In Europe and in Asia, that morning, there were young girls and nuns
and wives who were in the power of foreign soldiers whose language
they could not speak but could understand all too well--poor, ruined
victims of the tidal waves of battle. There were wives, young and
old, who had got their husbands back from war blind, crippled,
foolish, petulant. They had left part of their souls on the field
with their blood.
It was a time when it seemed that nobody had a right to be unhappy
who had life, health, shelter, and food. Yet America was perhaps as
discontented as Europe.
Kedzie had reason enough to make peace with life. Gilfoyle was as
valuable a citizen as she. She might have helped to make him a good
business man or a genuine poet. What is poetry, anyway, but the
skilful advertisement of emotions? She might at least have made of
Gilfoyle that all-important element of the Republic, a respectable,
amiable, ordinary man, perhaps the father of children who would be
of value, even of glory, to the world.
There was romance enough in their wedding. Others of the couples who
had bought licenses that day were rapturous in yet cheaper tenements,
greeting the new day with laughter and kisses and ambition to earn
and to save, to breed and grow old well.
But to be content with what or whom she had, Kedzie would have had
to be somebody else besides Kedzie; and then Gilfoyle would not
perhaps have met her or married her. Some man in Nimrim, Mo.
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