Part 31 (2/2)

And what can I add? Dear, it is not defeat. It is promise. It is hope.

Some day we shall know. But until then we shall go on. It is woman's bit to carry on. But not in despondency; not in bitterness; not in anger or despair. _He_ didn't go out that way. He was reverent--and a little curious, and he went out with a smile. And we shall go on, and carry his smile and his confidence through the valley of our sacrifice.

What am I doing, speaking of _our_ sacrifice?

I salute you, sister in the Order of Suffering--and of hope.

EDITH DUNCAN.

I handed the letter back to her, and for a time I had no words. ”Won't you let me tell the story?” I said at length. ”The world is full of sorrow, and it needs voices to give that sorrow words, and perhaps turn it into hope--as this letter does.”

She hesitated, and I realized then how much I had asked. ”It is the story of my life--my soul,” she said. ”Yet, if it would help----”

”Without names,” I hastened to explain. ”Without real names of places or people.”

And so, in that little white-washed home, where the brown hills rise around and the placid mountains look down from the distance, and a tongue of spruce trees beyond the stream stands sentinel against the open prairie, she is carrying on, not in despondency and bitterness, but in service and in hope. And so her sisters, all this world over, must carry on, until their sweetness and their sacrifice shall fill up and flood over all the valleys of hate. . . . And if you should chance that way, and if you should win the confidence of young Three-year-old, he may stand for you and say, with his voice filled with the honour and the glory and the pride of it,

”My father was a soldier. He was killed at Courcelette.”

THE END

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