 been struck. "My duty?" he said a little 
 wildly. "Ah, I have thought of that, tool 
 I have done my best, Maman. I have done 
 my share. I am well . . . yes ... in body, 
 but not in soul. I need not go back . . . yet. 
 I am not called. I want to work for France 
 . . . yes. I want to plan for the end of this 
 war. They will need me then." His face 
 shone full upon her, filled with ardent, youth- 
 ful dreams. "I want to build!" he cried. 
 "Natalie will help me. I want to build up 
 the villages!" 
 
 He saw his mother rise. There was some-
 
 244 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 thing awesome in her rising. Her eyes were 
 set and stern. Her voice rang coldly. "Pierre, 
 my son? You think of love, of marriage with 
 a stranger at such a time? You talk of work 
 for France?" She pointed. "Your work is 
 out there, where your brother died, where 
 Henri has gone. You work is that of a soldier, 
 of a Bourdon. How dare you come to me . . . 
 your mother . . . with this thing? I tell you 
 that this marriage will never be while I live. 
 You, my last born, a coward? It is not pos- 
 sible. If you are well enough to marry, you 
 are well enough to fight. I have wondered 
 . . . and now I know. It is that woman then 
 ... it is she who has poisoned your mind, 
 turned you from your duty . . . she, the 
 stranger whose land is not in danger. Whom 
 has she lost?" Her passion mounted; with 
 hostile face and cutting voice she scourged 
 him. "Whom has she lost? Tell me that! 
 When Raymond's wife cries for vengeance, 
 when Germaine your sister's life is broken, you
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 245 
 
 speak of love and marriage! Shame on you, 
 Pierre! Shame on us!" 
 
 He was trembling from head to foot. Fever 
 blazed in his cheeks. "Maman . . ." 
 
 Madame Bourdon advanced towards him. 
 "I will forget this," she said ... "I will for- 
 get it. Let it lie buried between us. But know 
 one thing: that I would rather see you dead 
 than a coward." 
 
 Distracted, he clutched her arm. "You say 
 it is Natalie? It is not Natalie! She kept 
 me alive while I was in that hell. Her words 
 have been the inspiration, the only trumpet call. 
 She has loved France. She too has sacrificed. 
 Did she not send me off with a smile? Have 
 you forgotten her that day? Did she not send 
 me off with the courage and the calm of a 
 saint? You shall not be unjust! Natalie has 
 never influenced me in any but noble ways. 
 No, she has not. But don't you see, I am not 
 fitted to be a soldier? There, you have the 
 truth. And I have done my best ! But I am
 
 246 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 more fitted to put my heart and soul in the 
 rebuilding of this sad country." 
 
 "Pierre, the men of France are needed to 
 fight. I have no more to say." The mother 
 note had gone from her voice. She walked 
 with a steady step to her prie-dieu and knelt. 
 She knelt rigidly, her lips moving. Pierre 
 knew that she was praying for him. Then 
 despair descended into his soul. His fever left 
 him. He stood cold and desolate like an old 
 man, his mouth empty of words. 
 
 When his mother had prayed, she rose and 
 came to him. "Pierre, do thy duty," she 
 said. 
 
 He turned and left her. 
 
 Night was with him. He had not moved. 
 He had called aloud for Natalie in his solitude, 
 and with a momentary exaltation he felt sud- 
 denly her presence in the room. 
 
 "Pierre, do thy duty." 
 
 This then was his duty. He reached blindly 
 for the creed he had built once before. The
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 247 
 
 room filled with the ghosts of his comrades. 
 He saw them everywhere. He saw Lucien 
 Nassaud, Brillaud de Granville, Jean Lodec 
 and the others. He saw Raymond and Robert 
 de Gency. They pressed around him in ser- 
 ried ranks, pointing to a distant battlefield. 
 He took up a sheet of paper and wrote: 
 "There is no way out. We are Bourdons. 
 There is no way out now. The thing is done. 
 But I have no hate in my heart for any one. 
 Nor have they . . . my comrades. But there 
 is hate in the people behind the battle line. 
 The women hate, because we are killed. The 
 old men hate. They drive us on. We must 
 go. And there are men who are born war- 
 riors. So it will ever be. We, the builders, 
 must share their fate or be called cowards. 
 Well, and the country? It is beautiful and 
 tragic. But the other countries see gain ahead. 
 And the smaller ones will be victims until the 
 end of time. I cannot save them though I 
 would if it were in my power. Shall this be 
 a lesson? You nations who are far and wise,
 
 248 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 watch us die. Let our deaths teach you a 
 lesson. Then it will indeed be worth while. 
 Put those words for which men die out of your 
 hearts. Do not let the lust for armies sneak 
 up on your governments. Nor do not let false 
 fears drive you to excess. It is my message: 
 the message of one quivering soul whose jour- 
 ney will be far and mysterious. Watch us die. 
 Watch our youth go down and watch the red- 
 dened earth. And stay in your homes." 
 
