He was dumbfounded to
find that he, a man who had read and talked extemporaneously
before great bodies of learned men, should have cold feet and
shaking hands and a hammering heart because he was trying to read
an article on America for Americans before a high-school Junior.
But presently, as the theme engrossed him, he forgot the vision
of Linda interesting herself in his homemaking, and saw instead a
vision of his country threatened on one side by the red menace of
the Bolshevik, on the other by the yellow menace of the Jap, and
yet on another by the treachery of the Mexican and the slowly
uprising might of the black man, and presently he was thundering
his best-considered arguments at Linda until she imperceptibly
drew back from him on the packing case, and with parted lips and
wide eyes she listened in utter absorption. She gazed at a
transformed Peter with aroused eyes and a white light of
patriotism on his forehead, and a conception even keener than
anything that the war had brought her young soul was burning in
her heart of what a man means when he tries to express his
feeling concerning the land of his birth. Presently, without
realizing what she was doing, she reached for her pad and pencils
and rapidly began sketching a stretch of peaceful countryside
over which a coming storm of gigantic proportions was gathering.
Fired by Peter's article, the touch of genius in Linda's soul
became creative and she fashioned huge storm clouds wind driven,
that floated in such a manner as to bring the merest suggestion
of menacing faces, black faces, yellow faces, brown faces, and
under the flash of lightning, just at the obscuring of the sun, a
huge, evil, leering red face.
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