But in spite of it all, her sense of pity seemed to be going. When the twenty-third came, and she read that another gallant young leader had been assassinated, she could not mourn him deeply. Though nothing could be stupider than to slay Michael Collins, his earth went on shining in the grave. She could not bring herself to assert that such a youth ought never to have been born.

She had read a great deal in the papers about radio-telegraphy. Apparently the year 1922 would be remembered as the year when all the boys in America began to talk through empty space like gossiping seraphs. She wished that Horatio could have lived to see the day. How tickled she would have been to hear from Washington such words as these: “Get ready! Your brother Horatio is on the ether.” If all the boys in the world got acquainted with each other by such means, maybe peace would come after all—some day.

Occasionally she had seen some reference to the deeper mystery of radium and its terrible, almost inconceivable energy. She earnestly hoped that nobody on earth was trying to find anything like it but greater in quantity. Given such a power, the savage human race would destroy itself in a year.