"Yes. Irene told me," answered Rilla chokingly.
"We didn't want you to know till the evening was over. I knew when you
came out for the drill that you had heard. Little sister, I had to do
it. I couldn't live any longer on such terms with myself as I have been
since the Lusitania was sunk. When I pictured those dead women and
children floating about in that pitiless, ice-cold water--well, at
first I just felt a sort of nausea with life. I wanted to get out of the
world where such a thing could happen--shake its accursed dust from my
feet for ever. Then I knew I had to go."
"There are--plenty--without you."
"That isn't the point, Rilla-my-Rilla. I'm going for my own sake--to
save my soul alive. It will shrink to something small and mean and
lifeless if I don't go. That would be worse than blindness or mutilation
or any of the things I've feared."
"You may--be--killed," Rilla hated herself for saying it--she knew it
was a weak and cowardly thing to say--but she had rather gone to pieces
after the tension of the evening.
"'Comes he slow or comes he fast It is but death who comes at
last.'"
quoted Walter. "It's not death I fear--I told you that long ago. One
can pay too high a price for mere life, little sister. There's so much
hideousness in this war--I've got to go and help wipe it out of the
world. I'm going to fight for the beauty of life, Rilla-my-Rilla--that
is my duty.
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