Above the white-mantled world the concave of the sky hung blue and deep and pricked out with pale star points.
About the world the night had thrown her mystic jewelled robes of white and blue, making a holy shrine, a very temple of peace for God and man.
For some minutes they walked together in silence, after they had bidden good-night to the last of their friends.
"What a world it is, Mother!" said Larry, gazing about him at the beauty of the night.
"Yes, but alas, alas, that God's own children should spoil all this glory with hatred and strife! This very night in the unhappy Balkan States men are killing each other.

It is too sad and too terrible to think of.

Oh, if men would be content only to do justly by each other." "Those people of the Balkan States are semi-barbarians," said Larry, "and therefore war between them is to be expected; but I cannot get myself to believe in the possibility of war between Christians, civilised nations to-day.

But, Mother, for the first time in my life, listening to those two men, Romayne and Switzer, I had a feeling that war might be possible.

Switzer seemed so eager for it, and so sure about it, didn't he?
And Romayne, too, seemed ready to fight.