 To Natalie he wrote: "Natalie, I am go- 
 ing. I shall not see you until the moment of 
 parting. I could not. But to-morrow morn- 
 ing I shall take the necessary steps and be 
 sent immediately back to my post. Now this 
 is the beginning and the end. If it must be 
 that I lose you, remember always our love. 
 Let it be deathless. And when you plant your 
 gardens, think of Pierre. 
 
 "You said to me once, 'You are justified/ 
 I have not forgotten any of your words. You 
 sent me out with a brave heart. You shall 
 send me again. Nor shall I fail you this time,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 249 
 
 though it is harder. Nothing has changed 
 since that day nearly a year ago. The sound 
 of marching feet still rends the air. The sky 
 is black with smoke. And the invader is on 
 our land. The invader is on our land, but there 
 is more than that. His ruthless planning aims 
 at the heart of our Latin civilization. His hand 
 is lifted for a mortal blow at our immortal 
 spirit. He must be crushed. What is his 
 name, Natalie? You will tell me that when 
 I see you. I know one of his names. It is 
 the name of our present enemy. But when 
 I am gone, when the thousands are gone, will 
 his name have changed? Evil masquerades in 
 many uniforms. 
 
 "I see our heroes. They file before me as 
 before an applauding multitude. I see their 
 faces as one face set in grave purpose. I 
 see the flag they carry so proudly. Then they 
 are gone and others come. What language 
 will the future generations speak? Will it 
 be Russian, Japanese, English, or will some 
 undiscovered savage tribe spring forward
 
 250 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 another Prussian Empire? But France, Nat- 
 alie, France is not like the others. She is not. 
 She is the romance of the past, the poem the 
 young poet writes, the sweetest melody of all, 
 the blue flower reddened by a jealous enemy. 
 Oh, Natalie, men love this thing they call war 
 or there would be no wars. What can we do 
 with raw nature? It must be right. It must 
 be the great profession. And it must be mine. 
 But love me always. Let your vision cover 
 me gently when I am dead, and let my memory 
 lie in your heart like a cradled child. Be happy 
 if you can and your country stays wise. I 
 may never see the gardens of to-morrow, but 
 the flowers will be sweet. I am young, Natalie. 
 But so were they. So were Lucien Nassaud, 
 Brillaud, Robert de Gency and the millions. 
 I love. So did they. There is no difference. 
 The trumpet rings in my ears as imperious, as 
 clear, as Fate. It starts the rhythm. We must 
 carry it on. Adieu, Beloved. If life has been 
 short, it has held you as a golden frame holds 
 the masterpiece."
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 251 
 
 This letter he folded neatly and placed it 
 with the others. On the top of the package was 
 written, "For Natalie." 
 
 Then he went to his bed like a weary child 
 and slept till morning.
 
 XIV 
 
 WHEN Pierre did not come to Nat- 
 alie for several days, her heart was 
 heavy with nameless fears. The 
 happy time at Vincennes still lingered with 
 her, but since then Pierre had seemed absent- 
 minded, often depressed, and she wondered if 
 she had failed him in any of the fragile ways 
 that make love relations so precarious. Had a 
 hint of her inner doubts escaped her? He loved 
 the Natalie who had carried him victoriously 
 through his own dangerous perplexities. He 
 loved the woman who had stirred him into ac- 
 tion, explaining the inexplicable, giving fair 
 names to tragic deeds, prophesying a regen- 
 erated world to suit his dreams. But would 
 he love a Natalie who esteemed the death of 
 men a futile sacrifice? She had fed him with 
 pretty fairy tales, kept him hopeful when por- 
 tents of future wars darkened the horizon, 
 
 252
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 253 
 
 when the reckoning of capital and labor hung 
 fire in every nation, when plans for armaments, 
 always more armaments, found favor with gov- 
 ernments, when young boys snatched from 
 their families were to be taught the dangerous 
 game: all in the name of patriotism. The 
 world was arming, and the world chattered of 
 peace. Where was hope in such a gigantic in- 
 consistency? 
 
