Page:The haunted bookshop.djvu/134

 chant the cold dirges of the baffled, and sullen hymns of defeat?—I've sat here in my shop at night, and looked round at my shelves, looked at all the brave books that house the hopes and gentlenesses and dreams of men and women, and wondered if they were all wrong, discredited, defeated. Wondered if the world were still merely a jungle of fury. I think I'd have gone balmy if it weren't for Walt Whitman. Talk about Mr. Britling—Walt was the man who 'saw it through.'

"The glutton, the idler, and the fool in their deadly path across history.… Aye, a deadly path indeed. The German military men weren't idlers, but they were gluttons and fools to the nth power. Look at their deadly path! And look at other deadly paths, too. Look at our slums, jails, insane asylums.…

"I used to wonder what I could do to justify my comfortable existence here during such a time of horror. What right had I to shirk in a quiet bookshop when so many men were suffering and dying through no fault of their own? I tried to get into an ambulance unit, but I've had no medical training and they said they didn't want men of my age unless they were experienced doctors."

"I know how you felt," said Titania, with a surprising look of comprehension. "Don't you suppose that a great many girls, who couldn't do