It is the glory of the
unconquerable will. Look at the woman's face! The world calls him
beaten. _She_ knows that he has won. I see behind it the world's
battlefields--'way back from the first I see them all, and I see that the
thing which has shaped the world is not the success or failure of
individual battles one-half so much as it is this wresting of victory
from defeat by simply _breathing_ victory even after the sword
has been broken in the hand. What we call victory and defeat are
incidents--things individual and temporal. The thing universal and
eternal is this immortality of the spirit of victory. Why, every time I
look at that grip on the broken sword,"--laughing now, but eyes
shining--"I can feel the world take a bound ahead!"
CHAPTER VII
ERNESTINE IN HER STUDIO
The next morning she went to work. She had never wanted anything with
quite the eagerness that she wanted to work that morning.
"What I want to know is," Georgia had demanded the night before, "did
either of you do any work? I hear a great deal about quaint little
villages and festive cafes, but what did you actually do?"
Now if Georgia were only here to repeat the question, she could answer
jubilantly: "What did I do? Why, I got ready for this morning! Wasn't
that a fine year's work?"
It had seemed queer at first.
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