He kept looking at the people, and in his arms was Lory, sobbing for that woman who had lost her child from her shawl; and over there across the water were thousands whose children were gone, whose fathers had died....
Here they all seemed so kindly, and they were going home ... to homes such as he and Lory were going to have. _Just the same—just the same_....
And as he looked at the people, the thousands, going to their homes, Love that had come to dwell in him, touched him on the eyes. He saw them loving, as he and Lory loved. He saw them grieving, as that woman had grieved for her child. He saw them lonely for their dead, as he was lonely for his dead. None of them could deceive him. He knew them, now. They were like Lory and like him.
Out of a heart suddenly full he spoke the utmost that he could:
“What a rotten shame,” he said, “it’d be to kill any of them!”
She looked up, and saw where he was looking, and her heart leaped with her understanding of him.
“But they can’t seem to stop to think of things like that,” he said; “not when big things come up.”
“Big things!” she cried. “What’s big things?”
“Well—rights—and land—and sea-ports,” said he.
She laughed, and caught up an end of her blue knitted shawl and covered her face, and dropped the shawl with almost a sob.
“Rights—and land—and sea-ports!” she said over.
The three words hung in air, and echoed. And abruptly there came upon him a dozen things that he had heard that night: “We had just three little streets, but they took those....” “There is only one hell worse than we have been through....” “Say, if you like, that Belgium was only a part of what happens in war....” “We have to think of men brutalized and driven to hideous deeds....” “Enough of slaughter. Enough of devastation. Peace—lasting peace!” And then again the words of the Hungarian woman: “I had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I don’t know where I dropped him.”
“Think of millions of men doing like Dad and that sheriff,” the girl said suddenly. “I saw ’em there on the woodshed floor,—stark, starin’, ravin’ mad.”
Sharp on the dark before him was struck the image of that old madman in the kitchen. There was a beast in him. The Inger had felt the beast in himself answer. He had felt the shame of a man who is a beast to another man. _What if it were the same kind of shame for the nations?_