For a moment he held her so, not the less tenderly that his great arms would not let her move. But this obedience was, after all, not what he wanted. “Do you want to?” he demanded, and half loosed his clasp.
“I don’t know,” she answered sleepily—but she did not move away.
In a little while she fell asleep, and he sat so and held her. Her weight became a delicious discomfort. He was not thinking either of that night on the trail, or of what might be. He was hardly thinking at all. He was swept by the sweetness of the hour and by the sense of an exalted living, such as he had never dreamed; an exalted warfare, in which men killed for great reasons. And once his feeling was shot through with the recognition that every one in the car would be believing that she was his wife; that every one in the car would be thinking that they had a home somewhere.
He put his lips on her hair, and then rested his cheek there. So, sleeping, they sped through that new world.
AT Harrisburg, he bought a New York paper. There have been huge mass meetings in New York to which only an inch of space was given, on a back page; but this meeting had the second column next to the war news. Two overflow meetings had been held and in all three, the enthusiasm, the newspaper said, had been tremendous, the sentiment overwhelming. The editorial boldly supported the headlines:
“... enough of this policy of negation. If national pride has not been sufficient to prompt the United States to activity, to its rôle as a leader among the powers, surely the goad of a violated neutrality and an utter disregard of international law should be sufficient to open the eyes of its people....
“The refusal to exercise intervention was natural. The refusal to make the first move in calling a congress of all nations including the belligerents, was hardly less so. We should in no wise assume to dictate to the powers of Europe. The refusal to mobilize the army or to begin to provide anything like adequate coast defences a people has borne patiently and far too long. But the tacit refusal to permit the citizens to bear arms in defence of this their land ... etc.”
The Inger slapped the paper and the page slit down its length.
“That’s it,” he said, “they’ve got it. Ain’t it a wonder,” he put it to the flying Pennsylvania landscape, “that I come just when I come?”