The old
world is destroyed and we must build up the new one. It will be the task
of years. I've seen enough of war to realize that we've got to make a
world where wars can't happen. We've given Prussianism its mortal wound
but it isn't dead yet and it isn't confined to Germany either. It isn't
enough to drive out the old spirit--we've got to bring in the new.'
"I'm writing down those words of Jem's in my diary so that I can read
them over occasionally and get courage from them, when moods come when I
find it not so easy to 'keep faith.'"
Rilla closed her journal with a little sigh. Just then she was not
finding it easy to keep faith. All the rest seemed to have some special
aim or ambition about which to build up their lives--she had none. And
she was very lonely, horribly lonely. Jem had come back--but he was not
the laughing boy-brother who had gone away in 1914 and he belonged to
Faith. Walter would never come back. She had not even Jims left. All at
once her world seemed wide and empty--that is, it had seemed wide and
empty from the moment yesterday when she had read in a Montreal paper a
fortnight-old list of returned soldiers in which was the name of Captain
Kenneth Ford.
So Ken was home--and he had not even written her that he was coming. He
had been in Canada two weeks and she had not had a line from him. Of
course he had forgotten--if there was ever anything to forget--a
handclasp--a kiss--a look--a promise asked under the influence of a
passing emotion.
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