She was
absorbed, filled with a strange emotion that made her lashes
moist. She saw not only the tragedy and waste of life, but a
glorious glimpse of the way out. This man and his friends set the
common good above their private gain. For them a new heart was
being born into the world. They were no longer consumed with blind
greed, with love of their petty selves. They were no longer full
of cowardice and distrust and enmity. Life was a thing beautiful
to them. It was flushed with the color of hope, of fine
enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated. But
nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like
gods, immortals, these brothers to the spent and the maimed. For
they had found spiritual values in it that made any material
profit of small importance. Alice got a vision of the great truth
that is back of all true reforms, all improvement, all progress.
"Love," she said almost in a whisper, "is forgetting self."
Jeff lost his stride and pulled up. He thought he could not have
heard aright. "I beg your pardon?"
"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Go on please."
But she had broken the thread of his talk. He attempted to take it
up again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs.
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