To either side the savage battles of peace, and there in between--an island--the peaceful preparations for war.
And in such places, sheltered, detached, yet offered all she would have from without, had always lived Katie Jones, a favorite child of the favored men whom precautions against war offered so serene a life; surrounded by friends who were likewise removed from the battles of peace to the peace of possible war, knowing the social struggle only as it touched their own detached questions of pay and rank, pleasant and stupid posts, hospitable and inhospitable commandants.
And into this had rushed a victim of the battles of peace! From the stony paths of peace there to the well-kept roads of war! The irony of it struck Katie anew: the incongruity of choosing so well-regulated a place for the performance of so disorderly an act as the taking of one's life.

Choosing army headquarters as the place in which to desert from the army of life! Such an infringement of discipline as seeking self-destruction in that well-ordered spot where the machinery of destruction was so peacefully accumulated! She looked covertly at Ann; she could do it, for the girl seemed for the most part unconscious of her.

She was leaning back in the comfortably rounded corner of the stanhope, her hands lax in her lap, her eyes often closed--a tired child of peace drinking in the peace furnished by the military, was Ann.

It was plain that Ann was one who could drink things in, could draw beauty to her as something which was of her, something, too, it seemed, of which she had been long in need.

Could it be that in the big outside world into which these new wonderings were sent, world which they seemed to penetrate but such a little way, there were many who did not find their own?
Might it not be that some of the most genuine Florentines had never been to Florence?
And because all this was _of_ Ann, it was banishing the things it could not assimilate.