 And there was Pierre dreaming on a vol- 
 cano, of a tidy world built from the ashes of a 
 consumed generation. He would always 
 dream. All issues were reduced to his coun- 
 try's fate. She had not the courage to face 
 him with grim omens. Neither he nor she 
 would live to see a final peace built on com- 
 mon ideals and established interests of labor. 
 Let him dream therefore while he could, and 
 if he could go through his life and finish it still 
 dreaming, one more soul would have escaped 
 from the terrifying consciousness of reality. 
 But as she looked back over the past her rec- 
 ord struck her anew with dismay. She had
 
 254 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 played the role Pierre had given her. She had 
 joined her voice to the voice of romantic women 
 urging their men on to useless heroism. She 
 had gone the easiest way. Perhaps a voice or 
 two raised in loyal warning might have reached 
 a few lost striving souls. Posted through the 
 generations, in the wilderness of popular 
 opinion, have stood from the beginning such 
 prophets, geniuses, and children as their age 
 produced, ready to direct the occasional pil- 
 grim, saying: "We believe this to be the road." 
 Who had listened to them? They have been 
 pronounced too selfish, too wise, too simple. 
 They have pointed to a neglected byroad, lead- 
 ing away from vulgar market places where the 
 trade is for the strong. 
 
 Natalie was neither a genius nor a prophet. 
 For Pierre's sake she had chosen to be silent. 
 But her silence had chinks through which keen 
 eyes might look and find the torment of an 
 inquiring mind. She dreaded Pierre's divina- 
 tion. His recent avoidance of her seemed 
 to prove a gathering distrust. She suffered
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 255 
 
 proudly, refusing to call him to her side lest 
 she read in his eyes waning faith. 
 
 One day a short letter came : "Beloved, meet 
 me to-morrow afternoon at four in the Luxem- 
 bourg Gardens by the Carroussel. I want to 
 see you there, in the Gardens where we have 
 been so happy." 
 
 Then she knew that all was not well with 
 him, and her love rose fiercely within her to 
 accomplish miracles. Why had he not come to 
 the studio? At a word from her Felix would 
 have left them alone. 
 
 It was the end of May. The little balcony 
 looked out upon a flowered garden, full-bur- 
 dened trees and soft-backed roofs. The season 
 was rolling onwards to the tragic anniversary. 
 She leaned upon the balcony in her old pose of 
 stilled longing. She watched the graceful 
 swallows circling like loosened thoughts across 
 the sky. Why was not Pierre beside her? 
 How hungrily she would have drawn him to 
 her!
 
 256 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Instead Natalie went to the Luxembourg 
 Gardens, obeying Pierre's call. 
 
 She went early, unable to contain the un- 
 easiness which increased as the hour advanced. 
 The afternoon was gray and confining, heavy 
 in its sunless shadows. She wandered down 
 the long alleys, where little playing children 
 lit the spaces between the trees, and fountains 
 and flowers glinted in the distances. Old peo- 
 ple and lovers sat upon benches and chairs. 
 The hum of life mingled with the subdued dis- 
 putes of the birds. And, singly or in groups, 
 broken men in uniforms threaded their patient 
 way through romping circles, their faces bright- 
 ening in answer to the wide-eyed admiration of 
 small worshipers. 
 
 But Natalie thought only of one thing: 
 Pierre's coming. She desired passionately his 
 nearness. One glance at his welcoming eyes 
 would quiet her fears. She leaned on the ter- 
 race and studied the round clock set in the Lux- 
 embourg, whose lazy hands crawled through 
 the moments as if time were of no account.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 257 
 
 Then driven again by her restlessness she wan- 
 dered back to the meeting place, questioning 
 the alleys with growing anguish. Nearly four 
 o'clock, and no Pierre! 
 
