It occasioned Winona not even mild surprise that the world should abandon itself to hideous war on the very day after Lyman Teaford had wed beyond the purple.

It was awful, yet somehow fitting.

Anything less than a World War would have appeared inconsequent, anti-climactic, to these two so closely concerned in the preliminary catastrophe, and yet so reticent that neither ever knew the other's wound.

Wilbur Cowan may have supposed that the entire Penniman family, Winona included, would rejoice that no more forever were they to hear the flute of Lyman Teaford.

Certainly Winona never suspected that a mere boy had been desolated by woman's perfidy and Lyman's mad abandonment of all that people of the better sort most prize.
Other people, close observers of world events, declared that no real war would ensue; it would be done in a few days--a few weeks at most.