Page:Poems Cromwell.djvu/128

Rh personal immunities, their money, and the grace and luxury to which they had been born. A delicate humility made them feel debtors to life. In their eyes existence was a bond given by the soul, to be redeemed at any cost. Both had written from childhood, and in 1915 Gladys published a volume of poems that promised no uncertain music. Slight as it was, endless toil lay back of it: she had the master's sense of workmanship, and every verse and stanza was the outcome of labor that had often covered years. "Gates of Utterance" was obviously a first book: but it was the first book of a poet. Dorothea was developing more slowly, experimenting more cautiously. The short stories she left show at once more cleverness, a keener sense of epigram, of earth's hidden laughter, than any one could have guessed who saw only a graceful, fuchsia-like creature, eager to give her time and income to social experiment and investigation. But of them more was asked than selfless generosity, or will to serve. In a picture taken at the Chalons Canteen, the two girls, veiled and habited in white working uniform, stand like conventual sisters serving a group of poilus; Dorothea holds a slender pitcher from which she pours into the soldier's cup, while Gladys offers bread in a shallow basket. Clear of line like a classic bas-relief, the so fortunate and so