 The merry-go-round turned to its cracked 
 tune, carrying cargo after cargo of infancy in 
 grotesque mimicries of age. She tried to fix 
 her attention on the small beings circling, their 
 faces depicting undeveloped emotions of 
 pleasure, bewilderment, fear. But they only 
 heightened her unrest. Once lifted on the 
 wooden beasts, they were strapped in place and 
 forced to stay until the ride was over. The 
 machine, set in motion, never paused until it 
 had run its allotted course. If, in quest of 
 amusement or sensation, these mites experi- 
 enced fear, they were obliged to cope with it, 
 while they went round and round, a spectacle 
 for their complacent elders. Most of them sat 
 stupidly, their pink faces inscrutable, like little 
 old men and women undergoing a social rite; 
 a few smiled foolishly, seeking the maternal 
 eye ; others clung to the shiny pole upon which
 
 258 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 their mount was impaled, and with various ex- 
 pressions of revolt, anguish and distrust were 
 whirled to the end of their journey. Natalie 
 saw life caricatured, its endless contradictions 
 mirrored, in the helpless progeny, and turned 
 away to escape ironic comparisons. 
 
 Pierre was coming towards her. He walked 
 slowly, as if each step were a spent moment, 
 never to return. She hastened to him and he 
 stretched out a hand. A familiar little smile 
 was moored to his lips. 
 
 "Oh, Pierre!" Her greeting was burdened 
 with relief. 
 
 "Beloved!" 
 
 That was all. Their arms linked, they paced 
 up an alley, veering into a side path where, 
 among sweet greens and cool statues, shelter 
 was offered. Only a few people lifted a vacant 
 glance at their approach. Natalie found noth- 
 ing to say. She tuned in with his silence. They 
 chose two chairs, removed from indiscreet in- 
 truders, and sat down. 
 
 Then only Pierre said, "Let me look at you,
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 259 
 
 Beloved . . . Yes, you are beautiful." Meet- 
 ing his eyes steadily, she found them weary 
 and mysterious. The youth had gone from 
 them. His face was stamped with vigils and 
 self -questioning. 
 
 "You've been ill?" shot from her. 
 
 "I'm quite well," he answered gently, still 
 staring at her, as if to mark and register each 
 feature, each line of her body. "Look happy, 
 Beloved. I want to see you look happy once 
 more." 
 
 She managed an unconvincing smile, urging, 
 "Something has happened. Tell me what it 
 is." 
 
 But, without immediate response, his gaze 
 wandered from her to the stretch of grass at 
 their feet. He seemed to be counting each 
 blade, fixing in his memory leafy vistas be- 
 yond, caressing the statues, noting intently a 
 patch of blue that had broken through the 
 gray sky. His silence absorbed the tiniest 
 manifestations of life.
 
 260 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "Oh, what is it, Pierre?" she urged again, 
 with a sharp touch of fear. 
 
 Then he turned to her. "I join my regi- 
 ment to-morrow." 
 
 She sprang from her seat with an incoherent 
 cry as if she had been wounded. He mo- 
 tioned her back. "Sit down, Beloved. Be 
 quiet for my sake." She obeyed his note of 
 entreaty. 
 
 "I chose to tell you here in the Garden. If 
 your arms had been around me it would have 
 been harder. . . . Yes, I am a coward." 
 
 She was still staring at him. Her voice 
 sounded like the frightened treble of a child. 
 "I don't understand!" 
 
 "I must go, Natalie. There is no way out." 
 
 Then he told her all that had passed, all 
 that had come to him. He told her of his 
 interview with his mother. "I said it was not 
 you, Beloved," he ended on a pleading note. 
 "You mustn't mind her. You see I hoped 
 . . . everything could be arranged. But it 
 was not possible. My going makes her under-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 261 
 
 stand you. She believes me now when I say 
 that you give me strength to do my duty. She 
 believes that your love has kept me steady and 
 that it will again. . . . Won't it?" His ris- 
 ing inflection was lost. 
 
 A deep silence fell between them through 
 which Natalie groped among shattered things, 
 striving to still the tumult in her being. It 
 would do no good to scream or cry. The mo- 
 ment must be met and conquered. A crippled 
 soldier passed. A child in pink passed, throw- 
 ing and catching a red ball. A young woman 
 carrying a book passed. Natalie noted them 
 mechanically. Life went on. Only they two 
 had stopped, as if ordinary movements no 
 longer concerned them. 
 
 It seemed a long time before she said, "You 
 are not going back!" His accent of finality 
 had stunned her. She could have fought at 
 once an energetic mood, but his gentleness was 
 more implacable than argument. 
 
 He began to speak as he had done once be-
 
 262 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 fore at the parting, when there seemed so little 
 time to say all that was in his heart. 
 
 "Beloved, life is not just a question of liv- 
 ing and loving. We know that. We have 
 gone through this before. There is one thing 
 you must believe : I am strong now, and your 
 gift of faith is my talisman . . . not easily 
 lost. I could not see you, dear, before I had 
 made up my mind what I must do. You would 
 have thought me a weakling, if I had come cry- 
 ing for help at such a time. Now you can be 
 proud of me. This is my duty . . ." 
 
