Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/351

 said Eternity made me tired; and you said, I thought you'd do for me in place of Eternity and then you said, I thought you wouldn't but Fidelia would.

"You meant that I turned to you, when I was first trying to shake off father's ideas and when I'd got them shaken off, I turned to Fidelia.

"Well, a few of the ideas I shook off—or thought I'd shaken off—are in me again and I think they'll stay. I'll never go into the ministry but I've got to set myself to more than making money and spending it. It's right for me to make money, as I said that night in the snow; but also it's certainly not enough."

"What are you going to do differently?" Alice asked.

His need to do differently was met, temporarily at least, by his enrollment in the citizens' volunteer training camp which that summer was established at Fort Sheridan, in Illinois. It was the July when the British armies, seeking to relieve the frightful pressure of the German divisions before Verdun, were about the business of ceaseless slaughter in battle which soon earned the name of "the blood bath of the Somme."

The Russian front, too, was active and Italy was yet young in the war. The Serbians, swept from their native soil, were reforming in Macedonia, recruiting and making ready to turn. No one now talked confidently and carelessly, as had Vredick less than a year ago, about how the big bankers would soon call an end to war; most Americans were feeling themselves drawn closer and closer into it and Congress already had drafted the National Guard regiments into the regular army and offered to volunteers the chance for training which David accepted.