said Walter . `` Yes . Irene told me , '' answered Rilla chokingly . `` We did n't want you to know till the evening was over . I knew when you came out for the drill that you had heard . Little sister , I had to do it . I could n't live any longer on such terms with myself as I have been since the Lusitania was sunk . When I pictured those dead women and children floating about in that pitiless , ice-cold water -- well , at first I just felt a sort of nausea with life . I wanted to get out of the world where such a thing could happen -- shake its accursed dust from my feet for ever . Then I knew I had to go . '' `` There are -- plenty -- without you . '' `` That is n't the point , Rilla-my-Rilla . I 'm going for my own sake -- to save my soul alive . It will shrink to something small and mean and lifeless if I do n't go . That would be worse than blindness or mutilation or any of the things I 've feared . '' `` You may -- be -- killed , '' Rilla hated herself for saying it -- she knew it was a weak and cowardly thing to say -- but she had rather gone to pieces after the tension of the evening . '' ` Comes he slow or comes he fast It is but death who comes at last . ' '' quoted Walter . `` It 's not death I fear -- I told you that long ago . One can pay too high a price for mere life , little sister .
There 's so much hideousness in this war -- I 've got XXXXX go and help wipe it out of the world .
as at for if on since than to with without