 "Your duty?" escaped from her. 
 
 "Yes, Natalie!" His face grew animated 
 as he went on. The old fires burned in his 
 eyes. "The world must be delivered. France 
 must be delivered and do I not belong to 
 the world and to France? The value of a 
 man to-day lies in his endurance less than in 
 his brain. I can endure with the others. Nat- 
 alie, look at me. Am I not strong? What 
 are my dreams worth? They cannot defeat 
 an enemy. They cannot save a life. My
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 263 
 
 
 
 talent is for building, but I am like a man who 
 
 tries to build a beautiful cathedral on a land 
 that is littered with wreckage. How can I 
 build . . . and where? So there is nothing for 
 me to do but to go out with the other men and 
 clear up the land." He smiled wanly. "Be- 
 loved, you are wiser than I. You will inherit 
 my dreams. You will see that they are ful- 
 filled. I have stood aside from men, as dream- 
 ers do, loving them in my fashion. But they 
 are sociable animals, even in war. They die 
 together. That is rather fine, isn't it?" 
 
 "It would be better if they lived together!" 
 she interrupted quickly. 
 
 He shook his head. "They can't . . . now. 
 But it will come. I must think that. Ah, if 
 they could only live as they die one heart, 
 one mind, one body on the battlefield in superb 
 obedience to fate what union there could be 
 on earth!" He paused as if the thought had 
 mastered him, inviting Natalie mutely to join 
 him in his dream. But she stayed still and 
 limp.
 
 264 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Pierre touched her with his hand. "Natalie, 
 are you not content?" 
 
 "You must not go," she said as if it were 
 a lesson. 
 
 He argued like a little child, drawing closer 
 to her. "But why?" 
 
 With an effort she answered, "You've been 
 wounded once. That's enough." 
 
 "I thought so," he said sadly. "But it is 
 not enough." 
 
 "They will need you . . . after the war." 
 
 "When will that be?" 
 
 "You're not well yet." 
 
 He lifted his arm. "I can hold a gun." 
 
 "You're not strong," she insisted. Her 
 throat had tightened. She struggled to pro- 
 nounce words distinctly. 
 
 "You make it hard, Beloved." 
 
 "I need you here." 
 
 A fragrance of flowers drifted across their 
 path, fanned by the air, and floated by in- 
 tangibly. They were caught in a spectrum of
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 265 
 
 sweetness mingling their breath and eyes. And 
 so they sat through an instant of yearning. 
 
 Then, "You need me?" he whispered. His 
 eyes were suddenly moist. 
 
 She nodded. "I have grown to need you, 
 Pierre. Can you read a woman's heart? Can 
 you measure her desire?" She could not bear 
 to look at his eyes. The secret she carried 
 rankled in her heart, embittering her voice. 
 "You've done this because of your family, 
 haven't you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "They don't want me," she went on in ris- 
 ing passion. "Of course they wouldn't. But 
 need they send you away on account of it? 
 I'd rather give you up," she said wildly. Al- 
 ready she felt the space widening between 
 them. His image grew fainter as if he were 
 being carried away on a resistless tide. She 
 cried out at the pain in his face. "No, Pierre! 
 Forgive me!" 
 
 He said rapidly. "It isn't my family . . . 
 it isn't. They have voiced what is in us all
 
 266 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 to-day. And I have heard your voice with 
 theirs. Can you deny it? Beloved, I will 
 open my heart to you. You shall look deep 
 as you did that day. Then you will say again, 
 'You are justified.' Listen! . . . I don't want 
 to kill any more to-day than I did yesterday. 
 The thought is horrible to me. . . . You say 
 I am not strong. My body is well. Only my 
 spirit is sick. But you can cure me ..." 
 
 "Again?" 
 
 "Again . . . always! I have questioned 
 once more. You see I hide nothing from you. 
 I have tried once more to understand the out- 
 come of this great sacrifice, before ... I go. 
 I find you everywhere in the answer. I see 
 you pointing ahead." 
 
 "Ahead?" she echoed drearily. 
 
