"No, we shan't. The doors are shut. I saw to that. We are as much alone as if we were in a desert. And I can't sleep until I have read that chapter to you--please----"
Reluctantly, with her wraps on, she sat down.
He stood over her while she removed it, and helped her out of her coat "Look at me," he said, peremptorily. "I hate to read to wandering eyes."
"_So they marched away--young Franz from Nuremberg and young George from London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on the coast of France._"
That was the beginning of Geoffrey Fox's famous story: "The Three Souls," the story which was to bring him something of fortune as well as of fame, the story which had been suggested to Anne Warfield by the staring eyes of Peggy's pussy cat.
As she listened, Anne saw three youths starting out from home, marching gaily through the cities and steadily along the roads--marching, marching--Franz from Nuremburg, young George from London, and Michel from his sunlighted vineyards, drawing close and closer, unconscious of the fate that was bringing them together, thinking of the glory of battle, and of the honor of Kaiser and King and of the Republic.
The shadow of the great conflict falls gradually upon them. They meet the wounded, the refugees, they hear the roar of the guns, they listen to the tales of those who have been in the thick of it.
Then come privations, suffering, winter in the trenches--Franz on one side, young George on the other, and Michel; then fighting--fear----
Geoffrey stopped there. "Shall I have them afraid?"
"I think they would be afraid. But they would keep on fighting, and that would be heroic."
"This part is easy. It will be the last of it that I shall find hard--when I deal with their souls."
"Oh, you must show at the last that it is because of their souls that they are brothers. Each man has had a home, he has had love, each of them has had his hopes and dreams for the future, for his middle-age and his old age, and now there is to be no middle-age, no old age--and in their knowledge of their common lot their hatred dies."
"I am afraid I can't do it," he said, moodily. "I should have to swing myself out into an atmosphere which I have never breathed."
"Oh, I am of the earth--earthy. I have sold my birthright, I have yearned for the flesh-pots, I have fed among--swine. I have done all of the other things which haven't Biblical sanction. And now you expect me to write of souls."