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62 shining in wide-eyed young amazement through the blue haze of his cigarette-smoke. "What Peace?"

"Peace, simply."

"You're getting at me," cried Van der Welcke.

Brauws roared; and Van der Welcke too. They laughed for quite a minute or two.

"Hans," said Brauws, "how is it possible for any one to change as little as you have done? In all these years! You are just as incapable as in the old days of believing in anything serious."

"If you imagine that there's been nothing serious in my life," said Van der Welcke, vexed.

And, with great solemnity, he once more told his friend about Constance, about his marriage, his shattered career.

Brauws smiled.

"You laugh, as if it all didn't matter!" cried Van der Welcke, angrily.

"What does anything matter?" said Brauws.

"And your old Peace?"

"Very little as yet, at any rate . . . Perhaps later . . . Luckily, there's the future."

But Van der Welcke shrugged his shoulders and demolished Peace in a few ready-made sentences: there would always be war; it was one of those Utopian ideas. ..

Brauws only smiled.