 He looked troubled. "I don't understand 
 you, Beloved. I counted on your magnificent 
 faith. You have thought as I do that the duel 
 is between good and evil. Why has the world 
 come suddenly upon this crisis, if it were not 
 necessary to the world's development?" He
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 267 
 
 looked at her with the mystic expectancy she 
 recognized. "I am a thinking atom attached 
 to the mass, associating myself with the deeds 
 of men, because man represents life and I am 
 man. Is not that enough? When we have 
 driven out the enemy we may think of build- 
 ing . . . not before." 
 
 "Those who are left to think!" slipped from 
 her. Other words trembled on the verge of 
 utterance. She held them back. She was 
 afraid now of what she might say. 
 
 "There will always be men left," cried 
 Pierre, "while there are women such as you 
 to bear them! And the glory of dying for a 
 cause is more than life." But his voice missed 
 the triumphant ring of conviction. 
 
 She stared at him a moment and then said 
 slowly: "You will go? Nothing can stop 
 you?" 
 
 "Don't you see, it's the only way?" was his 
 answer. 
 
 Then something rose up in her that was 
 like rage. The wasted youth of nations, the
 
 268 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 force that drove them to destruction, her own 
 helplessness, and the idea that Pierre again 
 without hate in his heart was adding his life 
 to the others, goaded her beyond control. He 
 should go then, but not like the rest, stuffed 
 with illusions and catchwords of honor and 
 glory. He should go knowing the price, judg- 
 ing for himself the worth of death as she had 
 measured it. The lie within her burst its 
 bounds, but as she started to speak she saw 
 by his altered face that she was about to deal 
 a mortal blow. 
 
 "You are weak," she said. "You know deep 
 in your heart that you go because you are 
 afraid not to go. You were never meant to 
 hold a gun. You know that this nonsense 
 about saving civilization is the supreme lie of 
 an uncivilized world. For there is no civiliza- 
 tion to save: there are the brains which might 
 have made it a reality served up as targets. 
 War is not waged for sentiment. You may 
 think it is. Frenchmen may think it is. The
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 269 
 
 sentimentalists are always the easiest victims. 
 It has been so this time." 
 
 "Natalie . . ." he gasped. 
 
 She held him with her eyes, watching the 
 searing words mark him indelibly. "Let us 
 for once face such truth as there is ! Who am 
 I to know the truth? I can only voice what 
 has grown within me, planted by the first and 
 last lie I shall ever tell you." 
 
 "Oh, Natalie!" 
 
 She continued. "I told you that you were 
 justified. I did not think so. For I don't be- 
 lieve that any man of any nation is justified. 
 If their madness left them, if by a miracle the 
 killing stopped to-day . . . with no results to 
 show and the map unchanged . . . few men 
 would feel proud of the part they played, and 
 those who did feel proud, I tell you, are far- 
 ther from civilization and Christianity than the 
 men of the Stone Ages. For these modern 
 men have pretended to belong to progress. 
 . . . Remember I don't count. My thought 
 is an outcast. I cannot change human nature,
 
 270 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 though I uncover it. Now this is what I ... 
 one woman . . . believe: that those women, 
 who in Germany, England, France, Russia, 
 America and all the other nations gave their 
 voice freely to this or any war, unconsciously 
 abetting schemes of governments and capi- 
 talists, are fools and criminals. They should 
 have foreseen results. Men are ruled mainly 
 by their primal instincts. But they, the women, 
 should have known that if races are to evolve 
 into a higher state it must be through finer, 
 cleverer methods than war. Yes, I said clever ! 
 War is a stupid return for education. And I, 
 Natalie, fell into the sin of other women. I 
 sent you off with lies, lies, lies to suit your uni- 
 form. I will not send you the second time !" 
 
 Pierre stared at her. But nothing now could 
 stop her. 
 
 "The lust of conquest began with your 
 enemy. Yet blind fools cooped in the trenches 
 repeat like parrots the words given them, 'We 
 didn't want war. It isn't our fault.' And you, 
 their enemy, are saying the same words. You
 
 didn't want war either. It isn't your fault. 
 Then in God's name whose fault is it? Who 
 wanted war? Yet there is war, and war breeds 
 war. When your country is freed, don't for- 
 get, Pierre, it will only be one among many. 
 And it will have to face larger issues than at- 
 tacked land. It will have to face death and 
 debt. You hope for indemnities. Can a ques- 
 tionable sum cover the incalculable disaster? 
 Will that indemnity be paid to the government 
 or to the people ? Will it be invested in other 
 armies? Ah, Pierre, where will the builders 
 and the artisans and the men of brains be 
 then? The schemers will be left. They are 
 prudent. But when maimed men take off their 
 uniforms they will become so many useless 
 factors of society. You can't set them all to 
 weaving rugs and tuning pianos. You, who 
 fight, believe that with Prussia crushed you 
 will have no other menace to contend with. 
 You hope that by ruining one country you 
 can go back to your homes in peace. But if 
 Germany is crippled for a space of time which
 
 272 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 will not count in the world's future history, 
 she is simply one rival temporarily out of the 
 field. Oh, Pierre, evil cannot die. It is part 
 of us. Yoii would have to suppress humanity 
 to rid us of evil. Pierre, your death will not 
 affect the world." 
 
