MacRae looked at her and at the white cottage, at the great Gulf seas
smashing on the rocks below, at the far vista of sea and sky and the
shore line faintly purple in the distance. His gaze turned briefly to
the leafless tops of maple and alder rising out of the hollow in which
his father's body lay--in a corner of the little plot that was left of
all their broad acres--and came back at last to this fair daughter of
his father's enemy.

"The country is, yes," he said. "Anything that's worth having is worth
fighting for. But that isn't what they meant, and that isn't the way it
has worked out."

He was not conscious of the feeling in his voice. He was thinking with
exaggerated bitterness that the Germans in Belgium had dealt less hardly
with a conquered people than this girl's father had dealt with his.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean by that," she
remarked. Her tone was puzzled. She looked at him, frankly curious.

But he could not tell her what he meant. He had a feeling that she was
in no way responsible. He had an instinctive aversion to rudeness. And
while he was absolving himself of any intention to make war on her he
was wondering if her mother, long ago, had been anything like Miss Betty
Gower. It seemed odd to think that this level-eyed girl's mother might
have been _his_ mother,--if she had been made of stiffer metal, or if
the west wind had blown that afternoon.

He wondered if she knew. Not likely, he decided. It wasn't a story
either Horace Gower or his wife would care to tell their children.