The smoke of the donkey-engines was vanished, fires grown cold with the end of the day's work. But upriver and down the spoil of axe and saw lay in red booms along the bunk. He could mark the place where he had stood that afternoon and watched a puffing yarder bunt a string of forty-foot logs into the booming-ground. He could see figures about in the gardens, and the shrill voices and laughter of children echoed up to them on the hill.
"It is a great view, and there is more in it than meets the eye," Thompson said. "Eh, little woman? The greatest war of all, the biggest struggle. One that never ends. Man struggling to subdue his environment to his needs."
Sophie smiled understandingly. She looked over the valley with a wistful air.
"Did you ever read 'The Sons of Martha'?" she asked. Do you remember these lines:
"'Not as a ladder to reach high Heaven, Not as an altar to any creed, But simple service simply given To his own kind in their common need.'"
"It is a noble mark to shoot at," Thompson said.
He fell silent. Sophie went on after a minute.
"Dad said he was going back to first principles when he began this. There are men here who have found economic salvation and self-respect, who think he is greater than any general. I'm proud of dad. He wanted to do something. What he has accomplished makes all my puttering about at what, after all, was pure charity, a puerile sort of service. I gave that up after you went away." She snuggled one hand into his. "It didn't seem worth while--nothing seemed worth while until dad evolved this."
She waved her hand again over the valley. Thompson's eyes gleamed. It was good to look at, good to think of. It was good to be there. He remembered, with uncanny, disturbing clearness of vision, things he had looked down upon from a greater height over bloody stretches in France. And he shuddered a little.
Sophie felt the small tremor run through him.
"It is beautiful, and I can appreciate its beauty all the more from seeing it with you. I'd like to take a hand in this," he said quietly. "I was just comparing it with other things--and wondering."
"If I'll get back to this--and you," he said, with his arms around her. "Oh, well, I've got three months' leave. That's a lot."