 She heard him give a little sound as if he 
 were trying to breathe, but she swept on. 
 
 "Defend your country if you will, because 
 it is attacked! But don't believe that natural 
 instinct of yours which is primitive has any- 
 thing to do with great humanitarian crusades. 
 Those are bloodless. We have yet to see them. 
 You deal with local danger. That is all. The 
 peoples to-day are fighting to enrich further 
 capitalists and munition makers. That's what 
 it comes to. They are your real enemies. But 
 you do not attack them. They are the disease 
 of so-called civilization. And they prosper." 
 She laughed mirthlessly. "Pacific countries 
 are coining fortunes selling shells to whoever 
 will buy. Do you suppose they sell such death 
 because they believe in honor, glory, patri-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 273 
 
 otism? Do you suppose the manufacturers 
 have the interests of humanity at heart? Oh, 
 my dear, they are quite right to trade on human 
 folly. But finding such advantage in it, pres- 
 ently they will be urging their own people to 
 find an enemy and turn their munition fac- 
 tories into home industries. Internationalism 
 exists. Do you know where? Among bank- 
 ers and politicians. They are the ones who 
 with paid scientists are forging a huge syndi- 
 cate to wield the world and bleed it dry. You 
 die to satisfy them, Pierre. Is it worth while?" 
 
 "Natalie . . . stop," he whispered. "What 
 are you saying?" 
 
 "Saying what I, one woman, believe. And 
 I'll tell you more. Internationalism is a rem- 
 edy. But it will only come through free min- 
 gling of the races, interbreeding, cooperative 
 industries and disarmament. It won't come 
 with excessive taxes and wars. It won't come 
 while governments deal in secret treaties and 
 trickery. It won't come while men are will- 
 ing to die when they are told to."
 
 274 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 "You are killing me," she heard him say. 
 
 "Pierre, my own Pierre, is it not better than 
 lying to you? I have told you long enough 
 what you wanted to hear. Now you must 
 listen to me, the Natalie you have never 
 known." 
 
 Pierre rose and stood before her swaying, 
 his white face and tragic eyes fixed upon her. 
 "It's too late." Then the wail mounted that 
 was to haunt her forever after. "But, oh, Be- 
 loved, why did you tell me these terrible 
 things?" 
 
 She rose also and faced him, as if the su- 
 preme moment of parting had come. A bur- 
 den had gone from her heart. She felt emptied 
 of life and love. "I had to." An immense 
 weariness weighed down her body. She was 
 old. 
 
 "There is nothing more then?" he murmured. 
 
 "Nothing." Her eyes wandered to the grass 
 which in the thickening twilight had turned 
 to an opaque mass of dull green. The trees 
 threw shadows across their path.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 275 
 
 "Well, well, it's all over," she said as if she 
 were speaking to herself. "You'll have to go 
 then. My love can't save you. . . . The world 
 will have to learn," she added in a dazed voice. 
 
 "All this time I thought . . ." he muttered. 
 "All this time I thought. . . . Well, there is 
 nothing to be done ahout it." 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 Their eyes met in fathomless yearning. 
 
 "I can't mend the world," she said. 
 
 "No one can. . . . Oh, Natalie!" the cry 
 broke out and touched her. The clock struck 
 an hour. They counted the final notes. 
 
 "I must go now," he said pitifully as if he 
 were waking from a dream. "I must go." 
 
 "Yes ... go quickly. Kiss me, Pierre 
 . . . kiss me." 
 
 He kissed her. Those who passed and saw 
 the parting smiled affectionately upon this idyl 
 between a soldier and a girl. 
 
 "Adieu!" 
 
 "Adieu." 
 
 One more look that linked and parted them
 
 276 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 forever and he was gone, a bright spot among 
 the trees, vanishing far down an alley. 
 
