Hildegarde had not told Crispin all that had happened on election night, but she had told him a part of it and had ended with this:
"Father doesn't want me to have a mind of my own, but I must have it, mustn't I? Mother's love didn't demand that I should be her echo. Sometimes father doesn't seem to mind opposition. He laughs at me and says I am like him. But when he is in one of his moods I have to be careful—I wouldn't tell this to any one else in the world, Crispin, but you always understand."
Crispin's heart leaped at that. Yet, as he read on, he became aware of a sense of disquiet, almost of foreboding. For Hildegarde was talking of Meriweather.
"We are going to church together on Thanksgiving morning. No one else here goes to church—not even Miss Anne. She says she is emancipated, and father is indifferent. But I went last week with Merry to a century-old chapel at the cross-roads. There's a high church priest, so that there were candles on the altar, and there's a war memorial window, with a young soldier in golden armor and his face turned toward a great Light. Mr. Meriweather says that's the way it ought to be. That artists who make memorials of tired and stricken men don't know the Something that illumines men's souls at the very end. He says that war is beastly, but that the souls of men are not beastly. And that's why he likes the soldier in golden armor, with his eyes fixed on the Light—"
Crispin felt that it was a thing to disturb him, this growing intimacy with Meriweather. His name was sprinkled through the pages. She had called him once
