Mary never told Stefan of those nightmare moments before his arrival. From the instant that her deepest passion, the maternal, had answered to his need, she knew neither doubt nor unhappiness.

She settled down to the task of creating by her labor and love a home where her three dependents and her three faithful helpmates could find the maximum of happiness and peace.

The life of the Byrdsnest centered about Stefan; every one thought first of him and his needs. Next in order of consideration came Ellie and little Rosamond. Then Lily had to be remembered. She must not be overworked; she must take enough time off. Henrik, too, must not be over-conscientious. He must allow Mary to relieve him often enough. As for the Sparrow, she must not wear herself out flying in three directions at once. She must not tire her eyes learning typewriting. But at this point Mary's commands were apt to be met with contempt.

“Now, Mary Byrd,” the Sparrow would chirp truculently, “you 'tend to your business, and let me 'tend to mine. Anybody would think that we were all to save ourselves in this house but you. As for my typing, it's funny if I can't save you something on those miserable stenographers' bills.”

Mary was wonderfully happy in these days—happier in a sense than she had ever been, for she had found, beyond all question, the full work for hands to do. And to her love for her children there was added not merely her maternal tenderness for Stefan, but a deep and growing admiration.

For Stefan was changed not only in the body, but in the spirit. Everybody remarked it. The fierce fires of war seemed to have burnt away his old confident egotism. In giving himself to France he had found more than he had lost; for, by a strange paradox, in the midst of death he had found belief in life.

“Mary, my beautiful,” he said to her one day in September, as he worked at an adjustable drawing board which swung across his knees, “did you ever wonder why all my old pictures used to be of rapid movement, nearly all of running or flying?”

“Yes, dearest, I used to try often to think out the significance of it.”

They were in the studio. Mary had just dropped her pencil after a couple of hours' work on a new serial she was writing. She often worked now in Stefan's room. He was busy with a series of drawings of the war. He had tried different media—pastel, ink, pencils, and chalks—to see which were the easiest for sedentary work.

“It's good-bye to oils,” he had said, “I couldn't paint a foot from the canvas.”

Now he was using a mixture of chalk and charcoal, and was in the act of finishing the sixth drawing of his series. The big doors of the barn were opened wide to the sunny lawn, gay with a riot of multicolored dahlias.

“It's odd,” said Stefan, pushing away his board and turning the wheels of his chair so that he faced the brilliant stillness of the garden, “but I seem never to have understood my work till now. I used always to paint flight partly because it was beautiful in itself but also, I think, with some hazy notion that swift creatures could always escape from the ugliness of life.”

Mary came and sat by him, taking his hand.

“It seems to me,” he went on, “that I spent my life flying from what I thought was ugly. I always refused to face realities, Mary, unless they were pleasant. I fled even from the great reality of our marriage because it meant responsibilities and monotony, and they seemed ugly things to me. And now, Mary,” he smiled, “now that I can never shoulder responsibilities again, and am condemned to lifelong monotony”—she pressed his hand—“neither seems ugly any more. The truth is, I thought I fled to get away from things, and it was really to get away from myself. Now that I've seen such horrors, such awful suffering, and such unbelievable sacrifice, I have something to think about so much more real than my vain, egotistical self. I know what my work is now, something much better than just creating beauty. I gave my body to France—that was nothing. But now I have to give her my soul—I have to try and make it a voice to tell the world a little of what she has done. Am I too vain, dearest, in thinking that these really say something big?”

He nodded toward his first five drawings, which hung in a row on the wall.

“Oh, Stefan, you know what I think of them,” she said, her eyes shining.

“Would you mind pinning up the new one, Mary, so that we can see them all together?”

She rose and, unfastening the drawing from its board, pinned it beside the others. Then she turned his chair to face them, and they both looked silently at the pictures.

They were drawings of the French lines, and the peasant life behind them. Dead soldiers, old women by a grave, young mothers following the plow—men tense, just before action. The subjects were already familiar enough through the work of war correspondents and photographers, but the treatment was that of a great artist. The soul of a nation was there—which is always so much greater than the soul of an individual. The drawings were not of men and women, but of one of the world's greatest races at the moment of its transfiguration.

For the twentieth time Mary's eyes moistened as she looked at them.

The shadows began to lengthen. Shouts came from the slope, and presently Ellie's sturdy form appeared through the trees, followed by the somewhat disheveled Sparrow carrying Rosamond, who was smiting her shoulder and crowing loudly.

“I'll come and help you in a few minutes, Sparrow,” Mary called, as the procession crossed the lawn, her face beaming love upon it.

“Can you spare the few minutes, dear?” Stefan asked, watching her.

“Yes, indeed, they won't need me yet.”

The light was quite golden now; the dahlias seemed on fire under it.

“Mary,” said Stefan, “I've been thinking a lot about you lately.”

“Have you, dear?”

“Yes, I never tried to understand you in the old days. I had never met your sort of woman before, and didn't trouble to think about you except as a beautiful being to love. I was too busy thinking about myself,” he smiled. “I wondered, without understanding it, where you got your strength, why everything you touched seemed to turn to order and helpfulness under your hands. I think now it is because you are always so true to life—to the things life really means. Every one always approves and upholds you, because in you the race itself is expressed, not merely one of its sports, as with me.”

She looked a little puzzled. “Do you mean, dearest, because I have children?”

“No, Beautiful, any one can do that. I mean because you have in perfect balance and control all the qualities that should be passed on to children, if the race is to be happy. You are so divinely normal, Mary, that's what it is, and yet you are not dull.”

“Oh, I'm afraid I am,” smiled Mary, “rather a bromide, in fact.”

He shook his head, with his old brilliant smile.

“No, dearest, nobody as beautiful and as vital as you can be dull to any one who is not out of tune with life. I used to be that, so I'm afraid I thought you so, now and then.”

“I know you did,” she laughed, “and I thought you fearfully erratic.”

He laughed back. They had both passed the stage in which the truth has power to hurt.

“I remember Mr. Gunther talking to me a little as you have been doing,” she recalled, “when he came to model me. I don't quite understand either of you. I think you're just foolishly prejudiced in my favor because you admire me.”

“What about the Farradays, and Constance, and the Sparrow and Lily and Henrik and McEwan and the Havens and Madame Corriani and—”

“Oh, stop!” she laughed, covering his mouth with her hand.

“And even in Paris,” he concluded, holding the hand, “Adolph, and—yes, and Felicity Berber. Are they all 'prejudiced in your favor'?”

“Why do you include the last named?” she asked, rather low. It was the first time Felicity had been spoken of between them.

“She threw me over, Mary, the hour she discovered how it was with you,” he said quietly.

“That was rather decent of her. I'm glad you told me that,” she answered after a pause.

“All this brings me to what I really want to say,” he continued, still holding her hand in his. “You are so alive, you are life; and yet you're chained to a half-dead man.”

“Oh, don't, dearest,” she whispered, deeply distressed.

“Yes, let me finish. I shan't last very long, my dear—two or three years, perhaps—long enough to say what I must about France. I want you to go on living to the full. I want you to marry again, Mary, and have more beautiful, strong children.”

“Oh, darling, don't! Don't speak of such things,” she begged, her lips trembling.

“I've finished, Beautiful. That's all I wanted to say. Just for you to remember,” he smiled.

Her arms went round him. “You're bad,” she whispered, “I shan't remember.”

“Here comes Henrik,” he replied. “Run in to your babies.”

He watched her swinging steps as, after a farewell kiss, she sped down the little path.