 She sank into the chair staring vacantly 
 ahead of her. Then her loss struck her. A 
 cold pain entered her heart like steel. Driven 
 by it she ran down the alley after him. 
 
 "Pierre, I lied ! . . . Pierre, nothing is true ! 
 . . . Pierre, you are justified!" she tried to 
 call. But he had gone his way. And she was 
 left alone in the darkening garden to find her 
 way through the gates. There was nothing to 
 be done. She had spoken.
 
 XV 
 
 OLD Jean Bourdon and the women 
 dressed in black sat at the round table 
 eating. They ate like machines open- 
 ing and shutting their mouths. And in the big 
 dining room where the furniture seemed to 
 have sprouted from the floor in massive fa- 
 miliar shapes, these women of several genera- 
 tions fitted into the space like plants that have 
 grown in the same climate for years. The air 
 was charged with the heat of midday. 
 
 Jean Bourdon said once, "A year ago we 
 were all here." His dulled eyes rested on 
 three vacant chairs. 
 
 "Henri may be back on leave in a few 
 months," murmured Madame Bourdon. Her 
 rigid face had forgotten how to smile. She 
 spoke without interest. 
 
 "Henri . . . yes." 
 
 277
 
 278 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 Louise Bourdon looked up with a spark of 
 animation. "He hasn't written lately." 
 
 Madame Bourdon said with an effort, 
 "Not since Pierre's death," and lowered her 
 face. 
 
 Grandmother Bourdon wagged her head 
 and cackled, "Pierre is a brave boy ... a 
 good soldier." She peered around the table 
 with misty eyes. Her palsied hand reached out 
 for the bread. 
 
 "He died as a Frenchman should," Jean 
 Bourdon remarked heavily, and pushed his 
 plate away as if he would never eat again. 
 
 "He did his duty," his mother said. 
 
 Then Lorraine rose passionately. "I can't 
 bear it ... I can't bear it!" she sobbed and 
 swayed out of the room. 
 
 "Poor Lorraine!" sighed Germaine. 
 
 And they sat on, opening and shutting their 
 mouths, avoiding one another's eyes. The 
 room was weighted with memories of vanished 
 youth.
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 279 
 
 Natalie, in black, stood on the little balcony, 
 holding the letters Pierre had left for her. She 
 stood there without moving. 
 
 The roofs were very old. They seemed to 
 have lived a long while and grown wise and 
 mellow. Their quaint pattern was a seal 
 of the city set in the sky. Far away on its 
 peak the Sacre-Coeur hovered like a cloud. 
 The bells of Saint-Germain were ringing. 
 They rang as if they would never stop, as if 
 their voice must reach the ends of the earth 
 awakening sleepers. They told men there was 
 no way of escaping Fate. They told women 
 there was no use in weeping. The life of the 
 city, hidden among the roofs, drifted upwards, 
 a medley of interwoven discords. And below 
 in the shadowless old courtyard a little boy 
 was playing at war. He was a brave General 
 at the head of his troops. The courtyard was 
 peopled with enemies. Battles were rag- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 These words of Pierre's came to Natalie: 
 "I don't want to kill. I don't want to throw
 
 280 CHILDREN OF FATE 
 
 away any of the gifts civilization has given to 
 me, unless in offering my life I am benefiting 
 future humanity. If I had been let alone, I 
 would have created, built, justified my place 
 in a constructive society. Or else I should 
 have been a soldier from the beginning . . . 
 an automaton with a gun." 
 
 He had said, "There must be a deep sig- 
 nificance in our sacrifice. . . . What am I? 
 My bayonet is a blade of grass, my mind a 
 seed in the field. But if by adding my life 
 to the millions I can assist a natural terrific 
 manifestation of good, I must consider myself 
 enrolled in an eternal cause . . ." 
 
 Then she read again his last words. "Let 
 your vision cover me gently when I am dead, 
 and let my memory lie in your heart like a 
 cradled child. Be happy if you can and your 
 country stays wise. . . . The trumpet rings in 
 my ears as imperious, as clear, as Fate. It 
 starts the rhythm. We must carry it on. 
 Adieu, Beloved . . ." 
 
 He had gone the way of the youthful mil-
 
 CHILDREN OF FATE 281 
 
 lions and the world was none the better for 
 it. And she was alone with a grave in her 
 heart. 
 
 She stretched out her arms to the city. 
 
 But the city could not give her what it had 
 taken, nor could men undo what they had done.
 
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